ROYAL ROMANCE

by Victoria Hart

  The other students shuffled in as well, and a speaker took the podium. “Welcome, welcome,” she said. “Lots and lots of bright young faces here. I love to see that. Welcome to the College of Heledia. You all have quite a bit to be proud of for being here.”

  I swelled with pride in my seat, though I knew this was the same talk everyone across the world got at orientation events in college. But to me this felt important, and like she was talking to me specifically.

  The lecturer went on about the importance of this and that. She talked about diligence and the need for confidence and ambition. She said she believed in all of us because we’d got here and that’s what was important, more than anything else. She said we were among the greatest minds in the world.

  I didn’t care how overblown it was, how much she was trying to bolster our sense of self-worth and sell us on the idea of college. I was eating it all up. This is what I’d been craving.

  “We’re going to break up into your various disciplines now.”

  I stood up before she even called the political sciences group. I was ready to go. This was the college experience, the beginning of something new and huge – a rite of passage for people my age. A normal rite of passage that didn’t involve crowns or ancient traditions or family trees. So I was going to jump on it as much as possible.

  The political sciences group (I would learn later that everyone simply referred to it as poly sci) was smaller than many of the others and that made me feel safer, more secure. I liked the idea of knowing everyone in my program, of being able to put faces to names and know people on sight, rather than simply understanding there were x number of people studying the same thing as me.

  What I didn’t expect, however, was to see a familiar face in the crowd of political science students. Standing off to my left was Carlo – the man who had asked me to dance and then took it upon himself to place his body between me and a possible attacker.

  “Ma’am,” he said with a smile, bowing his head. He didn’t look surprised, though our fellow students around us did. He smiled warmly. In some part of my mind, I realized he’d been expecting me here. “How are you?”

  “You can call me Cassandra,” I said quietly, and it was like we were the only two in the room. “I’m well. Anxious, like everyone.”

  “I’d imagine. We were interrogated quite a bit after you were evacuated,” he said.

  The others nearby were glancing back and forth between us, and trying not to look as though they were paying attention.. Of course they knew exactly what we were talking about. The newspapers had been talking about nothing else. They looked at him with renewed interest now that they knew he had been there.

  “I hope it wasn’t too traumatic,” I said.

  “For me? You’re the one who was in danger,” he said with a laugh and then realized he shouldn’t be laughing. He blushed and dropped his face, but I shrugged it off.

  A facilitator came over, and with forced enthusiasm, introduced himself as a senior student in the program. He wanted us to go around in a circle introducing ourselves and, naturally, wanted me to start. I gave my name, knowing everyone there already knew me, but obviously we were going to pretend that wasn’t the case.

  As the rest of the introductions were made, Carlo and I glanced shyly at one another. Thinking back now, sometimes I think about how I saw him then, and compare it to how I see him now. It’s funny how first impressions show us just one layer of who a person really is. That boy I met was Carlo, but it would turn out he was a whole lot more than I was seeing.

  And getting to know that person underneath was both an adventure, and tragic. I couldn’t know, meeting him then, all the tears and smiles and pain and happiness that was going to be brought on by meeting him. But how could you know that about anyone? I captured this moment in my memory and I think that makes me luckier than most because I’ve got a time capsule of what was to come, the kind of thing people always said they wished they could remember.

  “So, we’re going to take a look around the poly sci building and meet some of the professors,” the facilitator said. “Sound good?”

  We moved out of the auditorium with my security guards in tow. I saw the group eye the men in suits and I hoped it wasn’t going to be too awkward for making friends. I took a breath and tried to pretend it was normal, hoping if I acted like it didn’t bother me then other people would follow suit.

  Despite what my parents said about the universities back in America and the campuses we visited while finding my brother a school, this place was incredible. It was a luscious, gorgeous campus with views of the crystal blue Mediterranean wherever you turned. I wondered how anyone was going to get any work done with views like this, where the sea and sky were trying their best to outdo each other.

  “Gorgeous right?” the facilitator said. “Don’t worry, it never gets old.”

  “He’s right,” Carlo whispered to me. “I had a view like this growing up. It’s been almost 20 years and I still love it.”

  I smiled. “My view was of a street corner and some expensive cars. If I was lucky there were cherry blossoms for a few weeks, but that’s it,” I said.

  “Well, you’ll love this,” he said. “It’s the easiest way to feel at home here, just looking at the view.”

  He was right. I felt peaceful, immediately. Everything that had been buzzing around my head for days now had disappeared in the calming view of the ocean, the way the shades of blue melted into each other and the breeze calmly moved the water without creating large waves or crashing sounds. I imagined tea and lunch out here, and I couldn’t stop myself from imagining it with Carlo. I blushed at the image, looked away, and hoped he didn’t notice.

  We moved on through the campus and I enjoyed the sensation that in this – starting school – we were all on the same footing. We were all new here. It was nice to feel like I fit in, for once. I hadn’t been born here, and I was going to be expected to win the hearts of the people.

