Page 8 of The Impossible Princess
I spend the night dreaming about shoes—stuck shoes, shoes that fly off, shoes that fall apart with every step I take. I am exhausted when I wake and stagger downstairs to a breakfast with my sisters of strong chocolate, hot rolls, and soft cheese. Alma and Freja are quick to offer their commiseration for my public humiliation.
“It could have happened to any of us,” Freja says. “It was just bad luck.”
“And gravity,” adds Alma. “Mama can’t be upset about physics.”
I smile as though I agree, but I know better. Nothing less than the perfect balance on this narrow road of royal protocol will satisfy Mama, and neither Freja nor Alma would understand. Freja has constructed her own bridge from point A to point B, and Alma manages to walk Mama’s line, all the while appearing to juggle flaming chainsaws without breaking a sweat.
If I keep trying, there’s no reason to think I can’t become that good at it.
The newspapers are spread across the table, each one more inventive than the last, and my stomach sours when I see how many there are. This is why what happened on the parade ground was consequential. Mama has a full agenda planned this week, and it’s been relegated to page three while my drama has claimed the spotlight.
My sisters finish their meal, but Ella hangs back, pauses for a few beats, and turns a smile on me, positively triumphant.
“You’re a GIF,” she squeals.
I growl. Alma is already a wildly popular GIF. Whenever people search the internet for a short, looping video ofdisdain,Slay Queen,die peasant, orThanks, I hate itto attach to their social media posts, the first choice to pop up is usually my oldest sister arrogantly lifting her brow.
Never mind that she is hilarious and sweet. Never mind that she was scared out of her mind. The GIF shows two scant seconds of video captured from an hour-long event highlighting endangered animals. It was the moment right when the giant Hispaniolan galliwasp escaped its handler and slithered up her leg. Alma has a special terror of lizards, but as she explained to us later, giant Hispaniolan galliwasps look like scuttling thumbs and have an uncanny necklessness, which made it a billion percent worse. That she didn’t run screaming or kick it, sending the species one step closer to extinction, was an act of heroism. But two seconds is enough to make her live on in perpetuity as a two-dimensional cartoon, the first image most foreigners ever see of our country.
We all received two months of intensive comportment training for that. A shudder dances down my spine, and I grip my mug tightly. I do not want to be a GIF.
Like a doomed queen marching up the steps to the guillotine, I say in a tone of deep resolve, “Show me.”
Ella hands me her phone. A member of the press has caught the two seconds I’ve been reliving since the moment they happened. Lieutenant Commander Max Andersen is kneeling with the most heart-stopping expression. Then he stands, his eyes tracking my face as he rises to his feet. It’s a simple image, but it looks as though he’s about to drag me into a dark closet somewhere and—
I blink back the thought. Yesterday was a calamity for my public image, and here’s why. Over thirty years ago, after the birth of a new baby, a European princess slipped on a bit of wet pavement as she went to greet the public. A tiny slip. She didn’t even fall. That clip resurfaces again and again on biographical programs, visual shorthand for why she became an ex-princess, got caught in an influence-peddling scandal, and gained all that weight. It lets people think that the seeds of it were there all along.
But as I watch my GIF play and replay, my feelings of embarrassment and frustration are nudged gently aside by the secret pleasure of remembering what it felt like to have Max Andersen look at me like that.
“What are the search terms?” I ask, tracking Lieutenant Commander Andersen’s eyes tracking mine.
“Princess,true love,say yes,proposal,Navy stan,do it…”
I groan.
“…royal wedding,hot man,shipping,yes sir… Shall I continue?”
“No, no. I’ve got it.” I drop my head in my hands, plunging my fingers into my hair. “Curse my heel.”
“Curse all heels.”
I grumble, “Curse the stone-cutter who bungled that paving stone—”
“Don’t you think he’s dead?” Ella giggles, entering into the game, firing off responses as quickly as I make complaints.
“I wish long-range camera lenses had never been created.”
“To hell with deep-space telescopes,” she rejoins.
“I’d like to uninvent the Navy.”
Ella nods sagely. “Our national sovereignty is a small price to pay for your feelings.”
“Curse hot sailors.”
She laughs. “Alas, you’ve lost me.”
I glance up and whack Ella on the arm. She laughs at me, rubbing the spot. “You’re not really upset, are you? You basically got to meet the God of Thunder in the actual, sun-kissed flesh,” she says, raising her eyebrow like I may have something new to impart that the world’s press didn’t manage to capture.
