“Come on,” I heard myself say. “We’re getting you out of here.”
“But I just got here,” Nick said.
I put my hands on my hips. “Right now, ‘here’ is alone in your bedroom,” I said. “Tell me something. When did you last have any fun?”
“You’ve been out with me—I’m terribly fun.”
“Sure, you are fun, but that’s not what I asked.”
“I do have a good time,” Nick insisted. He sat down on the bed and tugged on his hair. “I just sometimes get tired of it being contractually obligated. Being a prince involves a lot of luxuries, but getting to be in a bad mood is not one of them.” His face was downcast, but then he shook himself. “Ugh. Poor little royal boy. I’m sorry I even said that. I should be smacked.”
I closed his door. “Listen, I don’t know if you’re aware of this,” I said. “But you are allowed to have feelings, even if you did spring from the loins of Norman vanquishers or whatever.”
“Can’t we just stay in and watch Devour?” he said hopefully. “Wasn’t that chap with the bad wig going to suck the acid out of Carrie’s scar?”
“Nice try,” I said. “But you need actual social fun. And you’re right that it’s not going to happen at this party. Everyone down there’s either going to suck up to you or freak out on you.”
“Or just stare at me to see if I’m about to crack,” Nick said glumly. He looked resigned, then determined. “Right, as you’re clearly the delinquent here, where do we go?”
I grinned. “Anywhere. People here might recognize you, but who’s going to tell the people milling around out there?” I gestured expansively at the window. “If we can find you a mask, they’ll just think you’re some deranged guy who’s a week late with his costume.”
He considered this. “I think we’re going to look back at this one day and agree that it was a bad decision.”
“Even better,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”
Chapter Seven
Nick still claims I stole the wheelbarrow by announcing, “No fence is bigger than I am,” before hurtling over one and then running out two seconds later screaming, “Your chariot, my lord.” But I swear that the wheelbarrow found us, proffering itself in the middle of a random driveway, practically begging us to let it cradle the Royal Carcass.
“Are we there yet?” Nick asked, lolling his head to the side.
“We have moved about twenty feet since you last asked me that,” I said, heaving the wheelbarrow with great effort.
“Your problem,” Nick slurred, taking a swig out of his Guinness can, “is that you need to learn the metric system. It will make you whole. Are we there yet?”
His volume was loud, but Nick didn’t care. That was at least two parts due to the booze, but I also write it off to something we still affectionately call the Oxford Bubble. Prince Richard had struck a deal with the press to steer clear of Nick while he was at school, in exchange for occasional official sit-downs with him—a level of access previously denied them. Miraculously, the media honored this deal. And somehow both the townspeople and most of our fellow students were protective enough that they kept their mouths shut about Nick’s specific comings and goings. Even if they were woken up by the sounds of someone who looked like him being dragged off in a neighbor’s wheelbarrow.
It was going to be a long walk with that infernal thing, capping an even longer night. We’d snuck out to the nearest Boots and found, amid the cosmetics and snacks, a junk aisle with Halloween masks on clearance. While Nick hid around the corner—I had lied that I was going to shoplift, just to make him feel rebellious—I picked out a rubbery Darth Vader helmet and a Batman mask that would go all the way down over Nick’s shoulders.
“Ultimate Evil, or a hero who never speaks above a whisper?” I asked him.
“Ultimate Evil is obviously you,” he said, grabbing the Batman mask, which mashed his nose into a baby snout and made him sound congested. “It smells weird in here.”
“Stop stalling.”
On the way to Boots, we’d passed a billboard covered in posters advertising various events around town. Nick closed his eyes and I spun him around, and then he ripped a flyer off the wall at random, which is why we ended up at a dive bar named The Hedge Maze, where some regulars were duking it out in a profoundly impassioned and unironic karaoke contest.
I sidled up to the bar and waved at the portly, buzz-cut man pulling pints, whose neck was wider than his head.
“Is there a fee to enter?” I asked.
“Five quid,” the guy said, looking skeptically at both of us. “But I don’t trust a man if I can’t see ’is face. Might ’ave a gun up in there or summat.”
“His only weapon is his talent,” I said. “He’s just got terrible stage fright.”
“’e’s in a bloody mask,” the guy said. “S’not Halloween. What kind o’ prat does that?”
“Listen, sir,” I said, plonking a ten-pound note on the bar. “My friend Steve here is having a rough year. His, um, brother threw acid on his face and it has scarred him for life.”
“Blimey,” the man said. “Poor Steve.”
I nodded serenely. “The acid burned his throat. They said Steve would never sing again.”
“Yes, and he might never,” hissed Nick.
“He will,” I said. “Steve will sing.”
“He will,” echoed the barkeep. “I’ll waive the fee.”
“No, Steve would want you to have it,” I said. “He stole it from his brother’s wallet.”
We made our way to a table near the front, Nick pulling nervously at his mask as a balding old man sang “My Way” like he was Frank Sinatra’s long-lost brother.
“I was right, this is a bad plan,” Nick whispered. “That man is a marvel and I am nothing.”
I rolled my eyes, grabbed my Sharpie, and wrote on my own shirt, I have the voice of an angel. Then I went up and sang the first song I knew from the list: “Umbrella” by Rihanna. It was a rotten choice. Chances are, if you are not Rihanna, you sound fairly stupid singing that chorus. But going first allowed me to write down Steve after my own name, pick his song for him, and buoy—or shame—Nick into stepping up to meet or beat my weak challenge.
“What song am I doing?” he asked.
The opening bars to Wham’s “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” played. Nick froze. The first lines came and went without him.
“Can’t read, eh, Batman?” shouted Faux Sinatra. “Get off!”
“Pay ’im no mind, Steve,” shouted the barman. “Let ’er rip.”
And rip it he did. Once Nick started, it was hard to get him to stop, as if every suppressed public-partying impulse erupted out of him. I could swear he was working steps from his beloved dance movies into whatever weird prancing he was doing, and the crowd of forty- and fiftysomething cigarette-puffing locals were so enamored of the mystery bat that they cheered his every move. Four pints later, he’d performed a novelty song about fast food, “Bye Bye Bye” by NSYNC complete with the dance, an exaggeratedly wrenching rendition of an Oasis ballad, and a Shania Twain song that was popular when he was at Eton (for which I served as his air guitarist). By the time we rolled out, to wild cheers, Nick was exhilarated.