3:00 p.m.


We have to leave if we are going to beat the traffic home. I say goodbye. Claire does not say goodbye back to me, but Nathan does. He advises me to keep it real. Mrs. Gianini gives us a lot of leftover turkey. I thank her, even though I don't eat turkey, being a vegetarian and am virulently opposed to the mass slaughter of helpless fowls every time a holiday rolls around.

6:30 p.m.


We finally make it back into the city, after spending three and a half hours in bumper-to-bumper traffic along the

Long Island Expressway. Though there is nothing very express about it, if you ask me.

I barely have time to change into my baby-blue, floor-length Armani sheath dress and matching ballet fiats before

the limo honks downstairs and Lars, my bodyguard, arrives to escort me to my second Thanksgiving dinner.

7:30 p.m.


 Arrive at the Plaza Hotel. I am greeted by the concierge, who announces I me to the masses assembled in the Palm Court:

'Presenting Her Royal Highness Princess Amelia Mignonette Grimaldi Thermopolis Renaldo.'

God forbid he should just say Mia.

My father, the Prince of Genovia, and his mother, the Dowager Princess, have rented the Palm Court for the evening in order to throw a Thanksgiving banquet for all of their friends. Despite my strenuous objections, Dad and Grandmere refuse to leave New York City until I have learned everything there is to know about being a princess . . . or until my formal introduction to the Genovian people the day before Christmas, whichever comes first. I have assured them that it isn't as if I am going to show up at the castle and start hurling olives at the ladies-in-waiting and scratching myself under the arms. I mean, I am fourteen years old-I do have some idea how to act, for crying out loud.

But Grandmere, at least, does not seem to believe this and so she is still subjecting me to daily princess lessons. Lilly recently contacted the United Nations to see whether these lessons constitute a human rights violation. She believes it is unlawful to force a minor to sit for hours practising tipping her soup bowl away from her - 'Always, always, away from you, Amelia!' - in order to scrape up a few drops of lobster bisque.

The UN has so far been unsympathetic to my plight, but that, I believe, is only because they have never actually met Grandmere. Were they to witness for themselves the frightful visage ~ made all the scarier by the fact that years ago Grandmere had her eyeliner permanently tattooed on to her lids, not to mention the fact that she shaves off her eyebrows every day and then draws on new ones in black pencil — hovering over me during these torture sessions, they'd send over a hostage negotiator before you could say Kofi Annan.

It was Grandmere's idea to have what she calls an 'old-fashioned' Thanksgiving dinner featuring mussels in a white wine sauce, squab stuffed withfoisgras, lobster tails, and Iranian caviar, which you could never get before because of the embargo. She has invited two hundred of her closest friends, plus the Emperor of Japan and his wife, since they were in town anyway for a world trade summit.

That's why I had to wear ballet flats. Grandmere says it's rude to be taller than an emperor.

8:00 p.m. - 11:00 p.m.


I make polite conversation with the empress while we eat. Like me, she was just a normal person until one day she married the emperor and became royal. I, of course, was born royal. I just didn't know it until last October when my dad found out he couldn't have any more kids, due to his chemotherapy for testicular cancer having rendered him sterile. Then he had to admit he was actually a prince and all, and that though I am illegitimate, since my dad and

my mom were never married, I am still the sole heir to the Genovian throne.

And even though Genovia is a very small country (population 50,000) crammed into a hillside along the Mediterranean Sea between Italy and France, it is still this very big deal to be princess of it.

Not a big enough deal for anyone to raise my allowance higher than ten dollars a week, apparently. But a big enough deal that I have to have a bodyguard follow me around everywhere I go just in case some Euro-trash terrorist with a pony tail and black leather trousers takes it into his head to kidnap me.

The empress knows all about this - what a bummer it is, I mean, being just a normal person one day and then having your face on the cover of People magazine the next. She even gave me some advice: she told me I should always make sure my kimono is securely fastened before I raise my arm to wave to the populace.

