Who Made You a Princess? Read online

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  To:[email protected]

  From: [email protected]

  Date:September 22, 2009

  Re:Hello from Cairo

  Hey sweet thing, how are you? We have a 12-hour layover in Cairo before our flight to London, so I’m crashed on a big bed in the Four Seasons and catching up on e-mail. I’m thinking you should be back at school today, right? It’s so hard to believe you’re a senior. It seems like just last week we drove up that gravel drive, and you stood at the bottom of the stairs, trying to put on your game face before you went in. And now, soon you’ll be buying a prom dress! Too bad the trip to Paris is *after* graduation. Though I must say I have a certain little plan for the spring couture shows ::zips lips::

  I wanted to give you a heads-up about an old friend of yours. Remember when you were little and we went to Greece in the summer? You must’ve been six or so when we started going. Anyway, we always stayed in a white house that looked like a stack of sugar cubes, right on the beach, that belonged to some friends of ours. Back then they were just Zuleikha and Amir al-Aarez, but now they’re Their Serene Highnesses of Yasir. And guess what? Their son Rashid is going to be doing an exchange term right there at Spencer!

  We have an even closer connection with the family, did you know that? Besides a bunch of history I won’t go into, your great-grandma Hanna married one of his uncles. It’s not like you’re related all that close, though—in case, you know, you wanted to date him! LOL.

  Daddy says the prince did a couple of years in school in Switzerland before he decided to go to London. Now he’s in San Francisco because he wants to take computer courses. He has his pick of all the schools in the world and he wants an M.B.A. from little old Stanford! I send Zuleikha your school picture every year, so at least he’ll know what you look like. Have you met him yet? What’s he like? I know you’ll make him feel welcome, because he won’t know a soul.

  Daddy says the champagne is here. Must go.

  Love you,

  Mama

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  Chapter 3

  IN THE DINING ROOM, Lissa, Gillian, and I made our entrance. Potent, wise, and reverend seniors, that was us, and we had the look to prove it. Lissa had French-braided her hair down both sides of her head and combined the two into one at her nape. With a floaty BCBG sundress, she looked like a model in a medieval photo shoot. Gillian had given up trying to tame her hair, so she’d focused on clothes—an antique burned-out velvet camisole and black capris with knock-you-out Balenciaga halter sandals.

  And me? Let’s just say that I hadn’t wasted my three days in New York with the Changs before we’d gone to the Hamptons. Gillian and I had hit the trifecta—Bendel’s, Bloomie’s, and Barney’s—and I sashayed into the dining room in a hot tangerine Carolina Herrera silk shift that screamed, “Look at me!”

  The only thing better than making an entrance by yourself is making one with your friends. The problem was, our entrance barely registered.

  The dining room was about three-quarters full of people who had already arrived. More would come tonight, and of course the day students would all be in class tomorrow. But even from the door, I could feel the buzz in the room.

  “What’s going on?” Lissa murmured.

  “There’s Jeremy.” Gillian nodded toward her man, who waved and indicated he was saving the table for us. “He’ll have the scoop.”

  We got our food—gourmet deep-dish pizza—and hurried to join him. He stood when Gillian put her plate next to his, and right in front of us all, slid an arm around her waist and kissed her.

  Whoa. Gillian got all flustered and plunked into her chair as if her knees had failed. She bowed her head, and I realized it wasn’t because of that. Everyone but me was saying grace.

  After a few moments, Lissa lifted her head and got back on topic. “You know Tobin dishes demerits for PDAs.”

  “I couldn’t help it.” Hmph. He might be Mr. Romance, but look, the guy had made himself blush. “I haven’t seen her for six weeks.”

  Gillian, still beet red, took a big bite of pizza.

  “So, on the subject of making a sensation, what’s going on here?” I asked. “I feel weirdness in the room.”

  “Check it.” Jeremy gave a Gillian-like nod to his left. I followed his glance to see nothing but a group of guys sitting at the table next to the one claimed by Vanessa Talbot and her posse of A-listers. Two of the guys were in suits, facing the door.

