The Puppet Carver

by Scott Cawthon

  Payton checked pepperoni and mushrooms. Not pineapple. Pineapple on pizza was an abomination. And did anybody really eat anchovies? An anchovy and pineapple pizza was the grossest combination she could imagine.

  “If you’re still undecided on what you want, hang on to your card. We’ll collect the stragglers on the bus,” Ms. Bryant said. “Next up is the pizza packaging center.”

  “Psst, Payton!” Marley muttered.

  “What?” Payton said. She was actually enjoying the pizza tour more than she had thought she would.

  “Let’s go up those stairs.” Marley cocked her head in the direction of a set of metal stairs leading up to some kind of catwalk. It was the type of staircase that had holes in the stairs so you could look through them and see how high you were off the ground. Payton didn’t want to be reminded how far she was from the ground. She hated heights.

  “I don’t know,” Payton said. “We’re supposed to stay in line with the rest of the group.”

  “Come on, this tour is boring.” Marley flashed her most charming smile. “Let’s explore. See what’s up there.”

  “No, we’d better not,” Payton said, but she could see that Marley had that look that meant she wouldn’t take no for an answer.

  Marley grabbed Payton’s hand and pulled her. “Come on. We’ll just go up for a minute and have a peek. Don’t be such an old lady. You act like you’re as ancient as Mrs. Crutchfield.”

  Payton didn’t want to seem like Mrs. Crutchfield. She wanted to be young and have fun while she still could. She sighed. “Okay. But just for a minute.”

  Payton followed Marley up the rickety-seeming metal stairs, trying not to look down at her feet. Steam from the vats on the production line was rising, making it look like they were walking into a cloud. They stood together on the narrow catwalk. Marley was energetic and laughing, but Payton didn’t like being there. The railings didn’t seem high enough to be safe, and a sign reading FALL WARNING showed a stick man plummeting to his doom. It was unnerving. “Can we go back down now?” Payton asked. As was always the case when she was in a high place, her feet tingled and her stomach felt like it had migrated to the back of her throat.

  “Not yet!” Marley said. “It’s cool up here. All this steam makes it look like a horror movie where a monster comes out of the fog and”—Marley lunged toward Payton—“grabs you!”

  Payton felt like her heart was going to thud out of her chest. She took a deep breath and tried to get ahold of herself. “Stop! You can’t startle me like that. Not up here.”

  Marley looked at her, then grinned. “Hey, you’re really scared, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t like heights. Don’t you remember how I wouldn’t go on the Ferris wheel with you at the fair?” She had intended to go on the ride and had even stood in line with Marley, but had chickened out at the last minute.

  “That’s right. You stayed on the ground and just waved at me,” Marley said. “Well, there’s no reason to be scared up here. I’m sure this factory has safety regulations. I’m sure it’s safe to run.” She did a quick sprint down the catwalk, then ran back to where Payton was standing. “Or to jump up and down.”

  As Marley jumped, Payton could feel the catwalk give way a little. It made a horrible creaking sound. She grabbed on to the railing, afraid she might be sick. “Marley, please stop.”

  Marley laughed. “Why should I stop just because you’re scared? I’m having an awesome time, and I’m sure everything’s super safe.” She looked at a sign reading DON’T LEAN ON THE RAILINGS. “I bet that’s even safe.” She leaned her back against one railing and then propelled herself forward to lean into the one on the opposite side of the walkway.

  The railing wasn’t safe.

  Marley plunged forward and down, disappearing into the rising steam. Payton screamed, but the sound was drowned out by the whirring and grinding of the machinery below.

  Her heart pounding, Payton ran down the stairs to look for her friend. She looked for Marley’s injured body on the floor, but she was nowhere in sight. Payton looked at the steaming vats of sauce being constantly stirred by a giant metal paddle. How hot was that sauce? How deep was the vat? Could a person fall into it and—

  She struggled with even thinking of the word live. But that was what she was asking, wasn’t it? Could a person fall into one of those vats and live?

  In her heart, she wanted to believe it was possible, but her brain told her differently.

