At least David never did anything like that.
Still, I’m getting tired of having the things I count on in life ripped away from me. And for whatever pathetic, needy reason, I really, really want to count on Georg. I want to believe in the scary-weird-cool connection thing.
Because what if?
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Hottie Heaven
Hey, Val Pal!
Sorry it’s taken me a couple days to get back to you. But you would NOT believe what’s happened here. Let’s just say that there wasn’t even CLOSE-to-the-border action with Jeremy, let alone anything SOUTH of the border, because David’s parents decided to stay in the house during the Christmas party. We all pretty much sat around watching videos and drinking this dumb fruit punch his mom made. Booorrring.
Aside from the videos, about all we did was talk about you. Get this: David said he looked up the Schwerinborg royal family on the Web, and he found all these pictures of them and their palace! Jeremy and I went with Jules into David’s room to look on the computer during the party. Val, I don’t care how cold you think it is, or whether there are turrets, it looks like a fairytale!
And you totally lied when you said that Schwerinborg isn’t Hottie Heaven. I mean, have you been able to see Prince Georg yet? Apparently, there’s a sixteen- (almost seven-teen) year-old prince in Schwerinborg. And he’s TOTALLY HOT!!! You’ll have to tell me if he looks as good in real life if you actually see him. Wouldn’t that be something, to see a real prince? Although Georg is kind of a funny name. Do all people in Schwerinborg have weird names like that? Wasn’t that the name of the father in The Sound of Music?
Anyway, when I said Georg looked like a hottie, David got all weird and clicked on another picture, one that showed the palace’s dining room or something. I think he was jealous! It was sooo cute. No one else picked up on it, not even Jeremy, who you’d think wouldn’t want me looking at David so closely. But I swear, it’s true. And what was David doing looking up Schwerinborg in the first place if he wasn’t interested in you??
My cousins are visiting from Tennessee, so my mom’s making us all go to the Smithsonian with them. AND we have to do the White House tour, y-a-w-n.
I’ll e-mail you in a couple days, after they’re GONE. But write me again soon, You’re the best friend I’ve ever had, and I miss you lots!!
Hugs and love, Christie
PS—My mom says if you have a phone number you can give me, that she MIGHT let me call you, but it can only be ten minutes because it’s expensive, and only if I’m nice to my cousins. SO GIVE ME YOUR NUMBER!!
I’ve been sick to my stomach all day. No one told me how hard it is to go to a new school.
You’d think, being fifteen, I’d be past all this first-day-of-school-nervousness crap. I’m so not. First, I now realize how incredibly sheltered I’ve been, attending the same school system since preschool. I mean, living in northern Virginia means we get kids moving in and out every year, because there are so many diplomats, military parents, you name it, who move all the time. It’s just the nature of being around D.C. But I’ve never had to move.
And now I’m realizing just how much it sucks walking into a school with a few hundred high schoolers and not knowing ANYONE.
Well, anyone except Georg. And I haven’t seen him in over a week, since right before I had to take my placement exams.
Second, I’m having a major guilt trip over each and every new kid at school I’ve ever ignored. Images of kid after kid who tried to say hi to me are coming back, and I’m thinking I’m going to lose my lunch of (get this!) sauerbraten and carrot salad every single time I think of another face. It’s not that I was mean to anyone. I was always nice and said hello back. I just didn’t go out of my way to make sure they had someone to sit next to at lunch.
Which is probably why I spent my lunch hour sitting completely, totally alone. God is getting back at me.
I felt like the world’s biggest butt-wipe, sitting at a cafeteria table eating sauerbraten—which is beyond gross—while all the kids around me yakked about going skiing in Switzerland or shopping in Paris over their Christmas break. I wasn’t about to try to introduce myself—again—and tell them that I got to visit the Louvre once. With my parents. It’d be like stamping L-O-S-E-R in big red letters right across my forehead.
Or however you spell it in German.
