Royally Crushed by Niki Burnham Page B

For a minute, I wonder if Georg will ever sit for one and if the artist will be obliged to make him look just as cramped.
    He looks away from the picture at the same time I do, then takes another long swig of his Coke. “There’s no way my parents will allow it. They want me to go straight through school.”
    “Mine too,” I reply as soon as I swallow my bite of sandwich. I don’t know what magic Karl has worked on these things—they’re filled with your basic deli turkey, cucumbers, and a sauce I don’t recognize—because they’re phenomenal. “I never thought of doing anything else, though.But maybe if I was good at something like soccer, I would.”
    He doesn’t say anything, so I wonder for a minute if he’s kind of depressed about the soccer thing. Maybe if I apologize for calling Schwerinborg gray and boring yesterday, it’ll remind him of how much he likes living here and cheer him up a little.
    But then he’d know I know he’s the prince.
    I may have to ask Dad about how to handle this point of etiquette, though I don’t want to let on to Dad that I get along with Georg so well. Dad will get all jumpy about it, and I don’t want to get Georg in trouble either. I get the feeling he hasn’t told anyone about his soccer dream. Or at least not his parents, and I don’t want Dad to let on to them. Parents talk, as Jules, Natalie, Christie, and I discovered after Jules’s mom saw us hanging out with a group of high school boys at the 7-Eleven during our lunch hour when we were all in eighth grade. I didn’t get to go to that 7-Eleven again for almost a year, my parents were so sure that I was going to hook up with some older guy who might, in Dad’s words, “take advantage of my youth.” Right. We never even found out those guys’ names.
    “So what do you do for fun around here?” I ask. “Besides hang out in the library, I mean.”
    He gives me a smile that makes my stomach freeze. It’s bizzaro—he’s not that good-looking. At least not classically,every-girl-would-die good-looking. There’s an edge to him that takes him out of total hottie contention. Still . . .
    Maybe I’m just lonely is all.
    “I don’t, usually,” he says, grabbing another of Karl’s sandwiches. “I play soccer, I go to the movies. Stuff like that. But it’s vacation time now and my parents both have schedules they couldn’t rearrange, so we couldn’t go anywhere this year.”
    “You wouldn’t rather hang with your friends?”
    One of his eyebrows shoots up. “Who says you’re not a friend?”

6
    “THANKS.” I TRY NOT TO LOOK TAKEN OFF GUARD, but it’s kind of cool, being called a friend by a freakin’ prince . Especially since I can tell he actually means it. At least, I hope he does, because otherwise, I’m pretty much friendless here. It’s a pretty safe assumption that if Georg decides he doesn’t like me, I’m basically screwed at school. No one’s going to want to be buddy-buddy with the girl the prince says is a total reject. And I wouldn’t blame them either. I’d even ignore me.
    “I would guess you have other friends besides me, though,” I tell him, mostly to cover my own stupid smiley face reaction to what he said. I don’t want Georg to think I’m desperate, because I’m not. Being an only child makesme tough that way, or so I tell myself. “Unless you’re, like, a known ax murderer or something, and you’re just being nice to lull me into a false sense of security.”
    He holds his hands over his head, outlaw-style, then leans back in his chair, kicking his long legs closer to me. “You’ve caught me. I admit it. I’m sure the police will have my . . .” He fumbles for the right phrase for a second before saying, “My mug shot stapled to all the telephone poles soon.”
    He glances over his shoulder, toward the door, then shoots a casual look at my notebook. “You still have that drawing from yesterday?”
    Does he not want his family to know I’m drawing him?