Things did look better the next morning - right up until the moment that all of the events of that first night in Orlando came crashing back to me in vivid, horrifying detail and my eyes flew open. I lay there for a while trying to make sense of everything that had happened and failing miserably. Eventually I channeled Scarlett O'Hara and pushed the scary memories into a dark corner of my mind and barricaded them in, telling myself I'd think about it all later when I had the strength to face it.
Resolutely thinking about anything but the strange events of the previous night, I rolled over, tugged the receiver from the phone, and placed a collect call to my Mom. I've never liked lying to my parents, but I couldn't tell her what had happened. Not any part of it, actually. So instead of telling her that I'd been mugged, I said I'd lost my wallet. She promised to get my credit card (her's and dad's really, even if it did have my name on it) cancelled right away and that she would find out how I could get home without a photo ID. She also told me she'd tucked a couple of twenties in between the pages of her Bible, which she'd made me take with me. And she never once said 'I told you so' or fussed at me for not following her advice. I have the most awesome Mom ever. I really, really do.
After I hung up the phone, I turned on the TV for background noise while I got ready for the day. After catching the weather report, I wished I'd thought to bring along shorts or capris despite it being the middle of February. People think Texas is always hot, but it's got nothing on Orlando. I'd left snow flurries behind, trading winter cold for what might pass for summer up north. I cursed my own lack of foresight as I rummaged through my suitcase, trying to find something that might not cause me to die of heat stroke. I ended up in a t-shirt Danielle had gotten for me at the Margaritaville gift shop when we'd gone with our youth group on a mission trip to Jamaica and a pair of loose-fitting tan cargo pants. My room key went into my right cargo pocket, my sunglasses on top of my head. Finally I retrieved the twenties, trying hard not to think about the Ten Commandments or the Seven Deadly Sins or anything else religious as I flipped through the pages of my Mom's old Bible.
Unsurprisingly, one of the bills marked Psalms 23, which had always been one of my favorite passages. Another marked John 3. The third and last marked James 5, where my mother had marked a a few verses with orange highlighter. My eyes were drawn to the part that read "And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven."
I'd been raised in the church, and I believed in the Almighty. I even believed a lot of what I read in the Bible. But somehow I couldn't imagine that I could be forgiven for what I'd done the night before - that is, if I'd actually done anything and wasn't just hallucinating or something. Still, I figured it couldn't hurt to ask forgiveness. I slid to my knees on the threadbare carpet of my hotel room, rested my folded hands on the messy bed, bowed my head, and prayed. An age and a day later, I got up, blew my nose, washed the tears off my face, and stuffed one of the twenties in my front pocket. The other two bills went back into the Bible; I'd learned my lesson about keeping all my cash in the same place.
Downstairs, I asked the front desk agent (thankfully not the one from the night before) the easiest way to get to the Boardwalk Inn. Short of spending some of my small stash of cash on a taxi, the easiest way there involved the free hotel shuttle. I had to wait a while for the van to return, but at least the ride was in my price range. And the wait gave me time to grab food from the vending machines again, which was the best I could hope for since my hotel was both too cheap to spring for a free continental breakfast (which I'd have missed anyway, since I slept so late) and too pretentious for me to be able to afford either room service or the hotel's cafe
I have no idea how long the van ride to the Boardwalk actually lasted, but it seemed like forever. Especially with the group of boisterous pre-teens loudly singing what might have been Britney Spears songs. Or maybe it was Hannah Montana. Something annoying, anyway.
Long before we got to the Boardwalk, I found myself wishing that my parents and I could have afforded for me to stay at the Boardwalk Inn or one of the nearby hotels. But my family's never had a lot of extra cash, and my parents hadn't wanted me to work until after I graduated high school. Even then I'd only been working part-time for a family friend while I investigated my birth parents. The cheap hotel I was staying in and the airfare from Texas to Orlando was just about all we could handle.
Eventually we arrived at the Boardwalk, a part of Disney World modeled after turn-of-the-century Atlantic boardwalks. It's got some food stands, a restaurant or two, a couple of bars, a handful of shops, and the Boardwalk Inn. The Inn is a gorgeous upscale hotel that costs more per night than most people I know make in a week. Or two. And in it was the reason I'd come halfway across the continent. Or so I hoped.
Taking a deep, bracing breath, I strolled into the Inn, trying not to look like a gawking tourist. I probably failed miserably, but no one seemed to notice or care. The front desk agent was busy with a customer, so I lurked in the overwhelmingly large and opulent lobby. Soon enough the customer moved on, and I made my way to the front desk.
I gave the rather cute guy behind the counter what I hoped was a disarming smile and said, "I'm looking for Dee Ramos."
The guy swallowed very slowly. He looked kind of stunned. "Uh...who?" he managed to stammer after a while.
"Dee Ramos."
"Oh," he replied, shaking his head slightly as if to clear it. "Is she a guest?"
"No, she works here. Or she did."
"We have a lot of employees here," he said. "But my supervisor might know something or at least be able to find out something for you."
"Can I speak with your supervisor, then?"
"Yeah. Just have a seat over there," he said, using his whole hand to point toward a group of comfortable looking chairs and couches, "and I'll tell her you're here."
Almost half an hour later, a rather short, slightly overweight woman approached me. She had kind eyes and a warm smile, and she spoke to several of the Inn's guests as she crossed the room.
"Dolores Gregory," she said, extending her hand to me. I rose and shook it.
"Jordan Parker."
We exchanged the usual nice-to-meet-yous, and then she asked what she could do for me.
"I'm looking for someone who works here, or used to work here. It's kind of a complicated story, but I think she might know my mother," I explained. "Her name is Dee Ramos."
