Wax (9 page)

“In the citronella section, but I don't think it works as well on perverts as it does on insects. Aagh, there he is!”

Jill clicked off, but Poppy pretended she was still on the line. “Oh, really? Brown sugar and freshly cut grass? What a creative combination!” Hoping to forgo an awkward goodbye, she gave Madame Grosholtz an exasperated look and an “I have to go deal with this” face. Madame Grosholtz simply stared. “I'm sorry, I gotta run,” Poppy told her, putting her hand over the mouthpiece and shouldering her bag. “Lovely meeting you. Thank you for the candle. And for showing me your​—” Horrors. Nightmares. Physical manifestations of psychosis. “—​art.”

Madame Grosholtz: staring.

Poppy couldn't be sure, as she gabbed loudly into her silent phone and didn't look back, but it felt like Madame Grosholtz watched her all the way down the endless hallway, those piercing eyes burning into the back of her neck.

And then she caught a glance of another eye: that of a security camera in the ceiling, trained directly on her fleeing form.

∗ ∗ ∗

“Oh, good, you're still alive. Now I can murder you.”

Poppy found Jill in the Lost Children Fun Zone with a gift bag in her left hand, a mostly empty box of popcorn in her right, and a scowl on her face that rivaled the grumpiest of Internet cats. “I'm sorry times a
million,
” Poppy said.

“You damn well better be,” said Jill. “See this popcorn? I had to hurl it into the face of the security guard who had the audacity to say I was ‘making a scene.'”

“Were you?”

“Depends on your definition of ‘scene.'”

“I see. What's in the bag?”

Jill handed it to her. “I got you a gift to commemorate my feelings about this special day.”

Poppy pulled out a wax hand mold. “It's beautiful,” she said, turning it to appreciate every angle of Jill's prominent middle finger. “I'm surprised they let you get away with this.”

“They didn't. Hence the security guard.”

“And yet it's not the most outrageous wax sculpture I've seen today.”

“That's nice. Where's my fudge?”

Jill wouldn't hear another word about Poppy's adventures until her ten pounds of promised chocolate were firmly in hand, so it was back to the food court to do battle with the throngs of sugar-zombied children and their exhausted parents.

Ten minutes later they finally got to the front of the line. “Hurry
up,
” Jill said, looking around as Poppy counted out her money. “I think I'm on a most-wanted list now. If security finds me​—”

“They'll make you into a candle. Right. I got it.”

Dodging the legions of senior citizen groups returning to their tour buses, they made the trek back through the immense parking lot to the car. “I don't think Clementine is going to be able to handle all of this,” Jill said as she got into the passenger seat, hefting up the plastic bag that strained under the weight of all the fudge therein. “Her back tires are looking a little flat already.”

“That might be because I've never filled them?”

“Oh, Poppy. Sweet, dumb Poppy.”

Clementine was regularly abused by way of negligence. As Poppy hadn't ever planned on owning a car of her own, she had virtually no idea how to maintain one. “Do I need to get them replaced?” she asked, tossing her backpack onto the back seat.

“You need to get your head replaced. To the gas station with us.”

On the way, Poppy relayed to Jill the story of Madame Grosholtz's secret room, including the wax figures​—​but excluding the hallucinated blink of the Viking. After her dealings with Vermonty, Jill wasn't in the mood to entertain any more ideas of animate objects that should not be animate.

“That sounds inexcusably creepy,” Jill said, leaning against Clementine's side as they pumped the tires. “Why didn't you run out of there screaming?”

“I was worried that they'd capture me and use the revolutionary Potion to turn my fear into a scent.”

“Nature's Panic.”

“The Fright Stuff.”

Jill checked her watch. “We still have half a day left. Any more revenge fantasies to fulfill, Count of Monte Cristo?”

“No. I need to regroup and come up with a new plan. And my head kind of hurts anyway.” Which was true. Ever since she'd left Madame Grosholtz's workshop, a pressure had been building behind her eyes.

“You still want to hang out tonight?” Jill asked.

