Royally Crushed (41 page)

“But even if all that could happen, it was still a fantasy. Your parents weren’t really happy.”

“No, they weren’t.” I have to accept it now, like it or not. “And in reality, you couldn’t exactly transfer to high school in Vienna, Virginia. You think the culture shock I had moving here was bad . . . you in Virginia? Ouch.”

Here there’s almost a small-town feel to Georg’s existence. People who live in Freital—or anywhere in Schwerinborg—are used to seeing him. He’s out and about, and they generally respect his privacy. He’ll walk into a local cafe for a sandwich on his way home from school, talk to the old guy behind the counter, be friendly and ask about the guy’s kids. Sure, there are always people who gawk, but they at least try to be discreet. And while the European tabloid guys follow him on occasion, there hasn’t really been any dirt to report (other than me). They’re more interested in his parents’ day-to-day activities, since Prince Manfred runs the country.

Suburbia might kill Georg. Americans wouldn’t be so casual about the fact he’s a prince. Once it got out that an eleventh-grade European prince was visiting, it’d be sensationalized to the extreme. He’d take one step into a Starbucks and get mobbed by people wanting his autograph or shooting pics of him on their cell phones to e-mail to friends.

The minuscule Schwerinborg tabloids would be nothing compared to what he’d face in the U.S. The Fräulein, especially, would have a complete conniption fit if she had to make those kind of media arrangements.

“So let’s make the most of what we do have,” he says, sounding very Zen. “Because the way things are right now,
your mom’s already happy, your dad has a chance at happiness, and the two of us can be together. Don’t you think?”

Georg scoots his thigh away from mine. I can’t really read anything into it—we’re nearing the top of the lift and he always scoots away so I don’t wipe out. I glance toward the top of the lift to see if we’re near the spot where we have to raise the safety bar, but just as I register that we still have a little way to go, I feel Georg’s hand on my cheek, turning me back toward him. Then he leans in and gives me the kiss I really wanted last night.

The one that says he loves me, even when I’m crabby and whacked-out. The one that makes me want to curl up in his arms and kiss him like crazy and make them stop the lift so we can stay here forever. The one that says he forgives me—or at least mostly forgives me—for my outburst in the hallway last night.

The one that makes me think,
Screw Virginia and all my friends there—I want to be like this forever.
And I’m sure that’s exactly what he intends, too.

Especially when I hear a loud cough come from the lift chair behind ours.

Dad, of course. And Anna.

Sheesh—did I just think of her as
Anna
? My coffee must have been spiked this morning.

“We need to get off,” he says, pulling away from me and reaching for the safety bar.

I choke, I start laughing so hard, which makes him frown at me. I wave him off, ’cause I am
so
not going to explain the double meaning of his words. It’d be too, too cruel when he already worries about his grasp of English slang.

Plus, I don’t want him to know I have a dirty mind.

Once we’re at the summit, Georg and I endure the requisite lecture about public displays of affection from Dad and Anna, promise not to do the kissy-face thing again, and point out exactly where we’ll be skiing on the trail map. They take off down one of the intermediate trails, but not before Dad looks backward over his shoulder one last time to give me a warning glare with a very clear
Don’t make out in public
message.

I simply give him the same glare back. But unlike yesterday when I watched him disappear down the trail with Anna, I’m not so worried about it actually happening.

By the time we’re ready to meet Dad and Anna for lunch, I’ve managed to actually make it down a black run. Not gracefully (and probably not quietly, since I think I screamed when I started going too fast on one steep part), but at least with all my bones intact.

“Yes!” Georg shouts as we sail down the very bottom of the run, heading toward the ski racks outside the base lodge.

Once we finally stop, I use my poles to release my bindings, then keel over and do an over-the-top act of grabbing my quads.

“The pain! The pain! Somebody call an ambulance!”

He just smiles and shakes the snow off his gloves, like he wonders how I could possibly be sore. Probably because he cruised down the run like it was no big thing. He even skied backward on one of the not-so-steep sections, just so he could face me and see if I was doing okay.

Show-off.

