Sweet Sixteen Princess (The Princess Diaries 7.50)

Busted! How embarrassing!

“Sorry,” I muttered into my Diet Coke, hoping he wouldn’t notice how I was blushing. Only how could he not, under the unforgiving glare of the fluorescent overheads? (Note to self: Look into cost of getting new, more flattering lighting in caf.) “I was just…checking something.”

“Checking what?”

“Nothing,” I said hastily, and dug into my bean salad.

“Mia,” J. P. started to say, in a soft—but deep—voice, that (not surprisingly, considering the fact that Boris, across the table, had his violin out, and was showing Tina, Ling Su, and Perin how easy it was to pluck out the chords to the Foo Fighters’ “Best of You”) only I could hear. “Do you—”

But he never got to finish whatever it was he was going to say to me, because at that moment Lilly returned.

“Can you believe they were out

of mac and cheese?” she asked. “I had to settle for four slices of bread and a bag of Doritos.” She seemed to overcome her disappointment pretty quickly, though, if how fast she chowed down those Doritos is any indication.

I wonder what J. P. was going to say to me?

I think Tina is definitely right. One of these days, he’s going to blow like Mount Vesuvius. There will be no controlling J. P.’s eruption of passion when it finally happens.

Thursday, 7 p.m., April 29,

limo home from the Plaza

I walked into Grandmère’s suite at the Plaza only to be attacked by this woman with purple hair in a pair of lowriders who went, “Oh, great, she’s here,” and tried to stick a portable microphone pack down the back of my shirt.

“What are you DOING?” I demanded.

Fortunately Lars was with me, and he stepped in front of the woman and said, looking down at her all menacingly, “May I help you?”

Ms. Purple Hair had to crane her neck to see Lars’s face. Apparently she didn’t like what she saw up there, since she took a few stumbling steps backward and went, “Um…Lewis? We’ve got a slight…or, I guess I should say, big—really big—problem.”

Which is when this skinny guy in a pair of fancy red eyeglasses came hurrying out of Grandmère’s living room, going, “Oh, great, she’s here. Princess Mia, I’m so glad to meet you. I’m Lewis, and this is my assistant, Janine—” He indicated the purple-haired woman, who was still staring up at Lars like she was looking at King Kong, or someone, and seemed unable to utter a sound. “If you’d just let Janine put your mic on, we can go ahead and get started.”

I didn’t bother asking Lewis what it was we could go ahead and get started. Instead, I went, “Excuse me,” and walked past him, and right up to Grandmère, who was sitting in her pink Louis XV chair with her hair all freshly set, her makeup perfect, and a trembling, nearly hairless toy poodle in her lap.

“Oh, Amelia, good, you’re here,” she said. “Where’s your mic?”

“Grandmère,” I said, noticing for the first time the cameraman hovering by her shoulder. “What is going on? Who are these people? Why is that man filming us?”

“He isn’t going to be able to use any of the footage, Mia, if you don’t put a mic on,” Grandmère said irritably. “Janine! Janine, would you please put a mic on her?”

Lewis came in, bobbing his spiky-haired head.

“Um, yes, Your Highness, well, Janine tried, see, but there appears to be a problem—”

“What problem?” Grandmère demanded imperiously.

“She, um,” Lewis said, looking scared. But not of Lars. Of Grandmère. “Wouldn’t let Janine put it on her.”

Grandmère swung the evil eye she’d been focusing on Lewis onto me.

“Amelia,” she said coldly. “Kindly allow the violet-haired young lady to put a microphone on you, so that we can get this out of the way. I have a dinner engagement I don’t care to miss.”

“Nobody’s putting anything on me,” I said, so loudly that Rommel, in Grandmère’s lap, put his ears back and whimpered, “until someone explains to me what’s going on.”

“Oh, sorry,” Lewis said, looking mortified. “I thought you knew. I had no idea. Janine and I—oh, and that’s Rafe, with the camera”—Rafe, a burly guy in a bandanna, waved at me from behind his camera lens—“are from MTV, and you’re currently being filmed for a very special episode of MTV’s hit reality series, My Super Sweet Sixteen.”

I looked from Lewis to Grandmère to Rafe—I couldn’t see Janine, because she was still out in the foyer with Lars—and back again.