his backpack while I tried to process that Ian had been using the valuable essence of some rare South American orchid as basically Deep Woods Off!.
“Where are you going?” I asked as he headed away from Fairyland.
“To my usual campsite.” He nodded westward. “The stars are spectacular out there. Wanna come?”
“Now?” Trespassing into the Forbidden Zone was bad enough. Spending the night was out of the question. “I can’t. If the Queen found out, she’d . . .”
“Make you a princess like she did me a prince?” He chuckled. “Look, Zoe, we’ve only got a few more weeks here. We’re not going to be sent home at this stage. Besides, I’m not going to win the Dream and Do, and probably you’re not either, and your coming with me won’t be a black mark on Jess, which is what I know you worry about. So, why not?”
When he said this, it was like he had lifted a heavy burden from my shoulders, a weight I hadn’t known I was carrying. Ian was right. Why not?
And so, I took his hand and followed him deeper into the woods simply because I had nothing to lose.
Twenty-one
We eventually emerged from the forest into a field where frogs croaked in harmony with a chorus of crickets. Even a few fireflies, stragglers from the early summer, rose from the grasses, twinkling to disappear among the stars. A waning moon shed an almost ethereal white light on the rubble of some ancient foundation.
Ian and I scaled the stones and arrived at the edge of a large, still pond reflecting the night sky. Rimmed by a sandy beach and protected by scrub pines, it was so pristine and untouched that I went, “Whoa!” a tad too loudly, causing the frogs to quit croaking and hop into the pond with a plop, plop.
“Nice, isn’t it?” Ian asked, smiling in the moonlight.
“We don’t have anything like this back in Bridgewater. Can you swim in it?” I’d heard lakes in the Pinelands were gross and swampy.
“Oh, yeah. It’s fed by a spring, and the bottom as far as I can tell is almost all sand.” He dropped his backpack onto the rocks, crossed his arms over his head, and pulled off his T-shirt. I tried not to look, but he was a Prince Charming, after all, and let’s just say he met the minimum requirements.
Ian stood at the edge of the rubble, hands on hips. “It’s a dammed-up stream left from when there used to be a gristmill here, so it’s pretty shallow.” He put his arms out and dove in like a racer, skimming the surface.
I hadn’t brought a swimsuit, of course, so I sat on the rocks hugging my knees and feeling awkward.
Ian’s head popped out in the middle of the pond. “Come on in!”
“I don’t have a suit.”
“So what? I don’t care. Do you?”
Um, yeah. “I think I’ll pass.” Anyway, my toes were already curling at the prospect of frogs or fish below. I was a Jersey girl. We didn’t do ponds and fresh water. We did cement and chlorine.
“Don’t be a wimp, Kiefer. Come on in. I know you wanna.”
That was true, too, though mostly because I didn’t want Ian thinking I was such a prude that I was afraid to get my tank top wet. Without a passing thought as to whether this violated the Fairyland morality clause, I stepped out of my sneakers and shorts, shrugged off my shirt, and, wearing just my tank and underwear, ran off the rocks before I could chicken out.
Ian was right. The water felt wonderfully cool and smooth after the sticky-hot hike, and I was able to graze the sandy bottom before I surfaced, careful to keep my legs moving lest there be sea monsters.
“Isn’t it awesome?” Ian swam next to me and shook off the water. I didn’t know if he was going to be one of those guys who liked to torture girls by pulling them under and pushing them down, so I was relieved when he left me alone to float on his back and look at the stars.
“How’d you find this place?” I asked, doing the same. I’d never seen so many stars in my life. It had to be because there wasn’t any ambient light from a city or the interstate.
“Saw it on a map before I got here and decided to check it out. That’s the major reason why I agreed to do this internship, because of the Pinelands. Do you know