Everyone was staring at me and I felt like a princess about to be fed to a dragon. The vibration of the tired machinery rattled my teeth. I gripped the side of the cage and stared at the police officer’s dark-blue shoulder so I would not have to watch us leave the ground. My heart thudded as we approached Morgan’s gondola.
The cherry picker operator expertly positioned us within arm’s length of her—just slightly over her gondola—and then shut off the engine.
“Can your friend come in with you?” the officer called to Morgan.
Morgan stared at us. She didn’t move or make a sound. Then—to both my extreme relief and my extreme horror—she nodded.
The officer didn’t waste any time unlatching the cherry picker door with a grim clang. He held my arm as I stepped into the gondola, then let go once I was safely inside.
I crouched on the floor for a second, hugging my knees to my chest, waiting for the gondola to stop swinging so hard and for my breath to stop sounding so ragged. For about a minute, I forgot why I was there. I forgot to be relieved that Morgan didn’t scream at my presence. I waited for my heart to slow down and for my legs and arms to feel solid again. When I could manage it, I pulled myself up and sat next to Morgan on the metal seat.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” I whispered, and glanced at the police officer. He was turned away, toward the open sky—apparently to give us a sense of privacy.
Morgan scanned the treetops and rides and buildings below before letting her languid gaze fall on me.
“You think you want to know,” she said hoarsely. “But you don’t.”
“Morgan…” I moved to grip her shoulder but then stopped myself. I didn’t know how she’d react. I was afraid she might startle at my touch and send the gondola swinging again.
“Of course I do,” I said softly.
That’s when I saw her eyes go shiny. Tears rolled down her face so fast I thought for a second it had started to rain. She looked away from me. We sat there silently for a couple of minutes. She didn’t sniffle or use her sleeves. She just let the tears slide off her cheeks and drip onto the front of her V-neck T-shirt.
“I’m scared up here,” I admitted, folding and refolding my hands because I didn’t know what else to do.
“I know you are,” she whispered.
“How did you even get up here, Morgan?”
She stared at me like I was stupid. The way she looked at me, a stranger would be surprised to know we were ever friends.
“Ask Ethan,” she said, looking past me, into the air.
Those two words scared me more than our height. And it finally sank in what should have been obvious the moment I saw her up here: Morgan is not okay.
She didn’t speak after that, but when the cherry picker approached us again, she got on with me. The three of us were safely lowered to the ground. We didn’t speak, but everyone gathered beneath the Ferris wheel clapped.
THREE
“Ivy,” Dad called through the bathroom door. “I need to get in there and get my Advil. I’ve got a bad headache.”
“Just a second, okay?” I called back as I washed my hands.
“What…you doing all kinds of fancy tinkling in there?”
“God, Dad.”
I hurried up and opened the door so he wouldn’t say something even more gross.
“Why the long face?” he asked, looking at me in the mirror while he wrestled open the Advil bottle. As he bent over it grimacing, his bald spot peeked through his slicked-back brown hair. By the end of the day, his hair product starts to break down from the heat.
“Kind of a tough day, that’s all,” I murmured, and couldn’t help thinking Morgan’s had been ten times worse.
“I’ve had worse,” Dad said, popping two or three Advil in his mouth and then leaning over to take a swallow of water from the faucet.
“You did a fantastic job,” he said, wiping his mouth with his hand and flashing me a quick smile in the mirror.
“I don’t know about that.”
“You talked her down, right?”
“She came down, yes. But she’s definitely not…herself.”
I hesitated. I considered telling him what Morgan said about asking Ethan. But I knew it was kind of creepy, and I didn’t want to make her sound crazy. Especially if she was going to want to come back to work for Dad soon. Best not to put any ideas in his head about Morgan being unfit or whatever. Still, I’d been thinking about her words all afternoon and into the evening as I’d covered her post at the Pizza to the Rescue counter in the Fabuland Food Zone.
