by Gina Damico
She nodded so hard, her neck cracked. “We were rehearsing anyway for our Broadway revue that’s coming up in a couple of weeks, so I can just refocus our rehearsal today for the parade tomorrow, because I’m the director, so I can. We can.” She fixed a goofy grin on her face and pumped her fist into the air. “Yes, we can!”
Now he was looking a little weirded out. “Okay. Great. Call time is at eight forty-five a.m. tomorrow in the parking lot behind the Price Chopper. I’ll be around, but let me know if you have any questions before then.” He gave her a little wave and allowed himself to be swept up by the hallway rush. “See you in biology!”
“Wait!” Poppy called after him anyway. “Do you want to, like, give me your phone number, or—”
“Nah, email’s good. Thanks again!”
Poppy slunk back to Jill, who was judging harshly. “I want you to know what you look like right now,” said Jill, “which is one of those skeletons you see in a haunted house, with your mouth wide open and giant gaping holes where your eyes should be and the sort of vacant silent scream reserved only for the damned.”
Poppy gathered up her textbooks and what was left of her dignity. “Let us dine.”
When they got to the cafeteria, Poppy, envying the ordinary day her fellow students were having, unpacked the grapes and neatly compartmentalized cubes of tofu her mother had prepared.
“So back to the Chandlers,” Jill said, joylessly chewing her turkey sandwich. “You’re saying that they’re Hollow Ones?”
“Yes.” Poppy took out her phone and showed Jill some pictures she’d taken that morning of the candle message: They did not think twice about disrobing their mortal trappings.
“But what about Dud? Did he disrobe his mortal trappings too?”
“You know, I’ve been thinking about that.” Poppy selected three grapes to demonstrate. “Madame Grosholtz, Anita, and Preston all came from their original, nineteenth-century selves. They’ve been reincarnating wax versions of themselves for decades.” She then removed a single tofu cube and put it by itself. “But Dud is different. It’s almost like Madame Grosholtz made him from scratch. Like his personality is new, not carried over from anyone else. Like she made him out of thin air. I don’t know how, of course, but I’m pretty sure he’s different from the other three. The tofu stands alone.”
“The tofu . . . stands alone.”
“Yes. Exactly.”
Jill seemed to have no idea how to respond to that. “What’s with the phone?” she asked instead. “Don’t you usually scribble your manic digressions in The List?”
“I have temporarily misplaced The List,” Poppy said irritably. “But—trust me, it’s all right there in the candle.”
“I see. And where might this candle be?”
“I left it at home. I can’t run the risk of it getting lost, or broken—or stolen.”
“Good Lord, Poppy. Paranoid much?”
“It’s not paranoia if they’re really after your secret-candle-message-hidden-by-a-dead-woman, Jill.”
Jill rubbed her temples. “Permission to change the subject?”
“Permission granted.”
“What’s new with Wax Boy? Or—sorry, the Tofu Who Stands Alone.”
“Oh, he sculpted the town out of candles.”
“Um, what?”
Poppy filled Jill in on what had happened after they’d parted on Sunday. “It’s like part of Madame Grosholtz is ingrained in him or something. Programmed.”
“How did the sculpture of me look?” Jill asked.
“Pretty dead-on.”
“Can I have it?”
“What? No—”
“I’ll give you ten bucks for it. Hey, look at that—you might have a pretty lucrative business opportunity here. Open up a little shop, sell the townspeople tiny versions of themselves. Or of other people, that they can then squash. Like voodoo dolls. Voodoo squash dolls. Doubles as a great band name, too.”
“Are you making fun of me?”
“I am.”
“This is serious, Jill!” Poppy whisper-shouted. “The Chandlers are up to something! Just because I don’t know what it is yet doesn’t mean it’s not happening!” She angrily pushed her lunchbox away.
“Done with your food?”
“Yes. Your rudeness and skepticism have made me lose my appetite.”
“Poppy.” Jill flashed her a knowing smirk. “Come on.”
