God Save the Queen

GOD SAVE THE QUEEN

A Novel

by Amanda Dacyczyn

Chapter
1

The Beginning

             
My name is Anya. I’m a senior in Littleton School in New Hampshire. I love Math and Science but I hate History and English. I really hate English, but you know that already, Mr. Numeros, so why am I writing this paper? It really doesn’t get any better than that. So deal with it.

I reread what I wrote and I decided it wouldn’t be wise of me to hand it in. But really, what kind of demented English teacher asks you to write an essay about who you are? I sighed and crumpled up the paper and then grabbed a clean sheet. It was the fourth sheet of paper that I had gone through and I was tempted to tell Mr. Numeros that it was hardly worth killing all of the trees in the rainforest.

             
I put my pen down and rubbed my head. I was getting an intense headache like I always did whenever I was under stress. I hated assignments like this. "Explain who you are and what your life has been like." That was the assignment question, and who can answer that, unless you're Socrates or some genius? I knew I couldn't. It wasn’t as though I didn’t want to do the project. It was just that I never knew how to put into words what I really wanted to say.

             
Unless you're talking about the bare-bone facts, like these:

My name is Anya Alexandrova, and I'm seventeen years old. I was born in the
Boston area and raised in Littleton, New Hampshire and I have never left, ever. This is where my parents wanted to raise me, somewhere away from the hustle and bustle that they had grown up in. My parent’s names were Sophie and Paul Alexandrov. I loved them very much and we were the perfect image of a family. My father always knew how to make me laugh. He was the type of guy who would never act his age, yet when he had to be serious he could change in a millisecond. He taught me how to play football at the ripe age of three, much to my mother’s disapproval, but I think she secretly loved it. Although she did slightly scorn most of the things my father taught me, she would always smile. She was more of the girly-girl type, with a fine eye for detail. She always knew what a room needed to have that extra "pop." She taught me how to make myself look good and how to present myself in front of important people. Not only were they my parents, they were my life.

             
Then shortly before my fifth birthday, my parents died in a horrific car accident on their way to pick me up from my pre-ballet class. It was then that my nanny Melinda Facia took on the role as my legal guardian, since both sets of my grandparents had died before I was born. That is why I considered Linda not only one of my best friends but as the only motherly figure that I could turn to.

             
I attended Littleton Elementary school and that was where I met one of my best friends, Maggie. One day in fourth grade, we were doing a project involving lots of glue and paper, and some of the boys thought it would be funny if they squirted glue in Maggie’s hair. I figured it out mid-scheme and intervened. I could have done something productive like tell the teacher or something, but no, I had to do the heroic thing. So I grabbed the glue and had a tug of war with the boy holding it. Suddenly the whole plan backfired when the squeeze-bottle of glue in our hands exploded. We had to stay in for recess and tell the teacher what happened. Once I got outside I saw Maggie standing there, smiling, then she thanked me and we stuck together like…well, you know.

             
We met Sadie three years later in middle school. She had just transferred from Louisiana and we first noticed her when she was cornered in the hallway by the school bully. We quickly came to her rescue before the bully could make off with her lunch money. From that day we all became best friends. But we were all so different.

             
Maggie was the busybody of the group. Although her blonde hair might have stereotyped her as the slow dumb blonde, she was anything but. She was always moving and never really liked to stop. I teased her that she was like a shark; if she ever stopped moving, she’d die. Sadie thought Maggie’s energy was inhuman and claimed she probably plugged herself in at night to recharge. She was also one of the prettiest girls in our class. Not only did she have flawless blonde hair and a sunny disposition to match, but her sense of style was impeccable. She always had the best brand names and the best of everything. And although she could have had any other friends in the whole school, she was still friends with me and Sadie, which sometimes confused me.

             
And that leaves Sadie. Sadie, oh little Sadie … She was the nervous wreck of the group. She was always jittery and shaking with fear. Sadie always would remind me and Maggie of a little Chihuahua. But no matter how frightened she would get, Sadie always had the guys chasing after her, whether she knew it or not. It wasn’t hard to see why. Sadie was a little shorter than Maggie and I, so she was able to look adorable just by her height. To top it off she also had lustrous auburn hair that none of us is Littleton had seen until she arrived. Unlike Maggie though, Sadie wasn’t a material girl. She preferred vintage clothing and could rock it better than anyone else in school.

             
And then there was me. Plain Jane. I wasn’t like Maggie or Sadie in any way. Unlike them I thoroughly enjoyed playing and watching sports, I was quick-witted and had what you’d call a dry sense of humor. I also wasn’t the leader of the group; I was just there for the ride. I was average height, brown hair and blue eyes. I never really enjoyed the labels of all the stores, but I wouldn’t mind shopping with Maggie at the mall, or Sadie at the local thrift shop. But it really didn’t matter. My life was normal, in everyway possible.

