The Royal Expectation

  The Royal Expectation

  American Royalty: Book #4

  Written by Laura McGehee

  Copyright © 2017 by Abdo Consulting Group, Inc.

  Published by EPIC Press™

  PO Box 398166

  Minneapolis, MN 55439

  All rights reserved.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  International copyrights reserved in all countries.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without

  written permission from the publisher. EPIC Press™ is trademark

  and logo of Abdo Consulting Group, Inc.

  Cover design by Laura Mitchell

  Images for cover art obtained from iStockPhoto.com

  Edited by Ryan Hume

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: McGehee, Laura, author.

  Title: The royal expectation / by Laura McGehee.

  Description: Minneapolis, MN : EPIC Press, 2017. | Series: American royalty ; #4

  Summary: King Emma finally has her dream job, and it is everything she ever wanted except for the soul-crushing battle against governmental inefficiency and Royal tradition. Prince Trevor goes on a spiritual journey through the desert, Prince Kyle reconnects with his youth by taking a summer job as a lifeguard, and Queen Donna continues to orchestrate her mad plans for world domination. Emma must choose between duty and love while the cracks in the Royalty continue to grow.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016946199 | ISBN 9781680764802 (lib. bdg.) |

  ISBN 9781680765366 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Washington family (Fictitious characters)—Fiction. | Kings, queens, rulers, etc.—Fiction. | Interpersonal relationships—Fiction. | Young adult fiction.

  Classification: DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016946199

  This digital document has been produced by Nord Compo.

  To dreams, for looking suspiciously different in the light of day

  “Walk, sir! Excuse me? Sir?” Prince Kyle yelled as loudly as he could to a furiously sprinting whirlwind of energy, commonly known as a youth at a pool during the summer. Unfortunately, Kyle’s strained voice emerged as a strangled yelp more reminiscent of an anxious terrier rather than the commanding decree of the King of the Royal Pool. The small ball of summertime terror did not stop sprinting across the deck, and Kyle did not try again. He didn’t think his voice or spirit could take it.

  From his perspective on the top of the lifeguard chair, Kyle could see his entire world stretching before him in all its chlorinated glory. The sun bore down on Kyle with an intensity that only those chained to a stationary chair high in the sky could possibly comprehend. Kyle was doing his best to maintain some semblance of propriety in his new Kingdom, and failing miserably under the dehydrating stress—his pee hadn’t been clear in weeks.

  Outside of this land of obnoxiously sprinting children, quickly melting snack bar ice cream, and swim race showdowns, Kyle was commonly known as Prince Kyle George Washington. He was a young man of nineteen years who had somehow turned out to be as handsome as an action-fighting superhero, in spite of his complete lack of physical confidence. But as soon as he stepped foot onto the pool’s abrasive concrete covered with slightly offensive chalk drawings crafted by the local ruffians, he was Prince no more. He was King of the Pool—at least, that’s what he whispered to himself in the mirror while wearing his cape constructed from a beach towel.

  Sure, one could say that his impulsive decision to become a lifeguard might have something to do with his sister becoming King faster than any other King-elect in United States history, leaving Kyle alone with his heartbreak and a distinct lack of power, but to Kyle, only one truth was evident: the Royal Pool needed a new lifeguard, and it was his destiny to serve this pee-filled cesspool. He desperately wanted to return to the childhood he never had, in which energetic teenagers had no other care in the world besides menial summer jobs and who got to which base with whom. But mostly, he had been deeply and truly bored.

  The Royal Pool spanned an immense amount of acreage and was large enough to drive any lifeguard insane with the sheer amount of childish tomfoolery occurring in each and every crevice. The Freemasons had erected the structure in the 1800s in the likeness of the King of Prussia’s ornate swimming facility—Herbold Jefferson was rumored to have been engaged in an illicit affair with the Prussian King’s wife, and this project came off as more of a slap in the face than an homage. The pool had been built in the midst of this personal strife and intense drama, the likes of which the Freemasons had not been prepared for, and as such, the pool was certainly not structurally sound in the slightest. A large mass of writhing, jumping, and splashing bodies frolicked and generally wreaked havoc within the tiled walls that routinely cracked and crumbled under the pressure.

