The Royal We by Heather Cocks, Jessica Morgan Page B

aware of this,” I said. “But you are allowed to have feelings, even if you did spring from the loins of Norman vanquishers or whatever.”
    “Can’t we just stay in and watch Devour ?” he said hopefully. “Wasn’t that chap with the bad wig going to suck the acid out of Carrie’s scar?”
    “Nice try,” I said. “But you need actual social fun. And you’re right that it’s not going to happen at this party. Everyone down there’s either going to suck up to you or freak out on you.”
    “Or just stare at me to see if I’m about to crack,” Nick said glumly. He looked resigned, then determined. “Right, as you’re clearly the delinquent here, where do we go?”
    I grinned. “Anywhere. People here might recognize you, but who’s going to tell the people milling around out there?” I gestured expansively at the window. “If we can find you a mask, they’ll just think you’re some deranged guy who’s a week late with his costume.”
    He considered this. “I think we’re going to look back at this one day and agree that it was a bad decision.”
    “Even better,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”

Chapter Seven
    N ick still claims I stole the wheelbarrow by announcing, “No fence is bigger than I am,” before hurtling over one and then running out two seconds later screaming, “Your chariot, my lord.” But I swear that the wheelbarrow found us , proffering itself in the middle of a random driveway, practically begging us to let it cradle the Royal Carcass.
    “Are we there yet?” Nick asked, lolling his head to the side.
    “We have moved about twenty feet since you last asked me that,” I said, heaving the wheelbarrow with great effort.
    “Your problem,” Nick slurred, taking a swig out of his Guinness can, “is that you need to learn the metric system. It will make you whole. Are we there yet?”
    His volume was loud, but Nick didn’t care. That was at least two parts due to the booze, but I also write it off to something we still affectionately call the Oxford Bubble. Prince Richard had struck a deal with the press to steer clear of Nick while he was at school, in exchange for occasional official sit-downs with him—a level of access previously denied them. Miraculously, the media honored this deal. And somehow both the townspeople and most of our fellow students were protective enough that they kept their mouths shut about Nick’s specific comings and goings. Even if they were woken up by the sounds of someone who looked like him being dragged off in a neighbor’s wheelbarrow.
    It was going to be a long walk with that infernal thing, capping an even longer night. We’d snuck out to the nearest Boots and found, amid the cosmetics and snacks, a junk aisle with Halloween masks on clearance. While Nick hid around the corner—I had lied that I was going to shoplift, just to make him feel rebellious—I picked out a rubbery Darth Vader helmet and a Batman mask that would go all the way down over Nick’s shoulders.
    “Ultimate Evil, or a hero who never speaks above a whisper?” I asked him.
    “Ultimate Evil is obviously you,” he said, grabbing the Batman mask, which mashed his nose into a baby snout and made him sound congested. “It smells weird in here.”
    “Stop stalling.”
    On the way to Boots, we’d passed a billboard covered in posters advertising various events around town. Nick closed his eyes and I spun him around, and then he ripped a flyer off the wall at random, which is why we ended up at a dive bar named The Hedge Maze, where some regulars were duking it out in a profoundly impassioned and unironic karaoke contest.
    I sidled up to the bar and waved at the portly, buzz-cut man pulling pints, whose neck was wider than his head.
    “Is there a fee to enter?” I asked.
    “Five quid,” the guy said, looking skeptically at both of us. “But I don’t trust a man if I can’t see ’is face. Might ’ave a gun up in there or summat.”
    “His only weapon is his