Even though this was my umpteenth trip to the Princes’ Tower—most often to wake Marcus—I was still struck by the luxuriousness of these dorms compared to the Ordinary Cast Members digs one floor below. There, the hallways were narrow and stank of sweaty armpits and pitted-out sneakers, the time-worn walls covered with graffiti concerning unfavorable attributes of Rumpelstiltskin.
Here in the princes’ quarters, everything was plush, with thick blue carpeting and crystal chandeliers. If you ask me, it was almost too ritzy for a bunch of seventeen-year-old boys.
And yet I couldn’t help thinking that behind one of these doors was the real traitor—I mean, the real Prince Charming—who’d saved me twice, if his directions last night out of the Forbidden Zone counted as a form of rescue, too.
All I had to do was use the master key to open each room and find that shirt, and I’d know for sure. The answer was practically inches away.
The hall was deathly quiet, the princes either working in the park or working out in the gym. My palms itched as I fingered the key that was begging to be used. I might have resisted its temptation if the first door I saw hadn’t been marked: Dash Merrill.
Here’s what was odd: Orientation aside, Dash and I hardly spoke except when we bumped into each other at the salad bar. Mostly he acted like I didn’t exist. He was either off with Valerie or hanging with his prince bros. I used to think he was just stuck-up, but if he were the real prince and careful about his connections, perhaps he was keeping his distance to protect me.
I put my ear to the door. Nothing. Dash usually did the first shift with Valerie, so it was a safe bet that I could search his stuff with impunity. Anyway, if I happened to be caught, I had a ready excuse: I was trying to find Marcus and had somehow ended up in the wrong room. Completely understandable.
Quietly I removed my key and placed it in the lock, snapping it open easily. With one last check down the hall, I stepped inside and closed the door silently.
The room was surprisingly messy for such a well-kept guy. I picked through the heap of clothes on the floor, avoiding several pairs of plaid boxers. Under the boxers were books, and under the books were jeans, and under the jeans were more books, and under them, shirts. I was like an archaeologist digging through teenage-male debris in search of the holy grail: one very Seattleish black flannel shirt.
Nothing there, I knelt to search under the bed, since it made sense that a person in such a precarious position would try to hide the evidence. As far as I could tell, there were several dust bunnies but no shirt.
Had he hidden it in his luggage? I walked over to the closet for a look-see.
Sure enough, there was a dark-green backpack. I thrust my arm deep inside and rustled around. Contact case. (He wore glasses?) A bottle of leaking sunscreen. Ick! And . . .
“Can I help you?”
Crap. Trolls!
I yanked my hand out of the backpack, wiped the sunscreen on my dress, and came out of the closet to find none other than Dash Merrill himself recently returned from the shower, dripping wet, with only a rather small white towel wrapped around his hips.
Gentle Reader: I have not led a sheltered life. I’m a frequent beachgoer, and I’ve seen plenty of guys with their shirts off. And some I’d literally pay good money to put their shirts on. Dash did not fall into that latter category, because he was Dash Merrill and his body was amazing. Smooth chest. Impressive shoulders. Muscular in a natural, i.e., not weird iron-pumping way.
“Hi!” I held up my hand dripping with white sunblock, mortification seeping through my pores.
I realized then that “looking for Marcus” wasn’t going to cut it, as it was very rare to find normal high school seniors, even those of questionable intelligence, hanging out in their friends’ backpacks. In their closets.
Dash closed the door behind him. “You mind, uh, explaining what’s going on?”
“What?” I said innocently.
He pointed to the closet. “You going through my pack.”
“Was I going through your pack?” I conjured a dismissive chuckle. “No, no. Hardly. The Queen asked me to do a spot-check for illicit food.” I dropped my voice and cupped my mouth in confidentiality. “Apparently we have a bit of a problemus rodentis.”
He wasn’t buying my ruse. “Shouldn’t that be Maintenance’s thing?”
“It will be, if we find the mice.”
“I thought you just said there’s a rodent problem.”
