fair Security Person,” but she just scowled.
“. . . then I’ll know it’s hopeless,” Jess concluded. “You get my point, right?”
“Sure, and I also think that when it comes to guys, you sometimes make things way too complicated than they have to be,” I said. “Come on. I’ve gotta get ready for work.”
Because it was before seven on a Sunday morning, our bathroom was delightfully empty, still reeking of the bleach-and-antiseptic spray the cleaning crew had used during the night. I stepped into the shower while Jess served as lookout so we could talk. The bathroom, with its insulating tile and running water, was the safest place to gossip—as long as no one else was in one of the stalls listening in.
“So what did you do while I was at the party?” Jess asked.
I told her about being summoned to remove a mote from the Queen’s eye and then her bogus request for a sleeping potion from Chef, who just happened to live on the edge of the Forbidden Zone, and then about running into the prince again and being surprised by Jake the Hansel who’d heard everything.
The only part I left out was the walk with Ian, since it would have opened up a whole can of worms I wasn’t ready to deal with. Jess knew I’d promised my grief counselor that I’d swear off boys for the summer. It was one of the few promises I’d made that, after last night, I desperately wanted to break.
“What do you think he’s gonna do?” Jess asked.
My mind was still on Ian, so I said, “Who?”
“Jake the Hansel. Do you think he’s gonna go to the Queen like he said, or was he just bluffing?”
I flipped off the shower and wrapped my hair in a towel. “I think he’s gonna try. More likely he’ll write a letter to her and put it in the Box of Whine outside Personnel like she’d instructed in her memo. That way no one will know who’s ratting on who.”
Half dressed, I stepped out of the shower soapy clean.
“But you get to go through the box first, right?” Jess craned her neck to check her hickey in the mirror.
“Not lately.” I went over to the sink to brush my teeth. “After that memo, the Queen took it over. I don’t think she trusts me.” I rinsed and spit. “I’ll tell you what, if Jake writes that he saw me in the Forbidden Zone last night talking to a prince, I am cooked. She will fire me on the spot, no questions asked.”
There was a cough on the other side of the vanity and then the sound of water being turned on. We were not alone.
Again?
I shook my fist at Jess, since she was supposed to have kept an eye out.
“I did. I looked under all the stall doors and everything,” Jess whispered. “I don’t know where she came from.”
I poked my head around to the other set of sinks and found Adele the weight-challenged Cinderella flossing her teeth.
I said, “Hi.” Um, what are you doing here in our second-class bathroom?
“Don’t mind me.” She tossed the floss in the trash. “I was too focused on my own stuff to listen to you guys rehashing last night.”
Under her breath, Jess went, “Yeah, right.”
Adele’s pale blue eyes were red-rimmed, like she’d been crying.
“You okay?”
“Never better.” In the mirror she flashed me the official Fairyland Kingdom Princess Smile—lots of white teeth touching top to bottom, the way no real person does. “I mean, what could be wrong, right? I’m Cinderella at the most magical place on earth. Wow!”
I watched as Adele smeared on lip gloss and took a haphazard approach to brushing her hair, all the while sniffling and batting her eyes. Guess that’s why she was slumming in our neck of the woods—so that her fellow princesses wouldn’t see her upset.
“Hey, Adele,” I said as she headed out, “I heard you playing your guitar on Humpty Dumpty’s Wall the other day, and it was great. What was the song?”
She stopped at the door. “Not anything you’ve ever heard before. I wrote it.”
“You wrote it?” That was impressive. “That deserves a legit wow.”
This time Adele gave me a real smile. “Thanks, Zoe. You’d be all right . . . if you didn’t work for her.”
I knew what she was getting at. “It’s not my idea to weigh the princesses constantly.”
“Yeah, but you’re the one who writes us up and charts each little ounce.”
I was sorry I’d decided to defend myself,