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Publication date: February 1st 2023
Genres: Adult, Comedy,
“I’m sick to death of this place,” I complain to my best
friend and roommate for the three plus years I’ve been at university. I’m
currently pacing back and forth across our tiny parlor like I’m trying to get
enough friction going to start a bonfire.
All six feet of Avery are stretched out on our velvet tufted
sofa. She’s so tall, her bare feet, full-on with French pedicure, are hanging
over the edge. She runs her fingers through her long, dark hair and fashions a
ponytail before twisting it and tying it in a knot on top of her head. “It
doesn’t help that people are always trying to catch you doing something
newsworthy so they can sell it to the tabloids.”
“I scratched my nose in Biology last week and swear I saw at
least three different flashes go off. I’ve been a nervous wreck waiting to see
who’s going to publish one of the photos with a headline, ‘Princess Sophie is a
Nose Picker!’”
Avery laughingly says, “I walked around with a wedgie for an
entire afternoon because I was worried someone would take my picture and alert
the world that Princess Sophie’s best friend is a butt picker.”
“Ha ha.” I roll my eyes. “We’ve been friends for over three
years. Surely you’ve seen how hard this all is on me.”
“Soph.” She pushes herself up into a sitting position. “I
don’t think anyone would believe that it’s hard being you.”
I spin around so fast I become a little dizzy. Grabbing a
hold of the back of the sofa to steady myself, I ask, “Are you serious right
now?”
“I know the press is a royal pain.” She stops to giggle at
her pun. “But other than that, you’ve got to admit your life is pretty sweet.”
“Which parts?” My hands are propped up on my overly
curvaceous hips as I demand to know how my life could look good to anyone.
“How about the fact that you’re an honest to God princess?
To the average bear, that’s a pretty cool thing.”
“I think you’re letting your American sensibilities lead you
astray. I assure you, most of the people in Malquar only care about me because
of who my parents are. I’m of no interest in my own right. In fact, no one
would even know who I was if I weren’t in the location they expected to find me
in.”
As she stands up, I feel a wave of pure envy wash through
me. Avery is as thin and graceful as a gazelle. She’s also so comfortable in
her own skin; I sometimes want to punch her on principle.
“What do you say we put that hypothesis to the test?”
“What test?” I ask, more than a little nervously. Avery is
the queen of outrageous ideas. Like the time she suggested we go out for a
night on the town totally commando. She’d gotten it into her head that if the
Kardashians could do it, so could we.
While I told her I had left my panties at home, the truth
is, I wore my underthings with the most coverage, which turns out to have been
a good thing. The picture that showed up in the next morning’s paper was one of
me spinning on the dance floor with my skirt practically above my ears. I can
only imagine the horror had I been butt-naked from the waist down. Kim
Kardashian might be audacious enough to pull off something like that. I am not.
“If no one would know who you were, I say we go somewhere
and see if that’s true.”
“I’m listening …” I should not be letting this woman lead me
astray, but I really want to hear the plan before I pooh-pooh it.
“Let’s leave town for a week. We’ll tell our professors
we’ve come down with some horribly infectious plague and we’ve been ordered to
quarantine ourselves.”
“Which plague would that be?” Look at me, still not
shooting her down. The desire to experience total anonymity is too
much temptation to pass up.
She pulls out her phone and types away before answering,
“I’m going to go with German measles. It says here that it’s usually mild, but
that it’s easily spreadable. They recommend one week’s isolation from the onset
of symptoms.”
“Aren’t German measles the same thing as rubella? I think we
were vaccinated for that as children.”
“No one’s ever going to put that together,” she tells me.
“So, let’s find out if you’re right. The worst-case scenario is that you’re
outed. The best case? A whole week of being someone else.”
“I’m in,” I decide before fully
weighing the odds of trying to perpetrate such a scheme. After all, I’m
twenty-one-years old, and arguably the most boring woman on the planet. It's
time I do something a little outrageous.
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