Nobody in Particular(36)
She barks a laugh, still holding me. Her thumb moves against my palm, and my eyes flicker down to look at our hands before I can stop them. “I can’t even do a single axel. God didn’t want to make me overpowered. I thought we were slightly exaggerating our promises.”
“We were, but I can play concertos.”
“Well, now I’m even more impressed. And I’m much more difficult to impress than you.”
I raise our joined hands up and down, finishing the handshake. Rose is slow to let go, and there’s no way I’m imagining how long we’ve been looking at each other. The same way I definitely wasn’t imagining it when she kept looking at me in Eleanor’s room a few weeks back.
The silence has been going on for too long, and I feel like I need to fill it, but I can’t think of a single thing to say. Rose’s self-assured grin has dropped off a little, and she’s scanning my face like she’s looking for something. She bites her lip, and I must lose all grip on reality, because for one delusional moment I actually think it feels like the energy before a first kiss. Where your fingertips tingle, and your heart starts to trip over itself as it races downhill, and you can’t tear your eyes away from one another until suddenly the space between you isn’t there at all anymore, and you don’t even know who closed it.
Like I said, delusional. Because we don’t kiss. Of course we don’t kiss. In what universe would that happen? Instead, Rose hops up and holds a hand out to help me to my feet. “Anyway, in all seriousness, please feel free to visit during the school holidays to play her. It’ll give her something to live for.”
I close the piano lid and hurry to keep up with her. “Thanks.”
God, I really am totally delusional. What kind of ego do I have? I’m definitely not imagining this, says the girl projecting her bonkers fantasy onto a normal, innocent situation. Thank god thoughts are private, because I think I would straight-up die on the spot if Rose ever found out what was going through my head in there. She’d skip right past “light mocking” and howl with laughter.
As long as I make sure I keep both feet firmly planted in reality, I’ll be fine. The last thing I need is to make one of my brand-new friendships weird before I’ve even made it through a whole term.
Especially not a friendship I’m starting to really, really care about.
SIXTEEN
ROSE
When I was younger, my aunt Belinda, the wife of my father’s brother, Albert, told me a fairy tale. It was the story of a handsome prince who met a beautiful maiden. She was everything he wanted in a wife; kind, and smart, and with the same sarcastic sense of humor he valued so much. Only, the maiden came covered in scars. They weren’t visible, but they were there all the same, betraying a history unbefitting a future queen. Aunt Belinda never told me the maiden’s exact crimes, but, she assured me, it was enough to make the king and queen despise her.
At first, the prince ignored his parents’ wishes, and courted the maiden, regardless. But every day, the king and queen grew angrier and angrier. Finally, the prince told his parents that love conquered everything, and he planned to make the maiden his wife. He was certain that once they got to know her, they would love her as he did.
The king and queen knew there was nothing they could say to change his mind. And so, they sent the maiden away on a ship to the land of her birth. She would never be allowed to return to the country. The handsome prince would have to find somebody else to marry.
“So, you understand, Rose,” Aunt Belinda said to me at the end of the story, “you must be mindful of who you give your heart to. Choose unwisely, and you risk both your heart and theirs.”
“My parents would never do that to me,” I said.
“Hmm,” she replied. “Your father thought the same thing, once. He learned, though.”
And that was when I understood that Aunt Belinda’s story was not a fairy tale at all.
As the congregation rises from the cathedral pews, I spot Aunt Belinda through the crowd, and wonder if she would have done the same to her own children, had she ended up queen. Her daughter, Sukey, is third in line after myself and Uncle Albert. Sukey’s three-month-old, Augustus—the one whose christening just concluded—is fourth. Third-in-lines do not face much restriction in regards to who they marry. Not when the first in line is poised to take the throne without obvious complications. So, I suppose, it’s more than likely that baby Augustus’s parents were a true love match.
What a luxury. I wonder if Sukey appreciates her luck.
My phone buzzes in my pocket with a text. I check it surreptitiously, and break into a smile when I see Danni’s name. Unfortunately, I will have to respond to her later. It would be unforgivably rude of me to be caught on my phone during an event like this.
It was difficult for me to see Augustus during the christening—though the royal family enjoy front-row seats at an event like this, Saint Mariana’s Cathedral is notoriously large, and the altar is approximately three miles ahead. Now, however, I manage to get a better look at the bundle of joy as the guests file out of the cathedral into the dreary day and mill about in the attached gardens. Baby Augustus has a pursed mouth, a wrinkled forehead, and no hair. He waves tiny clenched fists in midair and scrunches his face up in a squishy, pudgy frown. Cheer up, I want to tell him. You get all the benefits of being a little prince, but none of the pressure. It’s a good deal.