Just Your Average Princess Read Free Page A

a general rule not to eat anything with the word ‘cream’ in it. And you know corn is a filler anyway, right? Do you have any tofu? Maybe a soy burger?”
    Mom looks at Milan for a long minute and her smile disappears. But she doesn’t say a word. Finally she turns around, walks to the pantry, pulls out two cans of creamed corn, and walks to the can opener.
    Creamed corn it is, then.
    *   *   *
    My mom’s chicken is so good. I mean, so, so good. She always debones it and cuts off the fat, because she knows that rubbery stuff grosses me out, and then she batters it in flour and egg and bread crumbs and fries it in some vegetable oil. Delish. I want to reach for a third piece. I worked hard today and I’m pretty hungry. But I don’t want to look like a total pig in front of Milan. All she has on her plate is a scoop of green beans, which she is ever so slowly nibbling on. And that is only after she brought them to the sink and washed each bean individually to get off the butter Mom had added to them. Oh man, I thought Mom’s head was going to explode when she did that.
    â€œWhat are your plans for tonight, Jamie?” Mom asks. She picks up her and my dad’s empty plates and turns for the kitchen.
    â€œThe usual,” I say to her. “Hanging out with Sara.”
    Dad grunts and pushes back from the table. We watch him leave without saying a word. I’m sure he’s off to hole up in his office and watch TV. He’s not what you’d call the world’s best conversationalist. I’m pretty good at translating his grunts though. That one means “I wish you’d hang out with someone other than Sara every once in a while.” Not that he dislikes Sara or anything. I mean, he hired her to work at the Patch and gives her free rein to do her creative thing with the caramel apples. It’s only that she’s nineteen and out of high school and he’d probably be happier if my best friend was seventeen like me.
    And, well, he sorta thinks she’s a bad influence on me. Which she’s totally not. But it’s a small town and everyone knows everything about everyone else so when a rumor gets going it spreads through town fast. I know Dad wasn’t too happy when he heard that Sara got caught in a compromising position with a boy under the bleachers at the football field her senior year. But that was two whole years ago and it’s not like I followed suit or anything. I don’t even go to football games. I work on Saturdays.
    And truth be told, there was that one time when Sara first got her driver’s permit and we went joyriding in her dad’s new truck when we were supposed to be having a sleepover at her house. Nobody would ever have known if we hadn’t run out of gas about two miles out of town. We had to call her dad to come get us in her mom’s minivan, which he had previously sworn never to step foot in for as long as he lived. Guys are so weird about minivans around here.
    But aside from that extremely short list of typical teenage deviance, Sara and I are good people. It’s not like we’re getting drunk at parties or starting fires in empty parking lots. There are worse people I could associate with. Of course, I could bring Dilly Hanson around more. She’s my school best friend. But then Dad would find something wrong with her too, I’m sure. Dilly’s parents are a tad bizarre. Not bizarre in a bad way, I mean, they’re supernice people, have good jobs, and contribute to the community, and Mrs. Hanson is on the town board. But they do some odd things too, like their house is pink with orange shutters, they hang candy from the tree in the front yard every Halloween, and they named their three kids Dilly, Fraction, and Nero. In a town of only a thousand people, this kind of thing sticks out. I think of them as colorful while Dad says they’re freaks. That’s mostly why Dilly is