What You Think Of And What You Do

;;

People have a right to privacy. If she wants to go into her room and lock the door and not come out of have to deal with anyone, she should have a right to. People should not be allowed to take the hinges off her door and remove it. That's completely unfair.

Well, she's foiled them. She's out on the fire escape. It's zero degrees out and snowing a little, and her butt is probably frozen to the metal through her wool sweater and overalls, but no one's followed her yet.

It's sort of nice out here. The sun's going down pretty quickly, and all she can hear is the hiss of the snow as it lands on the metal of the fire escape, and the occasional siren or car. It's restful.

Mia needs a rest.

She doesn't want to leave her life entirely, okay? But maybe her trip to Genovia could extend a bit. Say, to the end of the school year, and after the summer vacation. She can come back to start tenth grade at AEHS. Everyone will have forgotten about today's mess, and Michael will be in college by then, and she won't have to talk to him or see him again, ever.

Okay? That's not a bad plan, right? Nine months in Genovia, soaking up the sunshine, maybe lie on that beautiful beach.

Sure, she'll miss her Mum – she's leaned out the window maybe twenty times, begging Mia to come inside – but her Mum can visit her in Genovia while Mia's away. Of course, not once she's in her seventh month, but any point before then would be cool. And then the next time she visited, she could bring Mia's new sibling along too. Or Mia could come home a little early and help out with her new brother or sister, before school goes back. Frank can come too – he's leaned out the window twice himself, asking her if she wants any of the chilli he made for dinner. There's some with no meat in it, just for her.

Her Mum's so lucky to have found a guy as nice as Frank. Good thing she knows it, too.

Her Dad's pretty cool too. Mia'll have a nice time, probably, living with him full time. He's even come over to the apartment, wanting to get Mia inside. He said he's very proud of her, on account of the press conference and the B in Algebra. He wanted to take her to the Zen Palatte for dinner. How nice is that? A totally vegetarian restaurant.

Too bad he had Lars had her door off, or she might have gone with him.

Her next door neighbour just noticed her. Ronnie, who used to be called Ronald but now introduces herself as Veronica, wants to know what Mia's doing, out on a fire escape in December.

Mia told her she needed some privacy, and this is apparently the only way she can get it. Ronnie just replied, "Honey, I know exactly how that is."

Ronnie's so nice, she gave Mia her electric blanket to borrow, plugged into the outlet beneath her air conditioner by the window.

Mia watched Ronnie put on her makeup, because she's going out for drinks with her boyfriend. Ronnie wants to know if Mia's been driven to the window by stuff at school. Mia explained it all, and Ronnie shook her head and said that it was good to know that things haven't changed very much from how it was when she was at high school – same petty drama everywhere, apparently. Although it was definitely worse for Ronnie than it is for Mia. Mia's been a girl her whole life. Ronnie's only been one for about a decade.

;;

That was freaking random. And weirdly sweet.

Guess who just joined Mia on her fire escape.

Didn't guess?

Grandmere. Seriously! There Mia was, being all depressed, wrapped in Ronnie's blanket (Ronnie had to go, but left her window open with the electric blanket plugged in, saying that she trusted Mia to give it back when she was done with it), when all of a sudden this big furry sleeve is sticking out her window, followed by a high-heeled boot, and before Mia absorbed what she was looking at, Grandmere was sitting there, blinking at Mia from her full-length chinchilla.

"Amelia," Grandmere said in her most no-nonsense tone. "What are you doing out here. It's snowing. Come back inside." This was even more clipped, because it was all in French. Grandmere had been insisting on teaching Mia her princess lessons almost entirely in French for the last two months, since she found out about A) Helen's pregnancy, and B) the fact that the wedding took place in a courthouse instead of being a lavish affair 'befitting for the mother of Genovia's princess'. No English had left Grandmere's mouth since then.

Probably why Mia got an A minus on that Final.

