How Zoe Made Her Dreams (Mostly) Come True

by Sarah Strohmeyer

  We pulled those on over our tops, slapped on white name tags, and proceeded to the orientation table, where we were each given a book entitled Fairyland Kingdom Internship Handbook & Rules and our room keys. Jess and I were thrilled that Fairyland had honored our requests and made us roomies, though we were kind of disappointed to learn we wouldn’t be in one of the turrets. Those, apparently, were reserved for princes and princesses.

  Jess went white.

  I said, “It doesn’t mean you’re not a princess.”

  “Yes, it does.” She looked like she was about to faint. I panicked.

  Turning to the orientation lady who’d just given us our room keys, I said, “I’m sorry to be a pest, but can you check if Jess Swynkowski has been cast as a princess?” The woman had our files right there, so it shouldn’t have been a big deal.

  “You’ll get your cast assignments after breakfast. We have to keep the line moving.” She waved toward a tall, dark-haired guy behind us. “Next!”

  “I don’t mind,” he said. “I can wait.”

  “Rules are rules,” she snapped. “And Fairyland has them for a reason, so you kids better get used to that. Now, what’s your last name, son? Did you say Davidson?”

  I smiled to thank him for trying. He shrugged, like he hadn’t done anything.

  Maybe some breakfast would help, since even as a little kid Jess had been the type to get woozy if she didn’t have her beloved apples and peanut butter by recess. I led her under the white banner that said Welcome, Fairyland Kingdom Summer Interns . . . Wow!™ to a grassy slope and, suddenly, I was starving, too. Glorious breakfasty aromas of coffee, waffles, and hot chocolate wafted from a huge, white tent where lots of the summer cast were milling about in their Wow!™ T-shirts.

  Let me state for the record that I have never seen so many beautiful people my own age in real life. Seriously, it was like stepping into an A&F catalog without the preppy bright green shorts. The girls were mega pretty, with long red, blond, or brunette hair conditioned to Pantene perfection. The boys were tall and slim, with sculpted muscles and perfect skin. They stood with their legs slightly apart, flipping their bangs every two seconds in a way that would have been annoying if they hadn’t been so cute. I wanted to kidnap one and take him back to Bridgewater as a pet.

  Jess went, “Wow.”

  “I know, right?” That Fairyland motto might have been less than original, but it certainly was apt.

  Too bad Ari, my grief counselor, had made me promise to give up guys for a while. The way he saw it, I was still too needy and hurting from Mom’s passing to be in a romantic relationship. One of his last pieces of advice before the end of school was: “Let’s make this the summer when Zoe grows out of her cocoon and emerges as a fantastic butterfly.”

  The cocoon reference was because I’d been spending most of my days holed up in our wood-paneled TV room sipping iced soy lattes, knitting cotton washcloths, and watching a slew of reality TV shows, my favorite being Teenage Pregnant Nightmare with which I was completely obsessed. It wasn’t the healthiest of addictions, I’ll agree, but it got me over a rough patch, and on some level Karolynne and her baby daddy Hunter Boxworth provided a fascinating lesson in sociology. Anyway, I could see the value of healing before opening my heart again for love, so I’d told Ari okay.

  But that was before I saw him.

  He was thoughtfully selecting an orange to go with his grapes and strawberries. His jeans were faded, and his tanned wrists were bedecked with various bracelets in worn, brown hemp. He obviously was into hiking or something equally granolaish, because his hair, naturally brown, was sun-streaked, and his shoes were beaten and muddy.

  Have I mentioned that I’m a sucker for earthy, outdoorsy guys? That may seem ironic, considering my leanings toward the hermit lifestyle. Guess Jess was right: Opposites really do attract.

  Jess followed my line of sight and said, “Hemp bracelets, Zoe. Need I say more?” She had a thing against guys who wore hemp bracelets. Also, dusters.

  I grabbed a hot white china plate at the buffet. “I don’t care. I’m going in.”

  Considering that I hadn’t done anything with a guy since my funeral-era boyfriend, Derek James, I was feeling rustier than a seventh grader caked in Clearasil at her first dance. I just stood there holding my plate and trying to sneak a glance at his name tag—Dash. When he handed me the tongs to the fruit bowl and said, “Man, I could eat a horse,” the best I could manage was a witty, “Yeah.”