             
Now, how was I going to get all this in an essay that wouldn’t bore the pants off Mr. Numeros?

Chapter 2

The News

             
After about three more hours of crumpling up paper I had finally gotten my essay done. I quickly reviewed what I wrote.

My name is Anya Alexandrova, and I am a senior at Littleton High school. I love the subjects Math and Science, but I am not that big of a fan when it comes to Social Studies. My parent’s names were Sophie and Paul Alexandrov, and they were my life, but they passed away in a car accident when I was five. My legal guardian’s name is Melinda, but I call her Linda…

              When I finished reading it I thought it was good enough to earn at least a B… for Blah, so I tucked it into my bag. I looked around at the mess I made in my kitchen. It looked as though a twister came through. I decided not to anger Linda in the morning, so I began to clean up. I remembered my Current Events homework--we had to watch the news for an hour--so I turned on CNN and half-listened as I began cleaning up.

             
There was special report about the falling European stock markets and the current revenue cost of blah de blah. Then a segment about Somalia, which only seemed to be getting worse by the minute. The reporter had an incredibly monotonous voice and I found my attention starting to wander as his words started to slur together. Then suddenly some urgent-sounding music kicked in and the screen started flashing BREAKING NEWS.
That got my attention,
I thought as I looked at the screen.

             
They cut away to the CNN news desk. It had to be real breaking news, because the anchorman was reading off a sheet of paper that had just been handed to him, and not the teleprompter. “This just in…Officials in Russia are confirming reports of a newly discovered ‘lost princess,’ a direct descendant of the Romanovs, Nicolas and Alexandra. We have representatives from the Russian Embassy here to discuss with us...”

             
I rolled my eyes and stopped listening. Being at least three-quarters Russian, my mother used to tell me about the tsars and tsarinas of the “old country.” Naturally I learned from my history classes who was who, but even before that I knew all about Catherine the Great and Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great. But my mother especially loved telling me about the Romanovs, particularly about Nicholas I and II. She told me how Alexi had hemophilia and how Rasputin, the “mad monk,” had allegedly cured him. I learned that the four princesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia would refer to themselves by their initials as OTMA.

             
I ate it up, because I was one of the original members of the princess generation. I would watch
Beauty and the Beast
,
Cinderella
,
Snow White
,
and
The Little Mermaid
almost every day. My mother was fine with it too. She would even join me in my pretend princess tea parties. But when the movie
Anastasia
came out when I was about four, only a couple months before my parents died, my mother wanted me to have nothing to do with it. She even refused to buy the video for me. Once I was at my neighbor’s house and she had just gotten it. We were half way through when my mom came and picked me up. She was outraged when she came in and saw that I was watching the movie she had specifically told me I was not allowed to see. She took me home and wouldn’t speak with me until later that night.

             
She came into my room, her face drawn and looking guilty. She sat down next to me said, “Anya, it’s not that I’m punishing you by not letting you watch this movie. It’s just that if you watch this, it will go against everything I have taught you.”

             
I just stared at her. I didn’t see where she was getting at. “No it’s not, Mommy. They mentioned how they all died. But you never told me that Anastasia got away.”

             
My mother rolled her eyes. “You see, this movie has already brainwashed you, darling. Oh,
nyet,
Anya, she never got away and you know it.”

             
I sat there and then had a question of my own. “What about there being a lost princess? Is that true?”

             
My mom pondered on that question for a moment. I think, looking back now, that she was trying to figure out how to explain death to me in the kindest way. “Well, there can’t be. If there are no heirs, then the royal line ends; it can’t come back. So no, there is no lost princess. And you should never believe anyone if they say that there is one. It’s a lie, a hoax. They’re only trying to get attention.” She smiled and then placed her hand on my face. “Just remember, you’re my little princess and no one can tell you anything else.”

             
That was the last private conversation my mother and I had.

             
Ever since then, several people have come forward, claiming to be related to Anastasia or one of her siblings. I would watch the reports and sometimes even hope that maybe this person wasn’t a fraud. But it would usually turn out that they were either influenced by drugs or alcohol or mental illness, or set up by someone, or just needed the cash or the attention. Now I was looking at the representative from the Russian Embassy (who seemed to have a French accent, oddly enough), and I knew that he was just feeding the newsman more lies. Maybe it was his greased-back black hair or that weirdly huge mustache, but I thought there was something shady about him. The anchorman who was interviewing him didn’t seem to be buying his story.

             
Neither was I. I finished the dishes and wiped the table and headed upstairs to go to bed.

Chapter
3

October

             
BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP!

