Royals

by Rachel Hawkins

  “I wrote this for you,” he says, touching the screen, and a tinny blast of music shoots out of his phone. The quality is crap, and I can’t really make out any of the lyrics over the shriek of the electric guitar, but I’m pretty sure I hear my name several times, rhymed with both “crazy” and “hazy,” and then Michael starts actually singing along with it, and please, god, let me die of sudden heat stroke, let a car take a turn and mow me down here in the parking lot of the Sur-N-Sav because between my ex warbling “Daisy’s driving me crazy” and Mrs. Miller beginning to march across the asphalt toward us, I’m not sure this afternoon can get much worse.

  And then I look up to see the black SUV parked at the edge of the lot, window rolled down . . .

  With a telephoto lens pointed directly at me.

  Chapter 2

  I hustle to my car near the back of the lot, keeping my head down, my bag tucked close to my side. I can’t hear the clicking of the camera over Michael’s stupid song—he’s trailing behind me still, the phone held out like an offering—but I imagine it anyway, my brain already racing ahead to what these pictures will look like, what the headline will say. Whatever it is, it will totally paint me as the bitch. In the past year since Ellie started dating Alex, I’ve learned that there’s basically nothing that’s not the girl’s fault in tabloid stories. Two months ago, Alex and Ellie went to some ship christening in Scotland, and Alex frowned and winced through the whole thing, which led to all these stories about how my sister was making him miserable, and that her demands for an engagement ring were tearing them apart.

  The truth? Alex had fractured his toe that morning tripping down some stairs. The pained look on his face had been actual, literal pain, not sadness because his evil girlfriend was bumming him out.

  Yay, patriarchy, I guess.

  That’s what’s so weird to me about Ellie buying into the whole royalty deal. It’s built on crap like that. If she married Alex and they had a daughter and then a son? Guess who’d rule.

  Yanking my car door open, I turn to face Michael. The song is ending now, and he pauses there, looking back down at his phone. I have a feeling he’s about to start the song over, and that obviously cannot happen, so I put my hand over his. His head shoots up, dark eyes meeting mine, and, ugh, he’s doing The Smile, which is almost as potent as The Hot Lean, which means I need to nip this in the bud right now.

  “Is that your doing, too?” I ask, jerking my head toward the SUV, and he glances over. Michael is cute and all, but he’s a terrible liar—I still remember the social studies test incident five years ago in middle school—so when he looks genuinely surprised and shakes his head, I believe him and sigh with relief.

  He’s still a douche who sold our prom pictures, but at least he’s not actively calling the paparazzi.

  “Look, Michael,” I say now, painfully aware of the lens still pointed at us, at the sweat dripping down my back, at how my hair is sticking to my face, and how any makeup I put on this morning is a distant memory.

  “We talked, okay?” I continue. “I get why you did it, and I hope the guitar is awesome and all you hoped it would be. But we’re done. Like. Really, really done.”

  With that, I sling my bag into the car, slide into the driver’s seat, and shut the door on him. He stands there, phone in hand, and I look at my ponytail holder on his wrist again, wondering if I should ask for it back.

  No, that would just make this whole thing sadder, really, and given that Mrs. Miller has finally reached Michael, he’s being punished enough. Her hair is trembling with righteous outrage, and as she shakes a finger at him, Michael—despite being a good head taller—actually cowers.

  Which is fun to see.

  I drive out of the parking lot, not bothering to look back in the rearview mirror.

  The drive home doesn’t take long since our neighborhood is only a few miles from the store. It isn’t exactly the most scenic of routes, either. When my parents first moved to Perdido, it was actually kind of a cool place. I mean, as cool as a town in Florida that’s nowhere near the ocean can be. It was quirky and eccentric, full of artists and writers and old houses that people had painted nutso colors. Lime green, turquoise, a shade I thought of as “electric violet,” all slapped on these dollhouse-looking Victorian mansions and cozy bungalows.

