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.”
“Then there’ll be seven candidates left.” He shrugged. “C’est la vie. At least our consciences will be clear.”
We got to the ground. Dash and I stepped out into a stark white, empty hallway by the service area. He was looking at me expectantly, waiting for my verdict.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “You were all gung ho to steal the Hansel’s complaint so we wouldn’t get caught. Now, all of a sudden, you’re Mr. Honesty, and you’re coming clean to the Queen. What happened?”
He grinned dopily. “Valerie. She and I are, um, pretty close these days, and I’ve told her everything. . . .”
I set my jaw, irked that he seemed to have forgotten his pass at me in the elevator. Was that really just a ruse to throw off the trolls? It certainly didn’t feel like one, going by those kisses.
“. . . and she convinced me that this is the right thing to do. How could I ever live with myself if I won the grant knowing that Marcus got screwed?”
“That’s a whole other issue, Dash. Remember?”
But he didn’t.
And that’s how I knew. I was being set up.