POPSICLE MAN 1.0
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Ignition.
CHAPTER EIGHT
SOPHIE AND MR. PUGLISI
THE DAY MY FATHER DISAPPEARED, ESSAY #2
I slid it across the desk and Mr. Puglisi read it out loud.
Officer Goethe was holding my arm, trying to pull me up. The nurse was gone. I was half conscious. I had something tucked under my arm. It was a magazine, thin and glossy, with pictures of a robot. It fell to the floor. My father grabbed it, pushed the officer away, and scooped me into his arms. He hurried out into the parking lot, laying me in the backseat. I woke up halfway home, dazed. My father pulled over and ran into a store for an ice cream pulling the wrapper off with his teeth as he maneuvered through traffic. “Here, honey, this will get you going.” I didn’t want the ice cream but held it as it began to melt down my fingers and pool on the floor mat. I set the stick in the center of the mess.
“You okay, Soph?” he asked.
“I am okay,” I answered. It was like my voice was coming from outside of me.
“In a year, you’ll be eighteen,” he kept saying.
* * *
In the kitchen, Trish was rewarming dinner. “You’re late. Where were you?”
I stumbled past her, sick, too tired to explain. Halfway up the stairs, my mother and father were already arguing. Something slammed. I stood in front of my room, hand on the doorknob, and then went down to Old Spice’s. The light was off.
“Hey, are you awake?”
O.S. sat up and yawned.
“Sort of.”
I stood in front of the bed. Ugly words came through the floorboards. “Why don’t you bring her a dozen roses?” Trish yelled. “With an elderly woman? What are you, sick?”
“She did it!” he kept saying. “It came back with her! Do you understand what that means?”
Doors slammed. A bottle broke.
“Are you okay?” O.S. asked.
I nodded, fingers massaging my forearm where the injection had gone in. There was a bump that ached and itched at the same time.
“Move over.”
I climbed onto the bed, knocking a stack of comics to the floor. We curled up together, something we hadn’t done since we were little.
“Remember when we used to take our blankets and pillows and sleep in the bathtub?”
“Yeah, I remember,” he said sleepily. “You used to make me lie at the drain end. The water dripped on my forehead all night.”
“Yeah, sorry about that,” I said.
O.S. giggled and then got quiet. In a while, he started to snore. I pulled the blanket around him tighter and, as I did, noticed his elbow. Just beneath the cuff of his pajamas he had a scar, a small red bump in the exact same spot as mine.
“You think your brother had this… happen to him as well?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I just remembered it.”
“There’s more here. Should I keep reading?”
“It’s not from that day.”
“This is before you went to the lab?”
I nodded. “It’s the week before. I know I was only supposed to write about that day, but I thought…”
“It’s okay, Sophie,” Mr. Puglisi said. “You did the right thing.”
“Maybe not,” I said, and he started to read again.
My dog, Twinkle, was sick. She wouldn’t run or play or eat. She wouldn’t chase a ball. Twinkle just lay on her side and looked up with wet yellow eyes. Even when she saw me, her tail barely moved. I begged my father to bring Twinkle to the vet. He kept saying “If Twinkle’s not better by tomorrow, we’ll go.”
The next day, I came home earlier than usual. I slammed my books on the counter and opened the door to the pantry. Twinkle was lying on her side, the black circle on her belly moving shallowly with her breath. She stared at my sneaker while my father injected something into her leg.
I stood with my mouth open. My father looked up.
“I’m giving her medicine.”
“Did the vet say it will it make her better?”
“I hope so, honey.”
A few hours later, Twinkle died. My father held my hand, and we had a ceremony, burying Twinkle in the backyard. I wanted to look in the box one last time, to say goodbye, but my father wouldn’t let me. “You’ll just get upset.”
That night I tiptoed downstairs, knowing my father was going to the lab first thing. I wanted to get my soccer gear from the trunk. The car smelled funny. None of my gear was in there, but the trunk was full. Next to a bunch of lab equipment was a heavy black plastic bag labeled Sample #12—Canis Control Group.
Mr. Puglisi paled. He cleared his throat while I stared at the new poster on his wall. It was a picture of a shy little Depressionera boy holding out a single rose. Underneath it said I Wuv You.
“Why don’t we play a little game,” he said. “You want to?”
I pictured us playing Twister. I pictured us playing Scrabble. I pictured us playing Texas Hold ’Em.
“Not so much.”
“Let’s do it anyway.” He coughed and got his pencil ready. “I’m going to ask you a question, and I want you to answer the first thing that comes to mind.”
“Like Rorschach without the blots.”
“Correct,” he said. “No blots. So what are you thinking right now?”
“I’m thinking about how excellent it would be if I had a pet rat named Boris.”
He wrote it down. “What are you thinking about now?”
“I’m thinking about how excellent it would be if I had a thousand-gallon aquarium filled with doubloons and mermen.”
He wrote it down. “What are you thinking about now?”
“I’m thinking about how excellent it would be if I had a giant drill-car that could bore its way to the center of the earth.”
He took note after note, scratching away.
