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“Just think of all the lovely things you could have if you went to live in Genovia.” My mom’s face totally lit up as she started listing the lovely things I could have if I went to live in Genovia, but her voice s
ounded strange, as if she were playing a mom on TV or something. “Like a car! You know how impractical it is to have a car here in the city. But in Genovia, when you turn sixteen, I’m sure Dad will buy you a—”
I pointed out that there are enough problems with pollution in Europe without my contributing to it. Diesel emissions are one of the largest contributors to the destruction of the ozone layer.
“But you’ve always wanted a horse, haven’t you? Well, in Genovia you could have one. A nice gray one with spots on its back—”
That hurt.
“Mom,” I said, my eyes all filling up with tears. I completely couldn’t help it. Suddenly, I was bawling all over again. “What are you doing? Do you want me to go live with Dad? Is that it? Are you tired of me or something? Do you want me to go live with Dad so you and Mr. Gianini can . . . can . . . ”
I couldn’t go on because I started crying so hard. But by then my mom was crying, too. She jumped up out of her chair and came around the end of the table and started hugging me, saying, “Oh, no, honey! How could you think something like that?” She stopped sounding like a TV mom. “I just want what’s best for you!”
“As do I,” my dad said, looking annoyed. He had folded his arms across his chest and was leaning back in his chair, watching us in an irritated way.
“Well, what’s best for me is to stay right here and finish high school,” I told him. “And then I’m going to join Greenpeace and help save the whales.”
My dad looked even more irritated at that. “You are not joining Greenpeace,” he said.
“I am, too,” I said. It was totally hard to talk, because I was crying and all, but I told him, “I’m going to go to Iceland to save the baby seals, too.”
“You most certainly are not.” My dad didn’t just look annoyed. Now he looked mad. “You are going to go to college. Vassar, I think. Maybe Sarah Lawrence.”
That made me cry even more.
But before I could say anything, my mom held up a hand and was like, “Phillipe, don’t. We aren’t accomplishing anything here. Mia has to get to school, anyway. She’s already late—”
I started looking around for my backpack and coat real fast. “Yeah,” I said. “I gotta renew my MetroCard.”
My dad made this weird French noise he makes sometimes. It’s halfway between a snort and a sigh. It kind of sounds like Pfuit! Then he said, “Lars will drive you.”
I told my dad that this was unnecessary since I meet Lilly every day at Astor Place, where we catch the uptown 6 train together.
“Lars can pick up your little friend, too.”
I looked at my mom. She was looking at my dad. Lars is my dad’s driver. He goes everywhere my dad goes. For as long as I’ve known my dad—okay, my whole life—he’s always had a driver, usually a big beefy guy who used to work for the president of Israel or somebody like that.
Now that I think about it, of course I realize these guys aren’t really drivers at all but bodyguards.
Duh.
Okay, so the last thing I wanted was for my dad’s bodyguard to drive me to school. How would I ever explain it to Lilly? Oh, don’t mind him, Lilly. He’s just my dad’s chauffeur. Yeah, right. The only person at Albert Einstein High School who gets dropped off by a chauffeur is this totally rich Saudi Arabian girl named Tina Hakim Baba, whose dad owns some big oil company, and everybody makes fun of her because her parents are all worried she’ll get kidnapped between Seventy-fifth and Madison, where our school is, and Seventy-fifth and Fifth, where she lives. She even has a bodyguard who follows her around from class to class and talks on a walkie-talkie to the chauffeur. This seems a little extreme, if you ask me.
But Dad was totally rigid on the driver thing. It’s like now that I’m an official princess there’s all this concern for my welfare. Yesterday, when I was Mia Thermopolis, it was perfectly okay for me to ride the subway. Today, now that I’m Princess Amelia, forget it.
Well, whatever. It didn’t seem worth arguing over. I mean, there are way worse things I have to worry about.
Like which country am I going to be living in in the near future.
As I was leaving—my dad made Lars come up to the loft to walk me down to the car; it was totally embarrassing—I overheard my dad say to my mom, “All right, Helen. Who’s this Gianini fellow Mia was talking about?”
Oops.
ab = a + b
solve for b
ab - b = a
