The royal family had started using the play palace for lunches and sometimes even as guest quarters for visitors other than the Prince’s girls, so there were days on end that we were told to stay inside and out of sight. Don’t walk out the doors, don’t go out on the balconies, and don’t use the gym or the pools during the day. It was a kind of house arrest, with lots of laser discs and bubble baths and exercise videos.

My French tapes had stayed at home. It was too disheartening to stare at them on the shelf here. But I did stare at what I had brought instead—my laptop. I wasn’t sure yet what kind of writing I wanted to do. Stories? Poetry? A play? I had long given up on my own performance project, so the field was wide open.

The e-mail system that Colin had set up worked perfectly. I plugged the phone line into my laptop every morning and sent the letters I had written the night before. I think I got away with it because it was so new that no one could really figure out what I was doing. If they had, I’m sure they would have stopped me.

The house arrest ruled out tennis, and the living room was crowded with yapping girls all day, so I started to hide in my bedroom, parking it on the bed and writing with my computer in my lap. I had kept journals since I was a little girl, sometimes with diligence and sometimes writing only scraps and dreams, but there was always a journal on my bedside table. In all of my big plans, I had overlooked the one thing I’d been doing consistently all along.

I decided to try journaling on the computer instead and it was my salvation. I lost myself in it. I had nowhere to go and nothing to do, so I banged out page after page of what it was like to be in Brunei. I copied my writing into e-mails that I sent to Colin. He began to do the same, writing pages describing his family’s summerhouse in Canada, updating me on the family gossip, singing his girlfriend woes. These e-mails gave me something to look forward to.

I began to record conversations, details, observations. The writing gave me a reason to look hard at the world around me and suddenly I wasn’t so bored. Suddenly I had a reason to be in Brunei that went beyond my distorted self-concept, my unhealthy attachment to a depraved prince, and my more easily understandable attachment to said prince’s bank account.

I had expected as much and it didn’t really get under my skin until Gina started getting the morning knocks on her door. Gina had a plain, pretty face, like that of a homecoming runner-up from some town in Indiana. She made a point to tell me that she didn’t show her titties in glossy centerfolds, but rather was a legit actress/model. Her skin wasn’t great and she always either had a ton of base makeup on or was walking around the house in a mud mask. She was short, with a tiny waist and big boobs, which I guess goes a long way. Her style was appalling, sort of Talbots goes naughty. She wore things like taupe shoes that would have been good for a PTA meeting paired with a nauseating boatneck flower-print dress two sizes too tight.

I was reading at the kitchen table when she walked back in the door after having been called by Robin for the first time. She sat down next to me and I put down my book.

“Can I talk to you?” she whispered.

“Sure.”

“I just went to see Robin.” Her eyes glazed with tears.

Oh, please, spare me. I rubbed her back soothingly. What else are you supposed to do when a girl starts to cry? She sucked in irregular breaths.

“I didn’t know where I was going and I was really surprised and. And. I know you were. Um. His girlfriend. So. I. Don’t want you to get mad at me. I. Didn’t know how to say. No. Are you mad?”

I assured her that I wasn’t. I told her that she’d be okay and he was really cute, wasn’t he? And she had probably done the same thing at home plenty of times and it hadn’t even been with a prince, right? And then I heard coming out of my mouth the exact same thing Serena had said to me.

“Don’t worry. He probably won’t call you again.”

I was wrong. He did call her again. And again and again. And there were no more tearful heart-to-hearts. She developed an all-knowing attitude with a generous helping of false modesty that really made me want to barf. It occurred to me that I was now Serena and Gina was me. I retroactively developed a new sympathy for what Serena had gone through, watching me come home every day, freshly fucked, newly wardrobed and bejeweled. It stung; there was no question. I just wasn’t quite such a twat about it.

I had seen enough to know that just as surely as I had once landed on the space with the long, long ladder, I had now landed on the space with the equally long chute. I resolved to take my slide as gracefully as I could.