“Who do you think The Nurse is, really?”
“I have no idea.”
“A representation of your mother, perhaps?”
“Representation?”
“Injections, needles, sharp objects,” he said, “are all very common symbols.”
“Symbols for what?”
He took a long time to clear his throat.
“I think you should return to this lab. Like, maybe today.”
I tried not to shiver. And then did. “Why?”
“To look around. To have some closure.”
“They don’t even use closure in Renée Zellweger movies anymore. It doesn’t mean anything.”
Mr. Puglisi church-steepled his fingers under his chin. “We need to find out what happened to your father, Sophie. That’s the first step toward a resolution.”
“How? I can’t just flip a magic switch and make it happen.”
“That’s what I’m here for, Sophie,” Mr. Puglisi said. “So that we can find that switch and flip it together.”
I considered the possibility that what he just said wasn’t complete horseshit. The odds were poor. I held up his last detention slip. “Okay, since we’re on the same team and all, do I still have to go?”
“You still have to go.”
CHAPTER NINE
SOPHIE BLUE
WELCOME TO THE TIKI LOUNGE
I walked from Mr. Puglisi’s office to detention down in the old science room. The door was closed, but Coach Dhushbak waved me in, one eye over the edge of his magazine, pretending not to stare. I sat in back. Coach Dhushbak blew his whistle, a quick chirp, and pointed to the desk closest to him. I rolled my eyes and got up and took a seat in the first row, but not the one he’d pointed to. There was a poster behind him of this
clean-cut kid who was supposed to look like a troublemaker, with a boom box and a wallet chain and skateboard. Underneath it said If Jimmy Had a Brain, He’d Be Dangerous.
Coach Dhushbak twee’d his whistle. “No staring at the poster.”
I pulled out my notebook and drew Coach Dhushbak stuffing himself into a wheat thresher. Chunky coach-parts came flying out the back, helping fertilize crops. Bryce Ballar sat on the other side of the room. He said something under his breath that sounded a whole lot like “rest rube.”
“Quiet,” Coach Dhushbak snapped.
“But, Coach, I totally saw Gothika staring at my junk!”
“Shut it, Ballar.”
Bryce Ballar winked, showing his gums, which were impacted with cookie dough. The acne on his forehead was red and angry-looking.
“Hey, Coach, can you turn down the heat?”
“The heat’s not on, Ballar, but it will be if one more word squeaks out your cakehole.”
“What a tool!” Bryce said into his palm, pretending it was a cough.
“What’s that, Ballar?”
“Nothin’ Coach. Scratchy throat.”
It was unbearably hot. A fly strafed the middle desks, making pass after pass. The sound of teachers locking up their classrooms echoed down the hallway. A tall janitor with orangey hair peeked in, frowned, and disappeared.
I looked at the clock. It was four fifteen. I drew a clown juggling skulls. When I looked at the clock again, it was four ten. I made the skulls on fire. Then it was four on the dot. The clock was moving backward. I looked again and the clock had no numbers. Where the twelve had been, it just said Now. Same with the three, five, and seven. Now, now, now. I blinked. Everything was like a bad video, shaky and Zapruderish. There was a low, insistent buzz. I looked at Coach Dhushbak, but he was locked in place. The page of his magazine was suspended midflip. His can of Sour White was half knocked over, the fizzy liquid sticking out in a little frozen wave.
Bryce Ballar was frozen, too, his mouth wide open. A piece of gum hovered between his teeth. I stood and snapped my fingers in front of him. Nothing. I leaned over, just an inch from his ham-hock face. Even with no breath, his breath stank. I flicked his gum with my pinkie. It rolled away, across the floor, but his mouth stayed open.
There was a tap.
On my shoulder.
I collapsed like an ironing board, just managing to grab the corner of the desk.
She was in a white uniform. In white shoes and white stockings. In a tiny white skirt. I knew it was her, even though she was totally different. She was hot. She was a sex bomb, with long blond hair and curve after curve after curve.
The Nurse was standing on a desk, with a perfect icy smile, one hand on her hip, the other holding a dog. Petting it. It was my dog. Twinkle. I could see the black circle on her belly that I used to trace with my finger.
The Nurse’s body blinked, like a television getting bad reception. In. Out. In. She opened her mouth, but there was no sound. Twinkle yipped. The Nurse pointed to her watch. Your birthday.
“What?”
She made a sound, a tiny wheeze of static, like exhaling dust. She reached out, as if turning a dial.
“Happy birthday!” she said, clearer. There was huge white cake in front of her, with candles burning.
“How are you even here?”
“I’m The Nurse,” she said, pointing to a badge on her white cloak that said ROSE FADE, NURSE ON DUTY.
“Rose Fade?”
“It’s pronounced Fa-Day,” she said. “What, you don’t remember?”
I was about to answer, but Rose Fade held up her hand. For a second she wavered, bad reception, her teeth no longer blindingly white. They were actually kind of brown. The same color as her eyes, which were dark and angry.
“We know now what you brought back out.”
“Brought out of where?”
