Twelve
I never should have tried to take Ian’s shortcut. I always get in trouble when I don’t go by the book.
It had seemed so straightforward when he was leading the way—down a gentle hill, left at the rock outcropping, around a pine grove, and voilà! In five minutes I should have been on the path.
But now I had no idea where I was, and with only Ian’s small and—eeep!—flickering penlight for guidance, I was beginning to worry that I had somehow accidentally wandered into the Forbidden Zone. You could tell the difference because the Haunted Forest was manicured and regularly cleared of underbrush.
This place was wild and overgrown. And buggy.
I scratched my ankles until they were raw. The mosquitoes had sensed my warm human flesh and had descended like a swarm of vampires, ruthlessly feasting on my blood.
Also, flip-flops? What had I been thinking taking the so-called shortcut in those? Please. I did not want to imagine what lay in wait to lunge at my bare feet—timber rattlesnakes. Spiders. Ticks galore.
I brushed off my legs. We’d spent a week in AP bio studying the life cycle of the common deer tick and how you could be bitten and infected with Lyme disease and not know it until a giant bull’s-eye bite swelled up on your leg and all your joints started hurting.
I really regretted remembering that.
If I’d chosen the path instead of the shortcut, I’d probably be in bed by now, I thought while scrabbling up a mossy incline, my stupid flip-flops sliding over dead leaves and sticks. I got to the top and almost fainted with relief. A light shone dimly through the trees. Or was it a star? No, it was definitely a light. A porch light.
There was a crash to my right, deep in the dark part of the forest. A deer, I told myself. New Jersey was lousy with them. Still, I wasn’t exactly eager to stick around and make sure, so I started running, flip-flops and all. Running toward that light.
“Every breath you . . .”
My heart practically exploded from my chest. Honestly. I had to change that ringtone. I grabbed the phone from my back pocket and slid it to On.
“Zoe!” the Queen trilled. “Where are you?”
“I’m on my way!” I started running again, accidentally stubbing my toe on an exposed tree root. Unspeakable pain rippled up my foot and calf, rendering me speechless.
“Well, hurry up, because there’s a scratching sound outside my window that’s annoying me. I was almost asleep when it woke me up. Make it stop.”
I quit rubbing my aching foot. Hold on. Hold on just a minute.
She was almost asleep?
“Zoe, are you there? I can’t see you!”
I held the phone to my face, hoping it adequately reflected the misery she was inflicting. “Can you describe this sound, ma’am? Was it an owl? A dog? A bird?”
“I don’t know what kind of animal it was! I’m not a blubbering Boy Scout!”
Oddly enough, that’s when I did hear a weird sound—and not the innocent rustling of leaves by some rodent. It was more like a thwack-thwack-thwack of footsteps coming through the undergrowth.
“I’ll go check it out,” I said, turning off the phone before she heard it, too.
I stood quietly listening, my pulse racing, my mind spinning out of control as I imagined every bizarre form of attacker—a wandering loner, a member of a Newark street gang with a poor sense of direction, the legendary New Jersey Devil!
And then logic prevailed. This park was in the middle of the New Jersey Pinelands, a million acres of protected nothingness. Chances were the sounds came from that tick-infected deer or perhaps my prince, in which case I needed to warn him that he was about to be caught in a trap.
“Hello?” I called.
The footsteps stopped, and after what seemed like an eternity, someone responded in that surreal princely voice. “Who’s there?”
It was him!
“Don’t come any closer,” I said. “If I see you and know who you are, I’ll have no choice but to report you to the Queen.”
There was a pause. “So I guess saving your life was, what, chump change?”
“Please. I’ve put my ass on the line by not telling her what happened. I promised you I wouldn’t tell, and I haven’t.”
“Thanks. I’d hate to have to explain the whole story.”
Not that again. “Really, whoever you are, your puns are pun-ishment enough.”
“What are you doing out here, anyway, Zoe? Isn’t it past your bedtime?”
“I could ask you the same thing,” I said, trying to get a bead on how tall he was. Impossible to tell in this darkness. “But we really shouldn’t stick around. The Queen’s set a trap for you with cameras, one for sure by the hole in the fence.”
He said, “Not all of the park is still fenced. They just want you to think it is. One hundred and forty acres is a lot to enclose, and with all the cost-cutting to raise profits, they’ve let the part no one sees rot into the ground.”
I’d been worried about that. “So you mean—”
“You’re officially in the Forbidden Zone.”
Which officially made me a treasonous criminal, the ultimate poster girl of Fairyland disloyalty. I took a deep breath as my nerves, already rattled, quivered and gave up. “Great. Just great.”
He came closer. Again, there was that princely Amazonian cologne. This time I more than swooned. I got positively dizzy.
“Do you want me to show you the way out?” he asked.
