If I am a Princess in Rags and Tatters
;;
So seeing Clarisse Renaldo for the second time in as many months was about as much fun as it ever was (read: it wasn't).
The main differences were mostly the window dressings – the suite Grandmere had in the Plaza was very pink, all over the place – pink flowers and cushions and carpet – whereas Miragnac (while still quite pink, due to some redecorating Grandmere had had done after Grandpere had died) was more in shades of cream and gold and light blue, more of a pastel country house of gentry in a period film, rather than the pink imitation the Plaza seemed to be going for.
It actually felt weird, for Mia, to see her Grandmere in a setting that wasn't Miragnac – after all, they rarely left the chateau once Mia got there for the summer.
Clarisse was, as per normal, decked out almost entirely in purple - her favourite colour – high-end fashion and crusted with jewellery that probably cost more than anything in Mia and her mother's entire apartment, even on her shoes (Why on earth would someone make shoes with diamonds sewn on? Really, why? Besides making the owner of such a pair of shoes come off as even richer and more snobbish about it than they already were?). Rommel was, of course, shivering his way through life as Clarisse clutched him in her arms; and she smoked her way through insulting Mia's entire appearance before dismissing Mia out of the room in under fifteen minutes because Clarisse had a dinner date.
Essentially, it was the average re-run of Mia's first day at Miragnac every summer – the mid-afternoon arrival and Mia's tiredness included.
Although this time around, it did include Mia being granted homework on the first day of it all – usually, giving Mia chores in etiquette was a second-day thing back in France. The chores? Oh, just a thousand-word essay on the women Mia admires most in the world and why, as well as a uniform-esque appearence for her to wear from now on! Nothing at all time-consuming or potentially princess-secret-busting happening here!
UGH.
;
And with the fear of her Grandmere's wrath, general displeasure, and control over her after school social life hanging over her head, Mia typed up the stupid essay/list thing – actually, it was pretty easy once Mia actually thought of women she admired, to the point she actually went over the set word count Grandmere had set.
But the pantyhose thing? The lipstick thing? That was gonna take more than half an hour to figure out.
To be clever, Mia borrowed some black nylons from her mother, as well as a lipstick, went to school with the annoying shoes that Helen had originally bought for Mia to go to school in (before Mia tapped that AEHS teachers didn't care too much about student's footwear, just so long as they didn't have to see any toes, and Mia joined the rest of the school in wearing whatever black shoes she could be bothered with), and she'd . . . tried(?) styling her hair, mostly by putting some little braids in and using them to keep her hair off her face. She'd even dug out a ribbon the same blue as her uniform and tied the braids with a bow, so, ta-da! An Effort Was Put In.
But instead of just letting one visible difference slide for once, Lilly felt the need to comment, mostly on the ribbon, asking, "So, Anne of Green Gables, ready for school, or shall we wait on your flock of sheep to turn up as well?"
Still, the day was uneventful, and after her math-not!detention session, Mia snuck into the ladies room and changed into the stupid nylons and shoes, and smudged on the bold-pink lipstick. It was a colour her mother actually didn't wear all that much – she preferred a red, but Mia figured that anything that looked that nice on her more olive-skinned mother wasn't a colour Mia would be able to wear well; and she was hoping to avoid being insulted too harshly by Grandmere, if she could. By the time she was fully prepped, she thought she looked pretty . . . almost pretty, actually. And she figured that she'd be safe from scrutiny until she got to Grandmere's, right up until she walked directly into Michael Moscovitz and dropped her entire bag on the ground.
"Christ, Thermopalis? What happened to you?" Michael's brow was furrowed, and he looked really cute. Michael was always cute, not that Mia would ever admit as much to Lilly except maybe on the pain of death with the guarantee that she'd die immediately after admitting it. It's awkward to admit to your best friend that you've had a half-crush on her brother for about two years, when you started to notice that boys can actually be cute. But just because Michael was cute when he frowned doesn't mean Mia wanted him looking at her so suspiciously. "What's with the war paint?" Michael went on, his eyes flicking over her appearance.
