Kingdom

Monday

I felt so relaxed in bed, I wake up to Jason moving my shoulders to wake me up. “Hey we gotta get ready for school”

“Uggh, no” I flip onto my back and move the blanket to cover my face. 

“Drama Queen it’s 5:45 in the morning”

“f**k” I jump out of bed. 

Jason looks at me and starts laughing. I was too busy to care, I hop into the shower to take a quick one and rush to get my uniform on. I don’t have my vanity set up yet so it’ll take time. Luckily I have all my makeup in the bathroom. As I straighten out my hair I hurry up and do a quick makeup job. Jason is still sitting on the bed laughing. I walk out and look at him. 

“You just laugh at me

 the whole time?”

He sits up “Yup” he has a big smile across his face. He reaches his arms to grab me. 

“Time to go” I look at him trying to be stern and take charge. 

As we drive to school Jason could tell I was nervous. 

“Why are you so nervous about having to face Kelly” he looks at me confused

“It’s not that” I lied

“Then what is it?”

“I don’t know” I lie again.

I wasn’t embarrassed for being with Jason. I just didn’t want to deal with a million questions from Kelly and her asking the right one which would get me to slip up I was more worried about saying something wrong or her catching me in a lie. 

We finally pull up to school. We both get out and start walking towards the main doors. 

What if she figured it all out? Maybe she knows? She did see Jason put a credit card in my pocket. Maybe she’s mad about not knowing or about Nikki knowing. Crap! She’s going to have a million questions about Nikki now. Oh my god what is she going to ask?

“Calm down, I can tell you’re freaking out.” Jason whispers in my ear as he’s walking next to me

I see Kelly, she sees me and steadily walks towards me. She is walking as if she is on a mission. 

She hooks my arm as she walks past me “girls room”

We walk into the bathroom. Kelly is checking all the stalls to make sure nobody is in the bathroom. 

“Okay spill?” She looks at me

“What?” I look at her confused

What is she wanting me to spill on

“When did you and Jason get together?” She looks at me

“Friday night” i tell her

“Since when are you friends with Nikki and she knows more than I do and I’m your best friend” 

I could tell she’s hurt by the news she found out from Nikki and I only have Nikki to blame for that. 

“So Nikki is part of a group of girls I grew up with. All our parents know each other and we’ve all been around each other since I can remember”

“Okay?” Kelly says half believing me

“Well They all decided that going to the 18+ club was a good idea so we all went and Jason and I kind of got together” now I’m nervous 

“How drunk were you two? She looks at me serious

“What?!” My eyes widen completely at the response 

“Oh come on I know you lost it to him I just don’t see you giving it up that fast unless you were plastered and realized what happened afterwards. Even if you two got together at the club” she looks at me worried. 

“Well we did do a bunch of shots before hand and got a ton at the clubs.”

She turns to the sink. 

“Well as long as you're happy I’m happy for you I was just worried you made some huge mistake. Aren’t you worried about Nikki blabbing it to the whole school”

She looks at me nervously. 

“I hope not and that would be a real b***h move is she did”

I’m not worried about her telling anyone because she does know what is at risk. She understands the secrecy we have to have. And how important all of this is to us all. 

Kelly hugs me

“Next time just tell me so I don’t find out from anyone else”

She looks at me seriously

“Okay. I promise” 

She is going to hate the next biggest secret I’m keeping from her but I know that she will understand why I’m forced to keep it a secret. At least I hope she will.

We walk outside of the bathroom and the bell rings. 

“Have fun” Kelly tells me as she walks off to her class 

Jason waits for me as I walk towards him to walk to our class together. 

“What was that about?”

“She’s pissed over what Nikki said at the mall? And finding out from Nikki” I tell him.

More complex than that but how can I tell him everything with so many people around. 

He raises his eyebrow at me like he knows I’m not saying the whole thing but he’s worried about what I’m hiding and how dangerous it could be for us.

**************

We walk to the lunch room. So are you going to tell me what’s up, yes but I also need to talk to Nikki about something as well.  

As we walk we see our Etiquette teacher Mrs. Long rom etiquette school. 

*buzz * both of our phones go off. 

Class in session come to room 501 now.

It’s from our etiquette teacher. We both look at each other.

“I take it they will be providing us with lunch.” He tells me

“Let’s go” I tell him before anyone notices

We rush over to the class room and we noticed they brought pizza. Unusual since they were always talk about eating healthy. We walk in and half the group is already there. We get to the pizza and the rest show up. 

