Eight
I was fast asleep when the iPhone the Queen gave me blared the strains of “Every Breath You Take,” the creepy Police song about stalking that Jess had set as my ringtone for Her Majesty.
“Zoe! Something’s wrong with Tinkers.” The Queen sounded panicked. “I’ve been buzzed.”
Strange but true: Tinker Bell had been taught to press her paw on a little brass button that activated a buzzer in the Queen’s bedroom. Frankly, I’d had my doubts that a dog with a brain the size of an overgrown peanut could be trained to use such a thing, but, apparently, overgrown-peanut dog brains are wildly underestimated.
Lowering her voice, the Queen explained, “I suspect she is suffering from an upset tummy. We were celebrating the latest quarterly profit statements this evening, and I’m afraid she overdid it with the foie gras and champagne.”
Probably really expensive champagne, too. Stifling a yawn, I said, “Yes, ma’am. I’ll be right there.” And hung up to get dressed.
Jess rolled over. “You’re kidding, right?”
“I wish.” Pulling on a pair of shorts, my Bridgewater-Raritan High School hoodie, and flip-flops, I took the iPhone so the Queen wouldn’t wake Jess with another call but left the flashlight next to my bed, figuring Tink would require no more than a quick do-si-do around her favorite bush.
Had I any inkling that her plan would be to take off for the Haunted Forest as soon as her toes touched the artificially green grass of Fiddler’s Green and that she’d pursue an imaginary squirrel all the way to the fence and I’d be forced to follow her into the Forbidden Zone, where I’d be stuck in quicksand, relying on the assistance of some wise-cracking, rule-breaking, night-wandering prince, I might, indeed, have been more prepared.
But I wasn’t.
The following morning I awoke with sand under my nails, the prince’s shirt swatch in my hand, and the blurry feeling that my duty was to report the prince’s illegal activities—that is, if I were as loyal to the Fairyland family as Her Majesty believed me to be.
Except I couldn’t be loyal to the Fairyland family, because I’d promised the prince I wouldn’t tell, a vow I absolutely couldn’t break. It wasn’t just that he’d found Tinker Bell and saved my butt, but that he’d found a branch and saved my life.
“So let me get this straight,” Jess said as I opened the Queen’s morning newspapers and went directly to the entertainment section to start editing. “You were chasing Tinker Bell, and you found an old wall, and when you reached up to see what it was, you stepped into a sinkhole.”
“Quicksand, actually.” I pondered whether Her Majesty would be irritated by an ad for a movie about Snow White even though it hadn’t been produced by a Mouse studio. “And I more than stepped. I went in up to my thighs.” I cut it out just in case.
“That’s sooo scary. I probably would have screamed my head off.”
“And let the trolls find me in the Forbidden Zone with Tink lost? No way.”
Jess plunked her finger on a coupon for free kiddie bowling, a family-friendly alternative to visiting Fairyland that would send the Queen into fits. “You missed this.”
I uncapped my X-acto knife and proceeded to carve out the offending ad along with several advertisements for skee-ball arcades, movie theaters, and a local internet café. “Good catch.”
“No problem. Give me the inserts, and I’ll check the rest.”
It was the Sunday paper, so there were tons. I dumped them in the lap of her blue gingham Red Riding Hood dress, and she got down to work.
“Here’s what I want to know,” Jess said. “What was a prince doing after curfew in, of all places, the Forbidden Zone? I keep thinking of those spiders and snakes and centipedes running around and . . .” She lifted her scissors and shivered.
“I have no idea what he was doing there. Trespassing into the FZ is an automatic dismissal from the program. Why take the risk?” Checking again to make sure no one in the rec room was in listening range, I added, “You know, I never would have been there if it hadn’t been for that damned dog.”
“Hey, home furries. What’s up?” Ian sauntered in, half dressed in his Puss ’n Boots costume followed by Karl and RJ. They flopped down on the couches, and Ian and Karl placed their heads on either side of the newspapers to bug Jess, who was totally creeped out by the way decapitated animal parts lay around Wardrobe like a horror movie.
“See?” Ian said. “They’re reading. Just like you.”
Jess pushed them to the floor in disgust. “I’m sorry to say that yours still smells like barf, Karl.”
“Not my fault. I had no choice.”
This was true. One of the little secrets at Fairyland was that because costumes like the wolf’s were so mega hot, it was not unheard of for the cast members wearing them to suffer mild heatstroke on sweltering summer days.
This presented a variety of challenges starting with Fairyland Rule #13: No furry cast member may remove any part of his or her costume in the park during operating hours. Should an emergency arise, the aforementioned character will calmly and quietly exit so as not to draw attention. ONLY then may the costume be removed.
A few days ago, with temperatures inching into the nineties, Karl got sick while in the Fourth of July parade. With no discreet way to slip into Our World while hundreds of people were taking his photo and asking for hugs, he had to endure the awfulness until the very end, when he was finally allowed to go underground and come out for air. Even though Wardrobe had done what they could with heavy doses of Febreze, it only made the situation worse by covering one bad smell with another. No matter how long he showered after work, he still reeked faintly of Sweet Citrus & Zest and puke.
RJ popped off the lid of his iced tea. “What are you doing here, Zoe? Usually you’re at Her Majesty’s beck and call by now.”
“The Queen let me sleep in because—” I’d planned on inventing some bogus excuse, but Jess beat me to the punch.
“Because the Queen called her in the middle of the night to go walk Tinker Bell, and, guess what, the dog got past the fence and into the Forbidden Zone, where Zoe fell into quicksand and—”
I gave her a hard pinch under the table before she got to the part about the prince. She promptly clamped her mouth shut.
RJ arched his eyebrow. “Tsk, tsk, Zoe. The Forbidden Zone? That’s an instant disqualification from winning the Dream and Do grant, you know.” He took a sip of his iced tea. “Of course, if you’d memorized the rules like I’d told you . . .”
I gave him a look. “I did. All two hundred and seventy.” I gathered up the scraps of newspaper and pushed them into the trash can. “I can’t help it if Tinker Bell took off.”
Ian got up and quietly closed the doors. “Even if it wasn’t your fault, Zoe, you probably shouldn’t be blabbing that story all over the place, especially in the presence of a future Fairyland executive over here.” He nodded toward RJ.
“Get real, Ian. You know RJ would never fink on us,” Jess said, doing that thing where she opens her baby blues and turns guys into mush. “He’s stand-up. Aren’t you, RJ?”
You could practically see RJ melt like butter. “Yeah, chill, Ian. I’m not that much of a creep.”
RJ and Jess locked gazes just a trite too long.
Behind their backs, Ian and I rolled our eyes.
Karl, who’d been strangely silent during this exchange, suddenly roused himself from his reverie. “If you ask me, there’s something weird about the way Management wants to keep us out of the Forbidden Zone. The Pinelands aren’t that dangerous, not like the Everglades in Florida. So what’s the big deal?”
Well, I thought, how about quicksand, for starters?