"Review session with Mr G-" was Mia's blurted out answer, "I stay behind after school every day-"
"Yeah, I know that," Michael interrupted, "but why are you –" His eyes widened, like he'd realised something. "Thermopalis, are you going on a date?"
Mia laughed in his face, standing up. "God, no! I'm meeting with my grandmother, she's in town-"
"You wear pantyhose and lipstick to meet your grandmother?" Michael didn't sound like he believed her.
Mia stopped laughing and arched an eyebrow. "My grandmother is a rich old French lady who likes to think society stopped moving forward the day Princess Grace died, and she gets mad whenever someone brings up that it has. Yeah, I wear pantyhose and lipstick to meet my grandma. The other option is being scolded for being in public without them."
Okay, so actually a huge lie, but it's not like Michael was ever going to meet Grandmere, so Mia figured she'd be okay to lie. And that was when Mia noticed that she was being stared at, intensely, not just by Michael – who was staring like if he did it hard enough, he'd reconcile Mia's short description of her grandma with his own Grandma Moscovitz, whom Mia had met and was the exact opposite of Clarisse Renaldo in every way – but by the scattered remains of the Computer Club that Michael was treasurer of. Their stares – they were mostly boys, actually – made Mia feel like there was some bug crawling on her skin. She needed to get out of there.
"Okay!" She said loudly, really uncomfortable in the attention, "So I'm gonna go-" Mia grabbed her things out of Michael's hands where he was holding them after collecting them off the floor. "And see my grandma now. Don't tell Lilly you saw me, okay?"
Mia brushed past Michael, who was kind of gaping like a fish at her face, actually, and just barely kept from sprinting to the door, where Lars was waiting with the limo – she'd told him that he could get away with not being stared at this late in the afternoon after school that he could come straight to the front door (probably shouldn't have done that. Anyone who saw her get into the car could kickstart a rumour Mia didn't need to deal with right now).
And Mia's first official princess lesson was horrible, as she expected. Clarisse kicked things off by saying the shade of lipstick Mia was wearing made her look like a poulet, which – it's rather rich for the sixty-some lady dressed all in purple with tattooed-on eyeliner, draw-on eyebrows, and chain-smokes like it's the only thing keeping her alive to say her granddaughter looks like a prostitute because of lipstick – also didn't help; and Clarisse's review of Mia's essay/list was to tear the whole thing up and throw it in a bin, so all in all, exactly the sort of reaction Mia had been hoping to avoid.
Whatever.
Then, they spent two hours with Grandmere insistently hammering posture and seating etiquette – it was actually a thing that they did every time Mia came back to her Grandmere's, because Mia stubbornly refused to 'sit like a lady' unless she had to, and Clarisse insisted that Mia always forgot how to be ladylike (personally, Mia just thought that Grandmere was running out of etiquette things to lecture her on, so she insisted on hitting the same beats all the time for Grandmere's own amusement). And finally, at about 6pm, Mia was bluntly told to go home, because Grandmere wanted to bathe before preparing for some dinner with some politician, but not before being informed to cancel whatever Saturday plans she had, because Mia would be spending the day with Grandmere.
Mia did actually try to protest this, because Saturday was when she helped Lilly film for her cable-access show, but actually she wasn't as upset as she claimed – Lilly's plan for the next episode involved confronting the owners of the deli near AEHS, who were giving five-cent discounts to students of the same ethnicity as the owners, but not anyone else. Mia got why Lilly was so mad, kinda, but figured that it was a big deal being made over five cents, especially since, again, it was five cents off the original tagged price. So being forced to miss the filming of Lilly harassing the deli owners wasn't really something Mia was upset over, so much as the principle of the thing, as well as the fact that Lilly always got really pissy whenever something inconvenienced her when she had a plan.
;
Okay.
