Beep.
“Phee, you didn’t call back. I don’t know what you saw on TV, but you can’t believe what they’re showing. I didn’t do anything with that girl. She got hurt and I was helping her. Seriously. Please call.”
Beep.
“Young lady, it’s your father. It’s almost midnight, and you’re not home. Not like you. Not like you at all. If this is your idea of independence, then we shall have a talk. You tread dangerously, my dear. How can I trust—? It is a bold mouse that nestles in the cat’s ear. Come home this instant! Do you think—” I pressed Delete.
Beep.
“Ophelia? Horatio. Hamlet’s telling the truth about Amsterdam. So… your dad said you didn’t come home last night. You’re killing him. Hamlet, I mean. Your dad’s pretty ticked, too. Hamlet’s on his way to find you. Call him. Or me.”
Beep.
“Damn it, Phee. Where are you?”
I stood staring at my phone and shaking. What a mess.
I walked away from Sebastian and our friends like a coward, without explanation, without apology, without public tears. I felt guilty and confused, but I couldn’t share my pain. Not with anyone. I’m aware that technically I didn’t do anything wrong since, really, Hamlet and I had broken up. In my apartment. Again outside the theater. And, quite memorably, for a third time in the limo. Foolishly, I had thought that being with Sebastian would make things easier. Clearer. That it would help me make a break from the past. From Hamlet. From his family. Yet being with Sebastian had only made it worse, and when I realized that fact, sickening disappointment overwhelmed me, and all I could think was that I had to be alone.
I would try to tell Sebastian about it someday, and maybe he would understand. Until then, I would sit separately in art history. I would avoid the courtyard. And I would risk losing my friends and pretend I didn’t care. And I prayed that they wouldn’t try to make a buck off of our time together.
That evening, after listening to my father go on and on about how disappointed he was in me, I retreated to my room. I had messed things up with Sebastian. I had messed things up with Hamlet. Or he had messed things up with me. How do you go back to someone who says such disgusting things and scares the hell out of you? You don’t. Or you shouldn’t. Sitting alone in my room that night, I realized that neither Hamlet’s desire to talk to me nor his disappointment that I’d been with another guy changed my decision. I wanted out of Elsinore. Maybe even Denmark. At the very least, I needed to get away from Hamlet. Even though the old Hamlet, the sane Hamlet, had returned from Amsterdam, I wanted to be done.
I flipped on the TV, catching the end of the news. “With apologies again to our prince and the viewing public, let us say once more that we should not have run a story so irresponsibly. The young lady was hurt, and our prince was a hero for rescuing her from what could have been a dangerous stampede at the club.”
I wasn’t sure I believed them. It would have been as easy for Gertrude or Claudius to force a retraction for a true story as it would have been for the media to fabricate a false one. It didn’t matter. Mistakes and miscommunications. Violent love and violent hate. Betrayals and desire. Our beginning, our middle, and our end.
Francisco:
Your father sent out security to look for you the night before Hamlet returned from Amsterdam.
Ophelia:
Doesn’t surprise me.
Barnardo:
Where were you?
Ophelia:
None of your business.
Francisco:
Everything’s our business.
Barnardo:
We think your disappearance was meant to further upset Hamlet and trigger some sort of violent act.
Ophelia:
Think what you want. This is outrageous.
Barnardo:
Okay. Try this one. Would you say Hamlet was crazy?
Ophelia:
I don’t know. I’m not a psychiatrist.
Francisco:
What do you think?
Ophelia:
Like “go to a nuthouse” crazy? No. Disturbed, yes.
Barnardo:
Is there a difference?
Ophelia:
Yeah. He was depressed. He was angry. He was totally obsessed with finding out what happened to his dad.
Francisco:
Here’s a picture of Hamlet on the roof of a limo. Here’s a picture of Hamlet jumping on chairs in the theater. Was his behavior in either of these cases normal?
Ophelia:
There was nothing normal about what happened at the castle after the king died.
Barnardo:
Even so, there are no pictures of you being destructive.
