The Princess Diaries

Grandm่re said, “Don’t converse in English with me. It’s vulgar. Speak French when you speak to me. Sit up straight in that chair. Do not drape your legs over the arm. And you are not Mia. You are Amelia. In fact, you are Amelia Mignonette Grimaldi Renaldo.”

I said, “You forgot Thermopolis,” and Grandm่re gave me the evil eye. She is very good at this.

“No,” she said. “I did not forget Thermopolis.”

Then Grandm่re sat down in the foofy chair next to mine and said, “Are you telling me you have no wish to assume your rightful place upon the throne?”

Boy, was I tired. “Grandm่re, you know as well as I do that I’m not princess material, okay? So why are we even wasting our time?”

Grandm่re looked at me out of her twin tattoos of eyeliner. I could tell she wanted to kill me but probably couldn’t figure out how to do it without getting blood on the pink carpet.

“You are the heir to the crown of Genovia,” she said in this totally serious voice. “And you will take my son’s place on the throne when he dies. This is how it is. There is no other way.”

Oh, boy.

So I kind of went, “Yeah, whatever, Grandm่re. Look, I got a lot of homework. Is this princess thing going to take long?”

Grandm่re just looked at me. “It will take,” she said, “as long as it takes. I am not afraid to sacrifice my time—or even myself—for the good of my country.”

Whoa. This was getting way patriotic. “Um,” I said. “Okay.”

So then I stared at Grandm่re for a while, and she stared back at me, and Rommel laid down on the carpet between our chairs, only he did it really slow, like his legs were too delicate to support all two pounds of him, and then Grandm่re broke the silence by saying, “We will begin tomorrow. You will come here directly after school.”

“Um, Grandm่re. I can’t come here directly after school. I’m flunking Algebra. I have to go to a review session every day after school.”

“Then after that. No dawdling. You will bring with you a list of the ten women you admire most in the world, and why. That is all.”

My mouth fell open. Homework? There’s going to be homework? Nobody said anything about homework!

“And close your mouth,” she barked. “It is uncouth to let it hang open like that.”

I closed my mouth. Homework???

“Tomorrow you will wear nylons. Not tights. Not kneesocks. You are too old for tights and kneesocks. And you will wear your school shoes, not tennis sneakers. You will style your hair, apply lipstick, and paint your fingernails—what’s left of them, anyway.” Grandm่re stood up. She didn’t even have to push up with her hands on the arms of her chair, either. Grandm่re’s pretty spry for her age. “Now I must dress for dinner with the shah. Good-bye.”

I just sat there. Was she insane? Was she completely nuts? Did she have the slightest idea what she was asking me to do?

Evidently she did, since the next thing I knew Lars was standing there, and Grandm่re and Rommel were gone.

Geez! Homework!!! Nobody said there was going to be homework.

And that’s not the worst of it. Panty hose? To school? I mean, the only girls who wear panty hose to school are girls like Lana Weinberger, and seniors, and people like that. You know. Show-offs. None of my friends wear panty hose.

And, I might add, none of my friends wear lipstick or nail polish or do their hair. Not for school, anyway.

But what choice did I have? Grandm่re totally scared me, with her tattooed eyelids and all. I couldn’t NOT do what she said.

So what I did was, I borrowed a pair of my mom’s panty hose. She wears them whenever she has an opening—and on dates with Mr. Gianini, I’ve noticed. I took a pair of her panty hose to school with me in my backpack. I didn’t have any fingernails to paint—according to Lilly, I am orally fixated; if it fits in my mouth, I’ll put it there—but I did borrow one of my mom’s lipsticks, too. And I tried some mousse I found in the medicine cabinet. It must have worked, since when Lilly got into the car this morning, she said, “Wow. Where’d you pick up the Jersey girl, Lars?”

Which I guess meant that my hair looked really big, like girls from New Jersey wear it when they come into Manhattan for a romantic dinner in Little Italy with their boyfriends.

So then, after my review session with Mr. G at the end of the day, I went into the girls’ room and put on the panty hose, the lipstick, and my loafers, which are too small and pinch my toes really bad. When I checked myself out in the mirror, I thought I didn’t look so bad. I didn’t think Grandm่re would have any complaints.

I thought I was pretty slick, waiting to change until after school. I figured on a Friday afternoon there wouldn’t be anyone hanging around. Who wants to hang around school on a Friday?

I had forgotten, of course, about the Computer Club.

Everybody forgets about the Computer Club, even the people who belong to it. They don’t have any friends, except each other, and they never go on dates—only unlike me, I think this is by choice: No one at Albert Einstein is smart enough for them—except, again, for each other.

Anyway, I walked out of the girls’ room and ran smack into Lilly’s brother, Michael. He’s the Computer Club treasurer. He’s smart enough to be president, but he says he has no interest in being a figurehead.

“Christ, Thermopolis,” he said, as I scrambled around, trying to pick up all the stuff I’d dropped—like my high-tops and socks and stuff—when I bumped into him. “What happened to you?”