How Zoe Made Her Dreams (Mostly) Come Tr - By Sarah Strohmeyer Page 0,71

the cracker for Little Bo Peep’s sheep. I could even feel the mounting trepidation as the sheep’s mouth got closer and closer and then stole the cracker from my tiny fingers.

“Mom,” I whispered, hoping maybe, wherever she was, she’d hear. Even though I knew that was silly, I couldn’t help it.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” Ian’s voice broke through my fog.

I didn’t want to tell him, because how would I explain that a willow tree just made me cry?

“Did your mom used to take you here?” he asked softly.

I nodded. “It’s been such a crappy day, getting fired and . . . other stuff . . . and then seeing this . . . I swear, I don’t cry all the time.”

He wiped away my tears with his thumbs as he had the night before when I’d broken down the first time. “Zoe, it’s okay. You loved your mom, and your mom used to bring you here.” He pulled me into him and rested my head on his chest. “It’d be weird if you didn’t cry.”

He stroked my hair and didn’t say anything as I let it all out, the stress of serving the Queen, trying so hard to be perfect, and then learning that I’d been nothing but a laughingstock all along.

If I’d had a mother, she’d be there in Bridgewater when I’d get home tomorrow to listen and understand and tell me that the Queen was a dried-up, two-bit theme-park manager. But there would be only my dad, and even though he was a sweetheart and did everything he could for me, at the end of the day he wasn’t my mother.

“I should go,” Ian said, after a while. “Not that I’m not loving every aspect of this.” He looked down at me and smiled. “But, you know, the hot-dog-and-mac-and-cheese crowd awaits.”

I sniffed back the tears and said, “Yeah. I gotta pack.”

“Lemme go find Sage and tell him,” Ian said. “You wait here.”

While Ian crossed the drawbridge into Cinderella’s Castle, I walked over to the willow and knelt at its roots, focusing on what this place meant to Mom and me. Perhaps here, right at this spot, we’d leaned against this trunk and stuck our legs out over this cool, green grass and fed the ducks. Mom would have remembered; I’d been too young.

I fingered the willow’s brittle bark with the hope that by mere touch I could resurrect the past. But of course I couldn’t. So I did the next best thing.

Reaching into my shirt, I removed Mom’s single-pearl necklace, the one Dad had given her the day I was born, and dropped it in a small hole I dug with my finger. Patting over the dirt, I knelt there.

“I miss you, Mom.” My chest ached, and so did every muscle as I fought back another bout of sobs. I guess this was the release Ari had encouraged, the “letting go” that I didn’t want to do.

It’ll happen when you least expect it, he’d said at one of our last sessions. “Maybe in class or at the movies or while cleaning out your mother’s closet.”

Or at an abandoned nursery-rhyme theme park.

Didn’t think of that, did you, Ari?

I felt a touch and nearly leaped out of my skin, but it was only Ian.

“Sage is gonna stay here and keep looking around. You ready?” he asked, offering me his hand.

I took one last glance at the willow. Bye, Mom, I thought, running my finger over the disturbed dirt. See you later.

I stood and took Ian’s hand. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

Twenty-seven

I spent the last night in Fairyland hanging out at the Frog Prince’s Pond with Ian and Jess and RJ, though I could barely look RJ in the eye.

There were a couple of times when I almost took Jess aside to tell her that her BF was not the dude he appeared to be. What worried me was that if he could live a lie, like being Mr. Fairyland, then what about his feelings toward Jess? RJ could have been lying about those, too.

But whenever I looked, they were holding hands or stealing quick kisses. She was obviously so freaking happy that no way was I going to be the messenger bearing bad news—and, besides, there was always the possibility that RJ really did like her. I hoped so, because Jess was too good a person to have her heart broken.

Meanwhile, Jess was irate over my shoddy treatment, since, apparently, I was the only one being punished. The Queen hadn’t so