Free Find Me I'm Yours by Hillary Carlip Page A

little, seeing she was outnumbered. Liza made me promise to Skype her and show her the tapes when I got home.
    After hanging up, I suddenly realized that I hadn’t thought of Jason in about an hour. At this point it was all about my future. No looking back.
    Oops, I just did.
    As dusk was rapidly approaching, the dramatic pink sun sinking behind the 405 freeway, it was a little hard to see anything once we got to the first set of stairs in Santa Monica Canyon. Nothing seemed out of place, except for a Luna Bar wrapper on the fourth stair from the bottom.
    By the time we got back across town to one of the Beachwood Stairs in Hollywood, it was as if the
Survivor
tiki torch had been extinguished, and it was almost pitch-black out. We used the flashlights on our phones to light up the area, but saw nothing. Just stairs. And three cigarette butts.
    â€œI think this might be a daytime job,” Coco said.
    â€œAgreed. We could totally be in the dark, in the dark.” I would have to investigate the other two in the morning before work. I couldn’t ask Coco to join me—she’d be up way late tonight with Blake’s show (which she tried to convince me to go to). The least I could do was let her sleep in tomorrow.
    It was now up to me, and me alone, to find Prince Charming’s glass boot.

Chapter 16
    DAY 4—MORNING
    I woke to my phone alarm at 7:00 a.m. with a definite Drambully-over, not to mention puffy crybaby eyes. Boo, Toupee, and I were all squeezed onto my twin mattress, which I had bought for $15.00 from some aging actor’s estate sale in North Hollywood. He was selling his old 8 × 10 headshots, too. I still regret not buying one.
    I FaceTimed Cooper. Nothing. I called him. No answer. I texted him. No response. Hopefully he was out of jail and back at school. I’d try again in the afternoon.
    After I walked the kids and fueled up on K & C Donut coffee, I splurged next door at Subway and used some of my remaining $7.00 to get a Mornin’ Flatbread for $2.50—cuz you can “Add-vocado!” And I did. Then I set out for the third stairs on our list, between the Hollywood Bowl and Universal Studios.
    I had never been to the Hollywood Hills so early before. It seemed like a small town—newspapers being delivered into driveways with a thud, sprinklers rotating, catching the morning sun in their spray. The stairs were nestled between two beige stucco houses, both with white railings leading to front doors. Very 1970. Or maybe 1980. Definitely 19Ugly.
    The one thing that set these stairs apart from others, and made me hopeful, was that halfway up, there was a rickety red fence bordering the right side. It looked like I had a match!

    No boot (or lap-map!) was in sight, but there was a lot more trash on these stairs than Coco and I had spotted on the last two. Candy wrappers, receipts, and a scrawled TO DO list that included “Pick up tiara.” SWEARS! But nothing seemed significant. That is until I found, slightly hidden under a crunchy leaf… THE GOLDEN TICKET!!!
    It really felt just as dramatic and life changing as Charlie finding his ticket out of potato soup poverty into the riches of the Chocolate Factory!

    Sole Mates Shoe Repair?! Isn’t my husband-to-be so damn clever?
    I whipped out my phone and searched for info, including what time they opened.
    www.SoleMatesShoeRepair.com
    It seemed so legit. Would this be the ticket to Mr. WTF’s other boot? I called Coco. “How was Blake’s show?”
    â€œUgh… most of the acts sucked, and Blake’s latest band attempt didn’t go on till 2:00 a.m. and then played only three songs. I wasn’t that thrilled about any of it.”
    â€œWell, you’ll be thrilled—UH, MAYBE?—to know I found the stairs AND the next clue!”
    â€œShut up!”
    â€œSwears! There was a ticket for a shoe repair shop in Burbank called SOLE MATES! Genius, right? So my question is—do we