there are actually carnivorous plants around here?”
My toes did that curling thing again. “In the water?”
“Not to my knowledge or information.” He laughed. “My dad’s a lawyer, and that’s how he answers every question, no matter how small. ‘Not to my knowledge or information.’”
I had the feeling Ian was a big fan of his dad and of Colorado, where they used to live and hike every weekend. As we floated around, he told me how his parents separated a few years before and he had to leave his beloved mountains for Dallas so his mother could take a new job. He hadn’t exactly been thrilled by the relocation.
“Everything’s so artificial in Dallas. We live in a gated community where the grass is chemical green, the pools are chemical blue. For fun, everyone goes to the mall or drives around in big air-conditioned cars, sits in air-conditioned theaters. I miss woods like this. I miss being able to walk out my door and be surrounded by nothing but wilderness.”
It seemed like a funny observation from a guy who was interning at a totally artificial fairy-tale theme park.
Our feet touched, and Ian ran his foot along my ankle. I didn’t pull away.
“I’d had a job lined up at an outdoor gear store in Telluride, but . . . my dad’s new wife didn’t think that would work.”
Ouch! My heart twinged in sympathy. “And Dallas?”
“If I’d stayed in Dallas, Mom would have made me work all summer.”
“Work never killed anyone, as my dad likes to say.”
Ian paused. “As a model.”
Oh.
Actually this didn’t come as that big of a shock. I’d heard rumors that some of the cast members had worked as models, Ian included.
“So you really are a Hollister dude, huh?” I asked.
“It’s mega embarrassing. My mother got me into it after the divorce because she said we were broke and I needed the money for college. Between you and me, I think she loves the whole scene, the agents, the photographers, the cash. She’d have me quit school and do it full-time if she could get away with it.”
“And if you didn’t want to be a naturalist . . .”
He stopped floating and looked at me. “How very perceptive of you, Kiefer. As a matter of fact, that is kind of what I’m interested in, and I’ve been thinking a lot about Yale’s forestry school.” He went back to swimming. “How about you? What do you want to do?”
I lay in the water staring up at the stars thinking how, unlike Fairyland, they had been here long before I was born and would be here long after. That filled me with a comforting peace, as if the universe had just given me permission to simply enjoy being alive here in the pond with Ian under the vast night sky, instead of constantly worrying about the Dream & Do grant and Jess and whether I was in trouble.
I said, “I don’t ever want to leave.”
“That,” he agreed, “is an excellent idea.”
After we got out of the water and I wrapped myself in Ian’s towel, we sat on the rocks and ate apples Ian had brought and chatted about Fairyland and what it was like to work for the Queen and who was most likely to win the twenty-five thousand dollars. (We always came back to Dash and Valerie.) When I felt my tank top was as dry as it was going to get, I got back into my shorts and threw on my shirt.
Except I’d grabbed Ian’s by accident.
“This is the one you ripped on the thorns,” I said, fingering the flannel. “Dash said it was his.”
“He did, did he? How clever of him.” Ian took a last bite of his apple, stood, and chucked the core into the weeds. “Was this part of his plan to get you to confess to the Queen that you’d been in the FZ?”
“Yep. To be fair to Dash”—and it was not easy being fair to Dash—“it sounds like his parents are really pressuring him to bring home the grant. He told me that when his dad dropped him off at the airport, he mentioned all the money they’d spent on Fairyland camps that could have sent the family to Europe. Talk about guilt.”
Ian sat back down next to me so our thighs were touching. “If I’d ever said to Dad that I wanted to go to a Fairyland camp, he would have signed me up for the marines.”
I laughed. “I never thought of it that way,