“Yeah, but until then I think I'll go home and work on more show stuff.”

“The
Annie
mop buckets need to be dented up,” Jill said through a mouthful of chocolate. “You could throw those against a wall for an hour or so. That should help with the headache.”

“You used to be nice, Jill. Vermonty has changed you.”

“Don't you say that about my man! You don't know him like I do!”

“I just don't think you're right for each other.”

“He loves me, okay? Why can't you be happy for us?”

Poppy's car made a thumping noise. She frowned and checked the tire pump. “Is it supposed to sound like that?”

“Who knows?” Jill popped the rest of the fudge square into her mouth. “Maybe the candle witch cursed your transmission.”

Poppy started to make a joke at Madame Grosholtz's expense but found that it wouldn't come out. As cracked as the woman had seemed, it felt wrong to mock her. Disloyal, somehow.

“Come on,” Poppy said, disconnecting the air pump and getting into the car. “Let's get you and your shipment of fudge home.”

“I'll text Dad to ready the forklift.”

∗ ∗ ∗

Poppy's house was empty, and her bedcovers were cool and dark​—​the ideal place in which to stick her head like an ostrich and sift through the tender thoughts throbbing through her skull.
Maybe I have a brain tumor,
she mused. Maybe everything she saw in that workshop was due to a chemical imbalance, a misfiring of neurons that had tricked her into thinking that lifeless blobs of goo could come to life.

Troubling as these notions were, fatigue swallowed them up. Poppy fell into a murky sleep without the aid of Forty Winks, disappearing into the abyss for who knew how many hours​—​yet when she woke up, her headache was still there.

She groaned into her pillow.
What if there's really something wrong with me? What are the symptoms of head diseases?
Internet research was required, but the thought of staring at a glowing screen made her eyeballs ache more. She emerged from the sheets, shook her rumpled hair out of her face, and reached for a pen to make a note of it: #19026: Research brain-related calamities—​but The List wasn't there.

“Egh,” she groaned, remembering that she'd tossed it into the trunk before going to Smitty's. Had she even taken it into the factory? She didn't think so, but it was getting harder to separate the day's realities from fantasies.

She stood up and took a few woozy steps out into the hallway. The sun was setting, the house still empty. Her parents must have taken Owen out for a treat after his soccer game​—​which translated, in the Palladino household, to a trip to the buffet at the new Whole Foods, which everyone decried when it opened yet flocked to like avocado-starved seagulls. At least they'd probably get it to go, and bring home a box for her.

She stumbled down the stairs, grabbed her keys from the hook, and walked out to the driveway, squinting against the setting sun. Mrs. Goodwin, the gardening goddess of Springwater Terrace, was ankle-deep in trimmings next door. She waved a dirty spade at Poppy. Poppy made some approximation of a wave back but refrained from saying hello at the risk of getting roped into a discussion about begonias. She was still hoping to squeeze in another hour of sleep before her family came home to find their daughter all tired, weirded out, and dying of a brain worm.

Or lung cancer,
she thought, jamming her key into the trunk's lock.
Who knows what sort of toxins were in those wax shavings​—​

But her worries evaporated the instant she opened her trunk.
Every
thought in her head evaporated the instant she opened her trunk.

The List was there, all right. Alongside a naked, yelling, wild-eyed boy.

7

“
WHO ARE YOU?
”
THE BOY YELLED.

In a reflexive panic, Poppy slammed the trunk shut. She put her hands on top, scarcely registering the metallic heat scorching through her palms.

“What in the ever-loving crap?”
she whispered.

Mrs. Goodwin had stood up at the commotion, peering in Poppy's direction. Poppy gave her a full wave this time, plus a look that said
Everything's fine here, no one has been stuffed into a trunk, garden's looking great!
Mrs. Goodwin gave her an uncertain nod and headed back into her house.

An unquantifiable deluge of strategies zoomed through Poppy's head​—​
drive somewhere else and then open the trunk; pull the car into the garage and then open the trunk; maybe NEVER open the trunk and let the guy suffocate because who does he think he is, stowing away in my car like that?
—​but in the end, her problem-solving instincts overthrew her reasoning ones and forced her hand to pop the trunk open once more.

