One Ghost Per Serving (31 page)

Eric circled his hand in a hurry-up gesture, and Rex did it like he was ripping off a bandage, without further preamble. Eric felt a wave of apprehension, and then it was like everything was moving in slow motion. He separated from his body, but watching his body from outside of it seemed to take a long time. Was this how it felt in September 2000? He felt incredible pressure, like he had expanded to the size of one of those car dealership promotional gorilla balloons, and then he was compressed back inside his body. His breath was knocked out of him, and, just as when he thought he would die from suffocation and from getting pressed into some kind of fruit strip, he was standing in Taffy’s school and holding Taffy up in the air like he did when she was smaller.

“Can you put me down now?” He heard her say, as though from very far away. She couldn’t be talking to him. He was insubstantial.

“What?” He managed to say. His head felt gigantic, like a fish bowl stuffed with building insulation.

“Put me down,” Taffy repeated with her special calm impatience.

Eric finally realized that he was holding up his daughter, and could, in fact, control his limbs. He put her down as slowly as possible, slowly leaned over, and put his hands on his knees. He took in a deep breath, and another, sucking in oxygen until he felt lightheaded. He leaned against the wall and got the basics of his situation. Rex wasn’t possessing him, nor did he seem to be around. They were in a hallway with lockers, classroom doors, water fountains, hand-drawn banners promoting club competitions and book fairs. Barely a minute had elapsed since Eric was standing at the bus. And his head was pounding.

“Taffy, do you have any aspirin in your locker?” This was a rhetorical question that actually meant, ‘Can I have one of the aspirins you keep in your locker?’ Taffy’s school locker was one of THE places to go for first aid supplies, including things only specialty medical clinics kept on hand, and for things like water purification tablets and field rations.

Taffy’s school locker was also one of the sites on Eric’s family emergency plan, which he supposed was slated for replacement. Mark’s
Formerly-Snackerge-now-Bollworm Family Emergency Plan
would consist of grabbing the files Mark could use to blackmail and/or sabotage people, stopping by his city apartment to frantically grab the grooming products he bought in Europe, and filling up his luxury sedan with so much stuff – high-end vacuum, Aeron chair, super-expensive blender, golf bag – that nobody but the driver could fit inside. “Makes the Snackerge plan look pretty damn good, doesn’t it?” Eric muttered.

“What’d you say, Dad?”

“Nothing. Just, nice job with the locker.”

“Thanks.” Taffy’s face brightened. “I got some new assault rations. They’re lighter and smaller and you only need water for the beverage mix. Want to try?”

“Nah, that’s okay.”

“No problem. I’ll get an aspirin.” Taffy went to open her locker.

Eric ran down the hall to look out the clear double doors at the end. Two delivery trucks were pulling up into the side lot – and an Aston Martin slid in after them.

The Nidus drivers did their own unloading at Taffy’s school. They jumped out in their work-safe shoes and their safety vests, dropped the plank from the trucks, then pulled out the pallet jacks. In the hallway, the bell rang and students clamored out the doors then streamed through the hall. Eric moved next to the door with Taffy and watched DZ get out of his car.

Eric leaned down and held Taffy’s shoulders. “Taffy, the yogurt these guys are bringing into the school is infected.”

“Really?” Her eyes lit up like it was Christmas morning. “With what?”

“Spirits.”

“Liquor?”

“No, ghosts.”

“Dad.”

“I swear. Remember those customers in the Quality Market?”

“The crazy ones who were going after the contest like you?”

“Those people were crazy because they tried the yogurt and ingested a spirit. The company that embedded the spirits thought it would just make people really want the product –”

“
That’s
a clever idea,” Taffy said to herself under her breath, as though it were something she’d like to try.

“No, it’s a terrible idea,” Eric said, “because the spirits were a lot worse than that – they were more like … parasitical poltergeists.”

“Why, poor cold chain management?”

“Uh, no,” Eric said. “They were just more dangerous than people thought.”

“But you ate so much yogurt. Why didn’t you get infected?” Taffy narrowed her eyes. “Or
did
you!”

“I didn’t,” Eric said as his cell phone rang. “Because I was possessed once,” he waved that off, “long story – and found out that I can’t get possessed again, at least not by the type of spirit that’s in the yogurt.” He looked at the number. It didn’t look familiar. “Apparently I was possessed for so long that it made me completely immune,” he told Taffy then answered the phone.

“Hello? Yes, this is Eric Snackerge. I what? I what? Could you say that again? Okay, one more time? All right. Thank you.”

Eric pocketed the phone. Taffy raised her eyebrows in a questioning look. “Dad?” She waved her hand in front of his face. “Hell
ooo
.”

“I won.” He looked off into the distance. He was pleased, but thought he would have more … emotion. Be more excited. “I won the Amass-and-Win.”

“The yogurt contest?”

Eric nodded, a little dazed. “Yeah, that one.” Finally, it hit him: the actual reason he had pursued the contest in the first place. He kneeled, sat on his left calf, and rested an elbow on his right knee. “You can go wherever you want now. You can do a research trip!”

“Is that why you did this?” Taffy said. “So I could go on a research trip?”

He took her hand. Crouching, he was only a little shorter than his daughter. “It’s a three week trip with a stipend big enough to bring all the lab gear you could want. I want you to be able to do things like that. I don’t want to …” he looked at the floor. “Hold you back.” He looked back up at her.

“I applied for a Young Scientist Fellowship through school.” She smiled at him. “I’m sure I’ll get it.”

