Who Made You a Princess? (22 page)

“Out!”

WHEN I WOKE UP
, the disembodied voices were a memory, the sounds rippling lazily like the long tails of ornamental goldfish. What time was
it? What day was it?

Bright lights. Ow.

“Shani? Are you awake?”

A cool hand covered my forehead and I blinked my eyes open. “Mom.”

She hitched a chair closer and stroked my cheek. “You had us pretty worried for a while there.”

“Where am I?”

“SF General.”

“What happened?”

“You tried to step on a Prius. It fought back.”

I huffed out a breath in place of a laugh. Pain stabbed in—stomach, diaphragm, shoulders.

Guh
. No more laughing.

“Your friend Carly said you ran in front of a car. According to her, you did a barrel roll over its hood and landed in the
middle of the intersection. You hit your head pretty hard on the concrete. Fortunately the driver was a quick thinker. He
jumped out and pulled you over to the sidewalk.”

“Is she here?”

“The driver was a man, dear. No, he’s not.”

“Not him. Carly.”

“She called 9-1-1 and the school, who called me. From what I gather, she rode in the ambulance with you.”

Of course she had. What would I do without a friend like Carly? First Mac, now me. The sweet girl with the core of steel was
making a career out of saving people’s lives.

“She’s not here now, though. I told them to go home.”

“Mac was here, too?”

“I don’t know. Who’s Mac?”

“Redhead. Scottish. Attitude.”

“Oh. Her. Yes, she was here this morning. But not for long.”

“They’re my friends. You shouldn’t have chased them away.”

Mom felt my forehead again, then adjusted the blankets over my chest. Just like a real mother. “I don’t need your permission
to decide what’s best for you. What you need is to recover.”

I didn’t like the sound of that. How badly was I messed up? I wiggled my fingers. Check. IV in back of hand. Eww.

Eyes worked. Ears worked. Mouth obviously worked. I ran my tongue over my teeth. All there.

Toes? Check. Legs? Check. “What does the doctor say?”

“He says you’re luckier than the Prius. That’s going to be totaled.”

Uh-oh
. “I am okay, right?”

“For some reason, you didn’t even break a toe. Your French tips are ruined, however, and you’ve got bruises everywhere. And
he thinks you may have a bit of concussion, from the size of the lump on your head, so that’s why they kept you overnight.”

“I’m okay.” Wow. Sweet relief spilled through me. “I’d hate to go to the premiere on crutches.”

“That’s the least of your worries.”

“Why?” Was there some internal trauma no one had the guts to tell me about?

“I’m very sorry that the news about Rashid upset you so badly, darling. You shouldn’t have run away. Then this would never
have happened.”

Oh, I get it. Being hit by a car was so my fault. Yep.

I turned my head, but there was nothing to look at except drawn curtains. I still couldn’t tell if it was day or night. “I
don’t want to talk about it.”

“We need to talk about it.”

“Not now. I wanna sleep.”

If my body couldn’t escape the scheming harpy who had taken over my mother’s body, my brain and the painkillers knew what
to do. I slid gratefully into the dark.

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Date: October 22, 2009

Re: Coming back

Thank you for your funny e-mail messages and Flickr photos. You are a true friend and I have appreciated every word. I was
very sorry not to see you at the Due opening. I would have appreciated your support at what was a very difficult and disappointing
time for me.

I have just arrived and am sending this from the limo. I look forward to seeing you again in Global Studies. Or perhaps sooner.

Rashid

T
HE NEXT TIME
I woke up, I came face to face with the biggest bouquet of flowers I’d ever seen outside of a hotel lobby. Birds of paradise,
lilies, frangipani—it was like a chunk of some tropical island had landed on my bedside table.

Dear Shani,

I was devastated to hear of your accident and hope you are recovering quickly. Please accept these poor flowers and think
of me each time you look at them.

Yours,

Rashid

I gazed at them with admiration, breathing in the fresh scent of greenery and the heady perfume of the flowers. Bashir had
terrific taste. Or maybe he had a handbook of what flowers to send on every social occasion the prince would ever need. because
I wasn’t fooling myself that Rashid had chosen them himself.

The handwriting on the card looked pretty authentic, though. Maybe I was dissing him. It wasn’t his fault my parents—and maybe
even his—had suckered him into a deal neither of us wanted. He was just as much a pawn as I, only he’d accepted his fate a
lot more gracefully.

“Shani?”

Carly leaned in the doorway, followed immediately by Gillian, Lissa, and Mac.

I couldn’t help the big, silly grin that spread all over my face like warm honey. “Girlfriends!”

They piled into the room as if it was our dorm, pulling up chairs, sitting on my bed, oohing over the flowers. Carly pulled
an orange tiger lily out of the bouquet, snapped off most of its stem, and tucked it behind my ear.

“There,” she said with satisfaction. “Good accessories can overcome even blah hospital gowns.”

I pulled her into a hug. “The only accessory I need is you guys. Thanks for saving my life, by the way.”

