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When I was six, my grandfather became sick for the first time. I think he knew he was going to die soon. 

He took me into his office and showed me the snow globe on his desk. Inside the snow globe was a frog, wearing a crown. He had shown it to me before, turning it over and letting the golden glitter collect on the top, then quickly turning it back up. We watched the glitter fall gently around the frog prince. He would soon gift me the snow globe, and tell me it was my turn to take care of it. 

But the frog prince was alone in there, I thought, and he looked sad. I was sad for him. When I told my grandfather this, he said, “Don’t worry, Erik; he has a nice life. He’s trapped in a perfect world.”

I was just about to turn twenty-one when I died.

I was a navy officer cadet, I had been a prefect and a rowing champion in my school. I was the crown prince, and I was supposed to become king, once my mother passed away or decided to abdicate in my favor, whichever happened first, many, many years from now. But I went away first.

The Swedish monarchy hadn’t lost a member of the royal family at such a young age in a very long time, perhaps centuries. The closest had been Princess Astrid of Sweden, an actual ancestor of mine, who also died from a car accident in 1935, at the age of 29. I didn’t meet her, of course, but I saw pictures of her. I could see a resemblance between us, but I never saw her in my heaven either.

Curiously, when people talked about me, they compared me to Grace Kelly and Princess Diana, since they also died in car crashes, but not to Astrid. People are not as familiar with our history as they think. Or maybe it was because she left Sweden and became Queen of the Belgians. 

Yet she had married and had children and became queen.

I didn’t live long enough to become a husband or a father, or a king, nor do as many things as any of them got to do. 

I can’t undo it.

I had been on my way to see my brother. It only occurred to me later, after I was dead, that I didn’t crash my car because of driving too fast; I was impatient to get there, sure. But it happened because I got distracted, thinking about something my brother had said.

—

I was in my heaven by that time, feeling like I had been put together again. 

“I don’t know what to do,” I said to Anna, my intake counselor.

“Exactly,” she responded, and that was all she had to say. That was the point. There wasn’t a lot of bullshit in my heaven. I didn’t think heaven would be Swedish. Or maybe I thought of it that way because I was Swedish. 

—

I felt like trying to figure out how I could have regained control, why I didn’t react the way that I would have hoped. Why did I freeze? Why didn’t I hit the brakes sooner? 

Anna told me these questions were pointless.

“You didn’t and that’s that. Don’t mull it over. It does no good. You’re dead, and you just have to accept it.”

I understood, but I still wondered. 

—

I could see it happening, almost like it happened in slow motion. And as clearly as if I had been watching it happen from a distance. It felt like it was yesterday. And it was, in a way. Life became a perpetual yesterday.

—

By the time my bodyguards, Malin and Joakim, got me out of the wreckage of the black Mustang convertible with red leather interiors that I had been so proud of, and an ambulance whisked me away to hospital, I was gone.

They tried to resuscitate me. I went into cardiac arrest a few times, and they tried frantically to keep me alive, to bring me back. But I was already on my way to another place.

I was in transit.

—

As soon as I popped up with enough awareness to look down at the events unfolding continuously down on Earth, I was much more concerned with my family than anything else.

I saw my mother sobbing in my father’s arms, and I saw my father with tears in his eyes, holding her close, the only thing keeping her from crumbling to the ground.

From the moment she received the news, she would be continuously bracing up under the weight of it, which she naïvely hoped might become lighter someday, but it would just continue to hurt in new and different ways for the rest of her life.

—

And miles away from them, I saw my brother in school, in the headmistress’s office, being handed the phone, and my mother’s voice telling him what had happened. I saw him walk away from anyone offering a comforting hand or word, and wrap his arms around himself, trying to keep it all in, before he finally crumbled to the floor in the hall where I had graduated only two years earlier.

—

I arrived at what I knew had to be heaven. I thought it looked this way for everyone.

There were mountains and fields, and lakes and channels and rivers, and miles and miles of forest. It was like I could see all of Sweden at once, and all the people and the buildings and houses had disappeared. Almost all of them.

There was my favorite summer place, Soliden Palace in Gotland, where we spent midsummer, and the holiday cottage of my first girlfriend, and the colorful houses from Gamla stan but they were stacked one on top of the other like you see on the coast of Slussen, and a beautiful Japanese house that I had seen once on a trip to Kyoto, the first really long trip abroad on which I accompanied my mother. It had a fantastic garden, full of blooming cherry blossoms. And it was in the middle of Kungsträdgården, in Stockholm, which was also famous for its cherry blossom trees. There were rowboats in the rivers, all the time, and people saying hello from them. There was music everywhere.

There were beautiful girls too. Lots of them.

These were my dreams. The things I dreamed of when I was alive. 

—

I realized later that all the people that I saw were all in their own versions of heaven. Our versions simply overlapped, with many similar things inside.

I met Joe, who looked like he was a couple of years younger. He was lying on the grass and reading a book. He reminded me of my brother a little bit, except that he had dark hair. 

“What’s your name?” he asked me.

“Erik.”

“I’m Joe.”

He had a British accent. I wondered if he was British, and whether he had been in Britain at the time.

“How long have you been here?” I asked.

“Four days.”

“Me too.”

We stared up at the sky. It was somehow every sky that I loved. Right above me was bright blue full of fluffy clouds, and to the left near the horizon it was dark and clear and starry, and in front of me was a summer sunset, when the sun never really sets and the sunlight made the clouds pink and orange, and to the right it was lit up by the most mesmerising aurora borealis.

“Do you like it here?” he asked me.

Whenever people asked me questions like that, my knee-jerk reaction was to be diplomatic and affable and say ‘yes’. I didn’t have to be any of those things anymore.

“Not really.”

Joe nodded. “Neither do I.”

—

He told me he had just started sixth form, which sounded like Swedish gymnasium, but he had moved to a new school, where they bullied him mercilessly, despite his many reports. A bully got carried away one day and slammed his head into a wall at just the right angle.

I told him I was a prince. Or rather the crown prince. Or rather, had been. He nodded. They had royalty in England too. His grandmother had been obsessed with the monarchy. He once met Kate Middleton, but he didn’t really care much about it.

—

That was the beginning. I guess.

Our heavens overlapped a lot, it seemed. They were made up of our simplest dreams.

We walked on an endless beach and went swimming in the ocean, and the waves and the weather were always perfect. We ate our favorite foods and we never felt sick.

Our heavens took form as our relationship grew, as we got to know each other. We liked a lot of the same things, even when our lives had been very different. 

Our guide, Anna, reminded me a lot of my father’s sister, Rebecca. She was my favorite aunt when I was growing up. Then she got divorced and remarried and moved away to Italy, so we rarely saw her.

Joe said that Anna reminded him of an aunt too. It didn’t take us long to realize that she was something that we wanted: family.

Anna had worked with a refugee program. She died because her abusive ex-boyfriend found her again and stabbed her.

On the fifth day she approached us with cups of ice cream and said “I’m here to help.”

My cup contained two scoops of pistachio ice cream, my favorite.

“How does this work?” we asked. 

“Do you know what you want?”

“Maybe,” I said. Joe shrugged. 

“Then all you have to do is desire it,” Anna responded. “And if you desire it enough, and understand why, as in really know why, then it will come to you.”

It sounded so simple. And it was.

That’s how I ended up in a really nice flat with smooth warm surfaces on the inside, but the outside looked like a brick cottage with vines growing up the walls, and a massive garden that just stayed beautiful. 

Joe lived next to me in a standalone Edwardian townhouse with huge flowering trees surrounding it, and a lake. 

I had a bike, and there were perfect trails wherever I went, and I never broke a sweat, and I never felt tired.

We could go anywhere we’d like, and we’d find things that we wanted. Bookshops and libraries. Ice cream shops. Coffee shops. Pubs. Night clubs. There was a movie theatre where we could go and watch movies about ourselves, where we were the main characters, or just movies that we loved, playing all the time.

Everyone we saw in these places was having fun. I was having fun. 

But I wanted to be alive again.

“You can’t,” Anna said.

—

Sometimes Joe was with me a lot, and sometimes he went somewhere where I couldn’t find him. I guess that was the part of heaven that we didn’t share, the part that was only his. Sometimes I was in a part that was only mine.

I missed him, and it was odd, because I had never met him before, but I knew suddenly the meaning of forever.

—

I couldn’t have what I really wanted. To be alive again. To be with my family. Heaven was not perfect.

But even if I couldn’t be with them, I wanted to watch them. Maybe if I watched closely, and hoped really hard, I might still feel like I was with the people on Earth that I loved. 

There was a funeral. The church was full, and there were cameras everywhere. They broadcast it all over the country.

My mother cried behind a veil, and my father’s eyes looked dark and heavy.

My brother was numb.

Prior to the ceremony, he was left alone with my casket, covered with the Swedish flag, a small mound of fresh soil on top of it. They left him alone with me, without having to ask. Nobody seemed to want to touch him, nobody spoke directly to him. He just wandered in, and everyone just left.  

He put his head on top of it, like he was making sure it was real. 

I was in there, or what was left of me on Earth was in there. I existed in the periphery now, all around and yet not quite there.

He lifted a hand and touched the soil.  

I tried to touch him, to reach for him. I could see him, I could almost feel him, but he couldn’t see me. He couldn’t feel me. 

He stayed like that until it was time, and someone finally came to fetch him. 

At the end of the ceremony, my navy mates picked up the casket and everyone stood up. I saw my cousin August, I saw the prime minister, I saw royals from our neighbouring nations, I saw my friends from school, all decked in black and looking doleful. 

My brother walked directly behind my casket. He almost looked like a ghost, gliding down the church aisle. 

—

I hadn’t had a girlfriend at the time. I hadn’t had time for that in the moment, not for something serious at least. Later I would, I had said.

They all wanted something serious. They all wanted something that would last. Most of them just wanted to become princesses. I knew they had no idea what that implicated.

I hadn’t even been close to getting married, let alone having children. I had no heirs.

—

My brother was now next in line. And my mother made sure he was aware of it. 

She suggested that he should join the next meeting with the royal court, to get a feeling of how things were handled. It felt almost like it was back to business. 

But at the same time, I knew she was falling apart. She had not been eating well, nor sleeping. She cried at the drop of a hat. 

I wanted to comfort her. 

My father did the best he could. But I knew more than anyone what afflicted my mother. She and I alone had known, had learned everything there was to know about it. What it meant to be heir to the throne.

It meant that she could not fall apart. She wasn’t only my mother, she was the queen.

She had a duty. 

I’d had a duty too. 

And now it was my brother’s.

“I always knew I would inherit the crown from my father, but I had time to prepare. And so did Erik,” she said the night after my funeral. They were sitting down for dinner, and trying to act normal. Perhaps it was all they could do to feel a semblance of normalcy. 

“But now you will succeed me. You and your future children,” she said, looking at him almost tenderly. Her voice was hoarse, and her eyes were red from crying all day. 

“No more mistakes,” she said to him, more a command than a request, despite the gentle tone. “You will be compared to Erik in every step you take.”

I knew this was true, unfortunately. That was supposed to be encouraging, but I knew it wasn’t. Nobody likes being compared to their older sibling. I wouldn’t like it. 

More than trying to be a role model for my brother, I had always tried to be a good friend. Maybe that had been my mistake. 

My brother loved me, looked up to me. But he never wanted to be me. And now he had no choice.

“I already am,” he said, his voice heavy. “I always have been.”

—

My brother was an empty shell. A spectre.

For days he did nothing but sleep, barely ate, barely did anything. 

I hoped he’d feel better soon. I hoped he was simply weathering a storm that would eventually pass, and that soon he’d go back to normal, or whatever normal was now. 

Because I knew that it wouldn’t be long before he was expected to embody the new crown prince.

He’d be expected to be calm, to carry his grief inside, to not crumble. 

None of those things were him.

They gave him time to decide when he would go back to school. It was only a matter of when, not if. He didn’t have a choice. 

But he didn’t protest. 

Maybe he wanted to get away from the place that reminded him much more of me, if only for a little while. Even if it meant going back to Hillerska.

—

—

As I lay in bed in my flat, staring outside the large windows at the changing sky, I obsessively went over the last conversation that my brother and I had. I didn’t sleep. I didn’t need to sleep anymore. I only watched and thought and wondered.

I saw myself in my room in the palace, chatting on the phone with him after he called me. He was supposed to attend the Parents day lunch, as did all the boarders, but he was hiding. 

My mother and father did not attend. They had been there for all the Parents day lunches when I was at Hillerska, but this time my mother had to go abroad on an official state visit, and my father went with her.

My brother was alone. 

He didn’t want to be there anyway; he didn’t like making small conversation, and he knew that, without my mother present, all the attention would be on him. He was not painfully shy or awkward, he simply had no interest in being seen, because he knew that people only took an interest in him as the prince. They didn’t really care about him; they didn’t see him, they only saw Prince Wilhelm of Sweden. 

“Come on, it’s not that hard,” I said, pretending to be exasperated. “It’s gonna look really strange if you don’t show up.”

“For me, it’s weird if I show up, Erik,” he said. 

“God, you’re such a dork,” I teased him. He just laughed.

I hoped that this would pass. He was only a teenager, he was probably just going through a rebellious phase. I had too, even though mine passed quicker, because of who I was. I’d had a role to fulfill, he hadn’t. 

“Pretend to be someone else,” I said, like I usually did, whenever I had to coax him to participate in formal events. That was my key to everything, pretending to be someone other than myself. 

He couldn’t be bothered most of the time, no matter what I said. He couldn’t for the life of him fake anything. 

And he couldn’t fake liking Hillerska. He hated that he was forced to go to a boarding school in the middle of nowhere, and leave his school in Stockholm and all his friends behind.

“We never should have let you choose your school,” my mother said that day when they made him record an apology, as if that was the reason everything happened, but it was settled. They suited him up and covered his scarred face with makeup and gave him a script that he could barely choke out.  

I knew it wasn’t fair.

“Being a prince is not a punishment but a privilege,” my mother would say to us both, on various different occasions. My brother had to be reminded more often. 

I couldn’t comfort him in front of our parents. I couldn’t tell him anything to make him feel better. They would scold me for coddling him. 

So I only sat there, watching him, trying to be encouraging, as he breathed hard and tried to keep his voice level while speaking to the camera. I wanted him to be aware that I was there too. And maybe if he could focus on me, and no one else, he’d feel a bit better. 

—

I put my foot down and told our mother that I would drive him to Hillerska on his first day. Not surprisingly, she protested. 