Anyway, Mia was genuinely shocked to see Grandmere anywhere near her room – she'd only come to the apartment once the entire time she'd been in New York, and she hadn't even set foot in Mia's room at the time. She was even more surprised that Grandmere was willing to climb out onto the fire escape – not to be un-princesslike, but the pigeons that sat on this thing weren't exactly conscientious about not pooping on this thing; and the fact that Grandmere was even speaking to her after what she pulled was just the cherry on the 'surprise' sundae.

But Grandmere got straight to the issue.

"I understand that you are upset with me," she said. "And you have a right to be. But I want you to know that what I did, I did for you."

"Oh, right," Mia said sarcastically, "Grandmere, how can you possibly say that? It was completely humiliating!"

"I didn't mean for it to be," said Grandmere. "I meant to show you that you are just as pretty as those girls in the magazines you are always wishing you looked like. It's important that you know that you are not this hideous creature that you seem to think you are."

"Grandmere, that's nice of you and all – I guess – but you shouldn't have done it that way."

"What other way could I do it?" Grandmere demanded. "You will not pose for any of the magazines that have offered to send photographers. Not Vogue, or Harper's Bazaar. Don't you understand what Sebastiano said about your bone structure is true, or that his creations all looked wonderful on you? You really are quite beautiful, Amelia. If only you'd just have a little more confidence in yourself – show off once in a while. Think how quickly that boy you like would leave the fly-girl for you!"

Mia sighed. "Grandmere, I told you. Michael likes her because she's really smart. They have a lot of stuff in common – math and science and computers. It has nothing to do with how she looks."

Grandmere made a disbelieving noise. "I think you're being rather naive."

Which is a totally Grandmere belief, isn't it? Looks are the main thing for her, always has been. After all, she loves to say, it wasn't her academic accomplishments that caught Mia's Grandpere's eye – he caught sight of her across a ballroom and promptly fell in love. Smitten by her beauty – or at least, that's how she tells it.

So it makes sense, in her view, that a girl like Judith, no matter how smart, how accomplished, would never be truly desired unless she could clone a fruit fly and look stunning in designer.

"Look," Mia said. "I told you. Michael is not the type of guy who is going to be impressed because I'm in a Sunday Times supplement in a strapless ball-gown. That's why I like him. If he were the kind of guy who was impressed by stuff like that, I wouldn't want anything to do with him.

Grandmere didn't look very convinced. "Well. Perhaps you and I must agree to disagree. In any case, Amelia, I came over to apologize. I never meant to distress you. I meant only to show you what you can do, if only you'd try." She spread her gloved hands apart, a smile on her lips. "And look how well I succeeded! You planned and executed an entire press conference, all on your own!"

Mia couldn't help smiling a little. "Yeah."

"And, I understand you pass Algebra."

"Yes, I did."

"Now, there is only one thing left to do." Grandmere sounded like the answer was obvious.

Mia nodded. "I know. Do you think I could spend all next semester in Genovia, you know, really get into the being a princess thing, and come back to Albert Einstein maybe in the fall, for my sophomore year?"

Grandmere's expression, from the light in Mia's room, was one of total disbelief. If this were a movie, there'd be a record scratch with Mia's sentence. "What . . are you talking about?"

"You know. I could finish ninth grade at a school in Genovia. Be a princess on weekends – you can take me to all the formal event you'd want, or something, and the people would meet me and understand me over a period longer than twenty-five days."

"You'd hate it." That was maybe the bluntest sentence her grandmother had ever said.

"No, it might be fun. No time for social drama, you know. Learning all about everything about my country."

Grandmere shook her head. "But . . . your friends – your mother . . "

"Well," Mia reasoned. "They could come and visit."

Then Grandmere's face hardened. She peered at Mia from between the mascara-ed slits her eyelid became. "Amelia Mignonette Grimaldi Renaldo," she said, "you are running away from something, aren't you?"

