The Hakim Babas are also superrich, according to my grandmother. They own about a gazillion oil wells. Grandm่re told me when I go have dinner with them on Friday night, I have to bring a gift and wear my Gucci loafers. I asked Grandm่re what kind of gift, and she said breakfast. She’s special-ordering it from Balducci’s and having it delivered Saturday morning.

Being a princess is hard work.

I just remembered: At lunch today Tina had a new book with her. It had a cover just like the last one, only this time the heroine was a brunette. This one was called My Secret Love, and it was about a girl from the wrong side of the tracks who falls in love with a rich boy who never notices her. Then the girl’s uncle kidnaps the boy and holds him for ransom, and she has to bathe his wounds and help him to escape and stuff, and of course he falls madly in love with her. Tina said she already read the end, and the girl gets to go and live with the rich boy’s parents after her uncle goes to jail and can no longer support her.

How come things like that don’t ever happen to me?

Wednesday, October 15, Homeroom

No Lilly again today. Lars suggested we’d make better time if we just drove straight to school and didn’t stop by her place every day. I guess he’s right.

It was really weird when we pulled up to Albert Einstein. All the people who normally hang around outside before school starts, smoking and sitting on Joe, the stone lion, were all clustered into these groups looking at something. I suppose somebody’s dad has been accused of money laundering again. Parents can be so self-centered: Before they do something illegal, they should totally stop and think about how their kids are going to feel if they get caught.

If I were Chelsea Clinton, I would change my name and move to Iceland.

I just walked right on by to show I wasn’t going to have any part in gossip. A bunch of people stared at me. I guess Michael’s right: It really has gotten around, about me stabbing Lana with that Nutty Royale. Either that or my hair was sticking up in some weird way. But I checked in the mirror in the girls’ room and it wasn’t.

A bunch of girls ran out of the bathroom giggling like crazy when I went in, though.

Sometimes I wish I lived on a desert island. Really. With nobody else around for hundreds of miles. Just me, the ocean, the sand, and a coconut tree.

And maybe a high-definition 37-inch TV with a satellite dish and a Sony PlayStation with Bandicoot, for when I get bored.

LITTLE KNOWN FACTS

1. The most commonly asked question at Albert Einstein High School is “Do you have any gum?”

2. Bees and bulls are attracted to the color red.

3. In my homeroom, it sometimes takes up to half an hour just to take attendance.

4. I miss being best friends with Lilly Moscovitz.

Later on Wednesday, Before Algebra

This totally weird thing happened. Josh Richter came up to his locker to put his Trig book away, and he said, “How you doin’?” to me as I was getting out my Algebra notebook.

I swear to God I am not making this up.

I was in such total shock, I nearly dropped my backpack. I don’t have any idea what I said to him. I think I said I was fine. I hope I said I was fine.

Why is Josh Richter speaking to me?

It must have been another one of those synaptic breakdowns, like the one he had at Bigelows.

Then Josh slammed his locker closed, looked right down into my face—he’s really tall—and said, “See you later.”

Then he walked away.

It took me five minutes to stop hyperventilating.

His eyes are so blue they hurt to look at.

Wednesday, Principal Gupta’s Office

It’s over.

I’m dead.

That’s it.

Now I know what everyone was looking at outside. I know why they were whispering and giggling. I know why those girls ran out of the bathroom. I know why Josh Richter talked to me.

My picture is on the cover of the Post.

That’s right. The New York Post. Read by millions of New Yorkers daily.

Oh, yeah. I’m dead.

It’s a pretty good picture of me, actually. I guess somebody took it as I was leaving the Plaza Sunday night, after dinner with Grandm่re and my dad. I’m going down the steps just outside the revolving door. I’m sort of smiling, only not at the camera. I don’t remember anybody taking my picture, but I guess somebody did.

Superimposed over the photo are the words Princess Amelia, and then in smaller letters New York’s Very Own Royal.

Great. Just great.

Mr. Gianini was the one who figured it out. He said he was walking to catch the subway to work and he saw it on the newsstand. He called my mother. My mom was taking a shower, though, and didn’t hear the phone. Mr. G left a message. But my mom never checks the machine in the morning, because everyone who knows her knows she is not a morning person, so nobody ever calls before noon. When Mr. G called again, she had already left for her studio, where she never answers the phone, because she wears a Walkman when she paints, so she can listen to Howard Stern.

So then Mr. G had no choice but to call my dad at the Plaza, which was pretty nervy of him, if you think about it. According to Mr. G, my dad blew a gasket. He told Mr. G that until he could get there, I should be sent to the principal’s office, where I would be “safe.”

My dad has obviously never met Principal Gupta.

Actually, I shouldn’t say that. She hasn’t been so bad. She showed me the paper and said, kind of sarcastically, but in a nice way, “You might have shared this with me, Mia, when I asked you the other day if everything was all right at home.”