by Aidan Wayne
“That sounds like it’d work out pretty well for you all,” Dana said.
“Yeah, if we manage to stick with it. Brody and Mitya already are kind of butting heads. And they’re rooming together. If it gets really bad, we might have to change up who sleeps where.”
“At least you guys can change up.” Dana sighed. “I’m stuck with Ashlee and her insane desire to be awake before sunrise.”
“You sure you can’t talk to her?” Eddie asked.
“We’re not even talking at all, right now.”
Isabella winced. “Things haven’t gotten better since yesterday, huh?” Dana and Isabella had talked a lot about their respective living situations while walking around the park together.
Dana rolled her eyes. “We exchanged emails back and forth before we met in person and things were okay, even if she was a little weird over me being trans, but I overheard her talking to her boyfriend or something on the phone last night. And I quote, ‘if she were normal, we’d probably get along.’”
There was dead silence at the table, and for a horrible moment Dana’s stomach dropped. She’d figured they were a pretty cool group, and open-minded enough, so she’d just tried to sneak the trans thing into conversation. Had she been wrong?
Then Eddie said, “Wow, fuck her, eh?”
“Did you guys fight over something, or is she just transphobic?” Bolin asked, brow furrowed.
“Pretty sure it’s the trans thing,” Dana said, sighing internally. It was okay. These guys were cool. She hadn’t been wrong.
“Man,” Bolin said. “That really sucks.”
“It’s okay,” Isabella said. “You’re at Disney! You’ll only be using your place to eat and sleep. It won’t be so bad. And we can hang out at your place sometime.” She grinned. “Safety in numbers, right?”
Dana had to smile too. Isabella had her back. “Right.”
“OMIGOSH, OMIGOSH, omigosh, Maya, ohmigosh!”
“That’s crazy amazing!” Maya pulled her in for a hug. “Congratulations. Wow!”
They were on break, and while Ashlee was having a great time talking to the others who had also been assigned as face characters, she absolutely had to go over to Maya and tell her the news.
“It’s basically a dream come true,” Ashlee said. “And I love Rapunzel. I’m going to watch the movie tonight.”
“When are you going to start learning how to be, you know, a princess?”
“Tomorrow. Today we’re going to get measured for costumes to make sure we can fit into them—and I might be assigned a different role, or cut completely, depending on my measurements.”
“Oh my god, that can happen?”
“Yeah. But I really, really hope it won’t. If I make the cut, then we’re going to go meet some of the other actors backstage.”
“You’re going to have to tell me all about it. Since you will make it, obviously. And I’ll tell how it felt to be Chip.” That’s the character Maya was going out as first.
“You’ll have to tell me everything, yeah,” Ashlee said. “Oh! Do you want to do dinner? We could go somewhere in the park.”
“Yeah, sure, that sounds great. I’ll text you when I’m done with today’s training.”
“Same,” Ashlee said. “Meet up at the castle when we’re both done?”
“Sounds good to me. And this also means you don’t have to go home right away,” Maya teased.
“Ugh, don’t remind me,” Ashlee said. “It’s not like I wasn’t perfectly friendly.” She had been, to start. And yeah, maybe she could have been better about certain things but…. “If she wants to be a jerk, I don’t have to be nice either.”
“That’s probably not the best way to do things,” Maya said. “I mean, you don’t want to actually end up hating each other. You live together. You’ve got to at least be civil.”
“Well, we were fine this morning. No talking. I can deal with no talking.”
“With the person you share an apartment with? A bedroom with? For five months?”
“Geez, when you put it that way….”
“It couldn’t hurt to be the one to extend the olive branch again, right? I mean, if she’s really awful, it won’t do anything, but there’s a chance it might. You know?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I know. And it’s a good idea. I’m still looking forward to dinner with you, though, and not at the apartment with her.”
Maya grinned. “That’s because I’m delightful.”
Chapter Six
THE NEXT few weeks of training passed by pretty quickly, Dana getting to know the ins and outs of the Disney Difference and Guest Service and spending a lot of time smiling at people and learning about her role. She learned about lost adults (because children didn’t get lost at Disney). She learned that there was no such thing as saying “I don’t know” and to be prepared to make up answers on the spot, especially for kids (example: what does Tinkerbell eat before she goes flying? Very tiny apples). She learned how to point (always with two fingers, never with one). She learned that the three o’clock parade, amazingly enough, always happened at three o’clock.
She took it upon herself to walk through the parks to learn them better, so she could give directions and tell Guests where the restrooms were, no matter where she was. And she also made it a point to nod or say hello to anyone she met backstage.
So far, the coolest part of it all was the backstage area. She liked the fact that there were bikes everywhere, to hop on in order to travel around from location to location, that she could see different people in various costumes coming and going and getting an inside look at how Disney worked.
A few times, she’d come across face or fur characters as they walked to and from their meet-and-greets. That was always cool. She didn’t necessarily believe in the “magic of Disney” or whatever, but it was still kind of special to just be walking to work and suddenly bam, there’s Mulan.
