Wax (10 page)

The boy scrambled to his feet and bounded to the center of the room like an eager-to-please puppy. “Now what?”

“Hold still.” Poppy snapped a photo with her cell phone. While she texted it to Jill, the boy stared up at her ceiling fan, whirling his head around as he followed the path of the blades.

Poppy studied him. He didn't
look
dangerous. Wide, curious eyes. Goofy, dumb smile. A hint of stubble on his jaw, a small paunch around his belly. Unruly strawberry-blond hair that was just long enough to flare out from behind his ears, giving the impression of wings. A baritone voice with a bit of a rasp, made more pleasant by the heaping doses of awe infused into every word he said. Though he was taller than Poppy, with broad shoulders and a thick chest, and though he was technically an unholy abomination, Poppy's fear began to ebb.

“Hi,” he said again, waving with his fingers wide like a toddler.

Poppy's phone rang. “Okay,” said Jill. “I will give you that there is a large and not entirely unattractive boy in your room. But I am forced to point out that he could be any number of human boys, and not some magical being made out of wax.”

“But he
is
a magical being made out of wax,” Poppy insisted. “Listen to me. Back there in Madame Grosholtz's workshop​—​she was telling me about these creations of hers, these​—​oh, crap, what did she call them​—”

“La cire vivante,”
the boy said.

“Right. Wait, what?” She looked up at him. “So you
do
understand what I'm saying?”

He waved again. “Hi.”

Poppy grunted and turned her attention back to Jill. “The point is that there were a bunch of these sculptures, and I know it sounds crazy, but I could have sworn that one of them
blinked.
And at the time, I thought I was losing my mind, but it now seems that I was fully sane and in complete control of my faculties, because one of those sculptures is currently sitting on my bed and going through my bag and​—​gimme that!” she said, grabbing a tampon out of his hand.

“Yep,” Jill was saying. “Fully sane.”

“Next thing you know, I get home and open my trunk and there he is. I don't know
how
he​—​oh!” She smacked herself on the forehead. “The bodyguard thing!”

“The what now?”

“Madame Grosholtz recognized me from
Triple Threat
and offered me one of her sculptures as protection from further bullying! I said no thanks, then you called, and I got the heck outta there. I guess she somehow stuffed one into my trunk anyway while we were getting the fudge . . .”

“Good for her. She realized that you were a danger to yourself and others.”

“But I don't get why she'd give me something out of the trash.” If Poppy
had
to have a sentient wax being bestowed upon her as a bodyguard, couldn't she have gotten SexyFace? “I remember this kid. He was sitting in a pile of rejects. Duds, she called them.”

“Dud?” the boy asked.

“Maybe she got desperate and grabbed whatever was closest,” Poppy said. “She
was
getting all worked up and panicky about something​—”

“Or maybe she's getting in on the town fad of playing pranks on you,” Jill said. “I hear candle witches have a delightful sense of humor.”

Poppy scowled. She wasn't getting anywhere with this. Jill was the least likely person to believe in anything supernatural. Jill didn't even believe in yoga.

Then, suddenly, it all became clear. “Wait a minute! I'll just take him back!” Poppy said, astonishment in her voice at the simplicity of the solution. She scrambled for her shoes. “I'll hop in the car and return him to Madame Grosholtz! Come on, dud,” she said, patting her knees as if she were calling a dog. “Let's go.”

“Don't forget your receipt,” said Jill.

∗ ∗ ∗

Hopping into the car was easier said than done. First, Poppy had to find the kid a shirt, eventually settling on an oversize promotional Killington Ski Resort tee she'd won on a field trip years before. Then she had to wrangle him into the car, adjust the seat to accommodate his frame, and put on his seat belt. Once he was all strapped in and ready to go, he opened the glove compartment and swept its contents onto the floor.

“Oops,” he said, his scrambling sneakers ripping the registration.

Poppy rubbed her temples. “Maybe you don't deserve to ride shotgun.”

“Shot . . . gun?”

