The Princess Diaries (The Princess Diaries 1)

“I can’t go,” I said, “because my mom wouldn’t let me go to a party like that.”

Oh, my God. Why did I say that? Why, why, why? I should have lied. I totally should have lied. Because how did I sound, saying something like that? Uh, like a total freak. Worse than a freak. A dork. A grade A nerd.

I don’t know what compelled me to tell the truth in the first place. It wasn’t even the real truth. I mean, it was a truth, but it wasn’t the real reason I was saying no. I mean, it’s true there was no way my mom was going to let me go to a party in a boy’s apartment when his parents are out of town. Even with a bodyguard. But the real reason, of course, is that I wouldn’t know how to act at a party like that. I mean, I’ve heard about these kinds of parties. There are like whole rooms reserved for people to go into to make out. We’re talking major French kissing. Maybe even MORE than French kissing. Maybe even like above-the-waist touching. Maybe even below-the-waist touching. I don’t know for sure, because no one I know has ever been to one of those parties. No one I know is popular enough to get invited.

Plus everybody drinks. But I don’t drink, and I don’t have anybody to make out with. So what would I do there?

Lana looked at me, and then she looked at her friends, and then she burst out laughing. Loud. I mean, REALLY loud.

Well, I guess I can’t really blame her.

“Oh my God,” Lana said when she had gotten over laughing so hard that she couldn’t talk. “You can’t be serious.”

I knew right then Lana had just latched upon a whole new thing to torture me about. I didn’t really care so much about me, but I felt bad for Tina Hakim Baba, who’d managed to keep such a low profile for so long. Suddenly, because of me, she was being sucked into the middle of the popular girl torture zone.

“Oh my God,” Lana said. “Are you kidding me?”

“Um,” I said. “No.”

“Well, you’re not supposed to tell her the truth,” Lana said, all snotty again.

I didn’t know what she was talking about.

“Your mom. Nobody tells their mom the truth. You tell her you’re spending the night at

a girlfriend’s house. Duh.”

Oh.

She meant lie. To my mom. Lana had obviously never met my mom. Nobody lies to my mom. You just can’t. Not about something like that. No way.

So I said, “Look, it’s not like I don’t appreciate being asked, and all, but I really don’t think I can come. Besides, I don’t even drink. . . . ”

Okay, that was another big mistake.

Lana looked at me like I’d just said I’d never watched Party of Five, or something. She went: “You don’t drink?”

I just looked at her. The truth is, at Miragnac I do drink. We drink wine with dinner every night. That’s just what you do in France. You don’t drink it for fun, though. You drink it because it goes with the food. It’s supposed to make the foie gras taste better. I wouldn’t know about that, since I don’t eat foie gras, but I can tell you from experience that wine goes better with goat cheese than Dr Pepper does.

I certainly wouldn’t chug a whole bottle of it, though, not even on a dare. Not even for Josh Richter.

So I just shrugged and went, “No. I try to be respectful of my body and not put a whole lot of toxins into it.”

Lana snorted at that, but across from her—beside me—Josh Richter swallowed the mouthful of burger he was chewing and said, “I can respect that.”

Lana’s mouth dropped open. So, I’m sorry to say, did mine. Josh Richter respected something I had said? Are you kidding me?

But he looked perfectly serious. More than serious. He looked the way he had that day at Bigelows, like he could see into my soul with those electric blue eyes of his. . . . Like he already had seen into my soul. . . .

I guess Lana didn’t notice her boyfriend looking into my soul, though. Because she said, “God, Josh. You drink more’n anybody else in this whole school.”

Josh turned his head and looked at her with those hypnotic eyes. He said, without smiling, “Well, maybe I should quit, then.”

Lana started laughing. She said, “Oh, right! That’ll happen!”

Josh didn’t laugh, though. He just went on looking at her.

That’s when I started to get the heebie-jeebies. Josh just kept staring at Lana. I was glad he wasn’t staring at me like that; those blue eyes of his are no joke.