  Suits? That wouldn’t cause the furtive glances and whispered conversations all around us. I exchanged glances with Gillian and Lissa. “So? They’re a little overdressed, but—”

  “Not the suits.” Jeremy swallowed. “The other kid. The one in the white shirt.”

  “I can’t see anything but the back of his head.” And craning to look would be so not cool.

  “That’s who everyone’s talking about. That’s the prince.”

  “The what?” Lissa dropped her fork and it clattered on her china plate.

  “Shhhhh!” I grabbed her elbow and forced myself to not stand up and gawk. “You’ve never seen a prince before?”

  “Sure, but not in this dining room.”

  Since I’d been mostly kidding, I stopped. “What?”

  “In Scotland, remember? The royal family went to church in one of the towns Dad was filming in. Wills and Harry were there. And yes,” she said before I could ask, “they are both just as gorgeous in person as they are in People.”

  Okay, moment to recover. I mean, when you think that I’m sort of friends with the daughter of an earl, I guess having a friend who hobnobs with princes isn’t so surprising. That was part of why my parents had been so enthused about my coming to Spencer. Stuff like this was pretty much routine around here. And then again, from what my mom had said in her e-mail, I knew this one myself. Or used to, when we were both so little that princes only existed in the pages of our storybooks.

  “So, staying on topic,” Gillian said, obviously having recovered her powers of speech, “the prince of what? Please tell me he’s not related to Vanessa in any way.”

  “Not that I know of. He’s from the Middle East. The Kingdom of Yasir.” Blank looks. Jeremy nodded. “Right. I’d never heard of it, either. Someplace near Saudi Arabia, sitting on oil fields that make Saudi look low-rent. He’s supposed to be worth a couple of billion all by himself.”

  I couldn’t resist sneaking another peek. Huh. The little boy I’d dunked in the clear blue waves of the Med?

  “And he’s gracing us with his presence, why?” Lissa wanted to know. “Is he another exchange student?”

  Jeremy nodded. “Channel Four did a segment on him on the weekend. Did you catch it?”

  “Nope. We came up from Santa Barbara this morning. He’s not news down there.”

  “So much for keeping a low profile,” Gillian commented. “Not like Mac.” None of us knew then that the British Embassy had had someone keeping an eye on her while she was here. Not that it had done any good when that nutjob David Nelson had kidnapped her.

  “Yeah, his bodyguards are right up front,” I mused, savoring my pizza. “But I guess if you call a press conference and tell everyone you’re here, you’re not very interested in a low profile, are you? It’s just more props for the school. I bet Curzon’s ecstatic.”

  Like most of the people in the room, I kept half an eye on the prince while I finished my pizza and made a trip to the dessert bar afterward to bag a crème brulée. Too bad he had his back to the room. All I could see was dark hair, perfectly cut, and a bit of tanned neck. I wanted to see how he’d turned out now that he was all grown up. I wanted to see if he’d recognize me. Then I shook my head at my bad self.

  Never mind scoping out the prince, you hound. You left your heart in Santa Barbara, remember?

  “Guess we won’t be hangin’ with the prince, will we?” I asked Lissa in a low voice when I came back to the table. Gillian and Jeremy were still at the dessert bar. There was no way he’
d remember me, or that I’d tell anyone we’d once played together. And if he didn’t, that was cool, too. It wasn’t like his life had anything to do with mine now. One more thing to let slide away on good-bye.

  “Why would we want to?” she asked. “That’s Vanessa’s department. Ten to one, if she were here, she’d be all over him. I bet she’d even invite him to sit at the sacred table.”

  “He might be nice.”

  “I’m sure he is. But you can’t find out unless you go over and talk to him. You’re welcome to go first.”

  I snorted into my soda. “Yeah, right. ‘So, Your Highness, what’s shakin’? Wanna hang?’”

  She snickered. “Go on. I dare you.”

  “I’d have to get past the bodyguards first. Fill out an application for an audience. Wait six weeks for it to be approved. Get the invitation—engraved, of course. Make an appointment. And by that time, the term will be over and he’ll be flying off home in his private Concorde before I even got to say a word.”

  Lissa hid behind her soda, trying not to laugh out loud.