Okay, when she agreed to be the princess without complaint (or, well, minimal complaint), at NO POINT did anyone say anything about makeovers. Okay? AT NO POINT.
So, please appreciate for a second exactly how pissed Mia is right now, because – her hair is gone. Okay, that's a lie, it's actually more of a pixie-bob thing where she has hair long enough to pin with bobby-pins, but short enough to show a good 90% of her neck, which, FYI, NOT a feature of hers that Mia's ever really loved. And she's blonde now. She was a brown-blonde just a few short hours ago, but now she's a blonde that's eerily reminiscent of Lana Weinberger, which is probably an aspect of this that Mia hates the whole damn most. Oh, and the fingernails-things – those are a thing. Specifically, they are little fake nails glued onto her real nails that, okay, she always had a nail-biting problem, but that doesn't mean she wanted FAKE ones. She keeps scratching herself with them.
Also, the scratchy facial that no one thought to ask her if she wanted, the very forceful eyebrow and upper lip waxing, and finally, after completely altering Mia's entire appearance, Grandmere then dragged Mia into just about every high-end fashion boutique that was willing to completely empty themselves out on a Saturday so that the Dowager Princess of Genovia and the still-secret heir could go shopping for clothes that the still-secret princess heir really, truly, genuinely did not want, would not wear, and was therefore just a waste of money.
She told Grandmere all of this too, by the way.
She told her that under no circumstances would Mia ever wear Chanel skirts, Dolce & Gabbana tops, Gucci shoes, or Christian Dior underwear which, by the way, didn't even come in the size of bra Mia actually wears. Literally all of the clothing bought totalled up to a higher bill than the one the vet gave Mia and her mother after he'd removed the sock that Fat Louie once ate. The difference is, that Mia got to go home with her pet cat afterwards, whereas this time, she went home with half a wardrobe of she didn't want and wouldn't wear, as well as a haircut she didn't want and that would attract stares the second she set foot in school on Monday.
She told all of this to her father, the second she got home. Why was her dad at the Loft when she got home, despite the fact that he and her mother generally couldn't get along for more than twenty minutes at a time if left alone together? Mia didn't know; Mia didn't care. Phillipe Renaldo had made the mistake of being there when Mia was steaming mad, so he had to deal with the consequences.
"First she gives me homework. Then she rips it up because she doesn't like what I wrote. She forces me to learn how to sit down to two hours – which, by the way, she does every summer whenever I make the mistake of slouching in front of her. Then, she drags me to a salon where the staff there cut and colour my hair without asking me, pour hot wax on my face to rip out hair without asking me, and glue tiny surfboards to my nails without asking me. THEN, she spends four hours dragging me around stores for stupidly expensive clothing I don't want and will never wear, and make me look like the mean, snobby girls at my school." Phillipe had the expression of someone who completely understood Mia's grievances, but was going to side with Grandmere anyway, which just made Mia angrier.
"Dad, at NO POINT during our little 'you're a princess whether you like it or not' tit-for-tat, did you ever say that I should have to be okay with Grandmere taking complete control over my life and appearance! Dad, WHAT THE HELL?! I know I don't look at ALL princess-y, but this crosses a damn line!"
Helen was watching her daughter and her ex with the attention of someone witnessing a public breakup scandal while eating in the park – utterly entertained. Phillipe nodded, once, before pulling out his wallet. "So how much?"
Mia was suddenly tired, after yelling. "What?" she asked, exasperated.
"How much money do I have to pay you, Mia, to let my mother turn you into a princess?" Phillipe said this like it was a completely reasonable sentence. Mia was appalled. So was Helen.
"Phillipe," she said in a warning tone, but Phillipe himself kept his gaze firmly on Mia.
"I'm serious here, Mia," Phillipe said, "if our initial agreement isn't enough to appease you about this, then becoming a princess can be a job. I will pay your salary. So. If you will agree to let my mother do whatever she feels is necessary to make you into the princess you are going to have to be one day, Mia, I will set up a bank account for you, and put money into it for every day my mother spends teaching you to be a princess, and all it entails. Holiday breaks included."
