Princess

“Dylan?”

He smiled at me as I covered my mouth while yawning. It was too early in the morning for me to be awake. Did this guy ever sleep regular hours?

Here I was (foolishly) thinking that because he had made no other attempt to talk to me about this date or to mention any timings or anything for us to go on our date, (insert an awkward cringe), it meant that he had lost his interest in me so I had to rely on my own spy skills to make this mission a success.

And then he turns up practically at the crack of dawn on Saturday, which meant that he probably hadn’t forgotten about me after all. How unfortunate.

“Good morning, Christina.” He handed me a sunflower which I eyed incredulously.

Pausing for a few moments to give him time to explain himself before I yelled at him, I was half-relieved that none came. “Why on earth did you wake me up at 6 a.m.? Just to hand me a freaking sunflower?”

“One, because today’s the day of our date and two, the sunflower reminded me of you.” He leaned against the doorframe, surveying my reaction.

A breath caught in my throat and I forced it out while blinking incomprehensibly at him. Sunflowers represented everything that was good about life-friends, family-and most important of all, it was the ultimate symbol for happiness. If there ever was a reason for anyone to give me such a flower, it was only to reflect on how unhappy I was.

Was this a clue in on how much he knew on what existed on my consciousness? Or I was over thinking this?

Ever since I discovered that the Moron wasn’t actually a moron, I’d been paranoid around him. Of course it didn’t help that my warped training insisted that there was nobody I could trust aside from myself so it obviously didn’t apply to guys whose fathers wanted me dead the moment they met me. All of that caused me to be extra jittery and nervous around this guy.

Forcing a smile on my face, I ended the prolonged, awkward silence with a short laugh. “Thanks, I guess. But this is really too early for me to wake up.”

“C’mon, get dressed already. There’s somewhere I want to bring and it’s kind of far from here…that’s why I woke you up so early.”

I frowned at the guy, getting excited despite my annoyance. It’d been a while since I met anyone who wanted to be around me this much, if I didn’t count Jeanne. Jeanne was another thing that I shouldn’t be thinking about, I reminded myself; it wasn’t healthy for my emotional state to bring her up in my consciousness. So I gave in, “Fine, fine. Just give me a moment.”

I grabbed the first things that I could find before remembering Calloway’s stupid advice and turning to stare at my reflection in the mirror.

A white tank top, with a gray jacket, black jeans and a green scarf was what I had on. But none of it was classified as making an effort and although there was another strange reason why Dylan Fuller liked me instead of all the other prettier girls here, I had to appear as though I cared about what he thought of me. That meant that I had to make an effort.
Groaning at the very thought of the ‘girly’ disguise that my instructor at the training camp had taught me, I opened up a secret cupboard full of the latest threads which I had hoped I would never have to touch.

Black leggings, a red checked dress with sleeves that reached my elbows, a couple of necklaces and black boots were what I ended up wearing instead. I couldn’t be bothered with another of the other fussy jewellery I found or any of the ridiculous make up, so I added a black hair band to complete the look. There, I finally looked as though I cared about what Dylan thought of me.

This make over thing was exhausting.

“Okay, let’s go.”

He eyed with bemusement and nodded, leading me in the direction out of school. “You look nice today.”

I shrugged, knowing that if I said anything, it would probably give me away. I was good with words like that.

“Aw, please don’t tell me that you’re not going to talk to me at all today… Okay, wait. I just told of something. Let’s play game… Try and guess where I’m taking you.”

“I have no idea.” We were walking out of the northern gate of the school compound. It felt good to be outside of the campus, as though I was myself again and not Kristen Stewart, teen delinquent. Inhaling the air, I toyed with ideas in my head and finally said, “Okay, I give up.”

“Spoil sport.” I noticed that his lips were slightly curved into a grin. His mood seemed to be almost euphoric today and I didn’t think that it had anything to do with our date. At least I hoped not. “Just think about where guys usually bring girls.”

“Not that I have a lot of experience, Dylan, but I don’t think that guys usually bring girls out of town on their very first date.”

“Good point.” He fell silent.

“So you’re not going to tell me?” I stopped, turning towards him and feeling irritated for no apparent reason. The location didn’t really matter after all…right? “That’s not fair.”
“Life’s not fair.”

I turned my head slightly so that I could see his expression as I snorted, disbelievingly. “Yeah, right. Give me one measly example of how life’s not fair for you.”

“I’m in this stupid school, aren’t I?” Tucking his hands into his pockets, he smiled at me, but not in a bitter way. We were walking further away from the campus and not into the city’s direction, which I was more familiar to, but instead towards the railway station.