Poppy grumbled and downed the rest of her tofu in one bite. “Seriously, who are these bizarre people on TV shows who lose their appetite when they get stressed? I could eat an entire lasagna right here, right now, no utensils, just my face, splat.” She put her head on the table to demonstrate.
Jill patiently chewed her sandwich and looked out the window. “So where’s Dud now?”
Poppy spoke into the laminate. “He wanted to keep sculpting, so I grabbed some of the surplus wax from the art supply and set him up in the slop room.”
“Are you sure that’s where he is?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you sure he’s not outside the window, flattening the landscaping with a giant wax version of Mr. Crawford?”
Poppy slowly raised her head.
14
Flee the cafeteria
“DUD! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”
“Hi, Poppy!” Dud waved Mr. Crawford’s wax arm at her.
She dragged him off the front lawn of the school while Dud dragged the wax Mr. Crawford, forming a motley chain of fools that was ultimately wrangled into the groundskeeper’s maintenance shed. “I told you to stay in the slop room,” Poppy said as evenly as she could, not wanting to spook him but finding it hard not to among all the hanging pitchforks and shovels. “You promised you’d stay.”
A look of genuine remorse washed over his face. “I’m sorry, Poppy. But I thought maybe you’d want to show it to Mr. Crawford because you like him so much!”
“That’s sweet of you, but—”
“Maybe if he likes it, he’ll marry you.”
“No. That is not how that works. Teachers don’t marry students. And even if they did, he has a wife and two children, and if I haven’t figured out a way to get them out of the picture by now, it’s probably never going to happen—”
“Poppy Jubilation Palladino.” Jill’s muffled voice came from outside the shed. She heaved the door open and wedged herself between Poppy and Dud. “You’re still weighing your prospects with Crawford? I thought we definitively ruled against that last year. We made a chart and everything.”
“He forgot to wear his wedding band last Tuesday,” Poppy shot back defensively. “He said he dropped it into the garbage disposal, but wouldn’t a man who really loved his wife plunge his hand in there to retrieve it?”
Jill turned to Dud. “Your guardian has mentally left the building, so I guess it falls to me to tell you that you have to scram. Your kind isn’t allowed here.”
Poppy rolled her eyes. “You don’t have to be racist about it.”
“Against . . . a race of sentient wax beings?”
“Racism is still racism. She didn’t mean it, Dud.”
Dud grinned cluelessly. “What’s a race?”
“A contest to see who’s fastest,” Jill said.
“What’s a contest?”
“A quiz for people in jail.”
“Jill, I swear to God . . .”
But Poppy trailed off as she stared at Wax Crawford. It was uncanny. The contours in his face, the easy smile. The paint matched his skin tone. And although he was dressed in a pair of Oklahoma overalls and the wig wasn’t quite right and his eyeballs weren’t made of the more realistic-looking glass ones Madame Grosholtz had had access to, the rest was immaculate.
Poppy sighed. “Can you find your way back to the slop room,” she asked Dud, “or do you need me to take you?”
“I can walk from here to there—”
“Smashing. Go. Just don’t let anyone see you.”
&
nbsp; He snuck out of the shed and tiptoed around the back of the school, making sure to stay out of the line of sight of any windows. Only when he was safely through the door to the auditorium did Poppy exhale.
“What do we do with this guy?” Jill asked, linking her arm through Wax Crawford’s.
“Beats me. I guess I’ll stick him in my trunk and figure out what to do with him later.”
“Thereby fulfilling your ultimate fantasy.”
“Shut up. Yes. But shut up.” Poppy stuck her head out once more to make sure no one was watching. “Stay here and guard him while I pull Clementine around.”
“Permission to make out with him while you’re gone?”
“Permission denied.”
∗ ∗ ∗
Poppy wrangled Wax Crawford into the car without much ado, without the painful awareness of how open and exposed she was, how high the potential for embarrassment. In a former life—like, three days ago—she might have been terrified of getting mocked by Blake Bursaw, but now she was so focused on the task at hand that she didn’t care.
Besides, Blake wasn’t anywhere to be found. She still hadn’t seen him.
