To Catch a Prince Read online

  Helene wished desperately that she hadn’t eaten that third piece of toast for breakfast. She felt her belly and thought that it must have expanded since she’d arrived in London. If she didn’t eat any lunch, that would be a start. After all, she would never be tall And she didn’t think William, who had been building houses for the poor, really cared whether she was rich. After all, that’s not why she liked him. But she could be thinner. She was sucking in her stomach when Aunt Barbara barged in.

  “There you are, Helene dear.” Barbara looked as stylish and frazzled as usual. She was wearing a short turquoise suit with narrow turquoise heels (her love of matching apparently extended to her outfits), and she carried both a comb and an egg salad sandwich. Helene worried she’d put the wrong one in her hair. “I was hoping I could ask a favor of you and Alexis today. Would you take Nichola out for the afternoon? She’s been sulking in her room for the last few weeks, God knows what about, but I know she’d be tickled if her older cousins paid her some attention. I have to go to a luncheon and a trillion meetings, or I’d play with her myself. But in any case, you two are loads more fun.”

  Helene agreed, and closed the magazine on her lap with a sigh of relief. Nichola had been almost invisible since they’d returned from the airport, and Helene wanted to get to know her. But she worried that Alexis would be annoyed to have Nichola tagging along.

  “Oh, and another thing, Helene,” Barbara said as she left the room, the scent of Chanel No. 5 hovering behind her, “this is the formal living room. If you want to slouch around, please try the third living room down. But I do approve of your reading habits. If you could just get Nichola to pick up Brontë. Or any book. Any book at all.” Helene tried to hide Heat under a couch pillow.

  As Barbara left, Alexis walked in saying that she didn’t care if it rained or sleeted or hailed. They just had to get out of the house. She would even go to any museum Helene wanted. When Helene told her sister of their new afternoon plans, Alexis looked pleased. “She’s a cute girl,” she said. “I was hoping she’d hang out with us more. She’s always off on her own. I feel sad that she doesn’t have any sisters. I’d have probably been that mopey and shy and secretive if you hadn’t moved in.”

  Helene felt reassured by Alexis’s generosity; it was exactly why they were so close from the beginning of their friendship. Because it didn’t matter who got the internship or the prince. What mattered is that they had each other. Wait a second, Helene, she thought, as Alexis ran off to change her outfit—again. While it did matter that they had each other, it also mattered a great deal who got William. It mattered more than anything else this summer. The tricky part was getting William and keeping Alexis as her best friend. Helene realized that was shaping up to be the summer’s biggest challenge.

  According to Lady Brawn, who had been generous with her gossip, Prince William once liked conservatively dressed girls. No problem there: Alexis had brought preppy to Scarsdale High before anyone knew that it was back in style. “But,” Lady Brawn whispered, “these days Will enjoyed ‘a bit of vampish glamour.’” This was not Alexis’s forte, but she was resourceful when it came to fashion, and she’d bought a few choice items at Harrods the day before. Now she pulled on a new tight black cashmere short-sleeved sweater, paired it with a black pencil skirt with a high slit, then added fishnets and knee-high black boots. Rummaging through Helene’s backpack, she found the perfect red lipstick. It was called Gash, and it made her lips stand out like rose petals on her pale face.

  She joined the others in the kitchen. Barbara and Helene were sitting at the round table, nibbling at a muffin. Nichola wasn’t there yet, but her voice was: “You can’t make me wear that stupid, ugly outfit!” she yelled from her room. “I don’t care if you bought it in Selfridges or Marks and Spencer! You don’t control me! I’m a free human, you know! And I know how to dress myself, far better than you’ve ever known!”

  The girls, whose successful implementation of Plan B had made temper tantrums a thing of distant memory, now looked at each other with a combination of horror and admiration.

  “But darling,” Barbara called back, looking nervously at Alexis, then at Helene. “The outfit is lovely. Laura Ashley. It’s very fashionable. And very smart. Right, Alexis? You know fashion. Isn’t Laura Ashley smart? I just don’t think girls your age should be wearing such short skirts. Besides,” she said with a determined nod, “you’ll catch your death of cold.”