“He needs to do this on his own, Erik.”

“He will, but I can show him around. I can show him that it’s not so bad.”

She gave up promptly. My mother didn’t care much how he adapted, as long as he adapted. 

I cared. My parents came with me on my first day. My brother deserved to have someone with him too.

The royal court saw it as an opportunity for media coverage. They claimed that there was a lot of damage control to be done. 

I rolled my eyes at ‘damage’. 

—

I drove with the top down, radio blasting, hoping my brother would cheer up, relax. He did not talk the entire way there, pouting at the scenery.

When we arrived, there were too many people waiting for us: the school headmistress, school staff, Farima, a photographer. That was too many. My brother rolled his eyes as I squeezed his shoulder before getting out of the car. 

I greeted everyone as the photographers began snapping photo after photo of our every move. 

I pulled August into a hug. He looked sharp in his uniform, all smiley-faced and twinkly-eyed.

I missed this place so much. And August was this place. 

Farima directed us promptly. Stand here, look here, smile. Another student, a first year from Skogsbacken, Alexander, rushed forward to carry my brother’s suitcase. My brother protested before Farima decided this was the perfect photo, of us carrying the suitcases inside. I took one, and August picked the other one up before my brother could, and there was a bit of a tug-o-war between them. I could hear the anger in my brother’s voice, even when he protested gently. 

“Just let him take it,” I said with a smile, even though it pained me. It didn’t feel like a big deal to me, but it was clearly a big deal for him. He only stopped tugging when I said his name, like a warning, and let go. 

“Wilhelm,” Farima called, and gestured for my brother to smile. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him grimace. 

—

After a painful parade of shaking hands with the staff and posing for more photos, we went to the church. Every student watched us as we walked in. I could feel my brother shrivelling up like a flower under the scorching sun. 

The choir came out; the girl at the front waved and smiled. My brother waved back. 

August was surprised that we knew Felice Ehrenchrona. I hadn’t seen her in a long time, but I recognized her. She had grown into a beautiful girl, and she seemed nice and friendly. August claimed to want to marry her. 

“You’ll have to stop sleeping around, then,” I teased. 

“One must lay the foundation while they’re still too insecure to object,” he retorted in typical August fashion, 

I snorted. Wilhelm didn’t find it funny. 

In retrospect, what actually seemed funny to me was to hear August talk like that. He hadn’t always seemed this snarky or self-assured, not when he started at Hillerska. Being here changed him, made him more confident and outspoken. In reality, he had always been like that on the inside, but now he acted like it too. 

I knew it because I was there. I witnessed his transformation. 

The choir began to sing. The song choice surprised me, but I was more surprised by how good it sounded. One of August’s classmates, Vincent, yelled something at the soloist, interrupting him and throwing him off for a moment. Everyone snickered, and the headmistress shushed him loudly, but the soloist kept singing, louder. 

I shook my head and smiled. A part of me missed this, the feeling of being here. These funny little moments, this place, the people. 

And as I glanced beside me for a moment at my brother, and saw him suddenly smiling, I wondered if he was starting to feel it too. 

—

It didn’t last.

There was nothing to cheer him up. Not with everyone looking, not with the photographers blinding us with their flashes. He chewed at his thumbnail, as he did when he felt antsy. I got annoyed too. 

“We run away on three,” I whispered without thinking.

“What?” my brother asked, suddenly snapping out of it.

I gave him a mischievous smile and counted under my breath, and took off. He dashed after me. 

I heard Farima protesting feebly, and Joakim take off after us, barely managing to keep up even as we tripped up the hill in our inadequate shoes.

—

The single room felt smaller than what I remembered them to be. Or maybe it just felt smaller because we were both inside, the two suitcases crowding the floor. 

In a last attempt to make him feel better, I said he was lucky he didn’t have to share like I did. I had said a lot of things since the day of the announcement, to try to make things easier: I encouraged him to join the rowing team, and told him which showers had the best water pressure.  Probably none of them helped. At that point, I knew nothing that I said would help. 

“Three fucking years,” he fumed, slouching in his chair. I felt offended for a moment. I had loved the three years I spent in that place, and it annoyed me that he didn’t even want to give it a chance. I was annoyed, at his attitude, at his rebellion. 

But I had to remind myself that we were different, and I couldn’t expect him to welcome this place with open arms. 

“Copy the first years and listen to the third years,” I advised him. hoping that he’d stop making this harder for himself, and just try to adjust. 

“It’s not just you. Everything you do reflects on the family. Stop being so selfish.”

I should have shut up. I should have not said anything. Silence would have been better.

But he needed to be more mindful of the way the public perceived him. And he needed to accept things the way they were.

“The faster you adapt, the easier your life will be. It’s not so hard. You just have to learn to keep up appearances.”

I learned to do that when I was even younger than him. I was a master at keeping appearances. 

—

It was like leaving him in purgatory.

Leaving him behind was painful, as much for him as it was for me. I knew he wouldn’t like it there, that he wouldn’t adjust so easily.

And I knew that our cousin August wouldn’t be of much help. He and my brother were too different, they would clash. 

But it was the best I could offer in that moment. 

—

We spoke a few times after that. I knew he texted our mother more than once, begging her to let him come back to Stockholm. I did my best to manage his expectations whenever we spoke.

That’s why it surprised me when he decided to stay during the weekend of Parents day. 

I looked forward to seeing him, hoping to talk some more sense into him, to help him overcome his anger.

As soon as I asked, he feigned nonchalance as he mentioned staying at school for the weekend to study, claiming he was stil behind and he had catching up to do.

I laughed, amused. 

“Are you, Wilhelm, my little brother, staying at school?” I teased in disbelief.

He doubled down on being oblivious. I peered at his face through the phone screen and laughed.

“You’ve met someone.”

He scoffed and turned pink. I smiled smugly as he stammered and looked around, like he was trying to find words lying around about him. 

“I, uh…” he mumbled, and sighed. “Okay, yes, but…” he started rambling about whether he thought they were a couple or anything at all. I relished his awkwardness, the way he was trying not to smile. I had never seen him like this.

“I get it, I get it…” I said quickly, to put him out of his misery. “You don’t have to tell me… I don’t want to know any details.”

That was a lie. I wanted to know everything. But I didn’t want to pressure him. He clearly was in way over his head. 

Immediately I wondered if it was that girl, Felice. Especially after seeing him smiling up at the choir that first day, but I didn’t want to ask, not yet. 

I became serious for a moment. “Hey Wille, enjoy yourself. Pretty soon people will start to have opinions…”

“Nobody cares about me. It’s because you’re the crown prince that they have opinions.”

He meant it. He never said things like that in a self-deprecating way; he was just used to people not considering him as important as me, because he was “just the spare”. 

I hated it. He was important to me. 

And right then, it made me a little sad to realize that I wouldn’t be seeing him yet. But I tried to lighten the mood.

“I don’t get it, why then are you sulking in your room when you could be hanging out with your crush?” I teased again.

He turned pink again. “Fuck you, it’s not a crush.”

I chuckled. “So what would you call it, then?”

“Goodbye, Erik, goodbye,” he said, sounding annoyed, but there was a smile plastered on his face. I winked. 

“Okay, goodbye.”

“You’re so annoying. Goodbye.”

He shut off the call.

That was the last thing he said to me. You’re so annoying. Goodbye. 

He thinks about that all the time now. 

—

Maybe it was Felice. 

It would make sense. She was beautiful and charming and had the right upbringing. Apparently she was also a horseback rider. Maybe they bonded over that. My brother liked every photo and video she posted on Instagram. 

I wondered what my mother would think of her. 

But this was just a crush right now. It could be anyone, it didn’t have to be a future anything. And nobody needed to know. 

Or maybe they’d ride off into the sunset together. 

—

My brother used to ride horses too. He used to love it.

He’d ride mostly during the summer breaks, when we’d go to one of the summer palaces; he would go off by himself for hours, no bodyguards to drag him back; he liked the freedom it granted him, to be able to disappear for a while. 

For me it was driving. I was very proud of my car, but it was more about the fact that I could be on my own as well, just for a little bit, feel free.

One time, he literally disappeared for hours and hours. He wouldn’t answer his phone. It was already autumn, and the light waned quicker: when it started to get cold and dark, I began to worry. We looked for him for so long that my body was aching all over by the time we found him. 

He was lying on the grass in the middle of a field, having fallen off his horse and sprained his ankle. His phone battery had died. He had intended to sleep under the stars and make his way back in the morning. He was only thirteen.  

I started berating him, but then I hugged him and helped him up onto my horse and brought him back into town and took him to hospital, where he was fitted with an ankle brace and given pain medication. 

Our parents tore into him when we got home. Our mother told him he would not be riding horses anymore, if that’s what it took to discourage something like this happening again. 

He would have protested, but he was in pain. 

That was the first time I really noticed how different they treated him. Neither of them hugged him. They were only cross with him. 

“They were just worried,” I said to him, like I was trying to convince myself as well. 

“Yeah,” my brother muttered, holding back tears. 

—

If he wasn’t coming home for the weekend, then I would go to him.

I didn’t tell him. I told the staff, only because I had to. I got into my Mustang, followed by my bodyguards in a black car, and set off. 

I wanted to be there for him. He was not letting on how much it hurt that our parents didn’t come for the lunch. I knew he felt lonely.

I wanted to comfort him.

But also, selfishly, I wanted to feel better about myself, for not fighting harder so that he wouldn’t have to go to Hillerska. Even if it was the best three years of my life, I knew he simply wasn’t the same as me, and he wouldn’t feel the same about that place, about the environment and the people. I still hoped that he’d eventually fit in.  

And finally, I wanted to find out who this ‘not crush’ might be. 

—

I watched my brother sombrely climb out of the car and be welcomed back by the staff and receive condolences and be guided into the main hall. He still looked like a ghost. He moved like he had forgotten how to be human.

People watched him, mouths open, misty-eyed as they tried to convey their sympathy.

They had a memorial service. The choir sang. The lead singer belted my favorite song, the rest of the choir harmonizing with him, and I cried in my heaven. I didn’t like this.

My brother stood up to talk. He said nice things about me, and something not so nice about himself. I felt a pang, but I wasn’t surprised.

People cried. Nobody knew what to do. 

Everyone had lost someone, some family member or acquaintance, grandparent, uncle, aunt, godparent, because of old age, of a medical condition, of cancer… everyone knew someone who had died. But no one knew anyone who had died tragically and unexpectedly and young.

But now they knew me.

—

My brother stayed in the main hall, alone, after everyone left. He sat in silence, staring at nothing, like he needed to withdraw into himself before he was forced to interact further with anyone.

A boy approached him. It was the lead singer of the choir, I recognized him from my brother’s first day. He sang really well that time, and he sang really well today. 

He sat nearby and asked my brother how he was. He said that he had been texting him.

“I need you to delete our messages,” my brother said.

The other boy looked stunned. 

My brother didn’t look at him. 

“I can’t do this anymore,” he said as he stood up and left. 

I didn’t know what to think. I followed him, even though I was curious about the other boy. 

—

They switched him to a double room on the first floor of Skogsbacken. I watched him be shown into his new room.

When I lived at Skogsbacken, I had a double room too, but I had to share. My roommate, Pelle, had been awful, he often masturbated in his sleep and his feet stank. 

My brother would live there by himself. All his stuff was already there, someone had moved everything. 

The headmistress spoke gently to my brother; for a moment she slipped and called him by his name instead of his title. She touched his face, and he hugged her, like he hadn’t been hugged in all this time. I don’t think he had been.

He was the crown prince now, so everyone would treat him differently, exactly at the moment that he desperately wanted to be anyone else. 

Everyone left, except my bodyguards—his bodyguards—, who stood outside by the door. Malin referred to him by his new title as she closed the door.

Don’t call him that, I tried to tell her. He can’t be that right now. 

—

In the privacy of his room, my brother picked up the snow globe, which had been placed on the windowsill.

—

I worried that my brother, left alone, would do something irrational.

He sat on the bed, hugging himself. He pulled out his phone, and I watched him scroll through his contacts, but I didn’t see what he was doing, who he was trying to call, before he put it away again.

He peeled the scarf off his body and tossed it aside. He tugged at the tie knotted around his neck, at the collar of his shirt, like he was asphyxiating. He hugged himself and closed his eyes. 

I could feel him reeling, trying to bury his emotions deep inside. I saw him breathing hard, rubbing his chest and neck and face, felt his heart thumping loud and fast in his chest, like he was running…

I could hear his thoughts, but it was like a loud, unintelligible jumble. 

He stood up and stretched his arms, to the sides, over his head, like he couldn’t breathe, like his body did not fit him properly, like he was bursting at the seams… 

I worried.

He finally stormed out of the room. He turned, desperate, and shouted at the bodyguards to please leave him alone. 

Malin apologized, her voice soft, but said no.

He turned, and they followed him. With a huff, he kept going, knowing that they would be behind him. 

—

They had to follow him. I know how annoying that could be. I used to joke about it, just to make myself feel better.

“Just make sure you don’t follow me into the shitter by accident,” I’d tell them. 

One time Malin walked in on my having sex with a girl, and I don’t know who was more embarrassed. Malin did not look at all flustered. I made a joke about that, but she was unflappable.

I guess she was more used to it than I expected.

—

My brother walked like he didn’t know or care where he was going. He just walked, stomping down the stone steps, quick enough to keep enough distance between him and them.

A voice called to him, and he stopped. He looked slightly surprised and relieved. 

A girl emerged from the little nook under the stone arch. It was Felice. My brother smiled a little. 

She gestured to the nook, to another girl with her hair up in two buns atop her head. They had a little fire going. They were both still in uniform and they had a little ash smeared on their foreheads.

“About the other day…” Felice started.

“Don’t worry about it,” my brother said. He had suddenly become charming. He took off his coat and placed it on her shoulders. 

Hug him, please, I said to her. Tell him a joke, make him laugh, please. Hug him as hard as you can. Please comfort him. 

But she couldn’t hear me. No one could hear me.

—

The first time I looked down on Earth, I realized that it looked exactly like one would think, like a satellite zooming in. Like looking at Google Earth, but everyone on Earth was actually moving. 

I could zoom in anywhere I wanted.

But there was only a few places where I actually wanted to see. 

—

A few times, I checked on some of my friends, curious about how they were dealing with my absence, with the heaviness.

I checked on my parents a lot, especially on my mother, trying to carry on with her duties. 

But I found myself drawn most to my brother, miles away, seemingly alone.

