Brighter Than the Stars

Annabelle - Plans

James's birthday was still pretty far away–in my opinion–but not in his. The summer had gone by quickly, and fall had followed suit. Still, we weren't that close, and I was sick of listening to him go on and on. The legal age in Itari was eighteen–when you could drink and even get married. In Atala it was sixteen, but Leo forbade James from getting anywhere near a tavern.

"Just think," James said. "If I had stayed with my family in Itari, I'd be getting married soon. Hey, what'd you think ever happened to Minnie?" Minerva Levine, with dark black hair that she insisted on calling it 'ebony', pale blue eyes, pink lips, and a heart shaped face she was certainly pretty. And, lucky her–she was musically talented, too. She sang and played the piano, both perfectly.

She also, in my opinion, had the personality of a wet rat. That was a bit harsh–she was nice enough. She was fine, really. We'd never really fought (except for the time I'd called her a not-so-nice name when we were thirteen, but she'd deserved it). That was the only time though, and she shouldn't have called me a jealous brat in the first place, even if my reaction was a bit much.

"Don't care," I said shortly.

"What's up with you? I thought you were okay with Minnie–she always treated you nicely, didn't she?" He stared at me, like he was daring me to tell him the opposite. As if Minnie could do anything wrong.

"She was fine. But I thought that was part of why you ran away–you didn't want to marry her." I sounded whiny even to myself, but I was tired of hearing about Minnie, who my mother had done nothing but compare me to. We'd been very close in age, and my mother had seen Minnie as the perfect daughter–even if she couldn't sew a stitch, and I'd practically made my entire wardrobe.

While everyone around me had been excitedly gossiping about all their future plans, it'd made me want to scream. I didn't know what I'd wanted to do, and I didn't like the future my mother had laid out for me. Marry well, take care of some big estate, be the perfect lady, an example in society.

I hadn't turned out exactly how she'd liked.

Everyone had expected Minnie and James to get together, but the truth was far more complicated. Minnie had wanted it–that was clear. She had been fourteen, but seemed so dead set on James, on what she wanted in life. James had been slightly thrown off by all of it, and while he'd flirted with every girl that looked at him, even at fourteen, he seemed to balk when he saw all of Minnie's plans and hopes.

She knew what she wanted, and there wasn't any problem with that. Not really. But James had been even more of a mess than he was now, and, honestly, so had I. I hadn't been very interested in planning my life out with some of my friends, and I remembered spending most of a party with one of my friends, Isadora, at the refreshment table, because neither of us had the answers to the questions about our futures that the girls were asking.

"What?" James smirked. "Jealous?"

"No!"

I left before he could tease me any more.

...

"See what I mean?" Nicole pointed to the tiny inscription in the corner, which I hadn't even noticed. She tapped the other paper she'd brought out, one from an old newspaper article, almost over a year ago, that was advertising von Vikas's campaign. The same inscription was in the corner. "It's in all of them that we have–he used to put it on business documents. I noticed it when Annalisa pulled out that poster back in Atala."

I leaned forward and squinted at it. "So that's his signature? At least no one's forging that–how does he even remember it?"

James laughed, then suddenly grew serious. "Hey, I think I could. I could get it really close, anyway, and then..."

Madeline frowned. "How and why do you know how to do that?"

"I spent a lot of time forging my dad's signature to send notes to my tutors so I could ditch. Anyway," he said, "the point is, I think I could forge it. If I can, maybe we could send a note to Annalisa, to try to get more information. Or something."

Leo nodded. "I think that might work. James–start working on that. We need to start working out what to say, though, to make it believable...and it'd be nice to get ahold of some of their correspondence, too. Just so we can know a little more of the situation."

"I can do that," Nicole said. "I'll go back to Atala, then, and break into the palace, and..."

Maddie paled. "You realise everything you're discussing is illegal, right? We're on good terms with Atala, but I feel like that would change if you broke into the palace to steal classified documents."

"Correspondence," Nicole said. "Unless I see documents that look like they could be useful, and then I'll take those, too."

Madeline stared at her, clearly trying to figure out whether she was kidding or not. When Nicole's face didn't change, she asked, "Are you serious?"

"Completely," Nicole said. At the same time, Leo said, "She's not."

"At any rate," Leo said, "you should probably stay out of this one. I don't want to end up incriminating you in any way–it's best if you don't know much. No offense, but I think it would look pretty bad if you were caught roped up in this."

"I agree," Madeline said. "I don't want any part in...this, anyway. I understand your intentions are good, but..." She shook her head. "I'll try and reach out to Annalisa and see if I can talk to her while you're doing this."

"Sounds good to me," James said. He hadn't been paying attention for at least ten minutes–he was already scribbling away on a piece of paper, trying to replicate the signature. He'd spilled ink on the table already, too. "I'll hopefully have this perfected soon, and then we can start thinking about what we want to say."

I glanced at the clock. "If we're done, I'm going to see if Mrs. Dayal is almost done with dinner, because it's already late."

Leo nodded. "Go ahead. Just don't bother her too much."

"I would never."

Word Count: 1,082