by Mia Archer
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, everyone just hates me because I broke up with the most eligible guy in the band and shattered everyone’s fantasy of the band geek power couple.”
It still surprised me how many people were invested in my relationship with Colin. Some even more so than Colin himself. The conversation with Fredericks the Annoying had been particularly drawn out and frustrating. I knew the guy meant well, but let’s face it. He was a band teacher. He wasn’t exactly hip or with it when he was my age, and he certainly hadn’t gained much in the way of relationship wisdom in the years since.
“I still hate the asshole for doing this to me,” I said. “These were supposed to be good times. I’m supposed to enjoy graduating from high school, and now all I can think about is how I can’t get the hell away from here fast enough.”
“Maybe that’s a good thing,” Sarah said. “Everyone else is getting all weepy and sad about high school being over, but thanks to Colin you can’t wait to leave!”
“Yeah, some small consolation that is,” I muttered.
I felt the bus shift under me. We were slowing down. Now that was something. We’d only slowed down a couple of other times on the trip. One for a bathroom break when we were making our way through Georgia and once when we got stuck in the never ending traffic jam that was Atlanta.
Driving through that nightmare made me sympathize with Sherman. He probably got stuck in traffic on I285 and decided it would be faster to burn the place to the ground than wait around.
Not that I’d ever utter those dirty Yankee thoughts to anyone in that fair city. I might be feeling snarky on this trip, but I wasn’t suicidal.
“Looks like we’re getting close,” Sarah said, looking out the window.
“What makes you think that? It could just be more traffic,” I replied.
“Yeah? Then what’s that?”
She pointed out the window and I leaned over her to have a look. A lean that put me in very close proximity, but for some reason even after coming out I didn’t think of Sarah like that. I’d heard stories of girls who fell hard for their best friend, but for me lusting after Sarah felt like lusting after a brother or sister.
Talk about gross.
“What am I…” and then I saw it and my breath caught. “Is that?”
“Yup. It is,” she said.
I stared at none other than the Royal Palace. The centerpiece of the main park at Royal Realms. Modeled after one of the palaces from their numerous royalty-themed movies, it was something that I was aware of via pop culture saturation, but let me tell you seeing something on TV and in the movies and actually seeing it in person were two very different things. There was something about seeing that palace live and in person that took my breath away, even viewing it through a dirty bus window from the Interstate.
“Damn,” I said. “We’re really going to Royal Realms!”
“You know it,” Sarah replied, a bit of awe creeping into her voice as well. All across the bus it seemed other people were having the same experience. I thought I could almost feel it shifting as everyone tried to move to one side of the bus to get a good look.
It was enough that Mr. Fredericks stood from where he was craning to get a good look out the side of the bus and cast an irritated look at everyone else doing exactly the same thing. “All right everyone. Back to your seats. You’re all going to be in the park soon enough. I hope all of you got plenty of sleep on the overnight too.”
He shot a look towards the back of the bus in particular. I didn’t even want to think about what had gone on back there in the middle of the night when the chaperones all went to sleep.
The bus passed through what looked like a toll booth, but it was branded with the park’s logo so I figured they were probably extorting people for parking or something. Either way we were moving again.
“We’ll be at the hotel in no time,” Sarah said. “I can’t wait. I’ve been waiting my whole life to see this place!”
“I know. This is going to be awesome!”
I couldn’t help myself. I suppose it was a testament to how thoroughly this place had wormed its way into every aspect of my pop culture childhood, but it felt like not being able to visit this place as a kid was one of the great disappointments in life. I figured if not getting to visit a theme park was one of the bigger disappointments in my life then I was probably doing pretty good for myself.
“So what are you going to ride first?” I asked. “I was thinking the Crazy Mine Train looks like fun.”
“Are you kidding? I’m going to the Royal Palace to meet some of the princesses. It’ll be awesome!”
I rolled my eyes. Of course Sarah would go for that. “You know they’re not real princesses, right?”
Sarah fixed me with a flat “no shit” stare and I blushed. Okay, so maybe that was a stupid thing to say.
“Oh yeah? So would you rather hold out for all the real princesses walking around the park?”
I opened my mouth to give her a piece of my mind when the bus lurched to a sudden halt. I was thrown forward and very nearly slammed my forehead into the seat in front of me which would’ve been pretty uncomfortable considering it was a solid hunk of plastic. Judging from how people were suddenly cursing up and down the length of the bus it seemed that some people hadn’t been as lucky as I was.
“What the hell was that?” I asked.
I looked up in time to see Mr. Fredericks fix me with an irritated look, but he didn’t say anything about language. Instead he looked around to see what the problem was.
The problem became evident soon enough. A bunch of cop cars went rushing past the bus on our side so I got a good look at them. Not local cops, either. I’m talking state dudes. They were followed by a string of SUVs that were black as night and rushing past just as quickly.
“Who do you think that is?” I asked.
