My toes did that curling thing again. “In the water?”
“Not to my knowledge or information.” He laughed. “My dad’s a lawyer, and that’s how he answers every question, no matter how small. ‘Not to my knowledge or information.’”
I had the feeling Ian was a big fan of his dad and of Colorado, where they used to live and hike every weekend. As we floated around, he told me how his parents separated a few years before and he had to leave his beloved mountains for Dallas so his mother could take a new job. He hadn’t exactly been thrilled by the relocation.
“Everything’s so artificial in Dallas. We live in a gated community where the grass is chemical green, the pools are chemical blue. For fun, everyone goes to the mall or drives around in big air-conditioned cars, sits in air-conditioned theaters. I miss woods like this. I miss being able to walk out my door and be surrounded by nothing but wilderness.”
It seemed like a funny observation from a guy who was interning at a totally artificial fairy-tale theme park.
Our feet touched, and Ian ran his foot along my ankle. I didn’t pull away.
“I’d had a job lined up at an outdoor gear store in Telluride, but . . . my dad’s new wife didn’t think that would work.”
Ouch! My heart twinged in sympathy. “And Dallas?”
“If I’d stayed in Dallas, Mom would have made me work all summer.”
“Work never killed anyone, as my dad likes to say.”
Ian paused. “As a model.”
Oh.
Actually this didn’t come as that big of a shock. I’d heard rumors that some of the cast members had worked as models, Ian included.
“So you really are a Hollister dude, huh?” I asked.
“It’s mega embarrassing. My mother got me into it after the divorce because she said we were broke and I needed the money for college. Between you and me, I think she loves the whole scene, the agents, the photographers, the cash. She’d have me quit school and do it full-time if she could get away with it.”
“And if you didn’t want to be a naturalist . . .”
He stopped floating and looked at me. “How very perceptive of you, Kiefer. As a matter of fact, that is kind of what I’m interested in, and I’ve been thinking a lot about Yale’s forestry school.” He went back to swimming. “How about you? What do you want to do?”
I lay in the water staring up at the stars thinking how, unlike Fairyland, they had been here long before I was born and would be here long after. That filled me with a comforting peace, as if the universe had just given me permission to simply enjoy being alive here in the pond with Ian under the vast night sky, instead of constantly worrying about the Dream & Do grant and Jess and whether I was in trouble.
I said, “I don’t ever want to leave.”
“That,” he agreed, “is an excellent idea.”
After we got out of the water and I wrapped myself in Ian’s towel, we sat on the rocks and ate apples Ian had brought and chatted about Fairyland and what it was like to work for the Queen and who was most likely to win the twenty-five thousand dollars. (We always came back to Dash and Valerie.) When I felt my tank top was as dry as it was going to get, I got back into my shorts and threw on my shirt.
Except I’d grabbed Ian’s by accident.
“This is the one you ripped on the thorns,” I said, fingering the flannel. “Dash said it was his.”
“He did, did he? How clever of him.” Ian took a last bite of his apple, stood, and chucked the core into the weeds. “Was this part of his plan to get you to confess to the Queen that you’d been in the FZ?”
“Yep. To be fair to Dash”—and it was not easy being fair to Dash—“it sounds like his parents are really pressuring him to bring home the grant. He told me that when his dad dropped him off at the airport, he mentioned all the money they’d spent on Fairyland camps that could have sent the family to Europe. Talk about guilt.”
Ian sat back down next to me so our thighs were touching. “If I’d ever said to Dad that I wanted to go to a Fairyland camp, he would have signed me up for the marines.”
I laughed. “I never thought of it that way, but you’re right. My dad has no clue, either.”
“It’s the mothers you’ve gotta watch out for. They’re the ones behind the scenes micromanaging every detail, making you think something they want you to do is really your idea.”
I kept silent as I always do when people start griping about their mothers.
Ian must have sensed that he’d overstepped some sort of boundary, because he added, “But I’m sure your mother’s nothing like that, right?”
“Uh-huh.”
