I shrug, but not the leave-me-alone-already shrug I give my parents. This one’s more polite. “I’ve only been here since ten A.M. Not much time to get a real impression.”
“That’s diplomatic. You can be honest.”
I know I just met this guy, but his smile gives me the feeling he’s for real. I think this about very, very few people, so I decide to tell the truth. “Well, Schwerinborg is pretty gray. And kind of boring. But I’m willing to give it time.” I say this in a jokey-jokey voice, ‘cause I don’t want to offend him or anything. For all I know, he loves living here.
“It’s not this gray all the time. I promise.” I can tell from the look in his eyes he’s trying to gauge my reaction to what he’s saying, and I must still be doing all right, because he isn’t as formal as when he first walked in and said hello. “It’s not going to be like living in the States, though. You’re not going to be able to hang out at a mall. Or make fun of the contestants in the Miss Teen USA pageant.”
“That’s okay. I can’t handle pageants, even as a form of amusement, and I’m definitely not the mall type. And if I get really homesick, I can always go to McDonald’s.”
He grins. “True. I hardly ever get to eat there, but I could nosh on fries all day.”
I can’t help but laugh. “Did you just say ‘nosh’?” It sounds so bizarre, coming out in that accent.
One of his dark eyebrows arches up. “That’s not right?”
“It’s right. I just wouldn’t think it’d be a word you’d use. Your English is amazing.”
“I’ve had to take it since kindergarten. If it’s no good now, I’m in trouble.” He gestures toward my notebook. “But I could never draw like that. No matter how many classes I had.”
Oh, geez. I still have my sketch on my lap. I’m always careful in class not to let anyone see what I’m doing. Not so much because my teachers will get their panties in a twist about it, but because I don’t want my friends telling me I made them look fat or made their lips too big or whatever.
“It’s no big deal, really. I’m supposed to be studying—”
“You’re very talented.” He shifts a little closer on his chair and leans forward for a better look. “Are those your friends?”
I nod. I’d shut my notebook, but that seems like it’d be rude at this point.
“Do you draw all your friends?”
“I suppose so. Not intentionally, or anything. My pencil just starts going with whatever’s on my mind. So at some point, all my friends and family get sketched.”
“I bet they’re flattered.”
I shake my head. “Are you kidding? They think I make them look awful.”
He runs a finger across the top of my notebook, just above Natalie’s head, then taps the paper. “If that’s awful, then your friends must all look like supermodels. If you ever drew me, I certainly wouldn’t complain. I’m sure you’d do a great job.”
Is Georg flirting with me? Whoa. Guys do not flirt with me. Especially not guys with accents. I mean, that David kiss last week is about the only flirting I’ve had in my whole freakin’ life. And it took me years to get to that point with David.
“Are you asking?” I say, because even though I’m not sure what he’s thinking, I can’t help flirting back.
He leans back in the chair and gives me a shrug I take to mean Why not?
“Well, grab a book and read,” I say. “Or do whatever it is you do when you usually come in here and I’ll draw you.” I give him a smile I’m sure he thinks is beyond dopey. I have to cover the fact that my hand is shaky somehow, though.
“All right. I usually come here just to sit in front of the fire. You know, to get away from my parents for a while. But I can find a book. Or we can talk, if you can draw and talk at the same time.”
“Um, I can’t draw as well if you’re watching me back. I have a thing about that.” That’s a lie, because I usually can. I’ve listened to my chemistry teacher drone on and on about neutrons and protons and atomic numbers, yet still manage to sketch him standing behind his monster desk and then ace the exam the next day. But Georg is throwing me off. “It might be better if you read.”
I start to draw, and get about halfway done when he suddenly looks at his watch and says something under his breath in German.
“Have to go?” Maybe I took too long. Or maybe he only asked me to draw him so he’d have someone to talk to, and me not talking is boring him out of his skull.
