At lunchtime, I stand with my bagged lunch, for once not certain about where I should sit. Should I try to make things up with Bethany? I glance at Bethany’s table, but she’s not even looking at me. Should I see if the truce Jasmine and I seem to have is strong enough to survive lunch? Maybe I should sit with people I don’t know yet and make new friends? I could probably use some new friends at this school.
As I scan the lunchroom looking for a likely new group of friends, Jasmine sees me and waves me over to her table. Well, maybe it is better to build a friendship on whatever we have going than to start all over again. What could have prompted this new friendliness from Jasmine? Is it just because I’m a princess? Maybe. I can live with that. I head to the table by the window.
I sit down and open my lunch.
“Any more of that royal baloney?” Jasmine asks me, and I know she’s figured out I was messing with her the other day.
“No. Today it is Imperial roast beef. The favorite sandwich meat of all the tsars of Russia.”
“You’re making that up, right?” Marly asks, sounding as if she really isn’t sure.
“Ja,” I say with a grin. “I’m making it up.”
Across the table from me, Jasmine laughs, and suddenly the atmosphere feels relaxed and almost normal.
“Do you like have a chef and all kinds of servants and every-thing?” Jordan asks.
“Not here. They all stayed behind. We’re staying at a friend’s place. We’ve been living mainly on frozen dinners and takeaway.”
“Let me guess,” Jasmine says, “last night was Imperial roast beef?”
“Just like the tsar used to eat,” I answer.
“I had to have dinner with my grandmother,” Jordan says, “and then I had to wash all the dishes. You’re lucky you have a maid.”
“I don’t—” I start, but Jasmine shakes her head.
“Don’t try to explain,” she says. “It’s not worth it.”
“I looked up your country,” Marly says, picking pickles off her hamburger. “I never heard of it, but it turns out it’s real.”
“We just have a really elaborate website,” I say. Turns out it’s real, indeed.
Marly’s eyes widen as if she actually believes me.
“I’m kidding,” I assure her. “Our country is real.”
“Marly,” Jasmine says with an over-elaborate sigh, “stop being an idiot.” She looks at me over her bottle of water. “Things are pretty messed up there now, though.”
I close my eyes until the urge to cry leaves. “Really messed up,” I say finally.
“What’s the deal with the videos?” Jasmine asks. “I mean, I saw them, and they’re cute, but only some of them are in English. Spanish I can handle, since my grandma makes me watch her ‘stories’ with her whenever I’m over, but whatever that is you’re speaking, I don’t understand.”
“German,” I say. “And mostly, the English ones are just translations of the German ones.”
“Ah. The only thing I knew for certain from the German ones is that you apparently like soda.”
“Have you ever seen their commercials?” I ask, knowing full well she has. Everyone has; that’s why I used them as a guide.
“Sure,” she answers.
“I love them!” Marly says, her eyes wide. “Were you in an ad?”
I cock my head and look at her, trying to figure out what she’s talking about.
“Shut up, Marly,” Jasmine says and turns back to me. “Okay, so commercials.”
“Right. They’re short and sweet and make everyone want to drink more soda. So I wanted to make videos that were short and sweet and made everyone want the royal family back.”
“Aww!” Jordan presses one hand to her heart. “That is so sweet. Such a great idea. Is it working?”
“I don’t know,” I admit. “People are watching them, but I don’t know if it’s going to save the kingdom.”
“Saving the kingdom is a pretty tall order,” Jasmine says.
“But it’s what I want,” I say, trying not to sound petulant.
“And as princess, you’re used to getting what you want?” Jasmine asks, one eyebrow quirked.
“Well, yeah,” I admit, though the way she says it, it sounds like maybe I am a bit spoiled after all.
“Can I see one of the videos?” Jordan asks.
Jasmine pulls out her phone and plays one of the videos for Jordan and Marly to see. It’s one of the German ones.
“So, what are you saying there?” Jasmine asks.
