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News agents all over the world are talking about this, and my face and the face of my dad are plastered across screens and printed on papers all over the world.
Everyone thinks that we are liars, disgusting, filthy pigs. And right now, it looks like they’re right. All my life, I was the daughter of a king. From now on, I am the daughter of a liar. The daughter of a cheater.
The daughter of the most hated monarch in the world.
Suddenly, I put my hand to my mouth and run blindly for the door, but the urge overwhelms me before I can reach a bathroom and I lean over and am violently sick inside a random bucket. No, wait, it’s a potted plant. Dead, but still.
I lean over and get sick again.
My head is fuzzy and I stumble blindly, trying to right myself, as black spots dance around my vision and another wave of overwhelming nausea roils in my stomach.
“Are you going to faint too?” A voice drawls behind me.
I turn around, but my vision is going black for real, and I can’t see a thing.
A hand wraps itself around my arm and holds me up.
“Whoa, steady there.”
I take a step back, and I feel something cold touch my foot. What on earth? It’s water. I’m still disoriented and my stomach is heaving and what I really need is to throw up some more, although there’s nothing left in my stomach to come up.
But it seems that instead, I’m about to fall into the pool.
My left sneaker is about to go through the water, already deep enough for my sock to get wet, as I blindly flail backwards, losing my balance, and then arms come around my waist, lifting me effortlessly off the ground and depositing me a few paces away, on solid ground.
I look up.
It’s Marco.
‘Are you going to faint too?’
His mocking voice makes my blood boil and I grit my teeth against the blackness. I won’t give him the satisfaction of seeing me being weak. But as he’s looming over me, those aquamarine eyes staring into mine, that square, five-o-clock shadow jaw ticking, I really would like nothing better than to faint.
He might catch me, I think.He might…
“Hey hey!” he says sharply, his arms still around me. His voice sounds muffled, far away for some reason. “Look at me. Focus. You just almost went through the ice there.”
I shake my head to clear it from the fog.
“Ice?” I murmur. There’s something wrong with my lips. They aren’t working properly.
He tries to let go, but my body has turned into jelly, and I almost flop to the ground when he removes his hand from my waist. He curses, sounding extremely annoyed as he catches me again. I, on the other hand, am delighted.
Well, I’m about to throw up and pass out, is what I am.
But other than that, I am delighted. His hands feel warm and big around my waist. But it’s not just that. Finally, someone who feels annoyed and impatient at the idea of rescuing me, instead of pretending that it is his obligation or, barf, his honor.
“Look,” Marco turns me around, still holding on to me so that I don’t fall. “Yes, ice, my queen,” he sighs.
He hasn’t called me ‘his queen’ in days—it’s his nickname for me when I frustrate him at basketball practice. I am so out of shape at basketball it’s ridiculous, but I’m not giving it up a second time. Let him mock me and call me ‘queen’ in that knee-melting way of his as much as he wants. He does it mainly because he can’t yell at me as much as he wants to, I suppose.
Have at it, Marco, I want to say.But let us remember that I have seen you shirtless and sweaty on the court a hundred times.Sudden heat makes my whole body turn into water. I mean, usually heat assaults me whenever I see him, and especially on the court, but there’s something about this moment, this party, his fitted black tee and the new me, that gets me right in the knees.On second thoughts, let us not remember it.
At least not right now.
I turn to look behind me. The pool is a glass of still water, except it’s not just water. A group of boys from the other side of the grass have started pounding the surface with their fists, laughing and high-fiving each other. A paper-thin layer of ice is coating the water. When did this happen? I had heard of snow in Vermont, but it’s only October. How low does the temperature have to get at night for this to happen?
Pretty low.
