Princess in the Spotlight (8 page)

Yeah, there was some tongue action, but believe me, I kept my lips way closed.

And since I have never been French-kissed, and had nothing good to confess on the show, Lilly decided to punish me by giving me a Dare. She didn’t even ask me if I would prefer a Truth.

Lilly dared me I wouldn’t drop an eggplant onto the sidewalk from her sixteenth-story bedroom window.

I said I most certainly would, even though of course, I totally didn’t want to. I mean, how stupid. Somebody could seriously get hurt. I am all for illustrating the degenerate lows to which America’s teens have sunk, but I wouldn’t want anybody to get their head bashed in.

But what could I do? It was a Dare. I had to go along with it. I mean, it’s bad enough I’ve never been Frenched. I don’t want to be branded a wimp, too.

And I couldn’t exactly stand there and go, well, all right, I may never have been French-kissed by a boy, but I have been the recipient of a love letter that was written by one. A boy, I mean.

Because what if Michael is Jo-C-rox? I mean, I know he probably isn’t, but . . . well, what if he is? I don’t want Lilly to know—any more than I want her to know about my interview with Beverly Bellerieve, or the fact that my mom and Mr. G are getting married. I am trying very hard to be a normal girl, and frankly, none of the aforementioned can be even remotely construed as normal.

I guess the knowledge that somewhere in the world there is a boy who likes me gave me a sense of empowerment—something I certainly could have used during my interview with Beverly Bellerieve, but whatever. I may not be able to form a coherent sentence when there is a television camera aimed in my direction, but I am at least capable, I decided, of throwing an eggplant out the window.

Lilly was shocked. I had never accepted a Dare like that before.

I can’t really explain why I did it. Maybe I was just trying to live up to my new reputation as a very Josiewish type of girl.

Or maybe I was more scared of what Lilly would try to make me do if I said no. Once she made me run up and down the hallway naked. Not the hallway in the Moscovitzes’ apartment, either. The hallway
outside
of it.

Whatever my reasons, I soon found myself sneaking past the Drs. Moscovitz—who were lounging around in sweatpants in the living room, with stacks of important medical journals all around their chairs—though Lilly’s father was reading a copy of
Sports Illustrated
and Lilly’s mom was reading
Cosmo
—and creeping into the kitchen.

“Hello, Mia,” Lilly’s father called from behind his magazine. “How are you doing?”

“Um,” I said, nervously. “Fine.”

“And how is your mother?” Lilly’s mother asked.

“She’s fine,” I said.

“Is she still seeing your Algebra teacher in a social capacity?”

“Um, yes, Dr. Moscovitz,” I said. More than you know.

“And are you still amenable to the relationship?” Lilly’s father wanted to know.

“Um,” I said. “Yes, Dr. Moscovitz.” I didn’t think it would be appropriate to mention the whole thing about how my mom is having Mr. G’s baby. I mean, I was supposed to be on a Dare, after all. You aren’t supposed to stop for psychoanalysis when you are on a Dare.

“Well, tell her hello from me,” Lilly’s mother said. “We can’t wait until her next show. It’s at the Mary Boone Gallery, right?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. The Moscovitzes are big fans of my mother’s work. One of her best paintings,
Woman Enjoying a Quick Snack at Starbucks
, is hanging in their dining room.

“We’ll be there,” Lilly’s father said.

Then he and his wife turned back to their magazines, so I hurried into the kitchen.

I found an eggplant in the vegetable crisper. I hid it under my shirt so the Drs. Moscovitz wouldn’t see me sneaking back into their daughter’s room holding a giant ovoid fruit, something sure to cause unwanted questions. While I carried it, I thought,
This is how my mother is going to look in a few months
. It wasn’t a very comforting thought. I don’t think my mother is going to dress any more conservatively while pregnant than she did not pregnant.

Which is to say, not very.

Then, while Lilly narrated gravely into the microphone about how Mia Thermopolis was about to strike a blow for good girls everywhere, and Shameeka filmed, I opened the window, made sure no innocent bystanders were below, and then. . . .