  “What are you two giggling about?” Gillian whispered as she came back with her dessert.

  “Nothing,” I managed, glancing over at the prince’s table again. One of his bodyguards got up. “Ooh. Hey,” I whispered. “Clear the area. His Highness is getting dessert.”

  Lissa lost it and leaned on one arm as she pushed me with the other hand.

  The bodyguard walked slowly across the dining room, his impassive face scanning this way and that. He moved with an eerie smoothness, like a droid with well-greased ball bearings for joints. One hand rested at his hip, where I’d bet my bank account he had, if not a pistol of some kind, then at least a stun gun. The other hand tapped the side of his head briefly, where a curly wire like a fine phone cord ran up out of his jacket and into a transmitter in his ear.

  So Secret Service.

  All this fuss to get the guy his dessert? Did they reconnoiter the stalls when they took him to the bathroom, too? I shook my head and drained the last of my soda. When I put the can down, I jumped about four feet.

  Secret Service Guy stood right behind me. “Miss Hanna?”

  I stared at him so long that Lissa finally had to nudge me with her elbow. “Huh? Are you talking to me?”

  “You are Miss Shani Hanna?”

  “Uh, yeah.” What’s it to you? I bit back the words. It’s not very smart to say stuff like that to people carrying unidentified weapons.

  “Would you please come with me?” His accent was a combination of British and the accent I’d heard on news reports where the Middle East reps to the U.N. are talking.

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  “Please, miss. His Royal Highness wishes to speak with you.”

  Beside me, Lissa made a choking sound. Gillian and Jeremy stared, their gazes bouncing from me to Secret Service Guy like they were watching a tennis match.

  “What?” I blurted. Was I dreaming? That was it. We were still on the highway. I’d fallen asleep in the car and the whole evening—arrival, dinner, my tangerine dress—was a figment of my imagination.

  “His Royal Highness wishes to speak to you,” the man repeated. Slowly.

  Lissa’s elbow connected with my ribs this time, hard. “Uh, why?” A legitimate question, right?

  “I do not question His Royal Highness, miss. I am to escort you to his table. That is all.”

  I gave one second’s thought to saying, “Dude, if that’s all he wants, he can come over here and say hey like a normal person.” But I didn’t.

  Instead, I got up and hoped I wouldn’t do anything stupid like fall off my Jimmy Choos while I made the long, long walk to the table next to the window.

  The whole dining room had gone as silent as a final exam. Tap. Tap. My heels sounded like castanets. Or like that drum you hear in movies when people get marched up to the guillotine.

  I lifted my chin. Well, I hadn’t worn a tangerine Herrera because I wanted to hide behind the potted palms. If you had to meet a prince you hadn’t spared one thought for in a dozen years, you couldn’t do much better.

  We stopped behind him. Secret Service Guy cleared his throat. And the prince turned.

  Wow to the tenth power.

  Dark eyes. Deeply tanned skin and a hawklike nose. Sharp cheekbones narrowing to a chin that meant business. A nicely cut mouth and a soul patch.

  I barely remembered my little companion from the Greek beach. There was nothing familiar in this face at all—but, my oh my, there was certainly nothing wrong with it.

  He stood, and I tilted my head up. Even though I had on stiletto heels, he still topped me by a good four inches.

  “Your Royal Highness,” Secret Service Guy said, “may I present Miss Shani Hanna. Miss Hanna, His Royal Highness Prince Rashid al Amir, heir to the Lion Throne of Yasir.”

  Long-ago playmate or not, I knew exactly what to do. I hadn’t watched a hundred historical DVDs with Carly for nothing. Not to mention gone obediently to the etiquette module every week in freshman Life Sciences. I extended my hand as if I were conferring a knighthood, and he took it as I sank into a curtsy that would have made even Mac’s mom, the Countess of Strathcairn, proud.

  A gentle tug brought me to my feet again and he looked down into my eyes. He didn’t let go of my hand. “A very great pleasure, Miss Hanna,” he said in a voice like midnight, rough with stars. “I feel as if I have been waiting an eternity to see you again. Do you remember me?”

