Notebooks of a Middle-School Princess Bridesmaid-in-Training

Tomorrow is my first day at the Royal Genovian Academy – or, as Nishi still keeps calling it, ‘princess school’ – and I can’t sleep.

What I’m going to wear (no choice: there’s a uniform)

How I’m going to do my hair (headband)

Whether or not she’s going to need to bring a hair dryer (no: all the bedrooms in the palace have their own en-suite bathrooms, which means each has a hairdryer and of course mini soaps and bottles of shampoo and conditioner made from the essence of real Genovian orange blossom)

(I HAVE to make her understand about the time difference. Genovia is six hours ahead of the United States. But I don’t think she’s ever going to grasp that fact until she gets here.)

At dinner Grandmère was like, ‘Don’t forget, Olivia, tonight you’re really going to need your beauty sleep. Every woman should sleep at least eight hours a night so that she can wake refreshed upon the morning to battle the new day!’

Which is ridiculous because I’m lying in a canopy bed shaped like a boat under a ceiling painted to look like the night sky, with Snowball cuddled up to me.

And sitting on the nightstand next to me is a tray that had warm milk and cookies on it that the royal kitchen sent up to help me doze off. I ate every single one!

Maybe it’s what my dad said when he came in to wish me goodnight and I asked him – quietly, so Grandmère and Mia wouldn’t overhear – if he thought I was going to make any friends in school tomorrow.

‘Of course!’ he said, looking surprised. ‘Your problem isn’t going to be not making any friends, Olivia, but making too many friends. You’re going to make so many friends, we’re not going to be able to fit them all here in the palace!’

I laughed because this was a joke, of course. The maximum capacity for the ballroom is five hundred (I know because there’s a tiny gold sign on the wall that says so, as required by Genovian fire code, and also because that’s how many are invited to the wedding).

But it was also a joke because only 120 students go to the Royal Genovian Academy (from kindergarten through to twelfth grade). Also because no one could possibly have five hundred friends in real life . . .

Unless, of course, she’s a princess. This was something Mia had warned me about at dinner.

‘Just to let you know . . . it’s possible that at this new school some people might only want to become your friend so they can use you for your celebrity status,’ she’d said over the very delicious ‘back to school’ dinner that the kitchen staff had thoughtfully prepared for me (with all my favourite things): mini-burgers, skinny fries, coconut shrimp, mac and cheese, with ice-cream sundaes for dessert.

(Grandmère asked Chef Bernard for his resignation letter when she saw all this, because, she said, there wasn’t a single green thing on the table. But then he brought her a salade niçoise, so she forgave him.)

‘Just be careful that the people you hang out with like you for you, and not because you’re a princess who might get them a ton of likes on their social media pages, or last-minute invitations to my wedding, or something,’ Mia said.

I must have looked alarmed, since she’d quickly added, ‘Not that this is going to happen to you! It’s just . . . well, it might have happened to me once.’

It’s possible that this piece of advice is contributing to my inability to sleep.

Even Grandmère wasn’t as comforting as she usually is when she came in to say goodnight.

‘I’ve ordered the bulletproof car to take you to school tomorrow, Olivia. It will be ready for you at eight o’clock. Don’t be late, as after it drops you off, I’ll need it to return to the palace to take me to a sporting goods shop in Cap-d’Ail. They supposedly stock an air rifle that’s superb for pest control.’

I sat straight up in bed. Carlos! ‘Grandmère, no! Please don’t shoot any of the iguanas. I’m sure we can think of some other way to get rid of them.’

‘Shoot the iguanas?’ She looked at her reflection in the gold-framed mirror above my dressing table and straightened her tiara. ‘I haven’t the slightest idea what you mean. I only mean to frighten them into going to someone else’s garden . . . Bianca Ferrari’s, perhaps. If there’s anyone who deserves iguanas in her pool, it’s her.’

‘Grandmère, don’t. And why can’t I walk to school? The RGA is right around the corner from the palace.’

‘A princess, walk to school?’ Grandmère sniffed. ‘Certainly not. You’ll ride in the bulletproof Mercedes with your bodyguard, Serena.’

‘Once you become a well-known public figure, there’ll always be someone out there looking to kidnap you. It’s wiser not to make it easier for them by giving them the opportunity.’

My sister (who happened to be walking down the hall at that very moment) gasped and said, ‘Grandmère, really? You’re going to frighten her.’

‘I’m not frightened,’ I said. ‘Serena has been giving me self-defense lessons.’

‘Nevertheless.’ Mia looked stern. ‘This is an unsuitable topic of discussion for bedtime.’

‘Pfuit,’ Grandmère said. ‘No one has been kidnapped in Genovia in years – which is unfortunate because I can think of quite a few people I’d like to get rid of, especially this week. Bianca Ferrari comes to mind.’

‘Goodnight, Olivia,’ Grandmère said, and went to her own room, probably to look up more ways to get rid of iguanas.

It’s hard to sleep when you’re starting a new school in the morning . . . especially one where everyone is royal.

But I guess I have no choice but to believe my dad that I’m going to make so many friends, we’re not even going to be able to fit them all in the palace. Why shouldn’t I? He’s never lied to me before . . .

Well, except for neglecting to tell me for my whole life up until recently that he’s the prince of a foreign country.

But that wasn’t a lie, exactly, because my mom asked him not to tell me, for my own safety. And that turned out OK in the end.