The Tiara on the Terrace (3 page)

I grabbed the box, trying to tell myself that Grace was acting strange because she was homeschooled and wasn't used to being around so many kids. Or that capturing a real fugitive had scared her off spying for good. Something told me there was a different reason she'd tossed out her FBI “Most Wanted” posters and had given away her walkie-talkies to the fourth grader down the street from us, though. She'd gotten really into browsing fashion websites
and reorganizing her room—which was weird, because before, she was basically on track to be on one of those reality TV shows about people who can't leave the house because they're trapped behind all the old magazines and empty ramen packages and cat pee–soaked blankets they've hoarded.

Sometimes I wondered if she was changing faster than I could ever keep up.

Grace started for the scaffolding. “Come on, Sophie,” she said, sighing. “I can't wait for you forever.”

I stared at her, a sinking feeling in my gut, and for the first time it struck me.

Maybe she really couldn't.

E
ach year “Festival Fever” struck as early as November, when crews started setting up bleachers along the main boulevard. The Winter Sun Festival was like Luna Vista's Fourth of July and New Year's rolled up into one. Even though the parade was on the winter solstice, just days before Christmas, the only signs of our holiday spirit were a few door wreaths and a scrawny tree outside the shopping plaza.

Festival Fever felt doubly intense that year. Not only was it the parade's 125th anniversary, but Luna Vista had become a national joke when it turned out we'd been harboring a fugitive as a school counselor for
two years
. Everyone was determined to show off our town and make this Winter Sun Festival the best yet.

The truth was, I didn't know who Luna Vista was showing off for anymore. Until the 1990s the Festival was
actually a nationally televised event. People all over the country would tune in to check out sunny Southern California and its bright, flowery parade floats in the dead of winter. It was just what the parade's founder, Willard Ridley, would have wanted. After all, showcasing California's warm December days was exactly why he and his hunting club had started the parade in the 1890s. That, and to advertise famous Ridley root beer, of course.

In the meantime America had become way more into Internet cats than parades, but Luna Vista still prepped for the Festival as if the whole world were watching. Marching bands from all over Southern California auditioned to appear in it. Hundreds of local high school senior girls competed to be selected as a princess or queen on the Royal Court. Designers worked months in advance on new fancy float plans. And kid volunteers like us swooped into the float barn to decorate them as soon as school let out for our winter break.

Grace and I had been dying for Prep Week to kick off—even more than most seventh graders. Not only was it the first time we were old enough to volunteer, but it was also the first time she and I and our friend Trista Bottoms would get to hang out together all day, as if we went to the same school. We even made our own special Winter Sun Festival
calendar to count down the days. But as I stood there in the float barn trying to shake off the strange twisty feeling I had about Grace shutting me down on the spy stuff, I found myself wondering if the Festival was really going to be as much fun as I'd thought.

“Sundae inspection in FOUR minutes!” Barb Lund blared through her megaphone again as Grace and I hopped off the last scaffolding rung and scooted past her to get more chopped strawflower petals. “And Zimball!” she shouted up to Rod on the Root Beer float. “Where's your dad? I need him to help adjust the starboard confetti cannons, pronto!”

Poor Mr. Zimball. Rod's dad was very high up in the Festival ranks, but he was so nice that Chairman Barb was constantly roping him in to help with something or other. We'd only been volunteering three days, and he'd already fixed the flat tire on her golf cart, oiled her squeaky office chair, and sanded down a splintery scaffolding board. And those were just the things I happened to witness.

Grace linked her arm with mine and we headed to the flower refill station at the back of the warehouse, passing dozens of colorful floats that featured everything from giant cartoon figures to replicas of Ferris wheels and palm trees. Festival rules said that every inch of the float had to be covered with organic material of some kind, so buckets
of bark, seeds, flowers, seaweed, and every type of plant you can imagine lined the aisles. Petals drifted in the air like snowflakes, and Barb Lund's favorite eighties oldies echoed through the warehouse.

“Have you asked Rod if he wants to sit with you at the Royal Court announcements yet?” Grace asked as Mr. Zimball hustled past us in his trademark Festival root-beer- brown business suit with another “Brown Suiter,” as we called all the Festival officials.

