God Save the Queen by Amanda Dacyczyn Read Free Book Online Page B

father come in and join the embrace. I was hugging both my parents. This wasn’t a figment of my imagination. They were real.
                  After a while my mother’s velvet tone spoke out: “Dear, listen.” I looked up to her perfect face. “Anya, you need to be here. I know that it was hard for you to leave, but sweetie…” She held my face in her hands. “We all have to make sacrifices sometimes. I mean, look at us,” I didn’t like where this was going and I started shaking my head furiously. “No, Anya, listen. Your father and I knew exactly what we were getting into. In fact, we’d been expecting it much sooner.” There were tears in her eyes as she went on, “So we soaked up every memory we could with you.” My father was now standing next to her and he began to talk. “Now, you know I don’t ever demand things, but sweetie, listen,” he said, his face suddenly stern. “You are going to stay here and you will learn everything they teach you. And you must try to stay safe. That means you must listen to what they tell you, and yes, that includes Kevin.”
                  Kevin? Great. Now he was ruining my perfect dream, too. “Give him a chance, Anya,” my father said. “He’s not all bad, I can promise you that.” I nodded, thinking that I wasn’t sure how I would keep this up. But I would try .
                  Then everything started getting brighter. I knew what this meant; I was waking up.
                  No! I thought to myself. I’m tired, exhausted even . But it wasn’t stopping! I won’t let it! Both my parents looked at me, but they were smiling. “Don’t worry, honey,” my mother said as she hugged me one last time. “We will see you again, I promise.” Then suddenly she was gone and it was just my father who was embracing me. “And remember, we are always with you.” He kissed my forehead and then he too was gone. And then everything was bright.
                  I sat up straight in my bed, sweating slightly. It was so real! They were with me, really with me, and I knew that beyond a shadow of a doubt. And then I bent over and began to cry, but not tears of sorrow, though. At long last, I was crying tears of happiness.

 
     
     
    Chapter 8
    Halloween
     
                  “Is everything clear? Bon aimable! Anya, are you even paying attention?” LaGard was looking at me with angry eyes. He never was really happy, but especially when I wasn’t paying attention, which was almost always.
                  We were at the meeting discussing the Halloween masquerade party and LaGard had just finished when I decided to pay full attention. I had gotten some of what he was saying--how it was my first public appearance and stuff like that. But now he wanted to quiz me? It always irritated me when he wanted to test my patience.
                  “Yes, I was,” I said in an almost too-sweet tone, “You were talking about the proper etiquette when being asked to dance. And before that you were talking about the unmasking rule.” He seemed astounded at my sudden powers of recollection (no more than I!), so he quickly resumed his senseless babbling and I resumed not paying attention while Kevin sat beside me being a…well, a LaGard pet.
                  Being nicer to Kevin was still a challenge to me. I was trying, but it was like trying to climb Mount Everest. Not impossible, but hard, very hard. I would do the little things, like force a smile. But a forced smile is always obvious, even if you don’t mean it to be, and actually comes off looking contemptuous. I didn’t actually hate Kevin, but I was still angry with him, and I really didn’t know why. Maybe it was because he was the bearer of bad news, the one who told me I was leaving my peaceful, blessedly humdrum life. The whole “kill the messenger” thing. That might have been it. Well, that and the fact that he’d