Forever Princess (The Princess Diaries 10)

What’s going to happen if Genovia is overrun by chain restaurants and—my chest seriously gets tight when I think about this—turned into another Euro Disney?

What can I do to make this not happen?

Dad says to stay out of it—that I’ve done enough…

Yeah. Like that doesn’t make me feel too guilty.

It’s all just so exhausting.

Not to mention all this other stuff. Like it even matters, in comparison to what’s going on with Dad and Genovia, but…well, it kind of does. I mean, Dad and Genovia are facing all these changes, and so am I.

The only difference is, they aren’t lying about it, the way I am. Well, okay, sure, Dad’s lying about why Grandmère is in New York (to plan my birthday party, when really, she’s here because he can’t stand having her around).

That’s one lie. I have multiple lies. Lies layered upon lies.

Mia Thermopolis’s List of Big Fat Lies She’s Been Telling Everyone:

Lie Number One: Well, of course, first, there’s the lie that I didn’t get into all those colleges. (No one knows the truth but me. And Principal Gupta. And my parents, of course.)

Lie Number Two: Then there’s the lie about my senior project. I mean, that it wasn’t actually on the history of Genovian olive oil pressing, circa 1254–1650, which is what I’ve told everyone (except Ms. Martinez, of course, who was my advisor, and who actually read it…or at least the first eighty pages of it, since I noticed she stopped correcting my punctuation after that. Of course Dr. K knows the truth, but he doesn’t count).

No one else even asked to read it, because who’d want to read a four-hundred-page paper on the history of Genovian olive oil pressing, circa 1254–1650?

Well, except for one person.

But I don’t want to talk about that right now.

Lie Number Three: Then there’s the lie that I just told Lana, about how I can’t go prom dress shopping with her because I’m busy hanging out with John Paul Reynolds-Abernathy IV after school today, when the truth is—Well. That’s not the only reason why I’m not going prom dress shopping with her. I don’t want to get into it with her, because I know what she’ll say. And I just don’t feel like dealing with La Lana right now.

Only Dr. Knutz knows the exact extent of my lies. He says he’s prepared to clear his schedule for the day when they all blow up in my face, as he’s warned me is inevitably going to happen.

And he says I better do it soon, because next week is our last session.

He’s mentioned it would be far better if I just came clean—confess the truth about having been admitted to every college to which I applied (for some reason, he thinks it isn’t necessarily just because I’m a princess), tell everyone what my senior project is really about, including the one person who wants to read it…even fess up about the prom.

If you ask me, a good place for me to start telling the truth would be in Dr. K’s office—with telling Dr. K that I think he’s the one in need of therapy. Yeah, he pretty much came to the rescue when I was going through one of the darkest periods of my life (though he made me do all the real work to climb out of that black hole myself).

But he has to be nuts to think I’m simply going to start blurting out the cold hard truth to everyone like that.

It’s just that so many people would be so hurt if I suddenly started telling the truth. Dr. K was there when the fallout happened after the Princess Amelie revelation. My dad and Grandmère were in his office for hours afterward. It was awful. I don’t want that to happen again.

Not that my friends would end up in my therapist’s office. But Kenny Showalter—oh, sorry, Kenneth, as he wants to be known now—wanted to go to Columbia more than anything, but instead got into his second-choice school of MIT. MIT is a fantastic school, but try telling Kenny—I mean, Kenneth—that. I guess the fact that he’ll be separated from his one true love, Lilly—who will be going to Columbia, just like her brother—is what’s bothering him about MIT, which is in Massachusetts.

And then there’s Tina, who didn’t get into her first choice of Harvard—but did get into NYU. So she’s kind of happy, because Boris didn’t get into his first choice of Berklee, which is in Boston. Instead, he got into Juilliard, which is in New York City. So that means Tina and Boris will at least be going to colleges in the same city. Even if they aren’t their first-choice colleges.

Oh, and Trisha is going to Duke. And Perin is going to Dartmouth. And Ling Su is going to Parsons. And Shameeka is going to Princeton.

Still. None of them is their first-choice college. (Lilly wanted to go to Harvard.) And no one who wanted to go to school together got into the same place!

Including me and J.P. Well, except that we did. But he doesn’t know that. Because I told him I didn’t.

I couldn’t help it! When everyone was checking online, and all the envelopes were coming, and no one was getting into their first-choice schools and everyone was finding out they were going to be one or even two states apart, and they were all crying and carrying on, I just…I don’t know what came over me. I felt so badly about getting in everywhere, I blurted out, “I didn’t get in anywhere, either!”

It was just easier that way than telling the truth, and having someone get their feelings hurt. Even though my lie made J.P. turn pale and swallow resolutely and put his arm around me, and say, “It’s all right, Mia. We’ll get through this. Somehow.”

So, yes. I suck.

But it wasn’t like my lie was all that unbelievable. With my math SAT score? I shouldn’t have gotten in anywhere.