  “You don’t know anything, do you?” Nichola asked as she walked into the kitchen, causing even Helene and Alexis to gasp. Gone was the girl at the airport in a plaid jumper and ribbon. Nichola wore a black leather skirt that barely covered her underwear. Her white, ribbed tank top came to just beneath her considerable breasts. And she wavered on inch-high platform shoes. The look was Britney, but the posture was puberty: She crossed her arms protectively in front of her exposed midriff and hunched her shoulders to make her chest appear smaller.

  “Oh, please take off that skirt this instant.”

  Nichola snorted and rolled her eyes. “All right. Here, though? You want me to take it off here and go out in my knickers?”

  “You know what I mean, Nichola,” Barbara pleaded. Alexis and Helene stared at their fingers on the table. This is why you need a sister—someone to stop you when you’ve gone too far.

  “Maybe I do. But what do you know?” Nichola started circling the table where Alexis, Helene, and Barbara sat, and they followed her movements like spectators at an ice rink. Her shoes were so high that with each step she took it seemed she could fall flat on her face. “You don’t know anything, Mum. Do you know that I’ve snogged tons of boys already? Or at least three. And I have a boyfriend, you know. Nigel is my boyfriend whether you like it or not.”

  As if she hadn’t heard, Barbara merely said, “Where did you even get that skirt, dear? I don’t remember buying it anywhere. It looks … cheap.”

  “Mmmm,” Nichola considered, still circling the table like a hawk stalking its prey, “I suppose it was cheap. It was very inexpensive indeed. In fact, it cost absolutely nothing. I just put it in my bag and walked out of the store. How do you think I get all my clothes with such a puny allowance?”

  Helene squirmed uncomfortably. Even she, who always spoke her mind, couldn’t imagine speaking this way to her parents. And she certainly hadn’t done all those things when she was Nichola’s age. Or ever, for that matter. But maybe kids were more grown-up in London. Or maybe they were just more open. But she knew that if Brenda Worth had heard these words from either Helene or Alexis, both girls would have been shoved into the Audi and shipped off to therapy in less than a minute.

  “Fine, have it your way,” Barbara said. “Run off and have fun now. Here’s some money, dear.”

  Nichola abruptly stopped circling. She looked distraught. Her arms snapped to cover her belly. Her shoulders slouched again. She bit a lock of hair and tried not to cry. But it was too late: Thick tears fell down her face, and she wiped them with the sleeve of her coat.

  “Oh, sweetie,” Barbara said, “you’ll have fun today.”

  Nichola nodded. She was, Helene figured, strangely more upset to have won the argument than she would have been if she had lost it. “Come on then,” Nichola said in the direction of the girls.

  Helene and Alexis stood up eagerly. They wanted Nichola to cheer up. Permanently. For some reason both of them thought she’d stop sulking if she hung out with them. But perhaps that was just cheery optimism, because she seemed as sour as ever.

  Nichola looked them up and down as she regained her composure. “We’re going to Camden to see Nigel,” she said with a sigh. “Look at you two. You look like such squares. I can’t believe Nigel has to see me with you.”

  Alexis, who had gone to such lengths to change her look, was offended. “Brat,” she muttered. Nichola was not the cute, adoring younger sister she’d imagined.

  But Helene just laughed and said, “Think what you want, babe.”

  Afte
r all, there was nothing intimidating about a sulky thirteen-year-old, overdressed and awkward. Instead Helene concerned herself with Alexis’s appearance. In all black, Alexis seemed unnaturally slender, like a ballerina. Then in a rare, bold move she’d added that lipstick, a shade of blood red that looked surprisingly like Helene’s favorite shade. Together with Alexis’s pulled-back hair and tortoiseshell headband, it was Audrey Hepburn glamour with a modern twist. Helene, who wasn’t embarrassed to wear slips to school as dresses, or T-shirts sewn up as skirts, believed she never could have pulled off that style. It struck her that this is what the competition was doing to her: Instead of noticing her sister’s appearance and feeling admiration and pride, all she could muster was longing and jealousy.

  Well, she consoled herself, Alexis may be the elegant one, but only I will have a ticket to the Royal Ball. And she would soon enough, if she played her cards right. And in the meantime they were going to Camden—wherever that was.

  It’s All Good in Camden

  CAMDEN? ONE WORD: stellar.