  To make matters worse, these unruly water fanatics were exclusively Royal adolescents, a specific breed of wildly spoiled and preposterously ill-mannered elite who operated as if the world owed them everything. Though in their defense, everything and everyone they had ever interacted with only reinforced that belief—so was it the children themselves that were horrific, or was it the system? Probably a little bit of both, but it was not Kyle’s place to judge. No, Kyle’s place was in the chair above all the mayhem. He was pale with the stress of his Kingdom’s disarray, and also the large amount of sunscreen he had failed to rub into those parts of his face he couldn’t see in a mirror.

  The air was thick with mid-June heat and the chemical smell of chlorine mixed with non-deodorized sweat. A squad of Hamiltons sprinted around the deck, chasing each other in a life-or-death game of tag. A Madison and a Jay faced off in a game of chicken, on the shoulders of a Jay and a Madison, respectively. Child after child performed elaborate and incredibly dangerous dives off of the diving boards, inches away from splitting open their heads due to a complete lack of understanding of their physical limitations. Kyle visually combed through the madness, perching on the edge of his seat in a desperate attempt to prevent the untimely demise of these Royal existences. These lives were in his hands, but his hands were so clammy he couldn’t even spin a whistle around his fingers.

  In the direct center of the unruly youth, Glenn Hamilton made vicious eye contact with Kyle. Glenn smiled the devilish smile of a twelve-year-old boy hell-bent on destruction, paired with an uncanny knack for eternally getting himself out of trouble. Kyle sat utterly riveted to his seat, as stationary as a deer caught in headlights, specifically the one that Kyle had watched Trevor accidentally run over in his Royal Rover last Christmas. Just as suddenly as it began, Glenn broke eye contact and sprinted straight toward five-year-old Richie Monroe, pushing him into the pool with aggressive venom. Kyle fumbled with his whistle, nearly dropped it again, and then pressed it to his lips to shrilly sound the alarm.

  “You can’t do that!” Kyle shouted, but to no avail—Glenn Hamilton turned around and gave Kyle the middle finger in response. It appeared as if Kyle’s ruling position as King did not carry much clout in these waters, in which the local law of the fastest swimmer in each age group generally prevailed over any figure of authority.

  “Stop that!” he shouted. Kyle reached for his whistle once more, and felt it slip through his fingers to the pavement below. His heart sank deep into his stomach. The whistle was a lifeguard’s key to power, their very soul. Without his red beacon of authority, Kyle’s baggy red swim trunks and thick shades meant absolutely nothing.

  He stared at the whistle on the deck below. Would he have time to dismount, grab the whistle, and make it back up before a child drowned, or worse, before Marco the Manager noticed? It was a dangerous gamble, but he felt naked up in the
air without his only defense against Glenn and his swim team cronies. He looked back at the office. No sign of Marco. It was now or never. Never, or now? Kyle teetered on the edge of the chair, crystallized in his own indecision. And then, he heard that familiarly sharp tweet of his own whistle. Kyle looked down to find Glenn standing with the beacon of power firmly between his lips, and a matching red glare igniting his dark eyes.

  Glenn was gaunt, far too tall for his age, and speckled with misplaced freckles. He looked like he would fall over at the slightest gust of wind, and yet he ruled the Royal children between the ages of six and fourteen with an iron fist. He had become the Royal Swim Team’s swimming star in recent weeks, despite his visible frailty. He was also the younger brother of the infamous hummer/question-asker, Tristan Hamilton.

  “Missing something?” Glenn taunted, as he twirled the whistle around his fingers effortlessly. How Kyle longed for such dexterity.

  “Come on, dude, give it back!” Kyle said as softly as he could. He couldn’t let the rest of the children know that he had lost control, not again. He had told Marco the Manager that today would be different.

  “Fat chance,” Glenn answered. “Hey, what’s red and black all over?”

  Kyle sighed. Glenn had asked him that twelve times today alone.

