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She decided not to tell her uncle. Because Amelie knew when she went, he’d get what he wanted: the throne, which was all he cared about. He didn’t care if there were no people left over to rule. He only wanted her money. And her crown.
Which she wasn’t about to relinquish just then. Because there was one more thing she had to do.
Too bad Grandmère’s back and WON’T STOP TALKING SO I CAN FIND OUT WHAT IT WAS!
Wednesday, September 22, 1 a.m., the loft
Oh my God! That was so sad! Princess Amelie totally died!
I mean, I knew she was sick.
And, obviously, I knew she was going to die.
But it was just so…traumatic! She was completely alone! There was no one even to hand her a tissue in the end because everyone else was dead (except her uncle, but he stayed away because he didn’t want to catch what she had).
Plus, there was no such thing as tissues back then.
That is just so…wrong.
Not about the tissues. About being alone.
I can’t stop crying now. Which is, you know, great. Since I have to get up and go to school tomorrow. For some reason. And it’s not like I haven’t exactly been depressed anyway. This is just, you know. Another shove farther down that hole.
I don’t even know why I bother to go on. I mean, look at the facts:
We’re born.
We live for a little bit of time.
And then we die, our uncle assumes the throne, burns all our stuff, and does everything he possibly can to illegitimize the twelve days we spent ruling by basically being the suckiest prince of all time.
At least Amelie managed to save her journal, which—she wrote, on the last few pages—she intended to send back to the convent where she’d been so comparatively happy, for safekeeping, along with her little portrait. The nuns, she said, would “know what to do.”
There’s something else she managed to save from burning, too—aside from Agnès-Claire, whom I have to imagine died happy and full of mice at the abbey where her mistress’s journal obviously eventually showed up, only to be returned to the Genovian palace by the dutiful nuns, according to Amelie’s wishes, to parliament, who…
…ignored it.
I can only assume they ignored it because they all figured, what could a sixteen-year-old girl have to say?
Plus, her uncle wasn’t exactly making life easy for them, what with his goal to spend every last penny in Genovia’s treasury. So it wasn’t like they had time to go home and read some dead princess’s diary.
Anyway, that other thing Amelie managed to save was one last copy of the thing she had drawn up and signed by those witnesses—whatever it was. She says she hid the parchment “somewhere close to my heart, where some future princess will find it, and do what is right.”
Except, of course, if you’re dying of the plague, it’s really not a good idea to hide anything close to your heart.
Because your corpse is just going to get burned to a cinder by your uncle in a fiery funereal pyre.
Wednesday, September 22, G & T
Lana just dropped a small weapon of mass destruction on the lunch table. Just dropped it, then shrugged, like it was nothing. But that, I’m learning, is her way.
“So how long has that been going on?” she wanted to know, waggling her fingers at the lunch table where Lilly was sitting with Kenny Showalter, et al.
I glanced over to where she was pointing. “Oh. Well, Lilly isn’t speaking to me for a number of reasons. First, and probably foremost, she blames me for J.P. dumping her—”
“Hey!” J.P. protested. “I didn’t dump her! I told her I thought it would be better if we were just friends.”
“Yeah. There’s a lot of that going around. Second,” I informed Lana, “Lilly’s upset because I refused to run for student council president. Even though I never wanted to be student council president in the first place, she did. Third, she—”
