"She's so annoying."
"Cas, stop."
"What? She is!"
"You've been saying that all week."
"Because she's been annoying all week. She's been annoying since she GOT here." I kicked the dirt underneath the bleachers. Lyra sat next to me picking at the crust of her Pb&J sandwich.
"You did shove her, you know," Lyra said.
"She tripped me first."
"So?"
“Oh, come on! Are you on her side? You know she tripped me!”
"No. I saw you fall and then I saw you shove her and then I saw you get sent to the principals office. Again."
"Whatever."
"It's not whatever, Cas, you're gonna get suspended."
"Good. Then I don't have to see her face."
"Oh my god."
"She's always THERE, dude. Every time I turn around. Just standing there smiling at me like a creep. Who does that?"
"Someone who's trying to be nice? To be your friend?"
"Nobody's that nice. She's fake."
"She's not fake —"
"And the thing with the boys during gym class?"
"She was defending you."
"She was NOT defending me."
"Cas, Katie was being a jerk about the dance and she told her to shut up and that it's not your fault you don't like boys. She was on your side."
"I didn't ask her to be on my side! I don't need her on my side! Now everyone thinks —"
"Thinks what?" She tilted her head.
"Nothing. Forget it. She's annoying and I hate her."
"You don't hate her."
"I do."
"Cas!" Lyra threw her sandwich crust at me. It bounced off my arm. "You're being a jerk."
"Good."
"She doesn't even have anyone else. She sits by herself every day. It's so sad."
"So?"
"So maybe she's just bad at it. At the whole making friends thing. She just wants you to like her."
"Well, it's not working." I pulled grass out of the ground. The bell was about to ring.
I was staring at the princess.
She was across the room at her window, holding a book she wasn't reading. Her fingers were on the page, but they weren't moving. Her eyes were directed towards the glass. The late afternoon light caught her side profile, making her glow.
She pissed me off.
I don't have to go over the chains, the stable, etc. again. I'd already filed that stuff under "things I'll be mad about forever." What pissed me off right now, today, was HER. Her personality. The way she talked to me. The way she corrected how I walked and how I stood and how I held a cup. The way she'd say such condescending things that made me want to throw something at her head. The way she could eat proper food while I was over here inhaling leftover scraps like a feral animal, which, to be fair, she had literally categorized me as.
She was weird too. When she thought I wasn't listening, she had conversations with her plants. She paused as if they were replying. She had a habit of pulling her ears three times before she entered certain rooms. She slept with four pillows, arranged in a particular way. If Muime put them in the wrong order, she got very upset.
The princess was a strange, condescending, plant-talking, pillow-arranging control freak who had chained me to a horse. I was her prisoner and I was sleeping on a dog mat, and none of this was okay.
But the reality is that I was mostly pissed at myself. Even here, in this place, in this body that wasn't completely mine, I could hear Lyra's stupid voice. That annoying little nag, that thirteen-year-old know-it-all sitting under the bleachers, throwing sandwich crusts at me. 'She had no one else, Cas.'
It was bad because it worked, even across dimensions or timelines. Lyra's constant nagging was getting inside my head and making me feel things I didn't want. She wasn't even here; she was in an entirely different reality, and she was still winning arguments. Still makes me see what I didn't want to see. Still ruins my perfectly good anger with her perfectly annoying logic.
I hated it. I hated that Lyra had trained me to look at difficult people and see the lonely underneath the difficult. I hated it when it worked on me. I hated that, even in a world where Lyra didn't exist, the version of her that lived rent-free in my head was still whispering: "Just stop being so mean, Cas."
The princess didn't know how to reach out to someone without grabbing. She didn't know how to be kind without controlling. She was trying now, though she was doing it badly. I let out a sigh. Lyra's irritating voice emerged victorious.
"Cricket."
She turned. "I have asked you not to —"
"Shh. Shh shh shh. Hold on."
"Do not shush me, I am the —"
"Cricket. Just give me one second."
To my surprise, she complied, although not happily.
"I think we got off on the wrong foot," I began. "Like, really wrong. So let's just…start over. Clean slate. Pretend none of the other stuff happened."
"That is not how —"
"Hi." I extended my hand. "I'm Cas. I like long walks on the beach, sunsets, and not being chained to horses. Nice to meet you."
The princess looked at my hand, then my face, then my hand again.
"What are you doing?”
"This is the part where you introduce yourself back. Go ahead. You are...?"
