He reined to a stop and smiled with beneficent interest. “Is there a problem, good maidens?”
Viviana furiously waved toward Karl. “That wolf is trying to eat Red Riding Hood.”
Karl hooked his blue plastic purse in the crook of his arm, straightened his flannel nightgown, and stuck out a hip.
Ian squinted. “You mean that kindly old grandmother?”
“He’s not a grandmother!” the children protested. “He’s a wolf!”
“Let me see about this alleged wolf,” Ian said, sliding off his saddle and adjusting his white jacket.
“Oh, no, Your Highness, I was just saying hello to my granddaughter.” Karl’s falsetto voice was delightfully absurd. “I’m not a wolf. Not me. Oh, no.”
“Yes, he is!” the children cried.
Karl and Ian faced off with each other while I had second thoughts. If Ian had to save us, what kind of message were we sending to little girls like Viviana? Weren’t Viviana and I perfectly competent to save ourselves without the help of male intervention?
“Come on, Viviana,” I said, taking her hand again. “We can handle this.” And we charged ahead, planting ourselves between Ian and Karl as I reached up and removed the wolf’s lace nightcap, the one item that, in Fairyland, apparently distinguished carnivorous wild animals from brownie-baking grandmothers.
“You’re not my grandmother,” I declared. “The children are right. You’re a wolf, and I’m going to ask this prince to arrest you for trying to kidnap me!”
Karl gasped and wobbled off in his heels. The children cheered. Red Riding Hood was saved . . . until the 4:00 p.m. show.
I knelt down and handed Viviana a rainbow lollipop from my basket for being such a brave ally. She rewarded me with a hug and a furtive “I love you, Red,” before skipping off with her mother.
I gave Ian a reluctant grin. “Good job.”
“Not too bad yourself,” he said.
The iPhone buzzed in the pocket of my cape. “In my office,” she ordered. “Stat!”
I slid my phone to Off and stepped behind Jack’s Beanstalk. After checking to make sure no one was looking, I yanked open the dark green door, took the staircase down to Our World, and then the elevator to her office, where I discovered Her Majesty hunched over her keyboard, googling.
“Sit,” she commanded.
I took a seat and pushed back my hood. It was pleasantly cool in here with the air-conditioning. During heat waves a girl could miss a climate-controlled office.
“I suppose I don’t have to tell you who Sage Adams is,” she said, exiting out of a video.
“He was a runner-up on American Idol.” I decided to refrain from adding that he was also the celebrity crush of Karolynne, the sixteen-year-old mother-to-be from Teenage Pregnant Nightmare. “And now he’s a professional singer.”
“Depending on how you define the word professional. Or, for that matter, singer.” The Queen pressed a button, and pages began to spit out of her printer. “Be that as it may, it seems the famous Mr. Adams has a longing to revisit the days of yore by stopping by Fairyland for a tour of his favorite childhood haunt. Corporate would like us to seize the opportunity to make him our spokesperson.”
That wasn’t a bad idea, actually. Sage was almost eighteen, on the cusp of adulthood. Tweens loved him. Teenagers abhorred him. And middle-aged mothers thought he was exactly the kind of boy their daughters should be dating.
“That’s sensible,” I said. “Sage Adams is big among middle schoolers.”
“I’m glad you have so decreed, because Mr. Adams and his manager, a one rather odious Michelle Michaels, will be here within the week, and you, my young and loyal assistant, will be their—albeit mute—escort.”
She lifted the stack of newly printed pages and deposited them in front of me with a thud. “Some light reading for you.”
I gaped at the stack, wondering what possible relation it had with Sage Adams. “Why me?”
She crossed her arms and scowled. “Because I’m like a dragon, Zoe—dangerous, incendiary, and decidedly ancient. Mr. Adams would no more relate to me than I would relate to his juvenile music. What’s his hit song again? I was just looking at it on the You Tubes.”
“YouTube,” I corrected. “It’s ‘Come Away, My Love.’ The live version. It drives girls wild, because it makes it sound like he’s going to fall in love with them onstage.”