On the other hand, classes aren’t as bad as I thought. My desk in Western Civilization, where I’m currently sitting, and sketching, is a bit wobbly. But the teachers really are Americans, like Dad promised. Most of them seem to be younger than my teachers at Vienna West too, maybe in their twenties. And they’re all fun. I mean, when your Western Civ teacher draws a big picture across the chalkboard showing what a pillory looks like, or talks for fifteen minutes about the various disgusting ways suspected witches were tried in medieval times, it’s entertaining in a whacked sort of way. Way more cool than listening to Mrs. Bennett lecture in a monotone about the ramifications of the Emancipation Proclamation.
And actually getting to live where all this stuff took place is making it interesting too. Apparently we’re going to get to go on field trips to two different art museums this quarter. And we get to take a bus to a place called Rothenburg, in Germany, to see a museum that’s completely dedicated to medieval punishments.
Is that not wild?
Still, I’m really glad this is the last class of the day. I don’t know why, since it’s only three o’clock, but I’m wiped. All I want to do is go home and check my e-mail. Maybe even try to talk Dad into making some magic with his pots and pans. I’m thinking something fried and fatty and totally unhealthy, since I’m never going to have to worry about the size of my thighs or butt again. Judging from today, I may as well be invisible, so there’s no way I’m ever going to have a boyfriend.
When the bell rings, I can’t get out fast enough. But the minute my way-too-American-looking shoes hit the cobble-stoned street, I feel it.
I’m starting my period.
I usually go gangbusters on my first day, so an instant wave of panic is more than warranted. I find a bench next to the sidewalk, sit down (carefully!), and rummage through my backpack, hoping that I still have something stashed in the inside pocket from last semester.
Of course, I don’t.
I get up and half run, half walk (so I don’t look too anxious as I pass by everyone who’s leaving) back into the school. Unfortunately the girls’ bathroom is no help either. No machines on the wall. Now what? There’s no way I’m going to stick my nose into the group of snotty girls standing just outside the bathroom and ask if I can borrow something. If I do, for the next year it’ll be, like, “Oh, yeah, I met Valerie Winslow. She was the girl who asked me for a Tampax her first day of school.”
Um, thanks but no thanks.
I’m about to race to the nurse’s office—I assume there’s a nurse’s office, but I don’t know, which means I’m going to have to embarrass myself further by asking in the main office—when I see a basket on the shelf next to the mirrors.
I peek inside. Halle-freakin’-lujah. At least one thing is going to go right today.
A few minutes later, I’m back outside. Of course, half the kids are still hanging around the outside doors, and the ones who saw me bolting out of class and not bothering to stop at my locker the first time I left school are looking at me now, probably wondering what I was doing back in the building.
I yank my backpack a little farther up my shoulder, put my head down, and blow past them. I want nothing more than to be out of here. Maybe I’ll have some e-mail from the A-listers. Something more about David and him being jealous would suit me just fine right now.
Luckily it’s not a real long walk home—to the palace, that is. It only takes about ten or fifteen minutes. But there’s also a streetcar stop right by the school, and if I hop on, it’s only one stop to get to the palace. Since the street
car is pulling up, and Dad bought me a pass yesterday, I jump on. I punch my ticket in the little yellow machine on board and congratulate myself on figuring out something about Schwerinborg without having Dad tell me.
I quickly realize that this is a mistake, because the second the streetcar starts moving, I wobble, fall onto one of the bench seats, and nearly end up in this old lady’s lap. She’s in an all-black dress, and she has on—no, I’m not kidding—knee-high nylons, and you can see the tops of them at the hem of her dress. And her legs are all hairy, too.
She waves me off and says something in German that doesn’t sound particularly civil, but I have no idea what. And no idea how to apologize. I make an I’m so sorry face as I stand up from the too-narrow space beside her, go to the other side of the car, and grab on to an empty pole.
This shouldn’t upset me. But it does.
