The Puppet Carver

by Scott Cawthon

  This was great. If people were in the Pulverizer—even if they were stupid little kids—Colton could get them to notice him. They could tell an adult that they heard screaming under the platform, and he would be saved. Colton breathed a sigh of relief. This ordeal would be over soon.

  He could feel them above him, jostling around and bumping into one another. The platform pressed down on him a little more from their weight. They were giggling and talking to one another in little kid gibberish.

  Colton suddenly became aware of how urgent his situation was. If the platform was already pressing down on him more from the little kids just standing there, he had to get their attention before they started jumping. His repair to the machine would make the platform dip even lower into his crawl space.

  Colton banged on the bottom of the platform. “Hey!” he yelled as loudly as he could with his dry, scratchy throat. “Hey! I’m down here! Help me! Help!”

  He was going to have to try harder if he was going to make himself heard over all the noises of the place, plus the noisiness of the kids themselves. He pounded on the bottom of the platform with his hammer. “Help!” he screamed. “I’m trapped in here! Help! Help!”

  “Prepare for the Ticket Pulverizer Countdown! Now, when I finish counting, everybody jump up and down as hard as you can, all together,” the clown’s prerecorded voice said.

  The children’s screams of excitement drowned out Colton’s screams for help.

  “Here we go!” the clown announced. “Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two … one! Now … Jump! For! Tickets!”

  * * *

  Overhead, Bella the birthday girl and her six friends jumped in unison, the sound like a stampede of wild buffalo. The platform dropped, they laughed and cheered, and the tickets fell like rain.

  But then something wasn’t right. Bella had jumped in the Ticket Pulverizer lots of times. This time felt different. The platform wasn’t dropping as low as usual. The flow of tickets had slowed to a trickle. “It’s slowing down!” she yelled to her friend Aidan.

  “Jump harder!” Aidan yelled back.

  Bella jumped higher and landed with more force. The platform dropped. Some tickets sprinkled down, but it was a light shower, not the flood of tickets Bella wanted for her birthday.

  “Let’s all hold hands and jump together!” Bella yelled.

  “I don’t want to hold hands!” Aidan yelled back.

  “Come on, it’s my birthday!” Bella said.

  Aidan shrugged and relented, and the seven kids joined in a circle.

  “One … two … three … jump!” Bella yelled. The kids leaped, then landed at the same time, forcing the platform down, then up, then down farther.

  Jump. The platform dropped an inch.

  Jump. And another inch.

  Jump. And another. Bella and her friends laughed and let go of each other so they could grab the falling tickets.

  After the next jump, though, the platform didn’t go any lower. The kids jumped again, but it stayed put.

  Bella looked out at her dad, who was outside the Ticket Pulverizer, cheering them on.

  “It’s not working!” she yelled.

  “Jump harder, sweetie!” her dad called back.

  Jump.

  Jump.

  Jump.

  The kids all jumped with as much force as they possibly could. The platform lowered a tiny bit more, less than an inch, then wobbled a little, then stopped. One lonely ticket fell from the machine’s ceiling.

  Outside the Ticket Pulverizer, Bella’s dad nudged his wife. “That game’s broken,” he said. “The platform’s not dropping like it should. I think I’m going to go get a manager.” He was already looking around, trying to spot who was in charge.

  “Good idea,” Bella’s mom said. Looking inside the Ticket Pulverizer, she could see that even though the children were still jumping away, they were getting increasingly frustrated. The platform was pretty much stationary.

  In a few minutes, Bella’s dad returned with a heavyset Freddy’s employee whose name tag read TED. He gave the machine a once-over. “You’re right,” he said. “The thing’s busted someway.” He squatted, reached down under the machine, and switched it off.

  The children looked shocked by the sudden absence of light and noise.

  “I’m sorry, kids,” Ted said, yelling over the general chaos of Freddy’s. “The Ticket Pulverizer isn’t working right. I need you guys to get out of the machine, but I’ll tell you what. Since you didn’t get to win much in there, if you all go up to the front counter, the cashier will give you twenty free tickets each.”

