I swallow and look ahead, remembering that first day. Getting off the plane in Boston, my parents helping me set up a room, and then driving away. Me feeling like an alien with all the other American teenagers.
“I think it was pretty hard for them,” I say.
“What about you?” he asks.
“It was hard at first,” I say. “But I got used to it. Then I got kicked out when I got caught smoking pot on school grounds.”
“I knew it,” he says. “Bad from the beginning.”
“It turned out you needed richer parents than I had to get away with that kind of thing,” I say. “So I went to another one and didn’t get caught.”
He chuckles.
“Of course,” he says.
“You went to boarding school too, right?” I ask.
“Only one, in Switzerland,” he says. “I didn’t get kicked out.”
“You were probably quarterback of the football team, valedictorian, and class president,” I tease.
“Rugby,” he says. “I don’t think I broke a rule until I was twenty-three.”
“And now you’ve broken at least a couple,” I say. “Better stop now or you’ll develop a taste for it.”
He brings my hand to his mouth and kisses it.
“Too late,” he says. “You’re a very bad influence, zloyushka.”
“Good,” I say. “You needed one.”
He kisses me briefly, both of us still leaning against the wall.
“I’m coming over tonight,” he says, lowering his voice.
I can’t help but smile.
“You don’t have to escort Yelena home or something?” I ask.
A tiny twinge of jealousy worms its way through my chest, but I ignore it.
“I might,” he says. “But I’m coming all the same.”
We kiss again, longer this time, his lips moving against mine before we pull back.
“Keep your dress on,” he says, his voice dropping. “I want to take it off you with my teeth.”
My whole body flushes with heat.
“Then don’t take too long,” I say. “I’ve waited enough already.”
We kiss, longer and slower. He puts his hand to my face and runs his thumb slowly along my cheekbone, just underneath my mask.
“I should go before someone comes looking for me,” he says when he pulls back.
“We could go to my room now and you could make excuses later,” I say. “It’s better to apologize than ask permission, you know.”
Kostya just chuckles, his voice low and gravelly, and kisses me again.
“Keep the dress on,” he whispers, and stands, straightening his uniform. I stay on the bench, kicking my feet.
As he turns to leave, his back suddenly straightens and his face goes stony. A bad feeling gathers in the pit of my stomach, and I sit up straight and slide my feet into my shoes.
Please not his father, I think.
“Yelena,” Kostya says.
That’s better, but not by much.
She answers him in Russian, her sweet voice soft and confused. Then she walks forward, sees me, and freezes.
“Good evening, Miss Sung,” she says, still very formal with me.
She reaches out and takes Kostya’s arm, her eyes flicking from me to him and back, like she’s trying to add something together and can’t quite manage it.
“Good evening, Yelena Pavlovna,” I say, and stand in my unfastened shoes. I hope I don’t need to take a step, because I’ll fall over.
She looks up at him.
“Your father asked me to find you. He’s giving a toast before the final dance.”
Kostya nods once.
“Of course,” he says. “It was a pleasure talking to you, Hazel.”
“You as well, Kostya,” I say.
Yelena gives me one last glance, and they walk away. I sit heavily on the bench and stare at the stonework path for a moment, trying not to think what if she’d come thirty seconds earlier.
I refasten my shoes, take a deep breath, and delicately scratch my face underneath my mask.
We’re not keeping this secret, I think. Just because I haven’t actually told anyone doesn’t mean they haven’t found out.
Hell, Yelena, his actual date to this event, came about ten seconds too late to catch us making out. This secret thing isn’t working.
I walk back toward the ball, just as Kostya escorts Yelena back into the ballroom through the open glass doors. I don’t want to be jealous, but right in that instant, I am.
I’m stupidly, childishly, petulantly jealous that she gets to have him escort her around, that she can come find him if she wants. That she gets him in public and I get him in garages and bunkers, after midnight, in the dark.
Put on your big girl panties, Hazel, I think.
Then I walk into the ballroom and listen to toasts.
I walk with my parents back to the guest wing of the palace. The moment we’re out of sight of Svelorians, I make my parents wait for me to take off my shoes, then stretch my toes against the wooden floor.
“I don’t know how those women do it,” I say. “They’re robots, Mom. Robots with robot feet.”
She laughs.
“They’re just used to wearing heels,” she says.
“I gotta say, being a man is pretty great,” my dad teases. “No heels, no childbirth...”
“Shut up,” my mom and I say in unison.
Then we laugh again. We’re both slightly tipsy. I think she’s still relieved that the assassination attempt turned out to be nothing, and I’ve got my own reasons for being in a great mood.
We reach the junction of the hallway where they go left and I go right, and my mom gives me a hug.
“We’ll see you Tuesday,” she says.
“Tuesday?” I say.
“The King set up some meetings while he’s at the economic summit over the weekend and asked me to join him,” she says.
“I just wanted to go to Kiev,” my father adds.
It sounds vaguely familiar, so I just nod.
She hugs me again, a little tighter this time.
“Hazel, be safe,” she says. “And behave yourself.”
She emphasizes the last part just a little too much.
“Don’t I always?” I ask.
My mom just sighs, then relinquishes me to my dad.
“Stay out of trouble, freckles,” he says. “At least try.”
We head to our respective rooms. I shut the door and lock it behind me, then toss my shoes under the bed, and get the mask off my face and toss it on the dresser.
I hesitate for a moment, then reach into my dress, unstick the jellyfish bra, and throw it into a drawer. It’s not exactly a sexy look.
Then I wonder what I’m supposed to do while I wait.
After a while I settle for reading in a big leather armchair, but I can’t focus. I’m reading the same paragraph of Alice in Wonderland, the only English book I could find in the Kiev train station before I left, over and over again, listening for a knock on the door.
I read it again. Think about the dessert table. Squirm. Read the paragraph.
I want to take it off you with my teeth.
Read the paragraph again.
There’s a noise on the balcony, and I freeze. Even though I’m on the second floor of a literal fortress, I reach up and turn off the light, then turn off all the lights as I move through my rooms, still in my formal gown.