How Zoe Made Her Dreams (Mostly) Come Tr - By Sarah Strohmeyer Page 0,3

pink tutus that we held out to curtsy when Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty passed by with one of their Prince Charmings.

I shouldn’t have let myself think about those sparkly, blue-sky days that smelled of coconut sunblock and popcorn that would never, ever be again, because I immediately plummeted into one of my funks. Jess, catching me fingering the single-pearl necklace that used to be Mom’s, shifted the Bobmobile into park and said, “You okay?”

I said, “Uh-huh. I’m fine.”

But Jess knew. She’d been there with me from the beginning, when Mom came clean about the diagnosis after admirably trying to pass off her nausea and exhaustion as stress. It was Jess who’d looked up all the reassuring survivor stories online and showed up on my doorstep with bags of barbecue potato chips, ice cream, chocolate sauce, M&Ms, those chemically questionable maraschino cherries, and whipped cream, plus Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Legally Blonde (1 & 2) to keep me distracted.

Jess had stuck with me to the bitter end—unlike Derek James, the crappiest boyfriend ever, who didn’t break up with me before the funeral only because his parents insisted that would have been cruel. Or so his subsequent girlfriend, Zara Cavalerie, couldn’t wait to tell me.

Meanwhile, I had been so caught up in the day-to-day slog of sickness and losing Mom and generally feeling sorry for myself that I hadn’t noticed that Jess’s family was falling apart, too. Not healthwise, thank god, but, rather, financially. One day her parents were gainfully employed at the local pharmaceutical company; the next thing I knew they’d been out of work for six months, and Jess was getting nervous.

Not that she complained—that’s the thing about Jess: she hardly ever does—but all of a sudden she couldn’t go shopping, and a trip to the movies was too expensive when, before, we didn’t think twice. She even had a job scooping Häagen-Dazs at the mall and still didn’t have a penny to spare. It was weird, and when I’d finally asked her what was up, she’d admitted that she was handing her paychecks to her parents, who’d already blown through her college fund.

I mean, there was nothing left in their savings. Not even five bucks for a measly spiral-bound notebook. And now Jess was looking at living at home after graduation while maybe taking a course at the Raritan Valley Community College instead of going to her dream school, Tisch, for drama at NYU.

“What are the chances of me actually breaking out as an actress, anyway?” she asked as we drove to Fairyland. “My money—that is, if I had money—would be wasted. Better to be practical and learn something useful. Like accounting.”

Jess could not count out change on a ten-dollar bill for a $6.79 Banana Split Dazzler down at the Dazs, so I couldn’t imagine her holed up in a cubicle doing people’s taxes. If she refused to have an honest discussion with her parents about money and college, because she didn’t want them to feel guilty for spending her NYU tuition, then I’d take charge.

After all, Jess had saved me from falling to pieces a year and a half ago. The least I could do in return was to help her now.

Oddly enough, that’s where Cinderella came in.

It came as no surprise that Fairyland Kingdom—where even the trash cans are spotless—had planned a super-organized orientation for the interns. There was a place for us to stash our car for a week, until Jess’s dad came to pick it up, and a place for our luggage (two bags, max) and a special gate where we had to check in.

There a scrub-faced Keebler Elf type named Andy the Summer Cast Coordinator crossed out our names (I was on the list—relief!) and handed us matching T-shirts that said Wow!™—the rather uninspired one-word motto of Fairyland.

We pulled those on over our tops, slapped on white name tags, and proceeded to the orientation table, where we were each given a book entitled Fairyland Kingdom Internship Handbook & Rules and our room keys. Jess and I were thrilled that Fairyland had honored our requests and made us roomies, though we were kind of disappointed to learn we wouldn’t be in one of the turrets. Those, apparently, were reserved for princes and princesses.

Jess went white.

I said, “It doesn’t mean you’re not a princess.”

“Yes, it does.” She looked like she was about to faint. I panicked.

Turning to the orientation lady who’d just given us our room keys, I said, “I’m sorry to be a pest,