  At that point in my suavity, I knocked a strawberry to the ground, picked it up, dusted it off, and ate it just to show I could be hard-ass that way. Dash regarded me in amusement. “You ate that?”

  I ignored the questionable crunch of grit and swallowed. “Uh-huh. It wasn’t too bad. Better than a horse.”

  “You know, I wouldn’t really eat a horse,” he said. “Seeing as how I’m a vegan.”

  “Hey, me too!” This wasn’t exactly true when it came to chocolate, ice cream, and pizza, three of the four essential food groups, but I didn’t feel like footnoting.

  “Then we’ll have to stick together,” he said.

  “One in two-fu.” Inwardly I groaned.

  He winced. “That was awful.”

  “Thank you.” I bowed. “I’m here all summer.” We grinned at each other, and then he said, “Bye,” and I said, “See ya.”

  Not too bad for a shut-in, I thought, giving myself a mental pat on the back.

  “Vegan, huh?” The dark-haired guy who’d been behind us in the orientation line now stood on the other side of the fruit bowl, picking out all the watermelon. The rest of his plate was filled with various meat products.

  I really didn’t want to get into “the vegan thing” with someone I didn’t know, so I gave him my standard line. “It’s a personal choice.”

  “I get that. I just don’t know why.” He studied his watermelon supply and went for a few more. “I mean, I understand vegetarianism. Don’t want to kill animals. Sure. But vegan makes no sense. I can’t really see the harm in milking a cow or eating eggs that won’t ever grow up to be chickens.”

  “If you really want to know, I’ll tell you,” I said, trying not to get heated, because he’d been nice to me with the orientation lady and everything.

  He put down the tongs. “I really want to know.”

  “Okay, well, for starters, the whole poultry industry is evil. Do you know how those chickens live? Cooped up in the same cage their entire lives, not getting out once. It’s criminal.”

  He boldly bit into a sausage, not even pausing to consider how I might have been offended. “Have you ever been around chickens?”

  “Have you . . .” I checked his name tag. “Ian?”

  “My dad has ’em on his ranch in Colorado. Man, do they smell.” He wrinkled his nose. “And talk about nasty personalities. They’ll peck each other to death, you know. They’re cannibals. Swear to god, cannibal chickens. Sounds like a Gary Larson cartoon, but it’s true.”

  “No, it’s not.” Sheesh. The pro-poultry propaganda some people believe.

  He took me by the arm and moved me outside, since, apparently, we were hogging the fruit table. “If we were allowed to go online here, I’d tell you to search Wikipedia for chickens plus cannibals so you could verify.”

  “Wikipedia’s your source?” That was laughable. “Oh, please. The poultry industry probably paid big money to get chicken cannibals on there. It’s an urban myth.”

  He grinned and his eyes crinkled. All of a sudden he looked really familiar—the mop of black hair, the prominent jaw, the constant half smile—though I was almost positive I’d never met him before. “Why would the poultry industry spread a myth that chickens were cannibals?” he asked.

  “So you wouldn’t feel bad eating their eggs.”

  “I wouldn’t feel bad eating their eggs if chickens were the sweetest things on earth. You know why?”

  “Why?”

  “Because they’re . . . chickens!” He thre
w up an arm. “And where I’m from in Texas, chickens are a vegetable.”

  Even I, the die-hard semi-vegan, had to laugh. “I thought you were from Colorado.”

  “My dad’s in Colorado. My mom’s in Texas.” Having finished his sausage, he forked a piece of watermelon while I had yet to take a bite of my own food due to certain insecurities about masticating near guys. “Long, complicated, and, ultimately, boring story.”

  A girl who’d been hanging in our periphery stepped forward all goo-goo-eyed. “Hi, Ian,” she said softly. She was very feminine in a princessy way—wavy, long, auburn hair, big green eyes, perfect figure. The whole girly, curvy enchilada.

  “Hi, Miranda. You feeling better?” To me, he explained, “We came in on the same flight from Dallas.” And he undulated his hand to indicate crazy turbulence.

  “Thanks for not telling everyone about . . .” She reddened, unable to finish whatever it was she wanted kept secret. That she got sick? Was doing two-to-ten in Texas? That they’d made out?

