Think as Hard as Ever I Can of Being a Princess
"When things are horrible – just horrible – I think as hard as ever I can of being a princess. I say to myself, 'I am a princess'. You don't know how it makes you forget." – Francis Hodgson Burnett.
Part 1 of Book 2 (Princess Diaries Volume II: Princess In The Spotlight)
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FtLouie: Hey, so I have a question I could use your opinion on.
HalfAgonyHalfHope: Go for it.
FtLouie: Given my day-to-day situation of being a giant loser at school and also a newly-outed princess, just how badly do you think my personal stock at school would drop if my classmates were to find out that my mother is having a baby with my Algebra teacher?
HalfAgonyHalfHope: Your mother's pregnant?
FtLouie: I just said that.
HalfAgonyHalfHope: I can't imagine anyone at your school cares that much about your business. When it's in the tabloids, maybe they'll care for two minutes, but if the teenagers at your school are anything like the teenagers at mine, that's what I'd expect.
FtLouie: Nick, what? Of COURSE they're going to care! I'm a freak! A princess with a bodyguard following me everywhere and whose mother is dating our Algebra teacher! I'm a weirdo!
HalfAgonyHalfHope: Then they'll chalk it up to being one more Weird Freak thing about you. Besides, it's your private business, and I doubt any of your classmates care that much. Sure, the ones that already don't like you will probably say something, but it's not like it'd be different from anything else rude they might say about your mother and Mr Gianini.
FtLouie: Why does that somehow make me feel better AND worse?
HalfAgonyHalfHope: It's a gift I have.
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So, how does Mia feel about the fact she's going to have a new baby sibling? Well –
She can't say she loves it.
Mostly because she's dealing with enough stuff – princess-ness, everything on the periphery of the princess things like paparazzi stalking her, passing her Algebra class, passing all her other classes – and now she's going to have to deal with her Algebra teacher probably being even more in her life. Mr Gianini seemed to be the kind of guy who stuck around when he got a woman pregnant.
Mia's mostly just trying to remain calm and chill about this – she's failing, but she is.
Why is her mother going through this again? Hadn't she learned her lesson with Mia? She'd already gotten pregnant with Mia when she was twenty-one, so she'd had to graduate college and enter into her career as an adult with a baby in tow. Her bastard royalty-related baby who, a decade and a half later, now will one day be Crown Princess of a whole damn country.
Wasn't raising one child on her lonesome enough of a life? Did Helen really want to do that again? Although, to be fair, Mr Gianini probably wasn't the heir to a whole country, nor likely to drag their child into international affairs as a political and public figure.
(Philipe Renaldo had caused a lot of opinions in his daughter about her future, is the point.)
But also the new baby thing. Did her mother even remember what being pregnant was like? Or how to have a healthy pregnancy? Mia knew that her mother's lifestyle was definitely different from what it was fifteen years ago – Mia was gonna need some information. How do you have a healthy pregnancy?
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Her English class had been assigned a journal by her teacher. To be read by her teacher. Apparently, Mia was supposed to record her deepest thoughts and emotions in the thing, and then turn it over to her teacher.
Uhh, Mia already has a journal, and she doesn't even want to re-read what she's put in the thing.
Well, Mrs Spears, hopefully you're in the mood for some nonsense lies edited into the shape of a diary, because that's what you're getting.
Name: Amelia Mignonette Grimaldi Thermopalis Renaldo. Mia, for friends and loved ones.
Age: 14
School Yr: Freshman
Description: Five foot nine, brown hair dyed blonde, grey eyes.
Parents:
Mother Helen Thermopalis
Occupation Painter
Father Artur Christophe Philipe Gerard Grimaldi Renaldo, called Philipe by family and friends.
Occupation Crown Prince of Genovia
Marital Status: Unmarried, either to each other or others. I was the result of a college fling, and if Dad asked Mum to marry him, she said no. Probably a good thing, because 85% of all the conversations they have are arguments. And they only see each other maybe five times a year (before now, that is. Dad is staying in New York City, presently).
Pets: One fat, Fat Louie. Orange and white, Louie is eight years old, and has been on a diet for approximately six of those years. Not that it ever works. One horse, Emily, although she stays in Genovia. Gray with white spots, Emily really belongs to my friend Nick, who lives in Genovia, and stays at his home, but Nick calls her mine.
