Page 14 of Nobody in Particular

But I’m still no closer to figuring out if Rose even likes me, so she’s not my problem. It’s Molly I need to check in on right now.

Molly’s calm—smiling a little, even. She closes her door behind her and we settle in, her on her bed, me in her desk chair. I kick off my shoes and pull my knees up to my chest as she speaks.

“His name was Oscar,” Molly says. She’s not looking at me. She’s speaking to the ceiling, with her hands folded on her chest. She kind of looks like someone on a therapist’s couch. “He was our friend. Actually, he was one of my closest friends. And, yeah. Long story short, he overdosed and died. Rose and I were in the room with him when it happened.”

I don’t reply, because I don’t think I’m meant to just yet. Like I figured, when I stay silent, she goes on.

“Rose is the reason we went to that party at all. We were all at her lodge for the holiday break, and someone she knew was throwing a party in the town nearby. Oscar wasn’t the type to drink, or do drugs, or anything. That was Rose and Eleanor. But I found out later Rose basically told him to take these pills some guy had, and no one told me. I… we found him in a bedroom. By then, there was nothing I could do.”

A muscle in her jaw works furiously, and she fixes her eyes on the wall while she steadies herself. I can’t help it; my eyes well up. I’m a crier. I cry at foster-animal advertisements, and happy viral videos, and news articles about suffering people I’ve never even met. But this is even worse because I know Molly, and I like Molly, and knowing she went through something like this breaks my heart. I wipe my eyes with a fist and hope she doesn’t notice. The last thing I want is for her to feel like she has to shut up just because I can’t control my emotions.

“Anyway,” she says. “That’s not the point. I mean, I don’t blame Rose for what happened. It’s not like she was trying to hurt him. But after that, all her focus was on rehabilitating her image. All she wantsto talk about is how she can stop people from thinking less of her for what happened. Meanwhile, she saw her friend die, and it’s like… nothing. What kind of person cares more about how they look than the fact that their friend died in front of them?”

I still don’t say anything, waiting for Molly to go on, but then her expression turns pleading, and I realize silence wasn’t what she was after anymore. “It’s not normal, right?” she presses.

“I can’t imagine how hard it must be for you,” I say. Molly looks relieved, and it makes me wonder if she’s been second-guessing her anger at Rose.

“Right,” she says. “So, yeah. That’s the story. And if this is who Rose really is when shit hits the fan, then it’s probably not such a big loss, anyway.”

She says it casually, but her jaw’s way too tense for me to believe that. I try to imagine what it would’ve been like to go through something like that with Rachel, and I just can’t. I’d want to believe that no matter how awful things got, I could rely on her to give a shit about what had happened, at an absolute minimum.

Is that how Molly used to feel about Rose, though?

“So, she really only cares about what people are saying?” I ask. In a weird way, I almost want Molly to take it back, or soften it, I guess. I don’t think I want to believe Rose is like that.

“Yeah. And to be fair, people are saying a lot.”

“I know,” I say grimly. “I saw some of it.”

Being publicly turned on en masse by people who have never met me, like what seems to be happening to Rose right now? I don’t think I could cope. Like, I legitimately think I would crumble.

“Didn’t they get in trouble?” I ask. “I mean, underage drinking, pills…”

From the look on Molly’s face, you’d think I told the best joke she’d ever heard. “When you’ve got enough family money, these things tend to go away,” she says. “Rose has had it the worst of all of them, really. Even if the law lets her get off scot-free, the papers never will.”

From the look on her face, she doesn’t think the trial-by-media Rose is going through really cuts it as a punishment. And even if I dofeel bad for Rose after reading some of those articles, I don’t exactly disagree. Not when I know for a fact that if I or any of my classmates back home got caught doing drugs like that we’d probably end up in juvie.

Molly chews on the inside of her cheek until a fold forms by her mouth. She concentrates on her phone for a few seconds, and then she passes it to me. “This was Oscar,” she says, and I realize I’m looking at his private personal page.

Oscar, a thin guy with pale, red-cheeked skin and bright blond hair, wasn’t a huge social media user—he only has about twenty photos on there. But in all of them, he’s smiling from ear to ear. There’s him with a shorter-haired Molly, and him holding a stretched-out ragdoll cat, and him stroking a horse’s neck.

“He loved animals,” Molly says, looking at the screen over my shoulder. “That was his horse, Nutmeg. I don’t actually know what happened to her. I might ask his mom.”

Something about the look on her face—sad and bitter and happy and fond all swirled up together—tells me she wants to talk about him. I mean, he hasn’t come up before. Maybe she and her friends avoid talking about him. Maybe she isn’t sure if she can.

So, I keep flipping through his photos, and say, “He looks like a great person.”

“He was.”

“Tell me more about him,” I say, and in one hit, the sadness and bitterness fade by half, and she smiles almost as big as Oscar did in the photos.

And she does.

EIGHTROSE

At any royal event, there are multiple aspects I struggle with. I’m no great fan of small talk, though I manage to force it—if only passably so—and constant social interactions drain me, and it’s all but impossible for my mind not to wander during speeches. But far and away the part I dread the most these days is the balcony appearance.

Ostensibly, the balcony visits are a chance for the royal family to interact with our people—all the while offering a marvelous photograph opportunity. Father, however, has always used it as an unofficial barometer for the family’s popularity. He takes careful note of how sprawling the gathered crowd is, and how loud the cheering, and even how much movement he spies throughout the throng. Our first balcony appearance following that night in Amsterdam, the crowd all but fell quiet when I walked out. I’ll never forget the strained look on Father’s face that day.

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