Mia opened her mouth to argue about personal integrity and not selling her soul for a profit, but she only got about two sentences in before Phillipe heaved this huge sigh and amended his offer. "Fine. If you do this, I will donate one hundred dollars a day to this salary we are making. Twenty dollars into your personal account, and eighty dollars daily to – what is it you love so much? Greenpeace. In your name, Greenpeace will receive eighty dollars in donations daily, and you will get twenty dollars daily as a stipend."
Phillipe stared his politician-stare into his daughter's gobsmacked face. It was the same one Helen was making. "Do we have a deal?"
They did.
;
FtLouie: You know what I love? When my friend turns around and says that there's something seriously wrong with my personality because I cancelled plans for one (1) day! Like, oh, I'm sorry, Lilly, I had no idea that the 50,000+ people of Genovia mattered LESS than your CABLE ACCESS SHOW WHERE YOU HAVE US ALL HARASS PEOPLE.
FtLouie: Yeah, sure, it was actually a total makeover I didn't even WANT, but she could've at least heard me out before jumping down my throat.
HalfAgonyHalfHope: Okay, I'm out of the loop here. What's happened?
FtLouie: Grandmere decided that she didn't like my looks, so she dragged me downtown to get a full physical alteration without asking my opinion instead of my usual Saturday helping Lilly with her show. I'm blonde now, is the point.
HalfAgonyHalfHope: Ah. And Lilly didn't like this?
FtLouie: No.
HalfAgonyHalfHope: And now there's a feud?
FtLouie: Probably? She hasn't called to apologise.
HalfAgonyHalfHope: Please give me a run-down here. I'm a bit lost.
FtLouie: So, Grandmere is giving me princess lessons now, right? So last night, she says that I have to clear my Saturday so that we can something something princess lessons. And I hate this, but I do, making Lilly mad at me, because she wants to call a boycott of the deli near our school (it's a thing involving a five cent discount and the fact that the owners are Asian-American). So I'm not at the filming, because Grandmere likes making my life difficult, and I'm getting a makeover that I a) don't want, and b) am not being consulted on.
FtLouie: And then, I go over to Lilly's to help edit the film, as I promised as a compromise for not being there during, and she's just like, 'Oh my god, Your hair's yellow. You have fake fingernails. You let me down over my arbitrary and frankly small-minded soapbox complaints over Ho's Deli. You look like Lana Weinberger. How dare you say no to me.'
FtLouie: so I snap and yell and storm out, and now I'm at home while my Mom is on a date with the Algebra teacher who makes me stay behind after school every day to study so I don't fail.
HalfAgonyHalfHope: Is the makeover really that drastic? To provoke a reaction that bad?
FtLouie: I mean, I don't like it, but mostly because it makes me look like a bad imitation of Lana Weinberger.
HalfAgonyHalfHope: Email me a picture.
This took a minute, as Mia had to drag out webcam and boot the thing up, before taking a rather grainy photo.
HalfAgonyHalfHope: I mean. It's different, but I wouldn't say you look bad. You look good.
FtLouie: No I don't! I look like Lana!
HalfAgonyHalfHope: Never met her. But this also isn't flattery. You do look good – you've got the cheekbones for the hair.
FtLouie: Stop lying to make me feel good.
HalfAgonyHalfHope: You know, you've got this bad habit of fishing for compliments, and then disregarding them once someone gives you one. You. Look. Good. You look blonde, but you've got the colouring for it.
FtLouie: Really?
HalfAgonyHalfHope: Yes.
FtLouie: Oh. Well.
FtLouie: Thank you.
FtLouie: So how's your week been?
HalfAgonyHalfHope: Relatively uneventful. Uncle is in Italy this week and the next, visiting some friends or allies or whomever, so he's not here to yell at me for getting detention.