Ophelia:
Well then, someone hasn’t done enough research.
“We hear there was a dustup at a comedy show. Some of Hamlet’s schoolmates were even arrested for what they did onstage. What was that about?”
Ophelia runs her fingers through her hair and takes a deep breath. “Claudius had a hard time looking at the truth. And when you’re in power, you can make the truth disappear.”
“Interesting,” Zara says, drawing out the word. “Care to elaborate?”
“Making things disappear seemed to be Claudius’s specialty,” Ophelia replies.
The audience laughs, and Zara looks amused. “There was, apparently, a recording of the show, but it has been destroyed.”
“I’m not surprised.”
I had hoped to get to the theater early enough to enter unnoticed. No such luck. Horatio, whom I’d been avoiding for two days, was scowling as he leaned against the rail of the lobby’s balcony. When I redirected my walk away from him, he cleared his throat and beckoned me with his index finger.
I stopped in my tracks. “What?” I asked, the word slicing the air.
“Hamlet told me what you did,” he said, his jaw set.
I crossed my arms and glared at him. “I’m sure.”
“Why’d you do it?”
“I didn’t have a choice.”
“You just fell on that guy?”
“Screw you. I was talking about the limo thing.” I turned to leave.
“Wait.”
“Why? You’ve already decided I was solely to blame.”
Horatio walked toward me. “That’s not true. But Ophelia, I dragged Hamlet to Amsterdam. He never—”
Backing up, I said, “Honestly, Horatio, I don’t care. I’m not explaining the guy from school, and I’m not sorry. I’ve had enough of Hamlet and this place.”
As I spun away from Horatio, I slammed into a girl of about eleven or twelve. I tried to catch her arm, but she fell to the floor, and the contents of her pink canvas bag spilled everywhere. Horatio and I both rushed to help her up, but when she saw my face, she screamed and we both let her go.
She scrambled to her feet, smoothing out her plaid uniform skirt and squealing, “Ohmygod, ohmygod. You’re Ophelia, right? I’ve seen you at school. Oh my
God
!”
I nodded, shrinking from her enthusiasm.
Before I could say anything, she asked, “Can I have your autograph?”
I tried to force a smile. “I’m kind of in the middle of—”
“I, like, totally love you and even though my mom thinks you’re, like, a bad influence because of those pictures, I’m like, ‘Whatever.’ I just love you and I don’t care what she says, and I’ve wanted to meet you since, like, forever, but you’re always with your friends in the hall and it’s, like, too intimidating, which is why I asked to come to this show even though I’m supposed to be at tennis practice. She told me employees and their families could be in the audience so I said I totally had to come. She’s on the way down from her office now. Ohmygod, I shouldstoptalkingnow.” She was breathless and, I realized, still hanging on to my arm.
“Well, it’s really nice to meet you,” I said, trying to take my arm back.
She held tightly, panting. “Ohmygod, your hair is
so
pretty. I wanted to dye my hair to match yours, but my mother said not to be ridiculous, that only dumb girls have hair like that, and I should concentrate on my studies instead.”
I pursed my lips as she spoke, then said, “Your mom is right about needing to focus on your work. And your hair is naturally pretty, so—”
“Ohmygod!” she squealed again, pinching my arm with her fingers. “You think it’s pretty?”
I opened my mouth to speak, but movement over her shoulder caught my attention. A statuesque woman with thick black hair and bronze skin had her hands on her hips and was tapping her foot. “Tara,” the woman called out. “Let’s go in.”
As Tara released her grip on me, she looked like someone had just spit on her birthday cake. “It was nice to meet you,” she whispered, before galloping over to her mother.
Horatio was fighting a laugh, so I kicked at him. I started to laugh, too, but my smile faded as Tara’s mother took a moment to glare at me before disappearing into the darkness.
“This is the problem,” I said, gesturing at the theater door. “Why I have to get out of here.”
He looked over his shoulder, but mother and daughter were already gone. “What’s the big deal? You and Hamlet are stopped all the time.”