  She approached the two nearest vats and tried to sort out the sounds they were making from all the other sounds in the factory. Was it her imagination, or was one of them making a smooth sloshing sound, while the other one sounded more like slosh, thump. Slosh, thump. She stood and listened for a moment until the thumping stopped, maybe because it really did or maybe because it had been her imagination in the first place.

  She didn’t know where Marley was, but there was one thing she did know: If Marley had fallen into one of those vats, there was no way Payton could get her out.

  Maybe if she told Mrs. Crutchfield, somebody could do something. But here, too, her heart and her brain told her something different. She wanted to believe that Marley could be okay, but the facts said otherwise: She had fallen from a good height. The vats of tomato sauce were boiling hot. Several minutes had passed since the accident, which meant it was probably too late.

  Marley could feel a distant ringing in her ears, and her vision narrowed to a pinprick. Her parents’ endless binge-watching of true crime shows told her that she was going into shock. Her mind whirled.

  What if she told Mrs. Crutchfield, but the old woman said it was Payton’s fault for not talking Marley down? Or what if one of her classmates accused Payton of pushing Marley in? Marley was beautiful and popular, it wouldn’t be long before kids started to talk. Maybe they’d think Payton was jealous, and there had been no one there to see it beside Payton herself. As if a switch had flipped on, Payton felt herself going into self-preservation mode. It was too late to save Marley, but maybe she could at least save herself.

  Up ahead, the members of her class were heading toward the exit. If she just fell into line, maybe nobody would notice that she had wandered off for a few minutes.

  She took a deep breath and went to join her classmates.

  As they boarded the bus, Mrs. Crutchfield stood next to the door and checked students’ names off her list. Payton had a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. She walked past Mrs. Crutchfield, boarded the bus, and took the same seat she had sat in on the way to the factory. It was glaringly obvious that the seat next to her was empty.

  After everybody else had taken their seats, Mrs. Crutchfield tottered over toward Payton with a concerned look on her face. “Do you know where Marley is?” Mrs. Crutchfield asked, eyeing the empty seat.

  “No, ma’am,” Payton said. It wasn’t quite a lie. Marley could be in any one of the vats; Payton didn’t know which one.

  Mrs. Crutchfield’s eyes narrowed. “Weren’t the two of you together on the tour?”

  “We were for a while, but then we … got separated,” Payton said. Once again, not really a lie. They got separated when Payton remained on the catwalk and Marley fell from it. “Marley said she thought the tour was boring. Maybe she just bailed and walked home.”

  “Without telling her best friend?” Mrs. Crutchfield asked.

  “Well, you know Marley. She’s pretty independent.”

  Mrs. Crutchfield was silent for a moment. “You have her phone number, I presume?”

  “Yes I do, ma’am.” Payton couldn’t tell if Mrs. Crutchfield was really looking at her suspiciously or if she was just being paranoid.

  Mrs. Crutchfield nodded. “Call her, please.”

  Payton’s hand shook as she took out her phone and pulled up Marley’s name on her contacts list. The phone didn’t ring on Marley’s end, probably because it had been cooked in a vat of tomato sauce.

  Cooked in a vat of tomato sauce. Like Marley.

&nb
sp; Payton had to swallow hard to keep from being sick. “No answer,” she said.

  Mrs. Crutchfield looked like she knew there was something Payton wasn’t telling her. Payton figured Mrs. Crutchfield had been teaching far too long not to know when a kid wasn’t being honest. Finally, thankfully, Mrs. Crutchfield broke eye contact. “Well, I guess I’ll have to alert her parents,” she said.

  She turned and left. Payton was relieved not to feel her penetrating stare anymore.

  But the relief didn’t last. One look at the empty seat beside her was all it took for her panic to return.

  * * *

  When Payton walked into the house, her mom was on the phone. “Oh, here she is,” she said. She held the phone out to Payton. “It’s Marley’s mom. She wants to talk to you.”

  Payton wanted to run, to go somewhere so far away that nobody could ask her any questions. But she held out her hand and took the phone. “Hello?” she said, her voice shaking.

  “Payton, when was the last time you saw Marley?”

  “Uh … she didn’t come home?” Payton already felt like a liar. She knew Marley hadn’t come home.

