“What do you think he’s gonna do?” Jess asked.
My mind was still on Ian, so I said, “Who?”
“Jake the Hansel. Do you think he’s gonna go to the Queen like he said, or was he just bluffing?”
I flipped off the shower and wrapped my hair in a towel. “I think he’s gonna try. More likely he’ll write a letter to her and put it in the Box of Whine outside Personnel like she’d instructed in her memo. That way no one will know who’s ratting on who.”
Half dressed, I stepped out of the shower soapy clean.
“But you get to go through the box first, right?” Jess craned her neck to check her hickey in the mirror.
“Not lately.” I went over to the sink to brush my teeth. “After that memo, the Queen took it over. I don’t think she trusts me.” I rinsed and spit. “I’ll tell you what, if Jake writes that he saw me in the Forbidden Zone last night talking to a prince, I am cooked. She will fire me on the spot, no questions asked.”
There was a cough on the other side of the vanity and then the sound of water being turned on. We were not alone.
Again?
I shook my fist at Jess, since she was supposed to have kept an eye out.
“I did. I looked under all the stall doors and everything,” Jess whispered. “I don’t know where she came from.”
I poked my head around to the other set of sinks and found Adele the weight-challenged Cinderella flossing her teeth.
I said, “Hi.” Um, what are you doing here in our second-class bathroom?
“Don’t mind me.” She tossed the floss in the trash. “I was too focused on my own stuff to listen to you guys rehashing last night.”
Under her breath, Jess went, “Yeah, right.”
Adele’s pale blue eyes were red-rimmed, like she’d been crying.
“You okay?”
“Never better.” In the mirror she flashed me the official Fairyland Kingdom Princess Smile—lots of white teeth touching top to bottom, the way no real person does. “I mean, what could be wrong, right? I’m Cinderella at the most magical place on earth. Wow!”
I watched as Adele smeared on lip gloss and took a haphazard approach to brushing her hair, all the while sniffling and batting her eyes. Guess that’s why she was slumming in our neck of the woods—so that her fellow princesses wouldn’t see her upset.
“Hey, Adele,” I said as she headed out, “I heard you playing your guitar on Humpty Dumpty’s Wall the other day, and it was great. What was the song?”
She stopped at the door. “Not anything you’ve ever heard before. I wrote it.”
“You wrote it?” That was impressive. “That deserves a legit wow.”
This time Adele gave me a real smile. “Thanks, Zoe. You’d be all right . . . if you didn’t work for her.”
I knew what she was getting at. “It’s not my idea to weigh the princesses constantly.”
“Yeah, but you’re the one who writes us up and charts each little ounce.”
I was sorry I’d decided to defend myself, because her mood had quickly soured. “It might be unfair, but that’s how I think of you, Zoe, as the proverbial messenger everyone wants to shoot.”
I had no idea that was how people felt about me. Everyone? I was so shocked that as she flashed one final, triumphant sneer and left, I had to lean against the cold wall to recover.
“Don’t listen to her,” Jess said, coming up and giving me a hug. “She’s just bitter because she knows she’s on thin ice with the Queen, and so she’s taking out her anger on you. You’re awesome.”
It was nice for Jess to say. Unfortunately I suspected Adele’s dig that I was nothing more than the Queen’s henchwoman was truer than my loyal and loving cousin would dare admit. It was quite possible that the other cast members really did secretly despise me just as they despised my boss.
Perhaps rightly so.
I shouldn’t have stopped for a quick breakfast—half a banana, a bite of toast, and a cup of regular non-Jess coffee—because in my effort to not starve, I was slightly behind schedule when I arrived with the Queen’s breakfast and papers.
“You’re late!” she snapped as soon as I pushed open the door. “Put down the tray and come over here. I have a new assignment for you, Zoe, and please don’t prevaricate. Be quick on your toes.”
Her Majesty was on another tear, pacing back and forth in the control room, grumbling, her arms crossed, while Andy the Summer Cast Coordinator alternately pleaded with her to listen to reason and tried not to trip on her train. At least she’d restored her makeup so that she didn’t look so much like a corpse as like a corpse with arched jet-black eyebrows and raw lips.
