Princess Mia

“Wait a minute,” I said. “What are you saying? How can I do what Princess Amelie did? Princess Amelie failed. Her bill never got passed. No one ever KNEW about it. No one but me.”

“Bye for now,” Dr. Knutz said.

And shooed me away.

I just don’t get it. My dad is paying this guy to help me with my problems. But all he’s doing is passing the buck, saying I have to solve my own problems.

But isn’t that what he’s getting paid for doing???

And how in God’s name am I supposed to do anything about the Princess Amelie situation? I made my case to Dad, and he totally blew me off. What more can I do?

The worst part of it is, Dr. Knutz got my blood work back from Dr. Fung’s office. The results? Normal. I’m totally normal, in every regard. Better than normal. Like Rocky, I’m in the freaking 99th percentile for my age group, or something. I was hoping at the very least that the fact that I’d started eating meat again would have raised my cholesterol to the point that it could be blamed for my hideous depression.

But my cholesterol is fine. Everything is fine. I’m healthy as a freaking horse.

Ouch. Why did I have to use the word “horse”?

Oh, God. We’re here. I can’t BELIEVE I have to do this stupid Domina Rei thing tonight.

All I can say is, if I get Grandmère into this club, or whatever it is, she better get off my back about my hair.

Pancho? He seriously told me a story about a horse named PANCHO?

Friday, September 24, 9 p.m., ladies’ room, The Waldorf-Astoria

She hates the nail polish.

She’s acting like my wearing it is going to totally ruin her chances of being asked to join this crazy club. She’s more upset about my nail polish than she is about the fact that our family, for centuries now, has essentially been living a lie. It was the first thing I brought up when I got to her suite.

“Grandmère,” I said. “You can’t agree with Dad that ignoring Princess Amelie Virginie’s dying wish is the right thing to do. Can you?”

And she’d rolled her eyes and gone, “Not that again! Your father PROMISED me you’d have forgotten all about that by now.”

Yeah. I noticed that by how he hadn’t returned a single one of my phone calls all day. He was giving me the silent treatment, the same as Lilly.

Well, the same as Lilly until she’d exploded this afternoon, that is.

“But, honestly, Amelia,” Grandmère had gone on. “You can’t expect us to completely alter our lives because of the whim of some four-hundred-year-old dead princess, can you?”

“Amelie didn’t craft her Bill of Rights on a whim, Grandmère. And our lives wouldn’t be altered,” I’d insisted. “We’d still go on just like before. Only we wouldn’t actually be RULING. We’d be letting the PEOPLE rule—or at least CHOOSE who they WANT to rule. Which could very well be Dad, you know—”

“But supposing it ISN’T?” Grandmère had demanded. “Where would we LIVE?”

“Grandmère,” I’d said. “We’ll go on living in the palace as always—”

“No, we wouldn’t,” Grandmère had said. “The palace would become the residence of the prime minister—whoever that would end up being. Do you really think I could stand to see some POLITICIAN living in my beautiful palace? He’ll probably have the whole place carpeted. In BEIGE.”

Seriously. I’d wanted to wring her neck. “Grandmère. The prime minister would live—well, I don’t know. But someplace else. We’d still be the royal family and still live in the palace and continue doing all the duties we normally do—EXCEPT RULING.”

All she’d had to say to that was, “Well, your father won’t hear of THAT. So you might as well drop it. Really, Amelia, RED nails? Are you trying to give me a stroke?”

Which, all right: I’ll admit this evening seems very important to her. You should have seen how she preened when the Contessa came up to me during the cocktail hour and was like, “Princess Amelia? My goodness! How you’ve grown since I last saw you!”

“Yes,” Grandmère said acidly, glancing at Bella Trevanni’s ginormous stomach. Or, should I say, Princess René’s ginormous stomach. “As has your granddaughter.”

“Due any day now,” the Contessa cooed.

“Did you hear?” Bella asked us. “It’s a girl!” We both congratulated her. She really does look happy—even glowing, the way they always say pregnant women do.

And it totally serves my cousin René right, the fact that he’s having a girl, when he himself was always such a flirt. When his kid starts dating, he’s finally going to find out how all the fathers of the girls he went out with must have felt.

But the Contessa’s not the only person Grandmère’s hoping to impress. The crème de la crème of New York society is here—well, the women. No men are allowed at Domina Rei functions, except their annual ball, which this isn’t. I just saw Gloria Vanderbilt putting on her lip gloss over by a potted palm.

And I’m pretty sure that Madeleine Albright is adjusting her pantyhose in the stall next to mine.

And look: I get it. I really do get why Grandmère is so anxious to be one of these women. They’re all super powerful—and charming, too. Lana’s mom, Mrs. Weinberger, was way nice to me when we first came in—she didn’t seem at all like a lady who would sell her daughter’s pony without letting her say good-bye—shaking my hand and telling me what an excellent role model I am to young girls everywhere. She said she wished her own daughter had as good a head on her shoulders as I do.