And for the first time ever, she realized she wanted to.
She paused at the school entrance and looked back at the parking lot. Blake’s car was not in it.
Maybe he’s sick, she thought as she walked back to class. Maybe he’s . . .
But she couldn’t think of any other reason why Blake wouldn’t be there. He’d told her he’d see her at school. He’d said he would call her back. Neither of those things had happened.
Something clenched in Poppy’s chest. And then something else clenched harder at the thought that Blake Bursaw’s well-being was something clenchable.
This distraction followed her all the way into biology, a class where she was typically distracted enough by the Greek god at the front of the room. Today, though, her thoughts drifted not to the noble pursuit of mentally undressing her teacher, but to the mysteries surrounding the candle factory.
Madame Grosholtz/Tussaud was made of wax, she jotted down in her notebook. And so are the Chandlers. But what does any of this have to do with Big Bob and Miss Bea?
She paused, her pen hovering above her notebook. She was supposed to be taking notes on how viruses replicate, but so far all she’d done was sketch out some blobby circles, turn those blobby circles into the dreamy blue eyes of Mr. Crawford, scribble it all out, and go back to thinking about the message in the candle.
Madame Grosholtz said that souls can be put into the forms of flames.
One fire, many flames.
One fire, many flames.
“Poppy?”
She looked up. Mr. Crawford was staring down at her, worried. “Are you having an asthma attack?”
“What?”
“You’re breathing heavily. Are you all right?”
Poppy forced herself to exhale and regain a normalish composure. She looked around the empty classroom. Class had ended, and she hadn’t noticed or heard the bell. “I’m fine. Just . . . got so wrapped up in the magic of horrific diseases. And—and—” There had to be a better way out of this. “And guess what? My parents said yes to hosting an exchange student!”
“Really? That’s wonderful!” His grin lit up the room. “Of course, there are still a multitude of steps between saying yes and finally receiving a student.” Oh? Poppy thought as he hurried to his desk and pulled out a thick folder. You mean they don’t come pre-stuffed into your trunk? “Here’s the informational packet,” he said, handing her the folder. “The exchange agreement is in there, along with some FAQs, expected responsibilities of the host family, all that fun stuff. Once that’s taken care of, we can begin the process of getting you matched with a student.”
She took it from him. “Great.”
He cocked his head. “You sure you’re okay, Poppy? You look kind of pale. Listen, if this bicentennial parade thing is stressing you out too much—”
“No, no! I’m happy to do it. Thrilled. Ecstatic.”
“You seem a little . . . on edge.”
“Nope! Just trying to figure out which songs we should sing in the parade. I’ve narrowed it down to either ‘Circle of Life’ or ‘Hakuna Matata,’ but I’m not sure how fast Serengeti Jetty can ship out their animal costumes on such short notice.”
“Er—”
“Now, I did find a nice gazelle online, but I’d rather save the money for another set of giraffe stilts.” If anything was worth blowing her own personal Giddy Committee budget on, it was this. “I’ve been meaning to ask you—how many wildebeests do you want? Five?”
Mr. Crawford frowned.
Poppy made a note. “I’ll get ten to be safe.”
He rubbed his chin with a wedding-banded hand that Poppy tried to ignore. “Poppy—”
“Oh, and don’t worry, our zebras won’t be made out of pajamas from Sears.” She snickered. “Nice try, Burlington High. Amateurs.”
“Actually, I don’t think we’re going to need anything that extravagant.”
Poppy blinked at him. “Oh?”
“I mean, I have no doubt that you could pull off a veritable Broadway production if you wanted to—and I’m sure that’s what we’ll see at the revue in a couple of weeks.” He smiled. Poppy caught a whiff of his patented flowery-sciencey smell. “But for the parade tomorrow,” he continued, “I think the people of Paraffin are going to want something light and happy and simple. Something familiar. Something the old folks can sing along to.”
Poppy gripped the edges of her desk.
Her voice quivered as she asked, “Like what?”
