Wax (18 page)

“I'm not!”

“Do you even need my help anymore? Why bother calling me?”

Poppy pulled the phone away from her face and let out a frustrated sigh. She hated when Jill got like this. It was all part of those stage manager tendencies of hers​—​a place for everything and everything in its place​—​that didn't always work out so well in reality. And definitely not in this bizarre wrinkle of unreality into which Poppy had fallen.

“Hello?” Jill was saying. “Where'd you go?”

“Listen, I'll​—​see you tomorrow. Maybe this'll make more sense then.”

“Okay. Later.”

“Later.”

Poppy ended the call and stared at the phone, feeling gross. Arguing with Jill was never any fun. It happened often enough, given that they were both strong-headed control freaks who always thought they were right. It was what had drawn them together. But this time it seemed a little bit worse. Like something fundamental was breaking down between them.

A quiet knock came at the door. “Poppy?” Dud stuck his head in. “Are you okay? What did the press conference say?”

She looked up at him. “I think I'm off the hook.”

“What hook?” Dud asked, coming into the room.

“For the fire. They don't think it was arson anymore. Unless . . . unless that's what they want me to think. Maybe they're spreading false information in the hopes that I'll let my guard down.”

“Hmm.” Dud nodded, as if he had the first clue what she was talking about. “What does the candle say?”

“The candle?” She smacked her head. “Oh my God, the
candle!
I forgot all about it!” She lunged for the heavy white stone, but urgent footsteps were thumping down the hall. “What's going on in here?” her father asked, barging in.

Poppy hid the candle behind her back with an impatient grunt. “What do you want?”

Both of her parents crowded into the doorway, visibly relieved at the lack of bedroom shenanigans. “You two ready for the big
Dr. Steve
marathon?” her father asked. “Starts in an hour!”

“We no longer own a television,” Poppy said.

“It's streaming online!” he said, elated.

“It starts at five? Isn't that a little early?”

“Not if you want to cram in eight hours! Word on the street is that he's got some real damning evidence against elbow macaroni​—”

“Fine. Can you leave, please?”

Her parents exchanged glances.

“Dud,” said her mother, “why don't you go find Owen? It's time for his afternoon snack.”

“Okay!”

As Dud raced out of the room, Poppy's father sidled in. “What's that behind your back?”

“Nothing.” She held it up, blasé, as if it were nothing. “Just a candle.”

He squinted at the tiny lettering, which Poppy was thankful he could not read without his glasses. “Ah,” he said after a moment, smiling. “I get it.”

“Get what?”

He turned to his wife. “I heard about this. Supposedly you can put a secret message into one of those make-your-own-candles from the factory. I bet it's a love letter.”

Poppy's mother cooed while Poppy wondered if it was possible to break all ties with her family and start a new life in the creepy candle dungeon. “It's not a love letter, you guys.”

“Then what is it?” her mother asked teasingly.

Poppy considered her options. She couldn't tell them it was a message from a somewhat-dead-somewhat-alive art legend. She couldn't tell them that Dud wasn't capable of understanding the concept of nipples, much less love. She couldn't tell them
anything.

Poppy fixed a defeated scowl on her face. “It's a love letter.”

“I knew it!” Her father grabbed the stone candle and held it over his head, out of her reach. “Oof, heavy! Can I reeead it?”

“No!” Poppy jumped up and tried to grab it from him, noticing as he held it aloft that the factory logo was stamped on the bottom along with the factory's motto:
One fire, many flames.
“Give it to me!”

He laughed again and relented, carefully handing her the candle. “But seriously, Popsicle, keep it friendly between you two. Dud's a nice kid. I don't want to have to end his life.”

“Noted.”

She shoved them both out into the hallway. “Remember Dr. Steve!” her father reminded her. “Come hell or high water, you said!”

She closed the door on them, then whirled around and leaned her back against it. “I would take both hell
and
high water over the problems I've got right now.”

There was a polite knock.

“Your dad said I should come give you a firm handshake and nothing more,” Dud told her when she opened the door. “I don't know what that means.”

“Just get in here.”

Dud sat down on the bed next to Poppy as she grabbed her magnifying glass and read Madame Grosholtz's newly revealed writing.

BUT PEOPLE IN THE SMALL VILLAGE WHERE I'D FLED BEGAN TO TALK, OF COURSE. ABOUT THE RECLUSIVE OLD LADY WHO MADE SUCH LIFELIKE WAX SCULPTURES. WORD GOT AROUND. AND BEFORE LONG, IT FELL INTO THE EARS OF THE WRONG PEOPLE. THE WORST PEOPLE: ACTORS.