“An alleged rodent problem. You have to stay on top of these things, you know, if you don’t want to be infested with rats.”
Dash tossed his black Dopp kit on the bed. “Gee,” he said, keeping a tight clutch on that towel. “And here I thought you were searching for something else.”
I swallowed hard. Was he implying what I thought he was implying? “Nope. Just food, other than, of course, Marcus.”
“Marcus?” He raised an eyebrow. “In my closet?”
“Or thereabouts.” The trick was to keep your tone calm and even.
“Marcus isn’t here. He’s down in Wardrobe getting his coat altered. If you hold on a minute, I’ll take you there.”
I started to say that wasn’t necessary, since I went to Wardrobe twice a day and obviously knew the territory, but Dash insisted. “If you wouldn’t mind turning your head . . .”
Had I been staring? Oh my. Red-faced, I stepped inside the closet again and closed the door while outside, inches away, Dash slipped into one of those boxers I’d probably touched. Seconds later he opened the closet wearing a gray tee and jeans. He put his finger to his lips, like I wasn’t supposed to talk.
“Come on,” he said loudly. “I’ll take you to Marcus.”
I followed him dumbly down the hall, my mind reeling in confusion. We walked through the doors and past a security troll to the elevator that would take us directly to Our World. We got in. Went down one floor, and the elevator lurched to a stop.
Dash had pushed the emergency button and taken off his shirt, throwing it over the small camera in the corner. Monitor #21, I believed. Not that, you know, I spent too much time staring at the camera in the elevator to the Princes’ Tower. Ahem.
“I’ll make this quick,” he said, looking down at me with a kind of longing that I found half intriguing, half freaky. But mostly intriguing. “I want to thank you for last night. You really saved me with that heads-up.”
Holy . . . ! I was gobsmacked. Dash was my prince? I’d been right? “So it was you?”
He grinned sheepishly, busted. “I don’t want to bring you into this any more than I have to. I just need to know you’re not going to tell . . .” He cocked his head toward the camera. “She’s monitoring my every move these days, so I think she’s on to me.”
“I’m not going to tell, and by the way, she thinks Marcus is you.” I showed him the letter. “And he’s being fired for it.”
Dash set his jaw and cursed. “That sucks. He didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Aside from showing up late every day for work, true. Also, I think even Lulu refuses to let him ride her. I think she’s insulted that he keeps falling off.”
I counted the seconds in my head. How long until the trolls came to start up the elevator? How long until the Queen observed that the camera had been grayed out by a Fruit of the Loom?
“There’s something else,” I added. “Jake the Hansel caught me after you left. And this morning I saw him slip a sealed envelope into the Box of Whine. I’m sure it details everything I said to you.”
“We need to get that, then.”
Well, duh. “We also need to get this elevator moving and the T-shirt back on your body. The Queen’s probably already radioed the trolls to investigate.”
“Don’t worry. One step ahead of you.” He punched the Restart button, and the elevator began to move. But he made no effort to get his shirt.
“This might seem kind of forward,” he said, coming closer, “but I think it’s the only way to throw them off.” Then he
leaned down, paused for a second, and brought his lips to mine.
What? My eyelids flew wide open in shock.
He stepped back and grinned. “Okay?”
More than okay. Actually really nice. I smiled as the elevator doors flew open to two awaiting trolls. Dash swept his lips over mine again, only kissing me deeper. I did my part by throwing my arms around his bare neck. In the process I accidentally took a big whiff of that princely cologne.
Suddenly I became fixated on the softness of his mouth, the feel of his wet hair, how even the sound of us kissing sent me into a tailspin.
“Excuse us,” one of the trolls said gruffly. “You two coming out, or you gonna stay in there all day?”
Dash released me from his clutches, and I gasped for breath, my body weak and wobbly.
“My apologies, gentlemen,” he said, grabbing his shirt and pulling me through the trolls. “You know how young love is.”
He said young love!
The trolls snickered like they knew. Oh, boy, did they know. I had to bite back giggles of my own as the cologne’s effects gradually wore off and I became, again, fully functioning.