“Front seat of the car​—​forget it.”

Poppy scanned the street for witnesses. Luckily, Mrs. Goodwin had finished her gardening, but Poppy's parents could arrive home any minute. She gunned it out of the driveway, narrowly missing the mailbox her mother had painted to look like a watermelon.

Fascinated, the boy watched suburbia fly by the window. “Better than trunk,” he said with a sage nod.

Poppy glared at him. “Do you have a name?”

“Dud?”

“No​—​sorry, I only called you that because​—”

“Dud! Dud! Dud!”

“Okay, okay. Here​—​be quiet and listen to the radio.”

She hit the button, and one of Madonna's more recent songs screeched out. Dud put his hands over his ears.

“Fair enough.” She pointed at the scan button. “Press this until you find something you like.”

Tentatively, the boy pushed the button, pausing briefly at each station until he landed on Poppy's parents' religion of choice: National Public Radio. He sat back in his seat and smiled.

“Talking,” he said with enthusiasm. “Learning talking.”

Poppy gaped at him. “You're learning how to talk just by listening? So you've only learned what I've been saying​—”

“Shh,” he said, holding up a finger.
“This American Life.”

Poppy rolled her eyes. “Excuse
me,
” she said, though she did shut up. No point in trying to compete with Ira Glass.

They were rumbling along toward the center of town, listening to a heartbreaking story about migrant diaper factory workers, when Poppy turned the corner​—​and abruptly sat taller in her seat.

The town square had become a sea of flashing red and blue lights. Sirens split the air; smoke darkened the sky. A cavalcade of fire trucks, police cruisers, and ambulances tore down the road, screeching around the edges of the lake.

With a sinking feeling, Poppy looked across the water.

Towering orange flames licked at the spires of the Grosholtz Candle Factory, the whole rear of the building lit up like a blazing candelabra.

8

“
THIS QUINOA IS DELICIOUS,
”
POPPY SAID,
shoving a spoonful into her face. “What am I tasting here​—​cumin?”

The Whole Foods buffet-to-go boxes had gone untouched.
Dr. Steve
had gone unwatched. One hundred percent of her parents' attention was focused on the boy shoved awkwardly into a folding chair and looking at a fork as though he had never seen a fork before.

“Coriander,” her mom answered flatly.

Dud speared a carrot with such force that the fork plowed through the cardboard of the container, dispensing some of its contents onto the carpet. Owen giggled.

“Poppy?” said her father, bending down to pick up the runaway chickpeas. “Could we have a moment to chat with you? Alone?”

“But I'm eating.” Poppy arranged her mouth into a shape that was a smile in name only. Behind it was nothing but sheer panic. The second she'd spotted the fire that had consumed the Grosholtz Candle Factory​—​and was still consuming it, judging by the occasional fire truck screaming by​—​she'd bolted, for motives that she couldn't herself determine. Maybe she wanted to keep out of danger. Maybe it was a gut feeling.

Or maybe it was the fear that she'd somehow, inexplicably, caused it.

Whatever the reason, she'd sped home at once. Worry clouded her thoughts​—​was Madame Grosholtz okay? Had she gotten out in time? Poppy hadn't been able to see too well from across the lake, but it looked as though the flames were concentrated toward the back of the factory. And the way the building was shaped, with that one narrow hallway, escape would have been near impossible . . .

When she got home, she wrangled Dud back up to her room and into her closet again, trying to think. But thinking was a higher brain function that Poppy had lost the capacity for. In the space of fifteen minutes she'd devolved to the mental level of a dung beetle​—​and like the dung beetle, all she could think about was the immense pile of shit she was in.

She was still “thinking” by the time her parents and Owen got home, and that's when her mutated insect brain decided it would be a good idea to remove Dud from the closet, take him downstairs, and introduce him to her family as if he were a cherished guest star on a sitcom. She'd half expected an unseen studio audience to burst into applause.