  “I’m not going to answer that,” Kyle said.

  “No problem,” Glenn said. “I’m just going to have the swim team tip over your chair again.”

  “Go ahead,” Kyle said. “See if I care.”

  Glenn smiled and brought the whistle close to his lips. Kyle balked.

  “Okay, fine!” he whispered tersely. Glenn stared at Kyle with a slight smile playing across the chapped lines crossing across his lips.

  “What’s red and black and brown all over?” Glenn asked again.

  “What?” Kyle asked dully.

  Glenn smiled the victorious smile of a cold-blooded killer.

  “Your bleeding heart, ripped out of your chest by Princess Daisy in front of the entire world.” He paused for a moment. “Also there’s some poop in there, that’s the brown part.”

  Kyle held his forced smile for as long as he could, which under the circumstances, turned out to be about fourteen seconds. Glenn stood and stared defiantly, his eyes communicating the simple truth that even children could be sadistic madmen. Kyle knew that breaking composure would mean that Glenn had won. But the wave of depression, sadness, and cinnamon-bun binges he had experienced since that fateful moment at Trevor’s coronation crashed onto shore in the most devastating way imaginable. As hard as he tried, Kyle could never truly control the depth of his wildly fluctuating emotions, even when the trigger was a poorly articulated taunt from a child.

  On the fourteenth second, Kyle simply could not hold it in any longer. His smile wavered, and Glenn lit up like a GlassPhone™ when receiving a Direct Chatter. Kyle felt the drip of hot, shameful tears run down his face and knew he was absolutely doomed.

  “Prince Kyle is crying!” Glenn shouted while blowing the stolen whistle as loud as he could.

  “Cry baby, cry baby, cry baby,” Glenn began to chant. The rest of the raucous youth joined in, and then once again Kyle sniffled on top of the lifeguard chair while a mass of children called him names in unison. He climbed down the lifeguard chair in defeat, and tripped over his own feet in the process. He landed face first onto his nose, and felt the familiar crunch of his fragile bone structure crumpling beneath the pressure. He stood up with blood and tears running down his face. There was only one safe space left in this world: his crying tree. He stumbled over to his arborous refuge and climbed to the very top, knowing that he would never come down—at least not until he had to pee or wanted a snack.

  A few lonely, tear-filled hours later, Kyle sat opposite Marco the Manager in the tiny cubicle of a guard office, pinching a pile of gauze around his nose. Although Marco had a potbelly that looked like a small, lumpy, misshapen yoga ball—and although he was also an unpopular descendant of the Jays—Kyle still had to listen to him because he was his boss. As a Washington, Kyle had never really had to listen to anyone, except the peasants who Chattered about his physique and sexual orientation on the Stream. And his scary stepmother Queen Donna. And his father before he had mysteriously died. But although this job was slowly draining his soul and he had to work even when he felt like taking a nap or climbing into his crying tree, he had to stick it out. He had a Kingdom to serve, and he had given up on most things lately (Coach Nena, Princess Daisy, his #WhoKilledtheKing investigation)—he did not want this job to be the next in line of personal failures.

  “Listen,” Marco said through the cover of his grave moustache. “We have a problem.”

  “I know!” Kyle exclaimed. “We have to kick Glenn Hamilton out of the Royal Pool forever! And I need to go to the hospital again,” he said with a gesture to his still dripping nose.

  Marco merely crossed his arms over his yoga ball stomach and gave Kyle that withering stare that never failed to evoke a deep gut-ache.

  Kyle shifted in his chair and smiled his best approximation of a bashful smile through the boundless white field of gauze jumbled around his nose. He had seen Trevor shoot that exact smile at least a thousand times, and it had worked repeatedly without fail. But as Kyle tried to angle the corners of his mouth into formations they did not naturally achieve, he felt his brow twitch with the effort and saw Marco’s gaze shift away quickly. Kyle could not be rejected again. Not here, not like this, not while wearing a hand-me-down speedo that threatened to fall down at any moment.

