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.