Princess in Pink

Even the guy who hates it when they put corn in the chilli is going to the prom. Everyone in the whole world is going to the prom. Except for me.

Lilly still isn't back from wherever it is she went off to before lunch. Which is probably just as well. I don't think Boris could take it if she walked in here right now. He found some correcting fluid in the supply closet, and he is using it to make little curlicues around Lilly's name on his violin case. I want to shake him and go, 'Snap out of it! She's not worth it!'

But I'm afraid it might loosen his stitches.

Plus Mrs. Hill, clearly due to yesterday's events, is fully sitting at her desk, flipping through Garnet Hill catalogues and keeping an eagle eye on us. I bet she got in trouble over the whole violin-virtuoso-globe-dropping thing. Principal Gupta is really very strict about bloodshed on school grounds.

Since I have nothing better to do, I am going to compose a poem that expresses my true feelings about everything that is going on. I intend to call Spring Fever. If it is good enough, I am going to submit it to The Atom. Anonymously, of course. If Lesley knew I wrote it, she'd never print it, since, as a cub reporter, I have not Paid My Dues.

But if she just FINDS it slipped under the door to The Atom's office, maybe she'll run it. The way I see it, I have nothing to lose. It's not like things can possibly get any worse.

Tuesday, May 6, St. Vincent s Hospital

Things just got worse. Very, very worse.

It's probably all my fault. All my fault because I wrote that before. About things not possibly being able to get any worse.

It turns out things most definitely CAN get worse than

- Flunking an Algebra quiz

- Getting in trouble in Bio. for passing notes

— Getting Asperger's syndrome as your Health and Safety project

- Your father trying to force you to spend most of your summer in Genovia

— Your boyfriend refusing to take you to the prom

— Your best friend calling you weak

- Her boyfriend needing stitches in his head from a self-inflicted globe wound

- Your grandmother trying to force you to have dinner with the Sultan of Brunei

What's worse is your pregnant mother passing out in the frozen-food department at the Grand Union.

I am totally serious. She landed face first in the Haagen Dazs. Thank God she bounced off the Ben and Jerry's and came to

rest on her back, or my potential brother or sister would have been crushed under the weight of his or her own mother.

The manager of the Grand Union apparently didn't have the slightest idea what to do. According to witnesses, he ran all around the store, flapping his arms and yelling, 'Dead woman in Aisle Four! Dead woman in Aisle Four!'

I don't know what would have happened if members of the New York Fire Department hadn't happened to have been there. I'm serious. Ladder Company Number 3 does all of its grocery shopping for the firehouse at the Grand Union - I know because Lilly and I, back when we were friends and first realized firemen are hot, used to go there all the time to watch them

as they picked through the nectarines and mangoes - and they happened to be there stocking up for the week when my mom went horizontal. They checked her pulse right away and figured out she wasn't dead. Then they called an ambulance and whisked her to St Vincent's, the closest ER.

Too bad my mom was unconscious the whole time. She would so totally have loved to have ridden in an ambulance with all those hot guys. Plus, you know, the fact that they were strong enough to lift her . . . and at her current weight, which is a lot ... that's pretty cool.

You can imagine when I was just sitting there, bored out of my skull in French, and my mobile phone rang . . . well, I freaked. Not because it was the first time anyone had ever called me, or even because Mademoiselle Klein fully confiscates any mobile phones that ring during her class, but because the only people who are allowed to call me on my mobile phone are my mom and Mr G, and then only to let me know that I need to get to home, because my sibling is about to be born.

Except that when I finally answered the phone - it took me a minute to figure out it was MY phone that was ringing: I kept looking around accusingly at everybody else in class, who just blinked confusedly back at me - it wasn't my mom or Mr G to tell me the baby was coming. It was Assistant Fire Chief Pete Logan, to ask me if I knew a Helen Thermopolis and, if so, could I come to St Vincent's hospital immediately. The firemen had found my mom's mobile phone in her purse, and dialled the only number she had in her address book . . .

Mine.

I about had a coronary, of course. I shrieked and grabbed my backpack, then Lars. Then he and I ran out of there without a word of explanation to anyone . . . like I had suddenly developed Asperger's syndrome or something. On our way out of the building, I skidded past Mr. Gianini's classroom, then backed up and stuck my head in to scream that his wife was in the hospital and that he better put down that chalk and come with us.

I've never seen Mr. G look so scared. Not even the first time he met Grandmere.

Then the three of us ran all out for the 77th Street subway station - because there was no way a cab was going to get us there fast enough in the midday traffic, and Hans and the limo are off duty every day until I get out of school at three.

I don't think the staff at St. Vincent - who are totally excellent, by the way - ever encountered anything quite like a hysterical Princess of Genovia, her bodyguard and her stepfather before. The three of us burst into the ER waiting area and just stood there screaming my mom's name until finally this nurse came out of triage and was like, 'Helen Thermopolis is just fine. She's awake and resting right now. She just got a little dehydrated, and fainted.'