In the evenings, he sat in his room alone, drawing or reading or listening to music in his headphones. He kept most of the lights off, except for a string of red lights coiled around the bookshelf above his bed, casting an eerie red glow on his face. It made him look gaunt. He spent a lot of time like that. He didn’t want to see anyone, or hang out in the common room. He asked the bodyguards to keep everyone away, even August.

During the days, however, he appeared to be fine. He went to class and went to rowing practice, and he talked with Felice and he even laughed. 

But sometimes he’d withdraw into himself, staring idly out the window in class, or walking by himself in the garden, the bodyguards a few steps behind. 

And when he did that, everyone left him alone, kept their distance. 

It was like there was a veil between him and everyone else. Like nobody could reach him. Nobody dared.

Not even the person that he hadn’t wanted me to know about, the one that had made him smile and become coy.

Not that I knew. 

The next time I saw him, he was gliding through the dark, with the first year lackey, the one that carried his bags the first day. The Asian one, I couldn’t remember his name, until someone said it: Alexander.

Alexander knocked on my brother’s window, and led him quietly toward The Palace, the ‘secret’ bunker in the middle of the forest where all the parties happened at Hillerska, where anything could happen and no one would find out. 

It was bullshit, it was not secret. The school staff knew about it, but they all turned a blind eye. 

I knew my brother had already been to that place; he told me about his initiation and the party afterwards, but didn’t share many details. I could tell he was annoyed about the hazing, so I didn’t press him for more. I thought about asking August about it, but never did. 

Inside The Palace, they stood outside a locked door and my brother pulled out the key that had been left with a cryptic invitation in his room. A group of Skogsbacken boys, stood inside the dimly lit room, in a semicircle, waiting for him. 

He was being inducted into The Society, this secret organization or club that had been going on for ages. To be a part of it, you had to be the first born male of a noble family. My brother, as the new crown prince, was being offered the spot that I had once held. They wouldn’t have invited him otherwise, but I no longer existed. They needed him in the club. 

The first time I walked into the same room, during my first year, I was admittedly in awe; and so was August during his first year, when he set foot in there, about to be welcome into an exclusive circle. 

I knew that my brother didn’t feel the same; he sneered at anything that felt remotely ceremonious, like these antiquated traditions of initiations and secret clubs. 

Granted, it was ridiculous; we didn’t really do anything except get drunk and play games, but the excuse of it was to preserve certain traditions, and protect the legacy of elite families that made Hillerska prestigious and longstanding; and more importantly, to protect the royal family. 

The boys in the Society liked the exclusivity, they liked that they fulfilled the requirements to be included, and they liked to think that they were extra important just because they liked the monarchy.

In retrospect, it made me feel more important. Sometimes the way some of the boys spoke about me made it seem like I was a mere figurehead, the carved figure in the front of a ship, commanding some sort of awe and respect, and yet ultimately useless. Nothing more than a symbol.

But as long as people thought of me as indispensable, I tried my best to make myself indispensable.

It was exhausting. But that was better than a lot of other things.

Like being a no one.

—

People called my brother a ‘party prince’, just because he liked to go out with friends. But because he was a royal he could get in anywhere, and his friends liked that, so they always wanted to go to clubs and parties.

He didn’t always drink heavily, and he rarely did drugs. But the environment and the people around him made those things increasingly accessible to him. Most of the time, he got away with it, until he started to become more popular. 

Many people didn’t like my brother much because he didn’t really care about being popular, he didn’t want to play into people’s expectations. 

So most of the time, that popularity came with a cost. Like the cut on his cheek and the black eye he got last time. It wasn’t his first time getting unwanted attention, but for my mother it was the last.

But my brother didn’t do those things, getting drunk or doing drugs or fighting people, to get attention, like the media often claimed. He did it to block out people, to make himself immune to them.

He did it to feel less like himself.

—

They played games and did shots and talked shit and joked, talking loudly over the music and shoving each other boisterously. After they were more than buzzed, August told Alexander to bring out the stuff that would ‘send them to the moon’. Alexander came back with a white bag full of various drugs: blisters packs and bottles of pills. They continued to roll dice and bet money on cards and talk shit, and popped pills and did more shots. 

My brother smiled and played along, toasting as he tossed back shot after shot, being boisterous after every pill he swallowed.

This was not the time, he wasn’t in the right place to take anything, but that was precisely why he did, without even thinking. 

He took so much more than he had ever taken before. And he was off. 

I had never seen him like this.

It was almost like his body acted independently from his mind, like a puppet whose strings have all become tangled.

“I’m going to mess up…” he said quietly, a little bit later. He and August were outside, peeing behind some bushes. The Palace was dark except for the room where The Society met. Faint music and voices came from inside.

Take him back to the house, I begged August. Call it a night, please.

They talked about me. In a slurred speech, my brother voiced guilt that I didn’t know was there, rumbling on the inside. He didn’t know what to do with himself. “I shouldn’t even be functioning as a human right now.”

Either from the drugs or the alcohol, or perhaps just the  of it all, he struggled with the words: 

“My brother is, like, dead…” 

It made it real all of a sudden. As much for him as it was for me. 

I could feel August processing it at the same time. 

—

The day my brother started at Hillerska, I stepped aside for a moment whilst Farima made him pose for yet another photo, and approached August.

“Take care of him, okay?”

He smirked and nodded. “Of course.”

“Promise.”

“I promise, Erik. I’ll care of him as if he were my own brother.”

I nodded. August had not known what it was like to have brothers until he went to Hillerska.

“And… he’s not like us, so don’t rough him up too much,” I added.

He knew what I meant. But also I knew how August was. I knew how all the boys in Hillerska could be. I knew all too well. 

I had been one of them, after all. But I didn’t want that for my brother.

“No, of course not,” August responded, giving me an ambiguous wink.  

I wanted to warn him again, but fell silent. I had to trust him. 

—

“It’s not your fault,” August said, squeezing his shoulder. “It really isn’t your fault.”

In that moment, I begged my brother to believe him. 

I felt heavy all of a sudden, in a way that I hadn’t felt in the time that I had been in heaven. It felt the closest to being alive again. But it hurt.

August opened his mouth and let out a deep scream. Then he looked at my brother, as if inviting him, daring him to do the same.

My brother hesitated before he tossed his head back and screamed too. It sounded like a lament, like he was wounded.

They screamed into the night, over and over, until their throats hurt.

In heaven, I felt something akin to pain in my chest. I let out a wail too, and cried. 

—

August was actually the first person I knew who had lost someone. His father died when he was sixteen.

It was also the only person who I knew that had lost someone to suicide.

—

I started to wonder why I couldn’t see other people. My grandfather, my grandmother, August’s father… All the ones that had gone before I had. I wanted to see my grandparents most of all.

Anna told me that they were in another part of heaven.

“You can be with them. You can have that, but not yet,” she said.

“When does it happen?” I asked.

“It’s not as easy as you hope,” she answered. “You have to stop wanting to know what happens on Earth, with the people you left behind. When you do that, you can be free. In other words, you have to give up on Earth.”

I thought this seemed impossible.

—

It struck me then that my father was probably feeling his own mortality in that moment. 

He had been the father of two children. Not just because of the monarchy and needing a spare. My father had always wanted two children, so that no matter what happened to him or to my mother, we could always have each other.

My brother had no one now.

—

The air in my heaven smelled of wet grass and soil, the smell after the rain. It was a smell that I always loved on Earth. It smelled like nature, like being in the middle of a forest. 

I imagined that’s how Earth smelled like in that moment, as I followed my brother.

—

He didn’t go back. August didn’t take him back to Skogsbacken, like I hoped.

Instead, he drifted out of the school grounds and walked in the dark down the long path flanked by trees, humming to himself under his breath. 

He wandered across the town, through empty streets, and it started to snow somewhat, a wispy and wet snow, almost like rain. He didn’t run for cover or head back, he simply continued on his way. Like he knew where he was going. 

An empty football field.

I realized he must have been here before. His feet carried him there. 

He hung from the chainlink fence for support and followed it around until he found a gap, a way in. The snowy rain pelted him and turned to water drops on his hair, face and clothes. He wasn’t soaked, but he would soon be. It was cold, I could see it. I could see his breath misting in front of his face, and I could see the frost on the metal bleachers. 

But my brother didn’t care. He shouted and walked with a hop, clicking his fingers, like he was defying someone, like he was talking shit with someone. There was no one around.

He was high. Higher than he had ever been.

I felt him moving physically through time trying to escape me. I could not hold him back. 

He kicked the metal figures used for football training, and tripped over one of them and rolled onto the ground. He crawled on hands and knees and felt prickly plastic on his palms. The grass was made of plastic, that’s why it didn’t get frosty. The soil was tiny jagged plastic beads. He crouched and looked at his palms, small black beads between his fingers, and he stared in a daze. Then he licked his hand, like a small child that has yet to learn not to put things in their mouth, and looked confused at his hands before spitting it back out. 

He sat on the ground, legs crossed, and pulled out his phone. 

I was the person who came to him, dropped everything to come to his aid, rescue him whenever and wherever he needed me. I couldn’t do that anymore. 

I wanted to know who he was calling. I hoped it was August. Or Felice. Maybe even Malin and Joakim, who weren’t yet aware that my brother had snuck out. Someone who could come as soon as possible and take him home. 

Not home. Hillerska.

I begged whoever it was to pick up the call.

When someone answered, his face lit up. He was freezing, even though he didn’t feel it yet. And yet he smiled, conspiratorially.

“Simon,” he said in a loud whisper.

—

Suddenly I knew where to look.

Only a few blocks away, inside a small house, inside a small room dimly lit by the yellow glow of a fish tank, I saw a boy sit up in bed, startled. The light from the phone screen lit half of his face.

“Who is it?” he asked, disoriented.

It was the boy from the choir, the one that my brother walked away from in the main hall. 

I became spellbound.

“I like you,” my brother said, in a whisper. 

“Wille?” the boy said, sleep leaving him. “Is that you?”

I could see them both at the same time; from my heaven I could see everything everywhere all at once, but I only cared about them. 

My brother sat hunched over, like he was making himself smaller, like he was trying to hide in plain sight, floaty rain pelting him.

“I figured it out,” he continued, whispering louder, thumbing the plastic bits still stuck to the palm of his hand. “Everything is fake… Even the grass in the field is fake, it’s plastic. The grass is plastic… And it’s bright green, even though it’s night.” He looked up at the sky. “It’s night, I know that much.”

“You’re in the football field?” the boy, Simon, asked, his eyes heavy.

“Yes, exactly,” he said, as if trying to prove he was lucid. “And all the people are fake, they’re made of metal… ”

In the dim glow of the fish tank, I saw the boy’s skin erupt in goosebumps, as he continued to listen to my brother. 

“But I like you… and that is not fake.”

—

I was torn, between watching this boy scramble to his feet and pull on clothes and coats and shoes, and sneak out of his house and pick up his bike and pedal furiously through the empty streets, under the rain, toward the field. And watching my brother fall into a daze once the phone call ended.

He had gone from a moment of pretend lucidity, to a moment of actual lucidity of where he was. But instead of moving, of heading back, he simply lay down, face down on the ground, dragging his fingers through the fake plastic grass. Like he would rather be there than anywhere else. Like he was trying to feel something again, even if it was cold and wet and miserable.

I sat beside him, wishing I could keep him warm. I worried for him. I worried that maybe he would not want to get up again.

The boy, Simon, was suddenly there. He dropped his bike and ran toward my brother, breathless, shouting his name.

—

In heaven, there were no angels, as far as I knew. Not the ones from books and movies and stories, not the biblical ones. It was just dead people like me. We visited Earth, and maybe people felt our presence and thought we were angels.

For some reason, I could not do that for my brother. No matter how much I tried. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I was trying.

He didn’t feel me.

—

I watched the boy, Simon, descend upon my brother like an angel.

My brother could have died that night. He was so high that he wasn’t shivering, but he was cold and wet. If someone hadn’t found him in time, he could have died from hypothermia.

But Simon found him. Simon answered his call and knew where to find him, and went to him.

—

And my brother looked like he had seen an angel too. He touched Simon’s face, and called him beautiful, and I knew. 

—

“I don’t even know what it is…” he had said to me on the phone, that last conversation, squirming and fidgeting with embarrassment.

I laughed that time, amused at his awkwardness. Of course he didn’t know. Nobody ever does at first. 

But as I watched him now, I knew.

—

The boy, Simon, brought my brother, still high as a kite, all the way back to Hillerska.

The bike was concealed between bushes at the entrance to the school grounds, and they walked through the gates and around shadows the rest of the way to my brother’s dorm room. The window had been left slightly ajar, and they climbed through it as quietly as possible. 

Neither of my -his- bodyguards came in, despite the racket they were making once inside.

Simon seemed to follow a sort of routine: he poured a glass of water from the sink, and told my brother to drink the whole thing. He grabbed the towel and gave it to my brother and told him to change out of his wet clothes, whilst he took off his jacket and his knitted cap and dried his own hair with the hand towel. 

He seemed to know what he was doing, taking care of a person under the influence. When he found my brother lying in the middle of the field, checking his pupils, checking him for injuries, asking him what he took.

“Are you mad at me?” my brother had asked as Simon helped him to his feet. 

Simon hadn’t answered. He seemed genuinely angry, but also genuinely worried. He put an arm around my brother’s waist to keep him upright and tried to walk him back to his bike. 

“You came… I can’t believe you came…” my brother repeated over and over, his voice small but light, like he was really in shock. Then he stopped and wrapped his arms around Simon, and hugged him.

He hugged him tightly, yearning, begging silently to be hugged back.

Simon did.

—

Still dazed, my brother obeyed and drank all the water, then he took off his jacket and started peeling off his clothes, dropping them to the floor. Simon looked away, turning his back to him. My brother didn’t notice; he toed off his shoes and climbed into bed, jeans still on, and wrapped the duvet over himself before curling onto his side. He closed his eyes.

There was a spare bed, with a set of sheets folded on top of it. However, Simon grabbed the pillow and climbed into my brother’s bed, curling at the foot, and sat there, watching my brother attentively. He put his own jacket over himself like a blanket. 

He eventually fell asleep too. 

—

I didn’t know this boy, but a part of me wanted to hug him too. 

—

Nothing else happening anywhere else interested me in that moment. I was no longer surprised, but I was still curious.

Time passed, though I didn’t know how much; time in the living world, time no longer felt real to me. But the sky became light outside. It had stopped raining, and the air seemed crisp. 

