Royal Genovian Bedroom
When I got home from school today, the first thing I did (after scooping up Snowball, who ran to greet me at the side of the limo, and letting her lick me all over my face) was knock on Dad’s office door.
“WHO IS IT?” Dad yelled. “I SAID I WASN’T TO BE DISTURBED!”
Snowball and I went in and found Dad sitting at his huge royal desk, which was covered in blueprints and millions of other papers. He had his reading glasses on top of his bald head, and his feet were resting on a stuffed boar that my grandfather had shot on a royal hunt way, way before I was born. I call the boar Annabelle because it looks a lot like a girl I used to go to school with who was named Annabelle.
“I don’t care how much it’s going to cost!” Dad was yelling into his cell phone. “I need it done as soon as possible. As soon as possible, do you understand?” When he saw me, he said in a totally different voice, “Oh, hello, Olivia sweetheart. How was school today?”
“It was great,” I lied, because I didn’t think he needed any more stress. “Dad, did your office schedule a visit from Mia and Michael to my school this Friday, the day before the wedding?”
“I think so. That woman from your school said there was some kind of program you kids were doing that Mia would want to see. Why, is that a problem?”
“I guess not,” I said, shrugging. “It might turn out okay. But I think Mia and Michael are probably going to have a lot of other stuff they’re going to need to do instead.”
“Like what?” Dad asked, fiddling around with the laptop on his desk.
“Um,” I said. “I don’t know. Greet all the guests. Pack for their honeymoon. Rehearse for the wedding. Stuff like that.”
“Oh, honey,” Dad said. “We have staff to do all that for them. Well, most of it.”
“Oh,” I said. “Okay. Well, see you at dinner. Good luck with the yelling.”
“Thanks, sweetheart.” He turned back to his phone. “No, not in two years, two months. I want it done in two months. Do you even know who I am?”
Hmmmm. Probably I should tell Mia—or at least Grandmère—what’s going on.
But then I remembered Madame Alain’s face when she said the performance was supposed to be a surprise and a wedding gift from the school, and how happy and excited she looked.
I don’t want to be the one to spoil it! They’ve all worked so hard.
And of course Princess Komiko said a royal doesn’t tattle (except, as I pointed out, in cases where someone might be hurt).
I can’t see how anyone is going to get hurt from this, except maybe my fingers, and they’ll probably survive.
So when everyone else asked how school went today, I only said, “Great!”
Nobody asked for many details because they were too busy dealing with Rocky. He may be the one person hurt from all this. I completely forgot about the lederhosen. You could see how a nine-year-old boy from New York City might not want to wear them, even as a surprise wedding gift for his sister.
He hasn’t told anyone about them, though. Like me, he’s keeping the school’s secret. All he said was that he’s going to build a rocket ship, powered by his own farts, and fly to the moon and live there with the dinosaurs.
Then he ran up to his room and slammed the door.
“Oh dear,” I overheard Mia say to her mom. “I don’t think Rocky had a very good day at school.”
Of course he didn’t! They made him promenade a lady up and down the room all day in his class, too! When he wasn’t being forced to sing about how all roads lead to Genovia, land of green and blue.
But instead of saying that when Mia’s mom asked me worriedly if I knew what might be wrong with him, I said, “Gee, I don’t know. Why don’t I go check on him?”
“Would you?” She smiled in relief. “I hate to ask, since I know you’ve had a long day, too, but Rocky really looks up to you.…”
This was news to me. Usually Rocky was getting me into trouble.
“Sure,” I said. “No problem.”
So I did.
Rocky has a room that’s almost as nice as mine, but instead of having birds and clouds painted on the walls and ceiling, it has hunting scenes and sailing ships, and his bed doesn’t have a canopy.
But he doesn’t spend much time in bed, anyway, since he prefers to spend his time in the large cardboard box he’s painted to look like a spaceship. That’s where I found him.
“Rocky, I know why you’re upset,” I said, kneeling beside the box, while Snowball sniffed all around it. “I think the song is stupid, too. And so is the dance. But we’re doing it for Mia and Michael. So at least it’s for a good reason.”
“That’s easy for you to say.” He pressed some fake buttons he’d painted inside his ship to nowhere. “You don’t have to wear overall shorts!”
“I have it worse. I have to dance with Prince Gunther. He flicks boogers at the teacher and makes fart noises with his mouth.”
Rocky looked impressed. “He sounds awesome!”
“Well, he’s not. I’d trade Prince Gunther for lederhosen any day.”
“I think we should both run away,” Rocky said. “Get in. I’m going to the moon.”
I knew Rocky was only pretending about going to the moon. But I got the feeling he wasn’t pretending about wanting to run away. Rocky’s adjustment to living in Genovia has been a bit like his name: rocky.
Maybe there was something I could do to help make it a tiny bit easier on him.
So I said, “I’ll run away to the moon with you for a little while if you promise that when we come back you’ll help me practice dancing, because Mademoiselle Justine says I’m really terrible and I need to work on it. But we can’t go to the moon forever, Rocky, because problems aren’t something you can run away from. You have to face them, or they’ll never get solved.”
He thought about it. “Okay. Get in.”
So Snowball and I got into the fake rocket ship behind him (after I made him promise not to fart on us).
These are the things you sometimes have to do when you’re someone’s older sibling. When I’m an aunt, I suppose I’ll have to be doing things like this all the time. I might even have to do worse things, like change diapers (although Mia says there’ll be a nanny. Michael wants to build a robot nanny, but Mia said no).
After we got to the “moon,” I acted like a velociraptor was eating me, so Rocky could “save” me—even though velociraptors do not really live on the moon, and if they did, and one started eating me, I would have been able to save myself, and Snow-ball, too.
This seemed to make Rocky feel much better, and by the time we went downstairs to dinner, he told everyone at the table that the Royal Genovian Academy wasn’t so bad after all, and he’d go back tomorrow.
Rocky wasn’t the only one who seemed to feel better. His mom was so happy that she whispered “Thank you so much” to me across the twenty-foot dining table, and even from so far away, I could see that she had tears in her eyes.
And Dad was so relieved about the change in Rocky’s behavior, he let us both go outside to play after dinner, instead of making us spend “family time” with him and all the guests (which, no offense, can get very boring).
Michael said I was a real trooper, and Grandmère said, “Well, I suppose there’s a possibility the RGA might know a thing or two about training royals that I don’t—though I doubt it.” Even Mia gave me an extra hug and kiss before I went to bed.
“Olivia, you’re the best,” she whispered. “What on earth did you say to Rocky to get him to want to go to school?”
I shrugged and told her I didn’t know. It’s okay to lie if the lie doesn’t hurt anyone.
“Well, whatever it was, keep it up, please. You’ve taken one huge worry off my shoulders.”
Maybe that can be my wedding gift to her: taking worries off her shoulders.
It’s going to have to be, since I don’t have money to buy her anything. I forgot to ask if, as a princess, I get an allowance.