She looked at my outstretched hand for a long moment. Eventually, she sat upright in her chair, tilted her chin, and pronounced, “I am Her Royal Highness, Princess Cruit of Tolamn, First Jewel of the Realm, Heir to the Coastal Throne, Daughter of King Ionracas, Keeper of the —”
"Okay stop stop stop."
"— Eastern Shore and Protector of —"
"Cricket. Stop. Oh my god." I tried hard not to laugh, "That's not... That's not how people introduce themselves."
"That is precisely how I introduce myself. I have done so a thousand times."
"Yeah and I bet it's a blast at parties. Try again."
"I will not 'try again.' That is my name. Those are my titles. I —"
"Ai ai ai. Come on. We're starting fresh here, remember? New beginning. No titles, no 'keeper of the whatever,' just your name. That's it. Like a regular person. Try it for me, princess. One time."
She seemed baffled, as if I had asked her to perform a task that was utterly foreign to her, such as juggling or eating with her hands.
"Cruit," she replied, sounding rigid and awkward.
"See? Was that so hard? Nice to meet you, Cricket." I dropped my hand, since she evidently had no intention of shaking it. "Now. Tell me something about yourself. Not princess stuff. Not kingdom stuff. Something real. Something nobody knows."
"Why would I tell you something nobody knows?"
"Cause, it's fun."
"I have nothing to share."
"Everybody has something to share."
"I do not."
"Okay, fine. I'll go first." I moved on the dog bed and cracked my neck. "One time, in high school, I was in biology class. And my friend said something to me. I don't even remember what, but it was so funny that I started laughing, and I laughed so hard that I peed. Like, full on. In my chair. In the middle of class. I peed my pants."
Her face showed a gradual dawning horror beginning from her eyebrows and working its way down.
"And there was so much of it that it went through the chair and onto the floor. Like a puddle. Under my desk. And I'm sitting there frozen because I can't move or everyone will see, and my best friend, she looks at me, and she looks at the pee on the floor, and without saying a single word she takes her entire water bottle and dumps it on my lap and on the floor. So now it looks like a water spill instead of a… you know. And she's like, 'oh no I'm so clumsy!' Real loud. And the teacher comes over to check on the 'spill' and he steps in it, and his foot slips and he falls. In it. He fell in my pee."
A long silence.
"What," the princess asked carefully, "is a high school?"
Of all the things in that story, that's what she landed on. I paused.
"It's like a… okay." I folded my legs in toward my chest. "It's like a… a great hall. Of learning. Where the youth of the realm are gathered to study the… the ancient arts. Of… knowledge. And the teachers are like... scholar wizards. Who instruct the young in the ways of the sciences and the histories and they wear robes. Long robes. And there are four houses and you get sorted into them based on your —"
That was Harry Potter. I was describing Harry Potter.
"— okay forget the houses. It's just a place where you learn stuff. Moving on. I told you mine. Your turn, Cricket.”
For a moment, she remained silent. Her fingers idly tapped her collarbone.
"Once," she said very carefully, "when I was quite young, I took a tart from the kitchens before supper." Without Muime's knowledge. A blackberry tart."
“And?”
“That’s it.”
"That's it?"
"It was before supper. We were not to eat before supper."
"Cricket, I just told you my teacher slipped on my pee. You stole a tart? Come on. Tell me about something you did that was actually bad."
She rolled her eyes. "I do not understand what you want from me." Her expression seemed irritated and almost like she was... frustrated at having to follow rules she didn't understand.
"I want you to tell me something that makes you a person."
She stared out the window for a long time, and I was sure she was going to tell me to fuck off. But then she spoke.
"There was a boy," she began. “From a neighboring kingdom. A prince. We were promised to one another as children. An arrangement made by our fathers when we were barely old enough to walk. His name was Perceval. He was —" She searched for the word. "He was dreadful. He wept at everything. He was frightened of horses and dogs and once he sobbed because a butterfly landed upon his sleeve. And I was to marry him. This weeping, quivering boy who shrieked at insects. This was to be my husband. My king." Her chin raised. “That simply would not be permitted.”
"What did you do?"
"I placed a dead frog upon his plate at supper. He screamed so violently the dogs began to bark. He told his father, who told mine. The next day, I put another in his boot. He flung the boot across the room, hitting a picture of my grandmother. My father was livid. Perceval told everyone that I was responsible. I cried, saying that I couldn't understand why he would tell such terrible lies about me."
She smiled.