“How incredibly naive and, yet, I must admire his marketing savvy. Hmm.” She perched herself elegantly in the chair. “Sing it for me.”
“Really?” I was a lousy singer.
“Yes,” she said. “Really. I would like to be able to quote the lyrics, if possible, during negotiations.”
I couldn’t sing it because I couldn’t carry a tune, but I could say it.
“This is my love song to you
I don’t know who.
But when I look out into the crowd and see
You being wowed. I’ll know you’re the one.
So don’t be surprised if I step off this stage and reach out and say
Come away with me . . . my love.”
The Queen lifted her eyes to the ceiling. “On behalf of all that is good and melodic, Ludwig van Beethoven, I apologize. Now, to the matters at hand.” She tapped the papers. “What you have there is a comprehensive list of Mr. Adams’s likes, dislikes, and deal breakers. It is your mission to read through the lists and ensure that everything he has requested is ready by his arrival, though we are lacking an ETA.”
I checked the first demand: no raw broccoli. As if Fairyland even served fresh vegetables. The Xbox 360 and feather-free pillows seemed easy enough, but the fair-trade 80 percent dark chocolate and peanut butter made from nongenetically altered peanuts had me stumped. This was New Jersey. Everything here was genetically altered.
“The thing is, ma’am,” I began, uncertain of how to turn down her offer to escort Sage. “I’m probably not the best person to be handling Mr. Adams and his manager. I don’t mean to seem rude, but I’m just not a fan.”
“Which is why you are ideal.” She hand-fed a piece of mozzarella from her Insalata Caprese to Tink. “Somewhere on that list you’ll see that Mr. Adams specifically requested an escort of a nonfawning nature. Also you two do have something in common.” She arched her eyebrow. “A deep and abiding nostalgia for Storytown. He’s curious to see its remains.”
That threw me for a loop.
I was surprised that a big star like Sage cared about Fairyland’s precursor, too. Maybe he wasn’t so commercial and awful after all.
I said, “I thought Storytown was long gone.”
“Not entirely, though according to our engineers it is sinking fast into the soft New Jersey sand.” She sipped her tea. “You haven’t seen it, Zoe, because in the interest of protecting public safety, it’s been secured behind a wall, out of sight in the Forbidden Zone.”
Sinking! The wall! The Forbidden Zone! That must have been where I got trapped in the quicksand and was saved by Dash.
“And you want me to take him there?”
Her teacup slipped out of her hand, falling to the saucer with a clatter. “Heaven forbid! Only if you wish to send me to an early grave!” She whipped out her white Chinese fan and started waving it to cool herself from the shock of my suggestion. “Were Mr. Adams to see how Storytown has been allowed to slip—quite literally—into decay, there is no doubt he would reject our offer of spokesmanship. Such a blight on our property is, shall we say, déclassé.
“Indeed, your goal will be to avoid all talk of Storytown while buoying his impression of Fairyland, so that Storytown becomes nothing more than a footnote in his future poorly crafted, overhyped, ghostwritten autobiography.”
I sighed. There was no arguing with the Queen when she had made up her mind.
“Moreover, Mr. Adams will be here on business. To wit, he will not sign autographs or personally entertain the flirtations of various interns. Nor will you inform said interns that he will be,
is now, or has been, on the premises. Do. You. Understand?”
I nodded.
“Speak!”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She sat back, somewhat mollified. “You should know, Zoe, that there are only ten candidates remaining for the Dream and Do grant, and they include you and the sweet, hardworking cousin who you admirably support and who has the Wow! spirit in abundance. It would be a tragedy if a mishap during Mr. Adams’s visit reduced that number to eight.”
I swallowed hard, my throat as dry and scratchy as sandpaper. “Yes, ma’am.” No pressure there!
Her computer dinged, and the Queen swiveled to check her email. “Oh, dear. This is not good. Not good at all.”
“Is everything okay?” I asked. Now that I thought of it, she had been looking paler than usual—if such a thing were possible.
She absently played with the ruby-scarab brooch on her dress. “It’s Adele, I’m afraid. We received information this morning that she didn’t fly home to Wisconsin as Personnel had arranged. According to this alert from Security, a survey of our cameras shows she hasn’t left the park.”
