And Stacey Cheeseman has done all those Gap Kids commercials, and had that part in that Sean Penn movie. J.P.'s even got Andrew Lowenstein, Brad Pitt's third cousin's nephew, playing the part of the male lead. The thing is bound to be HUGE. I hear, from people who've seen it, it might even have Hollywood potential.

But, back to the whole prom thing: It's not like I don't know J.P. loves me. He tells me so, like, ten times a day- Oh, G.o.d, I forgot how annoyed everyone gets when I start writing in my journal instead of paying attention to what's going on. Lana is making me try on a strapless Badgley Mischka now.

Look, I get the fashion thing now. I do. How you look on the outside is a reflection of how you feel about yourself on the inside. If you let yourself go-not washing your hair, wearing the same clothes you slept in all day or clothes that don't fit or are out of style-that says, "I do not care about myself. And you shouldn't care about me either."

You have to Make An Effort, because that says to other people I Am Worth Getting To Know. Your clothes don't have to be expensive. You just have to look good in them.

I realize that now, and acknowledge that in the past, I may have slacked off in that area (although I still wear my overalls at home on the weekends when no one is around).

And since I've stopped binge eating, my weight has stopped fluctuating, and I'm back down to a B cup.

So I get the fashion thing. I do.

But honestly-why does Lana think I look good in purple? Just because it's the color of royalty doesn't mean it looks good on every royal! Not to be mean, but has anyone taken a good look at Queen Elizabeth lately? She so needs neutral colors.

An excerpt from Ransom My Heart by Daphne Delacroix Shropshire, England, 1291 Hugo stared down at the lovely apparition swimming naked below him, his thoughts a jumble in his head. Foremost amongst them was the question, Who is she?, though he knew the answer to that. Finnula Crais, the miller's daughter. There had been a family of that name in villenage to his father, Hugo remembered.

This, then, must be one of their offspring. But what was this miller about, allowing a defenseless maid to roam the countryside unescorted and dressed in such provocative garb-or completely undressed, as the case now stood?

As soon as Hugo arrived at Stephensgate Manor, he would send for the miller, and see to it that the girl was better protected in the future. Did the man not ken the riffraff that traveled the roads these days, the footpads and cutthroats and despoilers of young women such as the one below him?

So fixed was Hugo upon his musings that for a moment, he did not realize that the maid had paddled out of view. Where the waterfall cascaded, the pool below was out of his line of vision, being blocked off by the rock outcropping on which he lay. He a.s.sumed that the girl had ducked beneath the waterfall, perhaps to rinse her hair.

Hugo waited, pleasantly antic.i.p.ating the girl's reappearance. He wondered to himself whether the chivalrous thing to do was to creep away now, without drawing attention to himself, then meet up with her again upon the road, as if by accident, and offer her escort home to the Stephensgate.

It was as he was deciding that he heard a soft sound behind him, and then suddenly, something very sharp was at his throat, and someone very light was astride his back.

It was with an effort that Hugo controlled his soldierly instinct to strike first and question later.

But he had never before felt so slim an arm circle his neck, nor such slight thighs straddle his back. Nor had his head ever been jerked against such a temptingly soft cushion.

"Stay perfectly still," advised his captor, and Hugo, enjoying the warmth from her thighs and, more particularly, the softness of the hollow between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, where she kept the back of his head firmly anch.o.r.ed, was happy to oblige her.

"I've a knife at your throat," the maid informed him in her boyishly throaty voice, "but I won't use it unless I have to. If you do as I say, you shan't be harmed. Do you understand?"

Thursday, April 27, 7 p.m., the loft Daphne Delacroix

1005 Thompson Street, Apt. 4A

New York, NY 10003

Dear Author, Thank you for giving us the opportunity to read your ma.n.u.script. However, it does not suit our needs at the present time.

Not even a signature! Thanks for nothing.

I just walked in the door and Mom wants to know why someone named Daphne Delacroix keeps getting all this mail from publishing houses addressed to our apartment.

Busted!

I thought about lying to her, too, but there's no point, really. She's going to catch me eventually, especially if Ransom My Heart does get published someday, and I build my own wing onto the Royal Genovian Hospital, or whatever.

Okay, well, I have no idea how much published novelists get paid, but I heard the forensic mystery writer Patricia Cornwell bought a helicopter with her book money.

