-3-
When I turned twelve, things were no different between me and Marko. But because my father insisted on dragging me onto the Javelin each summer to sail to Mirandus, I had no choice but to show up there, under the tree, where Marko stood apart with his parents, his arms crossed, his mouth curled up in a sneer. He flicked his eyebrows, and I scowled. He laughed and stepped forward. Our parents had already passed us and were already walking up the stone street to the castle.
Marko roughly brushed past me to take a box from one of the crewmen, and they started joking and teasing. I stood still, still scowling, but undecided now on what I was going to do here - what WAS I doing back on this planet? As Marko and the crewmen passed me again, he swiftly swept his foot inside my ankles and tripped me. I landed on my butt, but nobody was around to help me up. Some of the boys nearby laughed and pointed, but their fishermen elders swatted them away from the scene. My face flushed, and I bit my lip. I glowered at Marko's back.
The rest of the summer was like that. I avoided Marko as much as possible, gratefully accepting some of the local girls' friendship. I was thankful that unlike my schoolmates on Montressor, Mirandus girls are not tame little creatures but intelligent, talented beings who loved good runs and climbs and swims as much as the boys. I became part of my own small pack, and every day, our laughter was offered up to the hot sun.
There were still times, however, when I had to put up with Marko. It was tradition to organize summer games for young people on Mirandus. He won the footraces, tossing me a haughty look as he crossed the finish line. I returned the look when I scaled Green Rock Wall before he did. He shrugged it off and mumbled that I was lucky, that he'd told the other guys to hold back.
During rare times that Tita Felix decided to use the dining hall in the palace, I had to sit with him. When nobody was looking in his direction, he'd flick nuts and beans at me. I never could find a time when nobody was looking in my direction, so I couldn't retaliate with anything but dirty looks.
He put crabs at the foot of my bed in my sleep. He hissed into my ear and taunted me so whenever he caught up with me. He pinched me and yanked on my hair on the nights Dad told me to unbraid it or take it out of the bandannas I'd started to wear. When I took of my necklace and threw it at his head, he dodged it, catching it neatly in his hand. And, yes, he continued to trip me. But because I never found a chance to get back at him - except for a night of frogs on his face - and because he was the Prince, I could only glare at him. But I never cried. No, no, I never cried.
This horrible treatment from my "friend" continued till we were fifteen, and that summer, it seemed that Marko thought himself too great to pick on insignificant me. With the speed, agility, strength, and wit he'd inherited from his parents, Marko Peter Simaun seized every chance he got to show it off. He could swim farther, dive deeper, run faster, and speak better than anyone else our age, and he loved every chance to rub it in my face - without causing any of his family's subjects to like him any less. Oh, no, Prince Marko was still a great favorite, and I was the only one who raised my eyebrows when they talked of his great gifts, of how down-to-earth and wonderful he was. And he could still charm cookies from the scullery maids.
I snorted. Having long given up on trying to beat him in games, I turned to other things. Like I said, I had my own friends on Mirandus, and we did things on our own. When I couldn't be with them - or when one of them started the giggling and gushing about how dreamy Prince Marko was - I talked with Lakan, who was truly grown up now. He was enjoying his summer before his last year at the ISA; I was trying to enjoy mine before my first. Marko, I'd been told, would remain on Mirandus with his friends and tutors. And when Lakan would start on Marko not being such a bad guy, or when he decided to spend a day with his girlfriend, I would go to the library, or to the lagoon to think.
I no longer resisted my father's efforts to bring me to Mirandus; I had friends here that I could spend the summer with and new ways with which to avoid Marko for days.
The very next summer, however, when we were seventeen, something happened that forced us together, and it changed us all.