“I take offense to that,” said Poppy.

IF YOU TAKE OFFENSE TO THIS, I APOLOGIZE. BUT IT WAS ACTORS WHO SPELLED MY RUIN, AND SO I AM NO LONGER CHARITABLE TOWARD THESPIAN FOLK. THE PAIR OF TRAVELING THEATRICALS WHO CAME TO SEE ME WERE INTERESTED IN USING SOME OF MY SCULPTURES IN THEIR PERFORMANCES, LIKE PUPPETS. YET THEY CHANGED THEIR TUNE ONCE THEY SAW WHAT I COULD DO.

 

I ALWAYS KEPT MY MOST PRIVATE WORK HIDDEN AWAY, BUT I WAS NOT AS GOOD A LIAR AS MY VISITORS WERE, AND THEY SOON FIGURED OUT WHAT I WAS UP TO, WHAT I HAD BEEN DOING TO KEEP MYSELF ALIVE. AFTER THAT, THEY FORGOT ALL ABOUT THEIR FOOLISH PUPPETS. WHAT THEY SAW INSTEAD WAS POTENTIAL. SOMEONE WHO COULD SCULPT REPLICAS OF THEM SO THAT THEY COULD NEVER DIE. OR AGE.

 

WHY DID I GO ALONG WITH IT? IN TRUTH, I WAS LONELY. AFTER YEARS OF SOLITUDE​—​MORE THAN ANY HUMAN SHOULD HAVE ENDURED​—​HERE WERE FRIENDS AGAIN. I'D SCULPT HOLLOW AFTER HOLLOW, AND THE CHANDLERS WOULD DO ALL SORTS OF THINGS WITH THEIR DISPOSABLE BODIES​—​THROW THEMSELVES OFF BRIDGES, SWIM OUT INTO THE MIDDLE OF THE OCEAN, CLIMB TREACHEROUS MOUNTAINS. AND IF THEY FELL AND GOT IMPALED ON A ROCK​—​WHAT OF IT? I WOULD SIMPLY REINCARNATE THEM FROM THEIR FLAME-SOULS, LIGHTING THEIR FRESHLY SCULPTED HOLLOWS BACK IN MY STUDIO. WE WERE IMMORTAL. WE WERE UNSTOPPABLE.

 

OF COURSE

Even if the wax had burned down farther than that, Poppy wouldn't have been able to read it​—​her hands were shaking too hard. She placed the candle on her nightstand and put her head into her hands. “The Chandlers,” she whispered. “The Hollow Ones . . .”

“Poppy?” Dud placed a worried hand on her back. “Are you okay?”

“No. Nope. The Chandlers​—” She swallowed. “The Chandlers are made of wax. The Chandlers are well over a hundred years old.”

“Is that bad?”

“It's​—”

Poppy sputtered. It wasn't
inherently
bad. Madame Grosholtz did the same thing, and she seemed decent enough. Most people, if given the opportunity to become immortal, would take it, as long as it didn't hurt anyone in the process.

But the Chandlers seemed so . . . sinister. They were up to something in that candle dungeon of theirs. Sure, maybe it was a shrine to all the years that they'd cheated death​—​but if they'd been existing as nothing but wax Hollows for decades, then what was up with those bloodstains? If it wasn't their blood, whose was it?

“Is it bad?” Poppy repeated. “I don't know. But it's not good.”

Her first instinct was to call Jill​—​but when she picked up her cell phone, her finger paused over the screen. Jill had already made her feelings on this subject known.

Crinkling her nose in disgust, she scrolled through her contacts until she found
BLAKE BURSAW.

It rang six times before he picked up. “Hogwash? Didn't think you could dial with those hooves of yours.”

“I just made a series of groundbreaking discoveries, Bursaw. Do you want to hear them, or do you want to keep acting like a douche?”

“Can't I do both?”

“I'm hanging up.”

“Okay, okay​—​sorry. Go ahead.”

Poppy took a deep breath. “The Chandlers​—”

“Gram?” A moment of muffled speech​—​it sounded like he was talking to Miss Bea. “Sorry. My grandma's being . . . can I call you back in a second? I'm gonna go somewhere private.”