“That I miss my country and that my country might be small, but it is feisty, kind of like me.”
Jasmine grins. “Feisty. I like that. Feisty Fritzi!”
“That could totally be a hashtag!” Marly says.
“Oooh,” Jordan says, taking up the idea. “We could get T-shirts and everything!”
While I love the support from this unexpected area, I’m not sure what good T-shirts would do.
“Where would we even get T-shirts?” Jasmine asks Jordan. “But a hashtag, now that could work.” The next thing I know, she’s taking a selfie with me. “Princess Power!” she says. “Hashtag FeistyFritzi!”
I laugh. It feels good to laugh. Nothing has seemed very funny lately. Maybe with their help, I can actually make a difference.
Across the cafeteria, Bethany is glaring at us. I stop laughing and nudge Jasmine. “What’s the story with Bethany? She seemed nice when I first got here, but now she won’t talk to me.”
Jasmine shrugs. “Yeah. She’s all about helping the underdog. But you showed her you didn’t need her help. If you don’t need her, she doesn’t need you.”
Underdog. There’s that term again. “Do you think I’m an underdog?” I ask.
“You! Heck, no! You’re a princess! And you don’t let yourself get pushed around. I admire that.”
“Princesses don’t get pushed around,” I explain.
“Do you go to like princess school to learn stuff like that?” Marly asks.
Before Jasmine can tell her not to be stupid, again, I answer. “Sort of. My grandmother taught me.”
“Kind of like in Princess Diaries?” Jordan asks.
I know what she’s talking about. I saw the movie where the girl discovers she’s a princess and her grandmother teaches her all the ins and outs.
“Not exactly. I mean, I always knew I was a princess, so it was stuff my sister and I learned from when we were babies.”
“Will you still be a princess if the coup is successful?” Jasmine asks.
My shoulders tense again. I want to say that I will always be a princess, that that is who I am. That it can’t be taken from me. But in reality, perhaps it can.
“I don’t know,” I say.
None of them offer any snappy comebacks to that, for which I am both grateful and sorry. I wish one of them would have said that of course I’ll always be a princess. I’d like someone to think it, other than myself.
In the awkward silence that has descended on the table, I shift the subject back to underdogs. I need to understand this phenomenon.
“Do people like underdogs better than other people?” I ask. That seems to be what Mrs. Hart thought.
“Losers do,” Jasmine answers dismissively.
“I don’t know,” Jordan says. “I think people do. They like rooting for the person who seems to have the odds against them.”
“But,” I muse, “if you need people on your side to win, and people only back the one who is losing, how do you ever win and have people like you?”
“Some people like winners,” Marly says helpfully.
“Not Bethany,” I answer. “Are there a lot like her?”
“Enough,” Jasmine says. “You’re thinking about your country?”
“Ja,” I say. “I want the videos to convince people to back the king, and the other day someone told me they could be helpful because the American people like the underdog. But you are saying that if you start winning, people stop supp
orting you.”
“I don’t know if that’s always true. People like the underdog to win,” Marly says.
“But what about the next time? Then he’s not an underdog. Is he allowed to win again?” This is all so confusing.
“You only have to win once,” Jasmine points out. “Just long enough to get the country back.”
This is a very good point.
21
Are you going to the student-teacher volleyball game?” Jasmine asks as I stand at my locker, staring at my things, trying to remember what books I need to bring home.
“I don’t think so,” I say. I’ve seen posters for it, but I don’t know the teachers or most of the students, and besides, it costs three dollars. “I don’t have any spending money,” I say and grab my math and Spanish books before shutting the locker.
“Is that the only reason? I’ll spot you the cash. You’re a princess, I’m sure you’re good for it.”
“Only if the coup doesn’t succeed,” I say with a sigh.
“Then consider it my contribution to the cause. Come on. It will be fun.”
I don’t exactly want to go back to the townhouse. All I have to look forward to is the claustrophobic feeling of not having anywhere else to go and the tension that comes from not knowing what is going on back home.
