Princess Mia

“I know that,” Grandmère said. “I’m outside the school in the limo. Today we’re going to Chanel to find something for you to wear to the gala on Friday. Remember?”

No, I did not remember. But what choice did I have? None.

So here I am at Chanel.

The staff is very excited about my new measurements. Mainly because they no longer have to take in the chest darts on the bodice of any dress Grandmère chooses for me.

The suit she’s picked out for the gala is pretty nice, actually. And she’s finally letting me wear black.

“Your first Chanel suit,” she keeps murmuring with a sigh. “Where did the time go? It seems like just yesterday you were a scabby-kneed fourteen-year-old, who came to me not even knowing how to use a fish knife! Now look at you! BREASTS!”

Whatever. I never had scabs on my knees.

Then Grandmère handed me the speech she’d had written for me. For the gala. I guess she’d given up on the idea of letting me write my own speech. She’d gone ahead and hired a former presidential speechwriter to come up with a twenty-minute soliloquy on Genovian drainage. The speechwriter she got is apparently a very famous one, who wrote some speech about a thousand points of light.

I suppose she used to write for Star Trek: The Next Generation, or something.

I’m supposed to memorize my speech, Grandmère says, so it seems more “spontaneous.”

Fortunately, I can read while they’re fitting me for my new suit.

Only I’m not reading my speech. Because Grandmère’s off trying to find her own dress for the gala. Since she’s been invited to attend as my “chaperone.” I know she’s hoping we’ll BOTH get invites to pledge Domina Rei.

Which might not be so bad, actually. Then I can tell Principal Gupta I have an extracurricular to put on my college apps after all. That will make her happy.

Anyway, Princess Amelie’s uncle didn’t stay away from the palace for long after she threw him out. That’s because there were no guards left, since they all had the plague, too. He came back and kept telling Amelie how much money she was losing by not allowing the ships exporting Genovian olive oil to leave the ports. Also by not demanding that the Genovian people continue to tithe to her, even though they had no money, since they all had the plague and couldn’t work.

But Uncle Francesco didn’t care. He kept saying she didn’t know what she was doing because she was Just a Girl, and how she was going to bankrupt the Renaldo royal family, and go down in history as the worst Genovian ruler of all time.

How ironic that in the end, HE was the one who earned that distinction.

Anyway, Amelie told her uncle to back off. She knew she was saving lives. Fewer new cases of the disease were being reported because of her initiatives.

Too late for her, though. Because she’d noticed her first pustule.

She decided not to tell her uncle. Because Amelie knew when she went, he’d get what he wanted: the throne, which was all he cared about. He didn’t care if there were no people left over to rule. He only wanted her money. And her crown.

Which she wasn’t about to relinquish just then. Because there was one more thing she had to do.

Too bad Grandmère’s back and WON’T STOP TALKING SO I CAN FIND OUT WHAT IT WAS!

Wednesday, September 22, 1 a.m., the loft

Oh my God! That was so sad! Princess Amelie totally died!

I mean, I knew she was sick.

And, obviously, I knew she was going to die.

But it was just so…traumatic! She was completely alone! There was no one even to hand her a tissue in the end because everyone else was dead (except her uncle, but he stayed away because he didn’t want to catch what she had).

Plus, there was no such thing as tissues back then.

That is just so…wrong.

Not about the tissues. About being alone.

I can’t stop crying now. Which is, you know, great. Since I have to get up and go to school tomorrow. For some reason. And it’s not like I haven’t exactly been depressed anyway. This is just, you know. Another shove farther down that hole.

I don’t even know why I bother to go on. I mean, look at the facts:

We’re born.

We live for a little bit of time.

And then we die, our uncle assumes the throne, burns all our stuff, and does everything he possibly can to illegitimize the twelve days we spent ruling by basically being the suckiest prince of all time.

At least Amelie managed to save her journal, which—she wrote, on the last few pages—she intended to send back to the convent where she’d been so comparatively happy, for safekeeping, along with her little portrait. The nuns, she said, would “know what to do.”

There’s something else she managed to save from burning, too—aside from Agnès-Claire, whom I have to imagine died happy and full of mice at the abbey where her mistress’s journal obviously eventually showed up, only to be returned to the Genovian palace by the dutiful nuns, according to Amelie’s wishes, to parliament, who…

…ignored it.

I can only assume they ignored it because they all figured, what could a sixteen-year-old girl have to say?

Plus, her uncle wasn’t exactly making life easy for them, what with his goal to spend every last penny in Genovia’s treasury. So it wasn’t like they had time to go home and read some dead princess’s diary.

Anyway, that other thing Amelie managed to save was one last copy of the thing she had drawn up and signed by those witnesses—whatever it was. She says she hid the parchment “somewhere close to my heart, where some future princess will find it, and do what is right.”