Falling for Hamlet (10 page)

I was cold, so I walked to Hamlet’s dresser and took out a long-sleeved shirt. Before I pulled it over my head, I stopped a second to smell the collar. I knew it was clean because, at the castle at least, his stuff was taken care of. But I loved the combination of his scent and the detergent the laundry staff used.

Horatio caught me. “That’s just sad,” he said.

I covered my face. “I know. I don’t get to have these creepy moments when you guys are gone. Having you back is a bonus.”

He lifted his eyebrows in mock disapproval. “The king’s death is a bonus? Nice.”

“You know that’s not what I mean,” I said, throwing the shirt at him.

Hamlet walked in to find us having fun, and his dark mood sobered us immediately. He looked like someone had touched his jutting cheekbones with pink finger paint. He crossed the room quickly and sat on the floor facing away from us.

“What’s wrong?” Horatio asked.

Hamlet wouldn’t answer but picked up his guitar and closed his eyes. I saw him wipe away a tear, so I sat on the bed behind him and kissed the top of his head. He strummed with his eyes closed and tried to calm himself.

“She wants me to go back to school tomorrow,” he said finally.

“You’re kidding,” I sputtered. “Tomorrow’s pretty fast.” I wasn’t sure if I was disagreeing with Gertrude because she was wrong to push him or if I just expected him around for a while more.

“Did she say why?” asked Horatio.

He stopped playing and said angrily, “She said that while she would prefer I stayed by her side, I should get on with my life. We would sort out all the being-king stuff later. God, it’s been one day since the funeral! Get on with my life?” He shook his head and banged on the strings, making a discordant howl, then sat quietly staring out the window.

Horatio tucked his phone into his back pocket and asked, “You think you’ll come back with me?”

Hamlet shrugged. “Maybe.”

“It might help you keep your mind off of things,” I suggested, not really wanting to encourage it but remembering how busy I kept myself after my mother’s death. Busy to distraction. Busy to exhaustion.

He went back to strumming, but mid-song he threw his guitar across the room, cracking the neck. “No. Forget it. I’m not going. I can’t be in class right now. Who cares about macroeconomics or protozoa? My dad is dead. What am I gonna do, party, for God’s sake?”

Horatio went to pick up the broken guitar and I slid off the bed to sit next to Hamlet. “She’ll understand,” I said.

“Who cares?” Hamlet grumbled.

I rushed home from school each day for the next week, declining invitations to hang out with my friends, skipping swim practice and time in the art studio to be with him. I tried to keep Hamlet from grieving. More than a minute or two of silence or stillness, and he would retreat into a depression, and it would take hours to pull him out of it.

My friends, my coach, and my art teacher were pissed, which seemed unfair because I’d lost someone, too (though not an actual parent, so I guess everyone else saw it differently), and if I’d been taking any tough classes, my grades would have slipped. It did occur to me that it was probably a good thing that I wouldn’t be going to Wittenberg with him. My father, I begrudgingly admitted, might have been right about that after all.

Given my efforts to help Hamlet, I was slightly disappointed when we were swinging on the hammock on my balcony and he announced, “Being around the castle is too depressing. I’ve decided to go back to school.”

“I thought…” I began. “I thought we were doing all right.”

He ran his fingers along my thigh. “It’s not you. It’s my mother and my uncle. One of them is always hassling me about going back to school or wanting to discuss my future. I’m sick of it. And when my mom isn’t crying, she shuts herself behind closed doors. Most of the time, she acts like she doesn’t want me around.”

Well, that’s a change,
I thought. I couldn’t remember a single time when she hadn’t begged him to join her for a meal, tried to separate him from me, or otherwise sought him out. It didn’t make sense.

I asked, “Then who’s she turning to for comfort?”

“Claudius. She says he understands her… that he feels the same pain. But I don’t know what she’s talking about. His brother died, and I’ve never seen him cry or even look more than a little sad. And that’s only when someone else mentions what a loss it’s been. My uncle and I have never been close, but I’ve never wanted to be around anyone less.”