I did as commanded and put the tray on the wheeled dolly next to her glass desk. Then I stood waiting. The Queen stopped pacing.
“Curtsy!” she commanded.
Really? Now she was making me curtsy, too?
“Come on. Hop to. We have a lot to do today.”
I slid my right foot behind my left, held out the skirt of my dress, bent my knees, and bowed, imitating how the princesses did it during the parade.
The Queen sniffed. “Twirl.”
I had no idea where we were going with this, but I held out my arms anyway and, à la Julie Andrews on a mountaintop, spun around crazily, banging once into the watercooler.
“Not like a runaway weed whacker! Twirl like a princess.”
Oh, no. She couldn’t be thinking . . .
“Twirl!”
So I twirled, hands clasped in front of me in standard Fairyland style.
“She’s not perfect, by any means,” Andy said. “But she’ll do in a pinch.”
“She’s abominable. A yeti in stilettos would be more convincing.” The Queen clapped twice for me to stop.
I stopped and reached for the desk to keep the world from spinning. Twirling and Jess’s over-sugared coffee were not a great combination. Pouring myself into the chair, I said simply, “Why?”
“Rise! I did not give you permission to sit.”
I jumped up while the Queen sat and applied her signature to a letter Evelyn, her secretary, had delivered on official Fairyland stationery. “Zoe, I need you to serve as a temporary stopgap while I engage in a bit of cast reshuffling. If I bring up a girl from Ordinary to sub for Adele, she’ll only get her hopes up.”
Sub for Adele? So that explained why Adele was in our bathroom crying, because she’d been canned—already. “Tell me she’s not being fired for gaining five pounds.”
The Queen folded the letter and shoved it in the envelope. “I will tell you no such thing. I do not discuss personnel matters with interns, even if you are my assistant. Rule Number Fifty-Four-A.” She sealed the envelope by pressing her ring into a glob of black wax. “I will, however, inform you that from now on Adele is an Ordinary Cast Member Class B. To wit, a Character Yet to Be Determined.”
I chewed a nail, fretting that now Adele probably blamed me for her getting fired.
The Queen regarded me sharply. “Take that finger out of your mouth, Zoe Kiefer. Nail biting is a disgusting habit for the insecure and feebleminded.”
Or not, I thought, hiding my hand behind my back so I wouldn’t be tempted.
Sudden movement on monitor #24 caught my attention. It was the display for the camera by Personnel, and it also captured the Box of Whine, where I saw one Jake the Hansel approach clutching something to his chest. He checked over his shoulder once, twice, went on tiptoe, and shoved a letter into the box. Then, tidying his blond pageboy wig and straightening his lederhosen, he marched swiftly away from the camera.
That fink!
There was a knock at the door, and Evelyn bustled in with another letter. The Queen read it, sighed, and said to Andy, “Call Norbert Atkinson, our lawyer. I want to make sure he reviews this before I have Zoe deliver it to Marcus Blaisdel informing him of violating the Fairyland rules.”
I felt the blood drain from my face. If Marcus was in trouble for bringing a girl to his room, the
n my cousin was in trouble, too.
“Why do we need to call in a lawyer when that’s only a summons for Marcus to come to your office?” Andy asked.
The Queen closed her eyes and flared her nostrils. Andy should have learned, as I had, that she did not appreciate truculence. “Please. Just do as I say and . . . don’t . . . argue!”
Without another word, Andy took the letter, opened the door, and left so I was alone with the Queen in one of her most foul moods. She pinched the bridge of her nose and whispered, “Sustenance.”
I quickly poured a cup of tea and handed it to her. After she took a sip, she replaced it in the saucer and said, “Zoe, I am cursed by the company of dunderheads.”
Join the club. “Yes, ma’am.” I fixed her a nonfat yogurt and raspberries, chiding myself for not having brought more honey.
“I don’t know what I’d do if it weren’t for you.”
