Wish Apon A Star

Annabelle - Tie Dye and Trouble

Once Madeline stopped trying to flirt with Leo, she, Nicole, and I actually got along okay–she was smart, sweet, and generally alright to be around. While the air between her and Nicole was still tense, Nicole had stopped trying to convince her of Itariese 'traditions'; though, I thought it had been funny. Besides, I thought Madeline had deserved that, and she'd fallen for it, too.

But once she had stopped, she had proved herself more than capable of becoming Queen. She'd been prepped for it, of course, being heir, but most people I'd known from the Court had been prepared for something, and most of them had let it go straight to their heads. While the girls had often been competitive and sometimes even downright mean, there'd always been a few who would eagerly lend a dress or jewelry, and I'd always had friends among them. It had been the boys who'd been particularly awful. Girls had clumped into packs and then watched out for each other (which sometimes had drama from the inside, which had been irritating), but boys had always insisted on being alone, and frequently fought amongst each other, as if they had something to prove.

Madeline, at least, was likable. She spoke well, too, which was good if she had any hope of becoming Queen–the only problem was that we didn't know how people would respond to her accent. I'd actually never heard von Vikas speak, which probably played into why he was disliked, and to earn any sort of respect, Madeline would have to. But we didn't know how the Itariese people would feel about a foreign Queen, even a proven heir from a country we were on good terms with.

But we didn't really have another choice.

We'd told Owen about Madeline's arrival, and he'd agreed to help attempt to put her on the throne. But everything seemed like it would take forever, and there were plenty of question marks. I didn't like question marks.

I sat with Nicole and Madeline as we attempted to remove stains from the towels that had been in the upstairs bathroom–until James and Ollie had used them to climb out the window on a particularly muddy Tuesday, and now they were pretty much ruined. At first, I had wanted to let James and Ollie take care of their own mess, until I had another brilliant idea (which happened a lot) and decided the towels would be a lot better with some extra colour. When I'd presented the idea to Nicole and Madeline, they'd both given me a nearly identical look, which had honestly been terrifying. But, thanks to my amazing persuasion skills, that's what we ended up doing.

"I want," Madeline said, as she scrubbed at a towel–that was a good thing about her, too: she was willing to work, "to apologize. To you, Nicole," she added. "I did not realize...I thought it was more of a–how do you say it?--crush, I think, than anything more serious. Either way, it was wrong of me, and I shouldn't have done that."

Nicole shrugged. "It's fine. It doesn't matter. I shouldn't have tried to convince you of all those 'Itarise traditions'."

Madeline laughed. "I deserved that. And you really were convincing me, you know–I might have actually tried to do that. Quite honestly, I would have deserved it, too."

Nicole shrugged again. She didn't agree, but she didn't deny it, either. "It was still kind of a crappy thing to do, regardless. Especially if you had done something like that."

"Yet, I do not think you would be very sorry to have seen me do it, no?" Nicole started to protest, and Madeline shook her head. "I do not blame you. I would think the same, if it had happened to me. How long?"

Nicole blinked. "Um. About seven months. Not very long. I don't think."

"Tell that to James," I said and snickered. He hadn't been dating anyone for months, though, and had barely looked at a girl since his last breakup–not because he was particularly cut up about it, but because Leo had told him to stop messing with people like that. He may have been a jerk to most girls, but he'd listened. Maybe a tiny part of him felt guilty about it. I hoped so, anyway.