“Well glad to know you all know to hurry up.” Mrs. Long

Our principal and vice principal walk in. 

“These are our royal students?” they both looked shocked at us all. 

“Yes” Mrs. Long tells our principal and vice principal

“Alright roll call” 

“Bishop county?”  Mrs. Longs states

“Here.” Ethan raises his hand

“Arkland county?” 

“Here” Nikki raises her hand

As our teacher gets down the list our principal looks stunned by the acknowledgment over who everyone truly is. 

“Prince Jason” 

“Yes ma’am” he stands up

We all see our etiquette teacher and our principal and vice principal are bowing and curtsy him.

Jason sits back down. 

“Alright classes, so the rule on announcement is that you are all announced during graduation for the whole world to see. Along with the Valedictorian which is why you were all called so it’s been a tie between Jason and Alison.”

The principal steps in and goes “don’t you mean Prince Jason. 

“We’ve gone over not taking the status over our head and being humble so I say it once and that’s it now he’s a student.” 

We all know that she is annoyed so we do our best not to snicker or giggle. We all know better with Mrs. Long.

“So we have a problem as everyone is aware of who is the princess and married Jason over the weekend.” 

We see our principal and vice principal look at each other shocked. 

“So normally we announced the Valedictorian and they announce the lords than the prince and princess so this year we have to announce you both together as valedictorian and the royal couple.” 

We look at each other shocked. 

“Well it makes since you both are the smartest kids in school” nikki says as she’s eating her pizza. 

“So who’s announcing us than?” Jason says curiously.

“Uhm...that’s the problem I don’t know” Mrs. Long tells us. 

“What about my dad?  I know it’s not the norm but he’s there anyways and he can always be doing a speech and then announce myself and Alison.” 

We all think it’s a good idea and a real oh my god announcement part for the royal family. 

“Okay it looks like I’ll be making a phone call to the court regarding this.”

The principal and vice principal both look at our etiquette teacher in shock. 

“The big thing is that you cannot treat these students any different. You must act natural like you don’t know and ensure that nothing is released early until graduation. We will do a graduation practice and ceremony and nobody is to know the surprise. 

We have a week to go on the dance and almost a month for graduation. 

“When will we be meeting next?” Charlotte asked

“The goal is one week before graduation.” Mrs. Long informs us. 

“Where do we sit during graduation practice and graduation?” 

“During graduation practice you are to act like nothing is going on and graduation is when you will all come up at a certain time and are announced who you are as in royalty.” Mrs. Long announces to us.

It is tradition that any royalty are to be announced during the graduation ceremony. The prince is required to give a speech the year he graduates as being the future King. The king and queen go every year to the graduation to respect the lords and the children that have graduated. This year is different, we have the prince, and one child from every county graduating. This graduation will be on television as they are typically recorded and media will be there due to the king and Queen. To what extent none of us will know until the announcement. 

“Alright I’m going to dismiss you all and we will go over everything as the date gets closer. Need to ensure nothing else happens” Mrs. Long tells us

We all walk out throwing our trash away and cleaning up. We have 20 minutes before the bell rings signally the end of lunch. We all decide to disperse so nobody knows what’s up. A few girls go into other bathrooms. The guys walk around, and Jason and I stand by the vending machine. 

“Nikki” I holler as I see her. 

“Yes” she walks over to us

“Hey I think you might have said to much i from of Kelly” I tell her knowing she will completely understand. 

“She’s asking a million questions” she looks at me serious.

“Yup” I tell her

“Well what’s the cover”

“I got together with a group of people my family has known for years and we all went to the 18+ club. Jason and I got together” I tell her.

“Okay” she looks at me confused

“She knew I was a virgin before hand” I tell Nikki

“Oh s**t” Nikki is shocked not realizing my best friend would know something so intimate like that. 

“Luckily we don’t have much longer until graduation and the whole world knows.” I say relieved.

“Yeah that’s for sure I wish we didn’t have to wait that long but it’s also better we do wait that long because of all the paparazzi that we would have to deal with and stuff”. Nikki says. 

I remember the day that some info leaked and how pissed she was to the point she was willing to bully us into making sure nobody said anything but she also knew that we would all be angry if something got leaked. Luckily all of us have always been on the same page with it all since you know we all grew up with each other and we have a big understanding with each other over it all.