Not that I need a helicopter, because I have my own jet (well, Dad does).

So I was just like, "I sent out my book under a fake name just to see if I could get it published."

My mom already suspects what I wrote wasn't a really long history paper. I couldn't lie to her about it. She saw me in my room, listening to the Marie Antoinette movie sound-track with my headphones on and Fat Louie by my side, typing away all the time...well, whenever I wasn't at school, princess lessons, therapy, or out with Tina or J.P.

I know it's bad to lie to your own mother. But if I told her what my book was really about, she'd want to read it.

And there's no way I want Helen Thermopolis reading what I actually wrote. I mean, s.e.x scenes and your mother? No, thank you.

"Well," Mom said, pointing to my letter. "What did they say?"

"Oh," I said. "Not interested."

"Hmmm," Mom said. "It's a tough market these days. Especially for a history on Genovian olive oil presses."

"Yeah," I said. "Tell me about it."

G.o.d, what if TMZ got hold of the truth about me? What a liar I am, I mean? What kind of role model am I? I make Vanessa Hudgens look like Mother Freaking Teresa. Minus the whole nudity thing. Because I'm not about to take naked photos of myself and send them to my boyfriend.

Thankfully it was kind of hard to have a conversation with Mom because Mr. G was practicing his drums, with Rocky banging along on his toy drum set.

When he saw me, Rocky dropped his drumsticks and ran over to throw his arms around my knees, screaming, "Meeeeeeaaaaaaahhhhhh!"

It's nice to be able to come home to someone who's always happy to see you, even if it's an almost three-year-old.

"Yeah, hi, I'm home," I said. It's no joke trying to walk with a toddler attached to you. "What's for dinner?"

"It's two-for-one pizza night at Tre Giovanni," Mr. Gianini said, hanging up his sticks. "How can you even ask?"

"Where were you?" Rocky wanted to know.

"I had to go shopping with my friends," I said.

"But you din't buy anything," Rocky said, looking at my empty hands.

"I know," I explained, heading to the kitchen drawer where we keep the silverware with him still attached to me. It's my job to set the table. I may be a princess, but I still have ch.o.r.es. That's one thing we established during family sessions with Dr. K. "That's because we went prom dress shopping, and I'm not going to the prom, because it's lame."

"Since when is the prom lame?" Mr. Gianini wanted to know, wrapping a towel around his neck. Drumming can make you sweaty, as I know all too well, from the small damp person attached to my legs.

"Since she became a bitingly sarcastic, soon-to-be college girl," Mom said, pointing at me. "Speaking of which, family meeting after dinner. Oh, h.e.l.lo."

She said this last part into the phone, then gave Tre our standard order of two medium pies, one all meat for herself and Mr. G, and one all cheese, for Rocky and me. I'm back on the vegetarian bandwagon. Well, I'm really more of a flexatarian...I don't order meat for myself except in times of extreme stress when I need a quick source of high protein, such as beef tacos (so irresistible, though I try to abstain). But when someone else serves meat to me-for instance, at last week's meeting of the Domina Rei-I'll eat it to be polite.

"Family meeting about what?" I demanded, when Mom hung up.

"You," she said. "Your father's scheduled a conference call."

Great. There's really nothing I look forward to more than a nice call from my dad in Genovia in the evening. That's always a big guarantee a good time will be had by all. Not.

"What did I do now?" I wanted to know. Because, seriously, I haven't done anything (except lie to everyone I know about...well, everything). But other than that, I'm always home by curfew, and it isn't even because I have a bodyguard who basically ensures it, either. My boyfriend is way conscientious. J.P. doesn't want to get on the bad side of my father (or mother or stepfather), and when we get together, he freaks if I'm not on my way home a half hour before I'm supposed to be, and so he literally hurls me into Lars's arms every time.

So whatever Dad's calling about-I didn't do it.

Not this time, anyway.

