Page 32 of Love at Full Tilt
Hero’s Quest, Fableland
Orlando, FL
Of all Fable Industry films, Sunspark is easily one of the most beloved.
The love story between the brilliant but chaotic Princess Elorra, who prefers to spend her days with her Bunsen burners and experiments, and the roguish former pirate, Oliver Cray, still inspires pages upon pages of fan fiction decades after its release.
They’re an unlikely team turned even more unlikely heroes, and fans have forever lamented that their story did not get a sequel.
Issy, Tess, and I blow through the first two clues in notime.
They were both Sunspark themed, so it took us about five seconds to guess each one. It’s been fun, getting excited again about this fandom we all used to be a part of, laughing over how we’d swooned for Oliver Cray and Elorra, how we’d dressed like pirate scientists in sixth grade for Halloween.
Still, I can’t seem to stop myself from peeking at the leaderboard. I’m ranked at twenty-eight right now, with one last clue to find.
My stomach drops. So many of the contestants are faster than me.
And they don’t just know the lore; they know how to find the Easter eggs.
Like that mermaid yesterday. I’ve read plenty about it on F 3 , but I never saw anything about the anchor.
There’s no way I would have ever scanned that code without Mason.
I need those extra hints more than anyone else. And now I’ve lost them.
Tess snatches my phone out of my hand. “Excuse me. We are about to enter the sacred space of Elorra’s lab. No stressing about boys allowed.”
I reach for my phone but she doesn’t let go. “I was checking my standing.” And seeing if Mason was on the board, but Tess doesn’t need to know that part.
“I’ll return it so you can scan the code.” She rests her arm on my shoulders and checks me with her hip. “Look where we are.”
Hero’s Quest is separated into four different environments—a forest, a desert, a garden, and a mountain range—each of which borders Wayborn Castle, the park’s centerpiece.
We’re standing at the entrance to the garden, the various flowers and plants, most of which tower over us, bursting with color.
The brass fences that separate guests from the flora fork at numerous points to guide visitors toward attractions.
“I thought you were over this stuff.”
Tess shrugs. “This is Sunspark. We should always support ladies who love STEM, even if they’re imaginary princesses.”
Issy is practically bouncing out of her skin she’s so excited. She used to insist that she and Elorra were the most alike, since baking and cooking are their own kinds of science. She points ahead. “Southeast corner of the royal garden, behind the rosebushes, right?”
I nod, then recite the clue again. “Though colors surround it, the lowest, dankest place is this light’s home.”
Obviously, we’re meant to find the sunspark for the third clue.
Elorra hides it in her lab after she accidentally creates the ball of radiant light with one of her experiments.
Because it shines so brightly, she has to squirrel it away under one of her worktables, buried beneath animal hides and thick blankets.
We head toward an ornate archway in the shape of a crown that sits at the easternmost corner of this section of the park. It butts up against the side of Wayborn Castle, and down a set of partially hidden stairs, we should find Elorra’s alchemy lab.
The sky is cloudless, the sun beating down on the pavement.
Most people are lined up for rides or seeking out air-conditioning since there’s nothing to do in this area except examine the greenery and walk through Elorra’s lab.
I’m honestly surprised they haven’t torn down this attraction to build something that would draw a bigger crowd.
Walk-throughs aren’t exactly the thrills people are looking for these days, even if Fableland has a way of making them magical.
We’re traipsing down the stairs to the basement when that overcompetitive blond contestant, Erica K., steps out of the exit. I recognize her and her smug expression from her picture. A little thrill zips through me. She wasn’t in the top ten either.
As always, her makeup is perfectly applied, her hair pulled up in an expertly messy topknot.
She’s one of those girls who would be princess levels of pretty if not for the haughty vibe she gives off.
It ruins the whole effect. Like biting into a beautifully crafted truffle from the Curséd Apple to find turkey gravy filling inside.
Her blue eyes dip to the pin on my shirt. “Still in it, huh?”
I tip my chin up. “Seems so.”
“I’m Erica.”
“Lia.”
She glances from me to my friends. “I know we’re supposed to be in competition, but if you’re looking for the third clue, it’s not here.” She smiles almost shyly, as if she isn’t sure she should be telling us this.
“Really?” My hackles rise, but I do my best to sound neutral. Three days ago, she was pushing people out of her way. Now she’s giving fellow contestants advice? Doubtful. Not when the number of us keeps getting whittled down.
