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, “Grandp่re was the prince of Genovia before you?”

He said, “Yes . . . ”

“So Grandm่re is . . .  what?”

“The dowager princess.”

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

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 I do 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.

My dad looked kind of shocked. The last time I yelled at him had been years ago, when he agreed with Grandm่re that I ought to eat some foie gras. I don’t care if it is a delicacy in France; I’m not eating anything that once walked around and quacked.

“But Mia,” my dad said in his Now-let’s-be-reasonable voice, “I thought you understood—“

“All I understand,” I said, “is that you lied to me my whole life. Why should I come live with you?”

I realize this was a completely Party of Five kind of thing to say, and I’m sorry to say that I followed it up with some pretty Party of Five behavior. I stood up real fast, knocking over my big gold chair, and rushed out of there, nearly bowling over the snobby doorman.

I think my dad tried to chase me, but I can run pretty fast when I want to. Mr. Wheeton is always trying to get me to go out for track, but that’s like such a joke, because I hate running for no reason. A letter on a stupid jacket is no reason to run, as far as I’m concerned.

Anyway, I ran down the street, past the stupid touristy horses and carriages, past the big fountain with the gold statues in it, past all the traffic outside of F.A.O. Schwarz, right into Central Park, where it was getting kind of dark and cold and spooky and stuff, but I didn’t care. Nobody was going to attack me because I was this five-foot-nine girl running in combat boots, with a big backpack with bumper stickers on it that said stuff like support greenpeace and i brake for animals. Nobody messes with a girl in combat boots, particularly when she’s also a vegetarian.