Pilgrimage sounded crazy holy to me; I thought Robin was many things, but holy wasn’t one of them. It intrigued me. I had been in Brunei during Ramadan and I knew that the men fasted during the day, so their religious beliefs weren’t a complete ruse. Was this pilgrimage just something Robin had to do for his public image or did it hold real meaning for him? I wondered what Robin prayed for. I wondered what he really believed in. Did he believe in Allah? Did he believe in anything?

He and I had actually talked pretty freely and to that end I had kept myself conversant in politics and finance and British royal gossip, but faith had never come up. Did he pray for a good night’s sleep? Did he pray for a real friend, a friend he didn’t have to pay for? And me, what did I pray for?

While he was gone the parties still went on, but they were shorter. Prince Sufri had fallen in love with a Malaysian girl who was a student in London. He told me he was going to propose to her and he seemed delighted about the whole thing. He made a few attempts to get interested in badminton again, but his heart wasn’t in it and we all got to go home early.

Before I returned to Brunei, I had made repeated vows to stay sober. I had vowed to quit alcohol and everything else that was bad for me, including sugar and caffeine. I wrote out a long contract with myself to that effect. But once I got there, one by one the bricks that made up my wall of resolve tumbled. In a matter of weeks I was drinking every night and back on the diet pills. That contract was the first of my many failed attempts to control my substance abuse. I told myself it was the fault of my circumstances. If I was going to quit anything, it wasn’t going to be in Brunei.

Robin was on his hajj and I was on the anti-hajj. Delia and I danced together every night, acting totally stupid and laughing like crazy, jitterbugging and salsa-dancing to hip-hop with our Thai friends. Delia’s favorite song was “Just Wanna Be Your Friend.” Anthony played it at least twice a night and it became a kind of informal “Time Warp” or something, with everyone acting out the words and joining in, shouting certain lines, like I’m so HORNY.

Delia’s and my inebriation often led to one of us practically carrying the other home. One night, a misstep at the top of the stairs sent us tumbling end over end all the way to the bottom. Luckily, the staircases in the palace were all covered in plush carpeting and had a shallow incline. We both landed with our dresses over our heads The entire party nearly died with laughter.

Every night I drank and drove. Thankfully it was only a golf cart. One night I stomped on the accelerator rather than the brake and slammed the cart into the back wall of the garage. I pitched forward and smacked my nose into the rear-view mirror. My nose wasn’t broken, but it was swollen and cut and looked terrible. I was grateful that Robin was out of town while it healed.

My perpetual intoxication did have one positive result. One drunken night, I broke down and sobbed on the shoulder of a Penthouse Pet, a big-assed blonde with dusty green eyes, named Melody. This particular Pet also wore a promise ring supposedly from Vince Neil (same Vince Neil as Brittany, different promise ring) and talked constantly into a micro-cassette recorder because she was working on a book titled The Way I See It, meant to share her wisdom about life, both humorous and otherwise. She never wrote it. I’ve heard that instead she wound up devoting her life to Jesus.

It was the week before my birthday. Birthdays have never been my favorite thing. I hear it’s a common experience among adopted children. All the party girls tried to plan it so they’d be in Brunei for their birthday because birthdays meant jewelry, but the prospect of jewelry wasn’t enough to keep me from heading for a birthday meltdown. Between the Prince’s rejection and the drinking, I wasn’t doing so well. I wasn’t taking my slide gracefully, as I had vowed to do. I had become that girl who gets drunk and cries at parties.

“I’m not going to be a teenager anymore. And what have I accomplished? I don’t want to live my whole life drinking diet shakes and quitting everything I start.”

The girls who were approaching thirty rolled their eyes as I gave Melody the rundown on all the travails of the past year. I don’t remember what was said exactly, but I do know that during the conversation, I must have mentioned my unfruitful search for my birth mother, because Melody shared her wisdom with me (both humorous and otherwise) and it included the name and phone number of a private investigator in Denver.

I woke with the information on my nightstand. I was mortified that I had poured my heart out to Melody, far more so than I had been of winding up at the bottom of a staircase with my skirt over my head. Even so, I took that slip of paper and stuck it in a book for later. You never know when you’re going to need the name of a private investigator in Denver, written in bubbly handwriting with hearts dotting the i’s.