Friends: My best friends are Lilly Moscovitz and Nick Devereaux. Lilly has been my best friend since kindergarten, and she's very, very smart and has her own public access show, Lilly Tells It Like It Is, and she's always thinking up fun things for us to do on the show, like film people we think are undercover cops interacting with actual cops in Central Park. Nick has been my friend since first grade, but he lives in Genovia full-time, because his uncle is Genovia's Minister for Agriculture. He's also very smart, but not in the same way as Lilly. Lilly's very interested in politics and social justice, Nick is an avid reader, even of things books that are really, really old. Like Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters and the 'Gothic genre', which I don't fully get or like, but Nick talks about them like he's doing a college degree on the genre.
Address: All my life, I've lived in New York City with my mother, in our loft in Greenwich Village. During my summers, I stayed in my paternal grandmother's chateau in France. For a long time, I was lead to believe that my father was simply a politician in Genovia, as a member of parliament or something.
When I was twelve, Nick realised I had no idea of the truth, and showed me the book of Genovia's royal family, proving that my family was royalty, and my father the reigning monarch. It was explained to me by Nick that I was a member of the royal family, but that I had no duties or obligations; until this last summer, when the resulting sterility from my father's chemotherapy rendered me the only living child he had.
My Family History: The ancestry of my family on my father's side can be traced back to AD 568.
That is the year when the Visigoth warlord Alboin killed the King of Italy and a lot of other people (hence warlord), and made himself king of the conquered lands. After declaring himself king, Alboin married the daughter of one of the king's old generals, Rosagunde.
But Rosagunde wasn't exactly fond of the guy who invaded her home and killed her dad, as well as forcing her to drink wine out of her dead dad's skull, so she got him back on their wedding night by strangling him with her long braids while he slept. With Alboin dead, the dead King of Italy's son took over. He was so grateful to Rosagunde that he made her princess of the area that now is the country of Genovia. According to the only existing records of that time, Rosagunde was a kind and thoughtful ruler.
She's my paternal great-grandmother by about sixty-ish generations.
On my mother's side of the family, the Thermopalises were goat herders on the island of Crete until the year 1904,when Dionysus Thermopalis, my maternal great-grandfather, couldn't take it anymore, and left the rest of his family to run to America. He eventually settled in Versailles, Indiana (pronounced Ver-sales, instead of the traditional way), where Dionysus opened an appliance and hardware store. His offspring have been running it ever since. My mother says her upbringing would have been much less oppressive, not to mention liberal, back in Crete with her cousins.
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So, Mia is apparently incapable to keep secrets anymore. The royalty thing broke her.
Or, at least she's unable to keep her secrets away from other people's suspicions. Mia really wished Lilly wouldn't read over her shoulder when she was on the computer. She was just looking up pregnancy facts, okay? It could've been for anything at all! Lilly, you really didn't need to be so loud.
Honestly, looking up pregnancy facts isn't even that weird, but when people are looking at you as your friend demands to know your business, all Mia wanted was for the ground to open up and swallow her whole.
Still, the suggested daily diet for pregnant women was . . . eye-opening, even though Mia knew without a doubt that her mother would be as interested in following it as Mia was at the prospect of eating meat – she wasn't.
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Apparently hoping for a few days of peace and quiet to digest the news that Mia could be expecting a new baby sibling in about eight months was too much, because Grandmere had cancelled her trip out of New York. And Princess Lessons were back on for the week.
UGH.
Why does Mia even NEED Princess Lessons? Grandmere isn't teaching her Genovia's history, or about its international relations with its neighbours, or even the policies involving immigrants or the environment. Grandmere was just thumping etiquette lessons into her head, which was something she'd done every summer Mia was with her at her chateau, Miragnac ever since Mia was about five. She's done! There's nothing left to teach her, unless Grandmere wanted to ensure Mia was flawless at each and every dance that could probably be at a ball. In every country in Europe. And Africa.
Clarisse once made Mia spend four hours on a random Monday in August drilling Mia on how to get every drop of soup in a dinner bowl without getting any on herself – 'Always, ALWAYS tilt the dish AWAY from you, Amelia!'
Four. Hours. When Mia was seven.
Mia can't stand her grandmother for maybe 99 reasons, and the etiquette thing was sixteen of them.
Whatever. Baden-Baden was having a baggage strike or something, and Grandmere refused to go anywhere she may have to deal with her own luggage in any way (all twenty bags of it), so Mia had to call her back immediately. Because Grandmere had a 'surprise' for her.
