Royally Crushed (35 page)

Ask
? It’s a girls-ask-guys thing? Gag.

Ulrike pushes her tuna salad around her lunch tray. She’s one of those impossibly skinny girls who hardly ever eats, and not because she’s obsessed with fitting into a negative clothing size. Sorry, but I abhor standing in a mall dressing room trying on normal-sized clothes while girls in the other booths are whining aloud to their friends—who are usually standing outside the dressing room doors being total poseurs with their cell phones, checking for messages from their unfortunate boyfriends—about how they’re sooooo fat they’re almost out of a size zero and omigod their life is over! I want to rip the clothes out of their hands and tell them to get the hell out of my range of hearing. Maybe go to the food court and have something other than a head of lettuce for lunch.

But Ulrike’s not that way at all. She just gets focused on other things—like the dance—and forgets to eat much.
She would probably have to stop and check her clothing tags if you asked her what size she wears, since she’s not that into clothes shopping. Of course, she’s also really tall and has this shiny white-blond hair that makes her look like a movie star no matter what she has on.

Good thing she’s one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met, or I’d really have to hate her based on nothing more than her looks.

“I’ve been so busy with the planning committee, I haven’t even thought about who to ask,” she says, and glances across the table to Maya, who’s sitting next to me. “How about you?”

“I’m still thinking,” Maya mumbles in a way that makes me think she wants to go alone but doesn’t want Ulrike or Steffi harassing her about it. She’s a junior—excuse me, a
year eleven
—but since she lives next door to Ulrike, she hangs out with us lowly year ten types. Maya pushes her dark hair back over her shoulders so it doesn’t hang in her lunch tray, then focuses on Steffi. “Why do you ask? Is there someone you’re planning to take?”

“We’ll see. No firm plans yet.”

Georg is unavailable
, I mentally telegraph in her direction.

As if she can hear my thoughts, Steffi looks straight at me. “And how about you, Val? Are you going to try to ask Prince Georg?”

I hate her. Really I do. Because she says this in a tone that sounds nice to everyone else, but that I know is meant to make me feel like dog crap. It’s that use of the word “try.” She just slid it in there. Like it’s sooooo cute that I have a thing for the prince and I’m going to be pulling a real goober move by “trying” to ask him to the dance.

“I haven’t really thought about it, with the trip to Virginia and everything,” I answer honestly. She has to know there’s no one else I’d ask, which means she’s sniffing around to see how serious Georg and I really are. We’ve worked hard to keep things low-key just so we’re not the main topic of school gossip—and to try to overcome our recent tabloid snafu and the way it affected his parents—but all that secrecy does have one nasty side effect.

Namely, that Steffi still thinks she has a chance with him.

Before Steffi can say anything else, I ask Ulrike, “When is it, anyway? This weekend?”

I hope so, ’cause then maybe I’ll be off skiing with Georg and I won’t have to worry about Steffi giving me backhanded compliments all night while she tries to latch on to my boyfriend.

“Next Saturday,” Maya says, since Ulrike has finally taken another bite of her tuna salad and is too polite to talk with food in her mouth.

“Only ten days,” Ulrike adds, dropping her sandwich
back onto her plate. “And I’m panicking. We need to sell a lot more tickets. You guys have to promise me you’ll come, even if you don’t bring dates. Okay?”

We all promise. Steffi and Maya are fairly enthusiastic, but the last thing I want to do is go to a school dance. I’ve always felt like a loser at these kind of events, and even though I (finally!) have someone to go with, it’s not like we can go hide in a corner like other couples do and make out.

It just doesn’t work that way when
Majesty
magazine has a reporter whose sole job is to take photos of your boyfriend. The school is off-limits to the press, but still. We’re both bound to hear a “remember that you’re in the public eye” lecture from our parents before we set foot out the door, and we’ve learned the hard way that we actually need to take those lectures seriously.

On the bright side, it’ll be a night out where we can listen to good music and see who’s hooking up with whom around school (even if we don’t get to be all lovey-dovey with each other while we’re there) and we can always hide out at home and do something fun afterward.

“Great!” Ulrike’s smile is cotton candy sweet as she sets down her fork. “And if you feel like coming early to help me set up, I’d really appreciate—”

“Not me.” Maya holds up her hands like she’s warding off Satan. “When I set up, someone has to come through after me and redo it the right way. I’m awful at that kind of thing and you know it.”

Steffi says she’ll try to make it there early but isn’t sure what her plans are yet.

In other words, she’s hoping she’ll find something better to do, but she’s hedging so she won’t upset Ulrike.

Before my mind can stop my mouth, I pop out with, “I’ll help you.”

I’m totally not the school dance volunteer type, but the look on Ulrike’s face when both Maya and Steffi act like they’re gonna bail is too much for my guilty conscience to handle. I turn to face Ulrike and add, “You’re just going to have to be very specific directing me what to do so I don’t screw it all up. All right?”

“Thanks, Valerie!” Ulrike looks so grateful and Steffi so anxious, like this is eating her up inside, that I know I made the right choice.

“No problem.” Take that, Steffi.

“Can you be at the hotel at six?”

Hotel? “Um, which hotel?”

