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G. All of the above.
Whatever the reason, I snapped. Just snapped. Suddenly, I found myself reaching for Lana’s cell phone, which was lying on her desktop beside her calculator.
And then the next thing I knew, I had put the tiny little pink thing on the floor, and crushed it into a lot of pieces beneath the heel of my size-ten combat boot.
I guess I can’t really blame Mr. G for sending me to the principal’s office.
Still, you would expect a little sympathy from your own stepfather.
Uh-oh. Here comes Principal Gupta.
Friday, December 12, 5 p.m., the loft
Well, that’s it then. I’m suspended.
Suspended. I can’t believe it. ME! Mia Thermopolis! What is happening to me? I used to be such a good kid!
And okay, it’s just for one day, but still. It’s going on my permanent record! What are the
Genovian cabinet ministers going to say?
I am turning into Courtney Love.
And yeah, it’s not like I’m not going to get into college because I was suspended for one day in the first semester of my freshman year, but how totally embarrassing! Principal Gupta treated me like I was some kind of criminal or something.
And you know what they say: Treat a person like a criminal, and pretty soon, she’ll end up like one. At least I think that’s what they say. The way things are going, I wouldn’t be surprised if pretty soon I start wearing ripped-up fishnet stockings and dying my hair black. Maybe I’ll even start smoking and get my ears double pierced or something. And then they’ll make a TV movie about me, and call it Royal Scandal. It will show me going up to Prince William and saying, “Who’s the most popular young royal now, huh, punk?” and then headbutting him or something.
Except I practically fainted the first time I got my ears pierced, and smoking is really bad for you, and I always thought it must hurt to headbutt someone.
I guess I don’t have the makings of a juvenile delinquent after all.
My dad doesn’t think so, either. He’s all ready to set the royal Genovian lawyers on Principal Gupta. The only problem, of course, is that I won’t tell him—or anybody else, for that matter—what Lana said to make me assault her cell phone. It’s kind of hard to prove the attack was provoked if the attacker won’t say what the provocation was. My dad pleaded with me for a while when he came to pick me up from school, after having received The Call from Principal Gupta. But when I wouldn’t tell him what he wanted, and Lars just looked carefully blank, my dad just went, “Fine,” and his mouth got all scrunchy like it does when Grandmère has one too many sidecars and starts calling him Papa Cueball.
But how can I tell him what Lana said? If I do that, then everyone will know I’m guilty of not just one crime, but two!
Anyway, now I’m home, watching the Lifetime channel with my mother. She hasn’t been doing much painting at her studio since she got pregnant. This is on account of her being exhausted. It’s quite hard to paint lying down, she’s discovered. So instead she has been doing a lot of sketching from bed, mostly line drawings of Fat Louie, who seems to enjoy having someone home all day with him. He sits for hours on her bed, watching the pigeons on the fire escape outside her window.
But since I’m home today, Mom did some drawings of me. I think she is making my mouth too big, but I’m not saying anything, as Mr. Gianini and I have discovered it’s better not to upset my mother in her current hormonal state. Even the slightest criticism—like asking her why she left the phone bill in the vegetable crisper—can lead to an hour-long crying jag.
While she sketched me, I watched a very excellent movie called Mother, May I Sleep With Danger? starring Tori Spelling, of Beverly Hills 90210 fame, as a girl who has an abusive boyfriend. I really don’t get why any girl would stay with a guy who hits her, but my mom says it’s all about self-esteem and your relationship with your father. Except that my mom doesn’t have that great a relationship with Papaw, and if any guy ever tried to slug her, you can bet she’d put him in the hospital, so go figure.
As my mom drew, she tried to get me to spill my guts to her, you know, about what Lana said that made me go on a cell-phone-stomping rampage. You could tell she was trying really hard to be all TV mom about it.
I guess it must have worked, because all of a sudden I found myself telling her all of it, every last thing: the stuff about Kenny and about my not liking to kiss him and about him telling everybody, and about how I plan to break up with him as soon as finals are over.
And along the way, I mentioned Michael and Judith Gershner and Tina and the greeting cards and the Winter Carnival and Lilly and her protest group and how I’m secretary of it, and just about everything else, except the part about pulling the fire alarm.
After a while my mom stopped drawing and just looked at me.
Finally, when I was done, she said, “You know what I think you need?”
And I said, “What?”
And she said, “A vacation.”
So then we had a sort of vacation, right there on her bed. I mean, she wouldn’t let me go study. Instead, she made me order a pizza, and together we watched the satisfying but completely unbelievable end of Mother, May I Sleep with Danger?, which was followed, much to our joy, by the dishiest made-for-TV movie ever, Midwest Obsession, in which Courtney Thorne-Smith plays the local Dairy Princess, who goes around in a pink Cadillac wearing cow earrings and kills people like Tracey Gold (deep in the throes of her post–Growing Pains anorexia) for messing with her boyfriend. And the best part was, it was all based on a true story.
For a while, there on my mom’s bed, it was almost like old times. You know, before my mom met Mr. Gianini and I found out I was a princess.
