Lilly says I’m not assertive enough. Her parents say I have a tendency to internalize everything and fear confrontation.
My mom says the same thing. That’s why she gave me this book, in the hopes that what I won’t tell her, I’ll at least get out into the open somehow.
If it hadn’t turned out that I’m a princess, maybe I might still be all that stuff. You know, unassertive, fearful of confrontation, an internalizer. I probably wouldn’t have done what I did next.
Which was turn to Josh and ask, “Why did you do that?”
He was busy patting himself down, trying to find the dance tickets to hand to the sophomores who were manning the ticket table. “Do what?”
“Kiss me like that, in front of everybody.”
He found the tickets in his wallet. “I don’t know,” he said. “Didn’t you hear them? They were yelling at me to kiss you. So I did. Why?”
“Because I didn’t appreciate it.”
“You didn’t appreciate it?” Josh looked confused. “You mean you didn’t like it?”
“Yes,” I said. “That’s exactly what I mean. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it at all. Because I know you didn’t kiss me because you like me. You just kissed me because I’m the princess of Genovia.”
Josh looked at me like he thought I was crazy.
“That’s crazy,” he said. “I like you. I like you a lot.”
I said, “You can’t like me a lot. You don’t even know me. That’s why I thought you asked me out. So you could get to know me better. But you haven’t tried to get to know me at all. You just wanted to get your picture on Extra.”
He laughed at that, but I noticed he didn’t look me in the eye when he said, “What do you mean, I don’t even know you? Of course I know you.”
“No, you don’t. Because if you did, you wouldn’t have ordered me a steak for dinner.”
I heard a murmur go around through all of my friends. I guess they recognized the seriousness of Josh’s mistake, even if he didn’t. He heard them, too, so when he replied, he was talking to them, too. “So I ordered the girl a steak,” he said, with his arms open in a so-sue-me sort of way. “That’s a crime? It was filet mignon, for God’s sake.”
Lilly said, in her meanest voice, “She’s a vegetarian, you sociopath.”
This information didn’t seem to bother Josh very much. He just shrugged and went, “Oops, my bad.”
Then he turned to me and said, “Ready to slide?”
But I had no intention of sliding with Josh. I had no intention of doing anything with Josh, ever again. I couldn’t believe, after what I’d just said to him, he thought I’d still want to. The guy really was a sociopath. How could I ever have thought he’d seen into my soul? How???
Disgusted, I did the only thing a girl can be expected to do under those circumstances:
I turned my back on him and walked out.
Only, since of course I couldn’t go back outside—not if I didn’t want Teen People to get a nice close-up of me crying—my only recourse was to walk out into the girls’ room.
It finally registered on Josh that I was ditching him. By that time, all of his friends had shown up, and they came tumbling through the doors just as Josh said, sounding totally peeved, “Jesus! It was just a kiss!”
I whirled around. “It wasn’t just a kiss,” I said. I was getting really mad. “Maybe that’s how you wanted it to look, like it was just a kiss. But you and I both know what it really was: A media event. And one that you’ve been planning since you saw me in the Post. Well, thank you, Josh, but I can get my own publicity. I don’t need you.”
Then, after holding out my hand to Lars for my journal, I took it and stalked into the girls’ room. Which is where I am now, writing this.
God! Can you BELIEVE that? I mean, I ask you: My first kiss—my first kiss ever—and next week it’s going to be in every teen magazine in the country. Probably even some international magazines will pick it up, like Majesty magazine, which follows the lives of all the young royals in Great Britain and Monaco. They ran a whole article on the wardrobe of Prince Edward’s wife, Sophie, once, rating each one of her outfits on a scale of one to ten. They called it “Out of the Closet.” I don’t suppose it will be too long before Majesty magazine starts following me around, rating my wardrobe—and boyfriends—too. I wonder what the caption under the picture of me and Josh will be. “Young Royal in Love”?
Excuse me, but ew.
And the kicker of it all is that I am totally NOT in love with Josh Richter. I mean, it would have been nice—Who am I kidding? It would have been GREAT—to have a boyfriend. Sometimes I think there really is something wrong with me, that I don’t have one.
But the thing is, I would rather not have a boyfriend at all than have one who is only using me for my money or the fact that my father is a prince or for any reason, really, except that he likes me for me, and nothing else.
Of course, now that everyone knows I’m a princess, it’s going to be kind of hard to tell which guys like me for me and which guys like me for my tiara. But at least I realized the truth about Josh before things went on too long.
How could I have ever liked him? He’s such a user. He totally used me! He purposefully hurt Lana and then tried to use me. And I played right into his hands like the stupid sap that I am.