I guess she thought I couldn't embarrass her with spy-game talk if we focused on my love life instead. “Not yet,” I mumbled. “I think I should ask him to go to something else with me, don't you? It's too weird.”

Grace didn't have any crushes, not unless you counted my older brother, Jake, who was a high school junior—and that crush was obviously the result of early brain injury and/or serious vision impairment. Being homeschooled meant limited romantic options.

“I mean, it's not like it's a dance or something,” I explained. “He probably has to sit with his family. They'll be sitting on the terrace with all the VIPs, I bet.”

Grace sighed. “He likes you. It's so obvious. He's just shy! If you ask him, he'll know you like him, too.”

“And if he says no?”

“He's not going to say no. And if he did? He doesn't understand what he's missing.” She hugged my arm closer to her side. Just then another Brown Suiter zipped past us on one of the motorized white Festival scooters, a clipboard tucked under her arm.

“Royal page sign-ups!” someone squealed from the Girl Scouts of America's Beary Happy Family–themed float. It was like someone had blown a whistle. Before the Brown Suiter had even slowed to a stop, a mass of khaki-uniformed girls streamed away from their decorating stations, their badge sashes flapping as they raced past a surprised Goldilocks and the Three Bears huddled around a fake Girl Scout campfire.
Just Right,
read the loopy cursive script at the front of the float underneath them. Nothing felt “just right” about it.

Our good friend Trista Bottoms got caught in the crush of the crowd. Wearing her own version of a scout uniform—a khaki cargo vest that she'd sewn all her Girl Scout badges onto—she stood in front of the Beary Happy Family float like a boulder in a rushing rapids. The big mop of dark curls that sprang from her head made her seem bigger than she was. As a second wave of middle-school girls from other floats jostled by her, she turned toward us with a helpless shrug. Grace and I shot her a sympathetic look.

“Exc
uuuu
se me!” an annoyed voice whined behind us. Grace had accidentally bumped into Marissa's sister, Kendra Pritchard, who was carrying a basket of sunflower seeds. Kendra brushed off her uniform and flashed us a death stare, which hardly seemed right coming from a Girl Scout.

Grace apologized, but Kendra was flouncing back to her station on the Beary Happy Family float, stopping to give Marissa an encouraging pat on the back as she waited to sign up for the auditions.

“I think she put some kind of a hex on us,” Grace muttered to me.

“She's just afraid we'll audition for royal pages and beat out Marissa,” I joked.

Grace clapped her hands together. “Oh my gosh, how perfect would that be?” she asked, a glint in her eye. The flyaway hairs that had broken free from her ponytail gave her a wild look.

“I was kidding!” I backed away. I couldn't tell if the drifting petals made the air feel hazy or if Grace's suggestion made me feel woozy. It was probably both.

“We can all audition together,” she said, breathless. “Think of how much fun it'd be if we made it!” She turned to Trista, who'd finally waded upstream and made her way to us. “Right?”

Trista bumped her fist against ours in greeting. “How much fun?” she asked in her booming voice. “Let's see. Living in a
mansion for a weekend waiting hand and foot on high schoolers who believe they are actual royalty.” She pretended to do some mental calculations. “I estimate roughly
negative
3.5 tons of fun. Possibly less.”

I laughed. “What, you don't want to buff Lily Lund's toenails every night?”

“You guys,” Grace scowled. “It wouldn't be like that! A whole long weekend together, twenty-four/seven. Festival parties. Cool traditions. Riding on the Royal Court float!” She practiced her pageant wave and blew a kiss to an imaginary crowd.

Trista and I traded a look. I think we both would've rather grated cheese all over ourselves and spent the night in a rat-infested sewer.

“I'm not sure we're royal page material,” I said. The Festival claimed the Royal Court wasn't a beauty contest—that they were just looking for the “ABCs.” That is, girls who were “Articulate, Bright, and Charming.” Still, I'd never seen a middle-school page as short as me or as wide as Trista. Not even once.

“Don't be silly.” Grace rubbed red mum petal dust into her fingers, then swiped each of my cheeks. “All you need
is a liiiiittle bit of blush.”

“What're you talking about?” I smiled mischievously as I repeated the Royal Court judges' famous advice to contestants. “We just need to be ourselves.”

