𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐧, young royals

1: Blacklist

1: Blacklist

It was my first day at Hillerska when I met him.

Trees were shedding red and yellow tears, the rearmost weeks of autumn quivering before the edge of winter.

I remember how his shell-pink tongue danced in his mouth, how fissures of sustained effort creased his forehead and tilted his brows inward.  Young, I observed, most likely a first-year as I was.

I remember the late afternoon hue stricking his skin of brass and the keen echo of his voice bouncing to and fro on the walls of the chapel.  And when the choir's harmony made way for his solo, murmurs tackled whispers in the room.

"Who let him do the solo for the prince's welcome?"

"If he wasn't some lower-class twink, I'd almost think he could get somewhere in life."

"Oh, shut the fuck up, Nils."

I remember his hostile stare and the passion swelling in his heart and voice as he sung louder and clearer, ensnaring the entire audience in his symphony.

And most of all, I remember his way of not acknowledging me at all.  Purposefully, I realized.

There was something pleasantly bold and atypical about his dismissal of me. It contrasted with the needless flattery I usually received from strangers.

I strolled about, unheeding, for the rest of the day. Without meaning to, my eyes sought a curly-haired choir boy in the crowds. Tossed around by cameramen and journalists, I could only catch a glimpse of his retreating frame as he retired into the woods. Non-resident, I concluded.

That afternoon, in my dorm, I turned to the window and stared at my ghost in the glass.  Never before had I felt so ugly and misshapen in my life.

The skin around my eye was swollen and plum, reaching from the end of my brow to the summit of my cheek, busted veins like fireworks on the 4th of July.

"You're a lucky bastard," said my brother, eyes brushing over every inch of my dorm.  "I had to share a room until my third year."

I said nothing. This is miserable.

"What's on your mind?" queried my brother.

Looking down, I gnawed on the inside of my cheek, fingers biting relentlessly into my palms.

"I can't stay here 3 more years, Erik," I replied, looking back at him with pleading eyes. "I want to go home. With you."

He sighed, "That's enough, Wille.  You must understand that every little thing you do now reflects on me and the family.  You can't keep fucking up anymore."

I glanced down at my hands in my lap, fiddling with the hem of my sweat-shirt.  I guess it really did take a fool to remain sane.

"You sound just like Mom."

•••

I saw him again the next day.

We shared a social studies class, and he sat next to a brown-haired girl one row ahead of me, across my right side.

45 minutes into the class, he shamelessly scoffed at something the blond-haired guy sitting in front of me had opinionated.

"Simon, is there anything you'd like to share with the class?" asked the teacher, turning to him.

Simon. His name was Simon.

"It's a weird question," he stated blatantly.  "Why is it evasion for taxes, but scam for welfare?  It's okay for the rich to cheat, but not for the poor?  It's not welfare for the rich.  It's called deduction."  Simon looked in the blond boy's direction then, witty, and spat out, "You know how much your dad makes per year in EU subsidies?"