American Royalty

I clenched my fists into tight, white balls, trying to fight down the urge to just turn around and leave. I hated being here. I hated the pitying way the staff looked at you. I hated the depressed glean in everybody’s eye as they sat down in the waiting room. I hated the God awful music they played over the old-fashioned speakers which always seemed to be the same every time I came. I hated that I had to come here in the first place, as if I was the crazy one.

Because that’s all this place was anyway, a room full of crazies.

Settling myself uncomfortably down on a chair nearest the exit, I kept my eyes alert in case one of these lunatics thought it might be a good idea to attack. I’d dealt with these kinds of people my whole life. If there was anything I knew it was that they were completely unpredictable. One minute they could be fine, laughing, happy. The next they were upset, angry, lashing out. I wouldn’t allow anybody to lay a finger on me, and especially not on Hannah, my baby sister. It was for her I was doing this for because God knows what would happen if I didn’t.

She was my everything. She was the only girl I had ever loved and would ever love; I had raised her by myself while Mom was away and I had done everything I could to make her happy. She was eleven now, and beautiful in a way only your baby sister can be. Nobody had ever touched her and I was going to make sure it stayed that way – no boys with dirty fingers, no low lives who would try to drag her down with them, and especially not my mother. That was never going to happen.

I closed my eyes for a brief moment and tried to calm down the excess beating of my heart. I had to stop doing this to myself – thinking about it only got me angry. Every time it even so much as flickered through my mind I would react as if I had just downed a litre of energy drink, or was psyching up with my boys on the pitch, or was about to climax with a hot stranger writhing beneath me. Only my body would always be ready for a fight, itching for one really, and instead of a glorifying rush there was only a burning need to hurt someone.

It was just too bad that my high school allowed me to let out this pent up frustration.

I was getting impatient waiting in that clinic. Too much time had passed and Hannah would be getting bored waiting in the car. I had just picked her up from school, smiling fondly at her when she rambled excitedly about her high grade in English, listening acutely when she told me about the new friends she had made, giving her my sternest frown when she asked if she could go to a friends’ sleepover this weekend. I used to hate being both a mother and a father to a little girl when I was nothing but her brother. Somehow though, through the years of parents’ evenings and student awards, it had become natural. Not long after that it had become my life.

Hannah knew the Tuesday drill as well as I did, I didn’t need to tell her to wait in the car for me to come out, I didn’t need to promise her that afterwards we’d pick up dinner at Mcdonalds. I did anyway though along with the speech about not talking to strangers or opening the car for anyone but me. I was an overprotective brother through and through. Hell, it was difficult to remember outside of school that I could be anything but that.

I tried picturing how good Andy had looked today. And how those awe-struck faces had turned to watch me walk away from that bleeding nerd – Toby, I had learned from the whispers – how I was their God even when I was terrible.

Running a tanned hand over my buzzed hair, I wondered just how much longer it would take for my surname to be called out and the pills handed over to me. I wasn’t good at the waiting game, it was the only game I could never turn to my advantage. I had enough practise I just never had the patience. Especially when sitting here in the fucking waiting room surrounded by the craziest people known to man.

Well, they were missing one.

Just as I was about to lose my nerve, and possibly my anger too, the door swung open. And almost instantaneously, I lost every train of thought I had. All at once I lost so much more than my nerve.

It was cliché but she was fucking beautiful. So beautiful. Dark hair tumbling down her back, splashed out over pale shoulders with the odd freckle breaking up a sea of cream. She wasn’t short but neither was she particularly tall, built perfectly as if out of clay, fragile enough to break with a single breath. I had to shift to trap my hands underneath me in case I couldn’t stop from reaching out to touch her. Because, shit, I wanted to.

And I wasn’t even that stupid sappy boy who would fall all over himself because of a girl’s looks. Hell, usually it was the other way around; the shoe was on the other foot. But with her the shoe seemed to fit so perfectly on me. I found myself staring because there was nothing in the world that could take my eyes away from her. She was a Goddess. Then it struck me – just what was a Goddess doing in this shit hole?

Did she know who these people were? What was wrong with them? Manic depressives, schizophrenics, pathological liars, psychopaths, all lined up in these chairs waiting to be seen next. It wasn’t a safe place to be, especially for a girl like her. It looked like she was about to fall to pieces, I’m sure even the slightest touch would become her undoing. I knew just one touch from her would definitely be mine.

But she sat seemingly calmly down next to an old wizened man with unnerving flicking eyes as if she was just at a bus stop next to nothing more than another normal pensioner. As if this was a daily occurrence. And what if it was? What if she was just as crazy as everyone else in here? Fucking hell, she must have been crazy to come here in the first place. I know I most certainly was.

God, she was so beautiful that my tongue was parched dry and I still couldn’t force my eyes away from her. I felt myself growing red – blushing – and knew that whoever she was would only bring me more trouble because Dallas King never blushed. Not for anyone. Especially some stranger sitting in this loony bin no doubt waiting for some staff member to take her away, or load her up with some more drugs just so she could pretend to be sane. I didn’t need any more insanity in my life even if my body was begging for this exact insanity, was participating in some of its very own.