Simon woke up when a phone vibrated. He seemed disoriented for a moment. The stress of the midnight rescue mission had worn out, and maybe so had his anger. He only glanced over at the other end of the bed, checked his phone, and started climbing out of bed. As he did, he woke my brother up.

Despite a still foggy and drug-addled mind, my brother quickly reached out and stopped Simon from leaving. He apologized for what had happened and sat up, gently tugging Simon to sit down beside him. 

The high was mostly gone. 

“I want you to hold me,” my brother begged, his voice soft, like he wanted Simon to know that it was still a choice. But Simon did as he was asked. They spoke quietly, their heads touching. Simon’s fingers caressed my brother’s neck and shoulders.

“Could you stay with me until I fall asleep again?”

Simon nodded, and they both lay down. My brother put his arms around him, and Simon interlaced their fingers. I could hear their breaths, their hearts beating loud and fast in their chests, and wonder if they could hear it too.

My brother did not want to sleep. He wanted to be awake. I watched him put his face as close to Simon’s hair as he could and take a deep breath. 

—

I forgot for a moment that I was dead. I would not have found out about this any other way. 

—

He had never shown interest in anyone before. Not that I knew, at least. 

I think—I hoped—he would have told me.

Or… maybe he wouldn’t have. Maybe not, if it was this.

Maybe not, if he couldn’t know how I would react.

Maybe he had wanted to tell me that day…

—

I realized that if I tried really hard, I could see back in time, to moments where I hadn’t been present.

And in that moment, I tried hard. I wanted to see the beginning. 

It felt intrusive, but I wanted to know more.

I saw my brother rubbing his chest, breathing hard. I saw him climb on the bay window and open it front of a window, the chilly air freezing his toes and fingers and nose. He got a cramp on his foot. 

I saw the boy, Simon, coming down the hallway toward him, to check on him. He stood in front of my brother, and my brother sat, staring back, mumbling something and chuckling, feigning nonchalance. 

I saw Simon lean forward and kiss my brother on the lips. My brother did not recoil.

The boy sheepishly let out a nervous chuckle, before kissing him again. A noise startled them both. There was a loud movie playing somewhere. 

My brother started mumbling something, I did not hear what, clearing his throat and rubbing his neck nervously. Before the boy could walk away, embarrassed and mortified, my brother caught his shirt to stop him from leaving. He pulled him back toward him. 

I couldn’t look away. 

I was well aware what was going to happen now, and yet I needed to see it. 

I was entranced as my brother gently tugged Simon closer, hesitantly leaning closer, and this time he kissed him. Simon kissed him back. Nothing interrupted them again. 

—

Something had been rumbling inside him for a while now. Something that he couldn’t quite understand. 

The next time he saw Simon, he decided to nip whatever it was in the bud and told him they should forget about it. That he wasn’t like that. 

Like what? I wanted to ask. I wanted to know. 

I wished I could go back in time somehow, not just to be alive again, but to find my way into those moments, and see for myself what this was. 

He said he still wanted to be friends.

Compliant, and visibly surprised and hurt, Simon walked away from him.

I could hear my brother mentally kicking himself, wishing he hadn’t said anything, wishing things could be different. 

But the rumbling didn’t stop.

—

For days, my brother wondered what to do now. 

For days, they exchanged furtive glances. They went to class together, trained together, but not a word passed between them. 

I saw him tossing in bed, unable to sleep. I saw him throughout the days, moving like in automatic pilot, unable to focus.

I saw him looking at Simon, looking for Simon, thinking of Simon. 

—

The day before I died, he changed his mind, and with an inkling of hope he approached Simon once again, and I saw them both smile.

—

The day that I died, it had been Simon he had been talking about on the phone. I saw him after our call, breathing deeply as he put on his jacket and headed to the main hall. He passed by a disappointed August and walked to Simon’s table and introduced himself to Simon’s mother. There was a strange argument, and I saw my brother following a tearful Felice out of the hall, and comforting her; I saw her kissing him, because in that moment she didn’t know what I knew now. 

—

The day after I died, from the early hours of the morning, all the news outlets and social media had begun distributing pictures of the accident before my mother had a chance to call my brother. 

My brother had been with Simon, leaving Hillerska on his way to his house. 

That was the day everything changed. 

—

I could see it all unfold in front of me. The past, the present.

Maybe even the future, but I couldn’t understand it yet. I couldn’t make sense of it.

I could see it all, but I couldn’t do anything about it. 

—

“Do you remember what you said to me last night?” Simon asked suddenly. 

My brother slid his arm out from under Simon and sat up, embarrassed. He pulled the duvet over his lap.

In any other situation, in any other moment, I would have relished to have this information, just to tease him. 

“Wille. It’s okay,” Simon said, smiling up at him.

My brother stopped and stared at him, before he finally smiled too. A genuine smile. After a moment, a small self-conscious laugh escaped him, and he buried his face in Simon’s chest. 

“I like you too,” Simon said, putting his arms around his head. They laughed together.

My brother lifted his head and looked down at him again. Simon touched his face, pushing a stand of hair behind his ear. 

I should have looked away.

—

But I was mesmerized. By the tenderness, by the softness. 

I had never seen my brother like this, never had imagined him like this.

They kissed and touched. Hands slid down my brother’s back, all the way down. 

Then they started peeled off their clothes off in a hurry, desperately, and I finally forced myself to look away. 

There was no one to judge me for watching, but I still felt like an intruder.

—

And then I saw someone outside, and only I could see him.

August wandered outside the dorms, visibly tired. He had been at The Palace all night, and was now trying to get back into Forest Ridge. The boy, Alexander, would have let him back inside, but he was not in his room. The window was shut. 

He walked further down and peeked into my brother’s dorm room window, through the open blue curtains, and caught a glimpse. He hid around the wall and snickered, amused and giddy. 

I watched him pull out his phone and open the camera app and crouch under the window and point the lens through the glass and start recording, laughing quietly to himself, muttering “the crown prince…”

—

“You can trust August,” I said the day that I left my brother in Hillerska. 

I said a lot of things that I shouldn’t have said, as he stared at me in disbelief. 

August. My cousin. My friend. 

—

STOP. DON’T. LEAVE. LOOK AWAY.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to pull him back, push him away. I wanted to stop him.

I pushed and pushed against the unyielding edges of my heaven, trying to reach him. 

STOP. PLEASE. STOP. LEAVE. GO AWAY.

I knew why he was doing what he was doing. Under any other circumstances, it would have been a laugh.

But in that moment, I didn’t want him to see. I didn’t want anyone to see.

It took a moment, as he watched the screen, for him to notice who was in the room with my brother, and his face changed. He stopped recording and stood back, frozen, silent.

I had to look away. I couldn’t do anything. I was trapped in a perfect world. I couldn’t stop it.

When I was born, my whole life had already been meticulously planned. Gymnasiet at Hillerska, rowing team, military training, become a navy officer, international relations at Stockholm University. Date a girl from a good family and get engaged before the age of thirty, wedding at Stockholm Cathedral, move into Haga Palace. Two children, at least, preferably three. 

I followed the plan. It was partially a relief. I didn’t have to think about it, didn’t need to make any plans of my own. There was one already, and all I had to do was follow it.

There was no such detailed plan for my brother, although it was generally assumed that it would be basically the same. 

But he didn’t want a plan. He didn’t want to be told what to do. 

—

I knew he and I were different, not just because of our roles, but because of everything. We were different people. 

And yet we understood each other. I understood him. 

I knew him better than anyone. 

I thought I knew him better than anyone.

—

The plan was passed down to my brother when I died. I had not intended it. I would never have chosen it for him. 

But at the same time I didn’t completely understand why it was so difficult for him, to envision such a detailed, meticulous life.

Until now. 

—

I was torn, between wanting to tell my brother about what had happened, wishing with all my might to break through, find a way to communicate with him and warn him; and wanting to watch what happened next.

It still felt like a violation of his privacy, but I was entranced.

My brother woke up, and fell into a trance of his own. He watched the boy beside him, wanting—yearning—to touch him, yet not wanting to disturb him. Instead, he moved a hand over the naked back, the shoulder, hovering above the skin, eyes gliding over like he was intent on memorising every inch. It was like a meditative exercise or a worship ritual. He was no longer under the influence.

He gave into an impulse and gently caressed the boy’s face. The touch roused Simon.

Simon. That was all that occupied my brother’s mind in that moment. Just that moment, just that presence.  

They talked quietly, and then they started sort of wrestling, laughing, teasing, and then they were kissing again, soft at first and then fervently. I could not look away this time. I could feel the intensity, the desire, the love.

It couldn’t be love. Not yet.

Not ever. 

—

A knock on the door startled them. Malin’s voice called through, reminding my brother that breakfast would be over soon. 

They lay there a moment longer, chuckling, staring at each other, talking quietly. Simon suggested that they skip class. My brother rolled out of bed, and started pulling on some clothes. They talked about meeting up later.

There was a naked person in my brother’s bed, all wrapped up in the duvet. 

Not just any person. A boy.

And my brother was getting dressed and leaving. 

He put on my watch and his eyes lingered on this boy for another moment, and he looked like he would give anything to stay.

—

In the dining hall, among the chatter and clattering of cutlery and glass, my brother tried to keep a straight face as he made a sandwich for Simon. He shovelled some breakfast into his mouth and put on his coat and scarf and walked around the grounds looking for him. 

As agreed, Simon had waited a few minutes after my brother left, before getting dressed and sneaking out, heading to the school entrance to pretend that he had just arrived on the bus, as usual. 

My brother found him outside, walking around the edge of the forest. They spotted each other and smiled. 

They would have gone off somewhere, just the two of them, until it was time for class, had they not been interrupted again. 

—

August called him. He looked rather refreshed for someone who hadn’t slept a wink that night. He asked where my brother had gone the night before, after he disappeared. 

My brother lied and said he had blacked out and luckily woken up in his own bed.

I feared the worst in that moment: August saying something in front of others, calling my brother out on his lie. 

He didn’t. He just laughed and nodded.

But there was something in the way he looked at my brother, that made me restless.

—

I don’t know how I would have reacted if I had found out any of this while I was still alive. 

I tried going back to a time where I could have known, some moment when it could have been evident. I tried to spy on my brother’s past to find any indication that there was something clear, obvious, something different. 

There was nothing. 

No moment of curiosity, no search on the internet, no discussion with a school friend.

The only thing I encountered was Simon. Introducing himself to Simon, looking at Simon’s Instagram, messaging him, sharing inside jokes during rowing practice. There was a football game, and a motorcycle ride with two other people, Simon’s friends. This happened before that kiss. 

I replayed all of these moments incessantly, analyzing them like a forensic investigator. I could watch these moments, and my own memories replay, over and over in a loop without feeling like any time had passed at all.

I was frozen in time. 

—

“You like someone,” I had said that day, causing him to turn bright pink. 

I laughed. I teased him. I didn’t try to get the information out of him, I didn’t try to confirm my suspicions. 

But after replaying this moment obsessively, I realized that I never referred to a girl. 

A part of me wondered if he even would have told me if I had. If he might have corrected me. And what would have happened then.

Or maybe he felt relieved that I didn’t. That maybe I somehow knew. 

But I didn’t. I hadn’t known.

—

What if I had? What would I have done?

What if I could have told him I knew?

What if I had lived long enough so that he could have told me himself?

What if, what if, what if…

Anna told me that was very common, for people to get stuck on the what ifs and the if onlys. She warned me about obsessing over the past. 

There was no point. There was no changing anything now. 

—

I wish I could say that it made me happy. To see him somewhat happy.

As I watched them walking through the forest later that day, sneaking kisses down the trail when the bodyguards weren’t looking, and talking very close to each other, standing by the lake and smiling at each other, I realized with a pang that I had never seen my brother like this. Carefree. Relaxed. Smitten. 

But I was afraid. 

I had a friend in the navy. I knew Malin had a wife. I knew at least one person in my class. They all went through stuff, especially growing up, but their lives had taken shape. 

My brother, on the other hand, was the only living heir to the throne.

Whether this was temporary or something more permanent, I knew that it wouldn’t end well, no matter what. 

It seemed silly, considering how progressive Sweden is. It felt like it shouldn’t be a big deal for a future monarch to be queer.

However, this was the first. Would be the first. Many others in history had been that way, though those had been open secrets rather than publicly acknowledged.

So I was afraid. 

Maybe he was too, but he didn’t seem afraid.

“The water is cold!” my brother called over his shoulder, prompting Simon to laugh and hide his face in embarrassment. Malin gave a polite nod, before looking away, trying to hide a knowing smile. 

—

—

I followed him to Simon’s house. I had been there before, I had seen his room. 

The house was a home. Very small and modest, but warm and inviting. My brother had already met Simon’s mother. I could see a sliver of a memory flash around me. It was the day of the Parents lunch. I died not long after.

She was lovely and charming, and she seemed equally charmed by my brother. She was cooking dinner, and the flavorful smells filled the house.

They disappeared into Simon’s room. They were going to play games. They closed the door. My brother looked around the tiny room, and called it cozy. 

Simon looked nervous, self-conscious, and yet besotted.

“What are their names?” my brother asked, gesturing at the fish tank I had seen the first time I looked into the room.

Simon bit his lip. His mind was racing but he acted casual.

“Well, they’re very hard to tell apart, but…” he narrowed his eyes. “One of them is called Olle… and… the other one is…”

He was making up names on the spot. I watched as my brother approached Simon from behind and put his chin on his shoulder, and suddenly Simon fell quiet, seemingly unable to think anymore. “Um… Oski…?”

Relishing the effect he was having, my brother grazed his lips across the back of Simon’s neck, and I saw Simon take a quiet, deep breath, could feel his pulse accelerating. 

“And, um… Felle…” he managed to say, as my brother put his arms around his waist, and he seemingly melted into him. 

My brother nuzzled his jaw and kissed his neck.

Neither was coming down from a high this time. They were both fully sober and present, as they looked at each other, caressing each other, kissing deeply and softly. They slowly stripped each other’s clothes, pulling each other close. 

—

I felt guilty about watching, but I didn’t want to. I was no longer alive. Whatever I learned from them or about them, I couldn’t do anything, I couldn’t change anything. 

But somehow I could continue to live through other people. And they would never know.

It was only my brother’s second time having sex, I knew that much. Probably it was the same for Simon. It showed. It was clumsy and jittery and awkward, but it was also full of gentleness and caring and feelings. 