She was still here—waiting to get me.
“Where do you think she is?” I asked, trying not to act too nervous, though I was frantic.
“Not far. Perhaps hiding out in someone’s room or in the Forbidden Zone. Security, naturally, is fanning the area.” The Queen checked her email again. “It is one of the most dreadful crises to afflict a fairy-tale theme park, a Cinderella gone rogue. There’s no telling what kind of mayhem a scorned princess can wreak. No telling at all.”
Nineteen
I would have gone hunting for Adele myself if the Sage Adams Project, along with catering to the Queen and Tinker Bell plus playing Red Riding Hood, hadn’t kept me busy from dawn to midnight.
According to Sage’s bossy manager, Michelle, I was to arrange for a hybrid town car that would transport them from the Philadelphia airport to Fairyland. The town car was to be stocked with spring water in high-density polyethylene bottles, organic veggie chips, nonalcohol-based hand sanitizer, Trident White gum (flavor: peppermint), an iPad with 4G capability, sound-isolating ultracompact headphones, and the complete series of South Park downloaded and ready for viewing.
Once at Fairyland Sage was to be provided with a black trench coat and a Philadelphia Phillies baseball cap, because apparently that wouldn’t make him stand out in a theme park in August. When we were introduced, I was not to say anything but “hello” and escort him and Michelle to the attraction of his choice.
Most importantly Michelle stressed, “Do not talk.”
The visit was to take approximately three hours, no longer. At the end I was to usher him into Our World and then through the hidden tunnels to the Fairyland Kingdom Resort, specifically to room 505, the corner penthouse suite, where the TV was to be on and turned to MTV. The curtains were to be closed to prevent paparazzi from intruding.
The sheets on his bed were to be organic cotton, and all bedding was to be washed thoroughly in two-hundred-degree water before his arrival. The carpet was to be steam cleaned with nontoxic detergents. There was to be no leather, feathers, or any other animal product in the room. The windows should be washed with white vinegar and water. The soap in his bathroom: grapefruit/mint. Organic, natch.
There must have been fifty reminders that this visit was to be secret, confidential, blah, blah, blah. And if I so much as whispered the name Sage, the skies would open, and all hellfire and damnation would rain down on Fairyland.
It took me two days of ordering online from the Queen’s office and then making sure everything was delivered to room 505 instead of being lost somewhere in Fairyland’s cluttered mailroom. I even stood on chairs and washed the huge plate-glass windows in Sage’s penthouse suite—all eight of them!—with vinegar and water. That alone took close to four hours. I’d never be able to move my arm again.
“Congratulations, you did it!” exclaimed Sergei, the hotelier. I’d thought he was a complete snob when we first met and I’d had to explain that I, not he, would be handling the arrangements for a “Special VIP” the Queen had forbidden me from naming.
Now, having bonded over the search for the thirty peace lilies that Michelle demanded because they “filtered” the air, Sergei and I were old buddies. He ran a finger over the top of the TV cabinet and nodded his approval when it came up clean. “Is there anything else?”
“Not until the actual day.”
“And that is . . . ?” You could tell he was annoyed by our “Special VIP’s” refusal to pinpoint the date of his arrival, which was saying something, since Sergei had handled his share of spoiled guests.
“Anytime after today, apparently. Doesn’t matter. We’re ready.”
He opened the door using his handkerchief to prevent germs from tainting the knob, also one of Michelle’s requests. “Are you coming?”
“I think I’ll do one last inspection. Thanks.”
“Very well.” And he left.
I listened for his footsteps in the hall and went over to the TV, turning the volume wayyy down low as I clicked to channel 831. It was 9:00 p.m. on a Monday, and if memory served, Teenage Pregnant Nightmare would be playing in back-to-back reruns.
Yes, yes, of course, this violated a bunch of Fairyland rules, mostly #23 and #64. But it’d been ages since I’d watched TV, and I was suffering withdrawal, so you could consider this almost a mental-health excuse.
