Once Upon a Princess Page 6

  “What happened?” she asks, sounding more annoyed than sympathetic.

  I tell her all about Jasmine and her meanness and her calling me Frizzy and not letting me sit where I wanted to sit. “It’s not at all what I expected,” I say, trying not to let any tears escape.

  “What did you expect?” Georgie asks, a touch more sympathy in her voice. “To be treated like a princess?”

  “Of course.” I’m surprised she even has to ask that. “I am a princess.”

  “They don’t know that,” Georgie points out.

  Only because we haven’t told them, but shouldn’t it be obvious without us having to say anything?

  “Grandpa used to say that being a princess was about more than a title. It’s how we act and who we are inside. He said we glow from within.”

  “He didn’t really mean you glowed,” Georgie says.

  “I know that. But …”

  “Listen, Fritzi, and listen good,” Georgie says. She takes hold of my shoulders and makes me look at her. “Princess is just a title. Like king. It doesn’t confer special powers. It doesn’t make you different than anyone else, especially here in America.”

  “But …”

  “No.”

  Georgie never gets this firm with me. Maybe it’s best to leave it for now, but what I want to know is if king and queen and princess are just titles, then how come Mam got lost inside herself when her title was jeopardized?

  “Go take a shower,” Georgie says softly. “I’ll tell Mam you had a shortened day today.”

  I wish we didn’t have to hide the details from Mam. I want to tell her everything that happened today and have her comfort me and tell me it will be all right.

  As I dry off, a sudden pang of longing for Mademoiselle Colette comes over me. She might not have been the most imaginative nanny, no matter how many times I tried to get her to watch Mary Poppins to give her more ideas, but she was always sympathetic. What would she tell me to do if I went to her with this problem? She’d probably tell me to hold my head high and remember who I am.

  That’s the thing, all my life I’ve been told to live up to who I am. I couldn’t do some things and had to do others because I was Princess Fredericka. Now I can’t even tell people who I am. I suppose just because other people don’t know, it doesn’t mean I’m not still a princess. So, the answer: Hold my head high and behave like the princess I know I am.

  10

  Today is going to be a better day than yesterday. I am a princess, even if I am currently a princess in exile, and I resolve to remember to act like one. With my hair pulled back in a braid, wearing my favorite pair of jeans and a Snoopy T-shirt, I head out to school with Henri as my escort.

  In Spanish class, Señora Sanchez not-so-nicely reminds me that I have not covered my book yet.

  In math, I get a lecture on the importance of doing homework, something I gave no thought to last night.

  In gym, I change into the shorts and T-shirt that Henri bought me on a school supply shopping expedition yesterday and join the rest of the class for basketball. I am not surprised to be placed on the team with Bethany. I’m sure the teacher figures that team can’t get any worse, so why not put the new kid there?

  When I take up my position on the court, Jasmine is opposite me.

  “I’m taking you out, Frizzy,” she says. “You’re going down.”

  I smile. She doesn’t scare me. Much.

  “I don’t think so, Pinkie.”

  The gym teacher blows a whistle, and our game starts. I’ve never played basketball before, but I did spend yesterday watching, and I think I’ve got the basics down. Someone passes the ball to me, and I immediately look for someone else to pass it to, like I would do in netball. No one is available, and I remember that I can move with the ball as long as I dribble. I start to bounce the ball, and Jasmine steals it from me.

  That will not happen again.

  And it doesn’t.

  I intercept the ball when she’s passing it to someone else on her team and take a shot at the basket. The ball goes in, and I grin. I can do this.

  There’s one girl on my team who knows what she’s doing, and she seems relieved to have someone else putting in an effort. We pass the ball back and forth between us, taking turns at the basket. We let Bethany and her friends fade into the background, as they’d apparently like to do.

  We don’t win. Jasmine’s team outperforms us, but that’s okay. I didn’t make a fool of myself, and Jasmine didn’t make a fool of me. In fact, I showed Jasmine that I wasn’t someone to be messed with. As far as that goes, I feel the game was a success.

  “I didn’t know you could play basketball,” Bethany says as we head to lunch.

  “I didn’t know either,” I say. “I never played it before today.”

  “But you’re so good,” she says. I’m not sure if she’s impressed or annoyed.

  “I play netball. It’s similar,” I say.

  “Is that what they played in your old school? In France?” she asks.

  “Oui,” I say, because apparently I can’t help myself speaking French when I think of Academie Sainte Marie. “I mean yes.”

  “I know what oui means,” she says. “I’m not stupid.”

  Okay, then.

  Bethany goes off to buy her lunch, and I head straight for the sunny table again. Jasmine didn’t take me down in gym, and she won’t take me down here.

  This time, no one warns me or even really looks at me. Everyone seems to be very carefully looking at other things. Maybe it’s because they don’t want to see me get food dumped on my head again.

  My stomach is in knots, but I take a bite of my bologna sandwich and wash it down with a swallow of water as I wait for Jasmine to make her next move. Hopefully, whatever they serve for lunch today isn’t too messy. Maybe it will be a nice turkey sandwich or something that I can simply brush off.

