it wasn’t like there was a vending machine in the basement. Jess and RJ were hanging out drinking coffee, and when she saw me, Jess practically leaped across tables to make sure I was alive by squeezing me to death.
“I was so worried.” She gave me another hug. “I stopped by your room this morning and knocked to see if you wanted to meet up for coffee. I figured you were out walking Tink, but when I came back a half hour later you still weren’t there or in the bathroom. I worried that maybe you never made it back from You-Know-Where last night.”
“I’m fine,” I said, doing a quick check for Ian. No sign. Bummer.
Jess insisted I sit down and tell her everything over pancakes. As RJ showed no signs of excusing himself from the table, I had to omit the best part of my story, about spending the night with Ian. That, RJ definitely would have had to report.
I poured on a dab more maple syrup. “So now she’s ordered me to the basement to search through five boxes of files with an ominous name like PUD:1,001 to find some progress report.” I licked my finger and recapped the bottle.
Jess wrinkled her nose. “One thousand and one files?”
“Let’s hope not,” I said, realizing that I was famished after missing dinner the night before.
RJ, who’d been silently listening to our conversation, said, “I don’t get why you’re being punished if all you did was accidentally turn off the Queen’s cell.”
I shrugged. “She tried to reach me all night, and then she had to wake up early and walk Tinker Bell. That’s why she’s pissed.”
Jess bit her lip, and I could tell she was worried this meant I’d disqualified myself from the Dream & Do.
“I’ve given up,” I said. “There’s no way I’m gonna get the Dream and Do. I’m not a princess. I picked Her Majesty’s precious flowers my first day on the job. And now this.”
RJ leaned forward. “So why do you even try to please her?”
It was a valid question, and I didn’t answer it off the cuff. I thought about it. “Because I don’t want Jess to be a victim of guilt by association. . . .”
Jess said, “Right. Like you haven’t single-handedly made my summer by pulling strings to make me Cinderella.”
I ignored that. “And because there’s still a chance I’m in the running. And as long as there’s still a chance, I’m going to keep on trying.”
My cousin turned to RJ. “What do you think? Is she still okay?”
RJ’s fingers played with a straw on the table as he scrutinized me under his heavy black brows. “From the rumors I’ve been hearing in the front office, Zoe’s doing fine.”
But he wasn’t looking where I was looking. RJ was looking at me, and I was looking at Dash, who was jerking his thumb toward the hall. Apparently we had to chat.
Goody.
Twenty-four
“I stopped by your room last night hoping we could talk and maybe you could show me that you really had the shirt swatch,” he said. “I sat outside your door for an hour. Where were you?”
“Gee, Mom, no need to wait up,” I said, heading toward the elevators. “By the way, you being in the girls’ dorm after ten is a violation of the Fairyland rules, you know. Number six, to be exact. That would seriously harm your chances of winning the Dream and Do were the Queen to find out.”
A couple of furries passed on their way to get into position for the park opening in about ten minutes. Dash, exasperated by my insouciance, almost ran his fingers through his newly sprayed princely hairdo and caught himself from messing it up in the nick of time.
“I don’t know where all this hostility is coming from,” he said earnestly. “I’m being honest about what happened so I can save Marcus’s rep. I’m trying to do the stand-up thing here.”
“Except you’re not.” I eyed him levelly, curious as to whether he’d flinch. “It’s not your shirt. You weren’t the one who saved me from the quicksand. You and I never met in the Forbidden Zone, ever.”
“What?”
“You heard me. You’re trying to set me up.” Don’t back down, Zoe.
“How could you say that?” He shook his head, confused, as if no one had ever accused him of something so hurtful and I, being a sucker for boys on the verge of tears, almost bought it until I remembered that Dash Merrill had spent summers at acting