Who Made You a Princess? (7 page)

“You’re some piano player,” Tate told her. “I’ve never heard anything like it.”

“Thanks.” Calmly, she pushed her ketchup toward Jeremy, dipped one of her own fries, and offered it to him. Jeremy took it
and, I swear, fell another fathom deep in love with her.

Brett grinned at his friend, who sat back with a shrug. Clearly he could take a hint without getting bent about it. Meanwhile,
that left me with a prince cleaning up my ketchup. “You keep that up and it’ll all be gone.”

He turned and signaled to one of the bodyguards.

“Oh, please.” I got up. “I’ll get my own.”

“No, no. It is his duty to—”

“You’re kidding, right?”

I walked over to the condiment bar and filled a bigger ramekin. An agent materialized beside me as if I’d rubbed a lamp. “Miss.
Please allow me.”

“This isn’t for him. It’s for me.”

“Please.”

I surrendered the ketchup and rolled my eyes in Lissa’s direction while she tried to keep a straight face and failed.

Great. And here I was, narrowly avoiding a tug-of-war over who was going to present His Highness with a dish of ketchup. I
suddenly felt as if we were six again, fighting over who was going to get the last fig in the dish or who would ride in the
front of the car to the village to get ice cream.

The fact that I could remember that distant holiday at all amazed me. I hadn’t thought about it in years.

What I wanted was to be sitting next to a certain someone the way Gillian and Carly were, leaning on him if I wanted, maybe
even feeling his arm slip around me. I’d share Danyel’s dish any day.

Instead, I got another ramekin off the stack and filled it. With ranch dressing.

“Will you not share with me?” the prince asked when I came back with it.

“No. I changed my mind.”

He looked completely crushed. “But I got this for you.”

I put the dish down next to my plate and sat. “Dude. One, your bodyguard got it, and two, if I share it with you, you’ll just
hog it all again and leave me none. Now get over it and let me eat my lunch.”

And wouldn’t you know it, just as I said those last words, everyone in the vicinity decided to stop talking. My voice, cranky
as the attention-seeking little kid I’d once been, practically echoed.

I wanted to drop through the floor.

At the table by the window, Vanessa Talbot got up and strolled over to us. “Your Highness, my friends and I would be honored
if you’d share your lunch with us.” She glanced at me out of the corner of her mascaraed eye and scooped up his plate and
the ramekin of ketchup as though she’d been waiting tables half her life. “I love fish and chips, don’t you? Come on with
me.”

His spine stiff with the offense I’d dished him, Rashid got up and followed her and his lunch to the other table, where Callum,
DeLayne, Dani, and Emily made a big pro-duction out of making him comfortable and hanging on his every royal word.

Fine. Marvy. Exactly what I’d wanted in the first place.

I eyed the fries cooling on my plate.

And pushed them away.

To: [email protected]

From:
[email protected]

Date: September 28, 2009

Re: Hi

Lissa gave me your e-mail so I hope you don’t mind me invading your inbox. Funny to think that just a week ago we were hanging
out on the beach. Hope school’s going OK. Also that you don’t mind me joining your prayer circle by video. I felt like we
were all connected and I wanted some way to keep feeling that. I’ll give Lissa the YouSendIt link for the next one.

So…I’m curious. You hang with believers and go to church and prayer circle, but from what I can tell, you’re not a believer
yet?
Yet
is a pretty hopeful word though:)

I haven’t forgotten what you said on the beach. You know, when I was leaving. I was so surprised that I didn’t have an answer,
even though you deserved one. It takes me a while to think things through. Drives Kaz nuts sometimes.

So, bottom line, I’ve been thinking about you. Maybe we can get to know each other this way, or I can call you. However you
want to play it, I know one thing. I’ll be praying for you.

Your friend (I hope),

Danyel

I
’
D BEEN MEAN
to the prince. We’d been friends once. We weren’t now. So throw me in the dungeon.