  The conversation around me fades to a buzz, and I know Jasmine is approaching. I count to ten before looking up—no reason to make her think I’m waiting for her. She’s got a death glare focused on me, and I cringe when I see chili on her plate. This could get ugly.

  I smile my most plastic princess smile, the one I use when meeting dignitaries who bore me to pieces. “Hello, Jasmine, please have a seat. It’s a shame you didn’t get to eat your lunch yesterday. We wouldn’t want that to happen again.” I take another bite of my sandwich, hoping it isn’t too obvious that my hands are shaking.

  Venom leaks from her voice when she answers me. “Why are you at this table again?”

  I take a deep breath and summon my inner princess. A feeling of calm comes over me. I’ve got this.

  “I like this table.”

  “Are you crazy?” one of the girls surrounding Jasmine asks. She reminds me of Claudia with her curly blond hair and tiny nose.

  I simply smile and take another sip of my water. Maybe I am crazy. But I refuse to curl up and be walked all over by anyone.

  “This is our table,” Jasmine says, implying perhaps that I haven’t already gotten that impression.

  I wave toward all the empty seats. “Sit down. Please.”

  Jasmine puts the tray down, and the tightness in my chest relaxes a little. Maybe I won’t have chili dumped on me after all.

  “Listen, Frizzy,” she says, hands on hips. “This is our table, and we don’t want you sitting here. So move.”

  I take another swallow of water to steady myself. “The name is Fritzi. And if you don’t want to sit with me, sit somewhere else. I’m sitting here. You might as well join me.”

  The girl who looks like Claudia sits down. “This is silly,” she says to Jasmine. “Just sit. We can ignore her.”

  “That’s not the point,” Jasmine says, but she sits. They all do and eat their lunch without another word to me.

  I guess I won, but somehow I thought victory would taste sweeter.

  As soon as the bell rings, Jasmine and her friends dash from the table, in an attempt, I gue
ss, to get as far away from me as possible. I throw out my lunch bag and look at my schedule.

  Bethany comes over to me, arms crossed. “Do you want me to show you where geography is, or would you rather follow your new friends?” There’s a coldness in her voice that wasn’t there before.

  “I’d like you to show me,” I say. “I can hardly call those girls my friends.”

  “Then why sit at their table?”

  “Because I like that table.”

  “There are plenty of fine tables where you can sit without having Jasmine bother you. Why don’t you sit with us? I thought we were getting along.”

  “You’ve been wonderful!” I assure her, because I can’t afford to lose the one person who’s been friendly to me in this school. “But I can’t let her win.”

  Bethany gives a sad shake of her head. “Jasmine always wins. The sooner you accept that, the happier you’ll be.”

  “Wrong on both counts. I don’t intend to lose. And if I did, I’d never be happy.”

  “Must be hard being you,” Bethany says.

  “You have no idea,” I say, which I don’t think is the response she expected. I follow her to geography and am less than thrilled to see Jasmine and friends lounging in the back row seats.

  “Oh look, Frizzy is in this class too,” Jasmine says. “Wonderful.”

  One of the main problems with red hair is that it tends to go along with fair skin, the kind of skin that changes to red very quickly. Right now, I know my cheeks are flaming.

  “It’s Fritzi,” I say through clenched teeth. “Can’t you get that through your little pink head, or do you perhaps have a speech impediment that prevents you from saying my name properly?”

  Jasmine quirks an eyebrow at that. “If anyone can’t talk, it’s you. What kind of an accent is that, anyway?”

  “Cultured,” I say and sit down in the closest available seat.

  Bethany has ducked her head and refuses to look in my direction. That’s fine, I don’t need her to fight my battles for me. Though if she really wants to be my friend, it would be nice if she had my back on this.

  The teacher walks in and starts class. The lecture is on the location of the countries in Europe. I’ve got this. I take half-hearted notes and wonder when Sophia is going to return my text.

  The end-of-class bell almost drowns out the ringing of my phone, but the teacher still hears it.

  “You can’t have that phone on during school hours, Miss Moore,” he says.

  “No problem,” I say. “I’ll turn it off.” One glance at the phone tells me this is Sophia. I can’t miss this call. I slip into the hall with the rest of the class and answer it. It’s too loud in the hall to hear anything, so I duck into the girls’ restroom.

  “Sophia?” I press the phone to my ear.

  “I shouldn’t be talking to you,” she says in French, because it’s the language we use at school.

  “You have to help me,” I answer, also in French.

  “Fritzi, I can’t,” she says, and she sounds the tiniest bit regretful.

  The bathroom door opens, and Jasmine strides in and stares at me. I turn my back; I don’t need to deal with her right now.

  “We can get them to see reason.”

  “I think my father is perfectly reasonable. The monarchy has run its course.”

  “But …”

  “My father has forbidden me to speak to you, but you were my friend, and I didn’t want to not say adieu.”

  Were? My throat suddenly feels swollen.

  “Adieu?” I ask. It comes out as almost a whisper.

  “Oui. Adieu. Bon courage.” Sophia says quietly, and then the line goes dead.

  I pocket the phone, wipe the wetness from my eyes, and turn to see Jasmine still staring at me.

  “Quel est le problème?”