  But over the years, a lot of the cooler people moved out, and eventually beige started making its way back into Perdido. There’s a country club now, too, complete with a golf course—something that made my dad threaten to move. But while Perdido might not be the idyllic little artist community it once was, it’s still a nice place. Quiet, dull, and, as Mom was always pointing out, far enough away that it isn’t really worth visiting. Today’s photographer was the first one I’ve seen in months. There were better targets for the paps to go after.

  Like, for instance, Ellie.

  Beige had moved into Perdido, all right, but it still hasn’t crept into our neighborhood. My house is actually one of the more subdued on the block, a cheerful yellow instead of magenta or indigo. Tucked back from the street, it’s surrounded by banana trees and bougainvillea, the pink blossoms pretty against the sunshine-y paint. Wind chimes dangle from the porch, glass ones, wooden ones that sound like flutes, and the tacky shell-covered ones they sell in gift shops around here. Mom has a thing for wind chimes.

  But it isn’t the wind chimes that catch my eye as I pull into the driveway. It’s the big SUV parked behind my mom’s.

  Suddenly, the photographer back at the Sur-N-Sav makes sense.

  Chapter 3

  I park my car off to the side of the SUV, and when I get out, I give a wave to the security guys. It’s always the same two when El and Alex come to the States, so I’ve gotten used to them. “Hi, Malcolm!” I call. “David, how’s it going?”

  David, the younger of the two guys, lifts his bottle of water in acknowledgment while Malcolm just nods. As always, they’re in serious black suits, and I imagine that even with the air-conditioning in the car going full blast, they’re still dying. The heat is no joke, but Alexander doesn’t like bringing bodyguards into my parents’ house, so it’s the driveway for Malcolm and David.

  “Still disappointed you guys don’t wear plaid suits,” I tell them as I pass by the car, and while Malcolm just keeps staring at the house through his shades, David cracks a smile.

  My keys rattle in my hand as I jog up the steps of the porch to see the front door is open, but the glass door is closed. That means I get a second to see my sister and her boyfriend sitting on the couch, their posture perfect, before I come inside. They look as gorgeous and polished as ever, Ellie with her ankles crossed demurely, Alexander sitting on my mom’s floral couch like it’s a throne.

  He always sits like that—maybe he’s practicing.

  I think again about the guy taking pictures at the Sur-N-Sav and wonder if I need to mention that right off the bat. Ellie wasn’t thrilled about the prom pics thing (which, I mean, hi, neither was I, and honestly I think I’m the one with cause to complain), and I’m not sure if I want to get into all that on top of dealing with this surprise visit from El and Alex.

  Today’s Michael thing probably won’t even make the papers.

  As soon as I walk into the house, El—who hasn’t seen me since Christmas—takes one look at my head and says, “Oh, Daisy, your hair.” Her voice, as always, takes me by surprise. Even though we have British parents, neither El nor I picked up the accent. Then Ellie went away to university in the UK and came back sounding like a character from Downton Abbey.

  I lift a hand to tuck the bright red strands behind my ear, but then decide to heck with that, my hair is amazing.

  Luckily, Alexander agrees (or at least pretends to) because he immediately says, “Personally, I approve, Daisy. Redheads, very popular in my family.”

  He tousles his own reddish-blond hair with a smile, and I’m reminded why every
one in the world is pretty much in love with him. Prince Alexander James Lachlan Baird, Duke of Rothesay, Earl of Carrick, next in line to become King of the Scots, is both cute and a surprisingly nice guy. Definitely nicer than El.

  “It’s her Little Mermaid hair,” my mom says, coming in from the kitchen with a full tray in her hands, complete with teapot and our nicest china cups. Before Ellie and Alexander happened, we didn’t even own nice china. Or a teapot for that matter. We made tea in mugs with water from the electric kettle.

  But I get it—once their oldest daughter started dating a prince, fancy china seemed like the least they could do.

  Mom sets the tray on the table, but no one makes a move to actually pour any tea, probably because while Alexander—and now El—live in cold, misty Scotland, this is Florida in May, which means the idea of drinking hot beverages seems insane, if not masochistic.

  “Wasn’t it purple for a little while last year?” Ellie asks me now, and I raise my eyebrows at her.