More silence. I hugged my knees tightly. After a few minutes of this painful awkwardness, Ian asked softly, “Did I just say something wrong? I do that, you know. A. Lot.”
Oh, god. Exactly what I wanted to avoid. If I said, “I don’t want to talk about it,” I’d come off as rude. And yet, if I did relay the morose story about losing Mom, Ian would probably pull a move like my funeral-boyfriend, Derek James, and get as far and as fast away from me as possible.
This was the one vow Jess and I had made to each other: No one would know about her family’s “downturn in finances,” as the Swynkowskis put it, and no one would know about Mom. But if there was one lesson I’d learned during this summer, it was that some rules are worthwhile, and others need to be broken.
I said bluntly, “My mom’s gone.”
“Oh.” He pushed a stone with his foot. “I was afraid it was something like that. When did she leave?”
“She didn’t leave. I mean, not willingly.” I took a big, cleansing breath like Ari, my grief counselor, said I should in these situations. “She died. A year and a half ago, after being sick forever.”
Dammit! As I feared saying that out loud triggered the familiar dreaded reaction. My eyes suddenly burned. My nose tingled. I was going to cry, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
“I miss her every day.” My voice choked.
Ian said, “Come here.” His arm slid around me, drawing me to him, and he gently pressed my head to his shoulder. We sat like that until my sobs subsided and I could be a normal human again.
“Sorry,” I said. “I try not to do that.”
“It’s your mom. I totally get it.”
We were silent again, so quiet that the frogs had enough confidence to start up. “I really like being here, Ian. With you.”
He didn’t say anything, and I was worried that I’d come across as too needy, what with the crying and then the sappy admission that I liked him. I started to wiggle away, but he only held me tighter.
“Would you think I was scum if I made a pass at you right now?” he asked.
I smiled to myself. “That depends. Do you want to kiss me because you just found out I’m a tragic figure? Or is this your thing, hitting on girls who’ve lost their mothers?”
“Zoe,” he said, with complete and utter seriousness, “I’m not gonna lie. I’ve wanted to kiss you every day since I saw you at orientation making an ass out of yourself with Dash.”
“It was Dash who—” But I didn’t get a chance to finish. He thumbed a few remaining tears off my cheeks and hesitated.
“You okay with this?”
“With what?” My pulse had started pounding so hard, it had drowned out every sound except for my beating heart.
“I know you’ve been through a tough time, and I don’t want to—”
Oh, please. I brought my hand to the back of his neck and pulled him down. At the touch of his lips on mine, I quivered, and—sensing this—he wrapped me in his arms to steady me.
We broke away, and he shook his head. “Wow. And I do not mean that in the Fairyland sense of the word.”
“I know, right?” I laughed.
“Let’s try that again just to make sure it was legit.” This time I let him make the first move. And this time we didn’t break away.
Somehow we got off the rocks and onto the beac
h, falling onto the sand, laughing. Next I knew he was on top of me, kissing me and stroking my hair and all I kept thinking was, He’s a Hollister model. How rad is that?
I wanted him to keep going, but he rolled off and rested on one elbow, just looking at me and grinning.
I said, “What?”
“I was just remembering you that first day, how self-righteous you were about everything. You were like some sort of ice princess.”
“I was so not an ice princess.” Valerie. She was an ice princess.
“Really? You jumped all over me for asking you a simple question. I thought you were going to bite off my head when I dared to question why you’re a vegan.”
I ran a finger up his arm, wishing maybe we could stop talking and go back to what we were doing. “So I scared you is what you’re saying.”
“You had me kind of alarmed, yeah.”
“Even with your posse of cannibalistic chickens?”
He leaned over and kissed me lightly. “Don’t dis the chickens.”
I kissed him back. “You know what? I just realized that this is one of the most perfectly happy nights I’ve ever had.”
“Not the happiest night you’ve ever had? I’m very goal-driven, so I need to know.”
I lay back and thought about perfect happiness as I took in the stars, the warmth of the beach, the sound of the frogs croaking in the soft air, and gorgeous Ian Davidson lying next to me, so near I could feel the heat off his body. “Almost. Not quite perfectly happy, but close.”