Grandmere's surprises were not, historically, heartwarming. Some twenty-five years ago, she'd 'surprised' Mia father by selling his favourite horse – who'd broken its leg, and Philipe had been crying for a full recovery – and exchanging it for a new one that was even bigger. Clarisse still insisted that a new, giant horse for a distressed ten year old was a kind thing.
Some people really shouldn't be parents, ya know?
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And some people really shouldn't be grandparents, either.
Mia wasn't sure if Grandmere was aware, but 'surprises' are often supposed to be good things. Like, surprise! A new bike! Or, surprise! A here's a new TV to replace the black-and-white one in your bedroom, Just Because You Earned It Kiddo! Or something of THAT nature.
A TV interview with some news presenter – not two weeks after Mia made it CLEAR to her grandmother that she Does Not Want publicity about her life – is not a surprise. Well, technically, yeah it is, but it's certainly not a GOOD surprise. It's more along of the lines of surprise! You have three exams tomorrow that your teachers never mentioned, and also your mortal enemy at this school will be spending the entire time sitting in the seat directly in front of you, deliberately distracting you! Won't that be fun?
Ugh.
What the hell does Mia even have to say? Well, sure, if you're the right person and Mia's in the right mood, it's more difficult to make her shut up; but like, what does she have to say that will interest the entirety of America? She's a 14 year old vegetarian living in New York City with her single-parent artist antiestablishment mother, a middling student with only a handful of friends and no boyfriend.
This is not a life that is the majority of America.
Sure, she's a princess, but it's not as if she's done anything yet. It was two weeks ago – she's been at school! The MOST interesting thing that's happened is Mia rejecting a boy to go to a school dance, and an argument with her friend. Who cares about that?
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Well, Grandmere is of the opinion EVERYONE must care, because apparently she just about started a bidding war amongst reporters for the 'Once In A Million' chance to interview Mia. Which. Makes some sense, maybe? This is the first interview Mia will ever do, so she gets it. Still, that IN NO WAY means Mia WANTS to be interviewed. She didn't even want to GO HOME from her princess lessons today, given that her mother was going to tell her Algebra teacher about his impending fatherhood.
Still, he took it well. Mr G, she means. Took the news well. SO WELL, in fact, that Mia is now apparently a bridesmaid for the wedding that her mum and her new soon-to-be-stepfather are going to be having at City Hall at some point in the near future.
Helen's thinking maybe Halloween, because marriage is apparently as scary as Michael Myers was to Laurie Strode. Okay? Mia is . . . okay with this?
Well, in the interest of honesty, Mia's too tired to care. She's concerned about how her mother will react when the whole 'pregnancy' bit actually kicks in, what with food cravings and morning sickness and whatnot, but her mother marrying her Algebra teacher? Honestly, if not for the whole barely-passing-the-class bit, Mia likes Mr G. At least, she likes him a bunch more than she likes some of the other teachers at her school, so . . . her mother can do worse? At least Mr G's reaction is 'Let's get married', and not 'I'm going to parkour out of this building now and never speak to you again'.
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So, Mia is refusing to add to the news wheel of AEHS with her own little bomb – sorry, bombs, plural, of her impending big-sisterhood or her upcoming interview with a woman who interviewed the First Lady – so the Big News at her school is that the It Couple, Josh Ritcher and Lana Weinberger, have got back together, after having been broken up for almost a full week. Honestly, this isn't something Mia has ever cared about, but given that Josh's locker is directly next to hers, this development just means that getting into her locker is, once again, only possible with forceful interference.
Today, for instance, Mia required Lilly's assistance to separate the two from their liplock, Lilly obligingly stabbing Josh in the spine with the tip of her pencil.
Mia hasn't even mentioned her News to Lilly, either. It just . . . it feels weirdly like you're bragging, when you bring something like that up in a conversation, you know? If that makes sense?
The princess thing is honestly nothing but a big inconvenience to her life, and Mia honestly doesn't know how to talk about it with her friends, unless they start talking about it first. It feels awkward. So Lilly doesn't know about the interview. And you can forget her mother's pregnancy. Mia's barely coping with her OWN emotions on that subject, she refuses to have to deal with anyone else's just yet.
Sometimes Mia's certain that if she didn't have Nick in her life to vent to, her head would explode from stress.
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So, fast forwarding through her week, and the boredom of school and how weird her science classmate Kenny has been acting, sitting and waiting for an interview is somehow one of the most nerve-wracking things Mia's done recently.