“You know, I was wondering,” I said, deciding to come at it sideways. “Did Morgan seem okay to you these last few days? I mean, after the initial shock of finding Ethan wore off?”
Dad looked at me in the mirror again. He sucked in his lips and seemed to be deliberating what to say. “Well, maybe the shock hasn’t worn off yet. That’s probably the main issue.”
“But she seemed okay when I talked to her a few days ago. I mean, not great. But okay. But then…this.”
Dad shrugged and grimaced again, his gaze shifting back to his own reflection.
“This is a complicated situation, Ivy. You have to remember that you can’t solve everybody’s problems.”
“I didn’t say that I could. I wasn’t talking about everybody. Just Morgan. Morgan is different from everybody.”
Morgan and I had been friends since sixth grade, although I’d wanted a bestie since kindergarten. I’d had lots of friends in elementary school, but none of them really stuck. Until Morgan showed up. I shouldn’t have to remind my dad of any of this, but he doesn’t really concern himself with certain details of my life—friends, teachers’ names, after-school activities. As long as I have good grades, win awards, and show up for my Doughnut Dynasty and Fabuland shifts, the rest is kind of background noise.
“You know she’s at the hospital right now, right?” Dad turned and scratched his neck, peeking at his left profile in the mirror. “I ought to find a way to shave in the afternoon. I’m kind of a hairy beast, no?”
“Yeah, I know she’s in the hospital,” I replied, ignoring his second question entirely. After the Ferris wheel, the EMTs had put Morgan in an ambulance even though she didn’t have any visible injuries. They’d said she was going to the hospital for “observation.” When I’d texted her mom a couple of hours later, she texted back that Morgan was staying “for a night or two.” I was trying not to overthink this piece of news, or let it scare me too much.
“Hospitals allow visitors,” I reminded Dad.
“Tomorrow? You’re thinking of going tomorrow?”
“Well, I guess. I mean, I’ll try to contact her mom and see if I can.”
“You might want to give her a few days to herself.” Dad brushed down his eyebrows with his forefingers and gave the mirror a subtle smile. “Umm…you know they probably have her in the mental part of the hospital, don’t you?”
I sighed. “Yes, Dad.”
I’d kind of figured that from the vagueness of her mom’s response, and from the fact that Morgan had seemed fine physically. Still, I was optimistic that once the hospital staff realized she’d found a body a week ago, they’d understand that that might knock someone off-kilter for a day or two. And then let her go home.
“Kind of sad to think of her there.” Dad scratched noisily at his stubble, now using both hands. “It’s probably not a pleasant place.”
“Are you trying to make me feel better? Because it’s not working.”
I stopped watching him and let my gaze meet my own in the mirror. No crying, I reminded myself.
Dad shrugged. “Well, you might want to just give her a few days to rest.”
“Yeah, you said that.”
“And you’re going to be busy the next couple of days.”
Dad
grabbed his electric razor, started it buzzing, and gave his chin and cheeks a few swipes.
“I am?” I asked, surprised.
Dad shut off his razor and plunked it down next to the sink.
“We’ve got the Princess Parade. Remember, Ivy?” he said.
“Oh. Well, that’s pretty well set, I think. All the costumes are hanging up in the staff room of the game house. I’ve got the eight girls signed up and I’ve bought all the little giveaways—jewelry and candies and bookmarks.” My checklist for the parade had been set before Mom and I left for North Carolina.
“You need a new Cinderella. Cinderella’s pretty important.”
Crap. He was right. Morgan was out, which meant so was Cinderella.
“You know someone who could fit the Cinderella costume?” Dad persisted.
“We can just switch dresses around if we have to. Even I could be Cinderella if no one else wants to do it.”
“Nah. The girls love that Frozen princess. We need you to be the Frozen.”
