There’s a lot of stuff about being a girl I never realized. Like having your shoes match your gown. I didn’t know that was so important.
But Tina Hakim Baba sure knows. You should see her room. She must have every women’s magazine ever printed. They are in order on shelves all around her room, which, by the way, is huge and pink, much like the rest of her apartment, which takes up the entire top floor of her building. You hit PH on the elevator buttons, and the elevator opens in the Hakim Babas’ marble foyer, which really does have a fountain, only you’re not supposed to throw pennies in it, I found out.
And then there’s just room after room after room. They have a maid, a cook, a nanny, and a driver, all of whom live in. So you can imagine how many rooms there are, on top of the fact that Tina has three little sisters and a baby brother, and all of them have their own rooms, too.
Tina’s room has its own 37-inch TV with a Sony PlayStation. I can see now that I have been living a life of monastic simplicity compared to Tina.
Some people have all the luck.
Anyway, Tina is a lot different at home than she is at school. At home, she’s totally bubbly and outgoing. Her parents are pretty nice, too. Mr. Hakim Baba is really funny. He had a heart attack last year and isn’t allowed to eat practically anything but vegetables and rice. He has to lose twenty more pounds. He kept pinching my arm and going, “How do you stay so skinny?” I told him about my strict vegetarianism, and he went, “Oh,” and shuddered really hard. The Hakim Babas’ cook has orders to prepare only vegetarian meals, which was good for me. We had couscous and vegetable goulash. It was all quite delicious.
Mrs. Hakim Baba is beautiful, but in a different way than my mom. Mrs. Hakim Baba is British and very blond. I think she’s pretty bored, living here in America and not having a job and all. Mrs. Hakim Baba used to be a model, but she quit when she got married. Now she doesn’t get to meet all the interesting people she used to meet when she was modeling. She once stayed in the same hotel as Prince Charles and Princess Diana. She says they slept in separate bedrooms. And that was on their honeymoon!
No wonder things didn’t work out between them.
Mrs. Hakim Baba is as tall as me, which makes her about five inches taller than Mr. Hakim Baba. But I don’t think Mr. Hakim Baba minds.
Tina’s little sisters and brother are really cute. After we messed around with the fashion magazines, looking up hairstyles, we tried some of them out on Tina’s sisters. They looked pretty funny. Then we put butterfly clips in Tina’s little brother’s hair and gave him a French manicure like mine, and he got very excited and changed into his Batman suit and ran around the apartment, screaming. I thought it was cute, but Mr. and Mrs. Hakim Baba didn’t think so. They made the nanny put little Bobby Hakim Baba to bed right after dinner.
Then Tina showed me her dress for tomorrow. It’s a Nicole Miller. It’s so pretty, like sea foam. Tina Hakim Baba looks much more like a princess than I ever could.
Then it was time for Lilly Tells It Like It Is, which comes on on Friday nights at nine. This was the episode dedicated to exposing the unjust racism at Ho’s Deli. It was filmed before Lilly called off the boycott due to lack of interest. It was a very hard-hitting piece of television news journalism, and I can say that without bragging, since I wasn’t involved in its creation. If Lilly Tells It Like It Is ever went network, I bet it would be as highly rated as 60 Minutes.
At the end, Lilly came on and did a segment she must have shot the night before, with a tripod in her bedroom. She sat on her bed and said that racism is a powerful force of evil that all of us must work to combat. She said that even though paying five cents more for a bag of gingko biloba rings might not seem like much to some of us, victims of real racism, like the Armenians and the Rwandans and the Ugandans and the Bosnians, would recognize that that five cents was only the first step on the road to genocide. Lilly went on to say that because of her daring stand against the Hos there was a little bit more justice on the side of right today.
I don’t know about that, but I did sort of start to miss her when she waggled her feet, in their furry bear claw slippers, into the camera as a tribute to Norman. Tina is a fun friend and everything, but I’ve known Lilly since kindergarten. It’s kind of hard to forget that.