She looked up then from the stray streaks of her charcoal hair and caught me staring like I had been for the past five minutes. Her eyes bore into mine before quickly moving down to the carpet as if the stray pieces of upturned matt were more interesting than me. I was willing her to look back up to me, just so I could see for myself the exact colour of her eyes, but she remained focused solely on the ground. There was colour in her pale cheeks that hadn’t been there before and I knew it was because of me. I hadn’t forgotten that I was no ugly duckling myself.

I had suddenly found a perfect antidote to all of this waiting around, a distraction big enough to wipe out all of the horror and pain and sorrow that I knew were lingering not too far down the line. She was a challenge all in herself, an impossible mission I had no idea if I would be able to undertake. She was dangerous. Because the stirrings in my stomach were stronger than I had ever experienced and my want for her had overtaken any I had thought I knew. Even Andy, the girl who had come closest to breaking down a part of me, had nothing on the vision nervously playing with her hands just across this room from me. And I hadn’t even spoken a single word to her.

A new conquest. It was perfect. But already I understood that this wasn’t going to be like any other conquest.

I wanted to know everything about her in ways more than I had previously when all I’d cared about was what kind of underwear girls had hidden under their clothes. It was imperative right then that I knew just why she was here – if for herself or if for someone else. My muscles practically ached with not knowing. I wanted to know her name above all else though, because that was the first step in to make her fall for me.

Which she would do eventually. They all did.

“King,” the woman behind the desk read out, smiling directly at me as she did every Tuesday.

I started back into myself, instantly thinking how stupid I was being. She was just a girl, albeit a beautiful one, but just another one of millions nonetheless. I didn’t need any more crazy. I was sick of crazy. I had had it up to my eyes with crazy. There were old bruises on my chest, on my arms, on my back that showed that I didn’t want any more to do with crazies. There were new ones too that showed I didn’t have a choice in the matter.

Her eyes were on me as I stood up straight and waltzed over to the desk, keeping myself firmly tucked in from the other patients. She watched as I took the box of drugs offered out to me, and as I signed for them, and as I gave the lady another dazzling Dallas smile. I almost turned to tell her they aren’t for me, I’m not like the others in here, you have to believe me. But a little voice in the doorway had me reeling back all over again.

“Dallas,” Hannah moaned, narrowing her blue eyes at me as she twisted a piece of blonde hair around her finger. “What’s taking so long?”

I worked quickly then because all that mattered was getting my baby sister the hell out of that place. Nobody was to even look at her funny; nobody was to know what we had to go through every day. I’d rather die than let a soul understand that Dallas King and his sister were so far from perfect that they were practically broken in two. I would keep us together no matter what.

I swept her up in my arms and marched her out to the car with her complaining the whole way.

“You’re such an idiot, I can walk you know,” she grumbled.

“You should have stayed in the car. I was almost done. Why can’t you ever just do as you’re told?”

I placed her down only to give her a pointed look, telling her silently to get the fuck back in the car. No way was I allowing her in there with those people. I had gone my whole life protecting her, and if that meant strapping her down in these seats myself then that was exactly what I would do.

Hannah rested a hand on my cheek and frowned, telling me herself that I was scaring her. I stopped immediately. My feet stepped back but Hannah left her palm on my cheek, rewarding me with a small smile.

“I’m sorry Dallas.”

She knew I couldn’t resist when she gave me those big, innocent eyes. I couldn’t be mad at her like that. So I opened the passenger’s door for her to slip into and closed it carefully once every bit of her was safely inside. She mouthed the words we only saved for each other through the glass and I winked at her because she was my little girl despite the fact that knew exactly how to get around my guarded corners. And make me putty in her hands.

I was turning back, readying myself once again to set foot in that dead room, when a similar shocking sight set me in place.

“Excuse me,” the dark haired beauty called “I think you forgot these.”

Stunned, I could only watch her make her way over to me with the box of prescribed drugs in her pale grip. My heart stuttered, then fell over itself, then stopped altogether before racing up into my throat. I was a mess like none other as she came to a stop just a metre away.

“You left these at the desk and, I know it’s not my business, but these are kind of important.”

Did she know what they were for? Did she think that I needed them?

“They’re not for me,” I blurted out.

She was nodding softly as if she heard this all the time. “Like I said, it’s none of my business; it’s just these aren’t things you can really leave behind.”

She didn’t believe me but then would I believe a thing those crazies back in that room told me? I didn’t believe normal people most of the time, it was hard enough to trust without adding in the possibility of them being wrong in the head. She probably just saw another one of them, albeit with a hotter body and a better face.

“You’re Dallas King,” she stated, holding me right there with just a nervous glance into my eyes. It took everything in me not to reach out for her. I wasn’t used to fighting myself, especially not when it came to things like this, but I managed to hold on just enough.

“And you are?” I asked casually because inside I was dying to know.

She just smiled sadly, already turning around and half way back to the small mental hospital’s waiting room. “Florence,” she called softly, so softly I almost didn’t catch it. And, like a ghost, she was gone, right back in there with those lunatics.

It took me another minute to feel the box she had somehow placed into my palm, and a minute more to calm the muscles poised in my body. Getting in the car, I ignored Hannah’s suspicious glances to pull away onto the main road. I was barely holding it together, me, Dallas King, seemed to be falling apart as he waited in the line of cars at the Drive-Thru.

Maybe I was crazier than I had thought. Possibly it was just my hormones, driving me crazy over a pretty face. I was certain, though, that I’d see Florence again – just to see for myself that I hadn’t completely lost my mind.

Secretly hoping that she still had hers.