“Sorry about that,” Dash said, once we’d turned the corner to the hallway that led to the Box of Whine outside Personnel. “There didn’t seem like any other option.”
“It was fine.” I blinked away the fuzzy filter that made everything glow. “I, um, enjoyed your logic.”
“You’re all right, Kiefer. Now let’s go find the Hansel’s letter.”
The Box of Whine was a large, wooden box nailed to the wall outside Personnel. Since it was Sunday, Personnel was closed and the hallway vacant. We checked behind us. Dash threw his shirt over the camera again, and I opened the box with my master key. It was empty.
Dash peered in. “That’s not good.”
“Not good at all.” I closed the lid and locked it, trying to think what could have happened. “The Hansel must have given her a heads-up. She never gets her complaints this early.”
“Can’t you get the complaints before she does?”
“I could. . . . Unfortunately I was supposed to have delivered these letters to Marcus and Adele already.”
“Adele too?”
I drew a finger across my throat. “It might read Fairyland on the gates, but there’s no promise of happily ever after in this place. You know what the Queen told me the other day? That already half of the interns had disqualified themselves for one reason or another from the Dream and Do grant.”
Dash leaned against the wall and ran a hand through his damp hair. “I suppose she didn’t say who.”
“Nope. Anyway, I’ve got to deliver these summonses before the Queen has my head, and if you think that’s a metaphor, you don’t know my boss.”
“Anything I can do?” he asked as I headed toward Wardrobe.
“Oh, sure. Just find the troll with the complaints, knock him to the ground, get the Hansel letter, and give it to me by the end of the day. All without getting caught. No problem, right?”
“No problem.”
I’d meant it as a joke, of course. But apparently Dash was the type to take things literally.
Fifteen
After Dash left I went to Wardrobe to deliver my summons to Marcus, quite possibly the suckiest five minutes of my life.
I handed him the sparkling green envelope. “Look, before you open this, I want you to know that I’m going to do whatever I can to clear your name.”
Marcus had recently come from Makeup, so he looked nothing like his usual surfer-dude self. His blond hair had been hidden underneath a Prince Charming black hair helmet that magically transformed anyone who wore it into a living Ken doll, and his eyes were huge in scary eyeliner.
He slid his finger under the Queen’s seal and removed the letter, his blue eyes zigzagging from side to side. I watched in dread as the news sank in. “You mean, I’m being fired?”
“I don’t know.” Prosecuted, more like it. “You have to go see her.”
Then those baby blues turned cold. “This is about Jess last night, isn’t it?”
“No. Definitely not.” I crossed my chest. “The Queen doesn’t even know.”
“You told her, didn’t you?”
“Marcus, I said not a word. You have to trust me on this.” My heart started beating fast. I couldn’t stand it when people started hating on me for no reason. I don’t know, call me human.
Trish the stylist came down the hall, two pairs of glasses hanging around her neck. “Oh, Zoe. I’m so glad you’re here. I just got messaged from the front office about the change in casting and was trying to find you. We’ll need to take your measurements and do the necessary alterations to Adele’s costume, so you’ll be ready this afternoon to go on as Cinderella.”
Marcus glared. He might have had the IQ of earwax, but he was smart enough to figure out that I was moving up, and he and Adele were moving down.
“Oh, I get how it is. You rat on your cousin and me and—wham!—you get bumped up to Cinderella.” He crumpled the summons into a ball. “You know, I was worried about you telling the Queen, but Jess said you were chill. Wait until she hears about this.” He tossed the summons ball onto the floor and brushed past me, rudely bumping his shoulder against mine.
That was so unfair. “You’re wrong, Blaisdel. Dead wrong!” I shouted, though it was too late. Marcus was in the elevator, arms folded. He flipped me the bird, and then the doors closed.
I knew I would never see him again.
“This is going well,” I said to no one in particular, and went to find Adele.
As I trotted through the maze of the Our World hallways, I tried not to imagine how pissed Jess would be when she learned about Marcus getting fired. Or how disappointed she’d be when he falsely accused me of selling out or what would happen when word got around Our World that I was made Cinderella after I snitched on my own best friend and cousin.