We stayed up really late reading Tina’s teenage love novels. I swear, there wasn’t a single one where the boy broke up with a snotty girl and started going out with the heroine right away. Usually he waited a tactful amount of time, like a summer or at least a weekend, before asking her out. The only ones with a guy who started going out with the heroine right away turned out to be ones where the guy was just using the girl to get revenge or something.
But then Tina said even though she loves reading those books, she never takes them as a guide to real life. Because how many times in real life does anybody ever get amnesia? And when do cute young European terrorists ever take anybody hostage in the girls’ locker room? And if they did, wouldn’t it be on the day when you’re wearing your worst underwear, the kind with the holes and loose elastic, and a bra that doesn’t match, and not a pink silk camisole and tap pants, like the heroine of that particular book?
She has a point.
Tina’s turning out the light now, because she’s tired. I’m glad. It’s been a long day.
Saturday, October 18
When I got home, the first thing I did was check to make sure Josh hadn’t called to cancel.
He hadn’t.
Mr. Gianini was there, though (of course). This time he had pants on, thank God. When he heard me ask my mom if a boy named Josh had called, he was all, “You don’t mean Josh Richter, do you?”
I got kind of mad, because he sounded . . . I don’t know. Shocked or something.
I said, “Yes, I mean Josh Richter. He and I are going to the Cultural Diversity Dance tonight.”
Mr. Gianini raised his eyebrows. “What about that Weinberger girl?”
It kind of sucks to have a parent who’s dating a teacher in your school. I went, “They broke up.”
My mom was watching us pretty closely, which is unusual for her, since most of the time she’s in her own world. She went, “Who’s Josh Richter?”
And I went, “Only the cutest, most sensitive boy in school.”
Mr. Gianini snorted and said, “Well, most popular, anyway.”
To which my mom replied, with a lot of surprise, “And he asked Mia to the dance?”
Needless to say, this was not very flattering. When your own mother knows it’s weird for the cutest, most popular boy in school to ask you to the dance, you know you’re in trouble.
“Yes,” I said, all defensively.
“I don’t like this,” Mr. Gianini said. And when my mom asked him why, he said, “Because I know Josh Richter.”
My mom went, “Uh oh. I don’t like the sound of that,” and before I could say anything in Josh’s defense, Mr. Gianini went, “That boy is going one hundred miles per hour,” which doesn’t even make any sense.
At least it didn’t until my mom pointed out that since I’m only going five miles per hour (FIVE!) she was going to have to consult my father “about this.”
Hello? Consult him about what? What am I, a car with a faulty fan belt? What’s this five-miles-per-hour stuff?
“He’s fast, Mia,” Mr. Gianini translated.
Fast? FAST? What is this, the fifties? Josh Richter is a rebel without a cause all of a sudden?
My mom went, as she was dialing my dad’s phone number over at the Plaza, “You’re just a freshman. You shouldn’t be going out with seniors anyway.”
How unfair is THAT? I finally get a date, and all of a sudden my parents turn into Mike and Carol Brady? I mean, come on!
So I was standing there, listening to my mom and dad over the speakerphone go on about how they both think I’m too young to date and that I SHOULDN’T date, since this has been a very confusing time for me, what with finding out I’m a princess and all. They were
planning out the rest of my life for me (no dating until I’m eighteen, all-girls dorm when I get to college, etc.) when the buzzer to the loft went off, and Mr. G went to answer it. When he asked who it was, this all-too-familiar voice went, “This is Clarisse Marie Grimaldi Renaldo. Who is this?”
Across the room, my mom nearly dropped the phone. It was Grandmère. Grandmère had come to the loft!
I never in my life thought I’d be grateful to Grandmère for something. I never thought I’d be glad to see her. But when she showed up at the loft to take me shopping for my dress, I could have kissed her—on both cheeks, even—I really could have. Because when I met her at the door, I was like, “Grandmère, they won’t let me go!”
I forgot Grandmère had never even been to the loft before. I forgot Mr. Gianini was there. All I could think about was the fact that my parents were trying to low-ball me about Josh. Grandmère would take care of it, I knew.
And boy, did she ever.