**BELL RINGS** 

Lunch is over so we all head to our classes. All of our biggest fears is that the principals have a big mouth and blab to the teachers about who is who. It’s been known to happen in the past to those principal and vice principals have been handled within the court. 

Jason is busy Comforting me on what is going on and allowing me to understand that everything will work out. 

“Look I know you are unsure but they will be faithful” he was telling me trying to make it all easier on me knowing what we are all facing. 

“I’m just worried something will come out early” I tell him, this time I decided to be honest with him about it all. For all I know he will truly understand what is going on

“Besides we got the dance this Friday and here in a few weeks we got the Quiz bowl we need to focus on”

Fuck!!! I totally forgot about that we have the quiz bowl. We had our last national completion for the academic team. Typically Jason and I were the ones with all the answers but I wasn’t sure how they were going to base this one. 

“Okay well we have to study our butts off for that one.” I look at Jason 

“Yeah we have it tomorrow during lunch all of us getting together to work on it.” Jason looks at me worried if I forgot.

“One of our last meetings for the year. How are we going to face everyone knowing?” I ask him nervous

“Well hopefully we do amazing and it’s a success. We still have the last debate team competition to do here soon.” He looks at me

Luckily most of us who are on the academic team also do debate team so it does make it easier on the stFf to figure out competitions. 

We finally get to our 5th period class luckily it’s Honors Physics. Easy class for us we both have an A and it’s to the extent that we are currently 2 weeks ahead of class. Our Physics teacher is also our academics coach so she allows us to get ahead so we can study before the quiz bowl or any other competitions that we may have.  

Jason and I are busy working on all of our assignments. I guess you could say we were busting studying the physics part of the quiz bowl more than anything. Too distracted to notice anything else going on. So involved in our studies we both jump when the bell rings.

 A few kids started giggling because neither of us realized what time it was and that class was over. All I could think of was that we had one more hour and all this torture was over with 2 more months and the whole world would know our secret. Stressful but nerve racking to say the least. The only thing I could focus on was that I had a dance to go to Friday and figuring out what was in store at this dance.

We grabbed all of our stuff and we noticed that everyone had already cleared out of the classroom. 

“s**t I didn’t even notice the time” Jason says shocked by how everyone is already out. 

“Yeah one more class to go” I said now I’m hopefully by this but also scared. 

We finally end up parting ways since we one have 3 classes together and 6. I walk into my French 4 classes. And everyone is busy gossiping over whatever news may have came out. I see Kelly looking at her phone shocked. 

“What’s you?” I move my book bag to the ground as I sit down next to Kelly. 

“So what 18+ club did you all go to?”’she asked me still reading the article on her phone

“I don’t really remember we did shots right before hand, Nikki would honestly know” I tell her

“Oh okay, La Salles confirmed that the prince and princess were there on Friday night.” Kelly tells me bummed our.

“Oh, so they have any photos?” I ask her pretending to be shocked.

“I wish, I guess they did and they were forced to take them down due to some violation rules they have with the royal house.” Kelly tells me

“What?” I’m excited to hear all this but I can’t let her know the truth

“Yeah I guess they have a contract with the royal family and a bunch of royalty and aren’t allowed to release anything until the royals are announced at graduation.” Kelly tells me annoyed

“So we wait til graduation to know who they are?” I ask her. 

“Yeah it’s stupid like come one we all want to know who they are it’s not fair” Kelly tell me.

**Bell rings**

I pull out my phone real fast and text the group chat of everyone involved 

If anyone asked we didn’t go to La Salles Friday night

Luckily for me Miss. Berger decides to play a movie and doesn’t care if we have our phones out as she walks outside the room. 

My phone buzzes, I slowly grab it to see and it’s Nikki

What happened?

I text her back

Info got leaked explain later

I put my phone away afraid of getting caught. I know that it wouldn’t matter but the last thing I need to happen is have the whole school find out what happened through us all trying to cover up through text messages. 

I looked around and noticed everyone is glued to their phones like they are trying to figure out who the royal family is everyone is looking it up. 

Buzz, my phone goes off in my pocket. 

It’s Connor 

Anyone asks we went to Cowboys and then  the Bear. 

I decided to text them all back 

I told people i don’t remember and that I’ll have to ask Nikki

Nikki sends me to laughing emoji

Kelly asked you and that’s your go to after she freaked out. Works for me 

She sends me a smiley face emoji