It was not just sex, it was making love. 

I don’t know if I ever made love to anyone. I don’t know if I ever thought of it as anything other than just sex. Even with the one girlfriend I had. I had loved her. I think. 

My brother made love the way everyone should make love. Like any moment could be the last. 

—

After that, I would come back to watch Simon sometimes. Something about him fascinated me.

On my brother’s first day, during class, Simon made a sneering comment about the monarchy, throwing a defiant glance at my brother to catch his attention. To make sure he heard him. 

And yet my brother gathered up a bit of courage and introduced himself during lunch. There was something in the way that Simon spoke to him, casually, even smiling a little as my brother sheepishly admitted that he wasn’t supposed to discuss politics, that made me wonder if whatever assumption he had formed about my brother had suddenly vanished.

It seemed unlikely. And yet he smiled.

Us members of the royal family have to be careful about that sort of thing. We can hold opinions and feel outraged or empathetic about things that we care about, but we are under no circumstance allowed to express those feelings or opinions. We are supposed to be, for all intents and purposes, neutral. 

Most people don’t understand it. They don’t have to think about stuff like that.

We do. We are taught from an early age what we’re allowed to do or not, what we can talk about, how to project ourselves. 

It’s like living a double life. 

I got used to it. 

My brother felt stifled by it. 

That’s why I wanted to know why my brother felt so drawn to Simon from the first moment, despite Simon’s clear disdain. 

I wanted to know if Simon had changed his mind about my brother.

And I wanted to know what about him made my brother not so sad anymore now. How he had managed to fill the void. Apart from singing well, he didn’t seem special or extraordinary in any sense.

It made me a little angry. 

—

“Did you ever fall in love?” I asked Joe one time, as we wandered the fields in our heavens. I spent most of my time watching the people on Earth, but I still enjoyed the world I built in the afterlife, and the parts I built with him. We still had each other’s company. But I couldn’t talk to him about the things that happened with the people I left behind. He didn’t talk about what he saw from his heaven either. We wouldn’t understand, and it was too complicated to explain. 

Joe seemed to think about it for a long time, his face becoming sadder.

“I thought I did, once,” he answered. He shook his head. “I was wrong.”

I didn’t ask him anything further. He didn’t seem to want to talk about it. 

“Me too,” I said instead.

—

And for a moment I forgot about August.

—

The day of the party, I saw something in August had changed. 

I could see it in the way that he talked with my brother, about the situation, about me. A moment before he had been talking about the Society, as if it were the most important thing, this group of boys drinking and playing and talking about the land their families owned. He spoke solemnly about legacy and tradition, and about my brother as the future king, at the center of it all now. 

But outside, as my brother slurred through disconnected thoughts about being the crown prince and the accident, August shifted; he seemed weighed down once again by the heaviness of my absence, by the idea that he had lost someone again. 

—

My death had been unexpected.

The death of August’s father had been somewhat inevitable for those who knew him. Or at least that’s what my mother said. 

Carl Johan had been lost to drinking and betting and wasting money, and he created a rift between him and his family in the process.

Despite this, August still held his father in the highest esteem, because of everything he represented.

So his death had been the lowest blow. He had been the same age that my brother was now. 

—

The last time I had spoken to August had been unintentional. 

I was on my way to some event, and in my sleep-deprived boredom, I called my brother to find out how he was doing. I was starting to miss him badly. I was still worried about him. and still felt guilty. 

I saw a glimpse of my brother’s face before August appeared on the screen, beaming and greeting me. 

He texted me all the time, about my brother, about the school, about his plans. I sometimes answered. He talked about getting my brother in the rowing team. We always talked about rowing. 

I loved August, but he could be a bit much sometimes. 

“Nice to talk to you, as always,” he said with a big smile. 

“Yeah, see you,” I said. 

I rarely called, I was too busy. When I turned eighteen, my life changed drastically. I had more commitments, more of a public presence. And as soon as I graduated, I basically disappeared. 

We were no longer as close as we wanted to believe.

But I liked that he was there, to keep an eye on my brother.

My brother disagreed.

“He’s always getting on my nerves,” he seethed. “Has he always been like this?”

He can be intense, I said. Try to understand him, I said. 

I could handle August, I always could. He looked up to me, that made all the difference. I was the brother he never had. 

But he expected my brother to see him like that too. 

I told him then about how Hillerska became August’s whole life after his father’s suicide. I don’t know if I was trying to make my brother be more sympathetic toward him, or at least more understanding. 

My brother was more annoyed about the fact that he was always the last to know, that no one ever told him anything. People always underestimated my brother. 

They underestimated August too.

—

When August first arrived at Hillerska, no one would have known he was grieving. He was doing his best to hide it. He didn’t like people seeing him vulnerable. 

But he looked to me for comfort, for encouragement. For me to be his family now.

I hadn’t been that person for August.

I don’t think I knew how to be. 

I wanted him to feel at home. I wanted him to feel that things could be normal, despite his loss, his grief. I wanted him to move on.

I pretended everything was normal, and treated him the same way I treated everyone else. 

Perhaps he hadn’t been ready for that, and yet he played into the role. He absorbed the values of Hillerska in an instant, and followed the rules and worked hard, and honored the traditions. 

He dedicated everything to the school, to Skogsbacken, to the rowing team. He liked to be respected. He liked being seen as a leader. So he followed in my footsteps. 

—

Sometimes I thought we were more similar than I expected. He thought that too.

Other times, I wondered if we were nothing alike, and he just molded himself into someone that I would regard highly. 

The truth was that I didn’t know how much different he had become at Hillerska. I didn’t know whether he had always been like this.

What I had always known was that August longed for something. Acceptance, being well-regarded, admired even. Perhaps also affection. Even if it didn’t seem like it.

—

What I hadn’t known, what I discovered from my vantage point in heaven, was everything that August was going through. And what he was doing about it.

I found out that he hadn’t paid his room and board in a while, and that the headmistress was pressuring him.

I found out that he had convinced Vincent to get him ADHD medication, even if he wasn’t diagnosed.

I found out that Felice broke up with him via Instagram story after he tried to make her jealous by kissing her friend. 

I found out that the same friend was Simon’s sister, and that August had tried to convince her to get him her ADHD meds. 

And I found out that he had gotten Simon to get the alcohol for my brother’s initiation party, and that he hadn’t paid him back. For the same reason that he hadn’t paid the school. He couldn’t.

But then I also found out that the drugs from the party, the ones that my brother took, had come from Simon. Prescription drugs that he had taken from his father. He had gotten some for August, under the promise that he’d pay him double, and then he had gotten more for August to sell, so he could pay him back at all.

I found out a lot of things that I wish I hadn’t. I wish I didn’t know.

Because I couldn’t do anything about any of it.

—

I noticed that August had pocketed a bottle of pills from the party. I noticed how often he took them.

It wasn’t recreational. 

—

The boy, Alexander, had gotten caught with the rest of the drugs, on his way back to Skogsbacken, the night of the party.

I wondered, pointlessly, why they gave them to him to safekeep, why they didn’t just stash them in The Palace, where no one could find them, let alone connect them to anyone from the Society. 

It was too late now. He got suspended. 

But that wasn’t the end of it. The school staff still had to find out where the drugs had come from, and who else was involved.

If Alexander was pushed to confess, he might get everyone in trouble. 

August and the group sat discreetly on a picnic table, trying to figure out what to do. My brother joined them. 

“If anyone asks, we haven’t seen anything or heard anything,” August commanded. 

My brother tensed. My mother had told him ‘no more mistakes’. He could not get involved in anything remotely scandalous. 

—

I never thought of August as impulsive.

But then I watched him kiss that girl from the stables, Simon’s sister. Felice’s friend. He kissed her to make Felice jealous, because she had been hanging out with my brother a lot, because of the feelings she had for my brother. 

I knew that those feelings were mostly gone, that she didn’t fancy him anymore. But August seemed threatened by my brother anyway, became possessive of Felice.

Because my brother had many things that August didn’t. He and Felice clicked in ways that August simply could not. 

And August seemed too aware of it.

And then I saw his reaction when Felice found out, when her friend told her about it. She posted a photo of the two of them on Instagram, smiling and giving him the finger. She basically broke up with him in the most public way available, and made it clear that she didn’t care.  

August had probably expected a completely different outcome. 

But he hadn’t been thinking. Lately, it seemed that he only did things, without thinking first. 

And that was how he decided to find out where my brother’s loyalties lay. 

—

Alexander told him that he’d rat them all out if they didn’t help him avoid expelling. 

So August decided to rally the Society boys to blame the drugs on Simon.

My brother could rarely keep the truth out of his face, but no one would have been the wiser this time. 

Except August. Because August knew something the others didn’t.

“What? He didn’t tell you?” August said, feigning curiosity, examining his face. “I thought you two were friends.”

My brother said nothing.

“He’s been dealing to us for months,” August added. 

—

If I hadn’t known what I knew now, I would have done the same.

Maybe even if I had known.

And I knew exactly why August was doing this. 

But I didn’t know what he would do with the information he had. 

—

“Everything you do reflects back on our family,” I said to my brother that day, before I left him behind in his room in Skogsbacken.

It felt like I was reading a script. The royal house script. 

The same things my mother had recited to me before. 

She said these things to me all the time, a gentle reminder. She said it once in not as kind a tone after one of my relationships became public and caused outrage.

I listened. I obeyed. I accepted it.  

“Stop being so selfish,” I added for good measure. It usually did the trick. My brother didn’t want to be thought of as a spoiled brat. 

He wasn’t spoiled. He just didn’t want to be told what to do. He didn’t want to be so devoid of control.

And all I could do was tell him to suck it up. He’d get used to it. I had. 

But it weighed on him now more than ever. I wasn’t there to remind him of it. He had to remember it himself. All the time. 

—

My brother took the bait.

He confronted Simon about it. 

In his desperation, he said many things that he immediately regretted. He asked if he was trying to get on August’s good side. 

And in response, Simon was angry, defensive. He explained himself, revealed to my brother the thing that he didn’t know about August. Like it was no big deal. 

—

I went back and watched the night I died, from a different perspective. 

As my body was being taken from the wreckage and desperately and fruitlessly resucitated, as I ascended into a different plane of existence without a chance to say goodbye, I watched August taking out his frustration on the rowing machine, after learning from his mother that she had no money to support him, and that if he wanted to retain his place in Hillerska, he’d have to part with some of his inheritance, with assets from his father’s estate, Årnäs. 

I watched Simon sitting outside with his two friends, the ones with the motorcycles, and waited for August. I watched them argue, I watched August blow him off disdainfully, and I watched as this boy pushed him down and sit on him, shout at him and shake him until his friends pulled him off. 

August brushed grass from his face and sat up, humiliated, and shouted back that he was broke. 

Simon didn’t care. He stormed off, leaving my cousin sitting on the ground, dirt on his gym clothes, staring after him and his friends like he was afraid. 

For a moment, as he changed his clothes in his room, staring at himself pityingly in the mirror, August looked defeated. 

But then Felice showed up at his door and offered him exactly what he wanted, what he had told me he wanted, and things started to look up. A moment later he was having sex with the one that was supposed to be the girl of his dreams.  

It all went downhill from there.

—

August wanted, more than anything, to get rid of Simon. Because of what he knew. 

But also because of what he represented. An intruder. He didn’t belong. 

In that moment, with the situation with Alexander, the perfect opportunity arose. 

Out of sight, out of mind. 

—

My brother pondered over this revelation. Then he revealed that the other boys were thinking of blaming it all on Simon. 

I couldn’t help him. 

If it had been me, right there and then, dealing with this situation, I would have made sure that this didn’t get out. 

The other members of the Society wouldn’t have the power, but the crown prince would. I would have called the royal court and have them deal with it. I would have gotten the reprimanding of a lifetime, but at least it wouldn’t come out. Hillerska would never aspire to expel the crown prince from its rankings. I would be safe.

And so would my brother.

Except that he didn’t know that.

“No more mistakes,” our mother had told him. As far as he knew, he was on thin ice. And I couldn’t help him. 

He had to find a way to fix things.

But fixing things, for him, suddenly meant not only protecting himself, but also this boy. 

So he found one.

—

I watched my brother, and I watched Simon. But now I also watched August.

Every time I saw August by himself, he was watching the video on his phone.

I in turn watched his face, as he pored over the screen, over and over, stuck on a sixteen-second loop. I silently begged him to stop, to stop thinking what he was thinking. 

He even played it in the common room, with too many people around him. It was almost like he wanted someone to see it.

I kept thinking whether that was his plan. Why else would he not have deleted it by now? 

He put his phone away when Vincent came over. 

“What kind of king do you think Wille will be?” he asked quietly.

When we were at Hillerska together, he would ask me similar things, whenever we were alone. He wanted to hear and know everything. What kind of king did I want to be, what did I think I would like to do in the future, what did I hope to accomplish one day.

He was fascinated by all of it. Though I’m certain that he was far more fascinated by my title than by me as a person. 

In his mind, I was the epitome of cool and respected. Everything he wanted.

In his mind, my brother was not the future king he expected.

“Um, I don’t know…” Vincent responded casually, “He doesn’t seem so into the royal life, like Erik…”

He shrugged, like he didn’t think too much about it. 

But August did. He thought about it a lot.

—

Sometimes, when I heard people say my name, it felt almost like they said it as if were still alive, just elsewhere in the world at the moment. Absent, but still very much alive. I could pretend like I still existed somewhere on Earth.

And when certain people said my name, like my brother, it felt very obvious and undeniable that I was gone. That my absence was made even more evident by the sound of my name. 

—

August was called to the headmistress’ office, where she offered him a chocolate before telling him that, after Christmas break, he would not be allowed to return unless he paid his room and board.

The color drained from his face. He stammered some words, but the headmistress wouldn’t hear it. He stared in shock at her.

She couldn’t do that. Surely she couldn’t. 

He was the Skogsbacken prefect, he was the captain of the rowing team. He was the son of a Hillerska alumnus. He was one of the top students. And he was only months away from graduation. 

They couldn’t possibly do that.

But they were. 

She started talking about good public schools, and he stood up in a huff.

If August didn’t have Hillerska he had nothing.

No future, no legacy. Nothing. 

He stormed out of the office without another word.

I followed him back to his room, to the safety of his small quarters, and watched as he paced around for a few minutes, breathing hard. I waited for him to let it out somehow, scream into a pillow, throw something, break something, cry.