FtLouie: What did you get detention for?
HalfAgonyHalfHope: Arguing with my literature teacher. We're reading the Lord of the Flies this week, and they tried the whole 'the point of this book is that people are inherently chaotic, and the removal of power structures causes us to devolve into lawless animals'.
FtLouie: Isn't that the point? That's what people have always told me, when we watched that movie in middle school.
HalfAgonyHalfHope: Yes and no. I know it's a popular reading of it, but the author literally wrote Lord of the Flies as a reaction to a bunch of Robinson Cruse-type books about boys from a British boarding school, and how they washed up on an island and had lovely adventures and were the perfect pictures of British superiority compared to the savages on the island who were, conveniently, people of colour who were also Not British.
HalfAgonyHalfHope: Lord of the Flies was a reaction to that, saying 'Hey idiots, have you forgotten what boys are like? This is what would actually happen'. It's been theorised that a rewrite of the book would go very differently if it were boarding school girls, or people of lower classes, because girls at the height of the book's setting were taught to be kind and considerate of others, and people of lower social classes are generally more compassionate;
HalfAgonyHalfHope: As opposed to the upper-classes of Britain, where a lot of emphasis is put on social standing and personal empowerment, rather than the betterment of society as a whole.
HalfAgonyHalfHope: Pointing this all out to my teacher did not go over well for me.
Okay, Mia has to ask. What the hell kind of private school for rich kids does Nick go to, and what kind of people are they, because every time Nick talks of them, he never sounds like he's having a good time.
FtLouie: Did you research all of that before you had to read this book?
HalfAgonyHalfHope: Yes. I read the book on a recommendation from my uncle a bit back, because Machiavelli is his whole worldview, and I went out looking for alternative ideas.
FtLouie: So you had all the information compiled already?
HalfAgonyHalfHope: I'm a fan of getting all my ducks in a row, yes.
FtLouie: I've noticed.
FtLouie: Thank you for getting my mind off the Lilly thing, too, by the way. Now I'm just going to be thinking of Lord of the Flies all night.
HalfAgonyHalfHope: You're welcome :p
;
Oh god, why why why? Why did she have to stand up for herself last night, why didn't she just roll over and show Lilly her belly, if only so that she could've stayed the night and avoided seeing . . . that.
How is she ever going to pay attention in Algebra ever again, if all she can do in that class is revisit the mental image of Mr Gianini in his boxer shorts at her dinner table?!
GOD.
;
Okay, so that was a slight overreaction, and Mr Gianini would undoubtedly just have to deal with Mia staring off into space a bit, because it turns out that, uh, he's pretty cool? Or at least he knows how to make a joke.
God, if he and her mom become more serious . . . well, eh, would it be so bad? Mr G is probably one of the better teachers at AEHS, despite Mia's own inability to get anything he says about math.
Ugh, let's not think about any of that at all, thanks.
;
Iluvromance: Hey Mia. I know this is a random question, but did something happen between you and Lilly? I just ask because I was just IMing with Lilly and mentioned you, and she went off on this massive rant about how you're a - well, it wasn't nice.
FtLouie: Yeah. Uh.
FtLouie: I went over last night to help edit, you know, after I'd missed yesterday's taping, and. Well.
FtLouie: The whole reason I had to miss the taping was because my grandma is in town and she wanted to spend yesterday with me, which it turns out is code for 'force Mia into a makeover without asking whether or not she wants one', and now I'm blonde. And it freaked Lilly out.
FtLouie: Which is fair, kinda, because I freaked out when I first saw it, but then she went off on this whole rant about how I have no spine unless it suits me, and how dare I say no to her, and now I look like Lana Weinberger and some more awful stuff, so I snapped and told her to shut up. Which just made Lilly get worse, and now I think we're arguing?
Iluvromance: Oh. Wow.
Iluvromance: Okay, that explains some of it. Are you really blonde now?
