The Royal Expectation Page 2

  Emma jittered nervously in the deserted hallways of the Beige House, the lackluster peasant home for all of their most ineffective political affairs. In one hand, she clutched her backpack filled with her previous files, and in the other, her GlassPhone™. She stared anxiously at the door to the Oval Office. President Wszolek was on the other side of that door, and Emma could not wait to get inside. Today was the day that would change everything, or at the very least, a few things. True, she had been trying to have a day that changed everything for the past few weeks now. Also true, every day as King so far had been filled with paperwork, tedium, and meaningless public appearances in which she did her best to express her undying passion to change the world. But, she had aced every Freemasonic rite and assumed the throne faster than any of her feeble male predecessors. She was destined for greatness, and the tide would soon begin to shift. Today, she would meet with her idol, President Wszolek, and she would start affecting the change she wanted to see in the world.

  King Emma was twenty-two years old and currently living the life she had always dreamed of, ever since she realized those weird colors and feelings you experienced at night were known as “dreams.” She was stocky, built with the sort of solid frame that suggested a no-nonsense approach to most affairs in her life, ranging from clothing choice to interpersonal relationships. Ever since becoming King, she had eschewed any type of ceremonial robe or ornamental crown and resolutely dressed in pantsuits and blazers, like the peasant politicians. She had a cold smile that rarely, if ever, saw the light of day. She considered herself to be the most important person in the world, and she wasn’t wrong. Theoretically, that is. As King of the United States of America, Emma should have had a very far-flung reach of power and control. But she was three weeks into her rule and had started to wonder where all her supposed authority was hiding.

  She had tried to conquer her frizzy hair on this special day, tying her hair back into a composed bun. Her left eye twinkled with hope, but also with the glare of fluorescent lighting from the spooky lights in this deserted office. Emma felt alive with rambunctious, nervous energy. Her GlassPhone™ buzzed, and the erratic vibration of her phone mirrored her own erratic nerves perfectly. She looked down to read a Direct Chatter from the passionate lover she had just gut-wrenchingly abandoned in favor of her ambition.

  @Wolfer5: @newKINGemma lol good joke

  @newKINGemma: @Wolfer5 i’m serious. i can’t do this anymore.

  No fewer than three seconds passed by before Daisy’s response.

  @Wolfer5: @newKINGemma cool but, i respectfully reject ur break up.

  Emma couldn’t help but laugh, but then forcibly clapped her hand over her mouth. She couldn’t let Daisy woo her once more, as she had every single day since that fateful kiss in the vine and fig make-out grove.

  @newKINGemma: @Wolfer5 i really really can’t do this anymore. My allegiance to my country is too great, and this relationship is illegal

  @Wolfer5: @newKINGemma that’s really cute how much you care, and i admire your passion and like i said i understand u don’t want to tell the whole world about us right now. but don’t be stupid, we’re not breaking up

  Emma read the Chatter, and then glanced at the empty desk in front of Wszolek’s door. She was supposed to meet Wszolek sixteen minutes ago, but there was no sign of humanity in this building. The Beige House had always been a wasteland of benign peasantry, filled with oddities like coffee machines that couldn’t even make espresso and a system of communicating by hand-written memos. They did not have Glass™ technology in every room, or possibly any room, and Emma could not comprehend how they could work without constant connection at every moment of every day.

  Today, the Beige House felt less like a political office and more like the set of a recent horror film. From the flickering fluorescent lights in the hallways to the utter silence save for the occasional creak of a rusted door hinge, it seemed as if nobody actually worked in peasant politics. Come to think of it, that would explain a hell of a lot of the complete and total inefficiencies in the political system.

  “Hello?” Emma tentatively asked the empty desk. She was starting to think this meeting would never happen—and then Emma had to suppress a scream as a huddled figure popped up from under the desk. The secretary wore a baggy gray sweatshirt that swam and pulsed like her organs were rebelling within her. Her tired eyes and frazzled hair looked familiar. Too familiar.

  “So sorry,” the secretary gasped. “Just taking a little nap.”

