took his iPod out of his jacket and focused on untangling the wires, knowing better than to keep arguing.
“Talk to my dad tomorrow,” I suggested.
“Can’t wait.” Hamlet sulked and drank more wine.
The next morning we were all in Hamlet’s room. Horatio was texting Kim, Hamlet was strumming his guitar, and when I wasn’t sketching Hamlet, I was staring at him. I admit it was pathetic, but I fell to pieces watching him play the guitar, no matter how good or bad the sound. Classic girl crap, I know. The hair falling over the face, the furrowed brow as he tried to get the chord right, the guitar resting on his knee just so. Sigh and sigh. I dug it. What can I say?
Anyhow, we were all doing our thing when Gertrude stumbled in, and she did not look pleased to find Hamlet with company. She was still in her shiny sea-foam bathrobe; her hair was matted and she had not taken off her mascara from the night before. My guess is someone had given her something to help her sleep, because it was eleven, and by that point in the day she had usually done her Pilates, showered, dressed, and answered selected pieces of fan mail. She clutched her bathrobe around her and asked if Hamlet would follow her out. Horatio and I exchanged glances, and he went back to Kim.
I was cold, so I walked to Hamlet’s dresser and took out a long-sleeved shirt. Before I pulled it over my head, I stopped a second to smell the collar. I knew it was clean because, at the castle at least, his stuff was taken care of. But I loved the combination of his scent and the detergent the laundry staff used.
Horatio caught me. “That’s just sad,” he said.
I covered my face. “I know. I don’t get to have these creepy moments when you guys are gone. Having you back is a bonus.”
He lifted his eyebrows in mock disapproval. “The king’s death is a bonus? Nice.”
“You know that’s not what I mean,” I said, throwing the shirt at him.
Hamlet walked in to find us having fun, and his dark mood sobered us immediately. He looked like someone had touched his jutting cheekbones with pink finger paint. He crossed the room quickly and sat on the floor facing away from us.
“What’s wrong?” Horatio asked.
Hamlet wouldn’t answer but picked up his guitar and closed his eyes. I saw him wipe away a tear, so I sat on the bed behind him and kissed the top of his head. He strummed with his eyes closed and tried to calm himself.
“She wants me to go back to school tomorrow,” he said finally.
“You’re kidding,” I sputtered. “Tomorrow’s pretty fast.” I wasn’t sure if I was disagreeing with Gertrude because she was wrong to push him or if I just expected him around for a while more.
“Did she say why?” asked Horatio.
He stopped playing and said angrily, “She said that while she would prefer I stayed by her side, I should get on with my life. We would sort out all the being-king stuff later. God, it’s been one day since the funeral! Get on with my life?” He shook his head and banged on the strings, making a discordant howl, then sat quietly staring out the window.
Horatio tucked his phone into his back pocket and asked, “You think you’ll come back with me?”
Hamlet shrugged. “Maybe.”
“It might help you keep your mind off of things,” I suggested, not really wanting to encourage it but remembering how busy I kept myself after my mother’s death. Busy to distraction. Busy to exhaustion.
He went back to strumming, but mid-song he threw his guitar across the room, cracking the neck. “No. Forget it. I’m not going. I can’t be in class right now. Who cares about macroeconomics or protozoa? My dad is dead. What am I gonna do, party, for God’s sake?”
Horatio went to pick up the broken guitar and I slid off the bed to sit next to Hamlet. “She’ll understand,” I said.
“Who cares?” Hamlet grumbled.
I rushed home from school each day for the next week, declining invitations to hang out with my friends, skipping swim practice and time in the art studio to be with him. I tried to keep Hamlet from grieving. More than a minute or two of silence or stillness, and he would retreat into a depression, and it would take hours to pull him out of it.