FtLouie: Yeah. It's sickening.
Iluvromance: I'm sure it isn't, and besides, Lilly saying you look like Lana can't be true anyway – you two look nothing alike, and besides, hair grows out. You'll look back to normal in some time, so freaking out about a haircut isn't warranted.
FtLouie: Thanks, Tina. I needed that.
Iluvromance: although I would suggest that you don't expect an immediate apology from Lilly. She sounded really mad.
FtLouie: Really? Aw geez. Who am I going to sit with a school tomorrow then?
Iluvromance: Well, the whole 'Ho-gate' thing seems like it's actually going to be a big deal, if Lilly has her way, so we'll probably actually need to sit somewhere else tomorrow. How about you and me find our own table instead of worrying?
FtLouie: God, yes. You're such a good planner, Tina.
Iluvromance: ! Thanks! And don't worry so much about Lilly, I'm sure she'll get over it!
FtLouie: I hope so. I hate fighting with her.
;
Okay, so Mia didn't even know that Michael had her IM email, never mind that he would contact her after what happened with Lilly.
CracKing: Hey Thermopalis, what happened last night? It's like you went mental or something?
FtLouie: For your information, I did not go mental. I just got tired of your sister always telling me what to do. Not that it's any of your business.
CracKing: What are you being so snotty about? Of course it's my business. I have to live with her, don't I?
FtLouie: Why? Is she talking about me?
CracKing: You could say that.
FtLouie: What's she saying about me?
CracKing: I thought it wasn't any of my business.
FtLouie: It isn't. What's she saying about me?
CracKing: That she doesn't know what's with you these days, but ever since your dad came to town, you've been acting like a cagey head case.
FtLouie: That's rich – I'M the head case? She's always putting me down, and now my grandma's in town too, I don't need two people insulting everything I do – I'm sick of it! If she wants to be my friend, she needs to get off her high horse – she's always going on about people should be judged for their actions, not their looks, but when I am dragged into a makeover I don't even want, I'm the one turning into LANA?!
CracKing: You don't need to yell.
FtLouie: I'm not yelling!
CracKing: You're using excessive amounts of punctuation, and online, that's the equivalent of yelling. Besides, Lilly's not the only one criticising. She says you won't support her boycott of Ho's Deli.
FtLouie: Well, she's right. I won't. It's so stupid, don't you think? I mean, who cares about five cents anyway?
CracKing: Sure, it's stupid. Was the makeover really your grandma's whole deal?
FtLouie: Yep. I got to hers, and she says 'Let's go', so we go to a stylist's and they sit me down in the chair and by the time I realise what's happening, the guy's cut three chunks of hair off and my grandma's scowling at me so I don't say a word. So I'd just spent the whole day being insulted for my looks, and then I get to Lilly's, and she's decided to insult my entire personality too. I cracked.
CracKing: Yeah, okay. That makes more sense now. Are you still failing Algebra?
That was a subject change.
FtLouie: I guess so, but given that Mr G slept over last night, I'll probably manage a D. Why?
CracKing: What? Mr G slept over last night? At your place? What was that like?
FtLouie: I didn't mean to admit that. It was pretty awful, but he kind of joked around, and that made it OK. I don't know. I think I should be more mad, but my mom's so happy, it's hard.
CracKing: Your mom could do a lot worse than Mr G.
FtLouie: Given that I have met some of mom's exes, I get what you're saying. And yes, I am including my dad in that number.
CracKing: Whoa, really? Ha.
FtLouie: Given his recent interference in my life, yeah. Why'd you want to know if I'm failing Algebra?
CracKing: Because I'm done with this month's issue of CrackHead, and I thought if you wanted, I could tutor you in G&T. If you wanted.
FtLouie: Oh my god, that would be so great! Thanks!
CracKing: Hang in there, Thermopalis. Nowhere to go but up when you're at the bottom.
