Wax (30 page)

And the day immediately and without hesitation got worse.

“Hey, Poppy, guess what?” he said. “I melted the principal.”

“What?”

He fluffed himself up, looking proud. “I. Melted. The​—”

“Oh my God,
shhh.
Come on.”

Poppy grabbed his wrist and dragged him into the alcove under the staircase, where kids sometimes went to make out. “Slobber Junction, Palladino?” he said, waggling his eyebrows at her. “I'm flattered.”

“No. Never. Please reiterate what you said, and then explain it to me in the greatest of detail.”

“I melted the principal!”

“Elaborate.”

“It went down like this.” He spread his hands out to set the scene. “When I got to school 'bout a half hour ago, that orc of a lunch lady caught me smoking outside. Sent me to the principal's office. So I went, and you know, this ain't my first barbecue​—​I know how to sweet-talk my way out of detention. So I swagger into the office, bump fists with Miss Fitzgerald​—​have you met her? The new secretary?
Damn,
the booty on that woman​—”

“Jesus! Focus!”

“Hey, I wasn't rude about it! Jesus is a gentleman! So I
respectfully
bump fists with Miss Fitzgerald, wish her the best of mornings, and stride on into Lincoln's office. He doesn't see me come in at first, he's turned around, looking through a file cabinet. I said, ‘
Sic semper tyrannis,
Lincoln.' That's what I always say. We got a whole thing going on. You know, like John Wilkes​—”

“I got it. Continue.”

“But this time he jumped, all surprised and shit, and scraped his hand on the corner of the cabinet​—​which is made of sharp metal, so there shoulda been a cut there. But it didn't bleed! And then he rubbed it real fast and, like, made it go away! I guess he thought I wouldn't notice, but when he took his other hand away, there wasn't even a scratch mark there anymore.”

Poppy felt sick. “Go on.”

“So I said,
‘Busted,
Lincoln!' And of course he went all innocent and shit, ‘What are you talking about?' but it was too late.”

Poppy's palms were getting sweaty. “Too late for what?”

“I already
told
you! I set him on fire and melted his waxy ass to the ground!”

This claim, now repeated to her for the fourth time, still did not compute. “How . . . did . . . you do that?”

He rolled his eyes, as if there should be no difficulty in comprehending the words he was saying. “I took out my flamethrower,” he said slowly, explaining, “and burned him up. What don't you get about it?”

“Everything!” she yelled. “What flamethrower?”

“Well, after you told us all that shit yesterday about the wax monsters invading our town, I went home and, you know, got to work. We gotta defend ourselves.” He lifted the back of his shirt, removed something from his waistband, and displayed it to Poppy with a flourish.

“A paintball gun?”

“
With
a Zippo attached,” he said proudly. “And filled with lighter fluid.”

Poppy felt the floor tilt beneath her. “Oh, no. Oh, no no no.”

“So he melted.” Jesus shrugged as if, now that he'd told his epic tale, it was no big deal. “Bam. Cross him off the list.”

It was clear to Poppy that the most pressing issue here was that she'd created a situation in which a boy thought it was okay to fashion an improvised flamethrower and start immolating the school administration, but​—​“Wait. He really melted?”

“Hell yeah! That office floor was one big puddle o' principal! Ruined the rug, though, which is a shame because it was a nice rug. I rolled it up and threw it out the window, then went outside and dragged it into the woods. Collateral damage.”

“Did anyone see you? Or hear you?”

“Nah, and you know what? Lincoln didn't scream. When he saw what I was about to do, he just kind of stood there and glared at me. I don't think he wanted any attention called to it neither, you know? 'Cause then people would see that he was made outta wax, and that's
real
bad for Team Hollow.”

“Okay. Okay.” Poppy put her clammy hands over her eyes and tried to think. “This is a regrettable development, Jesus. You can't just go around killing them. That's not part of The Plan. We need to
identify
them first, and then figure out​—”

“Figure out what? If the situation is as bad as you say it is, we gotta start eliminating 'em, one at a time!”