“My parents expect me to have dinner with them, and I’m late.” He looks unhappy about leaving, which makes me feel better. I mean, it’s nice when an intriguing guy wants to stay and sit with you. People who look like Christie never appreciate it, because it happens to them all the time. But me, I appreciate it.
“Sorry,” I say. “Didn’t mean to—”
“If you’d like, I can come at the same time tomorrow. I need something to do. Before my parents find something for me to do. I don’t think it’s occurred to them that I’m on break yet.”
“I hear you. I’m sure I’ll be here. My dad’s making me study for some exams I have to take before I start school.”
He stands up, and I realize that Georg’s pretty tall. Probably six feet. I sooo love tall. “I can help you if you need to know anything,” he offers. “You’ll be in year ten, right?”
“If that’s what you call tenth grade.”
He grins. “I’m in year eleven, so I had all your teachers last year. Just ask if you have any questions, and I’ll give you the dish.” When he says “dish,” he hesitates, like he’s not quite sure that’s the right word to use.
I let it slide. “Thanks. That’d be cool.”
I look down at the picture in my lap once he’s gone. I’ll have no problem finishing it in my room tonight. Georg has a face that’s great to draw—really high cheekbones, blue eyes, and fair skin. And he’s got this dark, dark hair with just the slightest curl to it. There’s a lot I can do with shading when I sketch someone like him. Lots of contrast to play around with.
I pile up all the textbooks, still unopened, and drag myself out of the comfy chair and back toward the so-called apartment. I might not have gotten any studying done, but I feel a lot better. Georg’s absolutely delicious, even if he is David’s polar opposite, lookswise, and he has a grown-up edge to him that makes me suspect he’d look down on me if he knew the real me—the me who stands behind Wendy’s with my buds and sneaks cigarettes, or who stands in the corner at school dances and mocks the cheerleaders with their supertight, belly button-baring tops and overprocessed hair. (Okay, I mostly do this because no one ever asks me to dance, so I have nothing else to do. I’ll admit it.)
Or the me with a lesbian mother and a father who, while totally straight, knows the proper way to serve beluga caviar and which style wineglass to use for a cabernet versus a white zinfandel.
But I’m happy anyway, because I can tell Georg’s going to be a lot more interesting to hang out with than David ever was.
Georg likes my sketches. And he actually talks to me, unlike David.
Okay, I take that back. David does talk to me. But it’s not like he sets a time and a place when he says, “See you tomorrow.” There’s a difference.
I can’t wait to see if my computer’s hooked up so I can tell Christie I won’t be totally friendless in Schwerinborg.
Or not.
I’ll have to think about it first.
Five
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Official Schwerinborg Palace E-mail
(AS IF!)
Hey, Christie!
Told you it wasn’t like you’d never talk to me again. Less than 24 hours and here I am in your face already.
So here’s the latest: I really am living in a palace. Not the fairy-tale kind with turrets—this one’s more like a big mansion. There are lots of paintings of old men on the walls in the main part of the palace, and each and every one of these guy
s looks constipated. You’d think they’d get more fiber. Or, assuming they didn’t have Metamucil handy, that the artists wouldn’t immortalize them in oils looking so pained (and no goofing on how you think I make you look constipated, okay? I so don’t.).
What really rots, though, is that my room feels like it’s in Antarctica instead of Schwerinborg. You’d think that royalty could afford heat, but Dad tells me that European palaces constructed in the 1700s have their limitations.
The government offices—in a different part of the palace, next to where Prince Manfred lives—were done over in the mid 90s and are all beautiful and modern on the inside. Those rooms have heat. Of course.
That’s it for now—I want to make sure this gets through before I type any more. If it does, you HAVE to tell me how things went last night at David’s Christmas party. Did David actually get booze like Jeremy said he would? Did you drink anything? I just know I’d chicken out. I mean, how’d you get back in your house? My parents would smell alcohol on my breath from a mile away.
And—most important—any south-of-the-border action with Jeremy?
