Wax

by Gina Damico

“Did we save room for dessert?” Greg asked.

  Jill and Dud both declined, clearly wanting to leave, but Poppy said, “Yes,” perhaps a little too vehemently. “I’ll have a scoop of Forbidden Chocolate.”

  “Ohh,” Greg groaned. “Oh, no.”

  Poppy looked at him, surprised. “What?”

  “I’m so sorry, but . . . it’s forbidden!”

  “It is?”

  Dumbfounded, Poppy watched him prance off. “He knew the Forbidden Chocolate joke?”

  “Guess the Chandlers learned to do their homework after Smitty failed your bagel oven test,” said Jill.

  Poppy frowned. She still wanted to be sure. The Plan didn’t have allowances for setting innocent people on fire.

  She grabbed her phone and got up from the booth without a clear strategy in place​—​until she got to the kitchen and inspiration struck. “Hey, Greg,” she shouted from the door.

  Every employee in the kitchen stopped to look at her, even the line cook, mid–burger flip. “Yes?” Greg said, from the plating station. “Did you need something else?”

  Poppy felt a hand on her back. Jill and Dud had sprung up from the booth and were trying to restrain her.

  “What are you doing?” Jill asked, pulling on her shirt.

  Poppy ignored Jill, keeping her eyes on Greg as she rammed her elbow into the light switch. As there were no windows in the kitchen, the room went dark. Noises of confusion arose from the staff, but Poppy kept her focus squarely on Greg’s mouth, expecting to see a lot of flickering going on in that throat of his.

  And yet: nothing. No fire in his belly. No light in his mouth.

  Greg isn’t a Hollow?

  But in the corner of her eye, two small, flickering point of lights remained.

  One in Dud’s mouth.

  And one in Jill’s.

  22

  Shit self

  POPPY TURNED THE LIGHTS BACK ON AND BLINKED A FEW TIMES, pretending that the sudden brightness was bothering her​—​when in fact she was trying to recover her faculties, restore her breathing, and not FREAK THE HELL OUT.

  Jill is a Hollow. The candle smelled like Forbidden Chocolate because JILL LOVES FORBIDDEN CHOCOLATE.

  Poppy had to get out of there. She had to get Dud out of there.

  And to do that, she had to act normal.

  “I am so sorry about her,” Jill told the kitchen staff as Poppy picked up her phone from the floor, having dropped it in shock. “She’s preparing for a role as a crazy cat lady and took it a little too much to heart.” Jill scrambled for some bills in her pocket. “Here, Greg, this should cover our check. We’re leaving.”

  She dragged Poppy through the restaurant and out the front door. Dud followed, bewildered. Poppy kept a neutral face, but every second was agony, her mind chanting, Don’t tip her off, don’t tip her off, occasionally switching it up with a scream to RUN. AWAY.

  “What is wrong with you?” Jill said once they were in the parking lot.

  “I thought I could​—”

  “What? See if you could get bounced by a secret Friendly’s security squad? You’re acting like the kind of person who should be wearing a tinfoil hat and eating her own hair.”

  “I thought I was a crazy cat lady.”

  “You are all of those things rolled into one and tied up with a ribbon of damaged brain cells.”

  That’s when Poppy spotted it: her chance for escape.

  “Shut up, Jill!” she exploded. “God, I am so sick of you questioning everything I do! I’m trying to save our asses here!”

  Jill glared at her. “I know, but I don’t think that​—”

  “No! Enough! This is not how friends act! Friends are supportive and sympathetic in times of crisis! Not snarky and dismissive and awful!” She turned around and stomped off toward Clementine. “Come on, Dud.”

  Once they both got into Clementine, she started the car with a roar and pulled out of her spot, but Jill blocked her way. “Poppy, stop.”

  Poppy rolled down her window. “I’m going to Paper Clipz to print out copies of The Plan for everyone. I’m still holding rehearsal, because I still want to save this town. Come or don’t. I really don’t care anymore.”

  “I’ll be there. I promise.”

  Of course she would be, to listen in on the specifics of The Plan so she could relay them back to the Chandlers. “Well, you’ll have to find your own ride. Have a wonderful afternoon, jerk.”