“Since the wedding and the party pictures, it’s different. And no matter what strangers say to me, I have to be nice because otherwise my rudeness will end up being the new buzz.”
“That girl was sweet.”
“Yeah, but I don’t want to be anyone’s role model… or their cautionary tale, for that matter.” My stomach sank at the thought of daughters being warned not to be like me. “I just wanted to argue with you in peace.”
He half smiled. “It’s peaceful now. Argue away.”
I looked down and shook my head. “I’m going inside.”
“If you hate it so much, why are you here?”
I scanned the lobby. People were starting to trickle into the theater, so I lowered my voice. “My dad told me I had to come see this show. Gertrude and Claudius are coming. Gertrude wants to placate Hamlet by having a big crowd for this show he’s put together, and Claudius doesn’t want his wife to be anywhere near Hamlet unaccompanied. And Claudius told my dad it’s a command performance for everyone. So, according to my dad, even though Hamlet hates me, ‘everyone’ means I attend, too. And until I’m ready to make a clean break from this place, I’m going to play the dutiful daughter. My father’s barely talking to me as it is.”
“Help me understand why you did what you did. I can’t imagine a reason big enough that you’d hurt Hamlet like that.”
“I was embarrassed, Horatio. I’m eighteen, for Christ’s sake. What other eighteen-year-old has a sex tape floating out there?” I paused. “Maybe there are some, but I never thought it would happen to me. I didn’t want everyone—Everything that’s happened helped me see how much I don’t want this anymore. I don’t want
him
anymore.”
He furrowed his brow and studied me. “I don’t believe you.”
I sighed and felt a lump forming in my throat. “Okay.”
I wouldn’t have believed me, either. It had been a tumultuous few years, and Horatio had been close enough to know that Hamlet and I always ended up together in the end. For some reason, we couldn’t help ourselves. Yet Horatio wasn’t in my head. He couldn’t know the shift I felt. He couldn’t know that I was convinced that this time I meant it. At least, I thought I did.
Strangers and friends were milling around the lobby, some blatantly watching us, some pretending not to. He suggested quietly, “Let’s go in. It should be a laugh at least.”
“Yeah. Maybe.”
We started walking toward the ornately carved double doors that lead into the elegant theater, but Hamlet came up the stairs, so Horatio changed course. Hamlet said hi to Horatio while eyeing me hatefully. Unable to stand his gaze, I went inside and sat alone, hoping to slip away at some point.
The audience buzzed around me, and I pretended to lose myself in studying my surroundings. Carved cherubs danced around the proscenium arch, and in the middle of the painted oval ceiling, flights of angels sang a sleeping baby to rest. Molded crowns jutted out between the boxes, and banners hung floor to ceiling on each side of the stage. So much care had been taken to decorate a room that remained dark for most of its existence.
Horatio and Hamlet entered together and stood under the box seats talking for a few minutes while Gertrude and Claudius sat up front at Hamlet’s instruction.
Claudius called out, “Dear Hamlet—note I did not call you ‘son’—how are you?”
“Great, though things seem to change so quickly around here. Who knows how I’ll be in a minute? But being with you makes everything better, doesn’t it? Just ask my mother. Or my father. Oh, right, you can’t because of what you did.”
Claudius looked at Gertrude, then back at Hamlet. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Hamlet smiled with angry eyes. “Me neither.”
“Dearest,” called out Gertrude with her sweet manipulation, “come sit with me.”
“No, Mother, here’s someone more attractive.” He acted as if I were a magnet and, against his will, he was being pulled to me. His comment would have stung Gertrude for a variety of reasons, and he knew it. First, he shunned her loudly enough for all to hear. Second, her insecurity about her appearance, though she had nothing to worry about, was legendary, at least to her inner circle. There was a reason it took her over an hour to get ready each morning and why she had a startlingly large staff of stylists, makeup artists, and hairdressers ready to jump into action at a moment’s notice. Third, she hated that he always came to me instead of her.