“Leaving’s probably best then,” I conceded, then snuggled tighter against his body, trying to soak in the last moments I thought we’d have together for a while.

Barnardo:
Did you try to talk Hamlet out of being king?

Ophelia:
Why would you even ask that?

Barnardo:
Just wondering.

Francisco:
You get into his head… make him doubt that it’s the right thing to do.

Barnardo:
Hamlet hesitates, so Claudius takes over, driving Hamlet over the edge.

Ophelia:
That’s not why Hamlet was pissed.

Francisco:
Come on, all that power in the wrong hands.

Ophelia:
Hamlet didn’t care about power.

Barnardo:
What
did
he care about?

Ophelia:
(pause)
Me.

Barnardo:
And look where that got him.

Ophelia:
Does the DDI give lessons on cruelty or does it just come naturally to you?

8

“So, one minute we’re all mourning the death of the king, the next we’re hearing about a relationship between Gertrude and Claudius. When did you become aware of it?”

Ophelia smiles elusively. “Around the same time as everyone else.”

Watching two people kiss is about the most annoying thing ever, unless it’s in a movie. Somehow if it’s on-screen you can put yourself in the place of those beautiful people, and you can imagine the leading man running his fingers through your own hair, stroking your own face. You are suddenly gorgeous and the object of his desire, not sitting alone in sweatpants with racing stripes that you hope make your legs look thinner. But when a real couple is actually in front of you kissing, all you can think is,
I’m right here! Take your big ol’ tongue out of her mouth.

Happening upon two people kissing who don’t want you to see them kissing is not only gross but really, really awkward. Such was the case when I walked into Gertrude’s sitting room and found her lip-locked with Claudius. I’m not sure who was less happy about it. She had asked me to come see her, so the fact was, she was expecting me. Why she wasn’t more careful if she didn’t want to get caught, I just don’t understand. Of course, I haven’t always been as careful in my life as I should be, so maybe it was a mistake. Does it even matter? I froze in my tracks and then left the room as fast as I could, all the while considering Hamlet’s reaction to this stunning turn of events. I couldn’t decide if he’d be more devastated or furious when he found out. I knew
I
was more disgusted than anything.

Unfortunately, running away wouldn’t do for Gertrude, who chased after me shouting my name.

“I’ll just… come back later!” I called behind me.

“Ophelia, stop!” she commanded, so I did. Her smile fixed, she suggested, “Let’s go shopping.”

“Uh, I’m swamped with work, so…”

“I’ll write you a note or something.”

“I’m already really behind—” I began.

She interrupted my refusal. “Come now. In the weeks since Hamlet went back to school, I don’t think we’ve spent any time together.”

Let me just say that was all her doing, and I doubt she missed the time with me any more than I missed hanging out with her.

“Ophelia, sweetheart, we’ll buy you something fabulous. Ooh, we can even catch high tea at the Crown.”

I forced a smile of my own and replied, “Sounds lovely. Let me just get my jacket.”

“No need to say that this is just between us,” she said, winking at me. I shook my head as she closed the door behind me.

On the way home, Gertrude admired the suede blazer she had purchased for me, the one piece of clothing I actually liked all afternoon. The kiss went unmentioned. Though she thought she had bought my silence, more than anything I was too stunned to take action. I liked the blazer, yeah, but I didn’t stay quiet over designer clothes. I just wasn’t sure what to do. Was I supposed to alert the press? Tell my dad? Call Hamlet? Probably. Maybe I should have gone to Wittenberg and told him in person. But it was so surreal. So gross. So personal. As tempted as I was to tell him immediately, there was a part of me that thought Gertrude ought to do it herself. And if she and Claudius had ended things quickly and quietly, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. Part of me thought—maybe hoped—they would, and that would have spared the three of us—okay, me—having to tell anyone anything. And I never would have stayed quiet if I’d realized how serious things were with Claudius and Gertrude or how quickly they would progress. So I admit it: I took the blazer and I stayed silent. I’m not sure if telling Hamlet right away would have changed anything, but I wouldn’t feel quite so bad about what came next if I had.