“Ha!” Trista snorted, ducking out of the way as I grabbed a huge handful of petals and launched myself forward. I tugged on the collar of Grace's T-shirt and tossed the petals down her back. Grace squealed, then filled both her hands and returned the favor.

“Hey, there,” a voice called out behind us. My heart skipped a beat as I turned to see Rod Zimball. He put down his flower bucket and gave a little wave. White petals were caught in the crests of his dark curls like whitecaps, and his hazel eyes shone. The only way he could've possibly looked any cuter was if he were cradling a baby panda.

He cocked his head and squinted at me. Thanks to Grace's “blush,” I was pretty sure I looked like Ronald McDonald.

I followed his gaze to the trail of petals spilling from the bottom of my shirt and collecting on the warehouse floor in a puddle.

I felt the rest of my face blaze as red as my cheeks.

“Did I hear you guys say you're trying out for pages?” he asked. “You have to go for it,” he said.

I scanned his face for signs that he was teasing. But
he blinked back, his expression as sweet and serious as could be. A warm tingle spread through me, and I stood up straighter. It wasn't until I tried to catch Grace's eye that it hit me. Tall and thin, with hair as long and glossy as all the Royal Court front-runners, she'd snag a spot as a page in a millisecond. The tingle faded, and my insides hollowed. Rod wasn't talking about
us
, he was just talking about
Grace
.

“No time this year,” Trista replied abruptly. She hooked her thumb in one of the pockets of her cargo jacket. “Float engineers need some backup.”

“Too bad.” Rod shrugged, not at all thrown by how seriously Trista had taken his question. “I doubt you'd even have to try out.”

I must've looked confused because he looked right at me and raised his eyebrows. “Town heroes as Royal Court pages? People would love it!” He wiped his hands on his jeans and picked up his bucket again. “There's no way you wouldn't get a spot.”

If my face was red before, it was on fire now. What was I thinking? Of course that's what he'd meant.

I smiled back. I tried to brush petals from my own head, but my hands were so sticky with glue that I yanked out some of my hair. Then—because hands shouldn't sprout long
brown hair and flowers—I clasped them together in front of me. Maybe, someday, I would be able to
un
clasp them.

“You call that a line, ladies?” Barb Lund's thundering question made us jump. She was waving her hands at a group of seventh-grade girls, trying to steer them past the Girl Scout float to the sign-up clipboard. “Now let's see those patooties in single file, PDQ!” she barked at them.

“Patooties?” Rod's forehead wrinkled. “I feel like I need a translator,” he said.

“That would be bomb diggity,” I said, imitating Barb's awful slang. Rod laughed.

“You think the Floatator would be in a better mood,” Grace said. “Just three hours till Lily's crowning, after all.”

“Unless Lily doesn't make the cut,” I said.

The three of them chuckled as if I'd cracked another joke. Barb Lund had been preparing her daughter, Lily, to be on the Winter Sun Festival's Royal Court since shortly after her birth—even before, if you count the parade anthems Barb probably blasted to her in the womb. If the judges rejected her, Luna Vista could likely expect to be visited with seven years of plagues, starting with swarms of locusts personally imported from the Sahara Desert by one very, very angry Ms. Barbara Ridley-Lund.

“Passing over a Ridley in an anniversary year? Not gonna happen,” Rod said.

I followed his gaze to the dried-flower-cutting tables where Lily Lund was working next to a group of gorgeous senior girls who were obvious Royal Court front-runners. Like me, Lily never would have ordinarily been royal material, no matter how hard Barb worked at it. Lily was taller than I was, but not a whole lot, and she had dull brown hair, thick glasses, and unfortunate bangs that she tried to curl to control a cowlick. I assumed her glasses were absolutely necessary—otherwise, Barb would have forced contact lenses on her long ago. Clustered near her, with their identically cut silky blown-out blond hair, glossy lips, and crazy long legs, her Royal Court–hopeful friends looked like a single strange but beautiful alien life-form. One of them flipped her hair over her shoulder and whispered something to the girl next to her. I felt like I could smell her shampoo from where I was standing until I realized it was just the overpowering scent of mums and roses.