Nobody in Particular
Sophie Gonzales
To everybody who believed in this book, and in me.
I needed every one of you to make it here. Thank you.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Dear Reader,
Nobody in Particular is both my oldest child and my youngest. Eleven years ago, I met someone, and in the high of romantic bliss I wrote a 94,000-word manuscript in fifty-four days. I knew exactly what I wanted it to be, and the queer twist on the “royalty falls for commoner” trope poured out of me faster than my fingers could type it. I queried it and received an offer of representation within a matter of days, and I allowed myself to hope that this would be it. The book that would make me a published author.
Yet, it wasn’t. Over the next year I saw it taken to acquisitions again and again, only to be told repeatedly that there was no audience for a queer royal romance. It was a niche topic, by all accounts at the time. No matter how many times I edited it—and it went through more than its fair share of edits that year—this feedback remained the same. And so, I shelved it.
As any voracious—or even casual—reader can tell you, time eventually proved that there was, in fact, an audience for a queer royal romance. Many of them, even. And while I never forgot my beloved firstborn, the concern in my mind by this point was that my once-unique story had suddenly nosedived from “too niche” to “overdone.” One piece of media in particular followed the original plotline so closely I feared people might accuse me of copying it should I ever publish my own—predated—version. But when a few friends asked to read it in 2021, and I combed through it to “tidy it up,” I realized two things. One, I still loved this story intensely. Two, experience and fresh eyes had given me insight into how to update the plot somewhat, preserving the original heart but expanding it in a way that made it new again.
So, no longer an infant author, I took my manuscript and helped it grow up. I didn’t think it was possible to love it more, but here I am. I love it because it’s the story I wrote when I met the man I now call my husband, filled with that longing and hope and yearning. It’s the story I wrote when I was barely out of my teenage years myself, and the story I recrafted with the confidence that only comes from thinking through a manuscript for more than a decade. I don’t say this often, but I am proud of it. I’m proud, and so excited for it to finally move past the small group of passionate supporters it found years ago and make its way into the world.
This book has existed alongside me for more than a third of my life. I hope you enjoy it. I really do. It took a mammoth effort by countless people pushing for far too long to get it into your hands today.
And I am so glad the world it’s being sent out into has improved in so many measurable ways from the world it was conceived in.
Love,
Sophie
ONE
DANNI
I’m about halfway through my tour of Bramppath College when I get the sneaking suspicion I’ve dropped myself smack in the middle of shark-infested waters. And growing up in Boulder, Colorado, I never even learned how to swim.
Bramppath College is a stupidly prestigious boarding school, full of stupidly rich kids who all own Porsches, or BMWs, or whatever. Some of my classmates will be royalty—literally—and the rest will be nothing like my friends back home.
I belong at a red brick school, with desks decorated in permanent marker, and paint chipping off the walls, and everyone old friends with everybody else in their class. But now I’m enrolled in a place where the students sit around roses and honeysuckle, and eat at mahogany tables, and don’t look at girls like me unless it’s down.
Hellene, the bubbly woman who works in the uniform shop and is our temporary tour guide, is nice enough, I guess. But that’s no reason to let down my guard around rich people just yet. She doesn’t exactly seem like she drove a Porsche to work. Still, she’s either high-key obsessed with the school, or she’s being paid a decent amount to pretend to be, because she’s been rattling off facts about the buildings like she’s on speed. Mom’s super into it, though. The two of them are walking way ahead of me, talking like they met fifteen years ago instead of fifteen minutes.
I trail behind them, staring around as we walk. The grounds are enormous. My entire suburb at home could fit on top of this school, I swear. We duck under a neat hedge arch, hop down some stone steps, and then cross through a flower garden. To our left is yet another towering building that Hellene says was built centuries ago, and I crane my neck to take it all in until I pull a muscle.
Even my body knows I don’t belong here. Too bad my mind didn’t figure that out until it was way too late.
Until today, the whole moving countries thing was sort of exciting. Mom met this guy, Dennis Baker, online like two years ago, and as it turned out, he wasn’t a catfish. He’s actually a pretty great guy. My biological dad dipped when Mom got pregnant, and she stayed single pretty much my whole childhood, so I never had any kind of father figure to compare Dennis to. Still, I’m pretty sure he’s one of the better ones. When he and Mom got serious, he even offered to move to Boulder at first, because he thought I should finish high school in my own country. But then Mom went to visit him in Henland and got all googly-eyed over it, and fast-forward a year and a half, here we are.