Mia shook her head innocently. "Oh, no, Grandmere. Really. I'd like to like in Genovia. It'd be neat."

"NEAT?" Grandmere launched to her feet, amazingly gracefully, given the tight space on the fire escape. She pointed imperiously at Mia's window. "You get inside right now."

Mia'd never heard that tone of voice before. And believe it, she'd heard a lot of angry tones from her grandmother over the years.

She crawled back into her room, but not before unplugging Ronnie's blanket and shoving it back through Ronnie's window.

"You," Grandmere said once they were both inside, straightening her skirt, "are a princess of the royal house of Renaldo. A princess," she said, rifling through Mia's closet, "does not shirk her responsibilities, to her people or the people she holds dear. A princess does not run at the first sign of adversity."

"Um, Grandmere," Mia said, "What happened to me today was hardly the first sign of adversity, okay? What happened today was the last straw. I can't take it anymore, and I don't want to. I want out."

Grandmere, ignoring Mia, pulled out the green dress that Sebastiano had had delivered. "Nonsense."

That was all. Then she just stood there, tapping her toes and staring at Mia.

"Grandmere." Mia was feeling rather exposed – she was pretty sure her mum and dad and Frank were in the living room, and could probably hear every word. There was no door on her room anymore. "You don't get it. I can't go back there."

"All the more reason," Grandmere retorted, "for you to go."

"No. First of all, I don't want to face Michael, after what happened, and I bet my friends also knew what he was going to do. I'm such a loser that my friends think it's fun to joke about my feelings like that."

"You are not a loser, Amelia." Grandmere said. Her tone had softened considerably. "You are a princess. And princesses do not run away when things become difficult. They throw back their shoulders and they face what disaster awaits them head on. Bravely, and without complaint."

Mia put her hands to her face. "We aren't talking about marauding Visigoths, okay Grandmere? We're talking about a boy who thinks my feelings are a joke he can make fun of."

"Then you have all the more reason to show that his cruel joke means nothing to you."

"Can't I show him that by not going?"

"Because that," Grandmere said, "is the cowardly way. And you, Mia, as you have shown amply this last week, are not a coward. Now get dressed."

Mia wasn't sure why she did as ordered. Maybe it was because, she knew, deep down, that for once, Grandmere was totally right.

Or maybe because, secretly, she was curious what would happen.

But the real reason was because, for the first time, Grandmere didn't call her Amelia. She said Mia.

And now, provoked by stupid sentimentalism, Mia's in a car going back to the stupid high school she's thought she'd finally ditched not five hours before, in a stupid green dress, to be stared at and whispered about, to confront a boy who thought it'd be funny to make a joke about her feelings.

But regardless of what happens at the dance, Mia found comfort in the knowledge of one thing:

This time tomorrow, she's going to be thousands of miles away from all of this.

;;

When Mia was about to turn six years old, all she wanted for her birthday was a cat.

She didn't care what kind of cat. She just wanted one – a cat of her very own. She and her mum had gone for a visit to the Thermopalis farm in Indiana, one of the three total visits Mia's had to her mum's parents, oh, ever. And the farm had had lots of cats – and one of them had kittens, little fluffy orange and white things, which purred loudly when Mia held them under her chin, and liked to curl up inside the bib of her overalls and nap. More than anything in the world, Mia wanted one of those kittens.

It's worth mentioning that, at the time, Mia had a thumb-sucking problem. Helen had tried everything to get Mia to stop, from buying toys to putting hot sauce on Mia's thumb. Nothing worked.

So when Mia came to her mother, begging to keep a kitten, Helen got the idea: if Mia quit sucking her thumb, Helen would get her a kitten for her birthday.

Which Mia did, immediately. She wanted a cat of her own that badly.

And yet, as her birthday rolled around, Mia had her doubts. Even at this age of her youth, she knew her mother wasn't the most responsible person. Why else was their electricity always being turned off? And about half the time Mia was showing up to school wearing both trousers AND a skirt, because her mother let Mia decide what she wanted to wear. So Mia wasn't sure she'd remember about the kitten – or that, if she did remember, she'd know where to get one.

