Page 117 of Nobody in Particular

Danni is practically bouncing on her heels by the end of my sentence. “Okay. Perfect. Okay. I’m going to tell her.” She laughs at the sound of it. “I’ll talk to her alone for now. But come find us later, okay? I’d like you to meet her.”

Meet her. I get to meet my girlfriend’s mother. How enchantingly, delightfully normal.

I’m in love at first sight with my brand-new reality.

My phone buzzes in my pocket. It’s Father. He and Mum are here to remind me of the other side of my new life, I suppose.

Let them.

“Say what you want to say.” I fold my hands on the table and survey my parents.

The headmaster let us use one of the school meeting rooms for this conversation, for the sake of privacy. It’s quite funny, really, because between the bare walls and the table and chairs, I couldn’t think of a more fitting location to be interrogated. Or, perhaps, let go from one’s job.

Father’s face reddens, then his shoulders drop. “How could you do something so idiotic and rash?” he asks me.

Can he truly still not know the answer to that? Has he not listened to a word I’ve said over the last several months? “I won’t spend the rest of my life terrified someone will see me kissing the person I love.”

Mum closes her eyes as though she’s praying for strength. “You just threw away your future. For a high school relationship.”

“I didn’t. I did it for love.”

She opens her eyes. They’re the same shade of green as mine. A little like looking into my reflection. “You think you love this girl?”

“I know I love her. I intend to be with her forever. But if, for whatever reason, I’m not, there will be another love, and I would’ve had to watch them be harmed, over and over again, in order to force my hand, or protect my name. I would have lived to regret it if I forced myself to go through with your version of my future.”

Father scoffs. “How whimsical.”

“Pardon?”

“Love?” he asks. “What of responsibility? And duty? What of growing up, and accepting that your country is worth a thousand times more than your selfish desires?”

I wonder if he’s thinking of the girl my aunt told me of long ago. The one who had the audacity to fail to live up to our country’s loftymoral standards. The one he loved despite it all. Who was sent where he could not follow.

Mum glances at him, and I think she disapproves of his wording. Does she know of the girl who came before her? Or perhaps she thinks he’s being too harsh on me.

“What is it our country needs?” I ask him. “To believe in a lie? Or do they need to feel they can trust we are who we say we are, even if our honesty risks our popularity? Perhaps,” I add, thinking of Danni, “there are even some people who haven’t felt particularly represented by our family, yet might feel differently now.”

Father looks incredulous. “Are you telling me you gambled your future on the hopes that a handful of gay citizens will push to keep the monarchy in place?”

“I’m simply telling you,” I say, “that just because your circles consist of people who would be uncomfortable with somebody like me in power, it doesn’t necessarily mean the country is united in that opinion.”

I say it with confidence, even though, truly, I don’t know for certain. Henland is majority Catholic. And as for how open those Catholics are to change, or progress? It will, like most things, vary from person to person. In what ratios, who can say?

“Also,” I say, “what I did wasn’t a gamble. I just looked at the devil I knew, and realized I’d rather embrace the devil I don’t. Whatever it entails.”

Mum draws her eyebrows together. She seems significantly less annoyed at me than Father does, at least. “I don’t understand,” she says. “Is your life so awful? Why haven’t you discussed any of this with us?”

“Because,” I say in an icy tone, “I don’t feel like coming to you with my problems will help solve them. It feels like providing you with ammunition to use against me.”

“Is that so?” Father asks. Goodness, he’s patronizing. Do I ever sound like that?

“For example,” I say, “not even a fortnight ago, when you were apparently considering removing Danni from Bramppath in order to stop the rumors. Unless William lied about that, too?”

Neither of my parents seem at all surprised by the accusation, which tells me all I need to know. “It was only to protect you,” Mum says. “We remember what it’s like to be a teenager, and to barely grasp the concept of a future. We were afraid you might throw yours away for a teenage romance.”

“Founded fears, clearly,” Father adds.

“You remember what it’s like to be a teenager,” I say, watching Father closely, “yet you thought that trying to ship away the girl I love as soon as you discover our relationship is the kind of behavior that would encourage me to trust you?”

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