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Then she tried a different tactic. She started to cry. She said she’s really worried about me and that she doesn’t know what to do. She says she’s never seen me this way—that I didn’t even do anything the other day when Rocky tried to stick a dime up his nose. She said a week ago I’d have been freaking out over loose change around the house being a choking hazard.
Now I didn’t even care.
Which isn’t true. I don’t want Rocky to choke. And I don’t want to make my mother cry.
But at the same time, I don’t see what I can do to keep either of these things from happening.
Then Mom switched tack again, and stopped crying, and asked if I wanted her to bring out the big guns. She said that she doesn’t want to bother Dad while he’s busy with the United Nations General Assembly, but that I really wasn’t leaving her much choice. Was that what I wanted her to do? To bother my dad with this?
I told her she could call Dad if she wanted to. I told her that I’d been meaning to talk to Dad anyway about moving to Genovia full time. Because the truth is, I don’t want to live in Manhattan anymore.
All I wanted was for Mom to leave me alone so I could continue feeling sorry for myself in peace. My plan actually worked…a little too well. She got so upset, she ran out of my room and started crying again.
I really didn’t mean to make her cry! I’m sorry to have made her feel bad. Especially because I don’t really want to move to Genovia. I’m sure they won’t let me lounge around in bed all day there. Which I’m really sort of starting to like doing. I have a whole little schedule now. Every morning, I get up before anyone else does and have breakfast—usually whatever leftovers are in the fridge from the evening meal the night before—and feed Fat Louie and clean out his box.
Then I get back into bed, and eventually Fat Louie joins me, and together we watch the top ten video countdown on MTV, and then the one on VH1. When either Mom or Mr. G comes in and tries to get me to go to school, I say no…which usually exhausts me so much, I have to take a little nap.
Then I wake up in time to watch The View and two back-to-back episodes of Judging Amy.
After I make sure no one else is around, I go out into the kitchen and have some lunch—a ham sandwich or microwave popcorn or something. It doesn’t matter much what—and then get back into bed with Fat Louie and watch Judge Milian on The People’s Court, and then Judge Judy.
Then my mom sends in Tina, and I pretend to be alive, and then Tina leaves, and I go to sleep, because Tina exhausts me. Then, after Mom and everybody is asleep, I get up, make myself a snack, and watch TV until two or three in the morning.
Then I get up a few hours later and do it all over again, after I realize I wasn’t dreaming, and I really am truly broken up with Michael.
I could conceivably keep this up until I’m eighteen, and start receiving my yearly salary as Princess of Genovia (which doesn’t kick in until I’m a legal adult and begin my official duties as heir).
And, okay, it’s going to be hard to do my official duties from bed.
But I bet I could figure out a way.
Still. It sucks to make your mother cry. Maybe I should make her a card or something.
Except that would involve getting out of bed to look for markers and stuff. And I am way, way too tired to do all of that.
Wednesday, September 15, 5 p.m., the loft
I guess my mom wasn’t kidding about bringing out the big guns. Tina didn’t show up after school today.
Grandmère did.
But—much as I love her, and sorry as I am to have made her cry—Mom’s totally wrong if she thinks anything Grandmère says or does is going to change my mind about going back to school.
I’m not doing it. There’s just no point.
“What do you mean, there’s no point?” Grandmère wanted to know, when I said this. “Of course there’s a point. You have to learn.”
“Why?” I asked her. “My future job is totally assured. Throughout the ages, most reigning monarchs have been total morons, and yet they still were allowed to rule. What difference does it make whether I’ve graduated from high school or not?”
“Well, you don’t want to be an ignoramus,” Grandmère insisted. She was perched on the very edge of my bed, holding her purse in her lap and looking around all askance at everything, like the homework assignments Tina had left the day before and which I’d sort of thrown across the floor, and my Buffy the Vampire Slayer action figures, apparently not realizing they are expensive collectibles now, like her stupid Limoges teacups.
But from Grandmère’s expression, you could tell that, instead of being in her teenage granddaughter’s bedroom, she felt like she was in some back alley pawnshop in Chinatown, or something.
And okay, I guess it is pretty messy in here. But whatever.
“Why don’t I want to be an ignoramus?” I asked. “Some of the most influential women on the planet didn’t graduate from high school either.”
“Name one,” Grandmère demanded, with a snort.
