Who Made You a Princess? (16 page)

He tilted back the lid, and it would have taken the threat of death for me not to look.

Nestled in black velvet was a diamond necklace.

And not just any necklace. A diamond cluster necklace from the latest collection, with a big yellow stone dangling from the
center. It had to have been custom-made, because that stone hadn’t been on any of the fashion Web sites. And none of the pieces
in the new collection had appeared in any of the magazines yet—only customers like my mother had had advance previews.

I dragged my gaze off it, looked up at Rashid, and sat on my hands so they wouldn’t grab. At him or the necklace, I wasn’t
sure.

“Who is this for?” I finally managed out of a throat that threatened to close up altogether.

“It is for you. Don’t you like it?”

“Anyone would be insane not to like it. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

“Then why are you not putting it on?” He tilted slightly to the left, lifting an amused eyebrow at my hands, flattened on
the grass under my thighs.

“Because it can’t be for me.”

“I assure you it is. It was delivered into the hands of Farrouk on Monday in New York.”

“You sent the poor guy all the way to New York to get this?”

“It would have come from London, but the gentleman who prepares my mother’s pieces was on his way to Cabo San Lucas and agreed
to meet halfway.”

Okay, I was seriously dreaming. I turned one hand over and pinched it.

Ow
. Not dreaming.

Not accepting reality very well, either.

I gave the necklace’s pretty pear-shaped clusters one last hungry look and released my hands from prison long enough to close
the box and push it toward Rashid. “Of course I can’t accept this.”

“Of course you can. I ordered it for you. You will look like the princess in the fairy tale.”

“No. I’m serious. Even if you weren’t richer than Bill Gates squared, I couldn’t take it. This isn’t a fairy tale. It’s serious—the
kind of thing a guy gives his fiancée. And we aren’t even going out. I’m nothing to you except a little girl you played with
on a beach. Our
mothers
are closer than we are.”

Slowly, his face changed from “Look what I did—aren’t you delighted?” to “Oh my gosh, she really means it.” I hoped the necklace
was returnable to the gentleman in Cabo.

My hands still tingled with the urge to rip the box out of his hands and run away with it, but I stood my ground. Well, technically,
I sat my ground.

Get up, Shani. Walk away from the pretty sparklies.

Rashid looked so disappointed that I reached out and touched his hand. His pride I had no problem stepping on. But a person’s
feelings mattered, and it had taken him—and Farrouk—considerable time to do this. Not to mention expense. My brain couldn’t
even go there. I spoke as gently as I could. “This necklace is what you give a girl at the end of the—the, um, courtship.
When you decide to get married. Not at the beginning, when you’ve only had two dates.”

“You are special to me,” he said softly. “This is how I must express it. You are not just the little girl on the beach. You
are the friend who has made my time away from home bearable. Even when you are angry, you have been a friend to me when others
have been—how do you say it?—only suckups.” We grinned at a word like that coming out of his mouth. “This gift holds my thanks
for your friendship, and my hopes that someday it might be more.”

Something in my hard little heart melted, just on the very edges, and the heat of it sent a blush into my face. “Rashid, I—I
can’t promise you more.”

“I know it is very soon. But I wanted you to know of my hopes.”

I couldn’t speak. This was way more serious than a couple of dates and a kiss. This was that river, back in full force. I
couldn’t walk into it and come out intact.

“May I make a suggestion?” he asked gently, when the silence filled with traffic noises and birdsong and me not talking.

I looked up. “Sure.”

“Will you wear the necklace on Saturday night, simply as a loan from a friend? It would please me very much.”

I opened my mouth to say no, and stalled as a visual filled the screen of my mind. Dancing at Due, sparkling in the single
most expensive object I or any of my friends had ever worn. Well, okay, with the possible exception of the eighteenth-century
tiara that Mac had tucked away in her mom’s bank vault. Maybe we’d even drop in at Cream so Vanessa could get an eyeful of
it. Call me shallow, but I wanted to step out of my self-imposed shell and show those people I was someone, that I had friends
to whom I mattered. That I wasn’t an island anymore.

I blinked and focused on Rashid. “Just Saturday night. And then I give it back to you and you give it back to the, er, gentleman
in Cabo.”

“Agreed.”

“Rashid, for a prince, you make a really nice guy.”

He laughed and leaned over to kiss me on the cheek. As he did, he slipped the narrow velvet box into the pocket of my jacket.
“Keep this safe.”

“I will.” Duh. I wondered if Ms. Curzon had an underground bunker I could keep it in.

“And now I must go beat Tate DeLeon, who has been foolish enough to challenge me to a game of squash.” He got up, nodded at
Bashir and Farrouk, who were pretending to be garden statues, and walked across the lawn in the direction of the field house.

Leaving me with a couple of million in diamonds in my school jacket.

I waited until he was safely out of sight, then scooped up all my books and threw them into my bag. The velvet box bumped
gently against my hip as I ran into the building, up three flights of stairs, and down the corridor into my room.

Carly and Mac jumped about a foot as the door bounced off the wall and slammed itself shut behind me.

“Shani!” Carly squeaked. “What happened to you?”

I tossed my bag on the floor so that it skidded across the parquet and fetched up against my bed. “You will not believe—”
I managed to gasp, and ran for the bathroom with its four-foot mirror.

With shaking hands, I twisted my corkscrew spirals up—
gotta get rid of these first thing and lay on the relaxers
—into an approximation of a roll and clipped it in place. Then I stripped off my jacket and uniform blouse. Carly and Mac
crowded into the bathroom behind me, concern times two crowding in along with them.