“Bomb’s away,” I said, like in the movies.

It
was
kind of cool seeing this huge purple eggplant—it was the size of a football—tumbling over and over in the air as it fell. There are enough streetlamps on Fifth Avenue, where the Moscovitzes live, for us to see it as it plummeted downward, even though it was night. Down and down the eggplant went, past the windows of all the psychoanalysts and investment bankers (the only people who can afford apartments in Lilly’s building) until suddenly—

SPLAT!

The eggplant hit the sidewalk.

Only it didn’t just hit the sidewalk. It
exploded
on the sidewalk, sending bits of eggplant flying everywhere—mostly all over an M1 city bus that was driving by at the time, but quite a lot all over a Jaguar that had been idling nearby.

While I was leaning out the window, admiring the splatter pattern the eggplant’s pulp had made all over the street and sidewalk, the driver-side door of the Jaguar opened up, and a man got out from behind the wheel, just as the doorman to Lilly’s building stepped out from beneath the awning over the front doors, and looked up—

Suddenly, someone threw an arm around my waist and yanked me backward, right off my feet.

“Get down!” Michael hissed, pulling me down to the parquet.

We all ducked. Well, Lilly, Michael, Shameeka, Ling Su, and Tina ducked. I was already on the floor.

Where had Michael come from? I hadn’t even known he was home—and I’d asked, believe me, on account of the whole running-down-the-hallway-naked thing. Just in case, and all.

But Lilly had said he was at a lecture on quasars over at Columbia and wouldn’t be home for hours.

“Are you guys stupid, or what?” Michael wanted to know. “Don’t you know, besides the fact that it’s a good way to kill someone, it’s also against the law to drop things out a window in New York City?”

“Oh, Michael,” Lilly said, disgustedly. “Grow up. It was just a common garden vegetable.”

“I’m serious.” Michael looked mad. “If anyone saw Mia do that just now, she could be arrested.”

“No, she couldn’t,” Lilly said. “She’s a minor.”

“She could still go to juvenile court. You’d better not be planning on airing that footage on your show,” Michael said.

Oh, my God, Michael was defending my honor! Or at least trying to make sure I didn’t end up in juvenile court. It was just so sweet. So . . . well, Jo-C-rox of him.

Lilly went, “I most certainly am.”

“Well, you’d better edit out the parts that show Mia’s face.”

Lilly stuck her chin out. “No way.”

“Lilly, everybody knows who Mia is. If you air that segment, it will be all over the news that the princess of Genovia was caught on tape dropping projectiles out the window of her friend’s high-rise apartment. Get a clue, will you?”

Michael had let go of my waist, I noticed, with regret.

“Lilly, Michael’s right,” Tina Hakim Baba said. “We better edit that part out. Mia doesn’t need any more publicity than she has already.”

And Tina didn’t even
know
about the
TwentyFour/Seven
thing.

Lilly got up and stomped back toward the window. She started to lean out—checking, I guess, to see whether the doorman and the owner of the Jaguar were still there—but Michael jerked her back.

“Rule Number One,” he said. “If you insist on dropping something out the window, never, ever check to see if anybody is standing down there, looking up. They will see you look out and figure out what apartment you are in. Then you will be blamed for dropping whatever it was. Because no one but the guilty party would be looking out the window under such circumstances.”

“Wow, Michael,” Shameeka said admiringly. “You sound like you’ve done this before.”

Not only that. He sounded like Dirty Harry.

Which was just how I felt when I dropped that eggplant out the window. Like Dirty Harry.

And it had felt good—but not quite so good as having Michael rush to my defense like that.

Michael said, “Let’s just say I used to have a very keen interest in experimenting with the earth’s gravitational pull.”

Wow. There is so much I don’t know about Lilly’s brother. Like he used to be a juvenile delinquent!

Could a computer genius-slash-juvenile delinquent ever be interested in a flat-chested princess like myself? He did save my life tonight (well, okay: he saved me from possible community service).

It’s not a French kiss, or a slow dance, or even an admission he’s the author of that anonymous letter.