  With that, Poppy screeched out of the parking lot. It wasn’t until she’d driven far enough down Main Street and pulled into a parking spot that she started to shake violently, uncontrollably, with a frantic scream working its way through her body.

  “Poppy?” Dud looked terrified. “What’s wrong?”

  “Jill. She’s a Hollow. I don’t know when they got her​—​maybe this morning, before school? But they got her. Which means she knows everything that’s been going on today​—​oh my God.” She clapped her hand over her mouth. “I told her everything! And she’s going to tell them everything!” She slammed her hands on the steering wheel. “I’m such a moron!”

  Dud, not knowing what to do, rubbed her shoulder. “No, you’re not.”

  “I am! And​—​oh, Jill.” A sob bubbled up. “The real Jill. My Jill. She’s trapped in that tank, drowning in poison, and there’s nothing I can do about it! She’s probably already dead!”

  “Maybe not,” Dud said. “They said the younger ones . . .”

  He trailed off as Poppy cried. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t see through the tears in her eyes. She grabbed the steering wheel with shaking hands and tried to think clearly.

  We have to go to the tank. We have to try to get in. But even as she tested out the idea, she knew it would be fruitless. The tank couldn’t be breached​—​at least not until the whole Plan was carried out, start to finish.

  Jill would either be dead, or not. They wouldn’t know until tomorrow morning.

  “We have to stick to The Plan,” she rasped. “It’s the only way.”

  Dud nodded, his eyes huge. “It’ll be okay. It’s okay, Poppy.”

  “It’s not! Now I have to adjust The Plan to deal with her, too, but I also can’t tell her what The Plan is! How are we going to defeat these things if she’s one of them? We can’t keep up the charade forever​—​sooner or later she’ll figure out that we’re onto her, and then we’ll be targets​—​or maybe we already are! They’ll take us out next, and when we’re gone, there’ll be no one else to stop them and the town will be doomed! For real!”

  Paraffin was a powder keg that was frighteningly close to detonating.

  But there was nothing for it. She had to press on.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  After doing her best to collect herself, Poppy started the car to head to Paper Clipz​—​but turned it off again when she looked across the street at Smitty’s.

  Which was closed.

  In the middle of the afternoon.

  She reached into her bag for her phone​—​then swore as the cracked screen failed to respond to her touch. Reaching for the Giddy Committee contact sheet instead, she assessed the street for telephone options.

  “Hello, Mr. Kosnitzky,” she said, breezing into his shop.

  “Why aren’t you in school?” he demanded.

  “Good afternoon to you too, sir.” She smiled brightly. “As I’ve explained to you many times before, I often have free period at the end of the day, which means it is permissible for me to leave school grounds before the final bell.”

  He scowled at her. “Hmph.”

  “I was wondering if I could use your phone, just for a minute? It’s an emergency.”

  “Hmph.” But he pushed the antiquated telephone across the counter.

  Jesus picked up on the first ring. “Yo?”

  “Yo, Jesus. It’s Poppy.”

  “Oh, hey! ’Sup?”

  She turned farther away from Mr. Kosnitzky and lowered her voice. “Smitty’s is c
losed. In the middle of the day. Would you know anything about that?”

  “Yeah, definitely. I melted him.”

  “What?” Her heart was still clattering around in her chest like a fly trapped in a window. “What?”

  “On my way home from school, I paid him a little visit.”

  “And you did not simply take note of his Hollowness and leave the donut shop in an orderly fashion?”

  “Hell no.”

  Poppy looked to the ceiling. “Let me try to fill in the holes here,” she said testily. “You left school. You knew Smitty was a Hollow. So you, what, stopped by his café and did a little stakeout and​—​oh, I bet you waited in the back for him to bring the trash out to the dumpster and then​—”

  “Meltdown!”

  “Great. That’s just great.” She smushed the skin of her forehead into a lump. “Did you at least dispose of the wax?”

  “Of course I did. Jesus is a professional.”

  “Well, that’s good if it buys us some time, but that’s also bad, because people will definitely notice that Smitty is missing. I don’t think that donut shop has been closed a day since it opened.”

