“Oh,” Sebastian said, his shoulders slumping slightly. “You plan on coming back?”
Plan? Did I have a plan? My run-for-the-hills plan wasn’t quite a plan. More of a feeling. I couldn’t give him details I didn’t have myself, so I answered, “Probably. At some point. Not anytime soon.”
“Oh. Could I come visit?” His warm eyes met mine, sending a shiver through my body.
I pinched my leg again and curled my toes inside my shoes. He was too good, and this was too soon. And yet…
Damn
, I thought.
Walk away.
I said, “I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“I can take care of myself.”
Oh, how many times I had said that very phrase. I had no doubt I would hurt or disappoint him, and I would have said as much, but it would have done no good. He was smitten and determined, a deadly combination. God, not deadly. No more dead anyone. Hamlet. My father. My mother. My brother. I was falling into the abyss of memory when Sebastian touched my arm, yanking me back to the real conversation, my present life. I needed to let the past slip behind me. I needed care and contact but not the kind that added to my pain. I wasn’t sure what kind of contact this was, just that this was complicated.
He cocked his head and said, “You don’t have to answer now, okay?” His tenderness pained me.
“I’m not saying never,” I clarified. “Let me get myself settled. And then…”
“And then…” he said, his eyes shining.
“And then we’ll see,” I said as I grabbed for my keys and headed for my car.
Incredibly, the next day, a camera phone showing the game’s terrifying end surfaced. One of the spectators, an Elsinore Academy sophomore, had been too scared to show it to anyone, but his girlfriend finally turned it in. I had never been so relieved by a piece of intrusive technology. The nation was able to forgive my brother, and my father would finally be given a proper burial.
Our plans for Claudius became moot, since almost immediately hearings on his grab for power were ordered, and the public flew into a frenzy. He was buried quietly one night with no ceremony and at a distance from his brother and wife.
I spent the days before the funeral separating out what I wanted to keep of my dad’s and Laertes’s belongings. There wasn’t much besides photos, but I kept Laertes’s CD collection and my dad’s hats. He loved funny ones from our travels, and I didn’t have the heart to get rid of them. I found an old lipstick of my mom’s and kept that, too. The last item I tossed into the keep pile was a box of Hamlet’s gifts, notes, and the crumpled paper he’d thrown under my bed with the prophetic scribbles “To Be” and “Not to Be.” I couldn’t bear to look carefully at any of it, but I couldn’t throw it away, either.
Horatio came to get me when it was time to go to the service. I did everything in my power not to think, not to notice the crowds, not to hear the cameras clicking. Guards surrounded us and brought us to the car and then escorted us into the cathedral.
Walking toward the coffins at the end of the long cathedral aisle—the aisle I had begrudgingly hobbled down a few months earlier at Gertrude and Claudius’s wedding—my body grew weak. Horatio was holding on to my arm, to steady himself or me I couldn’t tell. I was relieved when the minister gestured for everyone to sit. The lacquered boxes seemed to mock us with their shining perfection. Such beauty was about to be put underground; their only purpose was turning to dust. The beauty of those I had loved would be forever locked inside, and all would be left to rot.
My brother, tall and wise, scornful and witty. Hitting me with a pillow if my head was blocking the television. Reading thick tomes that he insisted were interesting. His deep voice calling across the hallway telling me to turn down my music or asking how my day was. Smirking at my father’s instructions on how to be a better man. We laughed, yet those lessons made Laertes a wonderful man. A young man. So young he never had the chance to be his own man.
My father was not young. His pace was slowing. His hair was graying. His skin was wrinkling. His face was gentle and loving, despite the concern that often hung across it like a veil. Like a shroud. My father had had an opinion on everything, yet his opinions didn’t matter anymore. His advice would be dispensed to no one, and I alone held the memory of his private words. I had ignored too much of his advice, sure he would be around when I needed it, when I wanted it… which I had assumed would be never. “We never know the worth of water till the well goes dry,” he liked to say. Prophetic.