  His eyes were a brown so deep, they looked black, and authority and appreciation sparkled in them. I opened my mouth to say something gracious. Something memorable. Something he and the hundred and fifty eavesdroppers all around us would remember and talk about for weeks to come.

  “Do you still skinny-dip in the ocean?” I asked.

  “JUST SHOOT ME now.”

  I fell face down on the bed and pulled my goosedown pillow over my head to shut out the world and the aftereffects of my own idiocy. The bed dipped as Carly sat next to me and pulled the pillow away.

  “Get over yourself, chiquita.” I could hear the giggle in her voice, even if she was too nice to really let it go. “You were little kids.”

  “Go ahead. Laugh. I know you want to.”

  She toppled over, too, arms wrapped around the pillow, giggling at the ceiling. “I can’t believe you said that to him.”

  “I’m never getting over this. Never. He’s going to think I’m a complete fool.”

  “No, he won’t. He sure knows you remember him now, though.”

  “You just can’t say anything that personal to a future king. Off with my head!”

  Someone knocked on the door and pushed it open. “Is this the Department of Deportment?” Lissa asked in an oh-so-bright tone. “I need a curtsy lesson, please. Or is that next door in the Department of Dweebery?”

  “Now it starts,” I said to the ceiling.

  “Where’d you learn to do that?” Gillian crowded in behind her. “It looked really good.”

  “Everybody learns it in freshman etiquette.” I rolled over as they draped themselves on the furniture, which in our case was limited to two beds and two desks with ergonomic chairs. “Along with which fork to use, how to address a head of state, and how not to embarrass yourself in front of a room full of people.”

  “Failed that one, I bet.” Lissa rooted in the fridge and started tossing out Odwallas.

  I caught a strawberry lemonade and cracked the cap. “I’d have paid more attention if I’d thought I was going to actually use anything in that module.”

  “You did, though,” Carly pointed out. “Last June, remember, when I got that award? You told me what to say to the mayor. And then he asked me to call him Gavin anyway.”

  “But you didn’t have to curtsy to him.”

  “True,” Carly acknowledged. “But I know who to come to if I ever have to meet Mac’s parents.”

  “You could ask Mac,” Gillian said. “I’d buy a ticket to wat
ch her curtsy to anyone.”

  “I wish we could ask Mac,” Carly said. “I never thought I’d say this, but I miss her. She’s really solid under all the fireworks and attitude.”

  “She wouldn’t have said anything stupid to Rashid,” I put in. “She’d reduce the Secret Service to ash in one second and have him groveling at her feet, begging her to let him buy her a Caribbean island in the next.”

  They all laughed, and Lissa gave me a sideways glance. “So how come you never told us you used to know him?”

  “It never came up. And I forgot he existed until my mom told me about him in an e-mail.” I willed the blush back down to where it came from.

  “It is a little weird, though,” Gillian said. “His singling you out of the crowd like that.”

  “Not to mention recognizing you when you didn’t recognize him,” Carly added.

  “He was just dazzled by my beauty, and Vanessa wasn’t there to upstage me.” I congratulated my clever self on my airy tone. “But it’s no big mystery. My mom sends his mom my school picture every year. Maybe she showed one to him.”

  They seemed to accept that, and then they pounced on Gillian, demanding the scoop on her love life. I lay on my back, my gaze on the plaster border of Greek keys on the ceiling and my mind on a pair of dark eyes.

  Make that two pairs. Both brown, both full of intelligence and humor and the knowledge of the power they had over girls.

  Just yesterday, I’d wanted with all my heart for Danyel Johnstone to look at me as though I were his dream come to life.

  But he hadn’t. The prince had.

  And what was I going to do about that, I’d like to know?

  Chapter 4

  LATER IN THE EVENING, the girls dragged me to Room 216 for the first prayer circle of senior year. You’re probably wondering why I went when I was so sketchy on the subject of religion. But the truth was, I kind of liked it. It reminded me of my grandma in a weird way, even though she’s been singing alto in heaven for five years now. It felt safe to be there, and it reminded me of my promise to myself that I wouldn’t be an island anymore.