Take the Key and Lock Her Up

They’re the queens of their school; I can tell it by the way they sit and talk and toss their hair.

I’m a real-life princess, but I’ll never be as royal as the three of them.

“You notice everything,” I tell him. “Do you really expect me to believe that you didn’t see three girls in cheerleading uniforms checking you out?”

Alexei glances up, blue eyes through dark black lashes. “I do not notice girls,” he says. “I notice girl.”

And with those words, my brother coughs. “Well, I think that’s my cue to excuse myself.” He slides out of the booth and heads toward the bathroom, slowly. He actually holds on to one of the leather-covered barstools to steady himself as he goes.

The cheerleaders watch him. Just a few weeks ago they would have been eyeing both Alexei and Jamie, but my brother isn’t well, and it’s obvious even to them. Whatever swagger he used to have flowed out of him weeks ago. We left it puddled on the embassy’s dining room floor.

It’s coming back, I know it. Slowly. Surely. But it’s not coming fast enough.

“He’s not getting better, is he?” I ask, terrified of the answer, but needing to ask it anyway.

Alexei pushes his empty plate away and pulls mine in front of him, shoves a fork full of my pancakes into his mouth, then considers.

“He has the strongest heart of anyone I have ever known. He will recover.”

The frustration that’s been building inside of me for days is starting to boil now. It’s all I can do not to yell when I say, “Not if we keep dragging him all over creation. Not if we keep giving him fluids in the back of a car and not taking him to a doctor when his fever spikes, and … he won’t get better like this.”

“Yes.” Alexei pierces me with a stare. “He will. He has to.”

“He needs to rest,” I say like a petulant child, complaining about not getting her way. “He needs to stay in one place and rest.”

“We can’t stop running, Gracie.” Alexei pushes away my plate as well, his appetite suddenly gone. “You know that. We can never stop running.”

I want to yell and scream about how wrong he and Dominic are to doubt me—that I know Jamie better than anyone and I know what is best. I wish I could tell them that they’re wrong.

But they’re not.

And I hate that most of all.

“Jamie could stop running, you know …”

“Gracie, we—”

“He could.” I cut him off, make him look into my eyes. “He could stop if they had something—if they had someone—else to chase.”

In the silence that follows I can actually feel Alexei shifting, changing. He sits up straighter, leans closer. He does everything but grab me by the hands, force me to stay in this booth and within his grasp. I can actually feel Alexei’s fear.

“Gracie, if you think you can—”

“Hey!”

When I see a fuzzy blue figure out of the corner of my eye it takes me a moment to remember the cheerleaders. They stand at the end of our booth, pink backpacks over blue uniforms, all three of them looking down at Alexei, who doesn’t even seem to notice that they’re there, wearing uniforms that are the exact color of his eyes.

I look up at the middle girl, the one who spoke. “Hi,” I say, but the girl acts like I haven’t said a thing.

“So my friends and I were wondering … do we know you?” She runs her hands along her backpack straps, pushing her chest a little closer to Alexei.

“Sorry,” I say. “We’re not from around here.”

“It’s just that …” the girl says as if she’s still under the impression that she’s having this conversation with the cute boy and not the annoying girl he’s eating with for some unknown reason. “You look super familiar, and we thought we’d come say hi. So … hi.”

For a second, she’s content with the silence that follows, but Alexei’s gaze is still glued to me; the worry is still etched on his face.

“He says hi back,” I say, and for once the cheerleaders seem to acknowledge my existence.

“I’m Lura,” the girl says. “Lura McCraw.” She’s still studying Alexei. “You really do look familiar, you know.”

“He knows,” I say because the last thing we need is for these girls to hear Alexei’s Russian accent, for them to realize the cute boy in the diner is also the hot fugitive they’ve no doubt seen on TV.

Alexei didn’t murder the West Point cadet, but that’s one story no news station is going to carry. He’s still a fugitive—a wanted man. And I can’t let these girls realize it, especially since they want him for entirely different reasons.

“Lura!” her friend whines. “We’re going to be late.”

“Okay.” Lura turns back to Alexei. “Well, bye, then. I guess I’ll see you around. Nice talking to you.”

Whether or not Lura realizes that Alexei never said a word is something we’ll never know. As the girls head toward the door, Alexei doesn’t even glance in their direction. He doesn’t wonder what it feels like to spend an entire day sitting in classes, to live in a world where your biggest problems are pop quizzes or whether the person you like might like you back.

I’m a princess, but I’d trade places with the Luras of the world in a heartbeat. I’d trade places and never once look back.