Princess In Training by Meg Cabot Read Free Book Online

can through a Starbucks window would remember which songs he likes and doesn’t like. But the “M-m-m-my” part actually makes him spit up, if you accompany it with jiggling, as my mom was doing, and she seemed oblivious to the white stuff all over her shoulder.
    “What’s going on, Mom?” I asked.
    Boy, did I get an earful.
    “My mother,” Mom shouted, above Rocky’s screams. “She’s threatening to come here, with Papaw. Because she hasn’t seen the baby.”
    “Um,” I said. “Okay. And that’s bad because…”
    My mom just looked at me with her eyes all wide and crazy.
    “Because she’s my MOTHER,” she shouted. “I do not want her coming here.”
    “I see,” I said, as if this made sense. “So you’re—”
    “Going there,” my mom finished, as Rocky’s screaming hit new decibels.
    “No,” Mr. G was saying into the phone. “Two seats. Just two seats. The third person is an infant.”
    “Mom,” I said, reaching out and taking Rocky from her, careful to avoid the spit-up still spewing from his mouth like lava from freaking Krakatoa. “Do you really think that’s such a good idea? Rocky’s a bit young for his first plane ride. I mean, all that recycled air. Someone with Ebola or something could sneeze and next thing you know, the whole plane could come down with it. And what about the farm? Didn’t you hear about all those school kids who got E. coli from that petting zoo in Jersey?”
    “If it will keep my parents from coming here,” Mom said, “I’m willing to risk it. Do you have any idea what kind of minibar bill they racked up the time your father put them up at the SoHo Grand?”
    “Okay,” I said, between verses of “Independent Woman,” which always has a soothing effect on Rocky. He is much more into R & B than rock. “So when are we going?”
    “Not you,” Mom said. “Just Frank and me. And Rocky, of course. You can’t go. You have school. Frank’s taking a vacation day.”
    I knew it had sounded too good to be true. Not the potential risks to my little brother’s health but, you know, that I might get to escape to Indiana, instead of facing election hell back at school and the potential breakup with my boyfriend.
    Which reminded me.
    “Um, Mom,” I said, as I followed her into Rocky’s room, where she’d apparently been engaged in putting away his clean laundry before Mamaw’s blow fell. “Can I talk to you about something?”
    “Sure.” Although my mom didn’t exactly sound like she was much in the mood to talk. “What?”
    “Uh…” Well, she HAD told me once that I could talk to her about ANYTHING. “How old were you the first time you had sex?”
    I fully expected her to say “I was in college,” but I guess she was so busy trying to cram all of Rocky’s MY MOMMY IS MAD AS HELL AND SHE VOTES onesies into his tiny dresser, that she didn’t think about what she was saying beforehand. She just went, “Oh, God, Mia, I don’t know. I must have been, what, about fifteen?”
    And then it was like she realized what she’d just said and she sucked in her breath really fast and looked at me all wide-eyed and went, “NOT THAT I’M PROUD OF IT!!!”
    Because she must have remembered at the same time I did that I am fifteen.
    The next thing I knew, she was blathering a mile a minute.
    “It was Indiana, Mia,” she cried. “It’s not like there was so much else to do. And it was, like, twenty years ago. It was the eighties! Things were different back then!”
    “Hello,” I said, because I’ve fully seen every episode of I Love the 80s, including I Love the 80s Strikes Back. “Just because people wore leg warmers all the time—”
    “I don’t mean that!” Mom cried. “I mean, people actually thought George Michael was straight. And that Madonna would be a one-hit wonder. Things were DIFFERENT then.”
    I couldn’t think of anything to say. Except, moronically, “I can’t believe you and Dad Did It for the first time when you were