  It wouldn’t be easy; I knew that. And there were many times when I questioned my right to preside over anyone. I was a stranger, after all. At times like that, I reminded myself that I did have strong ties here, in both my father and my aunt. I wasn’t an imposter; I was the next in the royal bloodline of Heledia.

  But in those first few moments on campus, I couldn’t see the doubt anywhere, all I had was the gorgeous view of the sea and the land and the knowledge that this place would be my home. I was very excited about that.

  All in all, that first day at college was everything I wanted it to be. But like all things, starting out strong didn’t mean things wouldn’t go downhill after that.

  Chapter 6

  I returned back to the palace that night, a little jealous of the people who got to retire to dorms where they were meeting people and enjoying events and maybe even going out to parties. I tried not to sound too envious when I talked about it a few days later, at dinner with my aunt.

  “It’s a gorgeous campus.”

  “It’s a gorgeous land,” she said back with a smile, and I agreed.

  Unfortunately, our conversations had gotten shallow recently. It was the sad truth that we naturally had very little that bound us to each other. She was bookish, and I only wished I was. I was somewhat quiet with no network of friends, and she had plenty of people she could talk to at any given party, or even in any given room in the palace. She liked old literature and I liked American sports. She wanted to watch movies with subtitles and the greatest movies I’d ever seen were Star Wars.

  It was becoming painfully obvious how American I was, and the small ways that was affecting how I fit in to life at the palace were coming into focus. With not much in common, and feeling out of place, I hesitated to chat openly with her because I didn’t want to highlight how foreign I really was, in a land I was meant to be ruling in a matter of decades.

  And there was Carlo. He was something I wanted to keep for myself as long as possible. I knew my life belonged to the country arou
nd me. The media would respect no boundaries and the men who would become my ministers would always have an opinion to share on the decisions I made and the things I did. I was never going to be entirely myself and that was something I was going to have to get used to, so I planned to keep my crush to myself as long as possible.

  Carlo was kind to me. He seemed to recognize my trepidation, and how I felt out of place here, and he helped if he could. He was shaping up to be a very good friend. And for that reason he was going to be all mine for as long as possible; I wouldn’t even tell my aunt.

  “Make any friends?” she asked as if reading my mind.

  I shrugged and then remembered that my mother told me never to shrug at the queen. “I met people in my program. They’re nice.”

  She smiled, and didn’t mention my manners. “I’m glad. I feel bad that you’re not able to get the full experience by living on the campus, but it’s too dangerous right now.”

  There it was again, the truth about the looming danger: some people didn’t want a monarchy anymore and they were willing to fight about it if they had to. They were willing to hurt people over it. And I could very well be the person they were going to hurt if I wasn’t careful.

  I took a bite of my food, set down my fork, and placed my hands in my lap to disguise their shaking. I chewed carefully, thinking. If I was on campus, would someone come into my dorm room? Would they try to hurt me where I slept? I was never going to find out – but the idea that it could happen, that someone would hate me so much made my mouth go dry. There were so many ways I could be targeted. Maybe someone would lie on the residence form to make sure we were paired together. Maybe they would wait until we were comfortable with each other, just to make it that much worse. And then, one night, they’d strike – and suddenly my brother would be shipped out to Heledia to be groomed as king.

  It was a dark thought, and I couldn’t shake it.

  “I know this is difficult for you,” Aunt Sonia said, gently putting down her fork. Traditionally, if the queen stopped eating, you did too. But this was a family dinner, not a state event, and it was so much easier to avoid her questions if my mouth was full of roast beef. “I want to make it as easy as possible.”

  “I’m fine. I love it here,” I said, only half lying.

  “But that won’t always be the case,” she said. “There will come times when you want to do things and you just won’t be able to.”

  “I’m not going to want to go to parties, if that’s what you’re afraid of,” I said.

  She smiled at me, like she knew better. “Right now, I’m so proud that your focus is on your studies and you’re excited at the prospect of school. But as the stress of it all wears on you, I’m certain you’re going to want things you can’t have. I just want you to know right now that I love you, and I know how hard it is, and I’m exceptionally proud of you for everything you’re accomplishing just by being here.”

  Despite her cryptic message and her patronizing tone, I drew comfort from what she said. She was being sincere; I looked up and I could see it in her eyes. She wanted to be helpful, she wanted to impart wisdom to me. And it wasn’t the kind of wisdom where she sat around feeling proud of herself for saying it. She really wanted to help me.

  It wasn’t that my parents weren’t helpful, but they would never know what I was about to go through. My aunt did, because she’d done it herself. Even if my father had been king briefly, it had never suited him, and he’d forgotten a lot about how it was. But Aunt Sonia knew it first hand, and we would both be living it from here on out. We had only each other in this way, and I really didn’t want anyone else. I smiled and continued eating my dinner.