“Well, let’s see if we can improve on that.” And he kissed me again.
Twenty-two
I blinked and looked down at my hands entangled in another’s. There were my fingers—I recognized the pink nail polish sparkling in the bright morning sun—but whose fingers were those?
Ian’s!
Rolling from his grasp, I sat up in alarm. We’d spent the night together! Outside Fairyland! Those violations were so egregious, they weren’t even in the handbook.
And then another crushing epiphany: Tinker Bell.
I could just picture her tiny white paw frantically pressing the brass buzzer for the Queen, the doggy version of tattling that I hadn’t been there to walk her.
“I gotta go,” I said, hopping up and shaking the sand out of my hair.
Ian rolled over and smiled. His arm lay across his stomach, like he didn’t have a care. “No, you don’t. It’s earlier than you think.”
I ran up to the rocks to get my shoes. “It’s dawn. I have to walk Tinker Bell.”
His eyelids flew open. “The Queen’s dog?”
“Not Peter Pan’s girlfriend,” I said, checking the iPhone to see if she’d called. Fortunately she hadn’t. Whew!
Ian was up in a flash. “Holy crap. We gotta go.”
“I thought you said last night that we had nothing to worry about, since the Queen wasn’t going to send us home this late in the summer and you and I were probably not going to end up with the Dream and Do anyway.”
Hopping around on one foot, trying to tie his hiking boots in midair, he said, “Don’t you know, Zoe? What guys believe at night when they want to get a girl alone and what they believe in the morning are two very different things. It’s like we’re not even the same person.” He grinned and, nearly falling over, kissed me. “Come on. I’ll show you a shortcut.”
We left the lake with its odd tea-colored water and the remnants of the gristmill that I’d mistaken for boulders. Crossing a brief span of grass that I’d thought was a field, we were immediately back in the scrub-pine woods not far from the Haunted Forest, probably still on Fairyland property.
“The good news is she didn’t call,” I said, already breathless and sweating from dodging tree branches and climbing up embankments.
“Probably because we were out of range. Check now.”
Hesitantly I pulled the iPhone from my pocket. No fewer than twenty text messages—starting at midnight and ending about five minutes ago. A wave of sickness swept over me.
“I’m doomed.” The purple palace peeked through the trees of the Haunted Forest. “I went out after curfew into the Forbidden Zone and then spent the night there with a fellow cast member who, oh yeah, is a boy.”
Ian stopped me right at the edge of the forest. “Was it worth it?”
I searched his dark, smiling eyes, his messy hair filled with sand, the way his mouth turned up at the corners like he was always on the verge of a laugh, and said, “You bet.”
Tinker Bell was gone!
I searched everywhere in her private boudoir, even under her cashmere doggy bed and behind her crystal water bowl. Nada. What really had me worried was that her leash was still hanging on its gold hook by the door, so she had to be near.
That’s when the door opened and the Queen walked in with Tink in her arms. She took one look at me in my dirty shorts and with my unkempt hair and said, “Oh. No.”
“Nothing happened. I swear!” I reached for Tink, but the Queen flinched.
“You don’t deserve to hold her after what Tinksy went through, buzzing me in desperation, my poor sweet baby.” She planted a kiss on Tinker Bell’s head, and Tink yawned, sticking out her tiny pink tongue. “I am so disappointed, Zoe.”
I hung my head. “I know. It was wrong.”
“How many times have I told you never, ever, ever to . . .”
. . . go into the Forbidden Zone.
“. . . turn off your telephonic device?” She gently placed Tinker Bell in her bed. “Honestly, Zoe, after all your weeks in my employ, I assumed it was understood that, as I have said, you are to be at my beck and call. Did you simply forget?”
“I made a mistake.” I couldn’t believe Ian and I were going to get away with this.
