“I’ll be fine,” I scoff in reply, because I can hold my pee with the best of them, and there’s no way I’m ever going back upstairs. My curiosity is sated, after all.
After what happened last night, I half expected Vance to order Mr. Rodriguez to fire me the second I walked in the door, but Mr. Rodriguez doesn’t seem to be doing that, so either Vance doesn’t hate me, or he has no power over me.
I like the second option even better than the first, really.
Doing anything in the library today ends up being an absolute pain. I end up propping my crutches against one of the chairs and just taking it slow as I unpack a series of fantasy books from one of the boxes. The volume I had been looking for yesterday ended up being at the bottom of a stack of books on the desk, which was fun to discover, but I push that out of my head—along with the thought that maybe it wasn’t Mr. Rodriguez who took the books off the top shelf for me the other day—and work.
Around 5:30 p.m., however, the bottle of water I chugged after school creeps up on me. I tried it with a little of Quinn’s magic medicine, but I only used half of the packet and it tasted so bad I couldn’t bring myself to dump the rest in.
And now here I am, ready to pee myself because I don’t want to go upstairs to use Vance’s bathroom.
But I can’t suffer for another thirty minutes, so I make the hard decision: I will take a warp-speed pee break and return long before Vance ever comes home from his walk with Sansa and finds out that I went tinkle on his throne. With my crutches in tow, I quickly hurry my way across the house and up the stairs to the second floor, to the bathroom at the end of the hall.
I close the door behind me and quickly do my business. There’s shaving cream on the bathroom counter, and toothpaste, mouthwash, a cheap razor—all the things my dad has on his bathroom counter. With the exception of the orange hair wrap sitting on the sink.
After I wash my hands, I turn to leave when I realize the packet of orange not-Kool-Aid has fallen out of my pocket. I pick it up, about to stick it back into my jeans, when I realize I had forgotten that I had opened it a few hours ago. And…it goes everywhere.
“Crap!” I curse, grabbing the orange hair wrap, and scrub the powder out of the sink and the tiles before it has time to dye anything orange. Thank God it’s one of those fast-absorbing towels.
I don’t want to ruin anything else in this house.
Least of all the marble countertops.
AS I JOG BACK TOWARD THE HOUSE, I don’t see the eyesore of a hatchback, so the girl must not have come today. Did Elias actually fire her? Or even if she just decided not to show up, it doesn’t matter. I would be fine either way, I’m just glad she isn’t here.
I’m not quite sure how much longer I can stay out in this heat before I get heatstroke. It’s almost October and it has barely gotten below thirty-five degrees Celsius—erm, ninety-five degrees Fahrenheit, I guess.
“Tamales tonight,” Elias says, stopping me in the kitchen.
“Delicious.” I pluck out my earbuds and take the lead off Sansa. She springs into the living room with boundless energy and face-plants into the couch.
“You’ve been gone for a while.”
“Just out running,” I reply, opening the refrigerator to get a bottle of water. I unscrew it and toss the cap into the recycling by the island counter. The hair that fell out of my ponytail is sticking to my neck, and all I want to do is go take a shower.
Down the hall, the library door is open and I can hear—humming?
A chill curls down my spine.
“She’s still here?” I ask before I can rein my surprise in.
Elias blinks. “Well, of course. Her father hasn’t picked her up yet. She can’t drive herself.”
Ah. Right.
Stupid me. Of course Elias wouldn’t fire her.
I down the rest of my water and toss the bottle into the recycling as I pass. If I didn’t know she was here, then she probably hasn’t realized I’ve returned, either. I’d rather keep it that way. I hurry up the stairs as quickly as I can and close the door to the bathroom.
Why am I running away from a girl in my own house? Why was I so terrified when she found that mask yesterday? Why am I still?
Because she can go to the tabloids, I tell myself. Because she can make things worse for you, and you don’t need things worse right now.
The shower, at the very least, is cold enough to shock the thoughts out of me. I sigh and press my forehead against the cool tiles. The cold water and quiet gets my head on straight again as I wash my hair. Can’t really recall the last time I properly washed it—when did I arrive here again? Two weeks ago? Time goes so slow in this town, in this house, day after day.
Lately, though, I’ve been too busy worrying about that girl down in the library.
And what she thinks of me.
I’m scrubbing my hair with the towel to dry it when my reflection catches my eye. Something is off. Slowly, I pull the towel off my head. The same face stares back. Nothing out of the ordinary, except…
A SCREAM EXPLODES FROM THE BATHROOM UPSTAIRS.
Uh-oh.
There’s a clattering noise, and loud footsteps rush across the ceiling. I hear him storm down the stairs. “WHERE IS SHE?” he yells, his voice cracking with either rage or tears, I’m not sure which one.
Tears, please tears, the barbaric part of me cheers.
Even though I don’t know what for.
I hear Mr. Rodriguez start saying, “Why would you—” before something loud crashes in the kitchen, as if he dropped whatever he was holding. “Dios mío,” he gasps, “what happened to your hair?”
Oh—oh no.
