Sweet Sixteen Princess Read Free Page B

“I haven’t heard anything about Lilly and your grandmother planning any party.”
    I quizzed Lilly at length about my suspicions in the limo on the way to school, but she never once cracked.
    Perhaps I was only imagining the whole Grandmère/Lilly plot to fete me against my will.
    Which isn’t any wonder, really, if you think about all the stuff they’ve gotten up to behind my back in the past. Really, they are like the Snape/Malfoy pairing of the Muggle world. Only without the capes.
    Thursday, April 29, Gifted and Talented
    I observed J. P. closely all through lunch to see if I could detect any signs that he might explode in a volcano of passion, as Tina suggested he was going to someday.
    He must have noticed me staring at him though, because at one point when Lilly got up to get a second helping of mac and cheese (her mother’s low-carb diet has had the opposite effect she’d evidently hoped for where Lilly is concerned—it has only turned Lilly into even more of a raging carboholic), he looked at me and went, “Mia. Do I have something on my face?”
    I was like, “No. Why?”
    â€œBecause you keep looking at me.”
    Busted! How embarrassing!
    â€œSorry,” I muttered into my Diet Coke, hoping he wouldn’t notice how I was blushing. Only how could he not, under the unforgiving glare of the fluorescent overheads? (Note to self: Look into cost ofgetting new, more flattering lighting in caf.) “I was just…checking something.”
    â€œChecking what?”
    â€œNothing,” I said hastily, and dug into my bean salad.
    â€œMia,” J. P. started to say, in a soft—but deep—voice, that (not surprisingly, considering the fact that Boris, across the table, had his violin out, and was showing Tina, Ling Su, and Perin how easy it was to pluck out the chords to the Foo Fighters’ “Best of You”) only I could hear. “Do you—”
    But he never got to finish whatever it was he was going to say to me, because at that moment Lilly returned.
    â€œCan you believe they were out of mac and cheese?” she asked. “I had to settle for four slices of bread and a bag of Doritos.” She seemed to overcome her disappointment pretty quickly, though, if how fast she chowed down those Doritos is any indication.
    I wonder what J. P. was going to say to me?
    I think Tina is definitely right. One of these days, he’s going to blow like Mount Vesuvius. There will be no controlling J. P.’s eruption of passion when it finally happens.
    Thursday, 7 p.m., April 29,
limo home from the Plaza
    I walked into Grandmère’s suite at the Plaza only to be attacked by this woman with purple hair in a pair of lowriders who went, “Oh, great, she’s here,” and tried to stick a portable microphone pack down the back of my shirt.
    â€œWhat are you DOING?” I demanded.
    Fortunately Lars was with me, and he stepped in front of the woman and said, looking down at her all menacingly, “May I help you?”
    Ms. Purple Hair had to crane her neck to see Lars’s face. Apparently she didn’t like what she saw up there, since she took a few stumbling steps backward and went, “Um…Lewis? We’ve got a slight…or, I guess I should say, big— really big—problem.”
    Which is when this skinny guy in a pair of fancy red eyeglasses came hurrying out of Grandmère’s living room, going, “Oh, great, she’s here. Princess Mia, I’m so glad to meet you. I’m Lewis, and this ismy assistant, Janine—” He indicated the purple-haired woman, who was still staring up at Lars like she was looking at King Kong, or someone, and seemed unable to utter a sound. “If you’d just let Janine put your mic on, we can go ahead and get started.”
    I didn’t bother asking Lewis what it was we could go ahead and get started. Instead, I went, “Excuse