Princess in Love

Maybe that's why my dad, every time he looks at Sebastiano, heaves this big shudder.

Or maybe it's just because my dad feels about Sebastiano the way I feel about my cousin Hank: I like him in theory, but in actual practice he kind of bugs me.

Sebastiano doesn't bug Grandmere, though. You can tell that Grandmere just loves him.

Which is really weird, because I always supposed Grandmere was incapable of loving anyone. Well, with the exception of Rommel, her miniature poodle.

But you can tell she totally adores Sebastiano. When she introduced him to me, and he bowed with this big flourish and kissed the air above my hand, Grandmere was practically beaming beneath her pink silk turban. Really.

I have never seen Grandmere beam before. Glare, plenty of times. But never beam.

Which might be why my dad started chewing the ice in his whiskey and soda in a very irritated manner. Grandmere's smile disappeared right away when she heard all that crunching.

'If you want to chew ice, Philippe,' Grandmere said, coldly, 'you can go and have your dinner at McDonald's with the rest of the proletariats.'

My dad stopped chewing his ice.

That's how scary Grandmere is. She can make princes stop chewing ice with one sentence.

It turns out Grandmere brought Sebastiano over from Genovia so that he could design my dress for my nationally televised introduction to my countrymen. Sebastiano is a very up-and-coming fashion designer - at least, according to Grandmere. She says it is important that Genovia supports its artists and craftspeople, or they will all flee to New York or, even worse, Los Angeles.

Which is too bad for Sebastiano, since he looks like the type who might really enjoy living in LA. He is thirtyish with long dark hair tied back in a ponytail, and is all tall and flamboyant-looking. Like, for instance, tonight, instead of a tie, Sebastiano was wearing a white silk ascot. And he had on a blue velvet jacket with leather trousers - which aren't any better, really, than pony-skin skirts, but at least we eat cows. Nobody eats ponies, except maybe in France.

I am fully prepared to forgive Sebastiano for the leather trousers if he designs me a dress that is nice enough. You know the kind of dress I mean. A dress that, should he happen to see me in it, will make Michael Moscovitz forget all about Judith Gershner and her fruit flies and fill his head with nothing but thoughts of me, Mia Thermopolis.

Only, of course, the chances of Michael ever actually seeing me in this dress are very slim, as my introduction to the Genovian people is only going to be on Genovian television, not CNN or anything.

Still, Sebastiano seemed ready to rise to the challenge. After dinner he even took out a pen and began sketching -right on the white tablecloth! - a design he thought might accentuate what he called my narrow waist and long legs.

Only, unlike my dad, who was born and raised in Genovia but speaks fluent English, Sebastiano doesn't have a real keen grasp of the language. He kept forgetting to put the second syllables on to words. So narrow became 'nar'. Just like 'coffee' became 'coff', and when he described something as magical, it came out as 'madge'. Even the butter wasn't safe. When Sebastiano asked me to please pass him the 'butt', I had to stuff my napkin in my mouth to keep from laughing out loud.

It didn't do any good, though, since Grandmere caught me and, raising one of her drawn-on eyebrows, went, 'Amelia, kindly do not make light of other people's speech habits. Your own are not even remotely perfect.'

Which is certainly true, considering the fact that, with my swollen tongue, I can't really say any word that starts with s.

Not only did Grandmere not mind Sebastiano saying the word 'butt' at the dinner table, she didn't mind his drawing on the tablecloth, either. She looked down at his sketch and said, 'Brilliant. Simply brilliant. As usual.'

Sebastiano looked very pleased. 'Do you real think so?' he asked.

Only I didn't think his sketch was so brilliant. It just looked like an ordinary dress to me. Certainly nothing to make anyone forget the fact that I'm about as likely to clone a fruit fly as I am to eat a Quarter Pounder with cheese.

'Um,' I said. 'Can't you make it a little more ... I don't know. Sexy?'

Grandmere and Sebastiano exchanged looks. 'Sexy?' Grandmere echoed, with an evil laugh. 'How? By making it lower-cut? But you haven't got anything there to show!'

Now, seriously. I would expect to hear this kind of thing from the cheerleaders at school, who have made demeaning other people - especially me - a sort of new Olympic sport. But what kind of person says things like this to her only grandchild?

I had meant, of course, a side slit, or maybe some fringe. I wasn't asking for anything Jennifer Lopez-ish.

But trust Grandmere to turn it into something like that. Why can't I have a normal grandmother, who bakes me cookies and can't stop bragging to her friends in the Bridge Club about how wonderful I am? Why do I have to be cursed with a grandmother who shaves off her eyebrows and seems to enjoy making light of my inadequacies?

It was while Grandmere and Sebastiano were cackling to themselves over this great witticism at my expense that my dad abruptly got up and left the table, saying he had to make a call. I suppose it's every man for himself where Grandmere is concerned, but you would think my own father would stick up for me once in a while.

I don't know, maybe it was residual depression over the giant hole in my tongue (which doesn't even have a nice sterling silver stud in it so I can pretend to have done it on purpose to be controversial). But as I sat there listening to Grandmere and Sebastiano chatter away about how pathetic it was that I would never be able to wear anything strapless, unless some miracle of nature occurred one night that inflated me from a 32A to a 34C, I couldn't help thinking about Michael.