I can feel tears in my eyes, burning way at the back, and I blink to keep myself calm. I so need Jules and Natalie. They’d have made me laugh with some offhand crack about how the Schwerinborgers need an introduction to Nair. Or Christie, who’d have said something miraculous to the old woman to make it all better.
I sure hope Christie got my e-mail with my phone number, and that her mom lets her call me tonight instead of waiting for the weekend. I’m going to go over the edge if I have to wait until Friday to talk to someone about all this.
I mentally pray that Christie will be extra nice to her Tennessee cousins and that they all have a fabulouso time at the Smithsonian. I ’m desperate.
Then I hear this voice near me speaking German, but it’s familiar. Way familiar.
“You okay?” Georg asks in English when I turn around.
“Um, yeah,” I manage, wondering if my day could possibly go any further downhill. I know how bad I look when I get into almost-crying mode. Before I can take two seconds and think, I blurt out, “What are you doing here?”
“I saw you getting on the strassenbahn and decided to follow you.”
“Saw me making a total dork of myself.” I give the woman I tripped over a weak smile, but she’s just staring at Georg.
“I told her it was an accident, and that you’re a very nice person but that you don’t speak German.”
“Or know how to stand up on a strassenbahn,” I say, trying out the German word for “streetcar.” “But thanks.”
I think I’m turning red now.
Georg puts his hand on my lower back, and the feel of his fingers through my clothes makes me freak out inside. “We’re here.”
I look out the window, and sure enough, we’re slowing down alongside a street-level platform. There’s a canopy over part of it, and in big black letters it says SCHLOSS, which Georg tells me is the German word for “castle.”
Schloss doesn’t sound like a castle to me, but seeing as the rear gate to the palace is across the street, I trust him that it doesn’t mean “sewage treatment plant,” which would’ve been my guess.
I still can’t believe that a prince is on this thing. And from the looks other people are giving him—most are more discreet than the old lady, either peeking from behind newspapers or past grab bars—I’m guessing this isn’t the usual way he comes home.
Once we’re through the gate and we’ve climbed up the back stairs into the wing where my apartment is, Georg stops.
“What?” I frown. I’m about to apologize for screwing up on the streetcar, but he crooks his finger at me, then puts it over his lips. I follow him down a long hall, wondering what’s with all the James Bond secrecy.
Oh, God. I hope I didn’t have an accident. If there’s a stain on my rear, and he’s about to tell me, I am going to call my mom and go home to Virginia. Tomorrow.
No, tonight. I bet I can at least get to Munich tonight.
“Here,” he whispers, then opens a door. I realize that we’re on a balcony overlooking a huge reception hall. The floor below us is hardwood, with all these beautiful inlays. Big velvet curtains are hanging from windows that are almost two stories high, ending right below the balcony that circles the room. I feel like I’ve escaped from a White House tour and stumbled into one of the secured areas.
“We’re not supposed to be here, are we?”
“It’s all right,” he says. “But I wanted to get you alone so we could talk.”
I start getting a creepy feeling. But excited, too, because he doesn’t look upset or stressed, and I know I sure would be if I had to tell a girl she’s been walking around with a big red spot on her pants.
This might even be something fun.
I eye the door we just entered through. “The library’s not good enough?”
He shakes his head. “Karl will show up the minute we go in there. Or my father will, if he knows I’m home from school. He’ll want me to tell him about my homework, what’s due, all that. He keeps a very close eye on my assignments.”
“That blows.”
He lets out a little puff of air, kind of a half laugh. “Well, that’s why I wanted to talk to you.”
“About homework?”
“No. About the fact you say things like having my father watching me every second blows. You’re … you’re very normal.”
“Thanks, I think.” I’d rather he told me I—m hot, or maybe that I’m brilliant. At least that I’m a lot of fun. But I’ll settle for normal.
“Trust me, it’s a compliment.” He drops down into one of the straight-backed chairs along the wall at the back of the balcony, and waves for me to do the same. I set my backpack down between my feet, then take the seat next to him.