Her regular days off were Wednesdays and Fridays, in part because her resume-building class was Wednesday morning, and her brand-marketing class was Friday morning. Each class was only a couple hours long, though, so she didn’t mind having to go to them on her days off. She had plenty of time around them, and she also had the option to miss classes, since they weren’t graded.
She didn’t get her schedule for the coming week until the Wednesday before, but the schedule at least lined up all her days and hours, as well as the shifts she would be working, so she knew which five outfits she needed to get out of Costuming for the week.
All in all, she was settling in pretty well. She got along with the other people who worked in the Hollywood Hills area, and made a friend in the Fantasmic circuit named Emmanuel, from Mexico, who she was hoping to be able to practice her Spanish with. Outside of work she hung out with Isabella and, to a lesser degree, Eddie and Bolin. She even met up with Meiying and got to talk with her about how things had been going (and exchange language practice). It was a busy, people-filled week, and she basically only went back to her apartment to flop into bed.
Which was for the best, since things hadn’t gotten any better with Ashlee.
At this point Dana was of the opinion that Ashlee had adopted certain behaviors out of pure spite. For instance, not only getting up early in the morning, but being obnoxiously loud during her warm-ups in the living room. And she still insisted on turning the TV on when she went to bed, which was even more disturbing.
Since Dana mostly worked in the afternoons and evenings, she’d fallen into the routine of waiting until Ashlee fell asleep and then turning off the TV. She also refused to get out of bed when Ashlee woke her up in the morning. Sometimes she even managed to drift back asleep, until her own phone alarm went off.
But the worst part was definitely just having to share the same space. They barely spoke, and the tension was palpable. It was agony waiting on the bathroom or to use the kitchen (not that Ashlee could use the kitchen), and if Dana came home to Ashlee watching one more Disney movie or cartoon, she was goi
ng to scream.
“Don’t you watch anything else?” she finally burst out one Tuesday evening, after coming back from her shift and totally sick of hearing Disney songs while she was trying to get ready for bed.
“Excuse me?” Ashlee said. “I wasn’t aware it was a crime to watch TV.”
“It might as well be, with how much you abuse it. When was the last time it played a show intended for someone over the age of four?”
“Last I checked, there were plenty of people in this world who actually like happy endings,” Ashlee spat. “We can’t all be soulless.”
“I wasn’t aware that being sick of hearing ‘When Will My Life Begin’ for the millionth time in a week meant a person was soulless, but I guess I’m learning all sorts of things today!”
“Oh, shut up!”
“I’ll shut up if you shut your TV off.”
Ashlee let out what was practically a growl and stabbed at the remote control on the bed next to her. The television powered down. “There. Happy?” she snarled.
Dana took a deep breath. “Very,” she said evenly, before she slid under her covers. “Good night.” She’d invested in an eye mask for just this reason; it wasn’t like Ashlee was going to turn the lights off anytime soon.
There was about two minutes of silence before the TV sounded out again.
Dana gritted her teeth and rolled over onto her side, pulling her covers over her head.
TRAINING WAS the most magical thing that Ashlee had ever been a part of. She got to go to work and stretch, learn dance moves, talk to other people just like her, and, best of all, go out on the Disney stage and act.
Being in the fur suits was stuffy and hot, but she couldn’t stop smiling inside them anyway. Learning how to interact with Guests (especially the tiny ones) without being able to speak was a super interesting exercise. She practiced her signatures whenever she had a chance and was getting pretty good at them, if she did say so herself. Of course, signing an autograph normally was a lot different from trying to sign something when her “hands” were huge, costumed things, and she sometimes couldn’t see what she was signing because her character’s eyes were above where her actual eyeholes were.
And princess-ing, while a dream come true, wasn’t a cakewalk either. She got advice on how to smile (make sure to crinkle your eyes, so it looks genuine). She learned how to wave. She learned how to laugh like Rapunzel and like Anna (and both laughs were different). She spent hours in Costuming practicing how to apply her look-alike makeup, and she learned as many facts as she could about her face characters, as well as their mannerisms, so she could provide the most magical experience she possibly could to her Guests.
When she wasn’t sweating her ass off as a fur character or doing princess practice, she spent her time working out, dancing—apparently there was a regular audition for parade performers and dancers every November, and she intended to be prepared—spending time with Maya, Neil, Stephanie (and Adriann and Emory and Javier and La’joi) and exploring the parks. Which meant she was pretty much exhausted by the time she got back to the apartment, basically ready for a shower and to go to bed.
And of course, what better way to turn in than to watch as many movies as she could, to really learn the Disney way, to really get to know the princesses—the ones she would be playing and all of the others besides.
Big surprise, though, that that’s what pissed Dana off. Not that she hadn’t already been pissy over the last week, banging around in the kitchen at night and hogging the shower in the morning. She also basically set up camp in the living room, so Ashlee didn’t feel comfortable spending any time there except when it was super early, when Dana was still in bed. She’d meant to try to talk to Dana like Maya had suggested, but she was basically glared at every time she opened her mouth. Ashlee was used to getting along with people. She didn’t like confrontation and she didn’t know what to do with someone who clearly wasn’t interested in being friendly.