A compliment? That was unexpected. And worrisome. Handing her the delicate china dish, the berries arranged in a uniform pattern of threes as she preferred, I said, “Ma’am?”
The Queen smiled thinly. “You are the only one who executes my orders as I direct with no useless backtalk.” She sliced a raspberry in half and nibbled half of that. “You keep Tinker Bell on schedule with regular vigorous exercise.” She gave her dog, snoozing on her satin pillow, a gentle pet. “The other day you prevented Sleepy from drinking that awful Five-Hour Energy. You noticed that birds were making a nest in Rapunzel’s braid and that the porridge in the Bears’ cottage had grown moldy, thereby sparing Goldilocks from all sorts of untold ills. And then, of course, you came to my aid last night.”
Okay, this was way too much praise. “Thank you,” I said. “I think.”
“Which is why I’m all the more disappointed that, being a close acquaintance of this scoundrel, you did not divulge the nefarious tendencies of one Marcus Blaisdel.” She pushed aside her yogurt and sighed. “He may seem like the village idiot, but I’ll have to let him go, Zoe. I have no choice. Such behavior as that which our security cameras detected last night cannot be tolerated.”
I swallowed. Jess! How had she allowed herself to be caught going in and out of the boys’ dorm when she knew that, for safety reasons, a security camera was aimed at the front door?
The only thing I could think to say was, “Ma’am. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You know,” she said, resting her pointed chin on her thin, white hand. “I believe you. By the way, never end a sentence with a preposition such as about, Zoe. It is so very pedestrian.”
How could she criticize my grammar at a time like this? What was going on?
“All clear!” Andy reappeared, waving the letter. “Norbert says it’s fine. However, he asks that you not speak to Marcus in person without making sure you have legal counsel present.” He laid the letter on the desk. I read it upside down:
SUMMONS TO ANSWER ALLEGED VIOLATION OF FAIRYLAND KINGDOM RULE #22:
Venturing into the Forbidden Zone at any hour and for any reason without written permission from Management will be considered to be an Act Against the Kingdom punishable by automatic exile from Fairyland Kingdom and automatic disqualification from the Dream & Do grant.
I gasped. “Marcus is the traitor?”
This didn’t make sense. The prince had caught Tinker Bell and saved me by using a branch to get me out of the quicksand. And then there was his analysis of costs and profits as reasons why Fairyland let much of the fence to the Forbidden Zone decay in disrepair.
Marcus wasn’t smart enough to be the traitor.
Unless he’d been holding out on us. Maybe that laid-back surfer persona he had going was a ruse. No, something was off.
The Queen whipped out a pen and applied her signature with a flourish. “Indeed. We have caught our spy. A reliable informant has come forward with damning evidence proving beyond a reasonable doubt that Marcus Blaisdel crossed from the Haunted Forest into the Forbidden Zone at eleven fifty-nine last night.”
Uh, no way. He was with Jess. Though I couldn’t exactly point this out to the Queen, not unless I wanted my cousin to automatically lose out on twenty-five thousand dollars for going up to a boy’s room after ten.
“He’s blond, though,” I said, wildly fishing. “You said the security cameras picked up someone who was slim and dark.”
“I also said those cameras malfunctioned.” The Queen folded the letter, stuffed it in the envelope, sealed it, and handed both to me. “Deliver these to Marcus and Adele. See that they read them while you wait. Then go to Wardrobe. Do me proud as Cinderella this afternoon, Zoe, and you just might end up as a princess for the remainder of the summer.”
This was all wrong. Marcus was being unfairly accused of spying, Adele had been fired for five stupid pounds, and Jess would be heartbroken when she saw that the Queen had made me Cinderella and not her.
And, worst of all, I was powerless to save any of them.
Fourteen
The rain had stopped, and the grounds crew was wiping off the benches and the rides to dry everything by opening in a half hour. As I was on my way to delivering Marcus’s and Adele’s summonses of doom, I tried to cheer myself up by thinking how happy all the little kids on their way to Fairyland would be now that the sun was out. One more reminder why it was important to keep positive and remember that this internship was the coolest of summer jobs—even if my boss was crazy.
