“Okay, maybe you don’t,” Grandpa said. “But something’s been eating you lately—maybe a problem at school or a falling-out with a friend? I’m not saying I could help, but sometimes it helps just to have someone to listen.”
Against her will, a picture of Dylan popped into her head—Dylan the first day she met him when she couldn’t believe this cool new guy, who could’ve sat anywhere he wanted to in the cafeteria, chose to sit right across from her. Well, that never happened anymore. Now he sat at a table with those guys who never talked about anything but fantasy role-playing games, and Millie sat alone with only a book for company.
“I told you, I don’t have any friends,” Millie said.
“Well, maybe you should try to make one,” Grandpa said. “You don’t have to be a social butterfly if you don’t want to, but everybody needs one good friend.”
“You don’t know what I need!” Millie stood up from the table. “I’m going to go do my homework.” She didn’t really have homework since tomorrow was the last day before break, but she’d say whatever she had to say to get out of there.
“And I’m going to my workshop,” Grandpa said. “You’re not the only one who can storm out of a room, you know, girlie.” It was the first time since she had moved in with Grandpa that he sounded like he was actually mad at her.
In her room, Millie opened her laptop, went to YouTube, and typed in “Curt Carrion music videos.” She clicked on “Death Mask,” her favorite song. The video was filled with images of ravens and bats and circling vultures. In the center of it all was Curt Carrion himself, growling his way through the morbid lyrics, his black hair spiky, his complexion pallid, his black eyeliner perfectly applied. Millie felt like Curt Carrion might be the one person on the planet who would understand her.
Who was she kidding? Nobody would.
* * *
“Please don’t boil me alive,” Millie said. She had to figure out a way to escape. Suddenly, desperately, she wanted to live.
“Not boiling? Well, understandable. By all accounts, it is a nasty way to go. People who observed boilings during Henry VIII’s time said it was so sickening they would have preferred to see a beheading. Oh! There’s a good one we haven’t talked about yet. Decapitation!” He said it like it was such a happy word. “There are many ways to chop off a head, of course, and if the blade is sharp enough, it’s fairly quick and painless. That being said, if the blade isn’t sharp enough … well, poor Mary, Queen of Scots, had to get three hacks with the headsman’s dull old axe before her noggin was liberated from her body. The guillotine was quick and clean, though, and didn’t require any particular skill on the part of the executioner, which made it easy to get rid of all those rich snots during the French Revolution. They just lined them up and ran them through the guillotine like an assembly line. Or rather, a disassembly line!” The voice paused again to chuckle. Whatever it was, it seemed to be having a very good time at Millie’s expense. “Saudi Arabia—where your parents are, am I right?—still uses beheading as their preferred form of capital punishment. They use a sword, which I find rather stylish and dramatic.”
Saudi Arabia, Millie thought. Her parents were so far away. So unable to help her. And now, as she was facing down death, she strangely felt more love for them than she ever had. Sure, they were weird and they made strange decisions and stupid mistakes, but she knew they loved her. She thought of her dad’s awful jokes and of her mom reading her story after story at bedtime when she was little. Maybe her parents were different from other kids’ parents, but they had always taken care of her basic needs, and they had always made her feel loved and safe.
Millie wanted to be safe.
* * *
“Millie, at least come downstairs and say hello!” Grandpa called up the stairs.
It was Christmas Eve, and Grandpa had been blasting Christmas music all day long, singing “Silver Bells” and “White Christmas” and others of Millie’s least favorites off-key in the kitchen while he baked the ham and decorated the cookies.
From the level of noise downstairs, Millie assumed that her aunt and uncle and cousins had arrived. This fact did not fill her with joy. Nothing did.
Millie reluctantly dragged herself downstairs. They were gathered around an antique glass punch bowl that Grandpa had dug out from who knows where in this house full of stuff.