And she didn’t write me any blessed note, which didn’t matter anyway, because I would never have handed it to my teachers if she had. I just stayed up later than I wanted and did terrible work, which I had been doing a lot even without her help.

Less than a week later, I was up in Hamlet’s room grabbing a CD he said I could take to download when Gertrude came walking in.

“Oh,” she exclaimed, “I thought you were one of the maids.”

“I was just leaving,” I said, holding up the case.

She gestured broadly to the door, and that’s when I spotted the sparkle of an enormous diamond. On her finger.

“What’s that?” I asked, pointing at her hand, my eyes wide.

She looked down and quickly covered her left hand with her right, then said, “Please follow me.” She clip-clopped down the hall to her receiving room. The walk must have given her time to think of what to say. I know it gave me time to think of a lot of questions.

She sat behind her desk and pointed at the chair I was to sit in. “Well, dear, things have developed, and I am truly glad that you found out, well, even before Hamlet.” I knew this could not be good. “Perhaps you can advise me on the best way to tell him that… Claudius and I are engaged.”

My mouth actually dropped open. I searched my mind for the date to be sure I wasn’t crazy for being so surprised. Nope, not crazy. One month. It had been one month since her husband had died of unknown—one might even say mysterious—causes. “Are you kidding?” I asked.

“No,” she said, clutching her hands together, hiding her new ring again. “It only happened this morning, you see.” She blushed and let out a little half laugh. “I’m simply afraid that, well, Hamlet is not going to take this well.”

“I imagine he won’t,” I answered, still in shock.

Gertrude stayed cool and patted her perfect French knot. As she did so, I had the chance to study the ring, and it was, to say the least, lavish. Twice as large as her original (which had been no small diamond) and sparkling dazzlingly. She said in a clipped voice, “The thing is, I’m very, very happy about this, and I am hoping that you can convince Hamlet that it is a good thing.”

I blew out a burst of air and smiled, though not for the reason she probably thought. I was laughing at what an impossible request it was, and how improbable it was that he was going to be anything but livid. “I’ll try.”

When I got back to my apartment, I decided to text Horatio first but didn’t want to make it too specific. Hamlet, I thought, should be the first to know.

Me: Strnge thngs r afoot @ the circle K

Horatio: ?

Me: Go hm. H wl need u.

My phone rang in my hand and I hoped it wasn’t Horatio because then I’d be sorely tempted to explain. It wasn’t. It was Lauren.

“You coming over tonight?” she asked. “Everyone’s watching
Denmark Divas
at my place. The theme is classic rap. Totally ridiculous idea for a bunch of pop singers, right? I can’t wait to see how vicious the judges get.”

“I can’t. Listen, I gotta go—”

“He’s not even in town,” she said with unadulterated irritation. “I get we’re invisible when he’s around, but—”

“You can berate me later, Lauren, but something just came up.”

“Whatever,” Lauren grumbled.

I sat on my bed, fleetingly considering how much I neglected my friends and how I was once again becoming the lamest kind of girl—the kind whose boyfriend came before all else. And then I thought about what to do… about Hamlet. I would have kicked myself if I weren’t so preoccupied with the Gertrude situation.

I didn’t want to be the one to tell Hamlet, but I certainly didn’t want him to hear it from anyone else, especially his mother. I decided to call rather than send a message. He did not, as you can imagine, take it all that well.

“Hamlet,” I began. My legs were shaking. “Hamlet. Okay. Can you sit down? I need to tell you something that… I don’t think you’re gonna like.”

“You’re not pregnant, are you?”

“What?” I asked, completely distracted. It might have been a funny miscommunication except that I was so dreading telling him the real news. “No. It’s about your mom.”