  “Please, Marco,” Kyle said, his eyes brimming with the burning passion of a young man who just wanted to earn an honest wage he didn’t need by establishing a tenuous rule over the neighborhood swim team gang in some sort of misguided attempt at discovering his identity. “Give me another chance. I can do it. I really can!”

  Marco cleared his throat and darted his eyes toward the door. “Listen, Kyle—this is the eighth time this has happened. This week. It’s bad for business. I just can’t have you openly weeping every time you’re on duty.”

  “That’s a lot to ask of a man!” Kyle said, his head drooping down into his hands. Kyle felt the hot shame of another imminent wave of tears, and did his best to keep the tide from drowning him. But soon enough, he felt the pressure burst from behind his eyelids and the subsequent stream of wet drips trailing down his cheek. He tried to pretend he was sneezing, but he ended up emitting a wounded, strangled yelp. His tears mingled with the dried blood smeared across his face, and he found pink droplets stream down his face to the floor. He felt Marco’s eyes on the back of his head and wondered if he should just sprint away again to start a new society in his crying tree, population: Kyle. Also, probably, a few ants and maybe a sparrow or two, as long as everyone had some social anxiety to cry about.

  “I’m sorry, Kyle, I really just don’t think this is working out,” Marco said. Kyle sniffed, wiped his nose on his sleeve, and looked up at the pudgy face through his tears.

  “I see,” Kyle said slowly. “You know, it really would be a shame if the King had to make some budget cuts here.”

  He felt the frenetic energy of impromptu scheming rise up in his gut, but he strictly restrained the anxiety. Across from him, Marco shifted his legs and narrowed his eyes.

  “I’m not exactly following,” Marco said gruffly.

  “It’s just, you know, King Emma has a lot of policies she wants to enact, and the money has to come from somewhere . . . ” Kyle trailed off meaningfully, as he had witnessed just about every member of his family do when ominously delivering a veiled threat. He squirmed in his seat; he hated this feeling, but knew it was necessary. He would never let Glenn win, not in this way.

  “You wouldn’t dare,” Marco said.

  “Wouldn’t I?” Kyle retorted. He certainly wouldn’t. He hadn’t spoken to Emma in weeks, and she would not care in the slightest about the Royal Pool. But he puffed his chest out as far as it would go and imag
ined himself hyperventilating, with Marco being forced to resuscitate him.

  Marco cleared his throat. “Look, I can only cut you so many breaks. This is the last time, all right? Don’t let me down.”

  “Yes sir, of course sir, anything sir!” Kyle shouted as he leapt to his feet. “I appreciate it, like, so much.”

  “Whatever,” Marco said. “Just don’t shut down the pool.”

  Kyle ran toward the door before Marco could change his mind, but was halted by the sharp command blow of one commanding, yet subordinate Royal, to his newest lifeguard. Kyle stopped short and turned toward Marco with his hand raised in salute.

  “Your whistle?” Marco asked, dangling the confiscated tool in the air.

  “Yes sir, thank you sir,” Kyle said. He leapt forward and grabbed it.

  “Oh, and we have like six more drowned Possums in the skimmers by the well,” Marco said. “Can you retrieve them and give them a proper burial?”

  “Six?!” Kyle shrieked. “Don’t they know how to swim?”

  “Oh no,” Marco said, “you’re thinking of walruses, probably.”

  In fact, Kyle was not. But he trudged toward the well dutifully, settling into the discomfort of fulfilling another’s wishes, even when they conflicted with his own desire to write in his sad journal about his sad feelings. As he rounded the edge of the deck, he caught Glenn’s eye from across the lap-lanes. Glenn was surrounded by a gaggle of young cackling boys, the kind you avoided eye contact with when passing on the street because they would probably tell you that your hair looked bad. Glenn looked at Kyle and winked. Kyle shuddered involuntarily. This would prove to be quite the treacherous summer, Kyle was sure of it.

  @newKINGemma: @Wolfer5 i’m so sorry daisy, but i can’t do this anymore. Really enjoyed the time we spent together, those two weeks in montreal were soooo fun, i hope we can be friends in the future?? but i gotta focus on myself and my work right now, i hope you understand???