“Wait, I know,” Katy says, taking the list out of her back pocket. “We’ll just write down the menu. That should count.”
It’s those kinds of ideas that make Katy our natural leader. “Seventy minutes left,” Zoey announces as Katy finishes scribbling down the menu. Luckily it only consists of eight items.
We run past the tourists who are beginning to line Main Street for the next parade. I wish we could stay to see who they have doing Snow White. That way I could judge my competition for the summer. I pause for one second in the hopes of catching sight of her, and right as I turn around a little girl with a long brown ponytail races past me at top speed, crying as she goes. She can’t be more than eight. A Disney employee is close on her heels, talking into a walkie-talkie. As the employee runs past me my heart suddenly seizes up. It’s my
father!
My father in blue polyester slacks, a white shirt, and a red vest that says guest relations host in dark blue letters on the back. I blink my eyes in disbelief.
At the same second that I recognize him, he stops and stares at me. By this time my friends have turned around to see what’s keeping me. Their jaws drop in unison.
“Dad?” I ask, in a small voice. “What’s going on?” The girl runs into a bathroom. The outside is decorated to look like a big tree trunk so it blends in with the scenery.
He looks from me to the bathroom to my friends and back to me again. “I don’t have time to explain,” he says. “I can’t go in there, and it’s my job to help that child.”
“It is? Since when?” I consider asking Katy to pinch me to make sure I’m not dreaming. On his chest is the same red-and-white plastic tag that Brenda at the Duck Hut had. Except underneath the small Mickey Mouse design his tag says jonathan. tampa, florida. Hanging below the tag is a little red ribbon with the words: earning my ears. I’m trying not to freak out but my heart is racing faster than when I thought Instructor Joe was dead.
“Since today, actually. I’m still officially in training. See the ribbon? I could lose my job if I can’t help her. Will you go in there and try to get her out? You have a knack for putting people at ease. Maybe she’ll open up to you.”
“I do?” I look around me. “I have a knack?”
My friends, still struck mute, nod in agreement.
He nods too. “People are drawn to you. I’ve seen it your whole life.”
I don’t know if he said that just to butter me up or not, but a compliment is a compliment. I have so many more questions to ask, but we’re in such a hurry and time is clearly of the essence for Dad too. “Where are her parents?”
“Looking for her, I’m sure. I called City Hall and told them I found her.”
“You called the
police?
”
Katy chimes in. “There’s a building here called City Hall, by the entrance of the park. It’s where the guest relations office is located.”
Dad nods, and Katy steps back a few feet again.
“So why is she crying?”
Surprisingly, a brief smile crosses his face. “This is right up your alley. She’s scared of the ghosts in the Haunted Mansion.”
“The ones that get in your car at the end?”
“Yup. Sound familiar?”
“Hey, I didn’t cry after the ride!” Just
during
it, but my friends don’t need to know that.
“Will you help her?” he pleads.
“All I have to do is explain the ghosts are just holograms, right? Like you told me when I was little?”
He shifts his weight from side to side. “Actually, you can’t say that.”
“Why not?
“We have to ‘preserve the magical guest experience’ at all times,” he says apologetically. “It’s rule number three in the handbook. You’ll have to figure something else out. Free cotton candy maybe? Hurry.”
I turn to my friends. Zoey glances meaningfully at her watch. “Go ahead,” Katy says with a light shove. “We’ll wait.”
It’s not like they have much choice, since I’m the driver.
With one last glance at the stranger who is my father, I hurry into the bathroom. I’ve never done anything like this before. Why should someone listen to anything I have to say? I know, I’ll pretend I’m acting in a play! When I get inside, I find the girl huddled under the counter, wiping her face with some toilet paper.
“Hi,” I say to her, cringing a little at how loud it comes across. Megan would love the acoustics in this place! “My name’s Josie,” I say more softly this time. “I used to be scared of those ghosts too. Maybe I can help.”
The little girl sniffles, and I feel her pain, I really do.
“Do you want to go back outside, and we can talk there?”
She shakes her head and doesn’t meet my eyes. Okay, so we’ll just have to do this here. In a bathroom. “Those ghosts looked like they were having fun, right? They seemed happy. So really, there’s nothing to be afraid of.”