He did none of those things. Instead he reached for a bottle, the pill bottle he had taken from the party, the one thing that had not been confiscated when Alexander was caught. He shook it, the contents rattling, and he tossed one pill onto the palm of his hand and swallowed it. Then he replaced the bottle in his desk drawer and went to get a drink of water from the sink before sitting back down and staring at the wall, as if waiting patiently for the effects to kick in.

He just sat there, staring blankly. He didn’t move. 

After what felt like hours, he pulled out his phone and played the video again. 

I watched him, afraid, willing him to stop.

As if he could hear me, he stood up again and went to the gym and worked the rage out of himself. 

—

That night, the members of the Society glided through the forest as the sun set and the light began to fade, to meet again at The Palace. They needed to decide on how to help Alexander, so that he wouldn’t tell on them. 

I watched the other boys sit by quietly as August established that they agreed to have Simon take the fall.

My brother seemed to work up his nerve and spoke up.

“I say we blame Alexander.”

August’s face shifted immediately. 

I wanted to stop all of it. I wanted to stop my brother from doing what I already knew he was about to do. 

“The thing is,” August began, steadfast, facing my brother, “you don’t call the shots here. How long have you been a member? A week?”

“And how much longer are you going to be a member?”

I had not really expected my brother to say what he said next. He laid it all out, how August couldn’t afford to stay in Hillerska if he didn’t sell Årnäs, which in turn would mean losing his Society membership. He said it all in front of the whole group. 

The tension in the air, thick and heavy, I could almost feel it, like I was in the room. 

I watched August trying to keep his composure. I watched the other boys glancing discreetly at each other, frozen into silence, partly shocked and partly savoring the drama.

“We all swore an oath to protect the royal family,” my brother added, facing up August. “And I say, we blame it on Alexander.”

Nobody protested. No one said anything. Not even August.

—

I understood why my brother was doing this. I alone knew.

In that way, he did what I would have done, to leverage things in his favor. In this case, he also did it to protect Simon. 

But it was low. 

And I would never have imagined that my brother would go there.

It worked, however.

My brother stood firm, resolute, defiantly staring at August. Then he walked out without waiting for anyone. 

No one said a word, and slowly the other boys stood up, one by one, and filtered out of the room, making their way separately back through the woods. 

—

The appeal of the Society went beyond the status, the fulfillment, and the honor. It was about secrecy and loyalty, no matter what.

I had taken every secret from that place, literally, to the grave. 

Once a brother, always a brother. 

—

It was all bullshit. Loyalty was hard. Honor and status were a fragile sham. And secrets always had a way to find their way to the light. 

—

And I questioned if any of it was ever even worth it.

If it was worth it now, for August. 

—

Eventually the Society boys approached the headmistress one by one, and each made up a somewhat consistent story about what had happened with Alexander. 

For a moment, I felt bad for the boy. 

But that was all I could do. Feel bad for him.

I wondered if any of them felt similarly at all.

—

My brother did. For a while, it seemed it was all he could think about. 

He felt guilty that he felt relieved. 

—

The next day, for Lucia night, my brother joined the first year students in their white robes and red sashes and wreaths and stood around a bonfire in the garden, warming up and warming their voices. Parents arrived for the Lucia ceremony, and the older students in their uniforms and the teachers and staff chattered inside, eating and drinking. 

My brother stared across the bonfire at Simon, who deliberately ignored him. He sent him a message, and Simon hesitated before following my brother’s lead, discreetly sneaking away.

I followed them into one of the classrooms. My brother told him what happened. They were both guarded: my brother had his arms crossed, and Simon looked like he was ready to storm off.

“Am I supposed to thank you?” he asked.

But my brother was guarded for another reason. 

He was scared. He was tense. He had been sad and lonely and constantly on the verge of a breakdown. And the only time that he had seemed completely different, like it was still possible for him to feel anything other than miserable, was when he was with Simon. 

“I didn’t want to lose you,” he muttered. 

Simon’s stance softened.

“You’re the only one here that I feel like I can talk to,” my brother added. His eyes filled with tears.

I used to be that person. I used to be the only one who my brother would tell anything and everything.

Or so I thought. 

There was a veil between him and the rest of the world, from the moment I was gone.

Nobody seemed to be able to reach through and touch him. Nobody could cross it.

Simon, however, walked through it like it was nothing, and held my brother, and comforted him. They wrapped their arms around each other, and I could feel the tension ebbing away, as a wave breaks upon the shore and slowly drags back. 

My brother was falling apart, but there was something still holding him together. 

—

August was falling apart. 

He wasn’t himself that night. He wasn’t chatting with the parents or being cordial. He couldn’t look at anyone in the face, let alone his friends. 

It was like a darkness covering him. 

He was spiralling. 

Without touching food or drink, he snuck away too, and headed to the library. The place was empty. He walked through the dark halls and made his way to one of the computers. No one used those, everyone had their own laptop. 

But there was no one around.

And he had a plan.

—

I watched in horror, as he uploaded the video to an anonymous post.

I scratched and punched and tore at the invisible walls of my heaven, trying to physically stop him. 

I thought I knew August. 

I never thought he’d be capable of something like that. 

I knew he would instantly regret it. 

But I couldn’t stop him. 

—

There was something terrifying in the expression on August’s face, as he finished posting the video. He sat back and stared resolutely at the screen, like he had finished convincing himself that it needed to be done.

—

I wasn’t the only one who saw August that night.

There was a girl outside. Simon’s sister. Felice’s friend. The girl August had kissed in the stables. Sara. 

She stopped at a locker and turned, and saw him through the window, wondering what he was doing, all by himself, in that place, at that computer that no one used.

I willed her to go inside, to stop him, to make him realize what he was about to do. 

She would have been too late anyway.

—

When he looked up and saw her, he froze. 

She stared back. But then simply walked away. 

—

The video that he had watched incessantly for days was running rampant already, unstoppable, like a cataclysm. 

I could feel it. I wished that in my panic I could be exaggerating, overblowing it, but I knew I wasn’t. 

It could not be undone.

—

“Promise you’ll take care of him,” I told August that day.

He smirked and nodded. 

—

I loved August.

I loved August…

I couldn’t believe what he had done.

—

Time seemed to slow down. It felt like everyone was gliding through a fake, enchanted world, like everything was still untouched. But there was a time-bomb ticking, counting down, somewhere. 

My brother and Simon returned in time. Sara returned in time. Her friends had made her Lucia, and they placed a crown of candles on her head, and all the white robbed students lined up behind her and followed her inside, singing, warm candlelight shining in the dark main hall. People beamed and awwed.

The bomb exploded in silence.

—

But I heard everything. 

I saw the slow blast.

—

I saw August answer his phone. I saw his face contort with shock and regret as Minou from the royal court spoke to him. 

I heard him break inside, heard the tremble in his voice as he thanked Minou. 

I saw the panic in his eyes as he looked for my brother in the crowd. 

—

I could not help him. A part of me would not have helped him. 

—

That part of me wanted to break through again, and reach for my brother. I could feel his pulse accelerating as he opened the link someone sent to his phone and the video started to play. 

The video taken through the window of his room, posted anonymously to the Internet, had already racked up thousands and thousands of views and comments. The counter kept climbing. 

—

My brother became a bomb himself.

—

He looked up, his face pale. He looked around at the people, the other students, the teachers, the parents. 

I could hear his quickening breath, felt the accelerating of his pulse. 

It was like the ground beneath him was about to give way, like the world was spinning away from him. 

He walked off, feet carrying him as fast as he could.

He pushed through the door of the nearest bathroom and lost his balance. Joakim followed him inside, just in time to watch my brother fall to his knees, the phone clattering out of his hand. Before he could even ask him what was wrong, my brother had crawled on hands and knees into the nearest stall and heaved into the toilet.

—

Up in heaven I screamed with rage, because my brother couldn’t do so in that moment.  

After I graduated from Hillerska, I spent the summer with some friends, on a luxury yacht, just off the coast of a small Italian seaside town in the Tuscan region. We partied every night and bathed in the sun and the ocean every day. That was when I met someone.

At first, I didn’t think of her as anything more than a summer fling. But we had a lot of fun. She was beautiful and smart and funny, and she didn’t care about my title. At least that’s what she said, and that’s how she acted.

And maybe that was what drew me to her most.

She was a model, working mostly in her home country, but she also posted content on OnlyFans. And she was very popular.

Predictably, her follower count doubled from the moment a paparazzi photo of the two of us together having dinner in town appeared on social media. 

As I expected, the royal court came the very next day and flew me back to Stockholm. 

When I got back home, my mother didn’t say anything to me. She trusted that I understood. 

I pretended to get over it quickly. After all, it was nothing more than a temporary, casual romance. A dalliance. 

The royal court took care of everything. There was a non-disclosure agreement that she signed. I was unaware of the amount that was offered, whether there was a negotiation at all. But it worked, and the whole thing was quickly glossed over by the media. 

And I never heard from her again. 

—

A few weeks later, one of my friends asked me whether I wanted to talk to her again. But he revealed that she was already with someone else.

I smiled. “Then that’s a no.” And left it at that.

—

I convinced myself that I didn’t feel empty. 

I had relationships before. I had a girlfriend for most of my second and third years at Hillerska. 

But after that incident, it became easier for me to not catch feelings for anyone. It was easier to not fall for anyone.

I was more preoccupied with not drawing any negative attention to myself, or to my family. 

The crown prince being caught with a girl of questionable reputation was already pretty bad. 

—

I saw people in the school watching the video. I saw my brother’s classmates gasping and watching, eyebrows raised, mouths agape, smiling with glee.

I saw the video on a loop through everyone’s eyes. 

—

Online there were cruel comments, sick comments, menacing comments. Some people acted like it was porn or hilarious. Some called it hot or sexy.

There were news reports and posts from every media outlet, every magazine, every sensationalist shit show. They were talking about it, discussing it, making conjectures. They were harassing my family to address it, ‘reaching for comment’, demanding something, anything.

—

The whole world seemed to be watching two boys through a window. Over and over again.

Not just any boy. The crown prince of Sweden.

—

My brother did not, could not, come out of his room. 

I stayed with him as he lay awake in bed, scrolling through his phone, a witness to every comment, every coverage, every retweet and reblog and repost. 

I wished I could take his phone away. Even though I knew that wouldn’t make it go away.

I wished I could take him away. Far from there, from everyone. 

—

He hadn’t eaten either. He had barely gotten out of bed. He’d scroll through his phone and toss it aside and pick it up again. He’d read posts and comments and freak out, and he’d burst into tears or scream. 

When he finally fell asleep, he tossed and turned in bed, feverishly, tears sprouting in his eyes.

He was falling apart. 

He didn’t know what to do. 

If I had been there, I wouldn’t have known what to do either. 

—

I was compelled to check on Simon too. 

I alone knew that he had nothing to do with it. I alone witnessed who did it, and why. 

And yet a part of me wanted to make sure that Simon was also distressed. That he wasn’t somehow enjoying his newfound popularity.

But he hadn’t gone to school that day either. Instead, he walked around his room, visibly overwhelmed, pacing like a caged animal, more frightened than anything. 

His face was plastered everywhere. People were talking about him online, people who knew nothing about him.

—

His mother comforted him when he returned from going to a shop that morning, and he didn’t tell her that he had caught the attention of a few people who recognized him. She talked about them switching back to their old school, and his sister became angry. She berated him about something else, about him meeting up with their father behind her back, and stormed out.

His mother suggested filing a police report, and I instinctively trembled. 

When she left, Simon pulled out a magazine he had bought at the shop. He had hidden it inside another magazine and pretended to read an article when she came in. 

It was one of those gossip magazines. I had appeared in a few of those; I was listed as an eligible bachelor a couple of times after I turned eighteen. That’s where most of the photos of me in Italy were published. 

My brother was now on the cover. Big bold yellow letters below his photo read THE CROWN PRINCE’S SECRET LOVER?

Simon’s own face appeared beside it too. 

His thumb stroked the cover where my brother’s face was printed.

Trembling fingers flipped through the pages to the article that detailed everything that was known about the video, about my brother, about Simon. He stared at more photos of himself that the editors had dug up from his social media profiles, and he read, brow furrowed, unable to tear his eyes away.

He flipped it closed all of a sudden and stashed it in a drawer of his desk and curled up in bed.

—

I hadn’t checked in on my parents for a while. I had been too preoccupied, too fascinated by what was happening with my brother, too worried about him. 

As the video spread further and further, my mother got on a car for the two-hour drive to Hillerska.

I wish she’d come to be supportive, to comfort my brother, to reassure him that it would be okay. 

But I knew this was simply a bigger deal than the nightclub fight. Bigger than my OnlyFans summer fling. And she decided that she needed to show up.

—

If he hadn’t been depleted, my brother would have recoiled the moment she entered his room, more afraid than comforted by her presence.

“No more mistakes,” her voice echoed in his head, from the night after my funeral. 

She tried to be comforting, reaching a hand to briefly caress his unkempt hair. But she was also in problem-solving mode. It was difficult to be both.

“You realize that this will have consequences,” she said. Her face was stern but sympathetic.

My brother was all cried out. He stared, exhausted and anxious. 

“I’m sorry, mum.”

It hurt to hear him apologize.

It wasn’t his fault. It was not his fault. 

And yet it was. And yet it couldn’t be undone.

He would have done anything to make it stop. 

In that moment, my brother needed his mother.

But in that moment, she could not give that to him. She had to be the queen. And they had to make a decision. 

“We can still deny that it was you on that video.”

I was not surprised by that suggestion. Denial was always the first option, when possible. And it was possible. 

It was still jarring to hear it. 

The crown prince being caught on video with a person of the same gender was, it seemed, unthinkable. There was no way they would admit to that. 

But my brother flinched, and only I noticed. 

Perhaps my mother also did, but chose to ignore it. 

She continued, instead, to explain what the plan would be. In her defence, she made it sound like it was still his choice. She understood that he needed to believe he had a choice, that he couldn’t deal with being forced to do something, that it would only tear him apart further. 

—

The night after the club brawl, I did my best to comfort my brother. He’d had to make a statement that he hadn’t wanted to make, and he was going to a place that he didn’t want to go to.

I was going to miss him. Much more than I did when I went away to Hillerska and he stayed behind. This time he was the one leaving. So maybe I had been trying to comfort myself too. 

I gave him the snow globe that grandad had gifted to me. My brother had always liked it, and it felt important to share it with him. To make sure that he knew he was loved. 

—

My mother had nothing of the sort to offer, other than protection and solutions. Which should have been enough.

