Seriously. If my dad had died without ever having had a kid, Sebastiano would be the next Prince of Genovia.

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.

Like about how with my luck, Michael will end up marrying Judith Gershner, so that even if I do ever get the guts to break up with Kenny, I will still never get a chance to be with the man I truly love.

And probably, given my luck, it will turn out that Sebastiano isn't just in town to design me a dress for my royal introduction, but to kill me so that he can assume the throne of Genovia himself.

Or, as Sebastiano would say, 'ass' the throne.

Seriously. That kind of stuff happens on Baywatch all the time. You wouldn't believe the number of royal family members Mitch has had to save from assassination.

Like supposing I put on the dress that Sebastiano has designed for me to wear when I'm introduced to the people of Genovia and it ends up squeezing me to death, just like that corset Snow White puts on in the original version of her story by the Brothers Grimm. You know, the part they left out of the Disney movie because it was too gruesome.

Anyway, what if the dress squeezes me to death and then I'm lying in my coffin, looking all pale and queenly, and Michael comes to my funeral and ends up gazing down at me and doesn't realize until right then that he has always loved me?

Then he'll have to break up with Judith Gershner.

Hey. It could happen.

OK, well, probably not, but thinking about that was better than listening to Grandmere and Sebastiano talk about me as if I wasn't even there.

I was roused from my pleasant little fantasy about Michael pining for me for the rest of his life by Sebastiano saying suddenly, 'She has bute bone struck,' which, when I realized I was the she he was referring to, I took to be a compliment about my

bone structure.

Only a second later it wasn't such a compliment when he went, 'I put make-up on her that make her look like a mod.'

Which, of course, is insulting because a nice person would say that I already look like a model (although of course I don't).

Grandmere certainly wasn't about to come to my. defence, however. She was feeding bits of her leftover veal marsala to Rommel, who was sitting on her lap shivering as usual since all of his fur fell out due to canine allergies.

'I wouldn't count on her father letting you,' she said to Sebastiano. 'Philippe is hopelessly old-fashioned.'

Which is so the pot calling the kettle black! I mean, Grandmere still thinks that cats go around trying to suck the breath out of their owners while they are sleeping. Seriously. She is always trying to convince me to give Fat Louie away.

So while Grandmere was going on about how old-fashioned her son is, I got up and joined him on the balcony.

He was checking his messages on his mobile. He's supposed to play racquetball tomorrow with the prime minister of France, who is in town for the same summit as the Emperor of Japan.

'Mia,' he said, when he saw me. 'What are you doing out here? It's freezing. Go back inside.'

'I will in a minute,' I said. I stood there next to him and looked out over the city. It really is kind of awe-inspiring, the view of Manhattan from the penthouse of the Plaza Hotel. I mean, you look at all those lights in all those windows and you think, for each light there's probably at least one person, but maybe even more, maybe even like ten people, and that's, well, pretty mind-boggling.

I've lived in Manhattan my whole life but it still impresses me.

Anyway, while I was standing there, looking at all the lights, I suddenly realized that one of them probably belonged to Judith Gershner. Judith was probably sitting in her room right this moment cloning something new. A pigeon or whatever. I got yet another flash of her and Michael looking down at me after I'd split open my tongue. Hmm, let me see: girl who can clone

things, or girl who bit her own tongue? I don't know, which girl would you choose?

My dad must have noticed something was wrong, since he went, 'Look, I know Sebastiano is a bit much, but just put up with him for the next couple of weeks. For my sake.'

'I wasn't thinking about Sebastiano,' I said sadly.

My dad made this grunting noise but he made no move to go back inside, even though it was about forty degrees out there

and my dad, well, he's completely bald. I could see that the tips of his ears were getting red with cold, but still he didn't budge. He didn't even have a coat on, just one of his ubiquitous charcoal-grey Armani suits.

I figured this was invitation enough to go on. You see, ordinarily my dad is not who I would go to first if I had a problem. Not that we're not close. It's just that, you know, he's a guy. What does he know about teenage girls?

On the other hand, he's had a lot of experience in the romance department so I figured he might just be able to offer some insight into this particular dilemma.

'Dad,' I said. 'What do you do if you like someone but they don't, you know, know it?'

My dad went, 'If Kenny doesn't know you like him by now then I'm afraid he's never going to get the message. Haven't you been out with him every weekend since Halloween?'

This is the problem with having a bodyguard who is on your father's payroll: all of your personal business totally gets discussed behind your back.

'I'm not talking about Kenny, Dad,' I said. 'It's someone else. Only like I said, he doesn't know I like him.'

'What's wrong with Kenny?' my dad wanted to know. 'I like Kenny.'

Of course my dad likes Kenny. Because the chances of me and Kenny ever getting past first base are like nil. What father doesn't want his teenage daughter to date a guy like that?

But if my dad has any serious hope of keeping the Genovian throne in the hands of the Renaldos and not allowing it to slip

into Sebastiano's control, he had better get over the whole Kenny thing, because I'm pretty sure that Kenny and I will not be doing any procreating. In this lifetime, anyway.

'Dad,' I said. 'Forget Kenny, OK? Kenny and I are just friends. I'm talking about someone else.'

My dad was looking over the side of the balcony railing, like he wanted to spit. Not that he ever would. I don't think. 'Do I know him? This someone else, I mean?'

I hesitated. I've never really admitted to anyone out loud that I have a crush on Michael. Really. I mean, who could I tell? Lilly would just make fun of me - or worse, tell him. And Mom, well, she's got her own problems.

'It's Lilly's brother,' I said, in a rush, to get it over with.

My dad looked alarmed. 'Isn't he in college?'

'Not yet,' I said. 'He's going in the fall.' When he still looked alarmed, I said, 'Don't worry, Dad. I don't stand a chance. Michael is very smart. He'd never want someone like me.'