“Oh,” Eric said.

“But that’s pretty much the most awesome thing you’ve ever done,” she added, and stretched her arms around his neck. “Thank you,” she said into his shoulder, and he was elated and completely content and mournful that the moment was so brief and would soon be in the past. After a moment, she pulled away. “I can probably do both trips,” she said with a quirk of a smile. “And you were possessed? Holy shit!”

“Language.”

Taffy dug in her pocket and took out a money clip stuffed with cash.

“Holy shit!” Eric said.

Taffy peeled off a dollar, held it up, then put it in another pocket. “So close, Dad.”

“You’re not selling –”

“Drugs? Uh, no. Custom-flavored candy.”

“Good, then maybe
you
can pay for college. Listen, I need you to run to the cafeteria and do whatever you can to stop kids from eating the yogurt in the snack boxes. Keep one of the boxes and bring it back to me.”

“Where are you going to be?”

“Rounding up the teachers, the other employees –”

Taffy snorted in derision.

“Still not getting along with Miss Farman?” Eric raised an eyebrow.

“Let me put it this way. If she’s hungry, she won’t go for the yogurt – she’ll scrape off bacteria from her legs using the bristles in her mouth.”

“I see.” Eric nodded, letting a hint of a smile escape. He glanced at DZ, who was wearing his aviators and hanging back, watching the spectacle. Why, to make a point? Eric kissed Taffy on her head, which smelled like citrus, then watched her jog down the hall while he stayed by the double doors.

The amount of freight remaining in several trucks told Eric that this would not be the only school to get the snack boxes. It just happened to be the first one. And that was definitely a point that DZ was making: it told Eric that DZ started here, and not a school in the city where he worked, because it was Taffy’s school. Eric closed his eyes. He wanted to win this contest so Taffy could go wherever she wanted to do research, but because he did, he wound up getting commerce spirit poltergeists deployed to her school.

“Way to go,” he muttered.

Then he realized that he was the world’s worst father for letting Taffy go to the cafeteria by herself.

The cafeteria was a hundred times worse than an animatronic pizza restaurant for children fifteen minutes after the birthday cake and fruit punch was devoured. Eric couldn’t tell if this was normal or a dire emergency that fell under the purview of the CDC. But some of the kids had snack boxes or pieces of them in their hands as they scrambled over the chairs and tables like speed-addled monkeys. He looked for Taffy’s blonde hair and those fluorescent orange plastic balls.

“REX!” He said in a near-yell over the din.

Rex didn’t show up. Maybe he was still driving. Eric pictured a copy looking at the bus, which would look like no one was driving it. Pushing this thought away, he jumped into the melee, which was so much more hyper and fervent than the older infected customers at the stores. One of the teachers, or so Eric presumed from his brown plaid blazer, snapped at him, capillaries red in the whites of his eyes, his voice a hoarse rasp. He hit Eric in the face with the empty yogurt container until Eric steered him into a different direction.

“TAFFY!”

Eric picked up a red chair and held it in front of him as he waded through the kids, cafeteria staff, and teachers. He thought he heard something, and followed the sound until he saw Taffy. She was examining a snack box under a table in the farthest corner from the cafeteria line, where the staff had handed out the snack boxes, judging from the pile of torn-apart cardboard.

“
Now
can I go to a better school?” Taffy said, putting earplugs in her ears. Eric sat under the table with her.

“I want to take this to the lab.” She held out the box.

“Let’s go now,” he said. “Unless you wanted to get in line. I hear they have pizza.”

“Maybe next week.”

When they scurried out from under the table, Eric crouched down and she got on his back.

“I can run faster than you,” she pointed out.

“But I need a shield.” He hoisted her up and secured her ankles.

Taffy gave him directions to the science lab. When he got to the door, he crouched down again and she slid to the floor. He barricaded the door behind them and she went to a sink at one of the lab stations to wash up. She dried her hands, pulled on a pair of blue gloves, then opened cabinets and took out some equipment. Eric took a coiled piece of red-and-white nylon rope from the teacher’s desk and jammed it in his back pocket. He went to the corner of the room by the window, near a slick poster of the Periodic Table and a diagram of a frog’s anatomy.

Out the window, Eric watched as a tiny silver car pulled up next to DZ’s Aston Martin. A man in his thirties slammed the door, paused, nearly clawed off his navy blazer then threw it back into the car, slamming the door even harder the second time. He was average height, with brown hair, khakis, a blue collared shirt, and a gray tie. He stalked over to DZ then spoke with his head forward in an accusatory way.

DZ put up a hand and went over to the jungle gym. The angry guy followed, yelling the whole way. Did DZ park in his teacher-of-the-month spot? Whatever the case was, he was really letting DZ have it. DZ seemed surprised, like angry guy was a tree that had suddenly become a person and expressed anger toward him.

“Taffy, don’t let anyone in here but me.” Eric got up and turned to her. She had on a pair of clear safety glasses and a lab coat. He wished he had a video camera, and made a mental note to record her in the lab soon. It occurred to him that he could probably dedicate the rest of his life to making documentaries about Taffy. Whatever else he screwed up, it didn’t matter. If he had to go through that, had to make every choice, every decision again in the exact same way so Taffy could exist, then he could make his peace with it. Even with Rex.

“And if anyone gets within ten feet of you –” Eric warned.

Taffy held up a propane torch and turned it on. It flared and hissed. “I know.”