Page 101 of The Frog Prince
“I don’thavean assistant.”
“Maybe she wasn’t your assistant. I actually don’t remember her name, just that she said due to a low turnout the event had been canceled.”
“When was this?”
“Friday.”
“Friday?”
“Day before yesterday, late afternoon, early evening, something like that.” Barb cleared her throat. “And I reminded her about our cancellation policy. There’s no refund within forty-eight hours.”
And it was obviously within forty-eight hours.
Barb adds apologetically, “Most of the balloon statues were already made. They hold air for weeks, and the storybook figurines were completed.”
I do not know what to say.
Barb doesn’t either. She hesitates. Silence stretches, and I watch another car leave the parking lot, and children pile into a minivan. Soon everyone will be gone.
This has to stop. This is wrong. Kid Fest was never canceled. Kid Fest was for kids in need, and it’s a big deal to the kids, and it’s supposed to happen today.
Right now.
“I better go,” I say.
“Okay,” Barb answers uncertainly. “But call me if there’s anything I can do.”
I hang up and race toward the vans and the adults trying to corral kids who’ve begun to go berserk. Some of the adults are ballistic.
Do I have any idea what this has done to the kids? Do I know how this looks? How it feels? These are children already unloved, unwanted… these are children isolated, alienated—and to treat them this way, it’s just a slap.Aslap, and I should be ashamed…
Iamashamed. I’ve no idea what happened, although there’s a sick knot in my stomach that says I kind of do know, but there’s got to be a way to salvage something today.
I stare at my phone, wanting it to speak to me, to give advice, to tell me who to call.
I punch in Olivia’s number. She’s on speed dial, number1—ironic, isn’t it?—and get her voice mail. I try again three more times and finally leave a slightly hysterical message, begging her to call me.
I try Josh. Nothing, just voice mail, and I leave another, more hysterical message.
Tessa next. Her phone is off.
My God. I’m alone in this, completely, horribly alone, and the disaster is complete when I see a reporter and a photographer from theChroniclestep out of a car across the street and head toward me.
The event’s canceled, but the press still comes? Irony number2.
ChapterEighteen
Iget home.Let the door swing shut. Allow my coat and keys to fall onto the couch while I slide down in my dark charcoal pants, onto the carpet next to the couch, until my head leans against the cushions.
I’m boneless, nerveless,gone.
How did this happen? Correction: I know how this happened; I feel it in my gut, hard and heavy as a rock—but how?How, as in, how can anyone be so malicious? So selfish? So frightened? So insecure? So cruel?
I want to cry; it’d be such a relief, but I can’t. The sick feeling in me is so strong, too strong, and it threatens to swallow me whole.
How could I have screwed up anything this bad? How could something good—an event for kids,troubledkids—be the right vehicle for getting back at me?
Why should the kids be hurt in all this?