Before I can drop the book I’m holding—the seventeenth volume of Starfield—and dive under the desk, he storms into the library wearing nothing but a towel wrapped around his waist and fury in his eyes.
Oh.
My God.
His hair…his hair is…
He jabs a finger at me. “YOU!”
His hair is orange. Not like a nice rose-gold sort of orange, brassy with the softest hints of sunrise, but…like…
Orange.
“YOU DID THIS!”
No I didn’t, I think. But then, like a flashback reel in my head, I remember the exact moments leading up to this very scene. Me in the bathroom. Me dropping the vitamin C packet. Me using the orange towelette on the sink to mop it up.
I…definitely did it. By accident. Not that he’ll believe me. So, as a guilty party would do, I step behind the wingback chair to put some, um, distance between me and someone who definitely totally completely wants to murder me.
“I’m sorry!” I squeak.
Yep, definitely a confession.
“LOOK AT THIS! LOOK AT MY HAIR!” he cries, rushing into the library. He pulls at his shoulder-length orange-pop hair. It’s like someone spilled an entire highlighter on his head. And I drank that? Oh yikes.
You can practically see him from space.
“It’s…uh…not that…bad?” I offer.
“It’s not that bad?” he howls, and covers his hands with his face. He falls into the wingback chair dramatically, and his towel slips a little. I quickly avert my gaze. “I’m hideous.”
“You’re not hideous.” Mr. Rodriguez tries to reason with him, following him into the library. He gives me a questioning look to see if yes, I am the perpetrator of this great and terrible sin. Yes, yes I am.
By absolute accident, mind you.
“No one will ever like me,” Vance goes on, his voice muffled by his hands.
“I like you,” his guardian says patiently.
“What’s the point if I can’t be beautiful?”
I squint at him. “Are you quoting Howl’s Moving Castle?”
In reply, he gives another anguished wail and flops half of himself over the
side of the armrest. The towel is doing a very terrible job of covering anything up, and I gently pull it over his nether region so he won’t have to disgrace himself.
Mr. Rodriguez says, “It’ll be fine. Whatever happened, it can’t be permanent, and it doesn’t look terrible. Remember how cute that woman from that pop-punk band you like was with orange hair? Same thing.”
“It’s not,” he mumbles in reply.
A strange smokiness tinges my nose. “Mr. Rodriguez…is something burning?”
“My tamales!” he cries, then spins on his heel and darts out of the library and back into the kitchen.
After he’s gone, I hear Vance groan and lean back in the chair. “I don’t know how I’m going to explain this to my publicist.”
I don’t know, either, but I’m sure he doesn’t want my opinion.
The doorbell rings. It’s my dad, right on time. So I take my crutches, shove them under my arms, and begin to leave Vance dejected and alone with his orange hair in the library. I pause at the door, though, and glance back.
“If I told you it was an accident, would you believe me?” I ask.
In reply, he pointedly looks away.
No, I guess I wouldn’t believe me, either.
PART THREE
FRIEND
Ambrose runs his fingers down the slender length of Amara’s neck. They are alone on the observation deck, and he watches as gooseflesh prickles over the princess’s soft skin.
“Do you really want to spend the rest of your life on that small little planet, ruling from a throne, watching the stars from a distance?” Ambrose asks softly. “Aren’t you going to miss this?”
This being the view from the observation deck. This being the countless stars spread across the sky. This being nights like tonight, when the skies are wide and the universe impossible.
This being alone together.
This being something that will never happen again.
Amara shrugs out of Ambrose’s grip. “The view is better on the south side of Metron,” she replies almost apologetically, but it’s all Ambrose needs to hear.
He looks away, trying to keep himself composed, pursing his lips tightly. He’s the Starbright General, after all, the slaughterer of legions, the hero of the Avaril Nebula, and the Noxian King’s greatest spy. For a moment he had forgotten that. “Very well, my princess.”
Then the princess curtsies, and leaves him on the observation deck with all of the stars in the sky—alone.
He’s meant to be alone, anyway.
SHE IS A DISASTER. That’s all there is to it.
At least she doesn’t come over on the weekends, and I can burrito myself onto the couch and fester in my cocoon of depression without her nosing through my entire life.
“Stop brooding and sit up,” Elias says with an exasperated sigh. Sansa starts sniffing at my face. I push her away, but she just sticks her nose right into my ear—and licks it.
“Argh,” I moan, pushing her away, and rub my hand against my ear.
Sansa sits down, her tail swishing back and forth like a duster, looking at me as though she had not just invaded my inner ear’s privacy. “I hate her,” I mumble.
“I know.”
“I don’t mean the dog.”
“You don’t mean it.”
I melt back into the couch and stare at television. There is a photo of Darien Freeman on Entertainment Tonight, walking beside the pop singer who did that unicorn music video. Thalia, or something. They’re talking about whether he’s dating her. I don’t even have to read their lips—I recognize the kind of story it is, a quick news flash of speculation. Only, I’m more accustomed to me being the focal point of those segments.
Elias sighs and turns the channel to Jeopardy!, and a black woman chooses Originals in TV Shows—“For six hundred, Alex,” she adds.