  Helene might have liked to see the museums, the portraits of dead kings and sketches by Leonardo da Vinci, but she could live with Camden. There were more beautiful freaks than mannequins in Madame Tussaud’s: a man in a kilt and Doc Martens and a shaved head tattooed with a swirling blue and green globe; a woman with gold dreads woven with pipe cleaners so they stood straight up like Medusa’s snakes; Mohawks of every color, including one painted like a rainbow, arcing over stoners’ heads; girls with cat eyes; boys with their hipbones jutting out of low-slung pants posing like rock stars against the graffitied walls. Some nerds, but the cool, Emo kind: thick-rimmed glasses, sloppy hair, shirts layered over long-sleeved thermals, and Vans. Girls on roller skates, old-fashioned ones with pink wheels. And, Helene observed, you could pierce any piece of skin you wanted.

  As soon as they climbed out of the Tube and began walking up Camden High Street, the main artery, Nichola tried desperately to look bored, but Helene and Alexis could tell she was as awestruck as they were. “I met him last week. He’s a tweaker,” she’d say of some passing club kid, or “Tim throws the most awesome parties,” but the guys in question never glanced back at her. Passing before store windows, she’d yank down her minuscule skirt and cover her stomach with her coat. She’d hidden her face with her hair so that it looked like her two huge eyes were peeking out of a curtain. In other words, as Alexis whispered to Helene, she looked like a Muppet. Oddly, Alexis fit in more than she usually would, with her Goth-looking black clothes and blood-red lips. All she needed were two lines of thick black eyeliner and a rip in her fishnets.

  It was a festival of freaks, and Helene had never been happier. Even the weather cooperated for once, the sun shining down, it seemed, only on Camden, only for the crazies there. A guy with a somewhat subdued pink streak in his hair approached Helene for advice on how to achieve the bright shade of fuchsia she was sporting in hers. She gave him a detailed rundown of the best procedure. His tongue was twice pierced and glittered when he spoke.

  As they continued walking the streets that were lined with tattoo parlors, Helene thought maybe this was the day she should get her belly button pierced.

  “No,” said Alexis, pulling Helene away from the window of a tattoo parlor in which a man dressed from head to toe in black leather wielded a tattoo needle with precision. “Totally unhygienic.”

  Nichola bought a trucker hat, which Alexis scorned as “so last spring,” but when no one was looking, she tried on one herself. It didn’t go with her outfit. But a black-velvet choker with an ivory medallion of a rose did. Helene oohed over it when Alexis put it on.

  What the girls were finding out was that in Camden you could buy anything you’d ever wanted. There were all the treasures Helene had scoured Urban Outfitters for, all the reasons she’d dragged Alexis to church tag sales and every Salvation Army in Westchester County. And nothing was folded neatly on shelves. Instead things spilled into the streets: racks of perfect vintage jeans, towers of granny purses, tables with the most unique handmade jewelry. Necklaces out of beer tabs; bracelets twisted from bike chains. Tents, lined up like a Moroccan village, offered flapper dresses from the twenties and tiny lace-up boots from the forties. You could buy henna hands, hair braids, your name on a grain of rice. In an hour Helene got a Celtic design painted on her forearm and a tiny fairy on her ankle. She swung a metal Strawberry Shortcake lunchbox that she’d scrounged from one of the many tents.

  “I wish Laszlo and Simon could see this,” she told Alexis.

  “Oh, god, don’t mention them. They didn’t call us this morning. I thought they would. But who’s waiting?” Alexis said with a wry grin. “They’re not our only way to meet William. Though I sure thought they were our best.”

  Helene had also been wondering why the boys didn’t call, but she brushed the thought aside and went over to talk to a man making tiny replicas of the Titanic out of toothpicks.

  The phrase “vampy glamour” was going through Alexis’s head as she eyed velvet corsets. Helene would look absolutely amazing in one. But Alexis was pretty sure she couldn’t pull that style off; besides, she figured, she really preferred to look fancier. Her ideal shopping spree would be at Saks, not the sidewalk.

  After a while Alexis left Helene cooing over sweat-stained T-shirts. She needed a break from all the people.

  She slipped into a shoe store and stared at herself in its funhouse mirror. Her lips were dried and caked, and she thought they stood out too much on her face. Was she really princess material? She wasn’t like Helene, who automatically smiled at everyone, giggled at every crass joke, and made boys stare at her because she was bright and sparkly like the gigantic rhinehouse ring she’d just purchased and that now twinkled over two fingers.