  Emma eyed the pulsing sweatshirt and pointed, doing her utmost to phrase this observation delicately.

  “I think your sweatshirt is alive,” Emma said.

  “Oh don’t worry,” the secretary responded. “Just my cats! Couldn’t get a cat sitter today.” A tiny whiskered face peeked through the neck of the sweatshirt, and Emma realized who the keeper of this door was.

  “Lorena?” she asked in awe. Her father’s old secretary, who, come to think of it, she hadn’t seen since before her father’s demise.

  “Shhh,” Lorena said, her eyes darting around wildly. “I don’t use that name here. Now, I’m Laurena.”

  “That sounds exactly the same,” Emma said.

  “It’s a new identity,” Lorena snapped.

  “Why did you quit?” Emma asked. Lorena laughed loudly, and the cats from inside her sweatshirt meowed in unison.

  “Quit? I didn’t quit,” Lorena said. “King Queen Donna replaced me with some stupid intern.”

  “Oh,” Emma responded. “Sorry to hear that.” Lorena’s eyes shined dangerously, and Emma could tell that the past few months had most definitely not been kind to this frazzled young woman. She really needed to end this conversation as soon as possible. “So, is Wszolek around, or—”

  “Hey,” Lorena whispered. “Do you need a secretary? Or an intern, even? I gotta get out of peasant politics. I’ll do anything. I’ll clean the toilets!”

  “No thank you,” Emma said politely, while edging toward the door. “But hey, you look really good, glad to hear that things are going well.”

  “They’re not!” Lorena whispered back. “I think there’s something in here,” she said, while gesturing to her sweatshirt, “something that’s not a cat, but I’m too scared to look! Would you mind . . . ”

  But thankfully, the door to the Oval Office slowly creaked open in the most murderous fashion possible. A deep, shadowy voice beckoned from within.

  “Come in.”

  Emma darted into the room, closing the door with a resounding clang behind her.

  The Oval Office was exactly as she had dreamed it would be—boring, oval, and beige. The entire office was bare, save for a single desk and chair in the exact center of the room. There was a definitive lack of elaborate watercolor portraits of their historical ancestors, and there wasn’t even a cinnamon bun hot bar. It was achingly apparent by the lack of accent elephant photography, that Dawn®Glass™ had certainly not designed this space.

  Emma directed her sharp gaze at the lone chair, and the dark form facing the wall.

  “Hello?” she asked as she shifted her backpack off of her shoulder and let it fall to the ground with a thump. The form slowly and spookily spun around to reveal the wearily lined face of peasant President Wszolek.

  “Hello,” Wszolek answered. “Sorry, I just always wanted to do that dramatic swivel, and when you only have a limited time left in the office you really have to start accomplishing your dreams.”

  “Don’t you have another year?” Emma asked. Wszolek smiled grimly.

  “Sure, assuming Kennedy doesn’t kick me out of office and destroy the world before that.”

  Emma felt her heart skip a beat at that cursed name. Ever since Emma had assumed office, Kennedy had been making quite the fuss amongst the peasants. Last week marked another protest outside the Royal Village gates, and this time it was large enough to disrupt horse traffic.

  “I would offer you a seat, but they sold all my other chairs to pay the
gas bill,” Wszolek said. Emma walked over to the desk, dragging her backpack along with her.

  “It’s fine, I’ll stand,” she said. “Thank you so much for meeting with me, I think you’ll really enjoy reading the documents I’ve brought with me.” Emma heaved the heavy stack of binders and files out of her backpack, the result of an entire lifetime of passion and research. She had plans for Royal Horse Trading de-regulation, subsidized peasant yoga programs, and public peasant healthcare, just to name a few. She knew that these sorts of decisions usually belonged in the realm of peasant politicians, but this was a new era of Kingship. She felt that she could really and truly change the state of the nation through her well-plotted ideas that addressed the issues that the people really and truly cared about.

  So far, nobody had cared. But she knew that her idol, Wszolek, the most powerful woman in politics, would understand. She would care. She would see Emma’s desire to help the world, and she would show her the path to take.