  Carlo and I had a few classes together. I was a full-time student, which meant that I was taking at least two classes a day and as many as four, depending on the schedule. Carlo was taking the same massive amount of work and I jokingly asked him what crown he was preparing for.

  And then came the first mystery of the man who had saved me at the party. He didn’t laugh at my joke like I’d expected – he went pale. His face just drained completely of the beautiful sun-kissed color, and it left him looking almost…afraid.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, wishing I could reach out to touch him, put my hand on his shoulder, but I wasn’t sure if we were at that point.

  “Fine,” he said, shaking it off. “I just remembered that I already have an assignment due and I need to work on it.”

  He then mumbled a goodbye and put as much distance between the two of us as he possibly could. I felt something in me twist. It had only been a little joke, but it had changed his demeanor completely and made him not want to be around me. It wasn’t like I’d asked him out and he rejected me, but it felt just as bad. I’d said something wrong. I felt embarrassed and unhappy for the rest of the day, moping my way through my classes.

  A few days later I saw him again and everything was fine. He was laughing again, making fun of my poor note-taking skills in our History of Marxism lecture, and afterward we sat out on the beautiful lawn while he helped me summarize my notes.

  “You don’t need to write everything down,” he said. “Just important facts.”

  “But what if the facts I think are important aren’t the ones that end up on the test?” I said.

  “Part of it is learning to trust your gut. You’ll quickly learn what’s important and what’s not. And, if not, then you’ll have it figured out by the first test. It’ll all be good,” he said with such a dashing smile that it was impossible not to believe him.

  It was as though my flub a few days ago had never happened and we were friends again, laughing and talking, and I felt the slow creeping truth of a crush forming under my skin, prickly and hot. I’d had crushes on boys before. I’d looked at Tommy Wagner with puppy dog eyes all through eighth grade and my brother never stopped reminding me how pathetic I looked, drooling after him. (I didn’t drool, but he liked to tell people I did.)

  The crush on Tommy didn’t end well. When the formal dance rolled around at the end of the year – the first formal dance we’d ever had, like a mini prom – he asked me to go with him and I was over the moon with happiness.

  For two weeks, I thought all my dreams were coming true.

  And then everything came crashing down. The problem was that Tommy was bragging about who he was going to the dance with, and not because of anything I had inherently inside me. He didn’t think I was the prettiest girl in the school, he didn’t think I was the smartest girl he knew, and he didn’t think I was the funniest. All the reasons I hoped a boy would like me had nothing to do with why he’d asked me to go with him.

  The illusion shattered the night of the dance when I went to meet him at the school, and heard him bragging to his friends about the pictures he was going to sell to the newspaper. He was going to use the money to pay for the new Playstation that had just come out. He was so excited.

  I felt like someone had just ripped my stomach right out and played ball with it. I didn’t end up going to the dance – I just walked outside in my formal dress and Darren helped me into the car. Tommy never got his bragging rights or his pictures, and I never got my first chance at a formal dance.

  I learned a lot that day. After that, I rarely went to school functions because I doubted that anyone liked me because of my personality. How could I know for sure? It was better to keep to myself. I don’t know if it was easier for Ben, or if he just stopped caring whether people were using him or not.

  And now I was in the same situation again. There was a boy I was crushing on and I was never going to be sure how he truly felt about me without the title in front of my name. He didn’t know me outside of that context. We’d met at an official state dinner, and we’d met at school, where I was followed by security guards. He knew who I was going to become, so we could never have an organic relationship. Nothing normal could grow from this.

  But I was going to keep going on it. I still wanted to be around Carlo, because he ma
de me feel good. Because I had very little to lose and I wasn’t going to sacrifice all the happiness I could have at college because a boy may or may not like me the way I wanted him to.

  “I saved you one of the peach teas,” he said one day, when I was late meeting him for lunch. “There were only two left and I knew you weren’t going to get here in time.”

  I blushed and mumbled a thank you, promising to pay him back. He told me that it was fine, that he didn’t want the money. He looked at me like maybe I needed to have friendship explained to me, and maybe I did. Aside from Anna in elementary school, I’d never had an actual friend.

  He was patient with me, and I knew he pretended not to notice when I was awkward or standoffish. And it made me feel both more at ease and embarrassed that I needed someone to show to me the ways of interpersonal interactions and how to have friends. I worried that he wouldn’t want to date someone who needed friends explained to her, let alone the whole world of dating. He didn’t need baggage like me.

  But still he stuck around. And later, when the truth came out, I would wonder for a long time if he’d stayed so near to me because he truly wanted to be my friend, or if it was because of the job he was being forced into doing.

  Things reached the peak of their weirdness when he disappeared one day, without warning. He’d said that he would see me in class the next day, and to save him a seat. He promised to bring coffee, because it was an 8 a.m. start. The coffee never came and neither did Carlo. I couldn’t tell what bummed me out more – but what ended up happening was far more terrifying.