Read an Excerpt
Chapter 1
June 18
Logan Airport
Boston, MA
Fableland Resort was the brainchild of Fable Industry’s CEO Sam Casterman. After years of entertaining children of all ages with his company’s animated films, Casterman wanted to create a place where they could go into the movies and be a part of the action. In his most famous interview, Casterman proclaimed, “Sometimes we need to close out the world and fall into our imaginations. Our resort will bring imagination to life.” And for the past fifty years, Fableland has been doing just that.
—Fableland, 50th-Anniversary Documentary
Most people love roller coasters for their beginning. That climb up, up, up as anticipation squeezes your veins and clicking tracks creep you ever closer to that first gravity-defying, stomach-wringing drop.
I prefer the end. When the brakes squeal and the car jerks to a stop and, for a fleeting second, silence settles over the world. It’s a moment of perfect peace. One that reminds me that, even after being twisted and turned and thrown upside down, I’m okay.
I would do just about anything—even give up breakfast, my favorite meal, forever—if I could be listening to the screeching melody of those brakes right now instead of my mother’s list of every possible disaster that might befall a barely eighteen-year-old girl in Florida without her parents.
“Don’t go out alone at night. Don’t talk to strangers.” Mom huffs a breath like she’s been running in place for the twenty minutes we’ve been standing at airport security. She lowers her head to dig through her purse. “And don’t get into cars with people you don’t know. Not even with that Dryve app all you kids are using.” Extracting a tissue, she blots her nose. Tears shine in her eyelashes.
She can’t cry in public. Not again. I run my hand over my stomach as if that will somehow unravel all its knots.
Mom squeezes the straps of her purse. “We hired you a driver to get from the airport to the hotel and back again at the end of the week. There should be no reason for you girls to leave the park.”
“But we won’t know the driver. How can we get in the car with him?” The words slip out before I can stop them. I smile to indicate it’s a joke, but my mom’s porcelain skin has found a new shade of white.
Dad frowns, the lines at the corners of his mouth so deep that I can see them beneath his dark-brown beard. His tanned cheeks have gone red. “Amelia. You haven’t gotten on the plane yet. This trip could still be canceled.”
Crap. I better not have just torpedoed six days of parental freedom.
I grab his arm and make my blue eyes Fableland-princess wide. “I was kidding.” You’d think they’d be used to my terribly timed sense of humor by now.
Facing my mother, I fold her into a hug. I’m barely five four, yet she makes me feel like a giant. Everything about her is so small and fragile. “I won’t leave the park. I swear.”
I don’t understand the things that stress her out, but she can’t help it. My grandmother says she burst from the womb anxious.
Mom tightens our hug. “Look out for each other, okay? And check in all the time.”
I nod against her shoulder.
“No boys,” Dad growls.
I salute him. “You got it.”
It’s an easy promise to make. My two best friends and I aren’t heading to Fableland—the best amusement park in the world—for some vacation fling. I have a contest to win and a huge cash prize to secure.
I slip my hand into my pocket, my fingers curling around the pointed end of a folded sheet of paper. The first clue for Fableland’s 50th-anniversary Superfan Scavenger Hunt popped into my email last night, one minute after midnight. Instead of sleeping, I spent the next few hours poring over the notebooks I’d organized for the trip, ensuring they were as thorough as possible. Every piece of information I could glean from the Fabler Fanatics’ Forums (F3 to its members) is sketched between the college-ruled blue lines in my neatest handwriting.
It doesn’t matter that I’ve never set foot in any of Fableland’s parks before. I know each one, inside and out. I can recite every Fable Industry movie by heart. I’ve read Sam Casterman’s biographies so many times I’ve lost count. I’ve even dabbled in a little Sunspark fan fiction (Elorra and Oliver are OTP forever).
With Tess and Issy at my side, there’s no way I won’t win. Getting into this contest is fate, a tiny slice of Fableland magic that came bursting into my life at the moment I needed it most.
My fingers itch to glance at the clue again. Just to assure myself it’s real. But my phone chirps with a text message from Tess before I can get the paper out of my pocket.
Tess
WE’VE GOT DUNKS AND DONUT HOLES. WHERE ARE YOU??