  But then Wszolek broke into harsh, sharp laughter that cut Emma even deeper than her father’s laughter at her childhood declaration of snack time regulation policies. Emma shuffled uncomfortably, her face quickly reddening and her sense of confidence draining in direct correlation to Wszolek’s number of chuckles, guffaws, and chortles.

  Wszolek had thin, sunken cheeks that seemed like they were perpetually screaming for moisture, or food, or most likely both. Her severely deep-set eyes and rapidly thinning hair suggested that her many years of service as peasant President had taken their toll. Nonetheless, Wszolek exuded the dangerous aura of a person at the end of their term. It smelled like a mixture of complete disregard for public opinion, a broken spirit, and wet leather, and it was not pleasant. Wszolek finally looked up at Emma and slowly ceased her caustic laughter.

  “Oh, don’t look like that,” President Wszolek said roughly. “You can’t bring a backpack to this meeting and expect me not to laugh.” Emma looked down at the functional blue and black bag at her feet helplessly.

  “Sorry?” she offered.

  “Well don’t apologize to me!” Wszolek said. “You’re the King of the United States of America and I just laughed at your heartfelt desire to effect change. Give me some anger!”

  Emma didn’t have any anger; she only had confusion.

  “I—I—I’m not angry,” she stuttered.

  “That’s your first mistake,” Wszolek said. “Always be angry when someone offends you. Don’t let anyone push you around. You have to be able to advocate for yourself.”

  “I can do that just fine,” Emma said curtly.

  “See!” Wszolek said, rising to her feet and gesturing broadly to the empty room around her. “Give me that but more. Three thousand times more.”

  “Are you drunk?”

  “Of course I am. Aren’t you?” Wszolek paced slowly out from behind her desk and walked over to Emma. She stood close—close enough that Emma could smell the not-so-faint hint of whiskey on her breath.

  “Listen,” Wszolek said. “You have a long, hard road ahead of you. I’ve been a woman in politics for twenty-six years and it’s very nearly killed me.”

  “I think I can handle a few misogynistic idiots,” Emma responded. She had beaten enough boys in physical, verbal, and spiritual competitions to know that she could hold her own, even in an institution that had been dominated by men since its very inception of white dudes drinking whiskey together while their women tended the home. She had brothers who consistently excluded her from their “male” activities, like Royal HorseGolf and math, even though Emma could score eighteen hole-in-ones in a row while simultaneously long-dividing without error. In fact, Emma would be proving her physical worth in just a few short weeks by barreling down the Royal field on horseback in the annual HorseGolf tournament, attempting to beat the most strapping of the Royal men in hitting eighteen successive golf balls into eighteen successive holes.

  Wszolek took a long, hard look at Emma, and she felt herself squirm under the pressure. She would give anything to win this woman’s approval, absolutely anything.

  “You have no idea what awaits you,” Wszolek said. “The only advice I can offer is to quit while you still have your original hair color.” Emma eyed the President’s thinning gray mass of hair and involuntarily shuddered.

  “That’s right, my darling,” Wszolek said. In this flickering fluorescent light, Emma could have sworn she was talking to an aged witch on the verge of cursing her for the rest of eternity.

  “This is your future,” Wszolek croaked. “No friends, no family, nothing to comfort you in your old age, except your morning hot whiskey, and a secretary with cats in her stomach.”

  “That won’t be me!” Emma yelled, recoiling and grabbing her files in a huff. “I have ideas. I have plans. I’m going to change this country! No, this world!”

  Wszolek emitted one sharp croak.

  “You’re just like the rest of them. Like Donna, like Loretta—you’re a power-hungry Royal who will destroy anyone who gets in your way,” she said.

  Emma recoiled as if she had been slapped. “I’m nothing like Donna, and absolutely nothing like Loretta.”

  “What makes you so different?”

  “They’re crazy!” Emma screeched. Her stepmother and former sister-in-law were the sort of Royal women Emma had spent her life despising, from their obsession with image, to their never-ending scheming, to their manipulation of sexuality in power dynamics.