“No. Nope. That is not how it works. Someone's going to notice that the principal vanished from his office!”

“Nah, I took care of that, too. I wrote up a phony note from the pad on his desk, said he was heading out for an emergency root canal, and showed it to Miss Fitzgerald. Chatted her up for a good minute or so, blocked her view of the door​—​so she'll think he slipped out while we were talking.”

“But his car is in the parking lot. Sooner or later people are going to realize that he's missing!”

Jesus just shrugged. “Not my problem. I did what I had to do.”

This was every kind of disaster rolled up into one. “Okay, give me the flamethrower,” Poppy said, never having thought she'd have to say
that
sentence out loud. “I will keep it for now.”

“You're not gonna break it, are you?”

“No. I'm going to put it into my locker for safekeeping. I think we should keep the ritualistic incinerations limited to one per day.”

Jesus pouted. “If you say so.”

“Just​—​go about your day. Avoid authority figures. And obviously don't tell anyone about this.” As soon as she said it, she realized that to someone like Jesus, that may not be obvious. “You got that? You can't tell
anyone.
”

“Okay, okay.”

“
Or
take them outside to show them the rug.”

“Aw, come on now.”

∗ ∗ ∗

Poppy wanted desperately to move on with her day, but she had to double-check Jesus's work. “Hi, Miss Fitzgerald!” Poppy chirped to the secretary, hoping to sneakily get a status update. “Is Principal Lincoln in?”

“No, in fact,” Miss Fitzgerald said. “Emergency root canal! He was acting so strangely when he came in this morning​—​not like himself at all. Must have been in so much pain, the poor man.” She clucked her tongue. “Do you want to leave a message? He's been getting calls all morning, but I haven't been able to track him down.”

Well, that's because he's melted into a carpet out back.
“No, that's okay. Thanks anyway!”

By the time Poppy finished, she'd missed English class completely; when the bell rang for lunch, she went straight back to her locker, where Jill was waiting for her.

“What's up?” Jill said.

Poppy almost deflated with relief upon seeing someone sane and helpful. “Oh, Jill. I don't know where to start.”

“You look sick, Pops. What's wrong? You are the whitest thing in this hallway, and that is saying a lot.”

Forgiving Jill's earlier Dud-related accusations in light of this new Jesus-related melting, Poppy gave her a quick rundown of the situation. “And the real Mr. Crawford is trapped in the tank, probably dead! He's younger than the rest, so maybe he's holding on, but​—”

“Wait a sec. Are you
sure
Principal Lincoln was melted?”

“Yes. Why?”

Feeling a remarkable sense of déjà vu, Poppy whirled around. Principal Lincoln was striding through the hallway as though nothing had happened, frowning at students, throwing out the occasional warning of “No horseplay.” He didn't look at her as he passed, even though she froze, dropped her books, and stared at him, open-mouthed, while other students were forced to go around the mess she'd made.

Only when Jesus rammed into her from behind did she snap out of it. “Poppy, did you see that? He's
back.
He came back!”

She lifted her books from the floor and hugged them to her chest, dread settling through her bones. “They must have multiple copies.”

It made sense. Surely the Chandlers had the capacity to duplicate Madame Grosholtz's originals; why
not
make an exhaustive supply of backups? Poppy hadn't gotten a good look when she'd seen Tank #2, but it was big enough to store them all. She could picture its balconies now: identical copies lined up one behind the other, like rows of a shark's teeth.

Jesus's eyes were all fire and brimstone. “So​—​what, now we can't melt 'em?”

Poppy detected a teachable moment here. “Well, we'd agreed that we weren't going to melt them
anyway,
correct?”

But Jesus's head was somewhere else. “Yeah, yeah. Unless . . .”

“No, Jesus. No ‘unless'!”

But before she could stop him, he took off down the hall and disappeared into the crowd. Poppy and Jill wordlessly watched him go.

