Sunday's Story - Loyal But Spoilt

“Oh my god, I cannot believe you just did that” she screeched back at me with an annoyed tone in her voice. Whilst swinging the satchel over her shoulders and neck so that the strap rested across her chest, she continued “Seriously Bea, what the hell!”  Whoops.

“You know I can’t help it” I shouted back with heavy breaths; still running as fast as I could. We turned a sharp corner into a disused bypass tunnel and came to a halt when we were encompassed by the dark. I pulled my long sleeve down over my hand and wiped the sweat off the back of my neck and forehead, thankfully it was dark so no one could see how un-lady like I was being.

“I’m sorry Your Highness, you need to start. I know you have diplomatic immunity and all that, but when you want to go out in the real world and no one knows who you are, you can’t just do want you want and get away with it, it’s not that simple out here.”

She was acting like my mother, all high pitched and frantic. I’d read stories about people who steal because they don’t have anything. I steal because it makes me feel like I do. Buying things is so boring and don’t even get me started on my personal shoppers back at the palace. However, taking without paying is invigorating.

I don’t do anything myself. I never have. The only time I get to truly experience this amazing world I live on, is when once a year, my most common lady-in-waiting brings me an outfit from her wardrobe and does me up like your regular average teen. I wash my hair and she styles it for me, a regular beach wave is the style that she favours. I get a whole load of rough eye makeup done in dark shades, which is the complete contrast to my regular neutral coloured barely-there makeup, which for a princess is mandatory.

Along with the excess of accessories and scuffed shoes; I’m ready. And I love it, we get into her mini, which I’ve noticed has a thin layer of dirt on its baby blue exterior. She drives me to the same packed bus terminus car park and we get a ticket on a bus that we buy with cash. Untraceable – that’s the plan.

So I guess me stealing, kind of go’s against said plan which, come to think of it, is probably why Alessa is so angry with me. But on that one day, I get to see this whole other side of her, listen to her when she isn’t annunciating every word, and it’s unusually refreshing.

She tells me about why she needs Friday evenings off and the whole of Saturday. About her boyfriend and what alcohol tastes like and how it burns the inside of your throat like a trapped fire. About the chaotic family meals she has to endure at least once a month, and how she’s nearly been kicked out of the palace as she’s leaving because no one recognises her once she’s changed out of her floor length gown and put makeup on.

A ‘rocker’ is what she called herself, she loved tattoos and piercings, dark makeup and leather jackets. How she got the job at the palace I’ll never know but it just goes to show how someone can have more than two sides, she seems completely innocent and content pacing slowly around the halls, behind me. But outside of those walls and fences, she’s outspoken and shows her midriff and wears low cut tops and short skirts.

“Stealing is that simple…” I retaliated after watching her readjust her outfit and redo her hair. “You just take it and leave”

She shook her head in disbelief, “No Bea! These things that you are so keen to just ‘take’ they’re not just things. These people need the money that selling them attains. It’s their job – don’t you understand that! You’ve never had to pay for anything in your life, you’ve never been told you couldn’t have something. But let me tell you, I have and IT SUCKS.” I was shocked, no one had ever spoken to me like this, and it just proved that she was right.

I had no idea, but she didn’t understand the thrill I got during that one day I spent with her, it was my one insight into the country I had no idea about but was supposed to one day rule. I didn’t want to seem weak but would never dream of hurting her, this was just another side of Alessa. Another side I had never seen; this country that, to my parents, was so amazing and perfect, just smashed into a thousand pieces in my eyes.

It didn’t provide a healthy living for everyone, it gave people masks and quite a few of them by the sounds of it. I had one, one mask that people could probably describe in one sentence, I was the loyal but spoilt princess.

Alessa was the confidant, the lady in waiting, the rocker, the lover, the worker, the friend, the rebel, but most of all the deceptor. She deceived me into believing she was innocent and content, when really she has dozens of angles. In the past forty second she changed my whole perception of how we live; well, how everyone but me lives.

If Alessa, my ‘plain’ lady in waiting, can change a princess’s faith in her country, surely I, as that princess, can make her life and all those who trust my family as their leaders, easier and less taxing?

Is there anything that you could change to make someone's live better?

Stay Excellent

 - Chantal DeHaine