Looking at Gertrude’s silver casket, my father’s favorite curse sprang to mind: “May the curse of Mary Malone and her nine blind illegitimate children chase you so far over the hills of Damnation that the Lord himself can’t find you with a telescope.” Inside I smiled a little.
See, Dad?
I thought.
You did teach me something useful.
My amusement faded as my gaze drifted to Hamlet’s casket, the most elaborate, the one most bedecked with flowers. Hamlet tucked a buttercup behind my ear. Hamlet shoved his sunglasses on top of his head. Hamlet strummed his guitar. Hamlet whispered words of love. Hamlet held me down. Hamlet called me a whore. Hamlet killed my father. Hamlet stabbed my brother. Hamlet. Hamlet. Hamlet. Damn him. Damn his name. Damn his memory. Damn the sweet pain I couldn’t shake. I closed my eyes, willing the thoughts away. “Good-bye, sweet prince,” I whispered to myself. No. No more of his name. No more of his memory.
“Sweet is the wine, but sour is the payment,” my father told me each time I chose pleasure over reason. Too bad my choice cost him so dearly. My lip began to quiver, but I forced my face to remain stony lest some cameraman catch my grief and broadcast it to the world. I wouldn’t give them what they wanted. I could hear every sound too loudly and yet understood none of it. Horatio whispered something, but I didn’t hear his words. I was sweating and cold, detached and overwrought. I wanted to go, but I couldn’t stand.
Horatio’s sudden absence left a cavern of cool air around me as he moved to the podium. I tried to focus my thoughts on him and his words about Hamlet, the Hamlet we once knew. Hamlet. Hamlet. My old self heard Horatio’s words and agreed: Hamlet had once been wonderful. My new self wanted to reach into the air and tear the kind words apart. Hamlet would be remembered as a charming prince who lost his way under the pressures of grief and conspiracy. I would remember him as the murderer of my very soul. Hamlet. Hamlet. The sharp end of his name curled my lips.
I became aware of silence. I looked up. Horatio was standing at the podium so stricken that he could not continue to speak. He laid his head on his arms, and the wrinkled papers shook in his hands. His father rushed forward and covered the microphone, whispering private comforts to his bereaved son. Taking the papers out of Horatio’s hands, his father completed the eulogy. The final story drifted around me while I focused on the father and son and how the father held the son as if bearing up the world. A father and son had led us to this moment. A father’s absence. A son’s rage. A daughter’s grief. Fathers and sons. Fathers and daughters. Lovers and deceivers. There was no escape.
“How has your return to—well, life—been?” Zara asks, a laugh in her voice.
“Oh, much better than expected.” Looking directly at the audience, Ophelia adds, “And I have the great people of Denmark to thank for it.”
The morning the movers were set to come, agents from the Denmark Department of Investigations barged into my apartment. Oddly, it was their suits that scared me more than their guns. Anyone who could do dirty work in a tie had methods of getting information I didn’t want to know about.
They grabbed my cell phone and went searching for my computer, but I explained that no one had returned it, or my old phone, after my last imprisonment. When they asked me to go with them, I refused. A man, who introduced himself as Special Agent Barnardo, stepped forward and put his stubbly face close to mine. His receding hairline made his forehead look enormous, and he smelled like mint gum and shaving cream, which struck me as funny given the stubble. “You’re coming with us. You can walk out, or we can force you. I would suggest you make it easy on yourself.”
I had passed being safe and was sick of following orders. “Screw you,” I hissed, and braced myself for what I knew would come. He cuffed me and dragged me out of the apartment.
I was brought to DDI headquarters, a soulless poured-concrete building with harsh fluorescent lighting and lots of locked doors. All of my panic was gone, replaced by irritation and disbelief. They put me in an interrogation room, questioned me for a few days while recording every second of it, and then released me. I left unsure of what they would find, and not sure that I cared. I was wrung out and felt utterly disconnected from everything and everyone around me.