I went to my room to visit Fat Louie before the pizzas came. I worry about him so much. Because let's just say I do choose to make everyone I know furious with me, and go to a college in the U.S. instead of L'Universite de Genovia, which really no one but the sons and daughters of celebrity plastic surgeons and dentists who couldn't get in anywhere else attends. (Spencer Pratt from The Hills probably would have gone there, if he hadn't leached his way on to his girlfriend's ex-friend's TV show. Lana probably would have had to go there, if I hadn't forced her to make studying, not getting onto lastnightsparty.com, a priority her junior year.) The thing is, none of the colleges I got into has dorms that let you bring your cat. Which means if I go there and I want to bring Fat Louie, I'll have to live off-campus. So I won't meet anyone, and I'll be a bigger social leper than I would be otherwise.

But how can I leave Fat Louie behind? He's afraid of Rocky...understandably, because Rocky adores Fat Louie and every time he sees him he runs and tries to grab him and pick him up and squeeze him, which has given Fat Louie, of course, a complex, because he doesn't like being grabbed and squeezed.

So now Fat Louie just stays in my room (which Rocky is forbidden from entering because he messes with my Buffy the Vampire Slayer action figures) when I'm not around to protect him.

And if I go off to college, that means Fat Louie'll just be hiding in my room for four years with no one to sleep with him and scratch him under the ears the way he likes.

That's just wrong.

Oh, sure, Mom says that he can move into her room (which Rocky is also forbidden from entering-unsupervised, anyway-because he's obsessed with her makeup and once ate one of her entire Lancome Au Currant Velvet lipsticks, so she had to put one of those slippy things on her doork.n.o.b, too).

But I don't know if Fat Louie will really like sleeping with Mr. G, who snores.

My phone! It's J.P.

Thursday, April 27, 7:30 p.m., the loft J.P. wanted to know how prom dress shopping went. I lied to him, of course. I was like, "Great!"

Our conversation slipped into the Twilight Zone from there.

"Did you get anything?" he wanted to know.

I couldn't believe he was asking. I was truly shocked. You know, what with the whole his having neglected to ask me to the prom thing, and all. Silly me, to a.s.sume we weren't going.

I said, "No..."

My shock grew beyond all bounds when he then went on to say, "Well, when you do, you have to let me know what color it is, so I'll know what color corsage to get you."

h.e.l.lo?

"Wait," I said. "So...we're going to the prom?" J.P. actually laughed. "Of course!" he said. "I've had the tickets for weeks now."

Then, when I didn't laugh along with him, he stopped laughing, and said, "Wait. We are going, aren't we, Mia?"

I was so stunned, I didn't know what to say. I mean, I- I love J.P. I do!

It's just that for some reason, I don't love the idea of going to the prom with J.P.

Only I wasn't quite sure how I was going to explain that to him without hurting his feelings. Telling him that I thought the prom was lame, like I'd said to Tina, didn't seem like it was going to cut it.

Especially since he'd just admitted he'd had the tickets for weeks. And those things aren't cheap.

Instead I heard myself muttering, "I don't know. You...you never asked."

Which is true. I mean, I was telling the truth. Dr. K would have been proud of me.

But all J.P. said to this was, "Mia! We've been going out for almost two years. I didn't think I had to ask."

I didn't think I had to ask?

I couldn't believe he said this. Even if it's true, well...a girl still wants to be asked! Right?

I don't think I'm the girliest girl in the world-I don't have fake nails (anymore) and I don't diet or anything, even though I'm far from the skinniest girl for my height in our cla.s.s. I'm WAY less girlie than Lana. And I'm a princess.

But still. If a guy wants to take a girl to the prom, he should ask her...

...even if they have been dating exclusively for almost two years.

Because she might not want to go.

Really, is it me? Am I asking too much? I don't think so.

But maybe I am. Maybe expecting to be asked to the prom, rather than just a.s.suming I'm going, is too much.

I don't know. I don't know anything anymore, I guess. J.P. must have realized from my silence that he'd said the wrong thing. Because finally, he said, "Wait...Are you saying that I do have to ask?"

I said, "Um." Because I didn't know what to say! A part of me was like, Yeah! Yeah, you should have asked! But another part of me was like, You know what, Mia? Don't rock the boat. You're graduating in ten days. TEN DAYS. Just let it go.

On the other hand, Dr. K told me to start telling the truth. I'd already not lied to Tina today. I figured I might as well stop lying to my boyfriend, too. So...

"It'd have been nice if you'd asked," I heard myself say, to my own horror.

J.P. did the strangest thing then: He laughed!

Really. Like he thought that was the funniest thing he'd ever heard.