She’s turning me into someone else.

So I stood in front of my father, looking like a human Q-tip in my new hair, and I let him have it.

“First she makes me do homework. Then she rips the homework up. Then she gives me sitting lessons. Then she has all my hair dyed a different color and most of it hacked off, makes someone glue tiny surfboards to my fingernails, buys me shoes that cost as much as small animal surgery, and clothes that make me look like Vicky, the captain’s daughter in that old seventies series The Love Boat.

“Well, Dad, I’m sorry, but I’m not Vicky, and I never will be, no matter how much Grandm่re dresses me up like her. I’m not going to do great in school, be supercheerful all the time, or have any shipboard romances. That’s Vicky. That’s not me!”

My mom was coming out of her bedroom, putting the last touches on her date wear, when I screamed this. She was wearing a new outfit. It was this sort of Spanish skirt in all these different colors, and a sort of off-the-shoulder top. Her long hair was all over the place, and she looked really great. In fact, my dad headed for the liquor cabinet again when he saw her.

“Mia,” my mom said as she fastened on an earring, “nobody is asking you to be Vicky, the captain’s daughter.”

“Grandm่re is!”

“Your grandmother is just trying to prepare you, Mia.”

“Prepare me for what? I can’t go to school looking like this, you know,” I yelled.

My mom looked kind of confused. “Why not?”

Oh my God. Why me?

“Because,” I said, as patiently as I could, “I don’t want anyone at school finding out I’m the princess of Genovia!”

My mom shook her head. “Mia, honey, they’re going to find out sometime.”

I don’t see how. See, I have it all worked out: I’ll only be a princess in Genovia, and since the chances of anybody I know from school ever actually going to Genovia are like none, no one here will ever find out, so I’m totally safe from being branded a freak, like Tina Hakim Baba. Well, at least not the kind of freak who has to ride in a chauffeured limo to school every day and be followed by bodyguards.

“Well,” my mom said, after I’d told her all this. “What if it’s in the newspaper?”

“Why would it be in the newspaper?”

My mom looked at my dad. My dad looked away and took a sip from his drink.

You wouldn’t believe what he did next. He put down his drink, then he reached into his pants pocket, took out his Prada wallet, opened it, and asked, “How much?”

I was shocked. So was my mom.

“Phillipe,” she said, but my dad just kept looking at me.

“I’m serious, Helen,” he said. “I can see the compromise we drew up is getting us nowhere. The only solution in matters like these is cold, hard cash. So how much do I have to pay you, Mia, to let your grandmother turn you into a princess?”

“Is that what she’s doing?” I started yelling some more. “Well, if that’s what she’s doing, she has it all screwed up. I never saw a princess with hair this short, or feet as big as mine, who didn’t have breasts!”

My dad just looked at his watch. I guess he had somewhere to go. I bet it was another “interview” with that blond anchorwoman from ABC News.

“Consider it a job,” he said, “this learning how to be a princess business. I will pay your salary. Now, how much do you want?”

I started yelling even more about personal integrity and how I refused to sell my soul to the company store, that kind of thing. Stuff I got from some of my mom’s old records. I think she recognized this, since she sort of started slinking away, saying she had to go get ready for her date with Mr. G. My dad shot her the evil eye—he can do it almost as well as Grandm่re—and then he sighed and went, “Mia, I will donate one hundred dollars a day, in your name, to—what is it? Oh, yes—Greenpeace, so they can save all the whales they want, if you will make my mother happy by letting her teach you to be a princess.”

Well.

That’s an entirely different matter. It would be one thing if he were paying me to have my hair color chemically altered. But paying one hundred dollars per day to Greenpeace? That’s $356,000 per year! In my name! Why, Greenpeace will have to hire me after I graduate. I practically will have donated a million dollars by that time!

Wait, maybe that’s only $36,500. Where’s my calculator????

Later on Saturday

Well, I don’t know who Lilly Moscovitz thinks she is, but I sure know who she isn’t: my friend. I don’t think anyone who was my friend would be as mean to me as Lilly was tonight. I couldn’t believe it. And all because of my hair!

I guess I could understand it if Lilly was mad at me about something that mattered—like missing the taping of the Ho segment. I mean, I’m like the main cameraperson for Lilly Tells It Like It Is. I also do a lot of the prop work. When I’m not there, Shameeka has to do my job as well as hers, and Shameeka is already executive producer and location scout.

So I guess I could see how Lilly might kind of resent the fact that I missed today’s taping. She thinks Ho-Gate—that’s what she’s calling it—is the most important story she’s ever done. I think it’s kind of stupid. Who cares about five cents, anyway? But Lilly’s all, “We’re going to break the cycle of racism that has been rampant in delis across the five boroughs.”