“You’d do the same for me.” She made herself comfortable on the edge of the bed.

“She hasn’t had as much practice as you,” Mac told her.

Then I looked more closely at the two of them. “What’s with the suits? Is that more Chanel?”

“Vintage sixties.” Mac plucked at the navy-blue boxy jacket with its signature cream piping. “Mummy dug it up and brought
it with her for the court case, since this isn’t my usual thing. She thought it would be more appropriate.”

I glanced at her feet, where she was styling her Louboutin ankle boots. “That’s better. You had me worried for a minute. So
you guys had to appear again today?” I thought for a second. “What is today?”

“Thursday. You stepped on that Prius yesterday,” Carly said. “And yeah, we did. Today David’s lawyer cross-examined us.”

“I bet that was fun,” Gillian said. “Did you wipe the floor with him?”

“Mac did.” Carly smiled at her. “But we didn’t come all the way over here to talk about that.” She patted my hand—the one
without the IV. “We want to know how you are and when you’re coming back.”

I glanced at the door, as if a doctor would come in and tell me. “I don’t know. I’m sore, and I banged my head, but nothing
big.”

“Thank You, Lord,” Lissa told the ceiling.

“I’d go back today, if I could.”

“Rashid’s back at school,” Gillian said.

“On second thought, I think I’ll finish out the term right here.” I pulled the sheet out from under Carly and hauled it up
to my chin.

“Are those from him?” Lissa waved a hand at the flowers.

“They’re probably from Bashir, but Rashid signed the card.”

“Oh, man.” Gillian looked pained. “
We
should have sent flowers.”

“Trust me, I’d rather look at his flowers and see you,” I assured her, “not the other way around.”

“Carly said something bad happened when your parents came to see you yesterday at school,” Lissa said a little hesitantly,
“but she’s being such a clam we couldn’t get it out of her.”

“You didn’t say I could tell.” Carly made a sorry face. “And with your mom kicking us out this morning and court today it
didn’t come up again.”

“No big.” I looked at them, one after another. “My parents only flew halfway around the world to flash me the big headline
that—”

“Shani!” My father walked in, stepping all over my words, my doctor trailing behind him the way Bashir and Farrouk trailed
in Rashid’s wake. “I’m so glad to see you awake and feeling well enough to have visitors.”

Yeah, I bet.
“Girls, this is my father, Roger Hanna. Dad, these are my roommates, Carly and Mac, and our friends, Gillian and Lissa.”

Dad nodded at them. “Nice to meet you girls.”

“Carly is the one who saved my life.”

“So I understand. Also the one who masqueraded as your sister.”

She and I exchanged a smile. “I so see the family resemblance,” I said. “You have my grandma’s eyes.”

“I don’t think telling those kinds of lies is so funny.” Sheesh, had he left his sense of humor on the luggage carousel at
SFO or what?

“There are other kinds that aren’t so funny, either,” I said pleasantly.

The doctor, who had been checking numbers on the machines ranged on one side of the bed, cleared his throat. Carly grabbed
the moment and slid off the bed. “It was great to see you, Shani. We’ll be going now.”

“’Bye, guys.” I felt as pathetic as I sounded as all the people I really wanted around me trooped out of the room, glancing
at my father as they went. When I couldn’t hear their voices anymore, I sighed.

Now I really felt sick.

The doctor typed something on the wall-mounted keyboard. “Your vitals are good, Shani, and we’ll do a couple of checks on
your responses to make sure, but I think I can release you tonight.”

“Yeah?”

“Just promise me you’ll lie low for a couple of days. No late-night partying, no alcohol, no sports until after the weekend.”

“No problem.” What, did the guy think I’d been drinking when I’d run out into the intersection? With another sigh, I let it
go.

“I’ll give you some time to visit with your dad while I do the paperwork, and then he can take you back to school.”

Oh, joy. Could we skip Part A and go straight to Part B?

Guess not.

Dad reached over and plucked the flower out of my hair. He looked around for somewhere to put it, and finally settled for
tucking it in at the bottom of the bouquet, where it hung suspended, just out of reach of the water.

“What did you do that for? I liked it.”

“It’s not respectful of Rashid’s gift.”

“I wore his diamonds. Why not his flowers?”

He looked at me as though he wanted to call the doctor back and tell him to rethink my release. “Is this a side-effect of
painkillers, Shani? All this crankiness?”

“It’s a side-effect of
you
, Dad. You come in here, chase my friends away, take away my flower, and then criticize me.”

He gave me a long look, but there was no anger in it. I was almost sorry. If I couldn’t get love out of him, then at least
we could pick a fight. “I’m going to cut you some slack, because you’ve been through an ordeal. But before they release you
and we go back to Spencer, we need to talk.”

The sleep strategy probably wouldn’t work, and he sat between me and the door. “Dad, you want one thing. I want something
completely different. End of talk.”

“I think if you knew the circumstances, you might reconsider your position.”

“I doubt it.”

He gazed at me from the chair, frowning. “When did you get to be so…obdurate?”