  She looks at me blankly, and I realize I’m still speaking French. “What’s your problem?” I repeat, in English this time.

  “You,” she says and pushes past me.

  “Oh, that’s original.”

  She inspects her flawless reflection in the mirror, while applying lip gloss. “Was that French?”

  “Oui.”

  “If you speak French, why are you taking Spanish?”

  Exactly what I want to know. “The school seems to think since I can already speak French, I need to learn Spanish.”

  “Typical.” Jasmine puts her lip gloss away and then frowns at me, as if realizing she has been civil to me. She pushes past me to the door. “You’re going to make me late for class,” she says and leaves.

  My world may be falling down around me, but there’s no reason to make it worse by my being late to class either. I leave the bathroom to find Bethany waiting for me like a faithful servant.

  “Everything okay?” she asks.

  Not even a little bit, but it isn’t like I can discuss it with her. “Fine,” I say. “Where do we go next?”

  I follow Bethany to English, where once again, Jasmine is enthroned at the back of the class. I brace myself to hear her call me Frizzy again, but she says nothing.

  I slip into an empty seat and wait for class to begin, but my mind isn’t on English class. All I can think about is Sophia’s quiet adieu. What does that mean? She’s simply cutting me off, siding with her father? Does this mean I have to be enemies with my best friend? I can’t do that.

  I wish I knew what was going on at home. Has anything changed since Georgie and I checked last night? How can I find out?

  “We’ll be going to the media center,” Mrs. Howe announces, “so you can get started on your research projects.”

  Score! A perfect chance to do a little research on my own.

  “Fritzi, you’ll have to choose a topic. It can be anything at all, as long as you have at least three sources and can write five pages on it.”

  I follow the rest of the class through the halls to the media center, or as they call it at Sainte Marie, la bibliothèque. We are each handed a laptop out of a cabinet and told to find a place to set up. I choose a table in the corner, away from everyone else, and wait for the machine to boot up.

  The first thing I do is search online for Colsteinburg, like I do every time I get the chance.

  There are pictures of protesters and riots and general chaos. I want to cry as I see my beloved home looking so hurt. But are these people protesting Pap or Orcutt’s attempted takeover? Where is Pap? Why are there no articles about the speeches he’s giving trying to bring calm? Isn’t he giving those speeches? Shouldn’t he be?

  There is a headline, “Where is the royal family?”

  I click on it, and a picture of me and Georgie with our parents pops up. It’s from the night of the ball, and looking at it makes me want to cry. We look like the perfect, happy royal family. What happened?

  “That’s you!”

  I slam the laptop shut, making all eyes turn toward me.

  11

  Bethany sits beside me. “Wasn’t that you in the picture?” she asks.

  From across the room the teacher calls to me, “Is there a problem?”

  “Non.” I close my eyes so I can concentrate on my words and switch to English. “Not at all,” I say. “Sorry, I got startled.”

  “We need to treat these machines with care. They are expensive.”

  “Right. Sorry,” I repeat.

  Bethany is still sitting next to me.

  “Well?” she asks, arms crossed.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lie.

  “That picture you were looking at. It was you.”

  “Can’t you just let me do my work?” Maybe it’s not the most diplomatic response, but I don’t have good answers for her, and I want to look at the article without her interference.

  “Fine,” Bethany says, sounding as if it is anything but fine. I don’t mean to hurt her feelings, but some things are more important right now—like what that article says.

  She moves on, and I reopen the compute
r. The article tells how the royal family has not been seen since the night of the coup. Cold shivers go up my arms. Where is Pap? We left him there to settle things. Why has no one seen him? What happened to him?

  There is speculation about what happened to the royal family. No one seems to suspect that the queen and princesses have left the country and are alive and well in America. Multiple rumors have us dead or imprisoned. The really disturbing thing is that the people who think we’re dead don’t seem horribly upset by the idea. It’s like we’re characters on a TV show or something. But we’re real, and if we were dead, I’d like to think it would matter to someone.

  I want to show the people of Colsteinburg that we are not dead. It’s almost as bad that we’re in hiding. It’s our country. Why didn’t we stay and fight for it?

  I click to another part of the article. There are pictures of mobs and riots in the streets. A car burns in front of Berg’s Apothetik. It’s so unreal.

  I don’t hear the teacher come up behind me.

  “What topic have you chosen for your research paper, Fritzi?” Mrs. Howe asks, and I jump.

  “Military coups and revolutions,” I answer without thinking.

  “That’s rather broad. You might want to narrow it down a bit.” She leans closer to the screen. Her glasses, dangling from a chain around her neck, hit me in the back of the head. I move the pointer so I can close the browser window, but she might take that as a sign that I am looking at something inappropriate. I leave it as it is.

  “What’s that all about?” she asks. “Some kind of protest?”

  “Ja, something like that,” I say, and she moves on to the next student.

  Does she seriously not know what these pictures are of? It is clearly a crowd in front of our palace. It isn’t like it’s some generic side street that could be anywhere in the world. Doesn’t she know that the whole social fabric of Colsteinburg is being ripped apart? Doesn’t she care?

  I know our country is small, but doesn’t a coup warrant worldwide news?