My name is London Tipton, and I am not what you think I am.

All my friends - well, most my friends - see me as a selfish, spoiled little rich girl who can't even spell 'mints'. They think that I only care about two things: myself and shopping. They write off any rare flashes of brilliance as 'just a fluke,' and credit any bouts of generosity as the upbringing Mr. Moseby gave me. They assume that I was born a stupid rich girl, will live my life as a stupid rich girl, and will die a stupid rich girl.

That is exactly what I want them to think.

If they knew the truth, then they would be living in deadly danger, as would I. If they knew who I really am, I would have to kill them myself, just to keep them quiet.

Who am I?

I am a spy.

Nobody ever questions where my father gets his money. They take it for granted that he owns a chain of five-star hotels all across the globe; they take it for granted that he owns a line of luxury cruise ships, not to mention countless small, seemingly insignificant islands, (and half of New Zealand.)

Well, Daddy does own all that. (Yes, even part of N.Z.) That is where he - and I - get a great deal of our money. It is true that I shop a lot, and yes, it is true that my weekly allowance is about the same amount that the president of the United States makes in a year - but hey, the facade of "spoiled daughter of multi-trillionaire" is an expensive one to keep up!

But what no one knows is that he only gets a fraction of his income from such enterprises. His real business is directing a spy organization, and I am his number one undercover agent.

Think about it. Why would a man who owns eighteen mansions, twenty seven high-class beach houses, and three castles make his favorite daughter grow up in a hotel, raised by the manager? A man that rich doesn't really have much to do, he can hire people to tie his shoes, for Pete's sake! Why would he abandon his daughter at a hotel for someone else to take care of?

Simple. It's one of the easiest ways to track people. You get a steady flow of traffic through hotels, and as the owner's daughter, no one thinks it's suspicious when I demand to see the hotel register. Ever since I was old enough to know that Daddy was the big boss of a secret spy organization, I have been passing him information from the safety of the Boston Tipton, and I've had a hand in the disposal of quite a number of enemies.

Again, think about it. Even as rich as I am, do you really think I could just "get rid of people" that I don't like? Of course not. Every single person who has disappeared - everyone who has given me a bad perm, or any girl that's been rude to me, or anyone who's blown smoke in my face at a party - they were all agents of opposing forces. It's our code, you see. Daddy gets a phone call from his spoiled daughter, demanding that he "get rid of so-and-so for such-and-such a petty reason," and he knows that I've found another one, and promptly dispatches an undercover team to capture them. It's really the easiest thing in the world.

You know my web show, "Yay Me! Starring London Tipton"? Simply another way to keep in contact with and pass information to my father. People think I started it just because I was jealous of my "best friend" Portia Tenenbaum, who also had her own web show. As a matter of fact, I did get the idea from her, and once again, nobody questioned the real motives of vain, envious little London. Even Portia suspects nothing.

Oh, remember my friend Chelsea Brimmer? The oh-so-sensitive Pisces who took over Cody's producer job on "Yay Me! Starring London Tipton" when he quit? She's my partner. It's true that her father is in prison for not paying taxes, but that's just his cover. He passes information to her from inside prison, she passes it to me, and I send it back to Daddy. It's a flawless system, and nobody would ever know that Chelsea is a cyborg. (Remember her nose job? She had super-special spy technology installed when she got it. Don't even ask what got installed when I had my ears done.)

There was a specific reason that Daddy put me on the S.S. Tipton, and it wasn't to keep me from "jetting off to Paris for lunch and missing my afternoon classes". I was on the trail of someone Daddy suspected of being an assassin in the employment of one of our enemies. Turns out, she really was just a schoolteacher with terrible luck keeping a boyfriend.

Speaking of boyfriends, people think it's perfectly normal, the way I never go steady with a guy. I keep getting crushes and falling in love with this, that, and the other young fellow that crosses my path. The truth is, I'm investigating them. (Not in the way regular girls "investigate" guys - ew!) No, I literally investigate them. I never hook up with a boy unless I suspect them of being an opposing operative, and once I've found out what I need to know, I dump them. Or give them an excuse to dump me, whichever happens to be easiest. The only young guy I ever actually had feelings for was Todd St. Mark, and he is the only outsider who knows my secret. Not even Mr. Moseby knows who and what I really am.

Sometimes it hurts to know how many people I'm lying to - Moseby, Maddie, Bailey, Zack, Cody, Carey...pretty much everyone. But I can't change that. I can't let them know - any of them. Not even the man who raised me.

My entire life outside of the organization is a mask, a facade, a lie. And nobody I actually care about can know that. Because that's who I am.

London Tipton, top secret undercover agent.