  “Sorry, Madame Director. Do you want to blab about this on the phone all day, or do you want me to get to work making more flamethrowers?”

  Poppy fumed for a moment.

  “I want you to make more flamethrowers,” she whispered, then hung up, fending off Mr. Kosnitzky’s scrutiny with an innocent smile. “All done! Thanks, Mr. K.”

  “Don’t slam the door on the way out!”

  “I have a question,” Dud said when Poppy got back into the car. “Why did you tell Jill to come to rehearsal if she’s one of the bad guys?”

  “Because we can’t tip her off. We need to pretend that we think she’s the real Jill, so that she doesn’t get suspicious and tell her bad-guy buddies.”

  Dud frowned. “But you also can’t tell the Giddy Committee about The Plan with her there, because she’ll tell the Hollows and they’ll know what to expect.”

  “Right. So we need to throw her off the trail.”

  “How do we do that?”

  Poppy narrowed her eyes and summoned the full weight of her theatrical prowess.

  “We make props.”

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Poppy and Dud drove from Paper Clipz to Paraffin High just as school was letting out for the day. “Repeat your job back to me,” Poppy said to Dud.

  “I wait in the car until you come out.”

  “Right. And if you start to feel melty?”

  “I start the car and turn on the air conditioning, but I don’t drive anywhere, because I do not know how to drive and I do not have a driver’s license.”

  “Good. Be back in a bit.”

  Poppy headed for the front door, easily blending in with the crowd of kids hanging around the entrance of the school. But someone called her name as she entered.

  “Poppy Palladino? Is that you?”

  Poppy whirled around and smiled at Miss Fitzgerald, the secretary, who was holding a coffee cup and a stack of papers. “Yes! Hi, Miss Fitzgerald.”

  “Hi, Poppy! Did you leave the campus at any point today?” She frowned and started to leaf through the papers. “Your homeroom teacher listed you as present, but a little while ago a call from Mr. Kosnitzky came in, saying that he saw you in town​—”

  “Oh?” Rotten Kosnitzky. “That’s weird, because I was definitely here. Maybe he saw my mom and thought it was me? We look a lot alike.”

  “Oh, okay!” Miss Fitzgerald smiled. “Geez, it’s like we’re running a truancy hotline today! We got a call from Smitty, too​—”

  “Wait, what? When?”

  “About ten minutes ago​—​said he saw a kid snooping around his dumpster earlier this afternoon.”

  “Smitty was there? At his coffee shop? Ten minutes ago?”

  “Of course he was,” Miss Fitzgerald said, laughing. “Smitty’s always there.”

  Poppy nearly screamed. She spun and sprinted down the hall as far as she could go, until she rounded a corner and leaned against the wall to catch her breath.

  Her throat tightened as the horrible thoughts cascaded. Smitty came back already while we were at Paper Clipz. And Jill’s not Jill. And if this plan doesn’t work, soon I won’t be me. Mom won’t be Mom, and Dad won’t be Dad. It’s happening TOO FAST.

  Just then, a man in a suit rounded the corner and gave her a big smile.

  “Hello, Poppy,” said Principal Lincoln.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  “No way,” Jesus’s voice screeched through the phone. “No fucking way.”

  Poppy had immediately removed herself from Wax Principal Lincoln’s presence and raced into Gaudy Auditorium, where the Giddy Committee was starting to convene and where Jesus was on speaker on Banks’s phone, seething.

  “Jesus,” Poppy said, “you need to accept it: your blowtorch-the-world plan just isn’t working.”

  “Let me at him again! It’ll work this time, I swear​—”

  “Dude, if you bring back that flamethrower, I will not hesitate to use it on you. Understand? Just get over here now.”

  The wobbliness in her voice made the Giddy Committee wince. “Are you okay, Poppy?” Banks asked.

  No, I am not, nothing is okay, my best friend might be dead, and Dud is probably going to melt in the car, she wanted to say​—​but she couldn’t, because at that moment Jill entered the auditorium.

  Wax Jill entered the auditorium.

  She lingered at the door. “Hey.”

  “Hey,” said Poppy.