Grandmère came bursting in, giving Mr. Gianini a very dirty look—“This is he?” she stopped long enough to ask, and when I said yes, she made this sniffing sound and walked right by him—and heard Dad on the speakerphone. She shouted, “Give me that phone,” at my mother, who looked like a kid who’d just gotten caught jumping a turnstile by the Transit Authority.
“Mother?” my dad’s voice shouted over the speakerphone. You could tell he was in almost as much shock as Mom. “Is that you? What are you doing there?”
For someone who claims to have no use for modern technology, Grandmère sure knew how to work that speakerphone. She took Dad right off it, snatched the receiver out of my mother’s hand, and went, “Listen here, Phillipe,” into it. “Your daughter is going to the dance with her beau. I traveled fifty-seven blocks by limo to take her shopping for a new dress, and if you think I’m not going to watch her dance in it, then you can just—”
Then my grandmother used some pretty strong language. Only since she said it all in French, only my dad and I understood. My mom and Mr. Gianini just stood there. My mom looked mad. Mr. G looked nervous.
After my grandmother had finished telling my dad just where he could get off, she slammed the phone down, then looked around the loft. Let’s just say Grandmère has never been one for hiding her feelings, so I wasn’t too surprised when the next thing she said was, “This is where the princess of Genovia is being brought up? In this . . . warehouse?”
Well, if she had lit a firecracker under my mom, she couldn’t have made her madder.
“Now look here, Clarisse,” my mother said, stomping around in her Birkenstocks. “Don’t you dare try to tell me how to raise my child! Phillipe and I have already decided she isn’t going out with this boy. You can’t just come in here and—”
“Amelia,” my grandmother said, “go and get your coat.”
I went. When I got back, my mom’s face was really red, and Mr. Gianini was looking at the floor. But neither of them said anything as Grandmère and I left the loft.
Once we were outside, I was so excited I could hardly stand it. “Grandmère!” I yelled. “What’d you say to them? What’d you say to convince them to let me go?”
But Grandmère just laughed in this scary way and said, “I have my ways.”
Boy, did I ever not hate her then.
More Saturday
Well, I’m sitting here in my new dress, my new shoes, my new nails, and my new panty hose, with my newly waxed legs and underarms, my newly touched-up hair, my professionally made-up face, and it’s seven o’clock, and there’s no sign of Josh, and I’m wondering if maybe this whole thing was a joke, like in the movie Carrie, which is too scary for me to watch but Michael Moscovitz rented it once, and then he told Lilly and me what it was about: This homely girl gets asked to a dance by the most popular boy in school just so he and his popular friends can pour pig blood on her. Only he doesn’t know Carrie has psychic powers, and at the end of the night she kills everyone in the whole town, including Steven Spielberg’s first wife and the mom from Eight Is Enough.
The problem is, of course, I don’t have psychic powers, so if it turns out that Josh and his friends pour pig blood on me I won’t be able to kill them all. I mean, unless I call in the Genovian national guard or something. But that would be difficult, since Genovia doesn’t have an air force or navy, so how would the guards get here? They’d have to fly commercially, and it costs A LOT to buy tickets at the last minute. I doubt my dad would approve such an exorbitant expenditure of government funds—especially for what he’d be bound to consider a frivolous reason.
But if Josh Richter stands me up, I can assure you, I will not have a frivolous reaction. I got my LEGS waxed for him. Okay? And if you think that doesn’t hurt, think about having your UNDERARMS waxed, which I also had done for him. Okay? That waxing stuff HURTS. I practically started to cry, it hurt so bad. So don’t be telling ME we can’t call out the Genovian national guard if I get stood up.
I know my dad thinks Josh has stood me up. He’s sitting at the kitchen table right now, pretending to read TV Guide. But I see him sneaking peeks at his watch all the time. Mom, too. Only she never wears a watch, so she keeps sneaking peeks at the blinking-eye cat clock on the wall.
Lars is here, too. He isn’t checking the clock, though. He keeps checking his ammunition clip to make sure he has enough bullets. I suppose my dad told him to shoot Josh if he makes a move on me.