  The kids’ moods got sunnier as they exited the machine and ran in the direction of the free tickets.

  The clown animatronic was acting weird, too. It was pointing at the base of the machine and grabbing at Ted’s arm as if it didn’t want him to go inside the Ticket Pulverizer. But of course it didn’t want anything. It was just a stupid robot. A stupid robot that seemed to be malfunctioning. Ted shook his head. Was every cheap piece of equiment in this run-down place breaking all at the same time? Ted climbed into the Pulverizer and jumped on the platform a few times. It hardly moved, even with the force of all his ample weight, though he did think he heard a liquidy squishing sound that, of course, made no sense. He was going to have to call the repair guy.

  When Ted exited the machine, the clown robot was standing in front of the door. Its face, which was usually wearing a comically huge grin, was now a mask of tragedy, with a downturned mouth and sad-looking eyes. Was a tear sliding down its cheek, or was Ted imagining things? Sometimes he thought he should find a more normal place to work.

  One of the little kids from the Ticket Pulverizer must have noticed the clown’s sad face, too, because he ran up to it and said, “Hey, Coils, remember me? I’m your buddy Aiden. Don’t be sad, okay? It’s bad to be sad. My cousin Colton’s sad all the time. That’s why I’m saving up my tickets to buy him a present.”

  The little boy threw his arms around the clown animatronic, and it hugged him back, holding him in its springy, coiled yellow arms.

  Weird, Ted thought, walking past the scene on the way to his office.

  The Ticket Pulverizer stood empty, or at least empty as far as anyone could see. Ted returned from his office with a sign that he hung on the machine’s door: OUT OF ORDER.

  “I can’t believe you talked me into taking home ec,” Payton said as she sat down with her best friend, Marley, at a long table in the classroom. “Who takes home ec these days?”

  “Come on, it’s an easy A,” Marley said, taking a notebook out of her backpack. “I mean, look around. How hard could it be?”

  Surveying the classroom, Payton had to admit that Marley might have a point. The room was lined with kitchen counters, sinks, and stoves. There were sewing machines and a headless, armless mannequin for making patterns and adjusting hems. Tucked in one corner of the room were a washer and dryer. They were going to be graded … on laundry? Payton laughed. “Well, it’s not exactly the chemistry lab, is it?”

  “Nope,” Marley said, with a grin. “And Mrs. Crutchfield is, like, a hundred years old, so she doesn’t even know what’s going on most of the time. She was my mom’s home ec teacher, and Mom says she wasn’t young back then.”

  “She was my mom’s home ec teacher, too,” Payton said. “Mom said that when she was a freshman, girls were required to take home ec.”

  “Wow, that’s super sexist,” Marley said. “What did the boys do while the girls were taking home ec?”

  “They took geography. Mom said it was like the school was saying that boys needed to know their way around the world, but girls just needed to know their way around the kitchen.” Payton’s mom did know her way around the kitchen, but she also knew her way around the bank where she was branch manager. Like her mom, Payton wanted a future where she could balance a career and a family.

  “Good afternoon, young ladies.” Payton and Marley’s conversation was i
nterrupted by the quivery voice of Mrs. Crutchfield, who had just tottered into the room. She was a tiny, birdlike woman, wearing a navy-blue dotted dress that she could very well have worn back when she was Payton’s mom’s teacher. Or somebody’s grandmother’s teacher. “And welcome to home economics, where you will be learning the art of keeping a gracious home.”

  Payton rolled her eyes and gave Marley a look, which caused her to have to suppress a giggle. Wait, Peyton, thought. Mrs. Crutchfield had said young ladies. Did that mean there were no boys in the class? She looked around the room. Only girls. So maybe times hadn’t changed that much since her mom was in school. Boys were allowed to take home ec now, but apparently they didn’t choose to do so.

  “You’re going to learn skills such as cooking and cleaning and sewing,” Mrs. Crutchfield said, gesturing toward the kitchen equipment and sewing machines in the room. “But you’re also going to learn the almost-lost art of etiquette. Might any of you young ladies be able to use the word etiquette in a sentence?”