“Maybe a celebrity or something?” Sarah asked. “I suppose they have to get special treatment when they come out here.”
“I don’t know. Doesn’t seem like many celebrities would get cops to escort them,” I said.
“Maybe it’s some president or something,” Sarah said.
“Yeah, well whoever they are they’re holding us up. The jerk,” I muttered.
I leaned back in my chair. I could hear other people chattering and speculating about who might be rushing past us in those cars, but I didn’t care. Whoever they were, it was just some rich asshole who probably thought they were better than all the poor people they were holding up.
The jerks.
Still, living like that must be nice. I sighed. Not like I was ever going to see anything approaching that life, but it was nice to dream sometimes.
I was still lost in that improbable daydream when the bus finally lurched forward again to take us to our discount hotel that was probably as far from whatever resort Richy McFancypants was staying at as was possible within the massive confines of the resort.
And as I thought about that an idea started forming in my head that was crazy and could very well get me in trouble, but it suddenly seemed a hell of a lot more fun than going to the park with a bunch of people who hated me.
I just had to figure out how to sneak away when we got to the hotel. No big deal. Yeah, right.
4: Amelia
“I’ll be meeting with park security when we get to the resort to go over arrangements for making sure that you’re safe for the duration of the trip,” Felix said.
I sighed as I looked out the window at the cars and buses passing by. I barely felt the SUV moving as we brushed past all those people at high speed in a fast lane created by the local police. I wondered what it felt like being out there in one of those cars visiting the park with the family.
No such luck here. Not that I’d want to be around mom or dad anyways considering how they’d been acting since the little incident. Speaking of.
“You don’t have to use polite euphemisms, Felix,” I said. “I know very well what you mean when you
say you’re making sure I’m safe.”
“Sometimes polite fictions are all we have, highness,” Felix said. “Regardless. Your father told me to make sure you stay safe and out of trouble, and I fully intend to do both.”
I looked out the window again just in time to pass a couple of large buses lined up in traffic. I stared up through the tinted windows and saw excited faces of people who looked to be about my age, maybe a little younger, staring down eagerly at the passing cars. No doubt wondering what all the fuss was about or fantasizing about what it would be like to be the person being whisked around in an overpriced SUV by a police escort.
I’d like to say I looked up at those faces and wished I was on that bus, but I wasn’t willing to go that far. It seemed like being crammed into a metal tube like that with a bunch of other people dealing with uncomfortable seating wouldn’t be the best experience. Still, there was a part of me that very much wondered what it would feel like to experience the park like they were. Away from home, mostly on their own, getting to visit a strange new place.
I glanced across the SUV to where Felix sat smiling that smug smile that I hated so much. Those people on the bus might not be as comfortable as me, but they certainly had the advantage of no smarmy security guard watching their every move.
“Safe and out of trouble is all well and good, Felix, but is all this really necessary?”
Felix leaned forward and the smile was gone. Great. Serious Felix was coming out to play.
“You’re the heir to the throne of Allora and you will have to learn to live with security like this. The sooner you get used to that the happier your life will be, highness.”
“Whatever you say, Felix,” I replied.
I didn’t see the point of all the security, but no doubt he would think I was just complaining for the sake of complaining. The heir to a small European country that was so out of the way that it didn’t even get mentioned in the history books because everyone forgot about us?
I mean sure I’d done my share of getting Allora noticed. It seemed the gossip rags couldn’t get enough of me, and I’d been more than happy to use that media fascination to annoy father, but it still seemed ridiculous to do all of this. I knew the real reason I was surrounded by security.
Father was doing his best, via Felix, to make sure I didn’t get my name in the papers anymore. Why else would he have me spirited off to a resort in America at the height of a scandal that was starting to get international attention?
“I don’t know why you fight this, highness,” Felix said. Amazing how he could make ‘highness’ sound like a four letter word. Sometimes I thought the man needed to remember who would be cutting the paychecks someday. “Life isn’t a fairytale like one of the movies this park is based on. You have obligations to your country, you know. Life isn’t one big party.”
As though to punctuate his line about life not being a fairytale we came around a bend and then I could see the Royal Palace off in the distance. Odd. I lived in the real thing back home, and yet still I felt a thrill seeing the palace for the first time, even at a distance. Sure I knew it was fake, but I suppose it was a testament to just how pervasive American culture was around the world that I literally grew up in a real palace and yet the sight of a fake palace sent a thrill running through me.
Maybe it was because the fictional version of royal life depicted in all those movies the park was based on was so much more appealing than the stifling reality.
I know. Poor little rich girl. Well being rich didn’t mean you were immune from having problems. They were just different.
Then we rounded a bend in the road, these super wide roads with all the cars bunched up together were another thing about my visits to America that never ceased to amaze me, and the palace was out of sight.
“Are we going to the park today, Felix?” I asked.