They were wearing Christmas sweaters, all of them, even her annoying little cousins. Aunt Sheri had on some wearable abomination with a reindeer that had a light-up nose. Uncle Rob, her dad’s goofy brother, wore a red sweater with candy canes on it, and Cameron and Hayden wore matching elf sweaters. It was all so hideous that Millie feared her eyes would bleed.
“Merry Christmas!” Aunt Sheri greeted her, opening her arms for a hug.
Millie did not move toward her. “Hello,” she said, her voice dripping icicles.
“Off to a funeral, Millie?” Uncle Rob said, nodding toward her head-to-toe black and purple clothing. He always said this to her and apparently never stopped finding it hilarious.
“I wish,” Millie said. Better to be in an honest sad environment than a fake happy one. And she would certainly prefer funereal organ music to being forced to listen to “Winter Wonderland” again.
“Millie isn’t celebrating Christmas this year,” Grandpa said. “But at least she’s agreed to grace us with her presence.”
“How can you not want to celebrate Christmas?” Hayden said, looking up at Millie with big, innocent blue eyes. “Christmas is awesome.” He had a little lisp that came out when he said “Christmas” and “awesome,” which, Millie supposed, some people would find cute.
“And presents are awesome!” Cameron said, pumping his fist in excitement. Both kids were so hyper it was like their parents had poured them full of black coffee. Millie wondered if there had been a time when she got this excited over the holiday or whether she had always known better.
“Our culture is already too materialistic,” Millie said. “Why do you want more stuff?”
Her aunt and uncle and cousins all looked uncomfortable. Good. Somebody in this family needed to tell the truth.
Sheri plastered a smile on her face. “Millie, won’t you at least have a cup of eggnog?”
“Drinking eggnog is like drinking phlegm,” Millie said. Really, how had such a disgusting beverage become a part of any traditional celebration? Eggnog and fruitcake both seemed more like they should be part of a punishment rather than a celebration.
“What’s phlegm?” Hayden asked.
“It’s that gross slimy stuff that’s in your throat and nose when you have a cold,” Aunt Sheri said.
Cameron raised his cup. “Yum! Egg snot!” he said, then took a big, showy drink that left an eggy mustache on his upper lip.
Millie couldn’t take it. She had to get out of here. “I’m going for a walk,” she said.
“Can we come, too?” Hayden asked.
“No,” Millie said. “I need to be alone.”
“Well, don’t stray too far,” Grandpa said. “We’re eating dinner in an hour.”
As Millie headed out the door, Grandpa called for her to remember her coat, but she ignored him.
All the houses in the neighborhood had extra cars in their driveways, no doubt because of visiting family members celebrating the holiday. All these people acting the same, doing the same thing. Presents and eggnog and hypocrisy. Well, Millie was different, and she wasn’t going to participate.
Hypocrisy, she thought again, and this time the word stung her. Dylan had said she was a hypocrite because she judged Brooke by her appearance. But boys—even boys who seemed cool like Dylan—were fooled by appearances. If a conventionally pretty blonde girl paid any attention to them, they’d think she was a saint and a genius rolled into one. No way was Millie a hypocrite. She was a truth teller, and if some people couldn’t handle the truth, that was their problem.
After one lap around the block, she was feeling pretty cold, but there was no
way she was going back in the house yet.
An idea popped into her head. Grandpa’s workshop had a little space heater he always kept running; it could keep her toasty warm while she waited out the party. He was too busy hosting his lame little holiday gathering to go into his workshop. It was a perfect place to hide.
Grandpa kept the key under a flowerpot beside the workshop door. Millie found it, opened the door, and pulled the chain on the bare light bulb that lit the small, windowless space. She closed the door behind her and looked around.
The place was even more crammed with stuff than it had been the last time she was here. Grandpa really must’ve been hitting the yard sales, flea markets, and salvage yards. Near his workbench was a rusty antique bicycle, the kind with a giant front wheel and a tiny back one. There were lots of old mechanical toys, too—a metal bank with a clown that flipped coins into its mouth, a jack-in-the-box that startled her when the jester doll inside jumped out, even though she’d known what would happen once she started turning the crank. There was even one of those horrible grinning monkey dolls that clanged cymbals together.