“And now look at you. Because you didn’t have your telephonic device activated, you’ve overslept and look worse than Rumpelstiltskin on a three-day bender.” She brushed her hands together as if just seeing me in this state made her feel dirty. “Well, you had better shower and change into a nice dress.”
I jerked up my head. Nice dress was bad. Nice dress wasn’t a gown. Nice dress meant that she was packing me back to Bridgewater. “Am I being fired?”
The Queen squinted. “What did you say?”
“Fired. Are you canning me? Like you did to Adele.”
“First of all, I did not fire Adele. I demoted her to a Class B intern. Adele fired herself by running away. Second, why would I fire you?” Her gaze, cold and hard, bore straight into my soul, and it occurred to me that she would have made an excellent torturer during the Spanish Inquisition.
I willed myself to lie. “You would fire me for not being at your beck and call.”
“No, dear girl. It was stupid, inconsiderate, and thoughtless, but it wasn’t like you, oh, I don’t know, spent the night in the Forbidden Zone.”
I nearly fainted on the spot.
Was she messing with me? She had to be, because the Queen gave me a sly smile and turned to go before abruptly stopping at the door. “Oh, by the way, speaking of Adele, it may give you some comfort to know that she is well and unharmed and in close proximity to the Fairyland campus.”
“How did you find out?” I asked, bracing for the worst.
The Queen placed her skeletal fingers on the doorknob. “Because I received a letter from her yesterday detailing everything.” Her lips pursed in some sinister victory. “And I mean everything.”
With that, Her Majesty left and went down the hall, her cackles ricocheting off the bare white walls.
Twenty-three
The one nice dress I had with me was a white eyelet cotton sleeveless number I’d thrown in my bag at the last minute and only because Jess, who was definitely old-school when it came to stuff like thank-you notes and avoiding blue eye shadow, had insisted that a new dress was absolutely necessary for the summer, even at a fairy-tale theme park.
“You never know,” I remember her telling me as she’d sat on my bed back home in Bridg
ewater.
Left unspoken was the sad implication that had I had a mother around, this was the kind of womanly secret I would have learned, along with the importance of a well-made supportive bra and SPF 30 sunscreen.
With my brown hair up, my feet in a pair of cute canvas wedges, my ears accessorized with a favorite pair of crystal owl earrings, and my lips lightly glossed in shimmering pink, I was the epitome of what Jess called “Jersey ingenue.”
If the Queen did indeed plan on demanding I explain Jake the Hansel’s grievance—which I’m positive was in Adele’s letter—or what I was doing out all night with Ian, then at least I would appear as pure as the driven snow.
Ian. I grinned at my reflection in the full-length mirror. If only he could see me now. . . .
A half hour later, right on time, I arrived with the Queen’s usual tray and newspapers to find her standing on a stool, her skirts gathered about her knees, yapping in German.
“Ya, ya,” the Queen was saying. “Wir sind bereit.”
I couldn’t understand a word. I pointed to the teapot, but Her Majesty indicated she didn’t want any. This was serious. I’d never known the Queen not to take her Earl Grey.
“Ich verstehe. Sie können eine Zusammenkunft nicht festlegen.”
Ah, German, I thought. And then . . . Aghhh, German! The Germans oversaw Fairyland. Heck. They owned Fairyland. Which meant that in effect they owned all of us, even the Queen.
“Guten Tag. Auf Wiedersehen.” She hung up, and Andy, who’d been cowering in the corner, rushed to her side. “What did they say?”
“That by the end of the day, we had better sign Sage to a two-year contract as our spokesperson or . . .” She closed her eyes briefly. “There it is.”
“No, ma’am,” Andy said. “It’s gone. Maintenance came and trapped it.”
I put down the tray. “What is it?”
“A mouse,” the Queen hissed.
“A mouse?” I scanned the floor for a scurrying rodent and then, recalling the Queen’s paranoia. “Or the Mouse?”
Andy gave me a funny look and said flatly, “A mouse has been spotted, Zoe. As I’ve said, Maintenance trapped it and took it away.”
How Zoe Made Her Dreams (Mostly) Come True Page 15