“Queen Elsa,” I reminded him. Not that I was thrilled about the role. I had suggested we do superheroes like Wonder Woman and Black Panther, but Dad had settled on princesses, saying, Let’s take it a step further, Ivy. Let’s make it sparkle. We were probably violating some kind of copyright law, having Anna and Elsa and Belle at our non-Disney theme park. But Dad likes to live on the edge when it comes to this kind of thing.
“Yeah. I need you to be the Frozen. Besides, that blue dress looks nice on you.”
“Okay, Dad.” I turned away from him and headed to my room. “I’ll see who I can get for Cinderella.”
“Someone with nice long legs,” he said, poking his head into my room.
“I’ll give it some thought, sure.” I rolled my eyes. I was so worried about Morgan that I really didn’t want to deal with the princess problem right now. But I was going to have to.
“Thanks, Ivy,” Dad said, smiling. And then he left me alone.
I picked up my phone and considered texting Heidi Copley, but instead went to the Fabuland social feed and flipped through the posts from the last few weeks.
Friday would be our second “Princess Day Parade” event and with the last one being partly my idea, I knew I couldn’t get out of this one. The first parade was right after Memorial Day, a few weeks before I left for North Carolina. Dad had invested in four new kiddie rides from SecondHandRides.com, which is like an eBay for amusement park owners (They still have to pass all the inspections, he’d reminded me). It had annoyed him that the East County Herald had chosen not to do a story about the new rides even though he’d offered them free tickets and complimentary pizza pie.
While trying to figure out how to get more parents of small children to want to come to Fabuland, I’d suggested a little kids’ event—like a movie night or a superhero character meet and greet—that the newspaper would cover, and then he could mention the new rides as part of the write-up. The parade itself was Dad’s idea, but it was mine to have an ice cream social for the kids in the Food Zone afterward. I felt like that had a cutesy-classy kind of a feel to it, to make the more upscale parents feel like they were getting more than a regular old day at Fabuland.
Overall, the event went really well and I knew Dad was pleased. The photos were the best part—Dani Erwin rode a horse as Sleeping Beauty, Morgan and Drea Tomasetti were on a float behind her, throwing dollar-store jewelry and lollipops, while I walked with the other princesses, playing Elsa to Emma Radlinger’s Anna. The little girls were so happy, pointing and waving to us like we were celebrities.
The one sour note, thankfully not shared online, was when Len Daskevich walked by the parade on his way into the Food Zone and saw Drea float by throwing shiny pink beads. In typical dopey fashion, and clearly misunderstanding the transactional terms of the Mardi Gras parades he’d probably seen on television, he yelled, “Hey, Drea! Show me your tits!” Drea had expertly stifled her laughter and Dad’s manager, Chris, had grabbed Len by the scruff of the neck and thrown him out of the park.
I knew this princess event on Friday was going to be even bigger since word could only have spread since the first. Switching gears, I checked the details on our Google Doc and saw that Dad had already hired the three horses we had planned. Cinderella, Snow White, and Belle were supposed to ride them. We were also adding a “Tea Party Book Club.” Amy Townsend—who would be dressed as Belle—was going to read aloud a couple of stories in the pavilion, and then girls would be paired with princesses to tell them about the last book they’d read. For their effort, each girl would get a certificate for free entrance to the park (for themselves, not their parents) to use another time. This way Dad could say the event was “promoting literacy” when he advertised it or talked to the papers. With how badly he wanted this to work, I needed to find a new Cinderella tonight.
How would you like to ride a horse in a princess costume for ten bucks an hour? I texted Heidi, biting my nails. All the other girls were getting nine dollars, but for a last-minute Cinderella I knew Dad would let me offer more.
What’s going on with Morgan? she replied in seconds. I wondered how much she’d heard about this morning.
She’s not feeling up for it, considering, I wrote. So, you in? It’s Friday @ 11. We can talk tomorrow if you want.
I waited for a few seconds. Typing bubbles appeared below my text and then disappeared.
Ever ridden a horse before? I texted. Maybe I needed to sell this a little more.
Once, she wrote back.
