Page 30 of Nobody in Particular

“Is Santi in the play?” Danni pipes up.

I hadn’t thought of it until the words left Danni’s lips, but of course this is about Santi. Everything is with Eleanor these days. As far as plans to court and marry the poor soul go, this one at least has more promise than her previous approach of staring at him across a crowded room and hoping for the best. Danni’s eyes flicker toward me, and we share a look of amusement.

“I’m not sure,” Eleanor says airily. “Couldn’t tell you what Santi’s doing. We haven’t even had auditions yet. Anything could happen.”

I don’t believe a word of it.

“Rose, I have a proposal,” Eleanor says, brandishing the script at me.

Glancing up, I raise my eyebrows. “Eleanor, we’re far too young for marriage, I must respectfully decline.”

She wisely ignores me. “I propose that when you’re queen, you introduce a law that if a lover needs something reasonable to happen in order to potentially win over her soulmate, she can demand it. Like, say, under the lovers’ law, if you needed a place in the school play, you could just… cite the law discretely and, boom, you’re in.”

“The ‘lovers’ law’?” muses Danni, looking to me for my reaction.

I pretend to consider it. “Fine. I’ll add it to the list of future legal alterations.”

Danni perks up at this. “You can do that? Can you change it to a four-day work week, too?”

“Danni,” I say, “for you, I’ll make it three and a half.”

Molly apparently runs out of patience with the amount of joy and frivolity in the room, because she actually deigns to acknowledge my existence at this. “Rose can’t change any laws,” she says, dropping her phone to her lap. “Not now, not ever. We’re a parliamentary monarchy.”

I want to be put out that she destroyed my fun, but I’m far too busy reveling in the fact that I am, as it turns out, not invisible to her.

“Wait, really?” Danni asks, deflating. Oh, bless her, she thought the queen could change the law willy-nilly? I would have thought she’d have learned better than to believe a word that comes out of my mouth by now. It’s very endearing, though. “What do royals do, then?”

I shrug. “Not a lot, Danni, not a lot.”

I’m half joking. We certainly can’t change the law to our will, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have plans for my working life, which starts as soon as I leave school. There will be royal duties, certainly—appearances, speeches, general attendance. But in less than two years, I will be able to start working on my own causes. I have already discussed my hopes to open a foundation providing a range of services for victims of domestic abuse with my parents.

More recently, though, I have decided to expand my plans to include support services and housing for unhoused young people. I’m interested in helping youth, certainly, though I’ll admit I’m especiallyeager to do what I can to assist queer youth facing family violence. I would be unable to run a foundation specifically for this cause, given the royal family is expected to remain politically neutral, but it would encapsulate it nonetheless.

Setting aside the irony of my being “politically neutral,” when in reality my very existence would be considered a political issue by many.

Eleanor jumps in. “That’s not true. You’re a symbol.”

“I saw an article call you a sex symbol the other night,” Danni says, apparently without thinking, because as soon as the words leave her mouth she turns crimson and her eyes widen so much they become almost perfectly round. Eleanor bursts out laughing, and even Molly has to fight to keep her mouth still.

And I, never being one to let an opportunity to tease pass me by, clasp my hands together in my lap and lean forward with interest. “Youdid,did you? May I ask what you were searching to stumble acrossthatresult?”

“I, um, I—I don’t—”

“Do you often look me up?” I ask innocently, locking my gaze onto hers. “Or is it only in the night?”

Danni finally recovers enough to reply properly, though she’s still a very interesting shade of mauve. “I’m pretty sure it was just one of the news stories that day. You know, the ones that bitch about how you… um, how you…”

At least this time she catches the words before they leave her mouth. She looks at Molly, stricken.

“I know the ones,” I say gently.

Molly keeps her focus on her social media video, tactfully pretending she was so enraptured by the task she didn’t even hear the subject drift dangerously close to that night in Amsterdam. And Eleanor, ever the peacekeeper, jumps in just before the silence grows too loud.

“Danni, you perform and shit, right?” she says. “Like Rose said?”

“Uh, Iplaypiano. I wouldn’t say I perform it.”

“Close enough. Would you go over my lines with me, please?”

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