Was he intending to bring me to somewhere far? Shaking away that thought, I concentrated on our conversation instead, determined to force out some piece of information from the illusive guy himself. “That’s right. What did you do, anyway, to get you sent here?”

“Nothing major… It just got blew out of proportion.”

“Didn’t anyone stand up to your parents to stop you from getting sent here?” I knew for a fact that his mother was dead but I wanted to hear it from his mouth. Perhaps it was cruel to pretend that I knew very little about him when in fact, it was the opposite. But I needed to hear some sort of emotion injected into that wry tone of his, so that I could at least figure out part of him.

“Jenna, my older sister, didn’t bother. Mum’s dead. Dad’s a nutcase. What else can I say about my family?” There was no trace of anger when he said all of this only a kind of humour which I couldn’t figure out. “What about you? What did you to get sent here?”

I came to a stop, staring at him. Dylan Fuller had deftly turned the conversation until it was my turn to answer some tough questions. How on earth did someone change the topic without revealing a single character trait? Clearly, this guy had some character training as well.

“What?” Seemingly just realising that I had stopped, he whipped around.

Starting to walk again, my mind raced with potential options. But none of them seemed to be able to satisfy someone like Dylan, who seemed as good as I was at telling lies. It appeared that I was going to have to go as close to the truth as possible, leaving some of it out but telling it still. I waited until I was next to him and he raised his eyebrows before speaking, “It’s not as though my family’s all that ideal either.

“I come from a one-parent family so Dad was all I had. I don’t know if I had any other relatives and I don’t know about Mum either, but basically it was just him and I. It was pretty much perfect until he got a heart attack and died. He was a lawyer, under a lot of stress and as a kid…there wasn’t much I could do.” I paused, remembering and cleared my throat.

Studying his expression (not surprisingly, it was still carefully guarded), I continued. “It turned out that I didn’t really have relatives, so I was left under the charge of my father’s lawyers. But none of them understood what I felt because Dad hadn’t been close to them as he was to me. There wasn’t anything I could about it because even though I didn’t like them, they were legally and rightfully my guardians.

“One day I decided to run away but I got caught… Luckily, it wasn’t that bad. My relatives gave up the rights to me and I got adopted by some pretty good people. But because of the whole running away thing, they thought that I would be some sort of trouble or something, so they sent me here.”

It wasn’t the truth but it came close to enough.

“I miss her sometimes.”

Confused, because I thought that he would say something about my family, I asked, “Who?”

“Mum.”

“Oh.” I thought over the sentence. “I miss Dad too.”

“I don’t think it ever goes away.”

This was quite a sombre topic we had embarked on, one which I hoped we would not dwell too long on. It was that brainless decision that I had made when I was a kid that got me into this state of apathy. Besides, it similarly came too close to why I was here with Dylan and I didn’t want any of it to give me away.

But I didn’t have to worry about our conversation topic for too long because we suddenly halted and he announced, “We’re here.”

I turned towards the direction that he had looking at and felt my heart grind to a stop.
We were outside the Fullers’ sprawling mansion.
***
I stared at him, unwilling to show any emotion, other than a sense of curiosity when my senses were bristling with anxiousness. This was not what Calloway had in mind when she asked me to um, use Dylan. Although she had gotten me into some hairy situations before, a key example would be when she landed me into this boarding school; Dylan Fuller was a lot less dangerous than his father would be.

And his father would very definitely be at his home.

How had I not noticed that instead of heading into the railway station we were heading to his house? How?

“Okay, I understood that disgust. We’re standing in front of a hideous building and I’m sad to say that this is actually my home.” He paused, perhaps waiting for some explanation from me for my expression but I wouldn’t give one to him.

Instead, I asked, “Um, is anyone going to be at home?”

A small grin of understanding developed over his features and my stomach lurched, wondering what it was that he comprehended. But after hearing his reply, I knew I didn’t have to worry about this yet. “No. I’m not nuts; I don’t do bringing girls home on the first date. I’m not that stupid.”

I bared my teeth at him and he shrugged, flippantly.

“You don’t need to be so harsh; I know that you like me.” He nudged me with his shoulder and I nearly glared back at him (because no matter what I had said or done to show my lack of appreciation for what he had done, it just flew over that thick hide of his) before remembering that this was just an act and probably not what Dylan Fuller actually felt.

In fact, I was beginning to wonder how much of his reactions were real and how much were pretend. He was that good of an actor.

“C’mon, let’s go in.” He tugged my arm and I slowly entered the house, committing what I could to my memory.