  Ian mimed a zipper across his lip. “What happens at thirty-five thousand feet stays at thirty-five thousand feet.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “You want to eat with us?”

  He hesitated, possibly out of courtesy to me, so I said, “My cousin Jess is waiting. Gotta go,” and started to leave.

  Ian reached for my hand, giving it a firm, warm shake with dazzling eye contact. “Sorry if it seemed like I was getting on your case, Zoe. I don’t care if you’re a vegan, but may I say, on behalf of the Texas Beef Council, that you should never trust a dude who doesn’t eat steak.”

  With a slight lift of his chin, he indicated Dash.

  Two

  The rosiness had returned to Jess’s cheeks, and her mood seemed much improved when I found her sitting cross-legged on the grass laughing with a curly-headed kid in a Life Is Good T-shirt and a hipster black guy with perfectly coiffed dreads; a white short-sleeve, oxford-cloth shirt buttoned right up to the throat; skinny jeans; and ironic, if expensive, Ray-Ban Wayfarer sunglasses, color red.

  “How’d it go?” she asked as I came over with my fruit and coffee. I was dying to replay my conversation with Ian, including his zinger of a parting line, but this was not the place, unfortunately, so all I could do was raise my brows—our signal to talk later.

  “Zoe, this is Karl,” she said, gesturing to the curly-headed kid. “He’s from Maine, and he’s exhausted because he had to get up at two a.m. to catch a flight here from Boston.”

  Karl was laid flat on the ground, eyes closed to the sun. “I’d get up to introduce myself, but I’d probably just pass out.”

  His voice was a strangely high falsetto.

  “Don’t bother,” I said, plunking myself next to him. “Been there.”

  “And this here is RJ.” Jess patted the arm of the hipster. “It’s his second summer at Fairyland, since he was an intern the year before. Now he’s an RA in the boys’ dorm and going to Columbia in the fall.”

  “Don’t forget the Fairyland Executive Training Program,” Karl murmured.

  Jess said, “Oh, yeah. RJ’s in the Fairyland Executive Training Program because he was such an awesome intern the year before.”

  RJ leaned over and extended his hand. “Ask me anything. I’m here to help.”

  It was all I could do not to loosen that top button. How could he wear a collar that tight?

  “He’s Mr. Fairyland,” mumbled Karl, who seemed to be half asleep. “He picked me up at the airport, and by the end of the drive I knew to avoid the Chef’s Surprise and where to chill in the park after-hours and that unless I was looking for a killer case of Lyme disease I shouldn’t go beyond the Haunted Forest. Oh, and that he’d better not catch me with a girl in my room after ten.”

  With a nod RJ said, “Yes, I’m the one you’re gonna want to avoid when you’re sneaking out at four in the morning.”

  A quick wit, I thought approvingly as I sipped my coffee.

  “Seriously,” Jess said. “That’s one of the rules. No girls in the boys’ dorms past ten and vice versa.”

  Karl yawned. “Quit talking about dorms. I couldn’t sleep one wink on my flight. All I want to do is take a nap. When are they going to give us our cast assignments?”

  “I can tell you now, if you want,” RJ said, pulling out a slip of paper from his back pocket. “Obermann, Karl. You’re a Red Riding Hood wolf.”

  Karl let out a moan. “A wolf costume. That’ll be so hot. And not in a good way.”

  “Yeah, but it’s also cool,” RJ said. “Don’t you know? Kids go crazy for a predator in heels and a nightgown.”

  Jess tried to read over his shoulder. “Do you have everyone’s assignments there?”

  “Most of them.” He ran his finger down the list. “Except yours, Zoe. Next to your name, it says Character Yet to Be Determined.”

  I knew it—a mistake!

  “Ooooh. That’s my favorite,” Jess teased. “Goldilocks and the Three Characters Yet to Be Determined.”

  I said, “Shut up! You’re just jealous because you wanted to be a Character Yet to Be Determined, too.”

  Jess cocked her head. “In a way, at our age, Zoe, we’re all characters waiting to be determined.”

  “Don’t get philosophical on me, Swynkowski.” I bit into a slice of cantaloupe and turned to RJ. “What does it mean that I don’t have a part? Is that bad?”

  “It means they hadn’t cast you by the time they were drawing up this list.”