Poppy decided that it would be prudent to sort the groundbreaking discoveries in order of importance by the time he called back. They started to run together in her head, and new insights kept popping up​—​
no wonder the fire was a hologram; it was just to keep up appearances, since a real fire would be the last thing wax beings would want in their proximity
—​so she reached into her bag to tear some paper out of The List.

Which wasn't there.

Poppy made a noise not unlike that of a dying whale.

“What's wrong?” Dud asked.

“The List,” she croaked, frantically digging into each section of her bag. A queasy feeling of helplessness bobbed around her midsection. “It's not here.”

She tore the sheets off her bed, but it wasn't there, either. She must have left it somewhere. School? No. It was in her trunk yesterday. Was it still in the trunk? Or was it . . .

“Oh, no.” Her stomach lurched. “Oh,
shit.
”

Her phone rang. She answered it with, “I left my notebook in the cavern!”

“So?” said Blake.

Whether the arson investigation had been called off or not, it would be very bad for someone to find her notebook directly beneath the crime scene, giant block letters screaming
IF FOUND, RETURN TO POPPY PALLADINO
, along with her phone number and address. “So . . . what if they find it?”

“Is this what you called about, Hogwash? Your stupid notebook?”

“Of course not​—”

“Then get to the point.”

“Fine.” Poppy took a deep breath. “Have you ever heard of Madame Tussaud?”

Blake let out a disgusted sigh. “You know what? We're done here. I'm just gonna ask my dad what's going on. He appreciates direct questions. He'll tell me.”

Poppy flashed back to the horrible things Madame Grosholtz had said in her message. “No! Blake, listen to me: do not confront them. I think they're mixed up in something really bad​—​actually, I think we all are​—”

“Thanks for your concern, but I think I can handle it. I'll call you afterward, if it'll make you feel any better.”

“No, you don't understand! The Chandlers are not who they say they are!”

He hung up.

And though Poppy stared at her phone all through dinner and all through the
Dr. Steve
marathon, and stayed up half the night waiting, he never did call back.

13

THE NEXT MORNING, POPPY WAS IN HER CAR AND OFF TO
school before her parents came down for breakfast.

“And the worst part
,”
she shouted into the phone at Jill as she drove, “is that the candle won't stay lit! There's more message in there​—​I
know
there is​—​but when the
Dr. Steve
marathon finished and I went to check it, the flame was out and it hadn't burned at all! Then I lit it before going to sleep, but when I woke up later during the night​—​same thing!”

“I'm more concerned,” Jill said over the phone, “with your delusion that the Chandlers are evil wax mannequins.”

“It's not a delusion​—​
hey!
” Poppy blared her horn at a car that had cut her off. Or perhaps the car that she'd cut off. “Jill, I've lost the capacity to multitask. I'll explain everything when I see you.” She ended the call and focused on the road, hands at ten and two.

“Where are we going?” Dud asked. His yellow sneakers were tapping against the floor of the car, his eyes bouncing around, taking in the sights of the town as they drove past.

“School!” Poppy burst out, irritated. “Can you believe that amid arson and subterranean mountain lairs and the emergence into my life of not one but four sentient beings made of wax, I still have to go to school and take a
gym quiz?
”

“What's a gym quiz?”

“Good question, Dud! A gym quiz is a thing that should not be. Because the height of a basketball hoop is a piece of knowledge that will NEVER ASSIST ME IN MY DAILY LIFE.”

“You seem tense.”

“As if gym isn't demoralizing enough on its own. Now we need to bring paperwork into this? And the result of this farce will have a bearing on my GPA?”

“What's a GPA?”

“Oh, only the number that will determine my future. Add to that the fun little challenge of getting to school early and explaining to the administration who
you
are and why you need to be enrolled in classes and oh, by the way, if my parents ask, just tell them he's from the incredibly specific ‘island near Africa.'”

“I thought it wasn't really that close to Africa.”

“It's not!”

Dud put a hand on her shoulder. “Do you need to talk through your feelings?”

Poppy glanced sideways at him.
Did he pick that up from eight hours of
Dr. Steve
?
“Yes, I do. Let me talk through my feelings. I
feel
like I'm trying to put a jigsaw puzzle together, but half of the pieces are from Teddy Bear Picnic, and the other half are from Kittens Frolicking in Baskets of Yarn, with a few random pieces of Majestic Bald Eagle Flying Over American Flag thrown in for good measure, and all of them are singed black and mutated from fire damage and smell like Ocean Breezes and broken dreams!”