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“I have eight.”
“Well, who has eight bodyguards? What are they guarding you from?”
Right. Are we having this conversation—or rather, this yelling match—here, between the bathroom and the dirty carpet? Not that I care.
“My mom,” I give him the abridged version, “was Austrian and Greek. My dad,” I shiver as I mention him, the knife of betrayal twisting deep into my stomach, tearing open fresh wounds. “My dad belongs to French, Norwegian and Russian royal families, apart from being Asterian as well.”
“So what?” Marco scoffs. “Do you mean to tell me that all these dudes are protecting you against abductors or killers because you happen to have a colorful family tree? Who cares?”
My hands curl into fists. I was wrong before. This is exactly who Marco is, and the dog and car incidents were some weird anomaly. He is exactly what he is right now. Rude, unfeeling and arrogant. That’s my boy right here. It’s almost funny if you think about it.
“Who cares,” he repeats, and his eyes are glued to mine, so shining blue, as if they are shooting electricity. “Who cares if someone kills a stupid little princess, no matter how many royal houses make up her family?”
“If an American kills me?” I answer, not wavering from his gaze. “The whole damn world cares.” His eyes flicker as I say the d-word. He wasn’t expecting that from me (neither was I). “If an American hurts or threatens me, he just hurt and threatened five of the most powerful European countries. That is third world war material.”
“Not necessarily,” he argues, but he’s gone a few shades paler.
“If someone wanted an excuse to start things, this would be it,” I say. “Me. My father and his advisors have been fearing it since the day I was born. And have you seen the political climate lately?”
He looks away. “Doubly more stupid to escape your bodyguards then,” he says finally. “If you knew that that’s the case.”
“We’re almost back to the campus,” I tell him. “And don’t call me stupid.”
“Don’t call you stupid? The palace is guarding you from an assassin. They must think the threat very real, if they spent that much money to send eight dudes and pay them to stay overseas.”
My guards are mostly American.
But they are not cheap, for sure.
I think about that for a second. I have thought about it, at the back of my mind, but I am now thinking about it from a whole different person’s perspective. A person who would probably never have had the chance of even attending UVM without the scholarship. I am thinking about it fromhisperspective.
“And knowing all this, you went and escaped them,” Marco says. “That’s even stupider than I originally thought.”
“You know one thing that wouldn’t be stupid right now? Escaping you.”
His blue eyes look me up and down coldly, dripping hatred. Goading me.
“It would be,” he says slowly, running his tongue over his teeth like a wolf, “the one clever thing you have done in your little stupid life.”
I want to hit him, to scream at him, to tell him where exactly he can shove his opinion. But I can’t. If I so much as open my mouth, sobs will come out.
So, instead, I do what he said would be the one clever thing to do: I run.
The last thing I hear before tearing down the hallway is him biting out a curse, and then the porcelain of the toilet bowl clanking as he throws up again. By the time he finishes, I am already downstairs and letting the door shut behind me.
And then, I’m alone with the trees.
/Marco/
[audio transcript]
I saw them die again tonight, mom. I saw them die in my sleep. My nightmares are memories from the war.
Why didn’t I die with them? Why did I survive the explosion that killed my fellow-soldiers? My friends? I don’t know. I wish I hadn’t. Everything would have been so much better if I hadn’t. That bomb that hit our vehicle… Most of my friends died instantly. Three more died in agony, days later, their bodies filled with holes and broken bones.
It turns out, that attack on our van? It was just a warning. Of what other horrible things will happen unless I obey.
I have obeyed every single order I have been given since that day. It wasn’t enemy fire that killed my friends, mom: it was my boss. And it was no accident that everyone but me died. I needed to be shown how much power my boss had. Has.
