I blushed. “Well,” I said, “I didn’t think anybody would believe me.”
“It is,” Principal Gupta said, “a bit unbelievable.”
That’s what the story on page 2 of the Post said, too. FAIRY TALE COMES TRUE FOR ONE LUCKY NEW YORK KID was how the reporter, one Ms. Carol Fernandez, put it. Like I had won the lottery, or something. Like I should be happy about it.
Ms. Carol Fernandez went on at length about my mom, “the raven-haired avant-garde painter Helen Thermopolis,” and about my dad, “the handsome Prince Phillipe of Genovia,” who’d “successfully battled his way back from a bout of testicular cancer.” Oh, thanks, Carol Fernandez, for letting all of New York know my dad’s only got one you-know-what.
Then she went on to describe me as “the statuesque beauty who is the product of Helen and Phillipe’s tempestuous whirlwind college romance.”
HELLO??? CAROL FERNANDEZ, ARE YOU ON CRACK????
I am NOT a statuesque beauty. Yeah, I’m TALL. I’m way TALL. But I am no beauty. I want what Carol Fernandez has been smoking, if she thinks I’M beautiful.
No wonder everybody was laughing at me. This is SO embarrassing. I mean, really.
Oh, here comes my dad. Boy, does he look mad. . . .
More Wednesday, English
It isn’t fair.
This is totally, completely unfair.
I mean, anybody else’s dad would have let them come home. Anybody else’s dad, if his kid’s picture was on the front of the Post, would say, “Maybe you should skip school for a few days until things calm down.”
Anybody else’s dad would have been like, “Maybe you should change schools. How do you feel about Iowa? Would you like to go to school in Iowa?”
But oh, no. Not my dad. Because he’s a prince. And he says members of the royal family of Genovia do not “go home” when there is a crisis. No, they stay where they are and slug it out.
Slug it out. I think my dad has something in common with Carol Fernandez: They’re BOTH on crack.
Then my dad reminded me that it’s not like I’m not getting paid for this. Right! One hundred lousy bucks! One hundred lousy bucks a day to be publicly ridiculed and humiliated.
Those baby seals better be grateful, that’s all I have to say.
So here I am in English, and everybody is whisper-ing about me and pointing at me like I’m a victim of alien abduction or something, and my dad expects me to sit here and let them, because I’m a princess and that’s what princesses do.
But these kids are brutal.
I tried to tell my dad that. I was like, “Dad, you don’t understand. They’re all laughing at me.”
And all he said was, “I’m sorry, honey. You’re just going to have to tough it out. You knew this was going to happen eventually. I’d hoped it wouldn’t be quite this soon, but it’s probably just as well to get it over with. . . . ”
Um, hello? I did not know this was going to happen eventually. I thought I was going to be able to keep this whole princess thing a secret. My lovely plan about only being a princess in Genovia is falling apart. I have to be a princess right here in Manhattan, and believe me, that is no picnic.
I was so mad at my dad for telling me I had to go back to class, I accused him of having ratted me out to Carol Fernandez himself.
He got all offended. “Me? I don’t know any Carol Fernandez.” He shot this funny look at Mr. Gianini, who was standing there with his hands in his pockets, looking all concerned.
“What?” Mr. G said, going from concerned to surprised real fast. “Me? I’d never even heard of Genovia until this morning.”
“Geez, Dad,” I said. “Don’t blame Mr. G. He had nothing to do with it.”
My dad didn’t look very convinced. “Well, somebody leaked the story to the press. . . . ” He said it in this mean way, too. You could totally tell he thought Mr. G had done it. But it couldn’t have been Mr. Gianini. Carol Fernandez wrote about stuff in her story that there’s no way Mr. G could know, because even Mom doesn’t know about it. Like how Miragnac has a private airstrip. I never told her about that.
But when I told my dad that, he just shot Mr. G a suspicious look. “Well,” he said again. “I’m just going to give this Carol Fernandez a call and see who her source is.”
And while my dad was doing that, I got stuck with Lars. I’m not kidding. Just like Tina Hakim Baba, I now have a bodyguard trailing around after me from class to class. Like I’m not enough of a laughingstock already.
I now have an armed escort.
I totally tried to get out of it. I was like, “Dad, I can seriously take care of myself,” but he was completely rigid and said that even though Genovia is a small country, it is a very wealthy country, and he cannot take the risk of my being kidnaped and held for ransom like the boy in My Secret Love, only my dad didn’t say that because he’s never read My Secret Love.
I said, “Dad, no one is going to kidnap me. This is school,” but he wouldn’t go for it. He asked Principal Gupta if it was all right, and she said, “Of course, Your Highness.”
Your Highness! Principal Gupta called my dad Your Highness! If it hadn’t been all serious and stuff, I would have wet my pants laughing.
The only good thing that has come out of this is that Principal Gupta let me off detention for the rest of the week, claiming that having my picture in the Post is punishment enough.