After my release, I moved into my new antiseptic apartment, anonymously beige and thoroughly inoffensive, and became a relative recluse. People tried to make contact, but I screened all calls, and for weeks saw no one except for Horatio’s family and my lawyer.
My lawyer looked across his desk and tapped his pen on his legal pad. “Ophelia, everyone’s been clamoring to hear what happened. An interview on
Zara
could help you quiet things down.”
I shook my head.
Sternly he continued, “And it could help your case. If the DDI decides to put you on trial, you need a sympathetic jury. You have to get your version of the events out there.”
“Zara is going to ask all kinds of personal questions. I don’t want everyone knowing all the details of my life,” I said.
“The people already know the majority of what happened.”
I grimaced. “Not the most personal stuff.”
“Tell as much as you feel you can. And leave out parts that will make you look bad.”
“So lie?”
“Weeeell, tell the truth as much as possible—albeit a
patriotic
version of the truth. Try to pin everything on Claudius. The public wants to believe that Gertrude was an innocent bystander. And Hamlet was deeply loved by his subjects, don’t forget.” When I winced, he added, “The people need to see you as sympathetic and remorseful. And like a regular teenage girl. Only more glamorous. You have to go on
Zara
. This show is important for your image.”
I dropped my head and clutched my stomach. I whispered, “I don’t want to be a public figure anymore.”
He peered over his glasses and reminded me, “It doesn’t matter what you want.”
Barnardo:
We’re gonna let you go. For now. But we’ll be watching you. Someone out there knows something, and we’re going to find it.
Ophelia:
Let me know when you do.
Barnardo:
Are you always this mouthy?
Ophelia:
No. You just bring out the best in me. (A door opens and closes.)
Francisco:
There’s a lawyer out there with Horatio. You can talk in our conference room if you’d like, or you can just leave.
Ophelia:
Parting is such sweet sorrow and all, but I think I’ll get out of here. Gentlemen, it’s been a pleasure.
Francisco:
We’ll see you around.
Ophelia:
Can’t wait.
Zara crosses her legs and sits back. “So now what? Are you going on tour? Planning to write a tell-all?”
Ophelia sighs and folds her hands in her lap. “No. I just want to put this all behind me.”
“Will you be going to college?”
“Yeah, in Paris, actually. I’m going to stay in my brother’s apartment. His university called and offered me a spot in their freshman class. Elsinore Academy gave me a pass on everything, once they found out why my grades had dropped, so I get to start with a clean slate. I’ll work hard. Like I used to.”
“Political science in your future?” Zara asks with a twinkle in her eye.
“Uh, no. Art history. Maybe I’ll move to Italy someday. Spend time studying the masters. Get a job in a gallery. I don’t know.”
“Will you be looking for romance?”
“Oh God, I don’t think so. I think I’ve had enough for a while.”
Zara smirks. “You never know. I hear those Parisian boys can be very romantic. Maybe some Romeo is waiting for you.”
Ophelia shrugs and forces a smile. “I’m not looking for romance. I’m not looking for anything but time. I’m asking your viewers to please, please leave me alone for a while so I can get my life together.”
“You heard it here, folks,” Zara says, holding Ophelia’s shoulder while staring sternly at the camera. “I don’t want any pictures or stories popping up about my dear friend Ophelia. If someone is fool enough to do it, I’ll find you, and there will be consequences.”
The audience titters. They might be smiling, but they all know she’s serious and powerful enough to make good on such a threat.
“One last question before I let you go,” Zara says. “Do you think the DDI has enough evidence to put you on trial?”
Ophelia answers quickly. “They have no evidence, because I didn’t do anything wrong.” Then she pauses for a second, and her forehead wrinkles. She continues, “You know, my dad had two favorite sayings. One is from the Buddha, I think: ‘Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.’ ” She smiles sadly at the audience. “Perhaps an even more fitting proverb is: ‘Truth fears no trial.’ If I am put on trial, all I can do is tell the truth.”
Zara shakes Ophelia’s hand as she says, “Well, thank you so much for joining us today.”