I was still in a mood on Wednesday as I left core class (U.S. History, which is the catch-all where they put me because I’d
designed my own curriculum) and headed to second-period math. Maybe my blues had as much to do with him as with spending the
previous evening reading Danyel’s e-mail and watching his new prayer video over and over again with the sound turned down
so Carly and Mac wouldn’t hear, and then seeing Rashid crossing the quad this morning after breakfast with DeLayne Geary,
who just happened to be going to the library at the same time.

Like she ever went to the library for anything but the latest issue of
Vogue
.

What was I going to have to do to get Danyel’s attention and make him think of me as more than just “your friend, Danyel”?
Date a prince?

Oh, ha-ha. That Shani, what a joker.

And then, what do you know, Rashid himself walked into the math classroom and took the seat across the aisle from me. One
of his bodyguards took up his stance outside the door, feet planted and hands clasped loosely in front. The other stood against
the rear wall of the classroom. I’m sure this was totally creeping out the faculty, but Mr. Jackson, the math teacher, ignored
both of them and got down to business.

When he assigned us some statistics problems to work on after the lecture, I made the mistake of glancing to my left. Rashid
smiled, as if he’d been sitting there watching me and waiting for me to look.

“I apologize if I offended you,” he whispered. “As we were eating together yesterday.”

“We were not
together
.” I glanced toward the front, but Mr. Jackson was busy helping someone. “And you didn’t offend me. I—I’m sorry I snapped
at you.”

“I accept your apology.” He sounded so pleased, I almost wished I hadn’t. “Please do me the honor of joining me today.”

“I, um—” What was the protocol for turning down royalty, anyway? How come they didn’t teach us
that
in etiquette? “I usually just eat with my friends. You’re welcome to join us, if you want.”

“Miss Hanna, is there something you want to share with the class?” Mr. Jackson materialized in front of me, his school tie
lying limply down his shirt, as if it had given up all hope of style years ago.

“No, sir,” I said.

“Then kindly stop the chatter and get on with your work.”

“Mr. Jackson, it was my fault,” Rashid said. “I asked her a question and she was obliged to answer.”

Jackson looked flummoxed. Because everyone knows that if a prince talks to you, you
are
obliged to answer. You can’t just ignore him. I mean, wars have broken out over that kind of thing.

“Right,” he said after a moment. “Please remember that I do the talking in my classroom, Your Highness. I’d appreciate it
if you’d confine your remarks to solutions to these problems.”

“Yes, sir,” we both mumbled.

I glanced at Rashid, and his eyes practically danced with suppressed laughter. An answering smile quivered on my mouth before
I controlled myself and looked down at my textbook. He didn’t have to come to my rescue. And he didn’t have to think Jackson’s
pompousness was funny.

What was funny was a guy like him having a sense of humor. How could you have perfect grammar and the ability to laugh at
things at the same time? I didn’t need another reason to like the guy. And I really didn’t want to remember that sparkle in
his eyes.

No. Uh-uh. My heart belonged to Danyel.

AT LUNCH, RASHID
took me up on my offer and staked out our tables. He’d even had the bodyguards—let’s call them the BGs for short, okay?—push
them together. Within minutes, the rowing team showed up and mobbed it, then Carly and Brett, and finally, my girls.

Somebody must have taken the prince aside and given him the dish on high school social skills. Or maybe he was a quick study.
Anyway, there was no hogging of ketchup or sly remarks about couples. Instead, the guy acted like a normal person—or as normal
as you can be when your net worth has nine zeros.

Carly leaned over under the cover of a series of good-natured insults about international soccer teams. “There’s weirdness
afoot.”

“What else is new?”

“DeLayne Geary IM’d me to find out if you and Rashid had a thing.”

I don’t know which was more surprising: DeLayne speaking voluntarily outside her caste, or her asking nosy questions about
me. I don’t think we’ve said more than six words to each other since we parted ways in freshman year.

“What’d you tell her?”