  Alexis frowned. Then she saw that when she did so, her face creased just enough to cause lines, maybe even permanent wrinkles, in her blemish-free brow. Wouldn’t William prefer it if she could just relax and enjoy herself—in a vampy glamorous way? She reapplied Helene’s Gash, which she’d hidden in her purse.

  She smiled at her reflection. Her frown was gone, and the new application had given her lips a healthy, red glow. Of course she could pull this look off. She was Alexis Worth. She’d been photographed for British Vogue for goodness’ sake. She worked for British Vogue. She could pull off any look she wanted—it was the thing she was best at. She began looking uninterestedly at the sneakers—when something much more important caught her eye. A newspaper lay on the counter, open to a full-page picture of Prince Charles and his sons at the Scottish shore. PRINCES OF TIDES, the paper said. William was just as poised and handsome as usual, casually dressed in a deep green sweater and khakis, but there was something in his eyes, a reserve she recognized in herself. Standing next to him was his brother—darling, cute Harry—who looked as if he had never worried in his life and who grinned at the camera like the world would always offer everything good and he’d be waiting right there to accept it. That was Helene’s look. William was like Alexis, distant and aloof. After they got together, maybe she’d ask William to introduce Helene and Harry.

  Unbeknownst to her, her smile crept from her mind to her lips. A skater boy who’d been watching her wasn’t even on his board, and he managed to fall flat on his face.

  Back in the mayhem Alexis found Helene flirting with a gypsy man who sold leather pouches. “Look,” she said to Alexis, “they’re for storing secret messages!” Alexis smiled. Helene was in a state of bliss, and nothing could corrupt that. Nothing, that is, except Nichola.

  “Hurry up,” Nichola said to Helene, who was trying on a gaggle of black rubber bracelets. “Totally not you,” she told Alexis, who had donned a boa. “This place is so lame,” she continued, fingering Alexis’s boa. “It’s only good if you’re stoned. Then all the colors swirl together. God, do you even know what I mean? Do you even get stoned in America? People say it’s hipper there, but I bet you haven’t done half the stuff I have.”

&
nbsp; Nichola kept talking in that way as the three girls slipped in and out of tents, and up and down staircases in a rickety wooden structure, much like a boat, which was the fulcrum of the action. At what age had they started drinking? Did they like to snog boys? Because she did. At what age had they started? When did they think they would actually have sex with a boy? She’d decided to do it on her sixteenth birthday. In three years. They were sixteen, had they had sex? As if. Anyone looking at them could tell they were totally boring virgins.

  It was a relief when they stopped for lunch and Nichola had to go around the corner to make some urgent calls on her cell. Helene and Alexis grabbed mango smoothies and tofu dogs sold by the cutest vegan hippie ever made. Or at least Helene thought so, and she told him this to his face. “It’s all good,” he said, grinning at her.

  “It is all good,” Helene agreed. Vegan Hippie gave them their meals at the Helene discount—for free.

  The girls crammed into the corner of a picnic table. Alexis took one bite of her tofu dog and made a face—it was enough to make her long for a Central Park hot dog. Helene didn’t seem to notice the gaggy, moldy taste; she finished hers in three bites, then eyed Alexis’s rejected tube of reconstituted soybean paste.

  “Can I have it?” she asked, and Alexis gratefully handed it over. “Do you think Nichola meant that about making out with all those guys?” Helene asked, her mouth full of tofu dog. “The only guy I’d kissed by the time I was thirteen was Billy O’Halloran. You remember, Rebecca’s bat mitzvah? Oh, duh—you kissed him too!”

  “Well,” Alexis laughed, “we do like to share. Did you hear that Billy actually had sex with Rebecca? After the junior prom! They were both invited by juniors but ended up together at the after-party.”

  “Rebecca?” Helene bit her bottom lip the way she did while trying to figure something out. She was thinking of Rebecca, a smart, pretty girl who was friends with both the sisters. She’d run into her just two weeks ago at Ben and Jerry’s, and they’d sat on the sidewalk and talked about their summer plans, ice cream dripping in the hot sun. She seemed the same then as she always did. “It’s strange, in a way, that you can’t tell by looking at someone whether they’ve had sex.