“You did just fine,” he assures me once our skis are locked and we’re clonking along like Abominable Snowmen in our heavy boots, doing the same heel-to-toe walk into the lodge everyone else is doing. (Someday, someone will invent ski boots a person can actually walk in. And they’re going to make a kazillion dollars on the patent, too. If I had better science skills, or anything close to real ski skills, I’d be all over it.)

“Use lunchtime to rest up, then we’ll take a few of the intermediate runs when we’re done,” Georg says. “We can try that black run again later. Now that you’ve done it once—”

So not happening. “Do you know how much snow I
got up the back of my jacket when I fell on that icy part? I don’t even want to risk it.”

“But you know where the ice is now. And you’re not
that
sore. You could go dancing right now, I bet, and you wouldn’t be able to tell you’ve been skiing for a day and a half.”

I spy Dad and The Fräulein in the concession line at the same time Dad sees me. He points to a table near where we were yesterday that’s covered with his gear. I pull Georg over, shoving Dad’s hat and gloves out of the way as we sit down. “That reminds me,” I say, speaking quickly because I’m afraid we won’t have much time to talk, “you know there’s the dance at school next weekend, right? Ulrike’s working on it for Student Council.”

“Sure.” He yanks off his gloves and tosses them into the pile with Dad’s and The Fräulein’s.

“Well, I volunteered to help set up. Ulrike was talking about it at lunch a few days ago and she sounded like she really could use the help.”

“Will Steffi be helping out too?”

His voice is completely polite as he says it—years of having “polite” drilled into him by his parents, I’m sure—but we both understand what kind of person Steffi is, and I know that’s why he’s asking. To watch out for me.

“Nah. She didn’t seem interested. I actually told Ulrike
I’d help after Steffi and Maya both turned her down.” I give him a guilty grin. “I wasn’t all that interested either, honestly. But I felt bad for Ulrike, trying to round up help and getting no takers.”

“You like her, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I do. She tries hard, you know?” I can tell he’s about to say something about how it’s cool I’m finding a new group of friends here in Schwerinborg, but I cut him off. I don’t want to go down the whole road of why I should like it here as much as I liked living in Virginia. Plus, I have a more pressing issue to discuss. “But that’s not why I brought it up. It’s a girls-ask-guys dance. And I was hoping, since I have to be there anyway, that you’d come with me.”

“An official date?”

Official? “I guess. I mean, I don’t think it has to be government-sanctioned or anything.”

Oh, somebody smack me. Bad,
bad
joke. It probably does have to be government-sanctioned, since we’d have to tell Dad and Georg’s parents. I bet The Predator would want her say, too, since the public-relations people at the palace are always worried about Georg’s image. We’d be coached on how to behave, how to answer questions if anyone asks . . .

Okay, asking a guy out
sucks
. It’s just wrong, no matter what the situation. But in this situation, it sucks double.
And I wish that for once in my life I would have canned the first smart-ass comment that came to me and counted to ten before speaking.

Georg doesn’t say anything. He keeps his focus riveted on his jacket as he unzips it and then hooks it over the backrest of his chair. I know he’s trying to buy time to decide—and I can understand why it’s a tough decision—but all of a sudden, I realize that I really want him to come with me.

I want us to be public. Loud and proud.

I mean, we did have one out-in-public date already, at a palace event with his parents. But they simply told anyone who asked that they’d invited me—the daughter of a palace employee—in order for Georg to have someone his own age to talk to. So it wasn’t really like anyone other than my Dad and Georg’s parents knew there was something going on with us.

Ditto for this weekend. It’s all so officially
un
official, because as long as no one took pictures of us kissing on the slopes (and other than that quickie on the chairlift—assuming they could even identify Georg with his helmet on—they wouldn’t have had a chance) it’s easy to explain this weekend away by saying we’re just on a friendly trip.

Up until this very second, I’ve been fine with keeping the whole boyfriend-girlfriend thing under wraps. In a way, it’s been romantic keeping things secret—sneaking
in kisses when we’re positive we’re alone, shooting looks at each other across the quad at school when no one’s looking. Hiding out in our apartments, where no one from outside the palace could possibly know what’s going on.

Plus, acting like we’re simply friends when we’re in public has made us that much more lovey-dovey when we are alone together. There’s a risky edge to it all.