Why did Grandpa want all this stuff, and what did he plan to do with it? Repair it and then use it to clutter the house some more, she guessed.
The strangest item among many was tucked into one corner of the workshop. It was some kind of mechanical bear with a bow tie, top hat, and creepy blank grin. It looked like it once had been white and pink, but years of neglect had left it a dingy gray. It was big—big enough for a person to climb into its body cavity, like in those science-fiction movies where people “drove” giant robots. The hinges on its limbs made it look as if its parts had once moved. It must have been a figure from one of those old kids’ attractions that featured creepy-looking animatronics. Why had little kids ever liked things that were nightmare-inducing?
From outside the workshop, Millie heard laughter and yelling. Hayden and Cameron, playing in the backyard. She hadn’t thought to lock the workshop door from the inside. What if they tried to come in?
She couldn’t let them find her. They’d go tell the adults, and then she’d be dragged back into the house and sentenced to mandatory celebration.
Millie found herself staring at the old animatronic bear, not just as a curiosity now, but as a potential solution to her problem.
She opened the door to the mechanical bear’s body cavity, crawled inside, and shut the door behind her. Darkness enveloped her. It was so much better than those annoyingly twinkly lights and garish, bright Christmas sweaters.
This was perfect. No one would find her here. She could go back to the house after she heard Uncle Rob and Aunt Sheri’s car pulling out of the driveway. So what if she missed Skyping with her parents? It served them right for being so far away from her on Christmas.
* * *
“Kids, time for Christmas dinner!” Grandpa called out the back door. “Millie, you come in, too, if you can hear me.”
Cameron and Hayden came running in, their cheeks pink from the chilly air.
“It smells great in here,” Cameron said.
“Well, that’s because I cooked you a feast,” Grandpa said. “Ham and sweet potatoes and rolls and your mom’s green bean casserole. You boys didn’t happen to see Millie while you were out there, did you?”
“Nope, didn’t see her,” Hayden said. “Grandpa, why is she so weird?”
Grandpa chuckled. “She’s fourteen. You’ll be weird when you’re fourteen, too. Now go wash your hands before we sit down to eat.”
At the table, Grandpa carved the big, sticky, beautiful ham. “I glazed this thing with Coca-Cola,” he said. “Found the recipe on the internet. I’ve been looking up a lot of recipes since Millie moved in, most of them vegetarian so she won’t starve herself to death. I bought this weird, fake turkey loaf thing for her at the grocery store. When she gets back, she can have it with the green bean casserole and sweet potatoes.”
“I keep feeling like we ought to go out and look for her,” Sheri said.
“Oh, she’ll show up when she gets hungry or when she feels like she’s made her point,” Grandpa said. “She and that cat of hers aren’t that different. She’s just at that age, you know. Now, speaking of hungry, who wants some ham?”
* * *
“I don’t have a sword like a Saudi Arabian executioner, Silly Millie,” the voice said, “but I do have a sharp sheet of metal I could pass through the chamber. It could pass at the level of your throat, or it could hit you lower and bisect you. And bisection is a sure way to go, too. Either way, the job would get done! I think it would be smooth like Madame Guillotine instead of a slow, dull hacking like Mary, Queen of Scots experienced, but I’m not one hundred percent sure. This will be my first attempt at decapitation. Yours, too, but it will also be your last!”
As the voice laughed at its latest witticism, Millie pushed on the walls of the chamber that trapped her. They didn’t budge. But then she saw a tiny crack of light shining through the side of the door. Maybe if she could slip something—a tool of some sort—into that crack, she could somehow pry the door open. But what could she use as a tool?
She took a mental survey of her jewelry. Her earrings were too small and breakable, and her necklace was an unhelpful string of jet beads. But there was the silver cuff bracelet on her wrist. She pulled it off and pushed and bent it until it was nearly ruler-straight. The end seemed like the right size to slip into the crack in the door. But she was too afraid to test it, too worried that her captor would notice.