  “I ate a kit—a Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza Kit,” Payton whispered to Marley, who laughed. Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza Kits were all the rage, even among high school kids. It was a nostalgia thing, Payton supposed. Whether it was for a birthday or for no particular reason, visiting the Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza Kit Factory to build your own pizza was comforting … and delicious.

  Mrs. Crutchfield turned her head toward Payton. “Could you repeat that so the whole class can hear it, please?”

  Payton felt her face heating up. “It was just a stupid joke I whispered to Marley.”

  “Yes,” Mrs. Crutchfield said. “And now I am asking you to share it with the whole class.”

  Payton knew her face was as red as a tomato. “I said, ‘I ate a kit—a Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza Kit.’ ”

  A few kids tittered, but the pun didn’t seem nearly as funny when she had to say it out loud for everyone to hear.

  “Very amusing,” Mrs. Crutchfield said. “And it’s interesting that you mentioned Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza Kits because next week we will be joining the culinary arts class for a visit to the factory where they are made.”

  The class erupted in cheers and cries of “Awesome!” and “Yesss!”

  Mrs. Crutchfield displayed a very slight smile. “Permission slips will go out on Wednesday.” She looked at Payton with a stern expression. “But now, in all seriousness, can you give the class a definition of the word etiquette?”

  Payton was more than ready for Mrs. Crutchfield’s attention to shift elsewhere. “Doesn’t it mean, like, good manners?”

  “Yes,” Mrs. Crutchfield said. “And from now on, I ask you to demonstrate good manners by raising your hand before you speak in my class.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Payton said, barely above a whisper. She wondered if this class was going to be the walk in the park that Marley said it was. Mrs. Crutchfield might be old, but it didn’t seem like she missed much.

  * * *

  “Hey, could you set the table while I get the spaghetti cooking?” Payton’s mom said. She was still wearing her nice blue blouse and gray dress slacks from work, but she had taken off her pumps and replaced them with fuzzy pink house slippers.

  “Sure,” Payton said, getting up from the couch where she had been aimlessly channel surfing. “And thanks to Mrs. Crutchfield, I’ll set the table one hundred percent correctly so everybody will know we’re living in a”—she made quotation marks with the index and middle fingers of both hands—“‘gracious home.’”

  Payton’s mom laughed. “Yeah, a gracious home where spaghetti with jarred sauce and a bag of premade salad are on the dinner menu! Mrs. Crutchfield would probably call Child Protective Services if she knew what I’m feeding you.” She dropped the contents of a box of spaghetti into a steaming pot of water. “How is Mrs. Crutchfield doing anyway? The woman has got to be older than dirt.”

  Payton opened the silverware drawer and retrieved three forks. “She still seems pretty sharp. She was sharp enough to call me out when I made a snarky comment to Marley.”

  “Yeah, you need to watch those,” Mom said, stirring the noodles. “I made snarky comments when I was in her class, too, so she probably thinks you come by it honestly.”

  “Because I do,” Payton said, smiling. She set the forks to the left of the plates. Mrs. Crutchfield said there should be separate forks for the salad and the entrée, but Payton put down one fork per plate only. Why wash more silverware?

  “I still don’t know why you let Marley talk you into taking that class,” Mom said, stirring the sauce with a wooden spoon. “You could’ve taken art instead. You like art, and you’re good at it.”

  “Are you implying that I’m not good at gracious homemaking?” Payton said, batting her eyelashes theatrically and doing a curtsy.

  Mom smiled and shook her head. “I’m implying that from the look of your room, you don’t care a fig about gracious homemaking. I’m also implying that sometimes you let Marley talk you into things you wouldn’t do otherwise.”

  Payton sighed. It was an old argument. “You don’t like Marley.”

  “I like Marley fine,” Mom said, ripping open the bag of salad and dumping its contents into a bowl. “But she has a really strong personality and strong opinions, and I think that sometimes she steamrolls over other people and their wishes and opinions.”

  “She doesn’t steamroll over me,” Payton said, opening the fridge door to find the Parmesan cheese. People did say that Marley is bossy, but that’s just because she’s a natural leader, Payton thought.