For god's sake, why would ANYONE tell her that the estimate viewership for this interview would be twenty-two million? It's like, oh, by the way, we know that you're not particularly happy about being a princess and having your whole life and any plans you've ever made for yourself upheaved, and that you're now shadowed everywhere by a bodyguard, and also paparazzi, and you're fourteen, and barely passing several classes, and now with very little notice, you're going to be interviewed by Beverly Walker, hard-hitting journalist who's interviewed more famous and important people than some have in their lives, and this is your first interview, well, by the way, the interview – the first one you've ever done, you remember – will be watched by TWENTY-TWO MILLION PEOPLE AT MINIMUM, NOT COUNTING RERUNS. No pressure!
Mia might be hyperventilating. A bit.
But instead of being allowing to go out onto the balcony for some fresh air and a moment of peace, she has to sit in this chair, surrounded by people running around and calling for equipment she isn't even sure matters, because she doesn't Know Anything about the TV business; she has to sit still and not move very much, because there was a Whole Stylist who did her hair and makeup and if she messes Anything of it up, Grandmere will probably react by dragging Mia to Paolo's tomorrow and just. Having him wax her entire head, or something.
The fact that Grandmere's always upset at something about Mia honestly isn't great for her nerves anyway. And Grandmere Really does not want Mia mucking up the 'look', given that Grandmere made the stylist do Mia's makeup twice, because the first time made Mia look like a poulet. Which is a word that means either chicken or prostitute in French. But when Clarisse Renaldo says it, it always means prostitute.
Lilly's Nana has never said the word 'prostitute' in her entire life. Not even in Yiddish. That's a fact. Lilly got the grandma who loves her and gives her cookies whenever they come to visit, and supports Lilly's dream/life goals, and Mia gets the grandma with tattooed eyeliner and a chain-smoking habit who says Mia looks like a sex worker. How is this woman a Princess, dowager or otherwise, never mind a grandma?
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Instead of rehashing Mia's interview, we're just going to give a transcript of what was said, and Mia's gonna freak out a bunch, because she can't decide if she did well or not.
Beverly Walker (BW), voiceover: Imagine, if you will, an ordinary teenage girl. Well, as ordinary as a teenage girl who lives in New York City's Greenwich Village with her single mother, acclaimed painter Helen Thermopalis, can be. Mia's life was filled with normal things most teenagers lives are full of – homework, friends and the occasional bad math grade . . . until, one day, it all changed.
Cut to Penthouse Suite, Plaza Hotel.
BW: Mia – may I call you Mia? Or would you prefer Your Highness, or Amelia?
Mia Renaldo (MR): Um, no. I prefer Mia.
BW: Mia. Tell us about that day. The day life as you know it changed completely.
MR (deep breath): Well, what happened was, my dad and I were having tea here at the Plaza, because it's been something of our tradition whenever he's in the city; and he set down is drink, and looked at me, all very grave, and he says 'Mia, I want you to know the truth. I think you're old enough now, and you know I can't have any more children, so what I'm about to say will have a lot of impact on your future. It's only fair I tell you, I am the Prince of Genovia'.
BW: Wow, so it was a very blunt confession, wasn't it?
MR (nervous laugh): Yeah, it was a bit. I wasn't very sure how to react. Honestly, I don't remember what I felt at the time – I wasn't happy or scared or angry, my brain was just like, 'oh. Oh boy.'
BW: So what happened after that confession?
MR: Well . . . it sort of started to be a planning session on how my dad was going to uproot my life and move me to Genovia, straight from there, and, uh. I got a little . . . ticked-off.
BW: Ticked off how?
MR: Well . . I definitely didn't have the most, uh, mature reaction to being told my whole life was going to be moved to another country, and I kinda . . uh, started yelling a little about how I didn't want to move, or be a princess, and how it was really unfair of my dad to expect me to willingly pack up my life and move to a palace when he never even though mentioning that he was a prince could be important information for me. And then I got up from my chair and literally sprinted out of the building. And got on the subway and went home.
BW: Oh, goodness.
MR (self-deprecating laugh): Yeah, I know. Real princessy, right? Eventually, we all – my mum, dad and I – and we hashed out a plan that would actually work without being too upsetting to my life, and so. Yeah.
BW: So what kind of plan is that?
MR: Well, right now, I'm going to keep attending my high school, and every day after classes, I come here to the Plaza, where my grandmother –
BW: Dowager Princess Clarisse, your father's mother.