I don't know what I thought would happen then, but I know I wasn't expecting the woman to make the sign of the cross and whisper 'ay dios mio.' She sank down into the chair beside mine and stared at me, her eyes wide.
Confused, I sat back down and let her stare. After a moment, she said, "Saint Cecilia's. 1989."
It was my turn to stare in shock. St. Cecilia's was the church where I'd been abandoned when I was a baby, way back in 1989.
"You're Dee?" I asked.
Dolores smiled. "To my friends, yes. Ramos was my maiden name."
"You were the one who took me to the church." I studied Dolores, my only clue to the bizarre mystery of the strange occurrences of the past year and my only link to my birth parents.
"Yes. I knew we would be safe inside the church, and I was right. And yes, I left you there, but I didn't abandon you. I kept in touch..."
"With Mrs. Cruz," I said, putting the pieces together. "She's the one who told me where to find you."
"She helped me come to the decision to leave you at the church. She made sure you stayed safe, and she found a family to adopt you. She never told me more than that, but I knew that if you had a family - a good family - you would be just fine."
I wasn't sure what to say to that. I settled for asking, "What did you mean when you said you knew we'd be safe there, at the church?"
Dolores glanced around the lobby and then looked back at me. "I should get back to work," she said. Before I could protest, she added, "I want to talk to you, Jordan, but now is not the time or place. Can you meet me here after I get off from work?"
"Of course," I said. As if I'd say 'no'.
"I get off at 7. Meet me here in the lobby. I'll buy you dinner, and we can talk," she said, standing even before she finished speaking.
I said I'd see her at 7, and then I just sat for a minute while I tried to figure out what to do next. I'd slept kind of late; add to that the forever-long shuttle trip, the brief conversation with Dolores, and lots of waiting, and it was rather late into the afternoon. I only had a few hours to kill, so I decided to explore the Boardwalk.
The French doors opposite the ones I'd entered through let out on a balcony. A few people lounged in the wicker chairs and rockers there, enjoying the mild Florida climate. I ignored them and headed directly for the steps leading down to the courtyard below.
A gift shop, an arcade, and an art gallery lay on one side of the courtyard. A restaurant - which I felt sure had to be far outside of my budget - sat on the opposite side; the Inn occupied the third side of the courtyard, and on the fourth side lay the actual boardwalk which borders a sizable lagoon. Across the water, I could see Epcot's giant golf ball, which I as an uber-nerd knew is actually called 'Spaceship Earth'. Concession kiosks and carnival games peppered the weathered boards, and a lone surrey filled with laughing tourists ambled along the long walkway, dodging pedestrians as it rolled along.
At the edge of the courtyard, I paused to look left and right along the boardwalk. Not knowing what was what - or where, for that matter - I headed right first, since the walkway to the left seemed to go on forever and the one to the right was far shorter. I found nothing to interest me, though, and meandered back past the courtyard to poke around in the gift shop. Half an hour later, I had seen everything the shop had to offer and hoped to never see anything else featuring perky princesses. Beyond the gift shop, I found only a restaurant, what appeared to be some sort of vacation condos, and a couple of bars.
All too aware of the huge amount of time I had left to kill, I followed the walkway and a line of tourists away from the Boardwalk to a couple of nearby hotels. Like the Boardwalk Inn, the Swan and Dolphin made my hotel look fairly pathetic. I spent some time sitting and staring at the swan fountain, browsed the gift shops, and then gave the whole exploration thing up as a lost cause. The whole experience was, in a word, boring. Maybe it wouldn't have been so bad if I'd had money to spend, or if I wasn't making a constant effort to block out the events of the previous night while simultaneously trying to not wonder too much about Dolores, or if I'd had my friend Danielle there to help me mock the more ill-advised products on display. Or if I hadn't been quite so painfully aware of the way many of the men who passed near me stopped to stare - and of the answering hunger rising inside of me.
I spent a little of my stash of money on a paperback at one of the shops, cursing the overly huge profit margin that's so much a part of tourist destinations, and headed back to the Inn. I settled myself down in one of those comfy wicker rocking chairs on the Inn's balcony with my book and essentially hid from the world around me. I couldn't keep my mind on my book, though, and ended up checking my watch obsessively until a quarter til seven, at which point I went inside the Inn and found a seat in the lobby.
Less than fifteen minutes passed before Dolores appeared, beckoning me from across the room. We walked outside together, and as we descended the steps leading from the balcony down to the Boardwalk proper, she asked me, "Is pizza okay?"
I gave her a look that said 'I'm a teenager; what do you think?' and she smiled at me. We turned right at the bottom of the steps and then right again when we reached the Boardwalk's main walkway. The area near the Inn there was under construction, but there was a gap in the middle of it all where people were buying pizza and sodas.
Dolores ordered us a slice and a soda each, then waited for the pizza while I took the drinks to a table near the water's edge.
I leaned against the wrought-iron table and stared across the lagoon at Spaceship Earth, contemplating how very little interest Disney World had for me now. When I'd set out for Orlando, I'd been excited about exploring the Disney parks - especially Epcot, which I'd dreamed of visiting since I was a little kid. Considering the nightmare my life had become in the last twenty-four hours, I suppose it made sense that all I wanted at this point was to get my answers and get as far away from this place as I could.
Dolores appeared with pizza, pulling me out of my dark thoughts.
"We can't really talk here," she said. "Not about anything important. We'll eat, and then we'll go down to Jellyrolls and talk there."
"Isn't that a bar?" I asked between bites of cheese-laden ambrosia. "I mean, I'm not old enough to go in, I don't think. And I lost my wallet..."
"I know people," she assured me with a grin. "We'll be able to get in."