Which, if you think about it, is exactly what all the popular kids do when they hang around the school grounds after the last bell rings, and Principal Gupta never calls the cops on them . . . but then again, I guess their parents are paying tuition.
I have to say, I sort of know now how Princess Diana must have felt. I mean, when Lars and Mr. G and I came out, the reporters started trying to swarm all over, waving microphones at us and yelling stuff like, “Amelia, how about a smile?” and “Amelia, what’s it like to wake up one morning the product of a single-parent family and go to bed the next night a royal princess worth over three hundred million dollars?”
I was kind of scared. Even if I’d wanted to, I couldn’t have answered their questions, because I didn’t know which microphone to talk into. Plus I was practically rendered blind by all the flashbulbs going off in front of my face.
Then Lars went into action. You should have seen it. First, he told me not to say anything. Then he put his arm around me. He told Mr. G to put his arm around my other side. Then, I don’t know how, but we ducked our heads and barreled through all the cameras and microphones and the people attached to them, until the next thing I knew, Lars was pushing me into the backseat of my dad’s car and jumping in after me.
Hello! I guess all that training in the Israeli army paid off. (I overheard Lars telling Wahim that’s where he’d learned how to work an Uzi. Wahim and Lars actually have some mutual friends, it turns out. I guess all bodyguards go to the same training school out in the Gobi Desert.)
Anyway, as soon as Lars slammed the back door shut, he said “Drive,” and the guy behind the wheel hit the gas. I didn’t recognize him, but sitting in the passenger seat beside him was my dad. And while we’re pulling away, brakes squealing, flashbulbs going off, reporters jumping onto the windshield to get a better shot, my dad goes, all casual, “So. How was your day, Mia?”
Geez!
I decided to ignore my dad. Instead, I turned around in my seat to wave good-bye to Mr. G. Only Mr. G had been swallowed up in a sea of microphones! He wouldn’t talk to them, though. He just kept waving his hands at them and trying to head for the subway, so he could take the E train home.
I felt sorry for poor Mr. Gianini then. True, he had probably stuck his tongue in my mom’s mouth, but he’s a really nice guy and doesn’t deserve to be harassed by the media.
I said so to my dad, also that we should have given Mr. G a ride home, and he just got huffy and tugged on his seat belt. He said, “Damn these things. They always choke me.”
So then I asked my dad where I was going to go to school now.
My dad looked at me like I was nuts. “You said you wanted to stay at Albert Einstein!” he kind of yelled.
I said, well, yes, but that was before Carol Fernandez outed me.
Then my dad wanted to know what outing was, so I explained to him that outing is when somebody reveals your sexual orientation on national TV, or in the newspaper, or in some other large public forum. Only in this case, I explained, instead of my sexual orientation, my royal status had been revealed.
So then my dad said I couldn’t go to a new school just because I’d been outed as being a princess. He said I have to stay at Albert Einstein, and Lars will go to class with me and protect me from reporters.
So then I asked him who’ll drive him around, and he pointed to the new guy, Hans.
The new guy nodded to me in the rearview mirror and said, “Hi.”
So then I said, “Lars is going to go with me everywhere I go?” Like how about if I just wanted to walk over to Lilly’s? I mean, if Lilly and I were still friends. Which is certainly never going to happen now.
And my dad said, “Lars would go with you.”
So basically, I am never going anywhere alone again.
This made me kind of mad. I sat in the backseat with red from a traffic light flashing down on my face, and I said, “Okay, well, that’s it. I don’t want to be a princess anymore. You can take back your one hundred dollars a day and send Grandmère back to France. I quit.”
And my dad said, in this tired voice, “You can’t quit, Mia. The article today closed the deal. Tomorrow your face will be in every newspaper in America—maybe even the world. Everyone will know that you are the princess Amelia of Genovia. And you cannot quit being who you are.”
I guess it wasn’t a very princessy thing to do, but I cried all the way to the Plaza. Lars gave me his handkerchief, which I thought was very nice of him.
More Wednesday
My mom thinks the person who tipped off Carol Fernandez is Grandmère.
But I really can’t believe Grandmère would do something like that—you know, give the Post the inside scoop on me. Especially when I’m so far behind in my princess lessons. You know? It’s almost guaranteed that now I’m going to have to start acting like a princess—I mean, really acting like one—but Grandmère hasn’t even gotten to all the really important stuff yet, the
stuff like how to argue knowledgeably with virulent antiroyalists like Lilly. So far all Grandmère has taught me is how to sit; how to dress; how to use a fish fork; how to address senior members of the royal household staff; how to say thank you so much and no, I don’t care for that, in seven languages; how to make a Sidecar; and some Marxist theory.
What good is any of THAT going to do me?
But my mom is convinced. Nothing will change her mind. My dad got really mad at her, but she still wouldn’t budge. She says Grandmère is the one who tipped off Carol Fernandez and that all my dad has to do is ask her and he’ll find out the truth.
My dad did ask her—not Grandmère. Mom. He asked her why she never bothered to consider that her boyfriend might be the one who spilled the beans to Carol Fernandez.