So by the time Mia's sixth birthday rolled around, Mia wasn't exactly holding out hope.

But then, on the morning of her birthday, her mother walked into her room holding a tiny ball of orange and white fur and plopped it onto Mia's chest. Mia remembers looking into Louie's (he didn't become Fat Louie until about twenty-something pounds later) big blue eyes, and she knew a joy such as she had never known before in her life and never expected to feel again.

Until her Non-Denominational Winter Dance for her freshman year of high school, that is.

She's serious.

After the fiasco of Sebastiano and the photos, Mia would've expected to NEVER feel grateful to her grandmother ever again. But she was SO RIGHT to make Mia go back to the dance!

Here's what happened:

Mia and Lars get to the school, and everything is all decorated with twinkly lights, to represent icicles or whatever.

Mia kind of felt like she was going to vomit from nerves, and mentioned it to Lars; he said no, that's not likely, because the last thing she'd eaten was way before lunch, so that food was definitely digested by now. And with that encouragement, Lars frog-marched Mia into the school proper.

There were plenty of people still arriving when Mia did, so Lars went to drop off their coats, and Mia got waylaid by Lilly-and-Boris and Tina-and-Dave, who acted all nice and happy that she'd come (Tina told her later that she'd already explained to everyone some of what Mia's deal had been that day, thankfully, because Mia didn't have a single question thrown her way about her dramatic exit from the carnival).

Fortified by her friends, Mia went to the gym, which was decorated all wintery with cut-out paper snowflakes, a couple disco balls, and fake snow everywhere, which, it should be noted, was a lot whiter and cleaner than any snow outside the building.

There were tons of people in the gym – Lana and Josh (ugh), Justin Baxendale and a flock of his adoring fans, Shameeka and Ling Su and Mia's other friends, and everyone else that were there to have a good time. Even Kenny was there, chatting happily with a girl from their Biology class.

Then Mia saw Judith Gershner. She'd changed out of her jeans into a very pretty red vintage-looking dress. But she wasn't dancing with Michael. She was dancing with a boy Mia'd never seen before.

Mia didn't say anything, about Michael, but she did ask Lilly about the boy. "He's Judith's boyfriend. He goes to Trinity with Tina's Dave. Jesus, Mia. Why do you care so damn much about Judith?"

"Well," Mia was thinking on the fly – not her best way to be. "She's been around a lot more, I thought she and your brother –"

"Were working on that stupid computer program for the Carnival." Lilly was very impatient, looking around like she was trying to find someone. "I don't know what is wrong with you today, but I can't deal with you when you're acting like such a freak. Just sit down –" Lilly yanked Mia into one of the plastic chairs that edged the gym, "and don't you dare get up. I want to know where to find you when I need you."

Mia didn't ask why Lilly might need to find her. She just sat. She wasn't even sure she'd be able to get back up. She was that tired.

It wasn't that Mia was disappointed. She hadn't wanted to see Michael dancing with Judith – at least, a part of her hadn't. A big part.

Another part of her wanted to ask him what he meant by that poem.

But she was sort of afraid of the answer. Because it might not be the one she was hoping it would be.

After a while, Lars and Wahim sat near her, deep in discussion about the advantages versus disadvantages of rubber bullets. So at least her bodyguard was having a good time. What was she doing here, honestly? She'd done as Grandmere commanded. She'd shown up. Proved to her peers that she didn't care about their opinion. Nobody was asking her to dance, while all her friends did.

Then she saw Michael.

Mia got Lars' attention, telling him that she was going into the hallway for some air.

Lars stayed to keep talking to Wahim. But Michael followed her.

He looked like he'd just gotten to the dance – he was out of breath, with an untied bowtie and with snow in his hair.