But she was also sick of being made uncomfortable in a place where she was supposed to feel at home.
“I live in this apartment too, you know,” she told Dana angrily one morning, when Dana made a fuss over her TV. Again. “And I’m allowed to live in it!”
“You could stand to be less obnoxious about it,” Dana said, going to the closet and not even bothering to look at her. “Like are you five? Really? All you do is talk about Disney nonstop and watch Disney nonstop and grow up, would you?”
“At least I am still excited about things and happy about things,” Ashlee hissed. “You’re the one working retail and planning on being a boring old suit for the rest of your life.”
“Oh, you mean like an adult? Who actually has a plan for the future? And is going to be earning money, instead of relying on parents who probably did and still do everything for her?”
“You leave my parents out of this.”
“So it’s not their fault you turned out the way you did?”
“Fuck you,” Ashlee spat, eyes filling with frustrated tears. “I did absolutely nothing but try to be friendly and welcoming to you, and you shoved it in my face from the moment we met.”
Dana glared at her, and it wasn’t fair that she seemed so unaffected. “Friendly and welcoming? You sure about that? Because last I remember, you were weird about me from the get-go, focused way too much on what I happen to have between my legs, and, let’s not forget, I’m not normal.”
“I’m sorry, okay! I said that once, and it was ages ago. Sorry it took me more than a second to get used to you! Maybe if you’d actually made an effort to be nice to me, we’d be having a different conversation!”
“Be nice? You’re the one who refuses to be a reasonable roommate and not wake me up at the crack of dawn every single freaking morning. Maybe I’d be a lot more amenable if I could get one decent night’s sleep.”
“It’s not my fault you’re a light sleeper!”
“So whose fault is it that you sound like an elephant in the morning?”
Ashlee’s phone alarm rang out, startling the both of them, and she fumbled to turn it off. “I have to go to work,” she said, going to grab up her shoes and put them on.
“Don’t let me stop you.”
Ashlee blew out a furious breath, slung her purse over her shoulder, and made a break for the door.
Stupid Dana, she thought angrily as she power walked to the buses. Stupid room assignments. Stupid situation. She wiped away tears of frustration as she impatiently waited for the bus, flashing her ID to the driver as she got on when it finally did arrive.
As soon as she sat down, she pulled out her phone and sent a message to Maya, who had basically become her best friend at Disney. Hey. On my way to MK. Are you already there?
Yup, her phone buzzed a minute later. Just finished with warm-up and got my assignment today. I’m going to be one of the Seven Dwarves.
Yeah? Which one?
Doc, I think. What’s going on with you?
Nothing. Had another fight with Dana. Trying to psych myself up for work.
What did you fight about?
Another “Disney movies are for five year olds” rant.
What, seriously? Okay, does she not realize that she works at a theme park that is almost more for adults than it is for kids?
I know, right? But no, she hates my movies, she hates the fact that I’m an early riser, she just hates ME.
Well considering the last couple weeks, the feeling’s kind of mutual.
Oh, at this point it totally is, Ashlee tapped out, frowning down at her screen. She’s just a jerk. I don’t even care that she’s trans or whatever. I got used to that. SHE’S just a jerk.
You still could ask to be switched to a different apartment. I’m sure there are other people who want to swap roommates.
Yeah. But that would be giving in.
ASHLEE WAS a lot calmer once she’d gotten to the parks and took one of the underground paths to Character Costuming. The Magic Kingdom’s costume center
was actually at a different location—except for face and fur characters. Those were all housed in the Magic Kingdom itself, on the first floor, underneath the parks.
“Good morning, Ashlee,” TJ said when she went over to get her assignment for the day. “Are you ready?”
Ready? “Sorry, ready for what?”
“Your first full day as Rapunzel, of course.”
“Really?” she squeaked. It felt like she’d barely begun her training. Was she really going to be allowed to try being a princess character onstage? Now?
“The only way to learn how to be a face character is to go out there and do it,” TJ said matter-of-factly. “You’ll still be practicing in fur, but you’re ready to start being trained for face too. You’ll have a forty-five-minute meet-and-greet with an evaluator, and afterward we’ll see how you did.”
“Okay,” Ashlee said, face about to split in two from her smile. “Okay, sure, I can do that. And I’ve been practicing really hard on my autographs too.”
“That’s great. But remember, Rapunzel is a character. She’s a person. And you’re the one who’ll be playing her today. You have to think, feel, and act just like her. Got it?”
“Yes, yes, of course.”
“Great.” He smiled at her. “Let’s go get you into costume.”
“Okay!”
She had to do her makeup first, after taking off her own makeup, and then she got into the dress and put on Rapunzel’s slippers.
Last (and most important of all) was the wig. She’d practiced putting it on before. She’d practiced wearing the entire costume before, so she could move comfortably in it, but it was all different now knowing that she would be going out onstage to meet actual Guests. And speak to them.
The wig was what made it real. Even though it apparently had something called a foam core, it still had a lot of heft and bulk, and it swung heavily against her back until she pulled it over her shoulder and arranged it how she’d been taught.