"On the third day I replaced his trousers with a pair belonging to one of the kitchen girls. He arrived at breakfast wrapped in a bedsheet because he had nothing else. I told the court I was deeply worried for his health and perhaps he ought to be examined. It continued for a fortnight. Frogs in his soup. Spiders upon his pillow. His finest doublet discovered in the pigsty, though no one could account for how it arrived. Every accusation met with wide eyes and a trembling lip. His father demanded an investigation. My father conducted one and found nothing, because there was nothing to find."
She smoothed out a crease in her dress.
"The betrothal was dissolved. His father declared the boy was losing his mind and refused to wed him until he was cured of his illness. Perceval was taken home." A beat. "My father never discovered the truth. Muime suspected but she has always been selective about which of my misdeeds she chooses to acknowledge."
“Fucking A, Cricket. That’s amazing. 10/10.”
The smile disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. She quickly stood up with the realization of landing.
"I should not have told you that."
"What? Why?"
"Because it is not… I do not share such things. Especially, not with a person of your stature.” She pursed her lips. "I do not know what compelled me to speak so freely."
“Cricket, it's not a big deal.”
"It was a private matter and I disclosed and I should not have —"
"Hey. Relax. I'm not telling anyone. Your frog crimes are safe with me." She didn't turn around. "Gotta say though, with a track record like that, I get why no man can lock you down. If you liked it then you shoulda put a ring on it, all the single ladies, all the single —"
"I beg your pardon?"
"It's a song… never mind. Point is, what's the deal? Every dude in the kingdom isn’t good enough for you? Are they all super lame? You just turning them all to stone out here?" I wiggled my fingers. "Ooooooo, scary princess."
She turned, looking like she might throw the book at me.
"You mock me. The very rumors that have —"
"Okay. You're right. That was dumb. I'm sorry. That was stupid a stupid thing to say."
She stood still, taking deep breaths through her nose. I observed her thought process, and then she sat down again, slowly.
"I do not send them away for amusement," she said, softer. "I know what is whispered. That I am cruel. That I delight in their shame." She examined her hands. "My mother and father loved one another."
I nodded to encourage her to continue.
"Not as a treaty. Not as a duty. He loved her with every breath he drew and he has not drawn a full one since she departed this world." Her fingers ran down the spine of a book. "When I was small I would watch them in the great hall. The way he looked upon her. The way she would reach for his hand beneath the table when she believed no one was watching. It was the sort of love one encounters in stories. It was the most real thing I have ever known."
After a momentary pause, she resumed speaking.
"Every man who has knelt before me has knelt for the throne. For the title. The lands, the armies, the coffers. They speak of devotion and I look upon their faces and I see nothing of what my father held for my mother. They desire what I carry. Not one of them desires what I am." She caught herself, widening her eyes slightly. She cleared her throat and redirected. "And you? Has your heart ever been claimed? Has any soul managed to capture the heart of a man with such considerable experience?”
"Yeah," I said. It came out faster than I’d intended.
Her eyebrows raised. "Truly? And who has won the heart of a man of your… appetites?”
"She nags," I said. "Like, constantly. About everything. My temper, my mouth, the way I eat, the way I dress, the fact that I don't read enough, dont exercise, don’t show up to classes. You name it.”
The princess was watching me. She was very still.
"She's smart. Not just book smart. She just gets people. She looks at someone and instead of judging or hating them she just... see’s the good in them. She always knows the why. It drives me insane because sometimes I just want to be mad at someone and she won't let me. She knows me better than anyone. She knows when I'm lying. She knows when I'm scared and pretending I'm not. She knows when I need to be left alone and when I need someone to be there." I picked at my cuticles. "And yeah, she's beautiful. But that's the least interesting thing about her. But if that's all you see you're missing everything behind it."
The fire cracked.
"Someone from your home?"
"Yeah. Back home."
The princess flipped the book over in her hands. "You must miss her terribly."
I thought about the fight. I thought about the anger, the pain, and the silence between us. I also thought about what I'd do if I ever woke up and got out of this.
I'd call her. Not text. Call.
No, I’d go to her. In person. I would tell her everything, no matter how crazy it might seem to her. I wouldn't care if she thought I was insane. I would finally have the courage to stop being a coward. I'd say what I'd been too scared to say.
"Yeah," I replied. "I miss her."
"She is very dear to you," the princess remarked.
"She's everything."
The princess didn't look back at me, just kept staring out at the sky. Her hand rested on the sill and her fingers slightly curled in. She suddenly stood up, crossed to the shelf, chose a different book and went back to her seat. Then she began to read aloud.