Who Made You a Princess? (15 page)

Next to me, Lissa waited the usual couple of seconds and then I heard her inhale.

“God?” I blurted, as much to my own surprise as everyone else’s. “God, I have no idea if you’re out there listening to me,
but these guys say you are. They say that if I just talk to You, You’ll answer. Okay. I’m talking. I’m dealing with a lot
of stress and a lot of things are bugging me. If You can give me a hand with that, I’ll be glad. Thanks.” I paused. What did
they say to wrap it up? Oh, yeah. “Amen.”

It took Lissa a second to speak. I guess she was recovering from the surprise. Anyway, she swallowed and began to pray, and
then Gillian and Carly followed her. When we were done, Carly came over and hugged me, hard.

“Kinda surprised, huh,” I mumbled.

“Does this mean you want to give your life to God?” she asked.

“No!” I made “go away” motions with my hands. “
Nein. Non. Nada
. It doesn’t mean anything. I need a little extra help, that’s all, and you guys say this is the way to get it. I’m just giving
it a try. Don’t read anything into it.”

“God might read something into it.” Gillian was smiling like she knew something I didn’t. Which, on every other subject, is
probably true. “You might start something He’s going to finish.”

“I’ll leave that up to Him.” Time to change the subject. “Who’s up for Starbucks?”

Gillian, Jeremy, and Lissa waved their hands. Carly shook her head. “I’m going to walk over to Brett’s with him. His mom made
zabaglione and wants us to eat most of it so she won’t.”

The four of us wandered down the hill in the twilight. It was still warm, but on the edges of the air, you could feel that
fall was going to arrive any second. We were still two blocks from Starbucks when my phone rang.

“You guys go ahead. It’s Danyel.”

I flipped it open and leaned against a convenient garden wall cleverly designed to look as if it had been hand-chipped in
Italy. “Hey. Didn’t I just see you?”

His smile overflowed into his voice. “Lissa let me join you, huh? I never know if that girl is going to keep the lid on me
or not.”

“She’d never do that. It’s kind of neat. You should get Kaz to do it, too.”

“He’s too shy.”

“Why? Doesn’t he pray in church?”

“Not that kind of shy. Whenever Lissa is in the room, shy takes on a whole new meaning.”

“Uh-huh. When are you gonna sit that boy down and tell him that if he doesn’t make his move, she’s going to do something extreme—like
date a jock. This guy named Tate is hanging around us way too much, and since Jeremy warned him off Gillian, and I know it’s
not for my benefit, and Mac won’t give him the time of day, that leaves her.”

“Ugh. Say it ain’t so.”

“She’s not desperate, but she’s not short of offers, either. I’m tellin’ you, the risk is there.”

He thought for a moment. “Can you keep a secret?”

“Do chickens have lips?”

“Uh, I’m guessing no.”

“I’m bad at secrets. If they’re good news, I want to share ASAP. If they’re bad news, the person usually needs to know. So.
Not good with secrets.”

He laughed. “Okay, well, try to hang onto this one, will you? Kaz wants to come up there one of these weekends. So of course
I’d ride shotgun.”

“That’d be great. We’d love to see you.”

“He’s so happy about the Hearst medal, you’d think
he
was the finalist.”

“Oh, I get it. It’s totally just an excuse to see her.”

“And it’s totally just an excuse for me to see you. So, see? It’d work out for everyone.”

I laughed while my stomach did a nosedive into my Miu Miu flats. “You’re not thinking
this
weekend, are you?”

He didn’t seem to hear the edge in my tone. Thank goodness for the missing bar on my cell phone’s reception. “That would mean
we actually had a plan. I don’t know. Kaz told Gillian sometime soon, though. I mean, he’d better do something before they
announce the winner, right?”

“Right.”
Breathe. Whew
. “But wait. Kaz told Gillian? Isn’t he talking to Lissa, like, on a daily basis?”

“I think he called to say congrats when the list came out, but he doesn’t want to smother her.” He paused. “So, who’s Rashid?”

“Guhhh, what?”

“Did you just walk under a power line? I said, who’s Rashid? Gillian said he was the new face in town. I figure he has to
be one of your trust fund types.”

“Yeah, he’s a real prince.”

Danyel laughed. “And you’re still hanging out with him?”

“I wouldn’t say we were hanging out.” Making out, maybe. I pressed a hand to my hot face. I had to end this conversation.
“But he’s nice enough. Listen, Danyel, I have to go. Everyone’s waiting for me.”

