I always thought that was because he had frequent flyer privileges.

I guess it’s because he’s a prince.

And then there’s that fact that whenever Grandmère takes me shopping in Genovia she always takes me either before the stores are officially open or after they are officially closed. She calls ahead to insure we will be let in, and no one has ever said no. In Manhattan, if my mother had tried to do this, the clerks at the Gap would have fallen over from laughing so hard.

And when I’m at Miragnac, I notice that we never go out to eat anywhere. We always have our meals there, or sometimes we go to the neighboring chateau, Mirabeau, which is owned by these nasty British people who have a lot of snotty kids who say things like "That’s rot" and "You’re a wanker" to one another. One of the younger girls, Nicole, is sort of my friend, but then one night she told me this story about how she was Frenching a boy and I didn’t know what Frenching was. I was only eleven at the time, which is no excuse, because so was she. I just thought Frenching was some weird British thing, like toad-in-the-hole, or air raids, or something. So then I mentioned it at the dinner table in front of Nicole’s parents, and after that all those kids stopped talking to me.

I wonder if the Brits know that my dad is the prince of Genovia. I bet they do. God, they must have thought I was mentally retarded or something.

Most people have never heard of Genovia. I know when we had to do our fact sheets, none of the other kids ever had. Neither had my mother, she says, before she met my dad. Nobody famous ever came from there. Nobody who was born there ever invented anything, or wrote anything, or became a movie star. A lot of Genovians, like my grandpa, fought against the Nazis in World War II, but other than that, they aren’t really known for anything.

Still, people whohave heard of Genovia like to go there because it’s so beautiful. It’s very sunny nearly all the time, with the snow-capped Alps in the background and the crystal-blue Mediterranean in front of it. It has a lot of hills, some of which are as steep as the ones in San Francisco, and most of which have olive trees growing on them. The main export of Genovia, I remember from my fact sheet, is olive oil, the really expensive kind my mom says only to use for salad dressing.

There’s a palace there, too. It’s kind of famous because they filmed a movie there once, a movie about the three Musketeers. I’ve never been inside, but we’ve driven by it before, me and Grandmère. It’s got all these turrets and flying buttresses and stuff.

Funny how Grandmère never mentioned havinglived there all those times we drove past it.

My hiccups are gone. I think it’s safe to go back to the Palm Court.

I’m going to give the washroom attendant a dollar, even though she didn’t attend me.

Hey, I can afford it: My dad’s a prince!

 

 

 

Later on Thursday,

Penguin House, Central Park Zoo

I’m so freaked out I can barely write, plus people keep bumping my elbow, and it’s dark in here, but whatever. I have to get this down exactly the way it happened. Otherwise, when I wake up tomorrow I might think it was just a nightmare.

But it wasn’t a nightmare. It was REAL.

I’m not going to tell anybody, not even Lilly. Lilly would NOT understand. NOBODY would understand. Because nobody I know has ever been in this situation before. Nobody ever went to bed one night as one person and then woke up the next morning to find out that she was somebody completely different.

When I got back to our table after hiccuping in the ladies’ room at the Plaza, I saw that the German tourists had been replaced by some Japanese tourists. This was an improvement. They were much quieter. My dad was on his cellular phone when I sat back down. He was talking to my mom, I realized right away. He had on the expression he wears only when he is talking to her. He was saying, "Yes, I told her. No, she doesn’t seem upset." He looked at me. "Are you upset?"

I said, "No," because I wasn’t upset—not THEN.

He said, into the phone, "She says no." He listened for a minute, then he looked at me again. "Do you want your mother to come up here and help to explain things?"

I shook my head. "No. She has to finish that mixed-media piece for the Kelly Tate Gallery. They want it by next Tuesday."

My dad repeated this to my mom. I heard her grumble back. She is always very grumbly when I remind her that she has paintings due by a certain time. My mom likes to work when the muses move her. Since my dad pays most of our bills, this is not usually a problem, but it is not a very responsible way for an adult to behave, even if she is an artist. I swear, if I ever met my mom’s muses, I’d give ’em such swift kicks in the toga they wouldn’t know what hit them.

Finally my dad hung up and then he looked at me. "Better?" he asked.

So I guess he had noticed the hiccups after all. "Better," I said.

"Do you really understand what I’m telling you, Mia?"

I nodded. "You are the prince of Genovia."

"Yes . . . " he said, like there was more.

I didn’t know what else to say. So I tried, "Grandpère was the prince of Genovia before you?"

He said, "Yes . . . "

"So Grandmère is . . .  what?"

"The dowager princess."

I winced. Ew. That explained a whole lot about Grandmère.

Dad could tell he had me stumped. He kept on looking at me all hopeful like. Finally, after I tried just smiling at him innocently for a while, and that didn’t work, I slumped over and said, "Okay. What?"

He looked disappointed. "Mia, don’t you know?"

I had my head on the table. You aren’t supposed to do that at the Plaza, but I hadn’t noticed Ivana Trump looking our way. "No . . . " I said. "I guess not. Know what?"

"You’re not Mia Thermopolis anymore, honey," he said. Because I was born out of wedlock, and my mom doesn’t believe in what she calls the cult of the patriarchy, she gave me her last name instead of my dad’s.

I raised my head at that. "I’m not?" I said, blinking a few times. "Then who am I?"

And he went, kind of sadly, "You’re Amelia Mignonette Grimaldi Thermopolis Renaldo, Princess of Genovia."

Okay.

WHAT? A PRINCESS?? ME???

Yeah. Right.

This is how NOT a princess I am. I am so NOT a princess that when my dad started telling me that I was one I totally started crying. I could see my reflection in this big gold mirror across the room, and my face had gotten all splotchy, like it does in PE whenever we play dodge ball and I get hit. I looked at my face in that big mirror and I was like,This is the face of a princess?

You should see what I look like. You never saw anyone who looked LESS like a princess than I do. I mean, I have really bad hair that isn’t curly or straight; it’s sort of triangular, so I have to wear it really short or I look like a Yield sign. And it isn’t blond or brunette, it’s in the middle, the sort of color they call mouse brown, or dishwater blond. Attractive, huh? And I have a really big mouth and no breasts and feet that look like skis. Lilly says my only attractive feature is my eyes, which are gray, but right then they were all squinty and red-looking since I was trying not to cry.

I mean, princesses don’t cry, right?

Then my dad reached out and started patting my hand. Okay, I love my dad, but he just has no clue. He kept saying how sorry he was. I couldn’t say anything in reply because I was afraid if I talked I’d cry harder. He kept on saying how it wasn’t that bad, that I’d like living at the palace in Genovia with him, and that I could come back to visit my little friends as often as I wanted.

That’s when I lost it.

Not only am I a princess, but I have to MOVE???

I stopped crying almost right away. Because then I got mad. Really mad. I don’t get mad all that often, because of my fear of confrontation and all, but when Ido get mad, look out.

"I am NOT moving to Genovia," I said in this really loud voice. I know it was loud because all the Japanese tourists turned around and looked at me, and then started whispering to one another.