Princess in the Spotlight (The Princess Diaries 2)

Then it hit me. The reason Hank seemed so different was that his Hoosier drawl was gone!

“Now, Hank,” Lilly said. “We discussed this. It’s your natural ability that got you where you are. I just gave you a few pointers.”

When Hank turned his gaze toward me, I saw that his sky-blue eyes were damp. “Your friend Lilly,” he said, “has done something no one’s ever done for me in my life.”

I threw an accusing gaze at Lilly.

I knew it. I knew they’d had sex.

But then Hank said, “She believed in me, Mia. Believed in me enough to help me pursue my dream . . . a dream I’ve had since I was a very young boy. A lot of people—including my own Mamaw and Pa—I mean, my grandparents—told me it was a pipe dream. They told me to give it up, that it would never happen. But when I told my dream to Lilly, she held out her hand”—Hank held out his hand to illustrate this, and all of us—me, Lars, Tina, Tina’s bodyguard Wahim, Shameeka, and Ling Su—looked at that hand, the nails of which had been perfectly manicured—“and said, ‘Come with me, Hank. I will help you achieve your dream.’”

Hank put his hand down. “And do you know what?”

All of us—except Lilly, who went right on eating—were so astonished, we could only stare.

Hank did not wait for us to reply. He said, “It happened. Today, it happened. My dream came true. I was signed by Ford. I am their newest male model.”

We all blinked at him.

“And I owe it all,” Hank said, “to this woman here.”

Then something really shocking happened. Hank got up out of his chair, walked over to where Lilly was sitting, innocently finishing her Ring Ding, not suspecting a thing, and pulled her to a standing position.

Then as everyone in the entire cafeteria looked on—including, I noticed, Lana Weinberger and all her cronies over at the cheerleaders’ table—my cousin Hank laid such a kiss on Lilly Moscovitz, I thought he just might suck that Ring Ding right back up again.

When he was done kissing her, Hank let go. And Lilly, looking as if someone had just poked her with an electric prod, sank slowly back down to her seat. Hank adjusted the lapels of his leather coat and turned to me.

“Mia,” he said. “Tell Mamaw and Papaw they’re going to have to find somebody to cover my shift at the hardware store. I ain’t—I mean, I’m not—going back to Versailles. Ever.”

And with that, he strode from our cafeteria like a cowboy walking away from a gunfight he’d just won.

Or I suppose I should say he started to stride from the cafeteria. Unfortunately for Hank, he didn’t make it out quite fast enough.

Because one of the people who had observed that searing kiss he’d laid on Lilly was none other than Boris Pelkowski.

And it was Boris Pelkowski—Boris Pelkowski, with his retainer and his sweater tucked into his pants—who stood up and said, “Not so fast, hot shot.”

I’m not sure if Boris had just seen the movie Top Gun or what, but that hot shot came out sounding pretty menacing, considering Boris’s accent and all.

Hank kept going. I don’t know if he hadn’t heard Boris, or if he wasn’t about to let some little violin-playing genius mess up his great exit.

Then Boris did something completely reckless. He reached out and grabbed Hank by the arm as he went by and said, “That’s my girl you had your lips all over, pretty boy.”

I am not even joking. Those were his exact words. Oh, how my heart thrilled to hear them! If only some guy (okay, Michael) would say something like that about me. Not the Josiest girl he’d ever met, but his girl. Boris had actually referred to Lilly as his girl! No boy has ever referred to me as his girl. Oh, I know all about feminism and how women aren’t property and it’s sexist to go around claiming them as such. But, oh! If only somebody (okay, Michael) would say I was his girl!

Anyway, Hank just went, “Huh?”

And then, from out of nowhere, Boris’s fist went sailing into Hank’s face. Pow!

Only it didn’t really sound like pow. It sounded more like a thud. There was a sickening crunch of bones splintering. All of us girls gasped, thinking that Boris had marred Hank’s perfect cover-guy face.

But we needn’t have worried: It was Boris’s hand that made the crunching sound, not Hank’s face. Hank escaped completely unscathed. Boris is the one who has to have his knuckles splinted.

And you know what that means:

No more Mahler.

Whoopee!!!