I decided then that you could not pit a bunch of ambitious, talented, extremely theatrical rising high school seniors against one another with twenty-five thousand dollars at stake and not expect blood to be shed. Many of us were going to fall. Maybe even me. Maybe even Jess.
I found Adele in the gym, working out with the rest of the second-shift princesses—Miranda, the redheaded Rapunzel; Laura, the raven-haired Snow White; and Valerie, the brunette Sleeping Beauty and Dash’s possible girlfriend.
This day just kept getting better and better.
Miranda, Laura, and Valerie were blessed with the perfect sort of symmetrical bone structure that made geneticists clap their petri dishes in glee. Miranda had sparkling green eyes and delicate features that called to mind well-bred, long-haired dachshunds. Laura’s jet-black hair and alabaster-white skin fulfilled every goth boy’s dream. But Valerie, with her exotic looks, was in a different category altogether.
On the opposite end of the spectrum was blond Adele, good ol’ Adele, who was huffing and puffing on the cross trainer in her pink spandex, desperately trying to lose the weight that had already stamped her DOA. Watching her try so hard and remembering how she’d been sobbing in the bathroom made me wish the Queen had read the Hansel’s complaint and put me on the bus back to Bridgewater first thing in the morning. Anything but this.
“Excuse me, Adele,” I whispered, trying to be discreet. “Could I speak to you alone?”
Laura and Valerie, who were lifting weights, exchanged knowing glances in the floor-to-ceiling mirror, but Adele just kept on chugging. She took a swig of water, wiped sweat off her forehead, and refused to make eye contact. “I’ve got fifteen more minutes. Can it wait?”
I didn’t want to display the summons in all its sparkling Fairyland glory, not with Laura and Valerie hanging on my every word. However, I couldn’t keep the Queen waiting a second longer. “Actually it’s kind of important.” Getting on tiptoe, I put my lips to her ear, “I have something from the Queen.”
Adele said, “Yeah. I guessed, seeing as how you’re her weasel
assistant.” Still, she wouldn’t get off.
By now Miranda was on the case, too, the three other princesses shooting worried glances at Adele, who was upping the awkward by being so stubborn. Left with no other choice, I pulled out the summons and said, “The Queen wants me to be sure that you read this.” When she showed no indication of taking it, I slipped it onto the little shelf where you’re supposed to put magazines or your iPod.
“No, thanks.” Adele flicked it off. Just like that. It went pffft across the room, hitting a treadmill and falling to the floor.
This was like babysitting Jaden Conroy, who used to dump his milk on the table intentionally. Patiently I picked up the letter right as my iPhone sang “Every Breath You Take” . . . in the pocket of my gown.
My boss’s pinched face filled the tiny screen. “Where’s Adele? Marcus has already come and gone. The second shift starts at two, and she’s not here.”
Adele kept pumping.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” I said, taking the phone into the hall. “She won’t read the summons.”
“She won’t, eh?” The Queen’s crimson lips pursed. “Then put her on. Now.”
Oh, god. Please let this be over. I made another trip to the gym, where Adele had taken the cross trainer to its maximum level, her face beet red and glistening with perspiration. “The Queen wants to talk to you.” I held up the phone.
Adele snatched it, breathing perhaps more heavily than was necessary, and put it on the book ledge. “I can’t read the letter now. I’m on the cross trainer.”
“Well, stop that and come here immediately. I need to speak with you.”
“No can do. I need to lose seven pounds by Monday, remember?”
“Not necessary. You’re a Class B Ordinary Cast Member, mostly like a Fairy Godmother now. Guests expect you to be plump.”
I winced.
Adele pressed the Pause button on the machine as her face fell and her eyes began to well with tears. “But you said—”
“I gave you three weeks, Adele. Four, if you count what Andy told you the first day. You are now three sizes larger than Simone. Do you know what they’re calling you around the palace? Cinderblock!”
How Zoe Made Her Dreams (Mostly) Come True Page 10