“As my tiny baby brother, you are legally not allowed to psychoanalyze me.”
His nose scrunches. “I’m barely fourteen months younger than you.”
“Tiny. Baby.” I poke his bicep. Then sneer in jealousy at the size of it. The younger sibling should also not be legally allowed to get more jacked than the older sibling. But that would probably require said older sibling setting foot in a gym on more than a rare occasion, so screw that, I’ll let him have this.
When he inhales, clearly about to change the subject, I show him the first photo on the paparazzi site, of me in my salmon shirt.
“Why thefuckdid you let me go out in public with—”
“Coal.”
I drop my phone and reach for my glass, but Kris puts his hand over it.
“Do you realize how much you fucked up?” His voice is low.
“Yeah.”
“All your bullshit, and I never thought you’d—wait, you do?”
I don’t look up at him. Just stare at the condensation beading down the side of my glass, still trapped under his hand. “I do. I didn’t—I just—fuck.”
“You gotta give me more than that, dude.”
My mouth hangs open like a gaping drunk fish. I have nothing, though. Nothing I can say to fix anything.
It’s why I fled the party like a coward. Because I am. A coward and a screwup and tonight I bested my records in both of those areas.
Kris yanks his hand away from my glass to scrub it across his face. This energy out of my brother, pity and exhaustion and the slightest tinge of fed up, damn near burns the alcohol right out of my veins.
I always know Kris and Iris are borderline annoyed by my antics, but they usually end up laughing with me, and that laughter is more infusing than any consequence is punishing. If I can get a smile out of them, I know I not only haven’t fucked up too badly, but I’ve hit the perfect note of endearingly goofy.
Like the time I arranged for our prep school building to go up for sale. Got a realtor involved and everything. Classes had to be canceled for a full week to hash out the confusion.
Or the time I filled a cathedral with chickens right before an Easter service.
Or the time during our annual Christmas Eve Ball where I rigged the sound system to play, on loop, “I Am Santa Claus,” a parody set to theIron Mansong, and it tookseventeen roundsbefore the staff could figure out how to shut it off. People were crying.
But that was harmless. Everything I’ve done has been harmless. That’s what I have to offer: harmless, meaningless bullshit.
Until now.
“I didn’t mean for anything bad to happen,” I try. The air is stale and smells like something burned in the kitchen’s fryer. “It wasn’t supposed to be a prank.”
“Then what the fuck was it supposed to be?” Kris is fighting not to be overtly pissed, I can tell, but it’s warring hard with pity, and I can’t decide which is worse. But then his face goes cold. “Wait. If you weren’t doing it for shits and giggles, were you trying to make it an incident? Like sabotage to expose us to the real world?”
I blanch. “No. Kris. You really think I’d do that?”
His pause is louder than anything else he’s said. If I were more sober, I’d be able to react better. Dive in with an explanation that would make all this okay. But as it is, I’m hit with a barrage of all my fuckups, my reputation for never taking things seriously and dicking around, and I can’t get any explanation out, the words all dammedup against my tongue. I suck down the remnants of my drink but there my excuses stay, glued in my mouth.
Would anyone believe me if I said I’d been trying to make things better? Prince Nicholas, headline darling, was trying to do somethinggoodfor once, and in truly poetic fashion managed to fuck up worse than usual?
The press wouldn’t believe me. Would Kris?
“So what were you trying to do, then?” Kris asks slowly. “Get back at Dad for dragging you into training?”
I watch the side of his face and take a quaking breath. I will get these words out, because if I can’t say them tomy brother,explain what I’d meant to do and why I’d done it, then—
My phone buzzes next to my now empty glass.