“So what’s up? You didn’t need to talk to me alone about that, did you?”
He turns his head to look at me, and since we’re less than an arm’s length apart, I think I’m going to fall over. His eyes are just amazing. Not as good as David’s—on the sparkly-cool scale, at least. But intense.
Georg takes a deep breath. “Do you know who I am, Valerie?”
“An ax murderer.” It just pops out. I know he’s trying to be serious, but I need him to tell me who he is.
He cracks up. “Would you have followed me in here if you believed that?”
“Not unless I had an ax of my own. And maybe a chainsaw.”
He smiles, then props his elbows on his thighs and folds his hands in front of him. For a second he looks away from me and stares at his shoes. I want to tell him that for all his dark hair and serious expressions, he looks nothing like an ax murderer.
Or a prince. I mean, a prince who wears Levi’s and rides the strassenbahn? A prince who hangs out with moi?
He told me I was normal.
I think I’m neurotic. He’s probably the normal one.
I’m about to tell him this when he turns sideways in his chair and touches my hand. “I’m a prince. My dad’s Prince Manfred.” He looks up from where his hand is touching mine, and my heart stops cold the minute his eyes catch mine. “Did you know that, Valerie?”
Whoa.
“Yeah,” I whisper. “I know. But I didn’t. Not that evening when we first met in the library. I figured it out later.”
“So how come you didn’t say anything?”
I shrug, but all I can think about is how warm and strong his fingers are on mine. I wish they weren’t. And I wish I didn’t have such a thing about a guy’s hands. It’s distracting.
“I don’t know,” I finally answer. “You didn’t say anything to me about it, so I figured it wasn’t my business. That you’d tell me when you wanted to.”
“But you didn’t treat me any differently. You treated me like I was totally normal, even after you figured out who my parents are.”
“Was I supposed to bow or something?” Okay, stop me now. He’s going to think I’m the most evil, most smart-assed—
And then he kisses me.
Not a big, deep kiss, just a quick, soft kiss. Almost polite, but not quite. I mean, there’s definitely more behind it than the David cheek kiss, and not just because this one’s on
the lips.
And the worst part is, it’s over before I can even think about it.
“Um, I guess that’s a no,” I manage.
“It’s definitely a no. I hate when people bow.” He gives me this lopsided, embarrassed smile, and for a second I wonder if he’s going to kiss me again. This time I’m definitely going to kiss back.
Definitely.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and he shakes his head. “I probably shouldn’t have done that.”
I try not to let my mouth hang open. I’m stunned. Why the hell shouldn’t he have done it? Because it’s improper or something? Because I’m butt ugly and he had a momentary lapse of judgment?
Or because I totally screwed up the simplest kiss and he doesn’t want me to think it’s going to happen again, because there’s no way on God’s green earth his lips will ever come within a mile of my icky ones again?
He lets go of my hand and leans back in his chair, tilting on the rear legs so his shoulders are braced against the wall. “It’s just … everyone I’ve ever met treats me differently. People who I know, just know in here”—he points to his chest—“don’t really like me, but are always nice to me. I hate that. I hate that everyone is fake with me all the time. You’re the only person I’ve ever met who’s not.”
I’m not sure what to say, so I just sit there looking like a total nimrod until he adds, “I just wanted to make sure you knew who I really am. Before you get to know everyone else at school, you know, and you see how they treat me and think that’s how you have to treat me.”
I’m trying to absorb what he’s telling me, really. But all I can think about is the fact he kissed me, and what I can say to make him realize it wasn’t a mistake.
“Hey, no problem,” I say, “as long as all the people around here don’t mind that I have no sense of what’s proper”—I make a gesture encompassing the palace—“which is kind of funny, when you think about it, since knowing what’s proper is my dad’s whole job.”
Royally Jacked (Romantic Comedies, The) Page 8