He grunted. A decidedly noncommittal grunt. I turned from the window and frowned at him, though the frown rolled off him like it was nothing. I really needed to learn how to frown with the full weight of my station in life like father did. It would probably help if I actually had all the power like father did, though.
“We’re going to the park, right? I thought that was the whole point of this trip?”
“We’ll go to the park if they’ve made the appropriate security arrangements,” Felix said. “And never forget that the whole point of this trip is to get you out of town for a little while until things blow over.”
I sighed and fell back in my seat. “You know this really seems like an overreaction for me getting caught in a side room kissing someone.”
I purposely didn’t mention that the person I was kissing was a girl. I refused to make that a big deal in this day and age, even if it seemed to be the only thing the gossip rags could go on about. I guess a little girl on girl action was salacious enough that everyone wanted a piece of the story, but it disgusted me that my sexuality was being trotted out on the front page of every hack job gossip website in the world because the idea of a princess snogging another royal was titillating.
“Perhaps you should think twice before doing something like that in such a public venue,” Felix said.
His tone said that he clearly thought this was just another one of my attempts to rock the boat. To cause a headache for father via those gossip rags. Gossip rags that couldn’t be bothered to give me more than a third page story. Until now. Oh yeah, I’d definitely brought the world’s attention down on Allora with that one.
“It seems to me that the fault should be with the security personnel working at the palace that night,” I said.
Felix leaned forward again, a sudden glint in his eye. “Oh? And why would you think that, highness?”
“The story never would have happened if that photographer hadn’t managed to sneak past everyone working security that evening,” I replied.
“Perhaps, but your father didn’t place the blame on the hard working security people, and so here we are trying our best to avoid media attention,” Felix said. “Another thing you would do well to remember, highness.”
“It’s not fair. The world wouldn’t care if it was a guy I was kissing,” I muttered.
“No one ever said the world was fair,” Felix sighed. “If it was then I wouldn’t be stuck babysitting a petulant child who refuses to accept that she has certain responsibilities.”
I blinked. Had he really just said that? Certainly Felix took liberties when speaking with me, but that was the closest he’d come to outright impertinence since I was a child.
“You will remember who you are talking to and who you are, Felix,” I said, every bit of the haughty princess coming out. I wanted to wince. I hated it when I did this, but at the same time it was like a monster lurking inside me that roared every once in awhile. I couldn’t help myself.
Felix, for his part, didn’t seem bothered in the least that the princess had come out to play. He simply leaned back and shrugged, the implied threat rolling off of him just like everything else I ever said.
“I’ll do that when you bother to remember who you are long enough to stop causing trouble for you and your parents, and for me by extension.”
I crossed my arms and looked out the window again. It was a damn good thing the windows were tinted, because otherwise the bright sunlight streaming in would’ve been blinding. I’d have to get a pair of sunglasses before I ventured out into the park. I couldn’t help but feel that those tinted windows, dark enough that we could see out but no one else could see in, were just another example of how I was separated from the real world in my royal bubble decreed by father and zealously maintained by Felix.
“I still don’t understand why you make such a big deal out of this anyways. The whole royal thing is mostly ceremonial in Allora. It’s not like anything I do really matters.”
A sigh. “You’re part of the royal family, and that means you’re important and we have to do this. You know my life would be so much easier if you would take yourself ha
lf as seriously as everyone around you does.”
I didn’t have anything else to say to that. I’d lived my life in a gilded cage that I didn’t feel like I deserved. Maybe that was part of the reason I spent so much time acting out and doing my best to infuriate father and mother. Or maybe I was just the black sheep of the family.
The whole thing was a farce anyways. Our family hadn’t wielded real power in Allora in well over a century, no matter what Felix said about us being important. Great-granddad giving up most of his power to parliament was probably part of the reason why our family got to keep their heads while so many others were wiped off the face of the continent. That and we’d never been as unpopular as some other monarchies to begin with.
It was nice to know my family, at least, wasn’t the type of crazy that inspired popular revolutions.
I thought back to those buses. To all the eager faces I saw staring down at our tinted windows. All those kids around my age who were no doubt wondering what it would be like to live my life. The fact that this amusement park did so much business solely on selling the royalty fantasy to Americans was proof enough that the fantasy had staying power. If only they knew what they were getting into wanting that life.
“You know I sometimes wonder what it would be like to have a normal life like that,” I said.
Felix chuckled. “You’re defining ‘normal’ based on what American television tells you normal is. That’s not a good way to lead your life.”
I stuck my tongue out at him to let him know exactly what I thought of that. Was it a little immature? Sure, but it summed up exactly how I felt in that moment. I hated it when he said something that sounded close to being true. It made it that much more difficult to ignore him other times when I thought he was definitely wrong.
Though as I stuck my tongue out at him an idea occurred to me. One that seemed crazy, and I’m pretty sure it was the plot of at least one of the movies that had built this park, but sometimes crazy worked.