“Just tell me.”
His directions were simple. Go directly between the two large pines, take about fifty steps straight ahead, and I would be on the path.
It was only then that I noticed the light I’d been running toward was gone.
“I have to ask,” I said, when he was done. “What are you doing out here?”
“Hanging in the great outdoors away from the plastic artificiality of Fairyland. You should try it sometime, Zoe. I especially recommend swimming under the stars in a real pond instead of chemically treated water. Nothing better.”
The cologne was indeed intoxicating. My body had started to sway, and my brain was turning fuzzy. I had to pinch my nose to minimize the effects.
I said, “The other day on the phone, the Queen mentioned that because of you, Fairyland’s entire future was at stake.”
He chuckled softly. “Yeah, right. I don’t think so.”
A warm breeze rattled the leaves above as he reached out to touch me. “Hey,” he said, pulling me toward him. I shut my eyes on the logic that I couldn’t report what I couldn’t see, right?
He whispered, “Thanks,” and I felt his fingers comb through my hair, pushing it back from my cheek. My heart started racing, because I was almost positive he was about to kiss me or something, but we only stood there like that for a while until he said, “I guess this makes us even. I saved your butt; you saved mine.”
“Hmmm,” was the best I could manage. I was dying to take a peek, but before I could, he’d let go, moving through the woods with the quiet agility of a cougar, leaving me slightly disappointed that I hadn’t taken the risk to find out which prince he was.
His footsteps were distant shuffles when I headed toward the two pine trees and, hopefully, the path. I went about five feet when I was abruptly blinded by a bright lamp.
“Turn that down!” I snapped, trying to shield my eyes.
In front of me stood a stocky figure, hands on hips, hair in a traditional German pageboy, the buckles on his lederhosen visible even through the undergrowth.
Just my luck. A Hansel.
“Well, well, well,” he singsonged. “If it isn’t the Queen’s very own lady-in-waiting caught red-handed conspiring with Fairyland’s most-wanted criminal.” His headlight zigzagged as he shook his head in condemnation. “And I suppose you’re gonna say it was just a coincidence?”
I recognized him as Jake, a somewhat cute Hansel with a big chip on his shoulder, namely his height. Or lack thereof. The other day he’d gone on a rant about how he would have been chosen as a Prince Charming had it not been for one or two missing inches.
“What are you doing out here, Jake?”
“What do you think? You got the memo. Whoever has information about the traitor will automatically be promoted and, therefore, that much closer to getting the Dream and Do.” He rubbed his hands together. “I can practically feel that twenty-five thousand dollars burning a hole in my pocket.”
“Yes, you’d make a lovely princess.” Couldn’t resist.
“Very funny, Zoe. If I were you, I’d be worried. I heard what you told him about the cameras, and that Management thinks he’s a threat to Fairyland. Do you know what the Queen’s going to do to you when she finds out what you said behind her back? That’s not exactly showing the Wow! spirit, is it?”
My body went stiff with dread. I knew he’d snitch on me, too. Jake the Hansel was just that ambitious.
“All right, all right. Don’t get your lederhosen in a twist,” I said, making light. Never let ’em see you sweat. “But how do you know?”
He said, “How do I know what?”
“How do you know I won’t get to her first? You need an appointment to talk to the Queen, whereas I, being her closest assistant, could wake her right now if I wanted and tell her that I caught you two conspiring.” I took a step closer. “Who’s she going to believe? Her most-trusted lady-in-waiting or a bitter little creep whose only chance of advancement is by ratting on his fellow cast members?”
He gasped. That was a Hansel for you—total wimps.
“I can’t help it if I’m short,” he countered. “You said ‘little.’ That hurt my feelings.”
“Oh, that’s too bad. Say, how about a photo of you in the Forbidden Zone to back up my story?”
“We’re not allowed to have cameras.”
“Correction,” I said, turning on the phone that, unbeknownst to him, could only call the Queen and do nothing else. “You’re not allowed to have a camera.”
The phone automatically rang Her Majesty, who got on sounding more irritated than usual. “What is it now, Zoe? Honestly, if you keep pestering me like this, I’ll never get the beauty sleep I need.”
But by then Jake was long gone.
“Nothing, ma’am. I just want to report that the sound shouldn’t be bothering you anymore. Some sort of animal digging, apparently. Scared it off.”
“And no sign of . . . anyone else?”
I hesitated for a second as I debated how to answer this. “Just a Hansel who was doing a citizen’s watch thing on the lookout for your so-called spy.”
“Really? Interesting. Now go to bed and quit bothering me. It boggles the mind why you teenagers insist on staying up so late. Might do for you to take a page out of my book. Early to bed, early to rise makes a woman beautiful and wise.”
I clicked off the phone and found my way to the path. I never did get that sleeping potion.