  “If she had come home, I wouldn’t be calling you!” Marley’s mom’s voice broke into a sob. “I’m sorry. That sounded rude. I’m just really upset.”

  “I know. Me too. Marley’s my best friend.” Payton wiped away a tear. “She sat with me on the bus on the field trip. We got separated on the tour of the factory.”

  Payton winced as she said it, thinking of the moment they got separated: when Payton stayed standing on the catwalk and Marley fell, disappearing into the clouds of steam. She felt guilty talking to Marley’s mom, but not guilty enough to tell the whole truth.

  “Where was she when you last saw her?”

  Payton took a deep breath. Here comes the big lie, she thought. “She was in line behind me when we were looking at the big containers of pizza toppings, but the next time I looked behind me, she was gone. She said she was bored, so I thought maybe she bailed. She’s done it before.”

  “You’re right. That wouldn’t be out of character for Marley,” Marley’s mom said. “Listen, if you remember any detail—any little thing that might help us find her—call me.”

  “I will,” Payton said. She hit END on the phone, sank into an armchair, and sobbed.

  Her mom appeared with a box of tissues and a glass of ice water. “Here, drink some water. It’s easy to get dehydrated when you’re upset.”

  Marley accepted some tissues and the glass of water, but her throat was so choked up it was hard to swallow.

  “So she was just there behind you and then she was gone?” Mom asked.

  Payton nodded.

  Her mom sat down on the couch. “You don’t think somebody could have … taken her, do you?”

  “I don’t think so,” Payton said. “I mean, I didn’t see anybody else around.”

  “I don’t think so either, not when I’m being rational anyway. It’s just that you see so much crazy stuff on the news nowadays, it’s hard not to be paranoid,” her mom said. “Gina—Marley’s mom—said they’ve already called the police, but Marley hasn’t been gone long enough to be declared officially missing. I imagine the police will question everybody who works at the factory to make sure there weren’t any creeps lurking around.”

  Payton hoped nobody at the factory would get in trouble over Marley’s disappearance. She felt a tug at her conscience telling her to come clean, but she had already lied to so many people today—Mrs. Crutchfield, Marley’s mom, her own mom—that it was hard to imagine backtracking and telling the truth. If she was afraid of getting into trouble because she and Marley snuck off, it was nothing compared to the trouble she’d be in now.

  “I think I’m still in shock,” Payton said. This statement, at least, was wholly true.

  Her mom reached out and patted her arm. “Of course you are. I’m upset, too.”

  “But you don’t even like Marley.”

  “I don’t dislike her. I just don’t think she always makes the best choices,” her mom said. “And I’m devastated for Gina. This situation is every parent’s worst nightmare.”

  Payton thought about the pain Marley’s parents and little brother must be in. But would the pain be lessened if Payton told the truth? At least if they had no clue about Marley, they could still hold out some hope. “I think I need to go for a walk. Try to clear my head a little,” Payton said.

  Her mom reached out, grabbed Payton’s hand, and squeezed it tight. “Given what’s happened with Marley, I’m kind of afraid to let you out of my sight.”

  Payton needed to get out of the house and have a few minutes in which she didn’t have to think frantically about what to say and what not to say. “I’m just going to walk around the block, Mom. Like I do almost every day.”

  Her mom let go of her hand. “Okay. But don’t be gone long.”

  As soon as Payton was out the door, she took big gulps of fresh air to try to calm herself. Maybe Marley didn’t really fall in the vat, she told herself. Maybe Marley was okay. Maybe she had fallen, then gotten right up and walked off and just hadn’t made it back home yet.

  But deep down, Payton knew Marley wasn’t okay. Even if she had missed one of the vats, you couldn’t fall from a height like that and be okay. At best, you’d have multiple broken bones. At worst …

  Payton took another deep breath. She knew what the worst-case scenario was, and she was pretty sure it had been Marley’s fate.

  Payton walked around the block, taking deep breaths and trying to shake the tension out of her arms. She probably looked like a crazy person, but she didn’t care. Maybe she was a crazy person. Or maybe she was turning into one. At some point, if she kept on telling lie after lie, would she be unable to distinguish lies from the truth?