(2:40 PM)
Issy
I made sure they didn’t put any jelly ones in the box!
(2:41 PM)
Lia
Still going through the mom checklist.
(2:42 PM)
Tess
:( :( :(
(2:43 PM)
Issy
Hugging you virtually until you get here and I can hug you for real.
(2:44 PM)
Lia
I think we’re winding down.
(2:44 PM)
Tess
GOOD BECAUSE WE NEED TO GET OPERATION FREEDOM UNDERWAY. IT’S OUR LAST HURRAH BEFORE COLLEGE, BABBBBBEEEEEYYYYYYY.
(2:45 PM)
I eye the growing security line behind me, something hot and uncomfortable burning in my chest. From the moment I told my friends I got into the scavenger hunt, they’ve been more concerned about celebrating graduation than winning.
But I’m not going to college. While they head off on a new adventure, I’ll be living at home, working at the family furniture store, and suffering through lists like this with my mother daily. Fableland’s contest is my one chance to change that. The prize money could give me a true taste of freedom. An opportunity to make some choices for myself, for once.
“I should get in line if I’m going to make my flight,” I say to my parents.
Mom glances at my flip-flops. “Where are your socks?”
“In my bag.”
“Lia, they make you take your shoes off.” She squeaks out the words, a telltale sign she’s about to spiral. Her cheeks pull in as she sucks their insides between her teeth, and there’s no question she’s making lists in her head of worst-case scenarios for going barefoot in an airport.
I angle my arm into my carry-on bag and fish around for my balled-up ankle socks. “Here, look.” I toss them up and down like I’m juggling. “I’ll put them on when I get to the front of the line.”
A sigh whooshes from her lips.
This is why I haven’t told her about the money yet. I don’t know how she’ll handle the possibility of me leaving. But that’s a bridge to blow up when I win. For now, I’m happy to let my parents think the prize is a bunch of merchandise and one-of-a-kind swag. Thankfully, neither of them understands the workings of the fandom forums I frequent well enough to verify that.
I reach for her hands. “Everything will be fine, Mom. Just six days, then I’ll be home.”
My mother smiles. “Have fun.” I know she means it, but her eyes are so wide she looks like someone’s forcing the words out of her mouth.
I kiss her on the cheek and give Dad a hug, then wander to the end of the security line. My parents draw back a few feet and wave until I disappear into the crowd.
Laughter and chatter and the loud chew of X-ray conveyor belts usher me forward, and I suck in the longest breath, letting it fill my chest.
For the first time in weeks, I feel like I can breathe.
“Finally!”
Tess tackles me when I reach the gate. I swear she was a linebacker in a former life. Tiny body, so much power. I have to brace myself to keep from toppling backward.
Her white skin is flushed with excitement, and her platinum-blond waves seem to have a life of their own. They crowd my face and smother my greeting as she squeezes me, but I’m too grateful for her apple-scented perfume and the way she hugs, like she’s the only thing keeping you from dropping off a cliff, to do anything but laugh.
Issy’s right behind her and envelops us with her tall frame, closing our perfect little circle. Her long dark hair is piled on her head in a topknot, and her olive-toned skin practically glows against the vibrant turquoise of her T-shirt. As always, she smells like the vanilla she dabs behind her ears every time she bakes. “You okay?” she asks me quietly. Her favorite phrase. She could be moments from drowning and she’d be yelling those words at everyone onshore.
I nod. “I am now.”
There’s nowhere I’d rather be after enduring a Mom Checklist than with Tess and Issy. They know I won’t be able to sit still for a good ten minutes, my whole body humming, itching to move, like I’m trying to find an exit in a room with no doors or windows. Usually we’d go for a run, or have an impromptu dance party, or throw ourselves on Issy’s trampoline, but the airport offers no such amenities, so they trail me as I pace circles around the rows of chairs.
The three of us have been certified ride or die since the second week of kindergarten, when Adam Schumacher dumped a jar of green paint over Issy’s head, and Tess and I doused him in pink and purple in retaliation. None of us were allowed outside for recess the entire week, but it was worth it. The strongest friendships are born of petty vengeance.