“I’ll have to let someone know I’m not going home,” I say. “Henri is probably waiting for me right now.”
“Sure,” Jasmine says. “I mean, if you’re going to live here, they have to expect you to get involved in the school and stuff, right?”
“I’m not going to live here,” I say. “We’re just here until everything gets straightened out at home.”
Jasmine doesn’t look bothered by that. “Whatever. You’re here now. You should be allowed to have fun.”
This is true. If we’ve been removed from Colsteinburg to get us away from the coup, it follows that we’re not expected simply to hunker down as if we were still home and in immediate danger. Why shouldn’t I go to an after-school activity?
Henri is out front waiting for me. I hand him my books. “I’m going to the student-teacher volleyball game,” I tell him.
Henri looks less than thrilled with my announcement. “Did you discuss this with your mother?”
I stand tall, trying to look regal like Mam or Georgie can do without even trying. “How could I? I only just found out about it.”
“Then I’ll have to insist you come home with me.”
“No. You all agreed I should go to school and get out of the house and have a normal routine. Well, this is part of the routine. I’ll be home later. You tell Mam for me.” I turn on my heel and walk beside Jasmine back toward the school, knowing that Henri is probably turning a hundred shades of red.
“You really told him!”
My hands are shaking. Yeah, I told him. And chances are, if Mam is feeling at all like herself, when I get home I’ll likely be grounded for life. It probably isn’t worth it just to watch a bunch of people I don’t know play volleyball, but whatever. I’m tired of being told I can’t do things. So I’m doing this.
In the gym, the bleachers have been pulled out, and people are crowding onto them, clumped together in friend groups. I follow Jasmine up to the top, where Marly and Jordan have saved us seats. On the way, we pass Bethany, Kim, and Miles, and I start to say hi, but Jasmine pulls me along, and Bethany turns away as if she doesn’t see me.
Perhaps I am not such an underdog after all, if Bethany has turned on me. But is that good or bad?
Jasmine pulls out her phone and takes a selfie of the two of us. “Princess Power!” she says as she uploads it. “You need to make another video, in English, and let me be in it.”
“I’m never sure what to say to Americans. My message has been for the people of my country.”
“Let me do the talking then,” Jasmine says.
“No,” I say. “Not unless I know what you are going to say. This is too important to take chances.”
Jasmine frowns, and I know I’ve annoyed her. “You don’t trust me?”
I give her my best regal look. “I barely know you, and not that long ago you dumped a tray of food on my head. Let’s say I’m being cautious.”
Slowly, Jasmine’s frown turns into a grin. “You’re not so stupid, you know that?”
“I do,” I answer, returning her grin.
“But I can be in the video, right?”
“Sure.” I don’t see a problem with that. I need a minute to think of a message—and one that is addressed to Americans.
A hundred conversations swirl around me, and I wonder if I will even be able to be heard in a video, but it’s worth a try. I pull out my phone and position it so that Jasmine and I can both be seen. “Hallo, America! I am Princess Fredericka!”
“Fritzi!” Jasmine hisses in my ear. “It sounds friendlier.”
Princess Fritzi? Well, why not.
“My friends call me Fritzi,” I say. “I am about to watch a student-teacher volleyball game and am wishing that differences could be solved by a simple game in my country.”
“Colsteinburg,” Jasmine pipes up. “You have to tell them that part.”
“Ja. Colsteinburg.” This video is already almost too long. Time to wrap it up. I can’t think of a snappy ending, so I finish with my traditional “Prost!”
“What’s that mean?” Jasmine asks, camera still running.
“Cheers,” I say.
“Then, cheers!” she says to the camera, and I stop filming. “Be sure to add the hashtag FeistyFritzi when you upload it. And maybe PrincessPower too.”
I nod and do as she says. It can’t hurt.