  She stopped at the corner of Brook and Branch where she had met Marley the week before. It had been such a normal night: an ice-cream cone, some whispering about boys, a walk to the duck pond. It all seemed so innocent and simple. It felt like those things had happened a lifetime ago.

  But that had been Before, and now it was After. There was no way to bring the time Before back, so she kept on walking.

  She walked past the houses and yards she walked past every day. Everything looked the same, but it wasn’t and would never be again.

  “Hey, Payton,” a voice called as she neared her house.

  Payton looked in the direction of the voice. Abigail was sitting in a wicker chair on her porch with a book in her lap and a glass of lemonade on the table beside her. As always, her mousy-brown hair was pulled back in a careless ponytail, and her glasses had slipped down on her nose. She was wearing yoga pants and a T-shirt that said SHH … I’M READING. She looked comfortable but also lonely somehow.

  “Hey, Abigail.” Usually Payton just said hey and kept on walking. Today she stopped. “What are you reading?”

  Abigail looked a little surprised that Payton was engaging her in conversation. “Oh. It’s just a mystery. It’s about this girl who goes missing. It’s pretty good.”

  A missing girl. Great, Payton thought.

  “You know … I don’t read as much as I used to,” Payton said.

  When Payton and Abigail had been friends, they swapped books back and forth all the time. They had read together and talked about what they were reading. They had been a two-girl book club. But when the friendship with Marley started, there was so much real-life drama and intrigue that there had been no time for books. “Maybe,” Payton said, “you could recommend some good ones to me. I miss … I miss reading.”

  She had almost said I miss you but stopped herself. It was true, though. She did miss Abigail. She had only just realized it. While the other girls Payton knew had changed a lot when they started high school, worrying about makeup and clothes and what other people thought of them, Abigail seemed the same as she ever was. It was kind of nice.

  “Say …” Abigail set her book down on the table. “Would yo
u like a glass of lemonade?”

  Suddenly Payton realized she was very thirsty. “Yeah, a glass of lemonade would be great.”

  Abigail stood. “I’ll be right back.” She disappeared into the house.

  She came back with a tall, sweating glass. Jack, her fat Siamese cat, followed her out the front door, rubbing against her legs. “You can come up on the porch,” she said.

  “Thanks.”

  Payton climbed the steps to the porch and accepted the glass of lemonade from Abigail. Jack butted Payton’s legs with his head and she bent down to pet him.

  “You remember Jack,” Abigail said.

  “Of course I remember Jack,” Payton said, petting him under his chin. “He’s unforgettable. I remember when he was a tiny kitten, but he’s a big boy now.”

  “A big, fat boy,” Abigail said. “But he still thinks he’s a tiny kitten. Would you like to sit down?” The time they had spent apart was making their meeting strangely formal, like two people who had just met and were being careful not to offend each other.

  “Sure. Thanks.” Payton sat and sipped her lemonade. It was cold and tart and bracing, the way she liked it.

  “I’m sorry about Marley,” Abigail said.

  “You know about that?” Payton said. The high school gossip machine worked fast, apparently.

  “It was all over school this afternoon,” Abigail said. “People said that when the bus came back from the home ec field trip, Marley wasn’t on it.”

  “Yeah,” Payton said. “It’s weird. We were touring the factory, and it was like she was just there, and then she wasn’t.” She didn’t want to lie to Abigail now that they had just started talking again, so she decided to stick to statements that were technically the truth.

  Abigail nodded. “You know, I’ve never really liked Marley, but I wouldn’t want something bad to happen to her. And that’s what people are saying … that something bad happened. This afternoon somebody said that one of the kids on the field trip said they heard a scream.”

  Payton swallowed hard. Had Marley screamed as she fell? And if so, would it have been possible for someone to hear her over the noise of the factory’s machinery? Everything that happened surrounding the accident was such a blur. Payton could remember rejoining the group, mindlessly filling out her pizza order card and turning it in, then sitting on the bus next to a conspicuously empty seat. The whole experience was as hazy in her mind as a dream.