“Round up the Giddy Committee,” Poppy said numbly. “Emergency lunch period rehearsal.
Now.
”

∗ ∗ ∗

Poppy sat in her usual spot in Gaudy Auditorium, marveling that the rest of the student body was carelessly chowing down in the cafeteria as if it were any other day. As if the fate of the town did not rest on a scrappy gang of musical fanatics and a psychotic plastic-flamethrower manufacturer.

The Giddy Committee slowly trickled in, buzzing with rumors. “What's going on, Poppy?” Banks asked.

“Well, Mr. Crawford is a Hollow, for starters.”

“Mr. Crawford is a
Hollow?
”

“I know,” Poppy said ruefully. “He's way too hot for something as horrible as this to happen to him, but here we are.”

It was then that Jesus bounded into the auditorium and started to make his way down the aisle.

Poppy knew that unnervingly gleeful look on his face. She grabbed Jill and hurried to meet him before anyone else could hear whatever troublesome things he had to say. “What now?”

Jesus winked at her. “I melted him again.”

“Jesus!”

“No, no, it's okay! Look.”

They watched him pull yet another weapon out of his bag.

“Where did you get that?” Poppy asked. “How many different guns do you bring to school on a daily basis?”

“I gotta be prepared! And with all the shit that's going on, I don't hear you complaining!”

“I have been doing nothing
but
complaining!”

“Check it out: the faster we melt their sorry asses, the sooner the copies will get used up! They can't keep up with us forever!”

“Yes! They can! That is the point, Jesus​—​they're immortal, they don't sleep, they have all the time in the world to replenish their copies!” Poppy gave Jill a hopeless look. “Jill, can you field this one? I can't talk to him anymore.”

Jill looked from Jesus to his gun, then back at Jesus again.

“Think you can make one of those for each of us?” she asked.

∗ ∗ ∗

“I can't believe you're taking his side,” said Poppy. “We're all gonna get expelled.”

“Can't get expelled if there's no principal,” Jill said.

“Actually, I think that sort of decision falls to a disciplinary board​—”

“Poppy, don't you think you're missing the bigger picture here? If we don't start extinguishing these things soon, the board will be made up of the very things we're supposed to extinguish!”

“But they're just going to keep resupplying! They're just going to keep pouring out of that storage tank and into the cathedral and through the tunnel and out of the gazebo and back into our lives again!”

“But Jesus is right​—​if we do it fast enough, maybe they won't be able to keep up.”

Poppy scowled. “Assuming that's even possible. So what are you suggesting​—​that we arm the Giddy Committee with flamethrowers and say, ‘Have at 'em, chappies!'?”

“I guess if you wanted to sound like an old-timey vaudeville performer, you could say that.”

“Um, Poppy?” Connor asked. “Lunch period is almost over.”

Poppy glanced up at the stage, where she'd placed everyone in accordance with the current incarnation of The Plan. (Except for Jesus. Jesus had been excused so that he could go make more flamethrowers.) Poppy had forgotten about them once she started arguing with Jill. “Sorry, guys. I've had to do a little scrambling in light of today's developments. You can come down.”

There was a mad dash off the stage. As there'd been no school the day before, the furnace had been turned up extra high to reheat the building, and the floor of the stage had risen to surface-of-the-sun temperatures. “I have a bone to pick with you, Poppy,” Connor announced dramatically, then worriedly followed up with, “A metaphorical bone.”

“Look, there's nothing I can do about the furnace. I've asked the janitor a million times​—”

“It's not that.” Connor put his hands on his hips and reflexively reached behind his back to swish the cape that he was not wearing. He scowled at its absence. “I have to say that while I appreciate the work we have to do in order to not let the townspeople slowly be replaced by evil waxen facsimiles, I fear that our performance is going to suffer if we don't keep rehearsing.”

Poppy was starting to feel as though she were running a daycare center. “Connor,” she said, sighing, “this is kind of important.”

“Yes, but the
craft!
The craft is suffering! And I'm just going to put this out there​—​but you know what
I'd
want to do if
I
were an evil waxen facsimile and had just completed the exhausting task of infiltrating a town? I'd like to sit back, relax, and immerse myself in the transcendent experience of live musical theater, that's what!”