  A million things were happening on Jill’s face, and she opened her mouth to speak several times before settling on “Can I talk to you for a sec? Alone?”

  Poppy nodded and got up from her seat. “Be right back,” she told the rest. “Talk among yourselves.”

  As she met Jill at the rear of the auditorium, Poppy took a deep breath. Time for more Acting.

  She told Jill about what had happened after they’d parted​—​the Smitty melting, the subsequent return of Smitty, the return of Principal Lincoln​—​all of it as honestly and authentically as she could, even though Wax Jill probably already knew everything. Because if she thought for one second that Poppy was holding anything back, anything at all, she’d realize that Poppy was onto her.

  When Poppy finished, Jill looked worried​—​though Poppy knew it was probably more of an expression of frustration that this puny gutbag’s plans were so difficult to quash. “Wow,” she said. “That’s crazy.”

  Poppy then remembered that she was still supposed to be mad at her for pettier reasons. “Oh?” Poppy said snidely. “You finally believe me this time?”

  “Huh? Oh. Yeah.” Jill scowled, as if she, too, were annoyed about having to keep up this little charade. “I’m sorry about this afternoon. You’re right​—​I should have your back.”

  “It’s okay. And I’m sorry for all the stuff I said.”

  They hugged. Poppy imagined their bodies sizzling upon contact, like cold water hitting a hot pan, their secrets smoldering between them and rising up in a smoky cloud of deception and propaganda and LIES.

  But it was just a plain old hug. With a lot of internal retching.

  When they returned to the group​—​which Jesus had rejoined, looking pouty​—​Louisa looked at Poppy expectantly. “So what are we supposed to do now?”

  Poppy pulled out a stack of still-warm, freshly printed sheets of paper and took a long, luxurious whiff. “Now,” she said, “we plot and scheme.”

  She handed out the detailed instructions to each member of the Giddy Committee, starting with Louisa and ending with Jill. At the top, in gigantic letters, it said THE PLAN, followed by a detailed itinerary and map.

  “Tomorrow,” she began, “two more people will be captured, and therefore two more Hollows will be released. Melting obviously does nothing to stop them, so instead of destroying them, we’re going to stop them from bein
g circulated into the general populace. It’s not a permanent solution, but hopefully it’ll buy us some time.”

  The Giddy Committee members were staring hard at the papers, their faces contorted by confusion and panic. “What​—” Connor started.

  “We don’t know the exact time the Hollows will be released,” Poppy interrupted. “So we’ll gather in the space under the gazebo early in the morning​—​at seven a.m. We wait there until they emerge from the tunnel. When they do, we tackle them and tie them up.”

  A few beats went by.

  “Tie them up?” Banks said, incredulous. “That’s so weak! Why not melt them?”

  “Because,” Poppy said, injecting loads of impatience into her voice, “if we’ve learned anything from Jesus’s adventures today, it’s that the Chandlers find out very quickly that their Hollows have been destroyed, and they are equally quick to replace them. This way, at least they’ll be stuck, immobilized, bound, and gagged, and the Chandlers won’t know about it. We leave them there under the gazebo, and then . . .”

  They waited for her to finish, but she didn’t. “And then what?” asked Banks.

  “Hopefully by then, I’ll have figured that out. But this is the best I can come up with for now. Jill’s right​—​slowing them down is better than doing nothing at all.”

  Jill nodded.

  Poppy sighed and heaved a helpless shrug. “So that’s it. We’ll meet tomorrow morning at the gazebo at seven.”

  “What if they don’t emerge until much later?” said Louisa. “You want us to skip school?”

  “Yes, I do. I need every one of you to promise me that you’ll show up. Is everyone onboard with this?” They exchanged wary glances with one another, but nodded. “Good. Plotting-and-scheming meeting adjourned.”

  The Giddy Committee shuffled out of their seats and up the aisle, uncharacteristically silent and downtrodden, their eyes darting around nervously. Jesus headed toward the main entrance to wait for his mom to pick him up, and Louisa and Banks began their walks home. Poppy and Jill headed into the parking lot, waving to Connor as he got into his car.

  Jill got into her mother’s car and started it up. “See you tomorrow, then.”