The girl keeps crying. The collar of her Hello Kitty t-shirt is getting wet. I grab a paper towel and hand it to her. She takes it and lets her hands fall to her side. I don’t think I’m doing very well here. Heck, just because Dad has to “preserve the magical guest experience” doesn’t mean I have to.
“You know,” I say, “it’s very possible those ghosts aren’t even real. I’ve heard rumors that they might just be holograms, like in a movie.”
The girl shakes her head. “They’re real! I know they are!” She swipes at her wet eyes angrily.
“What makes you say that?” Hey, at least she’s saying something. That’s a good sign.
She sniffles. “One of them... spoke to me.”
Huh? I didn’t see that coming. All I can think to ask is, “What did the ghost say?”
The girl meets my eyes for the first time. For the moment, she has stopped crying. “It was my nana. She said, ‘Don’t worry, Sloane, I’m here. We’ll go home together after the ride.’ But now she’s not here anymore!”
“So it’s not that you were scared of the ghost, it’s that your nana isn’t around when she said she’d be?”
Sloane nods her head. She wipes at her eyes again, but less angrily. A thin silver bracelet on her wrist catches the light.
“That’s a beautiful bracelet.”
She looks down at it. “My nana gave it to me for my birthday last year.”
“You must have loved her very much.”
Sloane nods. “She named me,” she says, sitting up a little straighter.
“How come she gave you such an unusual name?”
Sloane thinks for a while and says, “Nana said people with unusual names lead unusual lives.” When she says
unusual
it comes out like
anooshal.
“She sounds like a smart lady.”
Sloane doesn’t answer. She just stares down at her bracelet. I don’t want to lose her so I ask, “What kinds of things did you like to do together?”
Finally she says, “She used to love coming here. She wouldn’t go on any of the rides, though. She’d just watch me.” Sloane’s lips twitch in the first sign of a smile that I’ve seen.
I move closer to her. “Sloane, do you think it’s possible that your nana was telling you that she’s always with you, whether you’re here in Disney World or at home?”
Sloane tilts her head slightly, looking up at me.
“Maybe it was her way of letting you know she’ll always be inside your heart.”
Sloane thinks for a few seconds and then nods. Her face brightens.
I smile. “You’re a lucky girl to have a nana who loves you so much.”
Sloane smiles for real now and reaches for me to help her out from under the counter.
“There’s someone outside waiting to give all little girls named Sloane some cotton candy.” The words are barely out of my mouth when she runs out of the bathroom. That girl might have a future on the track team.
When I get back out into the bright sunlight, I see Sloane holding my dad’s hand, dragging him toward the cotton candy stand like nothing was ever wrong. He turns to look at me over his shoulder. He’s beaming. Zoey points frantically at her watch.
I wave goodbye to my dad and Sloane as Megan grabs onto my t-shirt and yanks. We take off in a run down the center of Main Street.
“I’m really sorry I made us lose so much time,” I say, huffing.
“Don’t worry about it,” Katy says. “You were only gone six minutes.”
“Really? It felt longer.”
“Whatever you said must have worked.”
“I guess so. Did my dad say anything to you guys while I was in there?”
The three of them exchange glances. “Not really,” Megan says. “Just some stuff about working here always being a dream of his.”
“Really? He never mentioned anything like this before.” As I say it, I remember our talk on the way to my driver’s test. All that stuff about following your dreams. I guess he was just waiting for the right moment to tell me. But the moment found itself, instead.
We hurry through the exit turnstiles and Katy squeezes my arm. “Helping kids seems like a pretty cool job to me.”
I smile gratefully. Yeah, it really
is
a pretty cool job. It feels nice to know that after the first few minutes in there, I hadn’t been acting anymore.
As we head into the parking lot, four girls I recognize from my gym class run past us. Two of them have big knapsacks on their backs, filled to the brim. Megan says, “What, are they afraid to leave their stuff in the car?”
I can’t help being a bit jealous. “It looks like they have a lot of things already.”
“Hey, at least they won’t find any menus at Donald’s Hot Dog Hut,” Zoey says.
“You think we should warn them?” Katy asks. We all look at her like she has two heads. “Just kidding,” she says. As we approach the car she checks her list. “What are we going to do about the two identical organic things?”
