Party Princess (The Princess Diaries 7)

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I just stared at him with my mouth hanging open until he laughed and said, “Mia, don’t worry. I won’t tell. About the money for commencement OR your grandmother’s scheme.”

But then I got all curious, and was like, “Why does your dad want to buy the faux island of Genovia, anyway, J.P.?”

“B

ecause he can,” J.P. said, not looking jokey at all—which, for him, was a first. He almost never seems to look upset or worried about anything—except corn, of course.

I could see right away that John Paul Reynolds-Abernathy the Third was a sore subject to John Paul Reynolds-Abernathy the Fourth. So I dropped it. That’s the kind of thing you learn when you’re training to be a princess. How to drop subjects that suddenly seem to turn uncomfortable.

“Well, see you tomorrow,” I said to J.P..

“Are you going to Lilly’s party?” he wanted to know.

“Oh,” I said. “Yes.”

“Maybe I’ll see you there, then,” J.P. said.

Which is sweet. You know, that J.P. feels comfortable enough with us to want to come to Lilly’s party. Even if he doesn’t know it’s Michael’s party and not Lilly’s.

Anyway, I’ve got more important things to worry about right now than J.P. and Lilly and Grandmère and her diabolical schemes for faux island domination.

Because I’ve got a scheme of my own to put into action….

Sunday, March 7, 1 a.m., the loft

I’m so embarrassed. Seriously. I’m MORTIFIED. This is probably the most embarrassed I have ever been in my entire life.

And I know I’ve said that before, but this time, I really mean it.

I really thought, for a while there, that it might have been working. My plan to prove to Michael that I really am a party girl, I mean.

I don’t understand exactly what went wrong. I had it ALL planned out. I did EXACTLY what Lana said. As soon as I got to Lilly and Michael’s apartment, I changed out of my rehearsal clothes into my party clothes:

—Black tights

—My black velvet skirt (transformed into a mini—the edges were kind of raggedy because Fat Louie kept batting at the scissors as I was cutting, but whatever, it still looked okay)

—My black Docs

—A black leotard left over from that Halloween I dressed as a cat, and Ronnie from next door said I looked like a flat-chested Playboy bunny so I never wore it again

—A black beret my mom used to wear when she was performing acts of civil disobedience with her fellow Guerrilla Girls

—And the water bra. Which I didn’t even fill up all that much, because, you know, I was scared of leaks.

Plus I put on red lipstick and tousled my hair all sexily, like Lindsay Lohan’s when she’s coming out of New York clubs like Butter after just narrowly having missed running into her ex, Wilmer.

But instead of being all, “That’s hot,” about my new look, Michael—who was answering the door as the first of his guests began to arrive, just raised his eyebrows at me like he was kind of alarmed about something.

And Lars actually looked up from his Sidekick as I walked by and started to say something, but then apparently thought better of it, since he went back to leaning against the wall and looking up stuff on the Web.

And then Lilly, who was busy getting her camera ready to film the festivities for a piece she’s doing for Lilly Tells It Like It Is on male-female dynamics in a modern urban setting, was like, “What are you supposed to be? A mime?”

But instead of getting mad at her, I tossed my head, the way Lana does, and was like, “Aren’t you funny?”

Because I was trying to act mature in front of Michael’s friends, who were coming in just then.