FtLouie: Bold of you to assume that I'm at the bottom. Or that I can't find a shovel to dig deeper.
CracKing: Ha ha. You'll be fine.
;
So on Monday, Lars, the driver of the limousine Mia's dad had insisted she take to and from school every day since her royal status was Agreed, dropped Mia off at school, where she immediately got slapped in the face with a petition to boycott the Ho's Deli. Lilly moves fast when angered and holding a grudge.
Mia rolled her eyes at Boris Pelkowski, the Russian violinist student holding it. She shared Gifted and Talented class with him, but where Mia spent the class either doing homework or trying to study Algebra, Boris spent the class practicing his violin concertos – a practice that, due to the volume level of his violin, had led to the habit of Boris being locked into the G&T room's supply closet, in an attempt to muffle the sound and give everyone less of a headache. Lilly had been crushing on Boris basically since the second day of school. Mia was more ambivalent.
When she told him she wanted no part in the boycott, though, Boris got rather indignant, telling her that in Russia, signing a petition would often result in that person being arrested by the secret police, and not demonstrating Mia's own American right to protest was disrespectful to his own home-country's struggles.
Mia told him that she was demonstrating her American right to protest – she was protesting the persecution of the Ho family, who had been enacting their own American rights of conducting their business how they wished.
Which was clearly not a stance that she had public support with – even if she and Lilly weren't feuding, there probably wouldn't have been a spot at their normal lunch table for Mia to sit at; instead it was full of people trying to organise a public protest outside the deli, including posters and chants that the students could chant at the Ho's themselves and the customers still using their 'racist' service.
Mia stared rather dead-eyed at the display from the table she and Tina had snagged. All this mess over five cents? Now she knew had Aladdin felt, being chased all over Agrabah by the city guards, over a loaf of bread. Jesus.
Tina was up getting herself another soda, Wahim in tow. Mia felt . . . weird, about the whole bodyguard thing. Part of the reason she wasn't thrilled about the princess thing - beside the complete alteration of what her life had been - was that . . . if she had to have a bodyguard, would she ever have privacy again? Like, Tina didn't seem to mind all that much, but she'd had a bodyguard since she was in elementary school, almost. She'd said that she'd just gotten used to it, but Tina's mom had told Mia, that time the two of them had a sleepover at Tina's earlier in the semester, that Mia was really one of the first people outside the 'Arabian sheik' world that the Hakim Baba's inhabited to try to befriend Tina. So, the bodyguard . . . sure, Tina didn't mind, and she and Wahim seemed to have a, an older cousin/brother interaction happening, where Tina didn't make a fuss about Wahim's flirting with Mademoiselle Klein, the French teacher, and Wahim didn't tell Tina's dad about her habit of putting on makeup after leaving the house – Mr Hakim Baba being one of those dad's that didn't want their daughters to wear makeup. So having a bodyguard probably wasn't all bad, once you got used to it. That didn't mean she wanted to get used to it.
Mia was reading the blurb of the romance novel that Tina had brought with her to school that day – one amazing thing about Tina, her taste in books. Mia hadn't really been interested in the genre, but Tina coming into her life had broadened Mia's horizons in the BEST way, literature-wise – and a shadow fell over Mia's head.
She turned around and came face-first with the tight white sweater of the Albert Einstein High School Cheerleading squad, as worn by one Lana Weinberger. So, to explain Mia's complaints about being made to look like Lana from two days ago, a brief description of the prettiest girl in the ninth grade: she's about five-foot-six, with long, shimmering blonde hair, her blue eyes are always highlighted perfectly on her face by flawless makeup, and the only time her berry-pink lipgloss is out of place is after she's been kissing her boyfriend where he's shoved Lana up against Mia's locker. Yeah. For the last month and a half of Mia's first year in high school, Mia has had a locker directly next to the locker of the most popular and handsome boy in the school: one Josh Ritcher, senior-year student. Who has been dating Lana for almost that entire time. So, daily, Mia has had the utter pleasure of watching the two of them make out against the two lockers, often unable to get into hers.