MR: Yeah, she trains me in, you know, etiquette, formal dancing, politic-cal conversation - sorry, I couldn't think of the right word - that sort of thing. The kind of stuff that means I hopefully – hopefully, fingers crossed! – won't cause an international incident at some event.
BW: It certainly sounds like you have a full schedule every week.
MR: That's an understatement, yeah.
BW: So you attend Albert Einstein High School here in Manhattan, don't you?
MR: Yes, I do.
BW: Do you like it there?
MR: Uh, (nervous laugh) I guess I like it as much as any teenager likes school, I guess?
BW: It's my understanding you've pulled one of your class grades up quite a bit recently.
MR: Yeah, I. I got an F in Algebra, but one of my friends, Michael, he's been tutoring me a bit to help me out, and. I mean I'm up to a D grade now, so clearly he's doing something right.
Well. Basically, Mia managed Not to spill the beans about either her mother's pregnancy, or her ridiculous crush on her 'friend' tutor – god, would it have sounded bad if she'd said that boy was her best friend's older brother? Oh well. Too late.
Still, the whole mess ended with Beverly very nicely giving a speech to the camera: 'She's not a jock, or a cheerleader. What Amelia Mignonette Thermopalis Renaldo, is, ladies and gentlemen, defies the societal stereotypes that exist in today's modern educational institutions. She's a princess. An American princess. And yet she faces the same problems and pressures that teenagers all over this country face every day . . with a twist: one day, she'll grow up to govern a nation.'
No mention that it's the last damn career Mia's ever wanted for herself, but still. A sweet sentiment, more or less.
But, GOD, was Mia ready to get out of there and hightail it to Lilly's place. Sleepovers with friends were always a good time, right?
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Sleepovers with friends were . . . half a good time. The good time – actually having fun and getting to relax. The other half – uh, finding out all of her friends have kissed boys, and she hasn't.
Mia feels sort of . . . defensive, about her never-been-kissed-ness? Like, she's not a prude, or anything, she just . . is taking things slow. She's got a lot going on, all right? She's barely got the energy to struggle through homework, okay, she doesn't have the energy to try and figure out the mind games of teenage boys.
Like this guy – or whoever it is – she's been sent a couple of weird IMs from some guy calling himself JoCRox, and Mia's been kind of ignoring the messages. Honestly, she does feel a little bad, because they're all very sweet, but she just doesn't have the energy for mind games, so she sent back a message last night to JoCRox, saying all that and uh. There's been no reply. Oh well.
But yeah. Lilly and Boris Pelkowski of the G&T violin, Tina and the guy she's been seeing since she took him to the Cultural Diversity Dance, Dave, Shameeka and her guy of the week, Ling Su and that one dude whatshisname who's been around for a minute.
But because Mia had nothing to confess to the camera – because Lilly was filming the confessions for her show, to demonstrate how low the degenerate youth of America have sunk – Mia had to do a Dare. Like Truth or Dare, y'know?
Lilly dared her to drop an eggplant out of Lilly's sixteenth story window. Which, honestly, how stupid. Someone could seriously get hurt, and Mia's all for showing how low the degenerate Yoof of America have sunk, but smashing in someone's skull sounds like a bad idea to do it. Still. Lilly was kinda pissy that Mia didn't have anything to confess on-camera – well, Mia did, what with dumb-bad crushes and that little bomb of her impending sisterhood and the attached stepfather, but confessing that to a camera before her mother had told her actual dad sounded like a bad idea.
But to avoid being branded a coward as well as a priss or prude – whatever – Mia went into the kitchen, getting past the Drs Moscovitz in the living room, ignoring stacks of medical journals in favour of casual magazines. And she almost made it without comment, but then Lilly's dad called, "Hello Mia. How are you doing?"
"Um," She said, because OH GOD NERVOUS was suddenly all over her brain. "Fine."
"And how is your mother?" asked Lilly's mother.
"She's good." Only half a lie.
"Is she still seeing your Algebra teacher in a social capacity?"
"Um, yes, Dr Moscovitz." More social than you'd guess.
"And are you still amenable to the relationship?" Lilly's father wanted to know.
"Uh. I guess," Mia shrugged. Does 'It's is happening, also he knocked her up and they're getting married so there's also no point getting mad' count as being amenable?
"Well, tell her hello from me," Lilly's mother said. "We can't wait until her next show. It's at the Mary Boone Gallery, right?"