Needless to say, I have not met a single David Anderson look-alike yet, so your dreams of someday double dating with me and the real David (ha ha ha!!) are safe. If I have to judge by the looks of the guys who carried our luggage up to our rooms, I’m not expecting Schwerinborg to be Hottie Heaven. But I’ll let you know if anything develops.
Val
After firing off my e-mail to Christie, I send slightly blander e-mails to Jules and Natalie, just so they won’t feel unloved. I’m exhausted, but I just know that if Christie gets an e-mail tonight and Jules and Natalie don’t get any until tomorrow, they’ll get all whiny and overanalyze the whole thing, decide I’ve turned into a total bitch, and then they’ll refuse to e-mail me back out of spite.
Of course, it won’t even occur to them that they’ve ignored me for, like, the last week.
Sometimes girls suck. Guys would never be this way.
I probably should have told Christie about Georg, but—since, even though I adore her, Christie is a typical girly-girl too and overanalyzes everything—I’m afraid it’ll make her think ’m not interested in David. And I still want to hear how, or if, David says anything to Jeremy about me being gone, before I say anything about Georg.
Plus, I figure I should wait and see if my first impression of Georg holds up before I announce that I’ve found a potential friend—maybe even a boyfriend—over here. Telling anyone would be making my expectations official, and I’m not there yet.
I curl up in bed, hug my pillow (a rather flat and hard thing—I may have to add fluffy pillow to hair dryer on the shopping list), and try to go to sleep. You’d think, given the fact that I’ve been up for a bazillion hours trying to regulate my body to European time, that I’d crash hard. But I can’t. I’m obsessing over David.
I pull my pillow closer and wonder what it’d be like if it was David cuddling with me instead. Would his blond hair feel as soft as it looks when I’m sitting behind him at a football game? Would he hold me tight, with his body fitting right against mine, and tell me that he s loved me from afar for years and been too scared to say so?
I know it’s impossible, but late at night, when I’m alone in bed, I can’t help but pretend.
As my mind drifts, I find myself wondering what might have happened if I could have gone to David’s Christmas party, and if my mom was her old self and I didn’t have to give a rat’s ass about David’s dad and his beliefs. Would David and I have ended up making out in some bedroom or on the back porch, like Jeremy and Christie always do?
Of course, I’ve never seen south-ofthe-border action, like I suspect Christie and Jeremy might have if they got enough privacy after the party ended last night. I haven’t even seen north-of-the-border action. Christie suspects this, but I haven’t told her for sure. Even though the A-listers know I’ve never had a serious boyfriend, I’ve tried to be real mysterious about what happens on family vacations or who I might’ve met when I had to go to summer camp during junior high. I don’t want them to think I’m a total loser.
And besides, they’re not going to tell me about their action if they think I won’t get what they’re talking about. But how can I get it—or get any, really—if they won’t tell me anything? How else am I going to figure it all out so I don’t make a complete and total fool of myself when a guy really does get interested?
I fold my pillow in half so it’s almost like my pillow at home and close my eyes. But the second I get comfortable, there’s a light knock on my door and I hear Dad whisper, “Val? You still awake?”
I take a deep breath and debate turning up the Avril Levigne playing on my clock radio. Finally I just click it off and answer, “Yeah. What’s up, Dad?”
He opens the door, and enough light comes in from the living room to make me squint when I look in his direction. I think he’s holding my notebook, but it’s hard to tell. “Valerie, I’m sorry to wake you up. I hope you don’t think this is an invasion of your privacy, but I needed a piece of paper, and—”
He reaches for the light switch, but I wave for him to quit. “Hey! No lights!”
He hesitates, then leans against the door frame. “Did you draw this picture?”
“If it’s in that notebook, then yeah, probably. Hold it out in the light and I’ll tell you for sure.”
He takes a step back into the living room and holds up the notebook, which is opened to the page with my half-finished picture of Georg.
“Yeah,” I say. “His names Georg. He came into the library after I went down there to study. He introduced himself, and we talked for a while.”