The hallway was quieter than the gym – everyone who was coming to the dance was inside.

"I didn't think you were coming," Michael said.

"Well, I almost didn't." Mia was sure her face was as red as Judith's dress.

Michael said, "I called a bunch of times. You didn't pick up the phone."

Mia wanted to sink into the ground, have the floor open up like in It's a Wonderful Life, and Mia would fall into the pool the floor below and just. Drown. "I know."

Michael looked like he wasn't sure crying was a good idea for him. Like maybe he wanted to. "Mia. With that thing today. I swear, I didn't mean to make you cry."

Maybe death by drowning wasn't enough. The floor could just open into a chasm and she'd just fall for ever and ever. "Then what was it? A bad joke? Were you making fun of me?"

"I knew it was you." Michael said it all in a rush, like if he didn't get the words out now, he never would. "I knew it was you, leaving those cards."

Well. It would've felt better if he'd literally ripped her heart out and kicked it across the hallway floor. Mia could feel her eyes well up with tears. "You did?" It almost made everything worse.

"Of course I did." Michael sounded impatient. "Lilly told me."

Mia was shocked. "How did LILLY know?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. Your friend Tina told her, I guess. Look, it's not important."

It wasn't? Mia was going to kill them. Forget getting Lars to do it. He could help her hide the bodies. Mia was going to strangle them with her bare hands.

Before she could go back into the gym, though, Michael grabbed her by the shoulders, giving her a little shake, like Listen to me. "Mia, it doesn't matter. What matters is what I wrote. I meant it. I thought you did too."

Mia wasn't sure she was hearing him right. She blurted, "Of course I meant it."

"Then why did you freak out at the carnival."

"I thought you were making fun of me," Mia said in her smallest voice.

"Never." And that's when he did it.

No fuss, no hesitation. He just leaned down and kissed her, right on the lips.

Tina had been right, at time Mia'd asked her for tips on kissing once, when they'd been bored in French.

Kissing is never gross when you're in love with the guy.

In fact, it's the nicest thing in the world.

Well, aside from Michael also being in love with her, and having kept it a secret almost as long as Mia has.

And Lilly apparently knowing all along but not saying anything until a few days ago, because she, quote, "knew Mia would freak the hell out if I brought it up first", and wanted to see how long it would take the two of them to figure it out on their own.

Or the fact that Michael was going to be going to college a few subway stops from Mia's own home, so she'll still be able to see him whenever.

Or Lana walking out to the hallway while they were kissing to go to the ladies, and saying in this disgusted voice, "God, get a room, would you?"

And slow dancing with Michael all night long, until Lilly finally came up to them and said, "Come on, you guys, it's snowing so hard if we don't leave now we'll never get home."

And kissing good night outside the stoop to Mia's apartment, with the snow falling all around them (and Lars complaining about the cold).

Her dad says that if Mia doesn't stop talking about Michael he's going to sit up the front with the pilot for the flight.

Grandmere says that she can't get over the change in Mia. She says Mia seems taller. Maybe she has grown, a little, and Grandmere says its because, due to a blanket decision for forgiveness all around (and the fact that Philipe still thinks what Mia did is hysterical), Mia's entire wardrobe for her Genovia trip has been designed by Sebastiano; to make her as princessy in appearance as she (isn't) in personality, just like how the dress he made her would make Michael not see Mia as simply Lilly's friend.

Except he it turned out he already did.

And that's the best thing in the world, in Mia's book.

;;;

And here's a happy ending. Aww, aren't they sweet.

From here on, there's going to be a good bit of canon divergence, mostly in terms of Mia and Michael's relationship compared to how they are in the books - just because there was a lot of how their relationship played out that I - with the 20/20 of hindsight + adulthood - don't personally care for.

But first, instead of going straight into a work of the fourth book, I'm working on a story about Mia's trip to Genovia, because they'll be some things happening there that will effect the next few story arcs.