Page 48 of Nobody in Particular

“Here, here, here,” Rose says in a low voice as she crouches down to look me over for permanent damage. When it turns out all my limbs are still attached, she helps me back up, but this time she stickscloser to me. I’m a liability, I guess. God forbid she has to use the panic button. I’d die of shame.

She grins sideways at me as we skate. “Wait, so you’re a wildly talented pianist, yet you don’t like the spotlight? How do you handle performing?”

“By doing it as little as possible,” I say. She gives me a confused look, and I go on. “I mean, I’ll do it for people I trust, or to audition, or whatever. But I havereallybad stage fright.”

“Oh. How will you pursue piano if you can’t perform, though? Or don’t you intend to?”

I shrug. That is a great, excellent question. One my mom’s asked me about a million times. “I don’t know. I keep promising myself I’ll get used to performing, but every time I chicken out. And I do want to pursue it if I can. I mean, I’ll probably never be a concert pianist, but I think I’d like to be in an orchestra. Like Caroline was. If I can be that brave. If not, maybe I’ll just play for myself.”

Rose does a little one-eighty shuffle so she’s facing me going backward again. Show-off. “But you have so much talent. Surely you can learn to overcome any stage fright?”

“Not all of us grew up in the spotlight,” I remind her wryly. “I can’t even perform in front of the school. What are the chances that I’ll magically be performing for a sold-out crowd in a few years?”

She gives me a knowing look. “Spend enough time around me, and you’ll get used to attention. Trust me.”

As the words leave her mouth, some of her brightness dims. I wonder if she’s thinking of my deal with Molly. And just how little time I’ve spent with her since I made it.

Should I bring it up? To apologize, or explain, or even to tell her I’ve missed her? I’m honestly not sure. She’s been smiling at me around school, and saying hi and stuff, so it’s been hard for me to tell if she cared at all that I asked for space.

It’s not easy to tell much of anything with Rose.

I stumble, and she automatically holds a hand out for me to grab onto. Her fingers curl around me firmly, and I wish she wasn’t wearing gloves, and I could feel the skin separated from mine by this stupid scrap of material.

“What about you?” I ask. “What happens after next year? Do you go to college—I mean, university—or get a job? Sorry,” I add. “I don’t know how being a princess works.”

Rose snaps back to the present. “I can go to university,” she says. “It’s encouraged, actually. I’ve thought I might like to study philosophy, or maybe anthropology. But it doesn’t matter what I study, or whether I choose not to. All roads lead to the same destination. I’m not allowed to hold any other jobs,” she clarifies.

“Right, gotcha. And is that what you want?”

Rose looks pensive. She still hasn’t let go of my hand. “What I want is to leave the world better than I found it. Being queen will give me more than enough resources to do that, if I don’t waste them. I just… hope I don’t waste them.”

“Well, that’s in your control, right?”

Something about her expression tells me she disagrees. She doesn’t elaborate, though. She doesn’t even reply.

My feet are killing me by this point, and even though I don’t really want to wrap things up, I eventually crack and tell Rose I have to get off the ice. Once my borrowed skates are dried and returned, I hover, waiting for Rose to suggest we head back to our rooms. Instead, she says, “If your feet are numb, we should go for a bit of a walk. It’ll help with the blood flow,” she adds, and I’m suddenly extremely thankful to human biology for giving me some extra time with Rose.

Now I’m here, I’m remembering how much I like being around her. So much that I’ve half forgotten why I ever wanted to take a step back to begin with.

It’s been raining more often than not over the last week, and the woods are muddy and slushy and soggy as we trudge through them. We’re moving slow, because we only have the moonlight and Rose’s phone flashlight to help us see where we’re going in the dark. Theodore is following way behind us, so distant that he could almost be some guy doing his own thing if I didn’t know any better. Even if I glance at him, he’s not looking at us. I guess he does that so Rose feels like she’s living a semi-independent life. And it’s not like he’s so far away he’d miss it if something went wrong.

“Oh, by the way,” I say, because if I leave it much longer it’s going to be weird to bring it up. “Congratulations.”

“On?” Rose asks.

“On Alfie. That whole… thing. It’s awesome.” I add the last lie because even though I mean the congratulations to sound real, it sort of comes out bitchy against my will.

She looks at me blankly for a while, like she’s forgotten who Alfie is or what I’m talking about. “Oh, that’s not… it wasn’t what it looked like. Alfie’s my friend.”

I snort. “Really? ’Cause I don’t do that with my friends.”

She stares at the ground furiously, and I stop smiling. She takes a deep breath, then looks back up, and there’s something desperate in her eyes that catches me off guard. “No, I actually don’t like”—she catches herself, tips her head back to expose her neck, and then steadies—“Alfie. I like someone else.” I blink at her rapidly, trying to process this brand-new information, and then she looks right at me and finishes with a casual, “Some other guy.”

My stomach sinks. Out of the fireplace and into the frying pan, huh? Maybe, just maybe, I should stop assuming impossible things the second I get the slightest reason to hope. One of these days, I’ll get on top of that habit, right?

“Yikes,” I say. “Do you think he saw the photos?”

“Who?”

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