“Are you all right?” Mac demanded. “Have you gone utterly mad?”

Standing in only my plaid skirt and lace cami, I pulled the box out of my jacket pocket and opened it. Carly leaned in and
gasped.

Mac squawked a Scottish expletive about some saint on a tricycle in frilly pantaloons.

The necklace slid over my shaking fingers in a cool, sparkling caress as I held it up to my throat. “Somebody do it up,” I
whispered.

Mac fastened the clasp, her own fingers ice-cold against the back of my neck.

“Where…how…?” Carly couldn’t get a sentence started. Her eyes had widened to perfect circles as she gawked at me.

I didn’t try to answer. Every cell in my body was focused on the image in the mirror.

I lifted my chin and dropped my shoulders.

Long, smooth neck.

Cream lace against coffee skin, and lying on it, the frozen fire of all those diamonds. The big yellow one lay dead center,
looking as though it were gaining warmth from my body with every second.

Rashid was right. I looked like a princess.

T
HE INVITATIONS
to the premiere came by messenger on Friday, just in time for half the school to be passing through the reception hall on
their way to the dining room. So naturally everyone heard us squeeing and waving them around and generally giving everyone
something to talk about for the rest of the evening.

Heh.

We didn’t bribe the messenger, I promise.

I hadn’t realized just how far the news had gone until I was hangin’ in the common room the next day, flipping through the
latest issue of
WWD
and waiting for the rest of the girls to get themselves together for our mani/pedi afternoon. I was quite happy with nothing
in my head but the latest designs from Alexander McQueen when Rory Stapleton plunked his sorry self down on the couch next
to me.

What, had The Bad Place frozen over and all the little demons gone skating?

“Hey.” He grinned at me like all I’d ever wanted was this precious moment between us. “I want to talk to you.”

I slapped the magazine shut and rolled it up, just in case. “What?”

“Would you relax? I don’t bite.”

“Yeah. You do. You totally bite.”

He laughed as if I’d said something hilarious. “So. Howzigoin’”

“Fine. Whatsitoya?”

Again with the laugh. He sounded like Eeyore on a good day. “You’re such a funny chick.”

“Dude. I have to go. What do you want?”

“How’s the prince?”

“I don’t know. Haven’t seen him since yesterday, when we were all in American Diplomacy. That’s, like, a class. Do you go
to those, or do you just buy a grade off the Net?”

He waited until I was done. I don’t think he even heard me. “So you guys aren’t, like, official?”

“How is that any of your business?”

He shrugged, still grinning. “I wouldn’t want to get a rep as a poacher, that’s all. A man has his pride.”

I stared at him. What did that have to do with me? “Bottom line, Rory.” Ugh. I’d never voluntarily said his name. It felt
like oil in my mouth.

“Bottom line is, I wondered if you had a date for the Cream gig tomorrow.”

Lucky thing I was leaning on the arm of the couch. Otherwise I would have fallen right off it and sprawled on the floor. “Why
would I be going to Cream? And why would you ever think I’d go with you?”

“Great, you don’t have a date. I’ve got a tier-one pass.” He lifted his arms and did a disgusting shimmy with his hips, which
made his shirt pull out of his waistband, which made him look even more of a mess than he was. “We can dance, drink, get nasty.
Huh? I figure you’re a woman with taste. If a guy’s gotta have someone’s seconds, it might as well be royalty.”

I stared at him for a moment. Had he really said what I thought he’d said?

No. He couldn’t have.

The grin slid sideways off his face. “What’s the matter? You only date black guys?”

With all this offensiveness, I hardly knew where to begin. Maybe I should do like Lissa, and make a list. I stood up, clutching
the rolled-up magazine. “One, you better not mean what I think you mean by
seconds
. Two, I date people I like, no matter what color they are. And three, I would rather date a Gila monster and go swimming
in a live volcano than go out with you.”

It took him a second to process this much information. Then his eyebrows went up. “You like swimming? We could go to the beach.”

“No. Not now. Not ever.”

“But me and Brett are buds. You and MexiDog are buds. That’s, like, a foursome. You should try me on. You might like me.”

I leaned into his face, and when his gaze dipped to my chest, the rat, I grabbed his chin and yanked it up. “Do. Not. Ever.
Call her that in front of me.”

“Uh. Okay. Hurting.” As soon as I let go, he said, “So is it true you gave it up for the prince?”

“What?”
I lost it and walloped him upside the head with
WWD
so hard he didn’t even have the sense left to yell. “Go ahead, say that again!” I shrieked, and whapped him a second time.
He threw himself over the back of the couch, but I didn’t stick around to get the satisfaction of seeing him cowering on the
floor. I hit the door and stomped across the entry hall, every slap of my jeweled flip-flops sounding like the smack of a
hand on a face.

I looked up at a commotion on the stairs, and what a relief—there were my girls. “You guys are gonna have to wait,” I said.
“I need a shower.”

“What happened?” Carly looked me up and down. “Are you okay? Did you spill something?”

“No. Rory Stapleton asked me out. And then he insulted me to the power of a hundred.”

Shrieks of disgust bounced off the floors, the stone pots with their palm trees, and the row of French windows opening onto
the quad. They probably also bounced off the side of Rory’s head, since he was still in the common room, but I didn’t care.
“I took care of him. He won’t be opening his nasty mouth again. Let’s get out of here.”