I crossed the soggy Fiddler’s Green on my way to the boys’ dorm and, at its top floor, the Princes’ Tower, where Marcus was likely still fast asleep. I was about to wave to Humpty Dumpty sitting on his wall and eating a breakfast burrito when I caught sight of Ian headed my way in his thigh-high boots.
His wavy black hair blew back in the morning breeze as his green cape whipped behind him. Were it not for the cat head under his arm, he’d have easily been mistaken for a prince.
“Ah, I see you survived okay,” he said, greeting me with a wide grin.
After our walk the night before, it felt like we were sharing a secret joke—and were simply waiting for the punch line so we could finally laugh.
“I guess I managed to avoid being attacked by fierce wild beasts, thanks to your trusty penlight.”
“That penlight’s gotten me out of many a tight spot. I still think you should have come with me to the party.”
I kept walking toward the dorms. “Yeah, how was it?”
“Awesome, if you’re into listening to princesses debate the virtues of Vaselining your teeth for faster smiles. Otherwise . . . pretty boring.” He leaned toward me. “It would have been much more fun with you there.”
This time, in the broad light of day, I was unable to hide my blush, and Ian must have noticed, because he smiled and said, “So there’s hope.”
“For what?”
He shrugged, his long legs taking lengthy strides. “We’ll see.”
“You’re weird, you know that?” I was careful to keep my head down out of fear that if I looked into his eyes, I might give myself away. “Where are you off to, anyway? You usually don’t do the morning shift.”
I winced, since that showed I’d been following his schedule like I was crushing. Which I might have been.
“Are you keeping track of my whereabouts?”
“I’m the Queen’s assistant. It’s my job.” As if.
“Then you probably know that my days of running around the park as a semipsychopathic feline with narcissistic personality tendencies have come to an end.” We stopped at the entrance to the boys’ dorm.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re looking at the newest Prince Charming.” He gave a low bow.
I dropped my jaw. “How did this happen?”
“Can’t tell you.” He zipped his lips. “However, I will say you played a part. After you told me that I was a suspected traitor, I went to the Queen, and we talked and”—he shrugged—“she promoted me to prince!”
So he was the informant!
At that moment every positive thought about Ian vanished. I could feel my heart break under the realization that he had lied about another cast member in order to get a promotion that would make him eligible for the Dream & Do grant. He was no better than the grasping, ambitious types like Jake the Hansel. Actually he was worse. At least Jake the Hansel reported something he’d seen and overheard.
Ian couldn’t have seen or overheard anything. He’d been with me at 11:59 the night before, thereby making it impossible for him to have caught Marcus in the Forbidden Zone when the Queen said the snitch reportedly saw him.
I was so pissed, so outraged that he could have used me in his scheme, that it was all I could do to keep from wiping that perpetual grin off his face with a good, hard slap.
“Psychopath is right,” I snapped. “Thanks to you, Marcus is being kicked out of the program.”
Ian’s face fell. “The Queen didn’t say she would do that.”
“You read the memo. What did you think would happen?” I jammed my master key into the boys’ dorm lock, fumbling a bit because the key didn’t quite fit.
Ian leaned over and opened the door for me with his swipe card. “Here.”
I can’t believe how wrong I’ve been about him, I thought as I yanked open the door and swung around so hard, my pearl tiara nearly flew off. “I hope it’s worth it, Ian. From every fairy tale I’ve read, there’s a seriously heavy price to pay—when you sell your soul.”
I had to take a few minutes in the stairwell of the boys’ dorm to get my act together. I could not let my summer be ruined by a jerk like Ian Davidson, and I shouldn’t beat myself up for being fooled by a dark-haired, sweet-talking boy with laughing half-moon eyes. I wasn’t the first girl to fall for a guy just because he was Abercrombie hot, and I wouldn’t be the last.
Chalk it up to experience and moveon.org.
Right.
I gathered my strength and forced myself to get back to doing my job—as unpleasant as it currently was.
How Zoe Made Her Dreams (Mostly) Come True Page 9