I grab my phone from Tess’s pocket.
Erica smiles, and I swear she flashes her teeth in the process like a predator. “Yeah. I wasted twenty minutes trying to find the sunspark. It’s not there.” She sighs. “Now I need to regroup and try to figure out what I missed.”
“Damn.” Tess frowns. “We were so sure this was the answer.”
That lion’s smile returns to Erica’s face. With a quick “Good luck,” she waves and jogs back up the stairs and into the garden.
Tess turns to follow her. “I demand we come back here after we find the other clue. I want to see if the lab looks as real as the Reddingshire walk-through did.” She’s on the first step when my hand catches her wrist.
“Look.” I hold out my phone. On the screen sits the leaderboard, with Erica at number twenty-six. It says she finished the clues for the day at 11:10, which was about five minutes ago.
Tess’s cheeks flame red. “What an asshole.”
“She’s definitely been playing dirty every chance she gets.” I don’t understand why. I know it’s not great to make assumptions about people you don’t know, but nothing about Erica suggests she needs the cash prize the way Mason and I do.
“I hope she can never find chocolate when she needs some,” Issy mutters. Her petty curses always involve food.
The three of us laugh. “An excellent punishment,” I say.
We hurry into the basement of the castle. The first left turn opens into the laboratory, and instantly, it’s like we’ve stepped right into the film.
I want to take it all in, but I also want to secure my place in the contest, so I make my way over to the second workbench and crouch to look beneath it.
Sure enough, there’s an old wooden crate covered with fabrics.
Pulling them away exposes a mason jar so full of bright light I have to squint to look at it.
It illuminates every crack and speck of dust in the stone floor.
The QR code is pasted on the jar like a label, and I scan it.
Position twenty-seven. I scroll through the page. Mason still isn’t on it. He hasn’t even gotten the first clue about Elorra’s favorite drink.
I hand my phone back to Tess before I give in to the urge to text him.
It’s hard not to worry about him. Nothing about the guy I’ve been hanging out with over the past few days suggests that he’d ditch me. Or worse, pull an Erica and try to make me fail like Tess suggested he might have. Otherwise, why would he have confided in me so much? Why would he have kissed me?
I won’t know the truth until I hear from him, and who knows when that will be. For now, I want to be in this moment with my friends.
All around us, the sparkle of Elorra’s well-kept beakers and pristine test tubes winks in the light from the bare bulbs above our heads.
Equations and notes are scribbled in chalk across the walls, and there are jewelry and fancy shoes discarded on shelves and under tables, where Elorra had shed them as she entered.
Tess has her phone out and is snapping pictures, the flash giving off intermittent bursts of light.
“It looks so…real,” Issy breathes. “Like they pulled it out of the movie and placed it here.”
“I can’t believe there’s actual sunspark.
” Tess flaps a hand in the air, hurrying over to the table where I’d scanned the code.
I gape at the sunspark with her, really able to take it in this time.
According to the movie, sunspark is a flower that has captured a ray of the sun.
Its bud is a ball of yellow light about the size of a dandelion puff, with a delicate green stem.
It floats in the jar as if the flower is not subject to the same laws of gravity as we are.
We go quiet for a minute as we admire it. Then I mumble, “The eighth-grade versions of us would be losing their shit rightnow.”
“Fourteen-year-old Tess would be trying to steal this.” Eighteen-year-old Tess attempts to uproot the jar, but it’s bolted to the wooden crate.
“We can get our own,” I say.
“What?”
“That was one of the attractions they added when they renovated Hero’s Quest a few years back, remember? You can climb Sun’s Peak at the other end of the park and pick your own blossom.”
“Shit. That’s right. We all begged our parents to take us that summer.
” She sighs dramatically. “Well, we better carbo-load before that. It’s like a thousand stairs.
” Tess’s stomach growls, and the three of us giggle.
“Speaking of carbs, I’m going to go grab one of those funnel cakes from the stand next door.
Don’t do anything Sunspark related without me. ”
Issy has walked behind the center lab table and is gripping the wooden edge with her fingertips, her back to me. She watches Tess disappear up the stairs. I almost don’t hear her when she clears her throat, the sound as soft and delicate as she is. “Can I tell you something while she’s gone?”