But looking at him now, knowing how I feel about him and how I’m pretty sure he feels about me—well, assuming he’s truly over my little hissy fit of last night—I don’t want to hide anymore. Tabloids and speculation that I’m a corrupting influence on Georg or whatever be damned. I don’t care if they say that I’m too stupid or ugly or nonpedigreed or just too flat-out American to be going out with him.

Or if they say I’m pregnant with an alien baby. Or that I
am
an alien baby.

I just want us to be together whenever we want. To walk down a street and hold hands if we want. To live our lives like normal high schoolers do. Eventually, the press types would lose interest, wouldn’t they? I mean, Prince Harry has some hotsy-totsy long-term girlfriend, and I haven’t seen
them
in the papers together in a while. And Britain’s Prince Harry is far better known than Schwerinborg’s Prince Georg.

Before I moved here, I didn’t even know there was
such a person as “Schwerinborg’s Prince Georg.” I’d have thought somebody made him up, it sounds so whacked to say it aloud.
Schwerinborg
all by itself sounds plenty whacked, but that’s the German language for you.

I notice that Georg’s looking past me, toward the concession area. I follow his gaze and see that Dad and The Fräulein have finished paying for our food and are at the condiment counter, loading minuscule paper cups with ketchup and piling napkins and straws onto the trays.

“Looks like lunch is on the way,” I say. I want him to give me an answer, but since he’s obviously hesitant, I figure the kind thing to do is to give him an out. Let him give me his answer later, after he’s had time to think about it. “So, wonder what they got us?”

“Probably bratwurst again.” He squints at the trays they’re carrying, then mumbles something about how he can rule a country but can’t pick his own lunch. It’s so out of character for him that I can’t say anything.

Besides, maybe he’ll take that sentiment and run with it—and start dissing The Fräulein. Not that I’m holding my breath on that one.

“Look, Val,” he says, looking at me again. His brows are pulled in, and I know what he’s going to say even as the words come out of his mouth. “The answer has to be no. I’m sorry.”

“It’s no problem. I mean, that’s what I figured.” I try to act like it’s no big thing, but I’m dying to know why.
Exactly
why. I’m that kind of a glutton for punishment. “So do you—”

“Lunch is served!” The Fräulein practically yodels the words as she plops a plastic tray down on the table. Seriously—I wouldn’t be surprised to hear a singsongy “yoo-hooooo” out of her.

“Great. What’d you get today?” Georg asks, ever the polite one.

“Soda, bratwurst, Kaiser rolls.” She flashes a smile in my direction. “I even brought some extra mustard, since I know you like it, Valerie.”

I don’t. I just used a ton yesterday to kill the taste. But she babbles on. “And for a special treat, when we’re done with this, your father and I are going to grab some warm strudel for everyone. They had a fresh pan in the oven, and it’ll be ready about the time we’re finished eating. How does that sound?”

I glance at Dad, trying to gauge his reaction to the strudel announcement. I swear, I am living one totally demented fairy tale. The Brothers Grimm never wrote anything this warped. Eventually, Hansel and Gretel got away from the mean witch, Sleeping Beauty woke up from her nap, and most important of all, the whole kingdom
learned about Cinderella hooking up with Prince Charming. Right?

So when do I get my happy fairy-tale ending? And is there a way it can
not
involve strange foods?

I can tell from his hopeful expression that Dad expects me to be enthusiastic about the freaking strudel, so I look at The Predator and utter one of the few words I know in German.
“Wunderbar!”

Wonderful.

“LISTEN,” GEORG SAYS ONCE WE’RE ON THE CHAIRLIFT
again, keeping his voice low since Dad and Anna are right behind us and—as Dad pointed out—voices carry on these things. “I’m sorry about the dance. But it’s being held at the Hotel Jaegerhof. The hotel’s a beautiful place, but . . . well, it’s not the same if the two of us go to a dance together as it is when we go on a ski trip where your dad and someone else from the palace staff are along. It’d be hard not to—”

“Don’t even worry about it.” I can tell—despite the fact that he’s wearing his ski helmet and has his goggles pulled down—that he’s wigging out, thinking that I’ll think he doesn’t love me.