How Zoe Made Her Dreams (Mostly) Come Tr - By Sarah Strohmeyer Page 0,76
anxious, wringing his hands and pacing. Now they were being led to the office, Ian with his head down and Adele trying really hard not to smile
RJ pumped his fist. “Adele’s awesome, isn’t she? It was her idea to play a temperamental princess who runs off to hide out in Storytown. And being away from the park gave her a chance to work in the off-site studio recording new songs and dances for the parade. That’s her major at Barnard, you know, music.”
I didn’t, of course. Up until two seconds ago, I’d thought she was a farm girl from Wisconsin. “So you and Adele . . .”
“Won the Dream and Do last year, just like you and Ian are going to win it this year. And then, come next summer, you two will return to the park as RAs to train a whole new set of interns.”
The door slid open, and the group stumbled in. Ian took one look at me hanging out with RJ and with a booming Texan shout exclaimed, “I knew it!”
Ian would later claim that, from the get-go, he’d suspected something was up. As proof, he noted that the Queen did not flip out when he confessed that he’d been the one in the Forbidden Zone so Marcus wouldn’t be unfairly sent home to California, an act of selflessness that Her Majesty considered the ultimate example of Wow!™ spirit.
“Obviously it was some sort of test,” he said. “I have a sixth sense about these things. Legit.”
My response to him was, “Oh, yeah? Then if you were so convinced this was a game, then why did you go to Storytown after saying good-bye to me last night to convince Sage that he should sign the contract to be a spokesman so I’d get my job back?”
“CYA, Zoe. Pure Cover Your Ass.”
I had my doubts. Anyway, by returning to Storytown and begging Sage to ask his mother to reconsider canceling the deal, Ian had passed the Final Exam and won the boys’ Dream & Do. So, as they say in Fairyland, All’s Well That Ends Well and It Always Ends Well.
The most difficult part, actually, was that Ian and I couldn’t tell anyone about the Game, not even Jess, which was ridiculous since Jess and I shared everything. Worse, she kept saying how bad she felt that I’d been treated so unfairly and how she was going to do something to set things right.
She even went to the Queen to plead my case, and the Queen had snapped that Jess had overstepped her position and that whatever happened to me was none of her business. Then she ordered Jess to work a double shift as punishment for her insolence.
Broke my heart.
For seven whole days until the Dream & Do ceremony, I had to go around pretending that the only reason I’d been allowed to stay until the end of the internship was because the Queen didn’t want to cover a sixty-dollar bus ticket to send me back to Bridgewater.
Every morning I walked Tinker Bell and dressed in my dove-gray gown and brought my boss her tray of newspapers and tiny food as if nothing had changed. At night Ian and I would sneak off to swim at the old gristmill and make out on the beach under the stars. When we weren’t kissing—and we did a lot of kissing—we would lie back on the sand and plan the next summer. Everything was perfect, except for one major glitch that I needed to fix ASAP.
On my second-to-last day at Fairyland, I summoned my nerve to take the Queen aside. “I have something to ask you,” I said, anxious not to appear disgraceful in any way. “It has to do with the Dream and Do—”
She stopped me. “I know what you’re going to say, Zoe. I had the feeling you might change your mind. That’s why we want you to be part of the Fairyland family.”
It will always be a highlight of my life when the two winners were announced and Jess, crying and laughing for joy, gave me a huge hug. “You did it, Zoe.”
“You did it,” I said, hugging her right back. “Now, quick, you’d better get up there before Valerie climbs over everyone and grabs your money.”
With one last smile of gratitude, Jess took her spot next to Ian, who gave me a thumbs-up, even though only a half hour before he’d told me that turning down the grant, while kind and sacrificial and all that, was