—

“I don’t want you to meet up with Simon in the meantime,” she said, again firm but gentle. “It will only fuel the rumors.”

My brother reacted slowly. 

“We have to solve this first,” she added.

—

Solve. It was a problem that needed solving.

But at least there was a solution. 

—

He did not go to school that day at all. Nor was he forced to.

As per my mother’s and the royal court’s instructions, the staff was not to address the matter with the students at all. 

In his absence, the whole student body was free discuss everything they knew, or thought they knew. And they did. 

—

—

I checked on Simon, hiding in his room. He had to send away a journalist who showed up at his doorstep, wanting to interview him about the video. He closed all the blinds and curtains of his room and lay in the dark. He had turned off his phone. 

His friends came to see him, and they talked. He told them that he was thinking of going back to school with them, but they encouraged him to not. Why should he switch schools? He should be able to go back, face everyone. He had nothing to be ashamed of. 

—

Simon turned on his phone eventually. 

My brother texted him.

Please come to school tomorrow. We need to talk.

They were both so stressed. They wondered who had done it. 

We’re in this together.

—

August brought my brother dinner that night. He tried to be comforting, tried to reassure him. He told him he didn’t need to hide. That if anyone gave him a hard time, he’d take care of it.

I felt a ghost of anger in my chest, like blood somehow still rushing through my heart and veins. 

Before August could leave, my brother apologized to him for what had happened in the Society meeting. 

“I know you were only trying to help me,” he said. “I know I’ve let you down…”

He was reaching out to someone, anyone. 

Not him, I thought. Not to him. 

I watched, with a small burn of satisfaction, as August tried to hide his shame. Like he was shrinking and shriveling at my brother’s words. He feebly thanked him for what my brother did about his unpaid fees, his words hollow and useless.

And then the burn turned unpleasant.

“I wish Erik was here,” my brother said.

He had not said my name in days. Not since the night outside The Palace. 

I felt once again like I was fading. 

“He’d tell me what to do… I… I don’t know… What am I supposed to do…?”

My brother fought the urge to cry again, eyes still rimmed with red. 

I wished I could be there. Though I didn’t know what I would have done.

—

I knew that August regretted what he had done. I knew that there was no undoing it. 

And I knew that he would never tell him. 

“I think Erik would have wanted you to be yourself,” August managed to say. “You know, follow your heart.”

—

But I hadn’t.

I hadn’t wanted him to be himself. 

I had told him to pretend to be someone else.

That was all I knew how to do. I hadn’t known how to be myself. I never knew who I really was. 

And I would never get to find out. Not on Earth.

—

The next day, my brother woke up, feeling sick as he waited for the crushing anxiety to pass. He got up, got dressed and waited until the last possible moment to go to breakfast. He was nauseated, and only managed a cup of coffee, as he ignored the stares of the few students nonchalantly lingering in the dining hall. 

That morning, Simon and Sara skipped the bus and were driven to school by their mother, to be safe.     

Standing in the cold, Simon looked at the building looming in the distance.

“Come on, it’s just school,” Sara said, still annoyed. 

“Thanks, Sara,” Simon retorted, bracing himself. 

—

Everyone subtly pointed and gestured and looked. They paused their gossiping the moment my brother walked into class. 

Only Felice greeted him with a smile, while everyone else could barely hide their amusement, especially when Simon walked in a moment later. The whispering and glances at both of them became more blatant. 

It all stopped as soon as the teacher came in, and everyone scrambled to their seats. My brother and Simon chanced a brief glance at each other, hearts still racing.

—

Before their next class, they met up in the gym lockers, the only empty room they could find. No one was around. 

My mother had told him not to see Simon, and he was already disobeying. 

It was their first time alone together since the video was leaked. More than twenty-four hours since they had spoken face to face. 

Simon sat down on one of the benches and watched my brother, expectant. 

My brother stood by, arms wrapped around himself, lips pressed tight. 

All he wanted was to go back to St Lucia night, when they had only just made up, before everything went to pieces again.

He finally sat across from Simon, their ankles intertwining. He tugged lightly at their tangled feet. 

A ghost of a smile pulled at one corner of Simon’s mouth, and he leaned forward, offering his hands, palms up. My brother’s own hands fell into them automatically. 

“What the hell are we gonna do?” Simon finally asked, stroking my brother’s knuckles with his thumbs before touching his forehead to his wrists. He switched to the spot beside my brother, fingers interlacing. He rested his head on my brother’s shoulders.

My brother licked his lips, hesitant and nervous.

“They’ve asked me to deny that it was me in that video.”

He wanted to explain himself, be honest, and to get it off his chest as soon as possible. His voice remained even, almost conversational.

“They want me to make a statement at the palace on Saturday.”

They. I wondered if he purposely left out that our mother had told him these things, or if he was unaware that it wasn’t just her, that the royal court were also behind these decisions. 

“But you’re not going to do it, right?” Simon asked, looking up at him. 

My brother sighed, exasperated. “I don’t want to say anything.” 

Simon bit his lip thoughtfully.

“But, Wille, everyone can see that it’s me in that video. What am I supposed to do?” 

My brother groaned, running his hands through his hair, like he did when he was stressed or anxious. 

Everything was so unfair. 

But there was nothing my brother could do about it. I hoped that Simon could understand that. 

“No matter what, they can’t dictate what you say,” Simon said. It wasn’t really a question. 

He stared at my brother, still waiting for an answer. He was asking for too much, asking my brother to take the reins of a situation that was completely out of his control.

—

“We haven’t done anything wrong,” Simon added, like he was looking for confirmation. I felt a pang. 

My brother sighed deeply.  

“No,” he answered, shaking his head before laying it on Simon’s shoulders. “We haven’t.”

They sat in silence for a moment, just being with each other, feeling comforted by the other’s presence. 

“You’re right. We’re doing this together,” my brother said as Simon put an arm around his shoulder. 

They wanted to hold each other close, as close as possible, for as long as they could, before having to go back to reality. 

My brother’s hand wrapped around Simon’s thigh and knee, his breathing slowing down as Simon’s fingers caressed the side of his face. 

He almost convinced himself in that moment. 

—

It would all blow over soon. 

I wished with all my might for all of it to go away.

—

But Sara knew.

And August knew that she knew. 

From the way he caught her looking at him a few times, he knew that she had connected the dots. 

The computer in the library was gone, taken away by whoever was looking for the culprit, whoever had traced the video back to where it was uploaded to the internet.

It was only a matter of time before they traced it back to him. 

Or before she told someone. 

—

But when Sara showed up to his room, it was clear that she hadn’t told on him. Yet.

August immediately became defensive and called her bluff. 

“So you won’t mind if I tell Wilhelm that I saw you using that computer on that day?” she said. 

He only managed to play it cool for one second. He stopped her from leaving, looking down guiltily. 

“Why did you do it?” she asked. 

That was the question that I wanted to know the answer to as well.

Perhaps a part of her wanted to know because her own brother was in the video. But she didn’t seem as upset about that, she was more upset about the way that it affected her. She didn’t want to leave Hillerska. 

For a moment I doubted that August would answer truthfully. 

“I don’t even know myself. It… it just happened,” he said, looking down at the floor. 

“I thought you and Wilhelm were friends.”

“Yeah… true,” he muttered.

“So why?” 

August flared up, finally looking at her. “Wilhelm has everything,” His cheeks became tight, teeth drawn. “And he just spits on it. I’ve tried to help him many times, but…” 

He didn’t know if Sara could understand, and he didn’t care. It felt good to tell someone, even if she had no idea. 

“I mean, Erik took his role seriously. Wille, he just shits on everything. He’s an embarrassment to the whole royal family…”

In heaven, I shrunk. In part because it hurt that he was using me to justify what he had done.

But in part because I partially agreed.

My brother wasn’t an embarrassment, that wasn’t true. But it was true that he didn’t care. 

It’s not that he didn’t take his role seriously, it’s that he had never asked for it. And thus he didn’t want it. 

—

But just then, I confirmed what I already knew. 

That perhaps August cared about me as a person, as his cousin, as his friend. But he cared a lot more about me as the crown prince.

I was his connection, the ultimate one, to status and notoriety. 

And he hoped my brother would have been my replacement, his new connection. But my brother wasn’t having that. 

So August didn’t care about him. Despite having promised me.

—

“That doesn’t give you the right,” Sara said. “And what about Simon? He’s completely destroyed.”

Her own anger at her brother’s actions, at a family situation, subsided long enough for her to become defensive on his behalf. Maybe she did care more than she let on. 

I watched as August buried his own distaste for Simon. The less she knew for now, the better for him. 

“So, what do you want?” he asked instead.

Sara fell silent.

“You’re still here, so clearly you must want something,” he added. “What do you want?”

That’s what he had become. That’s what everyone in this place was. Quid pro quo. There was always something to gain from someone who had as much or more to lose.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised when Sara seemed to think about it.

“You can have whatever the hell you want. What’s your biggest dream?” August pressed. 

He was willing to offer anything. He would find a way to give her whatever she wanted. Whatever would keep her quiet. 

It was clear that she already had something in mind. 

“To be like you,” she said, soft but not meek. “To live at Hillerska, have a life here.” 

August’s tense face broke into a smile and he nodded. He could put in a good word for her, get her a spot in Manor house, he could speak to the prefect. He offered to help her apply to a grant, so she could live there even if she couldn’t afford it.

He could do all these things. He knew everyone and everything, and he knew how to guarantee it. 

“And in return you won’t tell anyone,” he said, watching her carefully. 

Sara hesitated and said nothing. Instead she stood on her tiptoes and kissed him. As if to seal the deal. Or as if she were asking quietly for something else. 

She kissed him again, and August never stopped her. Then he kissed her back, his hands in her hair.

I looked away. 

—

I wish I didn’t know everything I knew. I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t change anything.

I only looked back to check if it was still happening. 

I caught a glimpse of her troubled face. She had yet to make peace with the choice she had made. 

—

I watched her announce that she was applying for a grant to board at Hillerska, so that she wouldn’t have to live there anymore, and stormed out of the room. 

The home that my brother had called cozy felt like a prison to her. It was far from what she aspired to have, to be. 

She wanted what her friends had. What August had.

I watched Simon get angry and follow her. I watched brother and sister clash. I watched as they argued over their mother and father and divorce and booze and drugs. She was accusing their mother of not leaving their father sooner, of not protecting them. 

I felt like an invader, even if they couldn’t feel my presence. I felt like at any moment they would know I was watching. 

“You have to give people a chance,” he was saying.

“Simon, you can’t always just give everybody a chance!”

She almost left, and so did I. I didn’t need to watch this. I didn’t know their story. 

But Sara stopped and turned back. “That’s your biggest problem. You’re always trying to help everybody. First you tried to help dad, and then me, and now Wilhelm.”

Maybe Simon had told her about rescuing my brother from the football field. And everything that happened since that day…

Or maybe she had believed what August had said. 

“You keep letting people piss on you,” she said. 

Wordlessly, Simon fell into a chair, visibly upset. 

“At least I don’t piss on my family, Sara.” He sneered at her. “And I’m not trying to be someone I’m not.”

Her eyes welled up.

“No one likes me when I’m myself…” she said.

Simon looked angry again, but also sympathetic. “I like you when you’re yourself!”

She shook her head. “Now you’re doing it again. You’re trying to take care of me.”

“I’m trying to be your friend again, because I need you!”

Tears spilled from her eyes. She came back and sat down beside him.

I didn’t stay any longer.

—

From heaven, I watched everyone at school pretend to go back to normal, but the rumor mill ran rampant. Everyone wanted to know who had done it, who had recorded the video and leaked it.

But no one at Hillerska was working harder on finding out than Felice. 

“Because if things calm down, then Sara might not have to change schools,” she said when her roommate asked her why she was so intent on analyzing the video like she was a hired detective on the case. Felice didn’t look away from her laptop screen, where she was scrolling through the video frame by frame, clicking back and forth through each one. 

“And I want to help Wille.”

Her friend shrugged, seemingly disinterested. “The police will figure it out.”

—

Someone had indeed figured it out already. 

I was too preoccupied with my brother to keep track of how the royal court was investigating this, and how they would deal with this information.

I feared that I already knew what would happen now.

—

My brother barely slept or ate that week. 

The night before he was going back to Stockholm, he texted Simon, asking him to come say goodbye.

In the morning, they sat on the floor of my brother’s room, waiting until the very last minute before it was time for him to go. 

“Do they want you to stop seeing me?” Simon asked, tenderly caressing my brother’s hair. 

My brother sighed. “Yeah, I’m sure they do,” he answered. “But I don’t want to.” 

Simon looked somewhat comforted. “Will you tell them that?” 

“I will,” my brother said, stroking his arm reassuringly. “I want to be with you.” 

He rested his cheek on Simon’s thigh. 

“You’re right, they can’t force me to make that statement,” he said, more confident. “I’ll talk to my mum.”

Simon smiled. He seemed pleased, relieved that my brother wasn’t just giving in. That Sara had been wrong. That they were real.

My brother checked his watch—my watch—and jumped to his feet. Simon asked him how he felt, and my brother muttered that he felt like being sick, as he put on a sweater, coat and scarf, breathing slowly.

Simon stood in front of him. “You’ll do just fine. You’re brave.”

He kissed him, their foreheads touching. They were both scared. 

My brother then pulled him close and hugged him. I felt them both relax in each other’s arms.

“Thank you for not letting me go through this alone,” Simon muttered.

—

To my brother’s surprise, my mother was waiting outside.

Her face turned sour when Simon walked out a second later. He nervously cleared his throat and greeted her. My brother didn’t look at her until she politely held out a hand toward Simon. 

“Pleasure,” she said.

Simon looked disconcerted as he took it. No one is ever ready to meet the Queen. He hesitantly bowed his head.

“Your, um… Majesty.” 

He said goodbye and left, and my mother watched him go, then glanced briefly at my brother before turning toward the car. My brother feared what she’d say once they were alone. 

But she didn’t say anything. They sat in silence, until they were halfway out of Bjärstad. He spotted the sour look on her face, unable to hide her displeasure any longer. I could guess what she was thinking. 

It wasn’t just that he had been with Simon, despite her request. 

And it wasn’t just because Simon was a boy. At this point, my mother knew everything there was to know about Simon, every bit of information that the royal court gathered about him; his background, his family, his social status, all the things that defined him, that made him too different, that drew too much unwanted attention. 

But it was mainly because he was a boy. 