  “Did you really come all the way from bonny Scotland to interrogate me about my hair choices?”

  Ellie’s nostrils flare a bit and she laces her fingers together between her knees. “It just seems like there’s always something new with you. That’s all I’m saying.”

  I shrug. “I like trying different things.”

  This is one of the major differences between me and Ellie—she’s been Princess Barbie since birth, pretty much. Me? I’m still . . . figuring things out. When Michael said music was “our thing” in the parking lot, he wasn’t wrong, exactly. When I’d dated him, I’d been super into learning to play the guitar, almost as intense about that as I’d been about origami lessons the year before. Or the art classes I took freshman year. But honestly, how are you supposed to know what you like unless you try stuff?

  Ellie says it’s “flighty,” but I think it’s fun, and before she can get going on that train of thought, I change the subject back to her, where it always ends up anyway. “I didn’t know y’all were coming.”

  Mom is sitting in her wingback chair, so I flop in Dad’s recliner, and Ellie frowns a little.

  My sister has always been one step away from having mice make dresses for her, but ever since she met Alexander, her Disney Princessness has been dialed up to eleven. While we both got Mom’s light hair, El’s was always shinier, more golden. Right now, it falls in soft waves to her shoulders, held back with a pair of sunglasses that probably cost more than my entire wardrobe. She’s wearing jeans, as is Alexander, but even those look fancy on them, probably because they’ve paired them with expensive leather loafers. Alexander is wearing a white button-down with the sleeves rolled up, and El has on some kind of drapey navy blouse with little white polka dots all over it.

  Basically, they look like they belong on a yacht, while I am wearing a T-shirt that says, “EVE WAS FRAMED.”

  “It was a surprise!” Ellie says brightly, and Alexander flashes me and Mom a smile.

  This is the unsettling thing about Ellie and Alexander. They spend so much of their life being public people that sometimes they act that way in private, too, so it can make you feel like they’re holding the world’s smallest press conference in the living room.

  “And a lovely one, too,” my dad says, coming into the room. He’s wearing a pair of khaki shorts that started their life as pants, a few stray strings hanging down to his bony knees. El’s forehead creases a bit as she looks over his graying hair, which is pulled back into a ponytail, and the paint that’s splattered all over his Pink Floyd T-shirt. Dad fancies himself an artist these days, although he’s not very good at it. But he gave up music ages ago, and as Mom points out, it’s good for him to have something that keeps him busy.

  And for all that Ellie is clearly not impressed with Dad’s appearance, he’s kind of the reason she even met Alexander in the first place.

  Here, let me give you the Star Magazine treatment.

  “10 THINGS YOU NEVER KNEW ABOUT ELLIE WINTERS (OR, MORE ACCURATELY, HER FAMILY!)”

  1) Ellie’s dad, Liam, was famous for eleven months in 1992! According to Liam, that’s the worst amount of time for a person to have fame—not long enough for anyone to remember you, but just long enough to ruin your life.

  2) Liam was in a band called Velvet! It was every bit as embarrassing as the name implies, and full of more gelled hair and skinny suits than his daughter Daisy would like to talk about.

  3) Velvet had exactly ONE HIT SONG, “Harbor Me,” and while that title sounds pretty sweet, “harbor” is being used in a metaphorical sense, and the video was banned in seven countries. The less we say about it, the better.

  4) Their second song only went to #22 (“Staying the Night,” less gross than “Harbor Me” but with way too many references to sheets and skin for anyone’s comfort), and the third never even cracked the top 100 (“Daisy Chain,” surprisingly not offensive, but also not listenable).

  5) By that point, Liam had a flat in London he couldn’t afford, a fancy car he’d crashed twice, and a pretty significant drug problem. It was all very Behind the Music!

  6) He moved back to his hometown, a tiny village in the Midlands, where he started working at his father’s garden supply shop, only to meet a lovely journalist by the name of Bess Murdock, who was working for some hip London newspaper and came all the way out to little Glockenshire-on-the-Vale to interview Liam for a “Whatever Happened To?” piece.