Perfect, I typed quickly. Someone from the farm will be there anyway so all you have to do is sit and wave as they lead.
K, she wrote back, after a couple of minutes.
Great, I thought. At least I wouldn’t have to be texting all night about this. Heidi’s reluctant but quick yes was the first thing that had gone right today.
Thx, I texted, and edited the shared Fabuland events spreadsheet before going downstairs to tell Dad and grab a water. He was watching an old Shark Tank.
“I’ve got you a new Cinderella,” I said, opening the fridge.
“Great, Ivy,” he said, glancing away from the screen for just a second. “That was quick. You’re awesome.”
“You’ve confirmed the horses, right? And am I right that there’ll be handlers for each horse?”
“Pretty sure, yeah.” His gaze slid back to the show.
“Okay.” I hesitated, the jug of water weighing down my hand. “I’m working in the morning tomorrow. So I’m thinking I’ll see if I can visit Morgan in the late afternoon.”
Dad didn’t take his eyes off Shark Tank, but he smiled a little. “That’s sweet of you.”
“Maybe I should bring her something.”
“Those places don’t allow sharp objects. That’s one thing I know.”
“Right,” I said, deciding not to supply a significant reply. I didn’t want him to feel he needed to add to that thought.
I watched as Dad took the two long back cushions off the couch and tossed them on the carpet. He does that when he’s kind of stressed out. He lies down and dozes off and sometimes doesn’t bother to go up to bed. I don’t think he slept in his bed for a month when he was the brand-new owner of Fabuland last summer.
As Dad gave the throw pillow a final fluff and lay down, I looked at the gray cushions on the floor. Jason and I used to make forts with them draped with Mom’s cheerful tie-dyed quilts. I missed my brother. I wished he had come home for the summer. Dad was trying—sort of—but Jason would’ve been a better listener, not to mention better to talk to.
“I was thinking, like, flowers,” I added, pouring my water and returning the jug to the fridge.
“Ah. Right.” Dad paused the show and looked at me. “You need money to help with that?”
“I’ve got ten or so bucks I can spend at Drake’s Grocery. But if
you want to chip in, I can get something really nice, like roses.”
“Give me my wallet,” he said. “It’s on the shelf with the keys.”
After I’d handed the overstuffed wallet to him, Dad pulled out a ten and a five. He hesitated before putting them in my hand.
“It’s nice you can be a good worker and a good friend at the same time. That’s one of the great things about you, Ivy. You can do two things at once. You know, not everyone is able to do that.”
“Umm…,” I murmured.
I knew he was probably about to remind me that Jason sometimes fell short in this category. But I didn’t feel like hearing that tonight—even if it was true.
“Thanks,” I said, and slipped back to my room.
* * *
• • •
With the princess business out of the way for the moment, I could finally focus on Morgan before seeing her tomorrow. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and opened our chat, which at this point was just a one-sided game of twenty questions.
Love you, dearie! Text me when you feel like it.
I knew Morgan probably wasn’t checking messages from the hospital, but it made me feel better to write it. Morgan and I used to call each other dearie when we were twelve or thirteen. We thought it was funny, I guess, to sound like old ladies. Maybe she’d read this and reply or at least smile.
Then I sat on my bed and fiddled with my iPad, looking through Morgan’s posts on social media from the last couple of weeks. I was particularly interested in the day that she stopped replying to me. But just to be thorough, I started with the day I left town for North Carolina.
That day, there was a picture of her on Facebook looking over her shoulder at someone—I assumed it was Emma Radlinger, who had posted it. Morgan’s shoulder was mostly bare—except for the little red strap of her bathing suit that showed. It must’ve been a new suit because I remembered her having only last year’s purple two-piece at the very beginning of the summer. In the photo she was smiling coyly, and wisps of her blond hair whirled around her face, caught by a gust of wind. She looked very sunny and relaxed. The opposite of this morning. I scrolled down to distract myself with the comments.
All the Pretty Things Page 2