∗ ∗ ∗
The Giddy Committee looked into the third row, fifth seat from the aisle, at their fearless leader, who sat not with her pen poised and her bullhorn raised, but rather slumped in her seat, staring straight ahead.
“What’s wrong with her?” Connor boomed, swishing his cape.
Jill hurriedly stepped in to block Poppy’s catatonic form. “Everything is fine,” she told the group. “There’s been a slight change of plans. We’ve been asked to perform at the bicentennial parade tomorrow—” A delighted cheer went up among the committee, but Jill cut it short. “Which means that today’s rehearsal will be spent practicing for that. We’ll resume the revue rehearsals again on Wednesday.”
“What are we performing for the parade?” asked Banks.
Jill glanced back at Poppy, who had turned an unsightly shade of green. “Well,” Jill said, addressing the club once more, “we’ll be doing a medley from, uh, The Sound of Music.”
Poppy let out a whimper.
“Get up on the stage and wait in the wings,” Jill instructed them, “where you will receive further instructions once our fearless leader decides to sack up.”
“Why?” Poppy moaned as Jill sank down into the spring-loaded seat next to her. “Why me?”
“You need to snap out of it,” Jill said, snapping her fingers in front of Poppy’s face. “I realize that literally nothing is worse than this. Not living wax figures, not interacting with Blake Bursaw, not eight straight hours of Dr. Steve. But you said you would do it, so you have to do it. You don’t want to let Mr. Crawford down, do you?”
“How could he do this to me, Jill? I used to be one hundred percent positive that he and I were soul mates. Now I’m starting to think it’s more like ninety-five percent.”
Jill curled her hands into fists. “It’s a crowd favorite,” she said patiently. “Despite your understandable misgivings, everyone else loves it. It’s family-friendly. People know the words. We live not fifty miles away from the von Trapp family lodge. It’s practically our official state musical.”
“Oh, big surprise, you taking Vermonty’s side.”
“Poppy.”
Poppy let out a loud, exasperated grunt and sat up in her seat. “Fine. Tell them to take their places for the Oklahoma number. We’ll use the same cho
reography and just switch the songs around or some bullshit.”
“That’s the spirit.”
Irritated, Poppy sank down again while Jill got up to relay the instructions to the actors. They glanced over at her, pity radiating from their eyes like a laser show.
Doubly irritated, Poppy habitually reached into her bag, then remembered that The List was still missing.
Triply irritated, she grabbed her biology notebook instead, trying to suppress the full-body cringe that came with the idea of mixing class notes with show notes. Still, she uncapped her pen and poised it on the page, ready to give this Austrian abomination her full attention, if only to please Mr. Crawford.
She started barking orders at the stage. “Louder, Banks! I can see you, Connor!”
Connor’s flushed, sweating head poked up out of the trapdoor in the center of the stage. “I can’t help it! It is literally a furnace down here!”
“Now, now, Connor—is that what a von Trapp would say?”
But before long, her directives began to deteriorate in both politeness and lucidity. “Be more Austrian, Jesus! Louisa, spread out your fingers! Put a little more jazz in that jazz hand!”
Louisa put her jazzless hand on her jazzless hip. “I don’t see how a family in peril at the brink of World War Two warrants jazz of any sort.”
“Well, I don’t see what any of this has to do with Paraffin’s bicentennial, either, but life doesn’t really make a crapload of sense, does it?”
“Okay, that’s it.” Jill marched down the aisle, clutched a handful of Poppy’s sweater, and yanked her up out of the seat. “I’m cutting you off. Go cool down. Take a walk. Get your toxic attitude out of here so we can get something accomplished.”
“I’m the one with the toxic attitude? Says Jill?”
“Yes, you are. Now go.”
“This is a mutiny,” Poppy called back to the Giddy Committee as Jill escorted her out of the theater. “You’re all mutineers, just like Captain von Trapp! Admiral von Schreiber would be pissed!”
∗ ∗ ∗
“Admiral von Schreiber would be pissed,” Poppy grumbled to herself as she pushed open the door to the restroom. She turned on the tap, closed her eyes, splashed water on her face, and let loose her thoughts.