  7) Surprising absolutely no one who has seen a romantic comedy, the two fell in love and moved to Florida for a fresh start. Luckily for Liam, “Harbor Me”—or an instrumental version of it at least—got picked up for a car commercial, and since Liam was the sole songwriter on that track (a fact that fills his family with equal parts pride and mortification!) he became, as they say, “well off!”

  8) It was this stroke of luck that allowed the Winterses to send their oldest daughter, Eleanor, off to the UK for university, and it was there that the blond girl with the shiny hair and teeth met the heir to the Scottish throne!

  9) Ellie—as she’s known to friends and family—and Prince Alexander have been dating for nearly two years now, making her the most famous person in her family, which is saying something since her dad was on the cover of NME, and her mom once made out with someone in Oasis!

  10) Ellie’s younger sister, Daisy, works at a grocery store and just got a killer dye job, clearly making her the real baller of the Winters family.

  There. Now you’re caught up.

  “Are you staying long?” I ask. The last time they were here together was Christmas, and it had kind of been a disaster. Alexander had needed to sleep on our pullout sofa, which must have been a step down from whatever dynasty-making bed he had back in Scotland (even though he’d spent the entire time insisting that he was fine, and that the sofa bed was “surprisingly comfortable” and “such an interesting innovation”), and then my dad had given Ellie a plastic tiara as a joke, which embarrassed her so much that she spent most of that evening in her room.

  Mom had been flustered about everything from setting the table to whether Alexander would be offended if we ordered pizza—our Christmas Eve tradition—and then more or less bullied Alexander’s bodyguards into coming in to drink eggnog with us on Christmas Day, which made everyone so uncomfortable that in the end, we all sat there in total silence, Malcolm and David in their black suits, El and Alexander dressed like they were going to church, and me, Mom, and Dad all in our pajamas, Dad with a stray bit of tinsel tucked into his ponytail.

  To be honest, after all that, I wasn’t surprised Ellie and Alexander had decided on a “surprise” visit. The less time my parents had to stress and think up new ways to be weird, respectively, the better.

  “Just through the weekend,” Alexander answers, putting his hand on El’s knee and squeezing briefly. They’re usually so formal that a squeeze feels like the equivalent of them making out in
front of me, and that is so not okay.

  “We have to get back to Edinburgh by Tuesday,” Ellie says, “but we wanted to talk to you first.”

  And then she smiles, covering Alexander’s hand with her own, and for the first time, I notice the emerald-and-diamond ring on her hand.

  Her left hand.

  Mom gasps, but it’s Dad’s reaction that sums up what I’m thinking.

  “Bugger me, Ellie’s going to be a princess.”

  Chapter 4

  “A duchess, actually,” Ellie says, and I swear she looks a little bit embarrassed, using one perfectly manicured finger to push her bangs back to the side.

  “Well, still a princess, technically,” Alexander counters, putting his hand over hers on her knee. “But yes, Eleanor’s title will be Duchess of Rothesay. Although, more importantly, she’s going to be my wife.”

  El smiles at that, a real smile, the kind we don’t see much anymore. Once she started dating Alex, her smiles got a little frozen, a little fake.

  From his spot in the doorway, Dad says, “Does this mean you’ll be able to have us beheaded? Because if so, I’d like to remind you that it was your mother who grounded you for sneaking out when you were fifteen. Granted,” he adds to Alex, “she was sneaking out to get more study time at the library, but it was still quite the scandal.”

  “Dad,” El says, but Alex just laughs, and Mom waves her hands at Dad.

  “Stop it, Liam,” she says. “No teasing today.”

  Mom is wearing an old sundress, and there’s ink on her fingers, which means she was probably writing when Ellie and Alex showed up—Mom is old-school and does her first drafts on yellow legal pads—but she’s practically glowing. “This is all so exciting. Surely the most exciting thing that’s happened in our family.”

  “I beg your pardon,” Dad says, folding his thin arms over his chest. “I was once shot out of a cannon filled with glitter at Wembley.”