She says something very German-sounding, so I ask her to repeat it slowly. Since German is Ulrike’s and Steffi’s
native language, this kind of thing just rolls off their tongues all the time. Maya’s lived here long enough (and taken enough German) to understand them, but not me. After taking French all through school (with straight As, thankyouverymuch) anything in German still sounds like someone horking up a loogie to my ears. I know maybe five or six words other than what I’ve figured out from road signs and reading the McDonald’s menu, and that’s only because Dad drilled them into me. Things like “excuse me,” “please,” and “thank you.” Typical Dad words.

Ulrike grabs her backpack out from under the cafeteria table and scribbles on a piece of paper. “Here’s the address and the hotel’s name. It’s only two blocks from the school, over on Blumenstrasse, so you should be able to find it.”

I study the page. I can’t begin to pronounce the hotel’s name. It looks kinda like Jagger, as in Mick and the Rolling Stones, but that’s not what it sounded like when Ulrike said it. “This is where the dance is?”

“They have a great ballroom. Prom is there most years, too,” she explains.

In other words, the press will have a much easier time getting in than they would at the school.

And Georg is going to be that much less likely to go.

He signed it
love
!

I think I’m going to pop right out of my seat in computer lab. Knowing Georg, he’d never say it unless he meant it either. Whaaa-hoooo!

I mean, once he handed me a McDonald’s bag with my fave sandwich in there, and when I thanked him, he said something about how it was “true love.” But that’s not the same, I don’t think.

I keep seeing all these articles in magazines about how relationships are doomed if one person likes the other one more, and it’s always the one who’s more head over heels who gets hurt. They make me wonder if I’m stupid, letting myself become more dopey in love with Georg than he is with me. But now I’m thinking we might actually be equally googly-eyed for each other.

I try not to look too obviously happy about what I’m
reading, since I don’t want anyone in the computer lab getting too curious. From the time stamp, it looks like he must have been here at lunch. He has a paper due in his English Lit class next week, so I’m guessing he was here working on it. It also explains why I didn’t see him anywhere in the cafeteria at lunch, though I probably wouldn’t have noticed anyway, what with Ulrike talking about the dance and me off in la-la land, daydreaming about skiing with my boyfriend.

Oh, shit. Skiing.

With my
boyfriend
.

What in the world was I thinking? I drop my head against the keyboard. The girl sitting next to me asks me if I’m all right, and I mumble something nonsensical but reassuring-sounding back to her. She gives me an “uh-huh” before turning back to her own e-mail.

How could this not have occurred to me before? Like, the exact minute Dad suggested we bring Georg along?

I’m going to have to wear ski pants. The ultimate in how-big-is-Val’s-ass fashion. And not only will Georg see it, photographers are bound to immortalize it. In print.

Oh, man. It might even end up in some media database, where anyone who wants to can pull it up at will, print copies, and plaster them all over the school. Knowing Steffi, she’d show the absolute worst picture to everyone and say,
“Doesn’t Val look so cute in this picture? Isn’t it so lucky for her that Georg’s parents let her tag along on his ski trip?” or something like that.

I raise my head and start tapping out an emergency missive. I’m tempted to put “Save My Ass!” in the subject line of the e-mail, but I know Dad won’t appreciate my language or the humor. And I’ve gotta stay on his good side, since he’s the only person who can help me now.

Assuming I handle this correctly.

I settle for “Major Emergency” and type a note explaining the situation in the nicest language I can muster (since this is going to the palace, after all). Then I hit send.

FOUR HOURS AFTER I GET HOME FROM SCHOOL, STILL
no Dad.

Georg has come and gone. I’ve not only finished my homework, but I’ve worked ahead, super geek that I am. I’ve been forced to find dinner for myself (horrors), and worst of all, even if Dad walks through the door right this very minute, I’m going to have seriously limited shopping time. Unlike stores in the United States, most of Schwerinborg’s shops tend to close right around dinnertime.

Unable to distract myself with food, I leave my microwaved carnage on the table and go check my e-mail for the zillionth time.

Nothing.

Not even the usual spam offering me low mortgage rates or asking if I want to increase my size to please my partner (and those messages never do mean my pathetic barely-B cups.)

How is this possible?

I open my sent mail folder to make sure I used the correct e-mail address for Dad. Of course I did.

I groan out loud. The man clearly doesn’t understand my emergency. It’s Wednesday. If we leave for our ski trip on Friday right after school . . . well, the clock is ticking. Even if he had some government event to attend tonight, you’d think he’d take two secs to e-mail me back and let me know.

Just to cover my ass (so to speak), I decide to e-mail my best buddy Christie in Virginia. Like Ulrike, Christie is one of those perfect people I could hate based on looks alone if she didn’t possess an uncommon cool quotient. Since her fashion sense is as good as my Dad’s—and Christie’s a lot less likely to ridicule my ski pants dilemma—I figure she’ll be able to steer me in the right direction.

Since she’s six hours behind me, if I’m really lucky she’ll be sitting at a computer at school. At worst, she’ll check e-mail when she gets home in a couple of hours. Either way, she’s probably going to be able to help before Dad.