Summer. Season of long, slow days and short, hot nights.
Back in Brooklyn, where I spent my first fifteen of them, summer -- when it hadn't meant camp -- had meant hanging out on the stoop with my best friend, Gina, and her brothers, waiting for the ice-cream truck to come by. When it wasn't too hot, we played a game called War, dividing into teams with the other kids in the neighborhood and shooting each other with imaginary guns.
When we got older, of course, we quit playing War. Gina and I also started laying off the ice cream.
Not that it mattered. None of the neighborhood guys, the ones we used to play with, wanted anything to do with us. Well, with me, anyway. I don't think they'd have minded renewing acquaintances with Gina, but by the time they finally noticed what a babe she'd grown into, she'd set her sights way higher than guys from the 'hood.
I don't know what I expected from my sixteenth summer, my first since moving to California to live with my mom and her new husband...and, oh, yeah, his sons. I guess I envisioned the same long, slow days. Only these, in my mind, would be spent at the beach rather than on an apartment building's front stoop.
And as for those short, hot nights, well, I had plans for those, as well. All I needed was a boyfriend.
But as it happened, neither the beach nor the boyfriend materialized, the latter because the guy I liked? Yeah, he so wasn't interested. At least, as far as I could tell. And the former because...
Well, because I was forced to get a job.
That's right: A job.
I was horrified when one night at dinner, around the beginning of May, my stepfather, Andy, asked me if I'd put in any summer employment applications anywhere. I was all, "What are you talking about?"
But it soon became clear that, like the many other sacrifices I'd been asked to make since my mother met, fell in love with, and married Andy Ackerman -- host of a popular cable television home improvement program, native Californian, and father of three -- my long hot summer lazing at the beach with my friends was not to be.
In the Ackerman household, it soon unfolded, you had two alternatives for how you spent your summer break: a job, or remedial tutoring. Only Doc, my youngest stepbrother -- known as David to everyone but me -- was exempt from either of these, as he was too young to work, and he had made good enough grades that he'd been accepted into a month-long computer camp, at which he was presumably learning skills that would make him the next Bill Gates -- only hopefully without the bad haircut and Wal-Mart-y sweaters.
My second-youngest stepbrother, Dopey (also known as Brad) was not so lucky. Dopey had managed to flunk both English and Spanish -- an astounding feat, in my opinion, English being his native language -- and so was being forced by his father to attend summer school five days a week...when he wasn't being used as unpaid slave labor on the project Andy had undertaken while his TV show was on summer hiatus: tearing down a large portion of our house's backyard deck and installing a hot tub.
Given the alternatives -- employment or summer school -- I chose to seek employment.
I got a job at the same place my oldest stepbrother, Sleepy, works every summer. He, in fact, recommended me, an act which, at the time, simultaneously stunned and touched me. It wasn't until later that I found out that he had received a small bonus for every person he recommended who was later hired.
Whatever.
Meg Cabot is also the author of The Princess Diaries series, upon which the Disney movies are based. In the books, though, Princess Mia has yield-sign-shaped hair, lives in New York, and Fat Louie is orange. And those are the least of the differences. The following is a complete list of the Princess Diaries books:
The Princess Diaries
The Princess Diaries, Volume II: Princess in the Spotlight
The Princess Diaries, Volume III: Princess in Love
The Princess Diaries, Volume IV: Princess in Waiting
The Princess Diaries, Volume IV and a Half: Project Princess
The Princess Diaries, Volume V: Princess in Pink
The Princess Diaries, Volume VI: Princess in Training
The Princess Present: A Princess Diaries Book
Princess Lessons: A Princess Diaries Book
Perfect Princess: A Princess Diaries Book
Aside from The Mediator books and The Princess Diaries books, Meg has written several more books:
American Girl
Samantha Madison saves the president's life...only to have his son fall in love with her. Which would be fine, except for all the Secret Service agents following them around.
Teen Idol
Jenny Greenley gives everyone advice, so why can't she follow her own and find love? Further complicating matters is the presence of hot Hollywood star Luke Striker in Jenny's homeroom, of all places.
Nicola and the Viscount
It's 1810, and Nicola Sparks is ready to dive headlong into her first London Season. Good thing there's a handsome viscount there to catch her!
Victoria and the Rogue
Lady Victoria Arbuthnot is accustomed to being right. She isn't always, though, especially when her own heart is concerned.
But wait! There's more by Meg:
The Boy Next Door
Boy Meets Girl
Every Boy's Got One
The 1-800-Where-R-You books:
When Lightning Strikes
Code Name Cassandra
Safe House
Sanctuary
