How Zoe Made Her Dreams (Mostly) Come Tr - By Sarah Strohmeyer Page 0,2

arrived at Fairyland only a few weeks before, how we’d looked forward to a pleasant summer of dressing up in costumes and entertaining children, while in our off-hours getting to know the extremely cute princes.

Oh, how wrong I’d been. Fairyland was nothing like I’d imagined, except maybe for the princes.

They were even better.

One

The day after we finished our junior year at Bridgewater-Raritan High, Jess and I hopped into her dad’s 1998 Honda Bobmobile and hightailed it down the Garden State to Fairyland with the windows open and our hair flying, Springsteen blaring at full volume. Personally I’m not a big fan of the Boss, but I’m pretty sure it’s a state law that if you’re on a road trip in Jersey, “Thunder Road” is de rigueur—even at 6:00 a.m.

I know, crazy. Who gets up that early the first free day of summer? Fairyland interns, that’s who. Everyone had to be at the park by eight. It said so in the thick, sparkly welcome packet we’d received along with the official letter congratulating us on being selected as Fairyland Kingdom Inc. summer cast members from thousands of rising high school seniors.

I still couldn’t get over that we’d been accepted or, rather, that I had, since Jess had been acting since she was a kid, so she deserved an internship. Me? I’m a disaster on stage, going left when everyone else is going right, forgetting lines, and, in the case of my debut as an ant in our second-grade performance of Aesop’s Fables, projectile vomiting.

In fact, I was so convinced my acceptance had been some sort of clerical error that I was prepared to be rejected as soon as we arrived. This was why I’d made Jess borrow her dad’s car, so I could drive it home after the inevitable.

“Stop putting yourself down. You kicked butt in the auditions,” Jess said, gripping the wheel at two and ten like a little old lady, her seat pushed all the way forward so her short legs could reach the gas pedal. God forbid we should get in a fender bender because, if the airbag deployed, she’d have been shot straight through the rear.

“You should sit back more, or your head’s going to pop off in an accident,” I said, applying the last strip of purple shellac to my pinkie toe that was propped on the dashboard.

“If I sit back, I can’t see over the wheel.”

Jess is petite like that. Tiny nose. Childlike fingers. Wispy, pale blond hair that she usually yanks into a ponytail so it doesn’t fly into her clear blue eyes. All her life people have been telling her she’s a little Cinderella, sweet and kind. (Yeah, right. They haven’t seen her spike a volleyball with seconds on the clock.) Often these same people find it kind of hard to believe that we’re cousins.

“Really?” I remember our neighbor Mrs. Coughlin exclaiming, when she’d learned Jess and I were related. “But you’re so different, Zoe.” Meaning, I suppose, that I was tall with brown hair and green eyes and not so delicate, since I liked to noogie her son, Curtis, on whom I had a huge crush.

“That’s why we’re best friends!” Jess had piped up in her cheerful way. “Because we’re opposites!”

I was so relieved we both got internships. Can you imagine how awkward it would have been if I got in and not Jess, or vice versa? I didn’t even want to think about it, and we weren’t out of the woods yet, since we hadn’t received our cast assignments. That was fine by me, but for a variety of reasons, some practical, Jess had her heart set on being a princess.

If they made her Elf #6 or any of the “lesser” characters like Goldilocks or, shudder, a furry, for which she’d have to wear a hot bear or wolf costume and run around in ninety-degree heat, she’d be crushed. At her size, almost literally.

We got off at exit 52, and as soon as we took a right, there were the purple turrets of the Princess Palace flying banana yellow flags with the Cow Jumped Over the Moon roller coaster behind it. Jess and I squealed like we used to when we were little kids and her mom, Aunt Nancy, and mine—twin sisters—would take us for the whole day. Our families were too broke to afford a week at the shore, so Fairyland was the highlight of summer vacation, and Mom spared no expense. She bought us crowns and fairy wings and