"Yeah." The Moscovitzes were big fans of her mother. One of her best paintings was hanging in their dining room.
But, finally, they both went back to their magazines, and Mia snagged an apple from the fridge, to camouflage her theft of the eggplant.
Really, it was a pretty big eggplant, and Mia held the thing to her belly as she went back to the room, and all she could think of was that – in a few months – her mother would probably be the size of Mia with the eggplant. It wasn't a very comforting thought, because Mia really couldn't imagine her mother dressing any more conservatively pregnant than she did not-pregnant.
Lilly narrated gravely into the microphone about how Mia Thermopalis was about to strike a blow for good girls everywhere, and Shameeka filmed, Mia opened the window, sticking her head out to make sure there were no passers-by who could get hurt – a residential street at almost eleven at night, even on a Saturday, come on – Mia stuck her arm out the window, looked directly at the camera, and then . . .
"Bombs away," she said, like in the movies.
It was kind of cool seeing this big, ball-sized eggplant tumbling over and over in the air as it fell. There were enough street lamps to seeing clearly the whole way down. Down, down went the eggplant, past the windows of the psychoanalysts and the psychologists and investment bankers – the only people who could afford to live in the Moscovitzes building – and then . .
SPLAT!
The eggplant hit the sidewalk.
Only not quite. It exploded on the sidewalk, sending bits of vegetable everything – mostly over an M1 city bus that was driving by, but also somewhat over the fancy Jaguar car that had been idling nearby.
Mia leaned out the window, admiring the splatter pattern the pulp had made against the street and sidewalk, the drivers door of the Jaguar opened up and a man got out from behind the wheel, just as the Moscovitzes building's doorman stepped out from beneath the awning over the front doors and looked up –
And then Mia was wrenched backwards onto the floor by an arm around her waist.
"Get down!" Michael hissed at everyone else. Lilly, Shameeka, Ling Su and Tina all ducked away from the window. Mia was still on the floor. Well. Michael was on the floor. He had Mia yanked back against his chest. Until he shoved her off him, anyway. Mia wanted to pout, once she stopped being surprised – she didn't even get to enjoy that!
Where had Michael even come from? Mia'd made sure to ask if he was home before Lilly even instigated Truth or Dare, because the last time Mia'd accepted a Dare from Lilly, Lilly had made Mia streak naked in the hallway. Not the hallway inside the apartment. The hallway outside it.
But Lilly had said Michael was at Columbia University, attending some lecture on robotics or something and wouldn't be home for hours.
"Are you guys stupid, or what?" Michael wanted to know. He sounded pretty mad. "Don't you know, besides the fact that it's a good way to kill someone, it's also against the law to drop things out the window in New York City?"
"Michael," Lilly was disgusted, "grow up. It was just a common garden vegetable."
"I'm serious." Michael had not calmed down. "If anyone saw Mia do that, she could be arrested."
"No she couldn't," Lilly said, "She's a minor."
"She could still go to juvenile court. You better not be about to air that footage on your show."
Lilly stuck out her chin stubbornly and said, "I most certainly am. It's to make a point."
"About what? Lilly, everybody knows who Mia is. If you air that without editing Mia's face, it will be all over the news that the Princess of Genovia was caught on camera dropping projectiles out of the window of her friend's high-rise apartment. Get a freaking clue, will you?"
Lilly rolled her eyes, but Tina ended up agreeing with Michael, also saying that Mia didn't need any more publicity than she already had, which. Mia had to actually try to not laugh at that. They had no idea about Mia's situation around publicity. Mia still hadn't told them about the Beverly Walker interview.
Lilly got up and stomped towards the window, starting to lean out – presumably to check whether the doorman and the guy with the Jaguar were still there – but Michael yanked her back. "Rule number one," he said, "If you're going to insist on dropping something out any window, never, ever, check if anybody is standing down there looking up. They will see you look out and figure out what apartment you are in, and then you'll get blamed for dropping whatever it was, because literally nobody but the guilty party would be looking out a window in that situation."
Shameeka pursed her lips, a smile and a quirked eyebrow following quickly. "Michael," she said, "it almost sounds like you've done this before."
Michael's face didn't really change, but Mia noticed the tips of his eyes turning a little red. "Let's just say I used to have a very keen interest in experimenting with the earth's gravitational pull."
Code: I used to drop things out the window too, and there may be a record about me at a police station. Or at least, that was Mia's translation. Why did Michael suddenly become just a little hotter?
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