Lana's kind of been Mia's nemesis since their middle school days – Mia had corrected Lana on Lana's interpretation of a book they'd had to read for class, just by saying that Lana was misremembering which character was which. And then Lana had tried to make Mia's life a living hell ever since. 'Tried' being the operating word – hasn't Mia proven she's more than able to ruin things for herself all on her own?
So here she is, staring up at Lana's smug, snotty face – not often a position Mia was in, given Mia's height over the rest of her grade level, normally making Mia look down on most all the girls in her grade – as Lana raised one finger and placed it firmly on the parting in Mia's hair. "Nice hair, Amelia," Lana said in a snotty voice, "are we aiming to be Tinkerbell for Halloween?"
Yeah, Mia's hair had been a note of attention for her classmates basically the whole day. Few had actually asked her anything about it, but she'd heard girls whispering about it in class. She hadn't done much to mitigate the attention she knew she'd get, more aiming to brush it off as none of anyone else's business – she'd just kinda brushed it out of her face and shoved it behind her ears. At a distance, Mia had decided that Nick was right – it wasn't a bad look on her, the blonde brought out her grey eyes better than her natural colour did, and she did have the cheekbones for it – but she still hated that Grandmere hadn't even given Mia warning about the change. Or the option to say no.
Mia glanced behind Lana, to where Josh Ritcher and his jock friends were sitting for lunch, talking about how they were all somehow still hungover from a party they'd been to on the weekend. She had to wonder if their coach knew.
"What do you call this colour, anyway? Pus Yellow?" Lana continued, not apparently aware of Mia's non-focus on her attempts at witty commentary. Mia knew she looked okay – Tina and Ling Su and Shameeka had all complimented her new haircut, despite Mia's own disinterest in her makeover. Lana was just flinging rudeness.
Tina finally came back to the table, bringing two sodas – one for her, one for Mia. Mia smiled gratefully at Tina and Wahim, but the bodyguard and his charge shared a glance before Tina cocked an eyebrow at Mia. It said 'how do you want to handle this?'
Mia wanted to handle it by letting Lana run out of steam and go away, but Lana was like a terrier – once she had something, it was really hard to get to release her grip. And because of Mia's wish to avoid conflict, Lana naturally turned her teeth to Tina. "Oh, how sweet. Tina, tell me, does your daddy give you money every day to keep paying people to be your friends, or can Mia be bought with soda every day?"
Tina gaped at little, at that. Lana had actually been ignoring the friendship between Mia and Tina for a while, actually, preferring to target Mia only. Wahim opened his mouth to say something, but Mia beat him to it.
She stood up, cracked open the can of soda Tina had given her, and, using the three inches of height she had on Lana, as well as the element of surprise, poured the soda can all over Lana's pretty blonde hair.
Lana was so shocked that she didn't say anything until no more soda spilled out of the can. But once done, Lana's voice sliced through the dead silence the cafeteria had become – everyone had stared, dead silent, for the ten full seconds Mia had poured the soda on Lana's head. "You – you –!" Lana stuttered, then screamed, not really in words, but more the shock of someone who doesn't know what to say.
Mia kept her face blank, but walked around the table to Tina, grabbing her friend's hand. "Let's go somewhere a bit quieter, yeah?" Her voice was steady, the shock of what she'd done and the trouble she was definitely going to get in not getting to her yet.
She and Tina walked out of the room, Wahim following with a hand over his mouth, desperately attempting not to laugh; when they passed the table they usually sat at, Lilly was staring, round-eyed and shocked, at Mia. Guess Mia wasn't as unassertive as Lilly thought, huh?
She wasn't sure, but applause may have come from the lunch tables the Geeks sat at too, as she left.
Originally, this was going to be a three-chapter retelling of the first book, and this chapter would end with Mia being ousted as a princess, but the chapter ran away from me.