Karolynne came on with her new boyfriend, who went by one letter—Z. Ugh. What a loser! I sat on the settee at the foot of the king-size bed and studied Z. Wifebeater. Skanky beard. A bunch of gold chains. Clearly he was in it for the fame of being on TPN. I mean, he wasn’t even Karolynne’s type. She went for guys who were short and stocky. Z was tall and wiry and covered with weird red welts.
I was prepared to be riveted as Karolynne and Karolynne’s slack-jawed sister, Tanya, cracked their gum while shopping for cribs—an episode I had found amusing in my wood-paneled TV room back in Bridgewater, but that now, after a summer of serving the Queen’s wild whims, I found to be simply boring. Didn’t these people have anything better to do? Like maybe get their GEDs?
Twenty minutes later and Karolynne was fighting with Z over why he hadn’t gone shopping for cribs. (I swear she and Hunter Boxworth once had the exact same argument.) Their faces turned red. Z threw a lamp and yelled that he wasn’t her baby’s father. For that Karolynne’s mother, Mae, doused him in her white wine. Even Karolynne tossed a pillow now and then. All this yelling and atrocious grammar and general nastiness gave me such a headache that I had to turn it off.
The Queen would have been appalled and rightly so. What had I ever seen in that show?
I closed the TV cabinet doors feeling somewhat blue. Without TPN to look forward to when I got home, there was nothing. Just me and Dad and school.
Well, I wouldn’t think of leaving Fairyland now. I would think about that later. The old Scarlett O’Hara approach.
Gathering my Sage file, I stepped out of his suite to find none other than Dash Merrill waiting for the elevator in his Prince Charming getup.
“Dash?”
He did a double take. “Zoe?”
“What are you doing here?”
“Tuck-in service.” He rubbed his fingers together to show it paid well.
Rich folks could afford to do this: arrange for a prince or princess to stop by their suites with milk and cookies to read bedtime stories to their children. While it wasn’t exactly encouraged, parents often tipped heavily.
“How about you?” he asked, punching the button for the elevator again.
“Running an errand for the Queen.” Vague enough.
The elevator dinged, and the doors opened. Dash waved me in. “After you.”
As soon as the doors closed, he pressed the Stop button and folded his arms. “We have to talk.”
“This with the stopping the elevators again. Your only move?”
“I tend
to stick with what I know. Okay, what are we going to do about Marcus? I feel bad.”
So did I. It was beyond unfair that he’d been kicked out for being the victim of mistaken identity. “Look at it this way: He’s back in California and happily surfing again and, as far as Prince Charming goes, Ian’s a huge hit. All’s well that ends well, right?”
He shook his head. “I have to tell Her Majesty the truth.”
A knot in my stomach tightened. “You do that, and you’re out of the running for the Dream and Do grant.”
“I know.”
“There are only ten people left as it is.”
“Really?” He sighed heavily. “And if we’re not out already, we will be.”
I suspected this was what he was getting at. “You’re bringing me down with you?”
“I’m not bringing you down, Zoe. You’re a witness. You were in the FZ that night. You know it wasn’t Marcus you ran into, so you have a responsibility to come forward, too.”
“I’m not wholly responsible,” I said, repeating one of his better puns.
He didn’t laugh, didn’t even crack a smile. “What about the shirt swatch you found? Do you still have it?”
“I’m surprised you know about that.”
“It was my shirt that got ripped, after all. If you show that to the Queen, it’ll clear Marcus, who probably doesn’t even own black flannel, seeing as how he’s from Southern California. That’s evidence right there that he’s innocent.”
The speaker came on. Hotel security telling us their computers indicated a stoppage between floors five and four.
Dash said, “Sorry. We’ll get it back online.” He pressed Resume. The elevator started up, and we descended, my brain reeling. Dash was right. I needed to step up and do the right thing, and I would . . . if it weren’t for Jess.
“But what about the other night I saw you?” I asked. “If I go to the Queen, she’ll want to know what Marcus was doing then, and I’ll have to say he was with my cousin, which will automatically disqualify her from the Dream and Do grant, too.”
How Zoe Made Her Dreams (Mostly) Come True Page 13