My hand slammed down on the alarm clock with such force t
hat it felt like I broke it--my hand, not the clock. Slowly I got out of my bed, still cupping my throbbing hand, and opened my window, reluctantly letting in the light that burned my eyes. I stumbled into the bathroom and washed my face, all the while not looking forward to another boring, predictable day of school. After getting dressed and putting on a little bit of make up, I walked down the stairs and saw Linda getting my breakfast ready.

             
“Morning, Linda,” I yawned, dropping into a chair.

             
“Good morning, Anya,” she smiled as she placed a huge plate of
blini
in front of me. Linda, who was also more than half Russian and followed the old traditions, believed that breakfast was the most important meal of the day.

             
“Wow! Do I have enough here?” I asked, gawking at the plate loaded with the delectable thin buckwheat pancakes.

             
Linda laughed, “Eat your
blini
and be quiet. Now, do you want sour cream or jam?”

“Both,” I said, getting started with a huge spoonful of raspberry jam
.

             
After devouring the meal I looked at the clock and realized I was going to be late. I jumped out of my seat and ran towards the door and grabbed my bag. Linda came rushing towards me and handed me my lunch, probably filled with the basics: a salad, noodle soup, a thermos full of borscht, and
pelmeni,
which is like a large dumpling filled with ground meat and onions. You know, the usual.

             
“Have a good day,” she said, kissing me on the top of the head. “And
please
don’t get into trouble. The last thing I want is another call from the office.”

             
I smiled at her and sighed. “Don’t worry, I’ve been good this year. So far,” I added with a wink. Then I looked up to the clock. “Crap, Linda, I have to go.” I hugged her one last time before grabbing my keys and running out the door.

              I made it to school with two minutes to spare. I met up with Maggie and Sadie, and then headed to first period English.

             
“You were almost late again, Anya,” Sadie warned me with a shudder. “That would have been the third time this week.”

             
“It’s fine. I’m here now, aren’t I?”

             
“Chill, Sadie,” Maggie sighed. “Besides, there are more things to worry about. Like the Halloween bonfire we’re hosting. Anya, have you decided what you’re going to bring?”

             
“I don’t know. Probably some cookies with pumpkin faces.” We just turned into our English class when Maggie started to suggest I actually put a little effort into the party. I ignored her as we grabbed our seats next to the window, and then class began.

             
After I passed in my poor excuse of an essay, I started class the way I normally started it, looking out the window and daydreaming, hoping maybe something interesting would appear outside. Normally it was just a bird or two or sometimes a squirrel. Other than that, there wasn’t much to look at. So during my normal space-out, I perked right up when a limousine pulled up in front of the school. I sat up and studied the limo carefully, noticing two flags waving in the front. Russian flags, to be precise.              

             
“Now,
that’s
strange,” I muttered to myself. It was just ironic, considering the news reports from yesterday.

             
Just as the chauffeur stepped out to open the back door of the limo, I heard an all-too-familiar voice bellow, “
Miss
Alexandrova,
would you like to state your opinion?”

That got my attention.
Slowly turning away from the window, I came face-to-face with Mr. Numeros, English teacher from hell, standing in front of my desk with his arms crossed.

             
“Um, well, I think…I think that…” I tried to think of something smart to say but I drew a complete blank.

             
“Well, you want to know what I think?” he asked, now right in my face.

             
“Do I have a choice?” I asked, hoping a little humor might break the tension. It didn’t.

             
“I think you were too busy daydreaming to pay attention to the lesson.” I looked down in disappointment as I heard the snickers of my classmates behind me. “Now back to our lesson.”

As he turned his back to me,
I quickly stole a glance out the window. Just my luck, I missed seeing whatever big-shot got out of the limo. So I reluctantly drew my attention back to the lesson, just in time for the bell to ring. I packed up and headed for the door, not waiting for Maggie and Sadie to catch up though they eventually did. 

             
“What was with you in English?” Maggie asked, trying to slow me down. “Normally you space out but are still with it.”

             
"I got sidetracked. It was that limo outside. Did you see it?”

             
Sadie nodded, “Yeah, I was thinking, it’s either a government official, or maybe the Prize Patrol from Publishers’ Clearing House.”

             
We laughed, but Maggie rolled her eyes. “You guys… It’s probably just some speaker for the freshman, about not doing drugs or something like that.”

             
“I don’t think so,” I said as we stopped at my locker. “There were two Russian flags on the hood of the limo. I think it’s the Russian Embassy.”

             
“The Russian Embassy? Here? Then they had a
loooong
ride,” Sadie said while checking her hair in my locker mirror, “I mean, it’s not exactly a trip to the 7-11, coming here from Washington, D.C.”

             
Maggie informed us that there was more than one Russian embassy in the country; there were four, in fact, and the closest to us was in New York. That was just the sort of obscure fact Maggie would just happen to know. But I wasn’t listening; I was having a brainstorm. “Wait a minute,” I said, “didn’t Andy Marison go to Russia with his family this summer?” Sadie and Maggie looked up with wide eyes.