“Did he see you drawing this?”
I push myself up on my elbows and shrug. “It was his idea. Why? What’s the big deal?”
“What do you know about this young man?”
I can’t believe he woke me up for this. Or almost woke me up, at least.
“Geez, Dad, chill. There’s nothing to get in a twist about. His parents work here in the palace, so he lives here, like us. We were just hanging out in the library, that’s all. I promise. I sat up straight and acted like a good girl and everything.”
Dad sucks in a deep breath, and even in the half light streaming in from the living room, I can see his nostrils going in, then out. “Did Georg tell you what his parents do?”
“Does it matter?”
Dad takes a step into my room. “Yes. Because Georg is Prince Georg, Valerie. Prince Manfred is Georg’s father. You didn’t know that?”
Um, no, I didn’t know that, so I just stare at my dad. I mean, the idea never even occurred to me. For one, that there were any kids in the palace, let alone that Prince Manfred might have a son my age—though now that I think about it, Dad did say Manfred had a kid who goes to the American school. Anyway, for two, even if I had known, who’d believe a prince would wander into the library and just start talking to me? Or that he’d know my name even before he came in?
I mean, come on.
Georg cannot be a prince. Wrong, wrong, wrong. He would have said something, wouldn’t he? Especially since, if it is true, and he really is a prince, then by definition, he is the Coolest Guy in School. Numero uno, supersnob, and guaranteed prom king. And way, way too popular to have been hanging out in the library on the—wrong side of the palace with Yours Truly. A guy like that would have made it crystal clear within two seconds of introducing himself that he was in his league, and I was in mine, even if we were now living under the same roof.
Oh, man. I bet he knows William and Harry. THAT William and Harry. He probably hangs with them on his school vacations and they ride horses or play polo or whatever snooty sport rich kids play. ‘Cause if Georg’s a prince, that means he has more money than I could ever hope to count. He goes to all the best parties. He’s probably even been to raves with ultralean, ultrasexy European supermodels.
I have not been to a rave. Ever. And neither have my boring, just
-cool-enoughnot-to-get-picked-on friends.
What I have done is make a total ass of myself, acting so high and mighty sitting in his library. Telling him his country is gray and boring, while I live in a tiny little part of his father’s palace where I eat McChicken on a Formica table and sit on a chair with unbalanced legs.
My dad is going to kill me if he finds out what I said.
At least I didn’t tell Georg that most of my friends don’t know the difference between Schwerinborg and a smorgasbord. As if I didn’t make a big enough idiot of myself to start with.
“You didn’t know, did you?” my dad asks again, though he can tell what the answer is from my face, so I don’t even bother with the Valerie Shrug.
“I’m glad you met someone your age,” he adds in his I’m-your-dad-and-I-love-you voice, which means a but is sure to follow. And it did. “But you need to be careful with Georg. Remember when you were seated at the White House picnic last year with the Carew boys? Same thing applies here.”
I roll my eyes. Dad lectured me in the car the whole way to that picnic. I wasn’t to talk to the Carew twins—two megaspoiled freshmen who think they’re God’s gift—about anything personal. As if I would. I can’t stand the Carews. Not because of politics, either. They’re just revolting as people.
And Dad’s lecture didn’t matter anyway, because the Carews had no intention of talking to me. In fact, they made a point of ignoring me so I’d know I was being ignored. Jerks.
“Dad”—I look him in the eye to make sure he knows he’s being ridiculous—“I’m not going to give Georg your credit card number or tell him you smoked pot in college or anything.”
“Not only is that not funny, you know it’s not true.” He turns on the light, but since I’m totally awake now, I don’t argue this time. I yank my feet up closer to my body so he can sit on the edge of my bed. When he does, he grabs one of my feet through the covers and wiggles it around, just like he did when I was a kid and I told him there was a dragon in my bed and he had to catch it before it ate my foot.
Royally Jacked (Romantic Comedies, The) Page 6