I thanked her, even though I don't actually own a kimono.

11:30 p.m.


I am so tired on account of having gotten up so early to go to Long Island, I have yawned in the empress's face twice.

I have tried to hide these yawns the way Grandmere taught me to - by clenching my jaw and refusing to open my mouth. But this only makes my eyes water and the rest of my face stretch out like I am hurtling through a black hole. Grandmere gives me the evil eye over her salad with pears and walnuts, but it is no use. Even her malevolent stare cannot shake me from my state of extreme drowsiness.

Finally, my father notices and grants me a royal reprieve from dessert. Lars drives me back to the apartment. Grandmere is clearly upset because I am leaving before the cheese course. But it is either that or pass out in the fromage bleu. I know that in the end Grandmere will have retribution, undoubtedly in the form of forcing me to

learn the names of every member of the Swedish royal family, or something equally heinous.

Grandmere always gets her way.

12:00 a.m.


After a long and exhausting day of giving thanks to the founders of our nation — those genocidal hypocrites known

as the Pilgrims — I finally go to bed.

And that concludes Mia Thermopolis's Thanksgiving.

Saturday, December 5



Over.

That is what my life is. O-V-E-R.

I know I have said that before, but this time I really mean it.

And why? Why THIS TIME? Surprisingly, it's not because:

Two months ago I found out that I'm the heir to the throne of a small European nation, and that at the end of this month I am going to have to go to said small European nation and be formally introduced for the first time to the people over whom I will one day reign, and who will undoubtedly hate me, because given that my favourite shoes are my combat boots and my favourite TV show is Baywatch, I am so not the royal princess type.

Or because:

My mother, who is expecting to give birth to my Algebra teacher's child in approximately six months, recently eloped with said Algebra teacher.

Or even because:

At school they've been loading us down with so much homework — and after school, Grandmere's been torturing me so endlessly with all the princess stuff I've got to learn by Christmas — that I haven't even been able to keep up with this journal, let alone anything else.

Oh, no. It's not because of any of that. Why is my life over?

Because I have a boyfriend.

And, yes, at fourteen years of age, I suppose it's about time. I mean, all my friends have boyfriends. All of them, even Lilly, who blames the male sex for most, if not all, of society's ills.

And, OK, Lilly's boyfriend is Boris Pelkowski, who may, at the age of fifteen, be one of the nation's leading violin virtuosos,

but that doesn't mean he doesn't tuck his sweater into his trousers, or that more often than not he doesn't have food in his braces. Not what I would call ideal boyfriend material, but Lilly seems to like him which is all that matters.

I guess.

I have to admit, when Lilly - possibly the pickiest person on this planet (and I should know, having been best friends with her since the first grade) - got a boyfriend and I still didn't have one, I pretty much started to think there was something wrong with me. You know, besides my gigantism and what Lilly's parents, the Drs. Moscovitz, who are psychiatrists, call my inability to verbalize my inner rage.

And then, one day, out of the blue, I got one. A boyfriend, I mean.

Well, OK, not out of the blue. Kenny, from my Bio. class, started sending me all these anonymous love letters. I didn't know it was him. I kind of thought (OK, hoped) someone else was sending them. But in the end, it turned out to be Kenny. And by then I was in too deep, really, to get out. So voila. I had a boyfriend.

Problem solved, right?

Not. So not.

It isn't that I don't like Kenny. I do. I really do. We have a lot in common. For instance, we both appreciate the preciousness

of not just human, but all life forms, and refuse to dissect foetal pigs and frogs in Bio. Instead, we are writing term papers on the life cycles of various grub and mealworms.

And we both like science fiction. Kenny knows a lot more about it than I do, but he has been very impressed so far by the extent of my familiarity with the works of Robert A. Heinlein and Isaac Asimov, both of whom we were forced to read in school (though he doesn't seem to remember this).

I haven't told Kenny that I actually find most science fiction boring, since there seems to be very few girls in it.