  “Really?” Mom raised an eyebrow. “So you’re telling me you would’ve taken home ec even if Marley hadn’t suggested it?”

  Payton hated it when her mom backed her into a corner. Even when you were right, there was no winning an argument with her. Now who’s the steamroller?

  “No, I wouldn’t have thought to take it. But the way she told me about it, it sounded fun and kind of … funny.”

  “Well, I hope you find it funny when Mrs. Crutchfield grades you on boiling an egg. And gives you a C minus. I’m speaking from experience here. The woman has impossible standards.”

  * * *

  Payton sat on her bed, propped up on pillows, doing a boring social studies assignment on her laptop. On her walls, posters of the boys from her favorite K-pop group smiled down at her like they were inviting her to abandon her drudgery and go dancing with them instead.

  An instant message from Marley popped up on her screen: “What are you doing?”

  Payton welcomed the distraction. “Homework. You?”

  “Nothing. Bored. You wanna go over to the Tastee Kone?”

  “Doing homework. Remember?”

  “So finish it or ditch it, who cares? I’ll meet you on the corner of Brook and Branch in half an hour.”

  Payton hesitated before responding. If she were to meet Marley in half an hour, that would mean she’d just have twenty minutes to finish her homework, which wasn’t a realistic amount of time for the assignment she had. But a chocolate-vanilla swirl cone would taste really good, and it was always fun to see who was hanging out at the Tastee Kone. Marley knew everybody and made easy conversation with them, unlike Payton, who tended to be on the shy side. But she felt less shy when she was with Marley. “Okay,” she finally typed. “See you in thirty.”

  Payton raced through the rest of her homework assignment, doing what she knew was a slapdash job. When she came downstairs, her mom and dad were on the couch watching one of those crime shows they found endlessly entertaining, even though every episode seemed identical to Payton. “Hey,” Payton said, already halfway to the front door, “I’m going to walk with Marley to the Tastee Kone.”

  “Did you finish your homework?” Mom asked.

  “Yes,” Payton said. She didn’t do it well, but she did finish it.

  “Do you need some money?” her dad asked.

  “Got some. Thanks!”

  As Payton shut the door behind her, she
heard her mom call, “Be home by dark!”

  Marley was standing on the corner of Brook and Branch, as promised. “I had to get out of the house,” Marley said. “Mom and Dad have company—these friends they went to college with—and they’re sooo boring! Every story starts with ‘Do you remember that time … ?’ and ends with something totally unmemorable.”

  Payton laughed. “Hey, at least they’re trying to have fun.”

  “Trying but failing,” Marley said. “It’s pathetic. Do you think you get to be a certain age and then just automatically get boring?”

  “I hope not,” Payton said. It was upsetting to think about. One birthday too many, and then you were an adult and incapable of having fun. It was all the more reason to have as much fun as possible now. They walked toward the Tastee Kone. A boy rode by on a bike and almost wrecked because he was looking at Marley.

  It was impossible not to be aware of Marley’s beauty. She had golden-blond hair and big blue eyes that somehow, unfairly, managed to have long dark, lashes. Her body was slim but curvy enough to be feminine. Boys tripped over their feet or over their words when confronted by her. Girls were either too jealous or too insecure to be Marley’s friend, but not Payton. Payton had no illusions about her own looks. So far, her short, skinny body was so free of curves she looked like she’d been drawn using a ruler. Her hair and eyes were a dull brown, and she had freckles that she hated. But when she hung out with Marley, she felt like a little of Marley’s glitter might rub off on her. She was like a plain little sparrow who was best friends with a flamingo.

  Outside the Tastee Kone, they sat at a picnic table, Payton with a chocolate-vanilla swirl cone and Marley with a huge banana split. Another thing Payton had noticed was that Marley could eat whatever she wanted and never seemed to gain an ounce.

  “Don’t look at the table behind us,” Marley whispered, spooning up ice cream with banana and chocolate sauce.

  Naturally, Payton looked. It was a table full of boys who were in their history class, drinking milkshakes and trading insults and laughing the way boys did.