The interior screamed of shameless wealth and glamour. It wasn’t to say that the decorations or furniture lacked of class, they were definitely elegant and tasteful but it was not for the faint hearted. Most of the abstract (meaning very odd) decorations weren’t just for people to muse over. That was my mistake the last time I had roamed in the corridors of this house. Those decorations very elegantly hid a killing plan.

Every decoration had some sort of merciless weapon inside or it was an alarm system that would alert every single killer in the house and there were a whole lot of those.

“Quite ridiculous, isn’t it?”

I whipped around, not realizing that he had still stood there waiting for me to take it all in. I wondered how much of the emotions I had been suppressing surfaced during that period and frowned.

He mistook my frown for an agreement and continued, “I’m going to get something, just wait for me here.”

I set myself gingerly on the antique sofa set, noting the direction that he was ambling off to. If my memory served me right, he was heading towards the family’s huge garage where there were a dozen cars of different prices, each newer and more expensive than the next but all served one purpose-as a fantastic, luxurious getaway car.

Why would Dylan need something like that?

Shaking off that thought, I let my eyes wander around the house. Although this house was indeed very nicely decorated, I thought that it somehow lacked personality. I hadn’t been inside a house for a very long time, but I had seen some home decorating magazines before and they had some sort of personal touch in them.

“Are you Dylan’s girlfriend?”

I turned around, knowing that it couldn’t be a maid that was speaking to me. None would dare to be that impolite to a guest of the Fullers’ so I was probably dealing with that sister that Dylan had mentioned.

She looked very similar to him, the same family traits. But there was something a little off with her. She seemed…somehow a little familiar though I was certain that I hadn’t encountered her during my visit here. “Um, I’m not sure.”

“I think I’ve seen you before.” She narrowed her eyes at me.

I increased the wattage of my smile until it bordered on insane while simultaneously rummaging through my memories, searching for this girl. But it didn’t register. Everything about my previous visit had been rushed and I doubted that aside from those creeps that had caught me that anyone else would have noticed me. “I don’t think so. I’m sure I would’ve remembered Dylan’s sister if I met her.”

She raised an eyebrow, entirely unaffected by my gushing words. “Sure you would. There’s no need for pleasantries, no need to suck up to me. It’s not exactly that you’re similar to his previous girlfriends, you know… They were so blonde, pretty and brain dead like a comatose patient.” She smiled at me.

Okay… So she had a stick her ass. Did that mean that I had to be as bitchy as her? “That’s…good to know. Um, oh, so what’s your name?”

“That’s right. I knew I forgot something. I’m Jenna Fuller, Dylan’s older sister.” Jenna stretched her hand out as if for me to shake it and I did. It was odd that we were doing something so polite after that bit of conversation. “How did you know about me in any case?”

“He’s mentioned you before.” I shrugged, leaving the ‘in passing’ out, because I was curious as to what she would say. Jenna Fuller was a firecracker and it either meant that I got burnt or I got entertainment and information out of it.

“I doubt that he has anything nice to say about me.” She said this mildly but there was some sort of…odd emotion in her eyes. “He doesn’t approve of anything that I or our family does.”

Was that a warning? And if it was, what exactly was she referring to their family’s dubious business or themselves as people? I kept my smile in check, replying as if I was happily oblivious to what she just said, “I’ll keep that thought in mind.”

Jenna opened her mouth as if to add something else but then we both heard footsteps and saw Dylan appearing. His eyes darted between Jenna and me before he quickly took a step between her and me, as though he needed to be a shield between the two of us.

Eyeing him with some sort of amusement, Jenna said, “Hey there Dylan. You’re home and you didn’t come to say hi?”

“There’s no reason why I should.” It was said like a statement, devoid of emotion and because his back was facing me, it was impossible for me to see what his expression conveyed. I could only guess from Jenna’s reactions what he actually meant and they weren’t easy to read either.

“You’re breaking my heart just by saying that… You see, that’s the sort of person Dylan is.”

She was obviously directing the last part of the sentence to me. I hoped that I didn’t look as confused as I felt because that would give a lot away. There was definitely some animosity between them but I didn’t get how I fitted into the picture. As far as I knew, I was just some fling of Dylan’s and nothing for Jenna to be majorly concerned over and yet, from the way she was behaving, one would think that I was the prize and not a toy in their little spat.

“I think we should get going now.” He gently tugged away from Jenna and out of the house, leaving me with some questions of my own.

1.Why on earth was Jenna Fuller such a weirdo?
2.Why were they treating me as though I was very important in their conflict?
3.What was Dylan trying to hide from me? He had stood between Jenna and I just now, as though he needed to protect me from whatever she had say but I had already heard some of it. Was he hiding something or was there something about Jenna that could burn me?