But all she'd got was a gust of stunned silence, six widened eyeballs, and Owen blurting, “Who's
that?
”

At which point it became obvious that this half-baked plan of hers was crumbling fast, and no amount of coriander could save it.

“Poppy,” her father repeated. “A word.”

“Can we please watch the news? I want to know what they're saying about the fire at the​—”

“Poppy.”

“Yeah, okay,” she muttered, standing up from the couch. “Um​—” She looked at Dud, who was evidently unsettled by the existence of bean sprouts, and then at Owen, whose expression was that of a child who'd been given a life-size action figure for Christmas.

“Watch him,” she told her brother. “Make sure he doesn't break anything.”

“Sure,” said Owen, watching Dud slice a single pea.

Poppy followed her parents into the kitchen and then into the privacy of the pantry, where they closed the door and stared her down. As the space in the pantry was limited, the awkwardness was nice and concentrated.

Her parents were busy shooting each other a lot of uncertain glances, which gave Poppy enough time to decide to charge forth from an offensive position rather than retreating into the canned tomatoes. “That was
very
rude of you,” she hissed at them.

“Excuse me?” said her father.

“I thought about what you said. That we should
open
our home, with
open
arms, and
open
our hearts to a scared young foreigner who wants nothing more than to learn all about our strange, vegetable-loving ways.”

“We did not say ‘open' that many times,” her mother said.

Her father agreed with a huff. “And we did not mean that you should pick up a random exchange student as soon as you found one! These things take months to set up! You're supposed to do this with the help of placement coordinators, there are interviews​—”

“So I cut out the middleman!” Poppy exclaimed. “Look. Dud needs a home, and I need a better reputation. Do you have any idea how good this will look on a college application? It's right up there with Habitat for Humanity. All the karma, none of the nail gun accidents.”

That mollified them a bit. “What about his family?” her mom asked. “Aren't we supposed to be in contact with them?”

“I already talked to his mother,” Poppy said, which technically wasn't untrue. “She was fine with it. Practically shoved him into my car!”

“I don't know, Poppy. This whole thing feels . . . what's the word . . .”

“Illegal?” her father supplied.

“Yes. This feels like kidnapping.”

“
Mom.
It's
not.
I even cleared it with the school. You can check with them on Monday,” Poppy said, making a mental note to add
#19026: Bribe a school official
to The List.

The lies were working. Her parents were now shooting each other deliberating glances. Her mom asked, “Where is he from?”

“Um. Canada?”

Wrong answer. They deflated. “Canada?” her father whined. “That's not very foreign.”

“Sorry, Dad. I was unable to secure a Parisian debutante on such short notice.” Her father's nostrils flared. She was losing them. “Of
course
he's not from Canada,” she said. “I meant he arrived
via
Canada. He's originally from​—”
Think, Poppy. Somewhere exotic.
“An island.”
More specific.
“Tristan da Cunha!”

Their stares got blanker, if that was possible. “I've never heard of Tris​—​how do you say it?” her mother said, not very subtly glancing at the food in the pantry to see if Poppy had stolen the name from a can of beans.

“Tristan da Cunha. It's a real place!” Poppy said too forcefully. “It was discovered by and named for a Portuguese explorer, then it was annexed by Britain and settled by only a handful of people, and the tiny population living there now are all descended from that first small bunch,” she rattled off, grasping to recall the salient points from the report she did in tenth grade. “It's one of the most isolated places on the
planet.
”

Her mother was captivated. “Is that true?”

Poppy batted her giant eyes, trying with all her might to inject as much gravitas as she could into her tale. “It's all true, Mom. Wikipedia it.”

“I
will.
”

“That's why he seems a bit off,” Poppy continued. “He's lived in such a remote place with the same three hundred or so people his entire life. So if he doesn't know how to, like, use a telephone, or, like, use a fork . . . that is why.”

Her father was still staring at her, trying to discern whether he'd raised a lying, evil monster or merely a lying, well-meaning monster. “Tristan da Cunha,” he repeated.