Out lunged the boy, ready this time. He was naked only from the waist up, Poppy noted with some degree of relief. He started running around the front yard in circles, alternating his cries between “Who are you?” and “Who am I?” and “What is this?”

Surely Mrs. Goodwin could hear him; all the neighbors would be able to hear him, though fortunately, none of them had yet emerged from their houses to investigate.

Damage control. Poppy reached into the trunk to grab the can of pepper spray Jill had gotten for her after “Hogwash.” Though the kid was easily a foot taller than she was, Poppy ran at him like a crazed linebacker, slammed into him, and pushed him all the way to the steps of her front door. Spotting the reappearance of Mrs. Goodwin's gardening clogs, Poppy gave him one last shove into the house before closing the door and turning to face him.

“What are you?” he yelled.

“Shhh!” Poppy hissed.

“What is ‘shhh'?”

“Quiet!”

“What is ‘quiet'?”

Though flustered, Poppy managed to shoot a stream of pepper spray at his face. The boy fell backwards, landing hard on his butt on the main staircase.

That shut him up. “Oof.”

The pepper spray, however, seemed to have no effect. Sticking his tongue out, the boy licked a bit of it off his lip. “Hmm,” he said thoughtfully, as if savoring its spicy flavor.

This puzzled Poppy. Had the spray gone bad? “Don't move,” she said, reaching into her pocket with her other hand. “I'm calling the police.”

“What is ‘police'?”

“Shut up!” She dug desperately into her pocket, cursing when she realized she'd left her phone upstairs. “Who are you?”

“Who are you?”

“No.
No.
Stop repeating what I'm saying and answer my question.
Who are you?
”

The boy looked as though he was about to repeat her words regardless, but he stopped himself and bit his lip, looking thoroughly confused and scared.

At this, Poppy softened a bit. “Why were you in my trunk?” she asked, switching up her tactics.

“Trunk,” he said eagerly, as if they were making headway.

Poppy relaxed her grip on the pepper spray but didn't let go. He seemed harmless, but ever since
Triple Threat,
she'd somewhat cooled on the idea of depending on the harmlessness of strangers. “Where did you come from?”

Brow knitted, hands clasped, jaw slack, he looked around the room in utter bewilderment while Poppy studied him for clues, from the curliest hair on his head to the neon yellow Velcro sneakers on his feet.

Wait. Where had she seen those sneakers before?

Her head snapped back up to his face. Something abnormal had caught her eye​—​although the house was growing darker by the minute, she thought she'd spotted a flash of light. “Look at me,” she demanded. “Open your mouth.”

Poppy peered down his throat, past his tongue and dancing uvula, and gasped.

A faint light flickered up against the back wall of his throat, like a fire in a cave.

∗ ∗ ∗

“I'm confused. Where is the living wax sculpture man now?” Jill asked on the other end of the phone.

“I locked him in my closet. And he's not a man. He's, like, our age.”

Jill made an impatient noise. “How can he be ‘our age' if he was created out of nothing?”

“Dark!” the boy yelled from within the closet, followed by the sound of a person being poked in the eye by a hanger. “Oof!”

“We don't have time to argue about semantics,” Poppy said, pacing around her bedroom and grasping her cell phone so hard, she was sure it would snap in half. “We need to figure out what to do. About him.”

“I think we first need to figure out the exact moment you hit your head and started hallucinating.”

“
Jill.
I am not hallucinating! Here, I'll send you a picture. Call you right back.” She gingerly made her way to the closet. “I'm opening the door,” she announced. “Don't spring at me or anything.”

He was sitting on the floor, a blouse of Poppy's draped over his head. “Hi.”

Poppy winced, unsure how to react to that. It was the first vaguely normal thing he'd said. “Hi. Can you come out here?”

“We don't have time to argue about semantics!”

“Whoa, we're not . . . oh, you're repeating what I said on the phone. Fun. Now get up, please.”