Dream Factory (24 page)

Ella opens a Disney bottled water and tips some into my mouth before drinking some herself. “I don’t want to spoil the morning,” she says, “but what about Cassie?”

“What about her?” I shrug. “She won the contest. Right now I suspect she’s at the Old Key West lounging by the pool, checking out the lifeguards. She’s not much of one for altering her plans.”

“You scared me the last few days,” she says, her voice quieter. I slow down and look at her, watch her fingers wind the key again so that again, we hear “When You Wish Upon a Star” while the snow swirls in a slow circle.

“Scared you how?”

“I thought you’d gone over to the dark side,” she says, and smiles a little. Then the smile fades and she looks out the window. “I can’t lose somebody else,” she whispers.

I squeeze her hand. “I can’t go over to the dark side,” I tell her. “I’m Luke Skywalker. It would screw up the whole story.”

She nods. “So Cassie went to the hotel by herself?”

“Can you think of anyone else she’d rather be with?”

She shakes her head, then pulls something from the back pocket of her shorts. She holds up a pair of wrinkled index cards. “Remember these?”

“Amy the All-Powerful,” I say. “Why do you have them?”

“Well, one is mine.” She holds it up so I can read it: “I want.”

“Hey, wait a second,” I say. I look again at the card, but it’s not my handwriting. “You won’t believe—”

“And the other one she can’t figure out. The weird thing is, it says the same as mine.”

She holds it up, and this time I do recognize my own handwriting. Just then it starts raining those fat Florida rain-drops that hit the windshield with a splat. I pull off my sunglasses and look at Ella, and she does the same. “That’s my card,” I tell her.

She smiles. “I was kinda hoping,” she says. She props them both up on top of the dash, just under the windshield, side by side. “I got rushed and dropped it in. But probably it was my brain being smarter than me. I mean, I don’t know what I want. But I know I do want
something
, you know?”

“Yeah, it’s hard to be specific.”

“What do you want, Luke?” She really looks at me, her green eyes flecked with copper. The radio station fades out, and we ride to the rhythm of the wipers. When I check the rearview, I notice the spires of Cinderella’s castle still barely visible behind us.

“Everything,” I say, and look at her again.

“Yep. Not very specific.”

“I didn’t finish,” I tell her. “Everything . . . and you. And if I can have you right here beside me, I think the everything might not matter so much.”

She blushes and smiles, reaches up to touch my hair. She opens her window a little to let in the smell of the rain, and our index cards flutter on the dash.

“Ask me what I want,” she says.

I clear my throat. “Ella,” I say, “what do you want?”

She smiles. “You, right here beside me.” She squeezes my hand, leans into me. “And a hamburger.” She smiles big.

“Nice. Are those two ranked in any particular order?”

“Oh, you are definitely first. The hamburger is merely a close second.” She kisses the side of my face. “And I mean it. All that crappy food we had? I want a
real
burger, on a sour-dough roll, with real tomato. And fries.”

“I know just the place. They have the best burgers in the world, I think. Wanna go?”

“Sure. Where is it?”

“Memphis,” I tell her, and cut my eyes at her. “That’s in Tennessee.”

She laughs. “Well, I might need some Junior Mints or something to tide me over, since it’s like . . . how far away? Two days?”

“Yeah, if we take our time.”

She nods. “Let’s do that.”

I nearly miss the next exit ramp heading west. As we turn, I glance up into the rearview and try to see the fiberglass castle disappear behind us. By now the rain has stopped, and sunlight fills the car. Ella leans as we turn, one arm holding on to me, the other holding up the glass snow globe near her eyes again as the music plays. She tips it slightly so that all of the snow settles to one side of the globe. For that moment the two of them, Dale and Cinderella, dance in the bright sparkle of water, all the snow gone, nothing clouding their vision.