But it’s a start.

I know what yer thinkin’:

Did he fire six shots, or only five?

Frankly, in all the confusion,

I kinda lost track myself.

But you gotta ask yourself one question:

(
beat
)

Do I feel lucky?

(
long pause
)

Well?

(
long pause
)

Do ya, punk?

THINGS TO DO

Q-tips

Canvas stretchers (for Mom)

That stuff you put on your fingernails

that makes them taste bad

Something nice for Mr. Gianini, to say

welcome to the family

Something nice for Dad, to say don’t

worry, someday you, too, will find

true love

I was really afraid that when I got home my mom was going to be disappointed in me.

Not
yell
at me. My mom is really not a yelling kind of person.

But she does get disappointed in me, like when I do something stupid like not call and tell her where I am if I am out late (which, given my social life, or lack thereof, hardly ever happens).

But I did screw up this time, and big time. It was really, really hard to leave the Moscovitzes’ apartment this morning and come home, knowing the potential for disappointment that awaited me there.

Of course, it’s always hard to leave Lilly’s. Every time I go there, it’s like taking a vacation from my real life. Lilly has such a nice, normal family. Well, as normal as two psychoanalysts whose son has his own webzine and whose daughter has her own cable-access television show can be. At the Moscovitzes’, the biggest problem is always whose turn is it to walk Pavlov, their sheltie, or whether to order Chinese or Thai take-out.

At my house, the problems always seem to be a little more complicated.

But of course when I finally did work up the courage to come home, my mom was totally happy to see me. She gave me a big hug, and told me not to worry about what had happened at the interview taping. She said Dad had talked to her, and that she completely understood. She even tried to get me to believe that it was
her
fault for not having said anything to him right away.

Which I know isn’t true—it’s still my fault, me and my idiot mouth—but it was nice to hear, just the same.

So then we had a nice, fun time sitting around planning her and Mr. G’s wedding. My mom decided Halloween would be an excellent day to get married, because the idea of marriage is so scary. Since it was going to be at City Hall, that meant I’d probably have to skip school, but that was okay by me!

Since it would be Halloween, my mom decided that instead of a wedding dress, she would go to the courthouse dressed as King Kong. She wants me to dress up as the Empire State Building (God knows I am tall enough). She was trying to convince Mr. G to dress as Fay Ray when the phone rang, and she said it was Lilly, for me.

I was surprised, since I had just left Lilly’s, but I figured I must have left my toothbrush there, or something.

But that wasn’t why she was calling. That wasn’t why she was calling at all—as I found out when she demanded tartly, “What’s this I hear about you being interviewed on
TwentyFour/Seven
this week?”

I was stunned. I actually thought Lilly had ESP or something, and had been hiding it from me all these years. I said, “How did you know?”

“Because there are commercials announcing it every five minutes, dorkus.”

I switched on the TV. Lilly was right! No matter what station you put it on, there were ads urging viewers to “tune in tomorrow night” to see Beverly Bellerieve’s exclusive interview with “America’s royal, Princess Mia.”

Oh, my God. My life is so over.

“So why didn’t you tell me you are going to be on TV?” Lilly wanted to know.

“I don’t know,” I said, feeling like I was going to throw up all over again. “It just happened yesterday. It’s no big deal.”

Lilly started yelling so loud I had to hold the phone away from my ear.

“NO BIG DEAL??? You were interviewed by Beverly Bellerieve and it was NO BIG DEAL??? Don’t you realize that BEVERLY BELLERIEVE IS ONE OF AMERICA’S MOST POPULAR AND HARDEST-HITTING JOURNALISTS, and that she is my all-time ROLE MODEL and HERO???”

When she finally calmed down enough to let me talk, I tried to explain to Lilly that I had no idea about Beverly’s journalistic merits, much less that she was Lilly’s all-time role model and hero. She just seemed, I said, like a very nice lady.

By that time, Lilly was totally fed up with me. She said, “The only reason I’m not mad at you is that tomorrow you are going to tell me every single little detail about it.”