Oh, yes. My dad said I can go out with Josh, but only if Lars goes, too. This is no big thing since I always expected Lars would go, anyway. But I pretended to be all mad about it so my dad wouldn’t think I was getting off too easy. I mean, HE’s in BIG trouble with Grandmère. She told me while I was being fitted for my dress that my dad has always had a problem with commitment and that the reason he doesn’t want me to go out with Josh is that he can’t stand to see me dumped the way my dad has dumped countless models all over the world.
God! Assume the worst, why don’t you, Dad.
Josh can’t dump me. He’s never even been out with me yet.
And if he doesn’t show up soon, well, all I can say is HIS LOSS. I look better than I have ever looked in my whole entire life. Old Coco Chanel really outdid herself; my dress is HOT, pale, pale blue silk, all scrunched up on top like an accordion, so my being flat-chested doesn’t even show, then straight and skinny the rest of the way down, all the way to my matching pale, pale blue silk high heels. I think I kind of resemble an icicle, but according to the ladies at Chanel, this is the look of the new millennium. Icicles are in.
The only problem is I can’t pet Fat Louie or I’ll get orange cat hair on myself. I should have got one of those masking tape roller thingies last time I was at Rite Aid, but I forgot. Anyway, he’s sitting beside me on the futon, looking all sad because I won’t pet him. I picked up all my socks, just in case he got it into his head to punish me or something by eating one.
My dad just looked at his watch and went, “Hmm. Seven-fifteen. I can’t say much for this boy’s promptness.”
I tried to remain calm. “I’m sure there’s a lot of traffic,” I said, in as princessy a voice as I could.
“I’m sure,” my dad. He didn’t sound very sad, though. “Well, Mia, we can still make it to Beauty and the Beast, if you want to go. I’m sure I can get—”
“Dad!” I was horrified. “I am NOT going to Beauty and the Beast with you tonight.”
Now he sounded sad. “But you used to love Beauty and the Beast. . . . ”
THANK GOD the intercom just rang. It’s him. My mom just buzzed him up. The other stipulation, before my dad would let me go, is that besides Lars going, Josh has to meet both my parents—and probably submit proof of ID, though I’m not sure Dad’s thought of that yet.
I’m going to have to leave this book here, because there’s no room for it in my “clutch,” which is what my skinny, flat purse is called.
Oh my God, my hands are sweating so hard! I should have listened when Grandmère suggested those e
lbow-length gloves—
Saturday Night, Ladies’ Room,
Tavern on the Green
Okay, so I lied. I brought this book anyway. I made Lars carry it. Well, it’s not like he doesn’t have room in that briefcase he carries around. I know it’s filled with silencers and grenades and stuff, but I knew he could fit one measly journal into it.
And I was right.
So I’m in the bathroom at the Tavern on the Green. The ladies’ room here isn’t as nice as the one at the Plaza. There isn’t a little stool to sit on in my stall, so I’m sitting on the toilet with the lid down. I can see a lot of fat ladies’ feet moving around outside my stall door. There are a whole lot of fat ladies here, mostly for this wedding between a very Italian-looking dark-haired girl who needs a good eyebrow waxing and a skinny redheaded boy named Fergus. Fergus gave me the old eyeball when I walked into the dining room. I am not kidding. My first married man, even if he has only been married about an hour and looks my age. This dress is the BOMB!
Dinner’s not so great as I thought it would be, though. I mean, I know from Grandmère which fork to use and all that, and to tilt my soup bowl away from me, but that’s not it.
It’s Josh.
Don’t get me wrong. He looks totally hot in his tux. He told me he owns it. Last year, he escorted his girlfriend before Lana to all the debutante events in the city, his girlfriend before Lana having been related to the guy who invented those plastic bags you put vegetables in when you go to the grocery store. Only his were the first to say OPEN HERE so you knew which end was the one you were supposed to try to open. Those two little words earned the guy half a billion dollars, Josh says.
I don’t know why he told me this. Am I supposed to be impressed by something his ex-girlfriend’s dad did? He isn’t acting very sensitive, to tell you the truth.