  “And how does reducing them to one sweeping, vague generalization make you any better than all those men out there, the ones who are saying the exact same thing about you?” Wszolek asked.

  “Well, I want to change the world,” Emma argued indignantly. “And I’m a woman, so I can’t be sexist.”

  “Honey, if you want to change the world, you better start by changing your career,” Wszolek said. “The American Royalty has never been, and never will be, important to the political process.”

  “I’ll be the first one to change that,” Emma said. “I’m already the first real female King, why can’t I be the first to change the world?”

  “Because,” Wszolek said, “Kennedy is going to stop you.”

  “He’s nobody,” Emma spat out. “His campaign will fizzle and die before it even begins.”

  Wszolek leaned in, her eyes wide. “Look around you, Emma. Why do you think nobody is here? Because they know a storm is coming. One that will kill us all if we don’t get out of the way.”

  Emma felt a twinge of fear through her spine, but stood up straighter in spite of the overtly ominous foreshadowing.

  “This is a political election, not World War XXX,” Emma said. “I think we can tone it down a little.”

  By now Wszolek was so close to Emma’s face that she could count the bloodshot lines in Wszolek’s eyes.

  “Be careful, young one,” Wszolek said. “He’s going to ruin you. He’s going to ruin us all.”

  “Well,” Emma said, straightening her jacket and jamming the files back into her bag. “Thanks for the advice.” She would have to deal with the realization that her childhood hero was actually a crazy woman later, but for now, she just needed to get out of this dusty and morose excuse for an office. She reached out her hand to shake Wszolek’s, and the President met her gesture with a clammy claw that rivaled a wrench.

  “I’ll leave a copy of my work with your secretary, in case you feel like waking up and doing something important sometime,” Emma snapped. Wszolek grinned like a rotting jack-o-lantern several weeks past its prime.

  “Secretary?” she asked. “We haven’t had a secretary in . . . years.”

  “Very funny,” Emma said, pushing open the door with a clang. “Then who is this?” But as she gestured out the door, she found that Lorena was gone. Wszolek cackled behind her, and Emma turned around slowly, the chill seeping into her very bones.

  “She was just here!” Emma protested. “Lorena, with the cats in her sweatshirt!”

  “Are you sure y
ou’re not drunk?” Wszolek laughed. But then, Lorena popped up once more from under the rickety desk, wiping the sleep from her eyes.

  “You rang?” she asked. Two cats meowed plaintively from her lumpy sweatshirt. There couldn’t be good air ventilation in there.

  “Oh,” Wszolek said, as her chortles subsided. “You meant Laurena. You should have just said so!”

  “That sounds exactly the same!” Emma yelled, as she threw down a packet of proposals, and stormed down the spooky hallway toward the exit.

  “Good luck in the Royal HorseGolf Tournament! Make sure that nobody attempts to murder you!” Wszolek yelled at her retreating form.

  Emma walked through the hallways with Wszolek’s words echoing through her brain. She surely didn’t want anybody to murder her, but she certainly knew she needed to win to prove to the people that she deserved to rule. She opened the limo to find the stern and emotionless face of DeMarcus, the family’s public relations manager.

  “How did it go?” he asked. Emma looked at him oddly. She couldn’t help but hear Wszolek’s words rattling around her brain.

  “Fine,” Emma answered, with unconscious restraint. “Great actually. We really got a lot done.” She wasn’t exactly sure why she lied.

  “Are you ready for the one-thirty speech?” DeMarcus asked, as the limo began winding its way through the peasant streets toward her next event.

  “Always ready,” Emma answered. She would be dedicating a hospital this afternoon, and was going to use the opportunity to discuss the recent viral outbreaks of mono spreading through the Royal Village, and the need for healthcare reform.

  “And you have the Royal HorseGolf Championship photo shoot afterwards,” DeMarcus reminded her. Emma sighed. She had better things to care about, but she would be forced to compete in the eighteen-hole sudden-death style tournament between all of the most obnoxious of the Royal elite, led by her former fiancé Tristan Hamilton. The competition historically was only open to men, but as the first real female King, Emma would be the very first woman to compete.