“No problem. See you soon, I hope.”

“Me, too.”

I hung up and sucked in a big breath of air.
Calm. Breathe. Think
.

First order of business: Impress upon Gillian that there were certain subjects that needed to stay off-limits. And my connection
with Rashid was one of them.

Second order: Make up my inconsistent, treacherous, two-timing mind and decide which guy I was going out with.

Before Danyel turned up when I least expected it.

IT TOOK RASHID
a couple of days to get over my lack of obedience training. On Thursday afternoon after classes were over he found me on
the front lawn in the sun, my World Lit books scattered around me.

“There you are.” As if he hadn’t been ignoring me for half the week, he folded himself onto the grass, pulling a fat old tome
of literary theory out from under his hip. I appeared to have been forgiven. “What are you working on?”

“Midterm paper.” Where was that paragraph I’d marked in Nalo Hopkinson’s
The Salt Roads
? What insanity had made me decide that a paper on the connection between love and immortality in Caribbean myth was a good
idea? And most important of all, how was I going to get this done before class on Monday? Friday afternoon was devoted to
manicures and massages, Saturday was hair and makeup, and Sunday was recovery. Nobody could expect anything out of me until
at least two o’clock—especially homework.

“Stop now and—” Rashid checked himself. “Please take a break from your work. I would like to talk to you.”

I had to give the guy credit. He was willing to swallow his royal habits and relate to me like an ordinary person. The least
I could do was talk to him. “Okay. But only for a minute. I seriously have to get some of this written today. I don’t want
it bugging me while I’m trying to have fun getting ready for the party Saturday.”

“It is the party I want to talk about.”

“Oh. Well, then. Why didn’t you say so?” I grinned at him, sat back on my hands, and then a thought struck me. “You didn’t
change your mind and decide to go to Cream, did you?” That would mean that underneath, he was really mad at me and I’d have
to do some serious kissing up to get back in his good books.

Not because I was shallow and liked hanging out with royalty. But because he was my friend, and it left me feeling hollow
inside when my friends were mad at me. If I was going to go to Due with him, I wanted everything to be cool between us.

He shook his head. “But I realized I did not actually ask you to go with me. It is all very well to do these things as a group
of friends, but that is no longer enough for me.”

“Of course I’ll go with you.” I’d figure out how to explain it to Danyel later. Or…hey. Maybe that was the answer. Maybe Danyel
needed to know I’d been with someone else to light a fire under his fine behind. Maybe that would make him unload this fixation
on me having to be someone I wasn’t yet—and goose him past “just friends” to “boyfriend.”

“I had hoped you might say that.” Rashid smiled, a slow, intimate smile that, okay, made my temperature rise a couple of degrees.
Was I conflicted or what? I wanted Danyel because of who he was, and I wanted Rashid because of how he made me feel. And how
he might make Danyel feel. As in, jealous.

That’s pretty low. First of all, Rashid is your friend. How’s he going to feel when he finds out you want to use him like
that?

Well, when you put it that way…I wished they’d flip. I wanted Rashid thinking in “just friends” mode and Danyel thinking in
“boyfriend” mode. But they were just the opposite.

Having two guys on the hook was a lot harder and more complicated than I’d ever thought it would be.

Meanwhile, Rashid waited patiently for me to say something. “I have to confess, I kind of took it for granted we were going
as a couple, even if I made you mad this week,” I said. “Guess I would have looked the fool, huh?”

“I am not, as you say, mad. And you will never look foolish on my account.” He sounded as if that was about to be written
into parliamentary law, back there in Yasir. “In fact, if you will allow me, the opposite will be true.”

How intriguing. “What do you mean?”

“You have several big events coming up in the next weeks, yes?”

I counted off on my fingers. “Sure. Saturday night, for one. The movie premiere. The annual Christmas shindig the school holds
to support the San Francisco Ballet School. And that doesn’t even count stuff like graduation.”

“And you will need things to wear to all of these.”

I laughed. “Like I need air to breathe. What are you getting at, Rashid?”

He reached into the inner pocket of his school blazer and pulled out a flat, narrow velvet box. On the top I glimpsed an H
and a W, set in a cartouche.

Oh.

My.

G—

“I would be honored if you would accept this and wear it to these events.”

Harry Winston. That couldn’t be a Harry Winston box. No way. He was using it to hold something else, like a charm bracelet
he’d gotten down at the wharf, with “I
San Francisco” and little Golden Gate Bridges dangling from it.