“How about two rocks?” Zoey suggests. “Or leaves?”
We look down at the asphalt. Every pebble we pick up is slightly different.
“I know!” I say loudly, asserting my new feeling of being capable. “We’ll get the Davis twins! They’re identical and organic!”
“Interesting!” Megan says, her eyes lighting up. “Think of all the bonus points for creativity. I can see us now, introducing videos on MTV, rubbing shoulders with all the famous people...”
“But we can’t have more people join our team,” Katy points out.
“They won’t have to join,” I say. “They’ll just be two more items on the list. We’ll make sure they don’t help us.”
“What if they’re on the scavenger hunt too?”
“We won’t know unless we try.”
She agrees, and we hop in the car and head back out to the main part of town. Megan says she knows where the Davis boys live because they are on her bus route. We pull in front of the house and get out. No one moves more than a foot away from the car.
“Who’s gonna ring the bell?” Zoey asks.
“Well,” Megan says, “since I’m the motivator, I say Josie goes up there. She knows them the best.”
I try to argue. “I don’t even know which is which.”
“Nobody does,” Megan answers, giving me a slight push on the arm.
I guess it’s only fair since it was my idea. I take a deep breath and walk up the path. I press the doorbell right away, before I can chicken out. One of the boys opens the door. He has a grape ice pop in his hand and is clearly surprised to see me. He lowers his arm and the ice pop almost touches the sides of his white shorts.
I put on my best smile and say, “Hi, Tom. Er, Tyson. Tom. Tyson?”
“Tom,” he says. His eyes dart around, clearly not sure what to make of this visit.
I glance behind me and he follows my gaze. The others are still waiting by the car. They wave. Tom haltingly waves back, ice pop dripping all the while. “This is going to sound strange, but if you and Tyson aren’t busy right now, would you mind coming with us on a scavenger hunt? I’ll explain on the way. The rules say I can’t pay you, but I’ll buy you lunch tomorrow at school.”
“Sure, we’ll do it,” Tyson says, coming up behind Tom at the door. Mental note: Tom is wearing white shorts, Tyson’s are blue. “We’re not busy, right, Tom?”
Tom looks uncertain. “I guess not. I’ll go tell Mom.” He leaves the doorway, and Tyson and I stand there.
“So, did everything work out with Mrs. Lombardo?” he asks. “Huh?”
“You know, in photography today. You forgot to hand in your note.”
“Oh, right. Well, it got sorted out in the end. I think.” Another mental note: Tyson is the one who spoke to me in class today. Tom joins us again, and we head down the driveway. “Don’t you guys want to know why we need you?”
“Oh, we know,” Tyson says. “Even though we’re not playing the game, we saw the list on the Web site. We were wondering if anyone would think of us.”
I make the introductions at the car.
Zoey looks Tom over and says, “Are you the frog kid from grammar school?”
Tom nods and stares down at his sneakers.
“I didn’t live here then,” Zoey says, “but I heard about it.” Tom opens his mouth to say something, then closes it again. “You guys will have to sit in the way back,” Megan says. “That’s fine,” Tyson says as Tom scrambles in. “We have older brothers, so we’re used to it.”
“Hey,” Zoey says, passing the tin of ashes to Tyson. “Would you mind hanging on to this? Be careful. It’s my cat.”
“Uh, okay,” Tyson says, holding it at arm’s length.
Before she joins them inside, Megan whispers, “Are they allowed to talk to us?”
“Of course they can talk,” Katy says. “They just can’t help us.” For a second Katy and I are outside the car alone. I whisper to her, “Don’t think I’m letting you get away today without telling me what on Earth is in that note.”
“Tonight at the lake,” she replies, opening the passenger door. “I promise.”
3:50
P.M.
– 5:10
P.M.
Zoey and Megan run across the lawn that connects Zoey’s house with Katy’s.
“What’ll we do if your brother is home?” Megan asks Zoey. “Are you just gonna ask him for the book?”
“He’s not home,” Zoey says, turning the key in the front door. “He’s starting his twenty hours of community service today.”
“What did he do this time?”
Zoey pushes open the door, which always sticks. “He set a Port-a-Potty on fire at the county fair last month.”
“How’d he get caught?” Megan asks, following Zoey upstairs.