And because of what that meant for my brother. What it said about him, specifically. 

It worried her that they had been together just now, that my brother had refused to stay away. 

—

“What if…” my brother began, trying to sound nonchalant. He hesitated. 

“Why can’t I just have a relationship with him?” 

My mother turned to him, eyes wide, lips pressed tight together. 

I knew that look. That was the look that greeted me when I arrived back from Italy, after the paparazzi photos.

“And not say anything?” he added, innocently enough. “Just… live a normal life.”

She stared in disbelief.

“You’re the crown prince,” she said, matter-of-factly, like he didn’t already know. “And that’s a privilege, not a punishment.”

I heard that many times before too. When I was my brother’s age, I also contested many things about my title, our position. When it came to being a royal, there were some things that were more difficult to make peace with.

“I didn’t ask for this!” he shot back. 

“Well, nobody has ever asked for this!” she retorted, upset. “You’re the only one who can take over the throne after Erik. Don’t you understand that?”

My brother suddenly looked remorseful. He sat back, defeated, and looked out the window.

—

My name now was a reminder of a commitment that neither of us had made, but that I had somehow gotten out of. And left him with the burden.

It came with a generous dose of guilt. Guilt at not ‘living up to my legacy’. Whatever that legacy was. 

I died too young to leave one behind, really.

—

“You’re so young,” my mother continued, her tone sympathetic once again. “When you’re young, love feels like the most important thing in the world.”

Is it not?

Is love not the thing that keeps us going? Keeps us alive?

I was not alive anymore, but the people I loved were out there, on Earth, and I could still see them, and as long as I could see them, I would stay in this part of heaven, watching. 

—

My brother still loved me. But I was not the one keeping him alive. 

As long as my brother loved someone, he would keep going. 

As long as he was loved, he would keep going.

My mother had no idea how close she had come to losing him too. 

But love had saved him.

Love kept him going. 

—

Was it love? He and Simon?

I don’t think my brother knew for sure. Not yet, at least.

But it was something.

—

She told him the story that she had told me, about her first love, before our father. An unfortunate romance, she called it.

I never knew if it was true. I was afraid to ask for details.

But I believed it, that time. 

And I could see that he believed it too. That he would let it convince him of what she wanted. 

—

“What I’m asking is, is it worth it?” she said, looking at him, pleading, begging him.

She asked the question, but his answer didn’t matter. 

—

I asked myself that, every time I met someone, every time I thought I had started to feel something. Every time it didn’t feel casual enough. 

Is it worth it?

The answer was usually no. Looking back, each time, I can’t be sure if I ever really considered it, or if it was simply easier to say no. To not think about it. To not fight. 

— 

“If you think the attention you’ve been getting so far is unacceptable,” my mother continued, to drive the message home, “it is nothing compared to what you will endure for the rest of your life.”

If you decide to pursue this lifestyle, was the part that she didn’t speak aloud. It was what she thought. I had heard her express a similar sentiment before. 

“We have a chance to cover this up,” she added with a finality. “I urge you to take that chance. You may not get another.”

My brother stared out the window, her words spinning in his head with his own thoughts. 

I understood what she was doing, and it worried me.

She was not giving him a chance to come to the same conclusion on his own. She was bowling him over, scaring him into agreeing to anything, guilting him into following her lead. 

By the time they arrived back at the palace, his mind was chaos. 

—

I watched my brother give into his fear and guilt.

I watched him sit, half-dressed, in his bedroom, and try to quiet the cacophony in his mind.

I watched him repress the bubbling anxiety in his chest, and stand up to finish getting dressed. 

I watched him walk beside my mother, heart racing as he sat across from the interviewer, go through the motions, and follow the script. 

“You’ll do fine,” my mother had said before she sent him into the room. It wasn’t a comforting word, it was a command. 

—

I peeked into the small house back in Bjärstad later that day, warm light pouring out the windows, keeping the cold and the dark at bay. 

Inside, Simon played card games with his family and one of his friends, laughing and chattering. 

The friend checked his phone whilst Sara shuffled the cards, and saw a news article had come out, and read it out loud.

Simon stopped listening after a moment, in disbelief. He blinked back tears.

After a silence, he announced he was going to bed, and rushed out of the living room, without waiting for a response, avoiding everyone’s gaze as he left. 

He stood in the middle of his room, staring at nothing. A tear refused to stay contained anymore and slid down his cheek. And then another. And then another.

Eventually, he wiped them with his sleeve. Reaching into the desk drawer, he dug out the gossip magazine with his and my brother’s faces on the cover and dropped it into the bin. He changed out of his clothes quickly and turned off the lights and got into bed. In the yellow glow of the fish tank, he cried himself to sleep.

—

I felt awful for him. 

He was just a young, naïve kid who got caught in the worst situation, and he didn’t deserve it. 

And now he was scared and trapped, and he had trusted my brother to help make everything less awful. To make things right.

My brother had believed his own lie; he hadn’t known he had been lying.

It was always going to be a lie.

—

My brother texted him later that same day, begging him to talk. 

I couldn’t tell if Simon was asleep or ignoring his phone, but he didn’t answer. 

—

That night, my brother didn’t sleep at all. 

He just wanted to go back, to see Simon, to explain everything. 

—

The next day, he tried again. He texted Simon from the car, when he was nearly at Bjärstad. He convinced the bodyguards to drive him to Simon’s house.

Simon replied that he didn’t want to see him. 

Please! I need to talk to you.

—

I’m outside.

To my surprise, Simon read the message and dragged himself out of bed. He slid on a jacket and his shoes, and met my brother outside.

My brother was only momentarily relieved.

“Can we…?” he started to ask, glancing around. There was no one else, except for them, and the bodyguards, who remained at a distance. Without waiting for an answer, my brother led the way around the back, where the houses ended. Simon reluctantly followed.

My brother didn’t have an argument prepared, or any script at all. 

It was just the two of them, standing on the grass, and there was a wide space between them. Like a chasm that they couldn’t bridge. 

“I’m sorry,” he said after a moment, with a small shrug. “But… it was, like, the only way.”

I could see in his face that Simon was more hurt and disappointed than angry. His eyelids were still pink from crying, and his nose and lips were turning red, perhaps partially from the cold, but also from the knot forming in his throat. He sighed.  

“But… this doesn’t have to change anything between us,” my brother added, looking hopeful, but acting nonchalant. Like he was calmly negotiating a deal.

“We’re still us… It’s just that we can’t be seen together.”

I understood where he was coming from. But hearing it out loud was unsettling. 

If there was one thing that was certain about Hillerska, and that the video proved, is that there was no such thing as privacy or discretion. Everyone knew everything, everyone wanted to know everything. 

We coaxed each other loudly to stand on a table and tell the whole house who we had hooked up with. 

We gossiped, we talked about others behind their backs, and we documented our lives, and others’ lives, on social media. 

Even now, despite his statement, everyone at Hillerska knew for a fact that the other boy in the video had been my brother. 

Everyone had seen them. And everyone would still see them. 

It would be an open secret. A very loud one.

—

Simon looked down at his feet and sighed again. 

“If I’m someone that you have to hide-”

“But-“ my brother interrupted. “Don’t you realize the shit storm that would follow if I come out?” he asked, annoyed and desperate. “How can you ask me to do that?”

It was jarring to hear him say that. Come out.

He couldn’t. Not now. Not after everything.

It would reveal he had lied, it would only cause a bigger scandal.

—

I knew he wished that things would be easier, that Simon might understand and be okay with any conditions that he offered. Because he could see no other way. 

In my life, I wanted a lot of things to happen on my terms as well, because they couldn’t happen in anyone else’s terms. The crown was inflexible that way. 

So for a long time, I chose not to be with anyone at all, unless it could be temporary and discreet. No strings attached.

My brother didn’t know how to get what he wanted without strings. 

—

“I’m not asking you to do that,” Simon answered, shaking his head. His voice was thick, slightly hoarse from crying. He sounded a lot calmer than I expected. “You just expect everything to be on your terms…”

He took a deep breath. He was doing everything in his power to keep from crying.

“You need to figure out what you want. And you can take all the time you need. And I respect that.”

He swallowed hard. “But you have to do it by yourself,” he said, his voice cracking slightly. 

My brother’s eyes welled up. Simon looked away for a moment, before the last of his courage could leave him. 

“I don’t want to be anyone’s secret.” 

—

A tear spilled out of my brother’s eye as the meaning of Simon’s words hit him. Any argument left in him was stuck in his throat. 

Simon walked off before he could lose his nerve. 

My brother stood there, unable to move, staring at nothing.

He was alone again.

—

He cried quietly in the back seat of the car, as they drove back to Hillerska.

From heaven, I felt his heart begin to crack. 

—

I wish I could have stopped time, stop everything that happened next. He wasn’t ready to deal with it. 

I wish I could have broken through and found a way to stop Felice from fixating on the video, and spotting a detail that would have escaped even someone as clever and observant as her.

I wish I could have stopped her from seeking out my brother to tell her what she had found.

I wish that Malin had been there to stop her from knocking on his door.

I wish my brother had sent her away.

—

I wish that none of this had ever happened.

I wish, I wish, I wish…

—

“I know who did it,” Felice said when my brother opened the door. “Who made the video.”

—

She showed him first, and then she sent him the evidence she had collected. 

My brother sat in his room, looking through the screenshots from the video and August’s Instagram posts. He looked at the dead pixels that Felice had pointed out. 

His heart was racing as he stormed out of his room. 

—

He found August by himself, working out in the gym. August casually turned to greet him. My brother merely stared at him. 

“I trusted you.”

A cold shiver ran down his spine, but August feigned ignorance. 

“I trusted you,” my brother repeated. “Why?”

August swallowed hard, unable to hide his guilt any longer. He stood up slowly.

“I’m sorry,” he said weakly after a long silence.

“You’re sorry?” my brother echoed.

“What do you want me to say? I’m sorry!” August said more forcefully.

For a moment, I wanted my brother to hurt him. 

I wanted to hurt him. 

—

My brother shouted at him instead, his voice painfully rough, echoing in the empty gym. Every word made August shrink further. 

“You were the one that I was supposed to trust!”

The one that I was supposed to trust. 

Because I told him. Because I assured him. 

I had said many things, made many promises that I didn’t, couldn’t, keep.

—

My brother stared, waiting for an answer. 

August pathetically kept his gaze fixed away from my brother, and said nothing.

There was a long stretch of silence. 

My brother shook his head slightly, the pained expression replaced by a bitter one.

“You are not longer part of my family,” he finally declared.

August looked up, eyes wide and hurt, as he watched my brother turn and walk out. 

—

—

It didn’t end there.

My brother found a quiet empty area, by the school building, near the lake pier. He pulled out his phone and called my mother. 

I couldn’t have stopped him. 

She was in the back of the car, on her way back to the palace after an event. She greeted him, her voice a little too light, too cheery.

“Mum, it was August,” he said flatly. “It was August.”

The question that crossed her mind in that moment was how my brother had found out.

“I know,” she said instead. 

“What do you mean you know?” he asked. Then it dawned on him. “How long have you known?”

“A couple of days,” she admitted.

He paced, bewildered, heart still pumping wildly. 

“Have you…”

“Wille-”

“You knew this whole time? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I knew how you would react.”

The way he reacted was the way that anyone would have reacted, at the realization that someone close recorded a private, intimate moment and plastered it on the internet, for everyone to see. Getting outed publicly. 

She argued immediately, like she had rehearsed it: that there was no point in going public with that information, that they had already made a statement regarding the video, that he had said it wasn’t him on the video, and that was the truth they were sticking to. 

—

—

My brother was trembling. 

“But- he should be punished! He bloody ruined my fucking life! How the hell can you protect him?”

“I’m protecting you,” my mother said calmly, despite his raised voice. “And I’m protecting our family, and I’m protecting the royal family-”

My brother fell silent, tears springing to his eyes for the umpteenth time that day, as the magnitude of what she was saying fell on him like a ton of bricks, like a bucket of freezing water, like a punch to the gut…

Our family. My family. The royal family.

They were two separate things. There was my mother and father, my brother, and there had once, not too long ago, been me. 

The royal family, however, was an illusion, an image that needed to be maintained pristine. Yet, somehow, they were one and the same. 

We had to be one and the same. 

“-and our legacy!” my mother was suddenly raising her voice too. “That is the only thing that can give Erik’s death any kind of mean-”

My brother shut off the call. 

Tears slid down his cheeks. 

—

In heaven, I cried with him.

Not only for him, but for myself.

—

This was my legacy.

I had died at nearly twenty-one, and my life had had no meaning. 

—

—

Everyone was going home for the Christmas break the next day. 

The choir sang at the church service, a melancholy hymn. 

Students in their maroon uniforms exited the pews at the end of the service and said goodbye to the school staff, then stood around chatting outside whilst waiting for their families to pick them up.

My brother walked past everyone, almost like a ghost.

He ignored August, ignored all his classmates. 

He didn’t have to wait for anyone, the bodyguards would drive him back to Stockholm. 

Then his eyes met Simon’s.

They had been stealing glances at each other during the service. They were both hurting, but they still sought each other. 

I hoped this would pass. I hoped that maybe they could somehow be friends again. 

I didn’t want my brother to be alone.

—

To my relief, Simon turned to him as he approached. He looked concerned. They said hi, and my brother told him he sang beautifully. 

A small smile appeared on Simon’s lips as he thanked him. 

Perhaps that was the reason my brother gave into impulse and stepped closer, enveloping Simon in a hug. Simon hugged him back. 

Everyone stared. My brother didn’t care, as long as he could hold him, just a little longer.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and this time he sounded truthful. This time he meant it. 

Simon closed his eyes and stroked his back, clutching briefly at his coat, like he couldn’t help himself. 

Without letting go, my brother whispered: “I love you.”

Simon took a deep breath as they stepped back, and looked around, at all the faces that promptly looked away from them. He looked back at my brother’s hopeful face, and shook his head almost imperceptibly. 

“I hope you have a nice Christmas,” he answered. 

My brother felt his heart sink, but he had been prepared this time. His face softened. 

“Thank you, Simon.”

He forced himself to walk away, all eyes following him again except for the ones he hoped for. 

He looked back once before getting in the car that would take him home.

—

Home.

When I was attending Hillerska, I missed the palace where I lived with my family. When it was time to go back for the holidays, I missed Hillerska.

They were both my home, in different ways. 

My brother had no home. 

—

I couldn’t help but feel scared for him.

—

That day, something in him broke completely.