“Millie?” the voice said. “Are you still with me? A decision must be made.”
Millie thought. If she lowered her head and curled up into a little ball when the blade shot through, it would miss her. She’d have to be quick, though, and make sure she got her whole head out of the way, or else she’d get scalped. If the blade came through lower to bisect her, she’d really have to flatten out in the bottom of the small space. “Is there any chance you would just let me go?” she asked. “Anything I could give you in exchange for my life?”
“Lamb chop, there’s nothing I want from you except your life.”
Millie took a deep breath. “Okay. Then decapitation it is.”
“Really?” The voice sounded tremendously pleased. “Good choice. It’s a classic. I promise you won’t be disappointed.” The low, rumbling laugh. “You won’t be disappointed because you’ll be dead!”
Millie felt more tears spring to her eyes. She had to be strong. But you could still cry and be strong at the same time. “Tell me when you’re about to do it, okay? Don’t just spring it on me.”
“Fair enough, I suppose. It’s not like you’re going anywhere. Give me a few minutes to get ready. You know what they say—‘Prior preparation prevents poor performance.’ ”
The chamber shook and rattled, then the animatronic’s eyes rolled back outward, away from the chamber.
Millie waited, her heart pounding. Why had she ever wished for death? No matter how hard life could be, how depressing or disappointing, she wanted to live. If nothing else, she wanted the chance to apologize to Dylan for what she’d said about Brooke and to ask if they could be friends again.
She curled into as tiny a ball as she could, tucking her head under her arms. She hoped harder than she’d ever hoped for anything that she was low enough to miss the blade.
“Millicent Fitzsimmons, you are hereby sentenced to die for Crimes of Humanity.”
“Wait,” Millie said. “What does that mean—Crimes of Humanity?”
“You,” the voice said, “have been rude and quick to anger. You have rushed to the judgment of others. You have been insufficiently grateful to those who have shown you nothing but love and kindness.”
The voice was right. Different incidences of her own rudeness and ingratitude played in her head like scenes from a movie she didn’t want to see. “Guilty as charged,” Millie said. “But why are those crimes I have to die for? Those are crimes that everybody’s guilty of from time to
time.”
“True,” the voice said. “That’s why they’re Crimes of Humanity.”
“But if they’re something all humans are guilty of, then why do I have to die for them?” The voice didn’t answer, and Millie felt a small tingle of hope. Maybe she wouldn’t have to take her chances by curling up on the floor of the cavity. Maybe she could talk herself out of this yet.
“Because,” the voice said, “you’re the one who crawled into my belly.”
Whimpering, Millie made herself as small as she possibly could in the bottom of the cavity. If she got out, she was going to make it a point to be nicer to Grandpa. He really had been good to her, taking her in and putting up with her moods and teaching himself how to cook all those vegetarian recipes.
“In the spirit of the French Revolution,” the voice said, “I will now do a countdown in French before releasing the blade! Un, deux, TROIS!”
Quick as a shot, the blade sliced through the chamber.
* * *
Grandpa brought out a platter of sugar cookies and set them on the coffee table. “I’ll be right back with the hot chocolate,” he said. In the kitchen, he finally broke down and called Millie’s cell number. Her phone rang from the pocket of her jacket that was hanging on the coatrack in the hall.
Oh, well. She would come back when she felt like she’d proved her point. He hated to think of her being outside without a jacket, though. It was pretty chilly out there.
Grandpa poured five cups of hot chocolate and topped them each with a generous handful of mini marshmallows. He carried the steaming cups on a tray into the living room. “Who’s ready for presents?” he called.
“I am,” Cameron shouted.
“I am!” Hayden shouted even louder.
“Do you think we should wait for Millie?” Sheri asked.
“She’s not celebrating Christmas, remember?” Rob said. “Why should we wait for her if she’s decided to be a brat?”
Into the Pit Page 13