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 Bridgewater.
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.”
“They most certainly did not!” the Queen bellowed. “It’s still here. It’s after me. It wants to nip at my heels.”
I was tempted to climb a chair, since I wasn’t exactly a big fan of tiny rodents with sharp teeth myself, but when the Queen was distracted by something on one of the monitors, Andy made a point of catching my eye, shaking his head ever so slightly, and mouthing, No mouse, as he twirled his finger by his head in the universal pantomime for crazy.
Could it be that the Queen was under so much pressure from the Germans that she was seeing imaginary mice?
Sugar! That’s what was called for. Dashing to the tray, I stirred her maple-syrup-laced blueberries into a tablespoon of fat-free plain yogurt. “Ma’am,” I said, offering it up to her since she refused to budge from her stool.
“Not this morning, Zoe. I am brunching with Mr. Adams and his manager, Michelle.”
I lowered the bowl. “He’s here?”
She checked her official Fairyland watch featuring Cinderella and the castle clock. “Scheduled to arrive in our underground garage at ten-oh-five.”
So that was why the Queen had asked me to dress in civilian clothes, not because I was being fired, but because this was my day to escort Sage Adams. The Sage Adams. My heart fluttered with relief and the thrill of spending the day with a real-live celebrity—even if his music sucked.
Wait! I needed to call Sergei at the resort and let him know, so the staff would open the windows in room 505 and bring up the special lilies Michelle had requested, the ones that filtered the air. Was the Italian spring water on ice? There was so much to do!
“Then I need to get ready.” Setting aside the blueberries and yogurt, I ran to get my itinerary in the Sage Adams file that, for the purposes of secrecy, I had kind of anagrammed into “Dam Sages.”
The Queen halted me with the outstretched palm of her hand. “Not quite yet, Zoe. There is no telling how this morning’s negotiations will fare. As much as I eagerly want to sign Sage Adams to be our spokesperson, I’ve ridden the merry-go-round enough to know it doesn’t always go the right way.
“Therefore, I will need you to stand by for my call. Andy has arranged for an emergency backup to play Red Riding Hood for you if all goes well and, perchance, Mr. Adams is interested in touring the park after brunch. Meanwhile I need you to do a search through my files, Zoe.” She smiled thinly. “All. Five. Boxes.”
This was my punishment for being late to walk Tinker Bell—sorting through five boxes of files.
Her smile grew wider. “In the basement.”
The basement! That dingy, damp place with the spiders and centipedes and silverfish? Oh, crud.
“Tsk, tsk. Don’t look so dismayed,” she said, gingerly stepping off her stool. “This time, however, please do remember to keep your telephonic device activated. Would be such a shame if I couldn’t reach you to escort Mr. Adams, and I had to rely on someone like Valerie.”
The assignment couldn’t have been more dreary: to find a five-page memo from the Germans about something called PUD:1,001 that Evelyn had accidentally archived in storage.
The PUD:1,001 boxes were in the vault where all the important Fairyland documents were kept. I would need my master key and also a special combination that the Queen gave me to use on a lock behind a false basement thermostat. Which meant I would be spending a sunny August morning locked away in a windowless room searching through papers, away from everyone. Away from Ian.
There, I said it.
On the off chance I might run into him during breakfast, I stopped by the cafeteria to grab something to eat, since I was starved and it wasn’t like there was a vending machine in the basement. Jess and RJ were hanging out drinking coffee, and when she saw me, Jess practically leaped across tables to make sure I was alive by squeezing me to death.
“I was so worried.” She gave me another hug. “I stopped by your room this morning and knocked to see if you wanted to meet up for coffee. I figured you were out walking Tink, but when I came back a half hour later you still weren’t there or in the bathroom. I worried that maybe you never made it back from You-Know-Where last night.”
“I’m fine,” I said, doing a quick check for Ian. No sign. Bummer.
Jess insisted I sit down and tell her everything over pancakes. As RJ showed no signs of excusing himself from the table, I had to omit the best part of my story, about spending the night with Ian. That, RJ definitely would have had to report.
I poured on a dab more maple syrup. “So now she’s ordered me to the basement to search through five boxes of files with an ominous name like PUD:1,001 to find some progress report.” I licked my finger and recapped the bottle.
Jess wrinkled her nose. “One thousand and one files?”
“Let’s hope not,” I said, realizing that I was famished after missing dinner the night before.
RJ, who’d been silently listening to our conversation, said, “I don’t get why you’re being punished if all you did was accidentally turn off the Queen’s cell.”
I shrugged. “She tried to reach me all night, and then she had to wake up early and walk Tinker Bell. That’s why she’s pissed.”
Jess bit her lip, and I could tell she was worried this meant I’d disqualified myself from the Dream & Do.
“I’ve given up,” I said. “There’s no way I’m gonna get the Dream and Do. I’m not a princess. I picked Her Majesty’s precious flowers my first day on the job. And now this.”
RJ leaned forward. “So why do you even try to please her?”
It was a valid question, and I didn’t answer it off the cuff. I thought about it. “Because I don’t want Jess to be a victim of guilt by association. . . .”
Jess said, “Right. Like you haven’t single-handedly made my summer by pulling strings to make me Cinderella.”
I ignored that. “And because there’s still a chance I’m in the running. And as long as there’s still a chance, I’m going to keep on trying.”
My cousin turned to RJ. “What do you think? Is she still okay?”
RJ’s fingers played with a straw on the table as he scrutinized me under his heavy black brows. “From the rumors I’ve been hearing in the front office, Zoe’s doing fine.”
But he wasn’t looking where I was looking. RJ was looking at me, and I was looking at Dash, who was jerking his thumb toward the hall. Apparently we had to chat.
Goody.