Stand By Me

catorce | chase

For the next half hour, the tiny car carrying three American foreign exchange students and one heir to the Spanish royal dynasty felt like the heaviest car in the world with the weight of silence hanging around the Prince, separating himself from us.

While in the front seat, navigating Louis to our destination in Barcelona, Isabel was texting me furiously. I tried shielding my phone away from Antonio in fear that he'd peer over and read our texts that were very much, inexplicably about him. Not that the Prince was looking, seeing as the Prince had quietly dozed off already, resting his hooded head on the rim of the glass window.

ISABEL: Do you think he is even the real Prince of Spain? I mean, have we tried DNA-testing him?

I tried to stifle a chuckle, texting back, Do you want to ask him to take a quick saliva swab? You go first. And you saw him. It's him in the flesh. I myself still had trouble believing the fabrications in fate that had to have happened in order for me to be seated beside a prince. The closest I had ever gotten to a celebrity was flying over Hollywood, California on a plane.

ISABEL: This is unreal. I wish I could post a selfie with him.

My fingers typed back, Absolutely no one in the world would believe you.

It had not escaped my mind that just very recently in the same week, the Prince had not only barfed and puked all over my shoes at work, but was very recently photographed in a public paparazzi fest hugging me in an airport elevator. My stomach churned with anxiety at the thought of those photos. There was no absolute way those could get back to the States, right?

And not only that, but how visible was my face in those photos? Could I be made out from a distance? Would that even make this mission and goose chase possible?

In the back of my mind, I replayed the words that the gas station clerk told us a while ago: The Queen and King are extremely worried. Around half a million euros for him, and growing by each day he goes missing.

I instantly added, Also, maybe let's not considering we'd get incriminated for kidnapping on an international scale.

I wish I could convince myself that I was only joking, but it sure didn't feel like it.

"What are you guys texting back there?" Louis, ever the glorious Captain Obvious, said aloud, resulting in causing the Prince to stir awake from his short cat nap.

Antonio brought a hand to wipe his eyes and pulled his hoodie off his head for a brief moment. From here, I could see that his eyes were still bloodshot, with deep, sagging crescents adorning the bottom of his eyes. Isabel gave Louis the most quietest smack on the upper arm, before turning around and facing the Prince and I in the backseat.

"Good-morning!" She remarked, although it was firmly only two pm in the afternoon. "Doing okay back there, Your Highness?"

"Si, si," he exclaimed groggily, a raspiness attached to his voice. "How much farther? I apologize if I snored."

I took in a second to get a good look at Antonio. I was absolutely feeling confused at this complex human being. One second, he was completely inebriated and drunkenly insulting the bartender and vomiting on my shoes, and the next second,

I shook my head politely, "You didn't, not to worry. Not that we would've minded."

Louis checked his phone at the GPS. "We left at around one-thirty, and from Madrid to Barcelona going straight on the A-2 and maybe the AP-7... we'll get there in six hours."