I nod, but the truth is, I’ve never heard of her mother’s band.
“But actually, her grandparents were the Blaus—German for blue—before they emigrated to America and anglicized it to fit in. My mother changed her name when she decided to become famous.”
I raise an eyebrow. Having been born to fame—notoriety, at least—I sometimes forget that other peoplechooseit.
“So to answer your question, I wouldn’t change my name. I wouldn’t throw away all that history.”
“I’m actually the eighth Lord Edward of Exeter,” I offer. “So we have that in common.”
“What do you mean?”
“We both have names that aren’t entirely our own.”
Amelia nods thoughtfully, taking another drag off her cigarette as she steps down the path. “We can’t go far,” she says irritably. “I have to be back by two for my care manager’s next check-in.”
“What?”
“Didn’t they tell you? They do bed checks all night long.”
As soon as Amelia says it, I know it must be true, despite Dr. Rush never having mentioned it. Even if it wasn’t their official policy, it’s the sort of thing Anne would have asked for. The idea that Dr. Rush could see me, see my body while I’m asleep and oblivious, makes me grind my teeth. At this rate, I’ll be lucky if I can still chew my food a year from now.
“They can’t see everything,” Amelia says, sensing my discomfort. “It’s like the paparazzi, catching glimpses of our lives and thinking they can tell the world what we’re really like.”
My jaw loosens. “Luckily, years of boarding school made me an expert at sneaking around.”
“Didn’t you get kicked out of boarding school?” Amelia doesn’t pretend not to know this particular bit of my history.
“Not for sneaking around.”
“Why, then?” she asks matter-of-factly, as though it doesn’t occur to her that my family went to great lengths to conceal the real reason.
Maybe it’s the drugs blurring my edges, or maybe it’s knowing that, having also been born to famous parents, people have probably been googling Amelia her whole life as well, looking up statistics about her height and education and the trouble she got into. Maybe it’s because her name is every bit as complicated as my own, or because she didn’t hesitate before asking the question, but I tell Amelia the secret Anne and my father worked so hard to hide: “I got drunk on campus.”
Amelia shrugs, unimpressed. “Isn’t that practically required at English boarding schools?”
“Yes, but most people don’t destroy school property in the process.”
In fact, plenty of students damage school property, but few have ever managed what I did.
Conflagratewas the word the headmaster used.Obliterate.
Then,Someone could’ve been killed.
Dad had rolled his eyes at that, not even pretending to respect the headmaster’s authority.Don’t tell me my son’s another angry young man,he said, as though the truly disappointing thing was that I was a cliché on top of everything else.
In private, Anne compared me to the sort of sociopaths who torture toads and squirrels in childhood, moving their way up the food chain one animal at a time until they got to humans.
One day it’ll be the police knocking on the door,she said, more to our father than me,to tell us about the people you hurt.
“What was the official story?” Amelia asks.
My family told the press I was failing my classes. They had no problem with the world thinking I was too thick to survive Eton.
“Let’s make a deal,” I say. “You don’t look me up, and I won’t look you up. We’ll meet like regular people, without all the ‘official stories’ to confuse us.”
“Regular people are all over the internet, too,” Amelia points out, “but deal.” She looks relieved, which almost makes me laugh out loud. Surely thestories I might find about her are more flattering than the ones about me. The tabloids labeled me the “Bad Boy Duke” when I was sixteen, despite the fact that my only chance at becoming a duke would be if my father, Anne, and her two sons all died.
Amelia takes another drag off her cigarette. We follow the path back to her cabin, and then she turns on her heel, wending her way toward the third cabin, the music growing louder with every step.