             
“You don’t think…?”

             
“He couldn’t have done anything that--”

             
“This is Andy Marison, guys!” I said. “The same guy who thought it would be funny to stack all the chairs in the hallway so that people couldn’t get by. The guy who let a pet pig loose through the halls the day the School Superintendent came. Trust me, he probably swiped the Romanov jewels from the Kremlin or something.”

Maggie and Sadie were looking down
, most likely because I was probably making a spectacle of myself. Then I felt a hand on my shoulder. I felt a lump form in my throat as I turned around, suddenly remembering who my locker buddy was.

             
“I didn’t swipe anything in Russia,” Andy Marison said, looking down from his six-foot-four height to my five-foot-eight.

             
“Well I… I didn’t… It wasn’t like I…”

             
"All we did was sight-seeing. And besides…” He slammed his locker shut. “If I had done something like that, don’t you think I would have bragged about it?” He turned on his heels and walked away. I took a deep breath and twisted back around to see Maggie and Sadie stifling their laughter as best as they could.

“Can we just go to
class?” I sighed as I rushed past them.

             
We made it to Math just as the bell rang. “Today we will be learning about irrational numbers,” Ms. Tawny began as we took our seats next to the window. I felt relief as I sank into my chair. Math was one of the few classes where I was able to relax. And considering my little scene with Mr. Numeros, I needed it. “Now the first thing you need to know…”

Ms. Tawny
was cut off by the announcement bell, which caught us all off-guard. No one made P.A. announcements during class; they always came during lunch, or right before the end-of-class bell. Nevertheless the bell rang and the familiar sound of the school administrator came on.

             
“Excuse the interruption, but can Anya Alexandrova please come to the office. That is all.” 

             
Click.

             
I felt my face flush as I got up and made my way to the door. As I left the classroom I could hear some
Ohhhhh’s
and the mumbles of my classmates, dying to know what I had done. I also was dying to know what I had done. I couldn’t have done anything to warrant a trip to the principal’s office. We had only been in school for a month, and I was late a few times, but I normally gave myself until Christmas before getting a detention.

             
When I arrived at the main office, the administrator and secretaries all fell silent in a way that really made me panic. Their eyes seemed to widen as I looked back at them, but then they suddenly looked down. Without a word, the administrator led me to the principal’s office and opened the door, closing it behind me. Then things got weirder. All of the shades were down and I could only see dim shadows lurking in the office. Then someone switched on a desk light.

             
I looked around in shock at the sight before me. Directly facing me were three men dressed in black suits. One looked fairly old, silver-haired and balding towards the front. He wore glasses which seemed to hide the wrinkles behind them, but only slightly. I noticed him first because he looked up at me with eyes full of anticipation, or perhaps with a slight bit of anxiety. He began to drum his fingers on the table as I looked around some more.

             
The second man next to him had greased-back black hair that matched his overly generous mustache. He had to be around forty. I recognized him immediately as the man from the news last night. His brown eyes were transfixed on me and I thought I saw a smile (or was it a smirk?) dance on his lips, but it was strategically hidden under his hefty mustache. I tried to ignore it as I looked at the third man.

             
He was clearly younger than the other two men--I guessed maybe eighteen or nineteen. . His blond hair was slightly disheveled, or maybe it was a carefully styled look that hadn’t made it to Littleton yet. His green eyes were accentuated by the emerald-colored tie he was wearing, but as I looked into them, they seemed to be wary, if not fearful. When I caught his eye, he quickly looked down.

             
Sitting next to him was Linda, and I hadn’t even recognized her at first. She looked completely different than she had at breakfast just a few hours earlier. She wasn’t wearing her usual jeans, baggy tee-shirt, and crocs, with her hair all messy. She was wearing what looked like a power suit, and her hair was pulled back in a tight bun. She looked businesslike and professional.

             
As I stood there dumbfounded at the people in front of me, I felt the principal place his hand on my shoulder. “Anya, thank you for coming. Please take a seat.” I eased my way into one of the soft cushioned seats and tried to grasp what was going on.  

             
Suddenly the black-haired man spoke up. 
“Bonjour.”
he said in his thick French accent. “My name is Marcel LaGard. This is Terrence Surand, and Kevin Turson.” I nodded at the three strangers as I tried to figure out what I was doing here. “We are part of the Russian Embassy and have come to tell you some very wonderful, though perhaps shocking news. Kevin, I’ll ask you to explain.” He nodded toward to the younger blond man, who cleared his throat before speaking.

             
“Um, Anya, I really don’t know how to say this without alarming you, but…” he began, and all I could think at that moment was, if these guys are from the Russian Embassy, why does this guy sound American and other guy sound French? “Well, I’ll just say it then. Anya Alexandrova, you are the Empress of Russia.”