The teachers win the game handily. They win because they have more experience and are better organized and are stronger. If the two sides of the Colsteinburg coup were the teams, wouldn’t our side win? Aren’t we more experienced and better organized and stronger? But what if we’re not? That’s the thought that makes my stomach knot up.
“Too bad the students lost,” I say as we descend the bleachers.
Bethany, whom I wasn’t even talking to, is the one who answers.
“I suppose you think that if they had let the princess on the team they would have won, right? You think you’re so great.”
I’m so shocked I can barely think of a comeback, but this cannot go unanswered.
Jasmine springs to my defense. “She would have done a lot better than you. And you barely say boo to anyone. How come you’re heaping on the princess? You on the side of the rebels or something?”
“I just don’t like it when people put on airs,” Bethany says, shrinking a bit under Jasmine’s gaze.
“Well, when you see Fritzi putting on airs, you let us know. In the meantime, shut up.”
Bethany turns away, and there isn’t really anything for me to add, so I follow Jasmine off the bleachers and out of the gym.
“Thanks for that,” I say when we get outside.
“Oh, you hardly need me standing up for you,” Jasmine says. “I know you can hold your own. But she’s so easy to fluster, I can’t resist. Besides, she’s being unfair to you.”
She is being unfair to me, and I don’t like it. I know it shouldn’t matter, but somehow I have to convince Bethany that being a princess does not make me a bad person.
Outside, people are leaving for home or calling for rides. I half expect Henri to still be there waiting for me, but he’s not. No one is.
“Do you have to call your bodyguard or anything to have him come get you?” Jasmine asks.
“I do,” I say. “The only way I was allowed back at school was if Henri brought me back and forth. They are worried about security,” I say.
“I guess that makes sense,” Jasmine says.
I text Henri to let him know he can come get me.
“One more video while you wait,” Jasmine says.
Why not?
“Hallo! Princess Fritzi here,” I say, and Jasmine smiles approvingly. “With
my friends Jasmine, Marly, and Jordan.” I make sure they each get seen. “The teachers won. The sun is shining. It is lovely here in America, but my heart yearns for Colsteinburg. For home. Prost!”
“Cheers!” Jasmine adds.
I post the video. “Thanks for your help,” I say.
“I hope it works,” Jasmine says. “I’d like to be able to say I helped save a kingdom.”
“You and me both,” I answer. I look in the direction of the townhouse to see if Henri is in sight yet. Maybe I should walk toward there. That couldn’t be any more dangerous than waiting here. I turn back toward the school to see if Jasmine wants to walk that way with me when I spot Felix coming up behind her.
Is he on our side or not? I can’t be sure. I do know I don’t want to deal with him on my own, or at all, if I can help it. He seems to have no such hesitancy about dealing with me. Before I can even formulate a plan, he’s by my side.
“Your Royal Highness,” he says, with all the proper deference I’m used to receiving when I’m home.
I nod my head in acknowledgment of the greeting but say nothing.
“I thought we had a deal,” he says.
“I made the video,” I say, taking a step back.
He takes a step closer, leaving the distance between us the same, and too close if you ask me. I can smell him. He smells like sweat and cologne and onions. It’s not a good combination.
“And you deleted it.”
“Ambassador Hart told me if the king leaves the kingdom, it’s as good as abdicating.”
His eyes narrow, and then he grins and makes a gesture with his hand as if to brush away that concern. “And you believe him?”
“Shouldn’t I?” I ask. Of course I trust Ambassador Hart. He’s letting us live in his house, after all. But what if that is a trap? How can we possibly know?
“You do know that he was quite tight with Francisco Orcutt when he was ambassador, don’t you?”
“Was he?” I ask, my knees starting to take on the consistency of wet noodles. It’s true his wife has been in touch with Mrs. Orcutt; she told us so. “But so were we all,” I point out.
“Ah.” Felix nods as if he understands. “It is difficult to know who to trust in a situation like this. But tell me, who brought you your teddy bear?”
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