With the elevator doors closed and Horatio’s laughter fading away, Hamlet and I stood silently, checking whether it was safe to proceed. City lights streamed in through the high windows, giving the large sitting room and open kitchen an eerie blue glow. We listened a minute at the entry to my father’s hall, which branched off to the right of the elevator. We could hear my father’s snore through his closed door, and I tried not to laugh. His bedroom and study were at the opposite end of the apartment from Laertes’s and my hall, so I led Hamlet the other way. We paused again, and since we heard nothing, I kept going. Hamlet shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans and sauntered behind me. Laertes’s door was open, but the light was off, so we continued into my room.
“Finally,” he said when we climbed onto my bed.
I kissed his shoulder, then his neck, then his cheek.
But he pulled back and asked, “So, who have you been seeing?”
“What?”
“You told my mom you’ve been dating other people.”
“Leave your mother out of this room, please,” I said, trying to kiss him again, but he stopped me.
“No, seriously. Who?”
“It was nothing,” I said, trying to sound casual, which is precisely what it had been, anyhow. He kept glowering at me. I added, “No one you would know.”
It wasn’t true. Hamlet knew Sebastian from the lacrosse team in high school. He knew that Sebastian was in my circle of friends and that Sebastian and I were always in the art studio together. But Hamlet didn’t need to know that Sebastian took me to hear a band called the Poor Yoricks and asked me out several times afterward. I wanted to torture Hamlet after all he’d put me through, but he didn’t need details.
“That’s—”
“Hey, we agreed: Don’t ask about last semester. This is what you wanted, so—”
“Well, I hate it.”
“Oh, you hate it? Then I am tremendously sorry,” I said with exaggerated sympathy. “Last spring, I totally should have been thinking about your feelings in case we got back together.”
He bit back a smile but then furrowed his brow and looked genuinely troubled, so I added, “Hamlet, it was nothing. If you want me to trust you, then you have to trust me. It’s not easy for me, knowing that once you’re back at school, you’ll have those girls in little skirts fawning all over you. I’m not supposed to give that any thought?”
He sat back on his haunches. “I don’t like any of them like I like you. I’ve broken things off in the past because I have been tempted… because I never wanted to cheat or lie. But honestly, Ophelia, there’s no one else for me.”
My stomach jumped a little, but I didn’t want to get too excited. I was trying to keep my emotions more in check this year. I had to protect myself.
“I think…” he started, “I want to stay together.”
Again I felt fluttery, but I could not allow myself to trust the sincerity of the sentiment. “Hamlet, you always do this. You decide one thing and then change your mind. It’s hard to know what to believe.”
“Believe that I love you.”
“I do.”
“Let’s try then. Let’s commit to being together.”
“If you say so,” I said, picturing Horatio’s “I told you so” face if Hamlet broke my heart again. But then Hamlet kissed me, and my fears evaporated. I sighed with happiness, thinking that this time things between us would work.
Francisco: So you were tight with the royal family.
Ophelia: We spent a lot of time together.
Barnardo: How much of that time did you spend plotting against them?
Ophelia: None. Why would I—
Francisco: Okay. Different question. You were alone with Hamlet constantly, yet your father, from what we understand, was very protective of you.
Ophelia: My dad was too busy and too tired to notice what I did a lot of the time.
Barnardo: So you took advantage of his schedule and his position?
Ophelia: (pause) No more than any other teenager.
Francisco: So that’s a yes?
2
“Did the queen take you out for ‘girl time’?” Zara asks as a picture of Ophelia and Gertrude in front of Elsinore’s most notoriously expensive shop is projected.
“Sometimes.”
“What did you two talk about?”
Ophelia blinks a few times and then her mouth curls into something resembling a smile. “I’ll never tell.”
Zara leans in. “I guess a girl has to keep her secrets. But, just between us, did you talk about Prince Hamlet?”