  Jess went, “Duh.”

  “Now, let’s see. Swynkowski.” RJ squinted at the bottom of the paper. “Ah. Here it is.”

  Jess slapped her hands over her ears. “Don’t tell me.”

  “Red Riding Hood Number Two.”

  Not even a #1. Bummer.

  Jess slumped. “I told you it was bad when they didn’t put me in the Princess Tower.”

  “Buck up. At least you’re not a generic elf,” I said, rubbing her back. “Anyway, who knows? You might end up loving it.”

  RJ folded up his paper. “That’s a great character. What’s your problem?”

  I knew Jess didn’t feel like going into it, so I said, “My cousin really wanted to be a princess . . . for a better chance to win the Dream and Do grant.”

  The Dream & Do grant was the big perk of being a Fairyland summer intern. While high school summer cast members weren’t compensated with more than free room and board, at the end of the internship, two of us—a boy and a girl—who’d showed “exceptional Wow!™ spirit” would each receive twenty-five thousand dollars in cash, along with a chance to enter the Fairyland Executive Training Program at Fairyland’s parent corporation—Die Über Wunderbar—in Düsseldorf, Germany.

  Jess and I didn’t talk much about the Dream & Do grant since, obviously, we couldn’t both win the big cash prize. Of course, being ever sweet, Jess insisted she wanted me to win, so I could pay off Mom’s lingering medical bills, but I knew she was counting on the money for college, and I couldn’t blame her.

  NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, the first step in Jess’s dream to become an actor, didn’t come cheap, and financial aid was slim. Since the Swynkowskis were currently broke, Tisch would be totally out of the question without some cash to offset the student loans.

  In my opinion, this was a no-brainer—Jess had to win this grant—though, she was right, being cast as Red Riding Hood didn’t help.

  RJ nudged her with his elbow. “It doesn’t matter what role you get. It matters how you play it and if you show that Wow! spirit.”

  Jess sighed. “I highly doubt that. Everyone knows the grants always go to the princes and princesses.”

  “Maybe you’ll be the first to break the mold,” he said. “I was a summer intern last year, so I know what Management’s looking for: cast members who put their all into playing their parts because, to them, Fairyland is more than a place to work, it’s a family.”

  Jess plucked a few blades of grass, thinking. “Well, I guess it’s not
the worst part in the world to get. I could be a . . .”

  “Watch it,” warned Karl, whom we’d assumed was asleep.

  “. . . little pig,” Jess added. “Certainly I’d be thrilled to be a wolf. And Zoe, you always said I looked fabulous in red.” She batted her lashes.

  “Better you than your bank balance.” Which I hoped wasn’t hitting too close to home, since Jess’s checking account had been overdrawn a lot lately.

  Manic clapping on the part of Andy the Summer Cast Coordinator forced us to quit talking and pay attention. “We have a lot to do today, cast members, so let’s get started,” he announced. “Listen up, because this is important!”

  After breakfast we were to divide into our character groups and then we were going to take a quick tour through the underground tunnels—or “funnels,” as he called them—that led from secret doors in various exhibits around the park down to Our World, where cast members hung out, ate, dressed, etcetera. After that we’d unpack, get settled, and start our official training.

  “And now, some ground rules.” Andy put up a poster:

  THE FAIRYLAND KINGDOM FIVE COMMANDMENTS

  1) There is no such answer as “I don’t know” in the Fairyland Kingdom. If a guest asks you a question and you don’t know the answer—find it. Conversely, if a guest asks you, “When is the five o’clock parade?” respond politely.

  2) Make a “no” moment into a “Wow!™” moment. Your job is to spread joy and glee for all to see! So if you spot a guest who’s not having fun, turn that frown upside down!

  3) Pointing is ALWAYS done with two fingers and an open palm. Remember: Give a thumbs-up for Fairyland!

  4) If a guest gives you trouble, fold your arms genie-style and security will come to your aid. Do not argue, threaten, challenge, or intimidate guests. Guests are RIGHT until proven otherwise. Remember: In Fairyland Kingdom THE GLASS SLIPPER ALWAYS FITS!

  5) Finally, and most important, TO FAIRYLAND ALWAYS BE TRUE. Fairyland is your family away from home, so pitch in and help out. We’re all in this together!