The tile changes to the question, “This actress was the original Princess Amara in the hit television series Starfield.”
“Natalia Ford, obviously,” Elias mutters. “That’s too easy.”
I make a wrong-buzzer noise. “Ellen North.”
And the woman answers, “Who is Ellen North?”
“Correct!” Alex congratulates her, and the woman earns six hundred glorious dollars.
Elias gives me a sidelong look. “How did you know that?”
“Everyone knows Ellen North was in the pilot episode of Starfield, but she was replaced by Natalia for the rest of the seasons,” I reply, turning onto my side. My feet hang off the end of the couch because no one makes furniture for tall people anymore, apparently. “I do two things well: I burrito on weekends and I know things.”
He frowns. “You are going to put pants on at least, aren’t you?”
“My hair is orange.”
“And you’re still in Friday night’s pajamas. It’s Sunday.”
“My hair is orange.”
He throws his hands into the air. “And mine’s beginning to fall out! We all have our problems, mijo.”
“This isn’t fair,” I go on. “I can’t leave, since my parents trapped me here, but you can very certainly make her leave—so why don’t you? Clearly none of us are having any fun here.”
“You parents didn’t trap you here,” he replies patiently.
“Then what’s it called when you send your son to some nowhere town with a warden”—I throw my hand out to him—“and no money to get out? No credit cards? No cash? No anything? What do you call that?”
He gives a long sigh and shakes his head. “All right, mijo. When she comes in tomorrow, I’ll let her know we no longer need her services.”
I give a start. “What—really? You’re firing her?”
“But you’ll have to finish up organizing that library alone.”
“A small price to pay!” I reply with a relieved laugh, surprised that he finally gave in.
As he leaves I feel just a little bit vindicated. Just for a moment. But the farther Elias gets, the less victorious I feel, until he’s gone from the living room and the triumphant smile slides from my face, and I feel just as hollow as before, except with orange hair.
* * *
—
THAT NIGHT, MY ONLY FRIEND also feels the need to turn against me right in the middle of a battle royale. “You need to apologize to her,” Imogen’s tinny voice says through my headset as I get headshotted for the third time.
DEATH IS ETERNAL! the caption reads as the camera rotates around my lifeless corpse.
I drop my controller and hang my head. “She dyed my hair, Imogen. Isn’t that retribution enough?”
“You purposefully kept a secret from her,” adds another voice—male. Imogen’s boyfriend, Ethan. I watch as his character comes over to mine and takes all of my ammo and supplies and runs on to the next objective. “It’s really simple. You just go up and tell her ‘I’m sorry.’ ”
“But I’m not in the wrong,” I try to argue.
“Oh yeah, you are,” Imogen replies.
“Because I didn’t want her to know that I was that guy at ExcelsiCon?” I respawn at the next checkpoint and jump off the sandy cliff and into the fray again. “Excuse me if I didn’t want to ruin my image.”
“Starflame. Self-absorbed much?”
That ticks me off. “What’s so self-absorbed with letting her have her fantasy? What do you think she thought, Imogen, when she realized it was me?”
“Maybe that she was happy she finally found you?” Ethan challenges.
“Or maybe she thought—oh! Let me go to the tabloids!” When they begin to argue I add, “Whatever—I don’t expect you two to understand.”
Imogen asks, “Because we don’t always see the worst in people?”
“Mo,” her boyfriend warns.
“What?” she says. “It’s the truth. Maybe you need a frie
nd—like we’re friends, obviously—but someone else. Maybe Natalia is making her work there because she agrees.”
A friend—why is everyone coddling me, thinking that I’m not acutely aware of the choices I make?
I grit my teeth. “Yeah, and do you also think I needed to get away from LA? That it was good of me to live in some—some nowhere town?”
“I’m not saying that, Vance.”
“You don’t have to because my stepfather already did,” I snap.
“All I’m saying is those stupid friends of yours in LA made you jaded and untrusting and that’s not who friends are. People aren’t out to find the worst in you, Vance. I thought you would’ve figured that out by now—”
Someone headshots me for the fourth time, and I give up. Both on this conversation and on the game. I’m too angry to play, anyway. “Forget it. I’m leaving.”
“Vance—”
“Good game,” I add absently, and sign off before she can say anything else. I wrench off my headset and bury my face in my hands. Because a small part of me thinks—for a moment—Imogen might be right.
And I can’t bear to think about that.
I PARK IN FRONT OF THE CASTLE-HOUSE on Monday afternoon, but I don’t turn off the car. I’ve half a mind to just kick my good ole hatchback into gear and drive straight home. Let Dad pay off the rest of the book fee—even though it’s probably still more than we can afford. I’ll find a different job to pay him back. I’ll even resort to Craigslist and risk getting murdered by some Hydra-hailing Ted Bundy with an alarming collection of The Killing Joke and the Reddit username FIGHTTHESJWS to find another copy of that waterlogged priceless volume of Starfield.
Honestly, that sounds at least a little more exciting than just the thought of facing Vance Reigns again. Vance Reigns, who was my mystery prince at ExcelsiCon, the guy I’d been daydreaming about—stupidly daydreaming about.
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