“They all thought it would be a device. All the techs said it was probably something electronic.”
“Device?”
“We’ve been through your house a dozen times. It must be here, it must be there. But you were clever. Hiding the code in drawings. Very clever.”
“What are you talking about?”
Rose Fade held up three fingers, lowering them one at a time.
“One, all roads lead to the lab. Two, O.S. does not stand for Old Spice.” She lowered the last finger, which left the middle one pointing at me.
“Three, I want my picture book.”
“What picture book?”
Her lip curled into a sneer. “The one your father stole. La Nutrika.”
I looked back at the desk where my drawings sat. “You mean my sketch pad?”
“Tomorrow you’ll be eighteen,” she said. “Ignition. Come to the lab with La Nutrika, and as a birthday present I’ll tell you what happened to Albert.”
My entire body hummed. The hard part of being terrified, I thought, was what you did with the fear afterward. Who you were afterward. I am different now. Sophie Mach II. I have officially had a discussion with someone who’s not really there. It was a whole new line to cross. This wasn’t ride-your-ten-speed-down-a-flight-of-stairs crazy. It wasn’t jump-out-of-a-plane-dressed-as-Elvis crazy. This was electroshock and oatmeal. This was meds under the tongue and plastic pee-pants and bored orderlies. And I was pretty sure there was no going back.
“I already know what happened to my father,” I said, bluffing.
“Is that right?”
“He was killed by the Popsicle Man.”
Rose Fade laughed. She leaned back and let out a dry wheeze, dust rising from her throat. “That’s not possible.”
“Why not?”
“Because your father is the Popsicle Man.”
Numbers rushed into my head, thousands of them, in long chains, like water being forced into my ears, swirling around. I held my temples, pressing down, suddenly completely nauseated.
“I can’t… he can’t…”
Rose started to fade. In. Out. In.
“Welcome back to the Virtuality.”
I squeezed my head harder.
Out. In. Out.
Out. Out. Out.
She was gone.
The buzzing sound stopped. Bryce Ballar’s mouth crashed shut. “Ouch! Shit!” he yelled, holding his jaw, testing his front teeth. Coach Dhushbak’s neck snapped back. His whistle got stuck mid-twee. He saw me in the middle of the aisle. “What in Christ, Gothika?”
His magazine page was still standing at attention. I watched as it slowly began to bend and fall. I watched as his soda became liquid and spilled across the magazine and into his lap.
“Standing without permission!” Coach Dhushbak said, slapping at the wet spot on his pants. He handed me a new detention slip.
“Great,” I said gulping for air. “Thanks.”
“One day you will thank me,” he said. “One day, when…”
There was a sound outside, a backfiring, like a series of gunshots. An engine whined like it was about to explode. Bryce Ballar and Coach Dhushbak went to the window to see.
“Hey, Columbine-a, you got a quarter?” Bryce Ballar started to say. “I want to buy a chocolate—”
The Popsicle truck came smashing through the window frame, shattering glass. The massive engine barreled over desks and chairs, whining and growling and drooling.
“Daddy?”
The truck slid sideways, revving its engine. The clown music came on with a jangling that sounded like laughter. There was a high-pitched whine as its wheels spun in a patch of burning rubber, before it released the brake and crushed me against the chalkboard.
CHAPTER TEN
SOPHIE AND LAKE
AS YOUR LEGGY SCANDINAVIAN MODEL PERSONA BUBBLES TO THE SURFACE
Sophie: “Oh, my God, you have to come over.”
Lake: “Why, what’s wrong? What’s going on?”
Sophie: “What’s going on? What is… I just… you wouldn’t believe—”
Lake: “Okay,
calm down. Take a—”
Sophie: “I’m not kidding, Lake. Get Herb out of bed. I feel like I’m about to lose—”
Lake: “But I can’t just—”
Sophie: “Yes, you can.”
Lake (after a long pause): “What about Trish?”
Sophie: “What about her?”
Lake: “Okay, okay, relax, I’ll be there soon.”
Click.
I guzzled two Diet Cranks, and they actually calmed me. I took deep breaths until I felt light-headed, then I did a drawing of Sasquatch, eating a hoagie. The Popsicle truck hadn’t squealed around the corner for at least an hour. Or had it? No. Okay. It must have gone on break. He must have slammed the brakes. It was Dad? No way. It had to be a trick. The Nurse was a trick. The Nurse was a tick. I almost laughed, pacing between my bed and the wall.
It couldn’t be him. I needed to not think. I needed to think of something else. Was that a sound? Was that jangling outside? I drew a guy with perfect teeth holding an armload of different toothpaste tubes. Underneath I wrote Advertising: It Helps Me Decide. I wondered if it was funny. I tore up the drawing. I wondered why there wasn’t a short word for freezer, like fridge. Reezer? Frez?
You’re losing it you’re losing it you’re losing it.
I jumped up and down for ten minutes, until Trish started tossing shoes.
I lay down with a pillow over my head. I flipped onto my left side and then my right.
What’s taking Lake so long?
I thought about how she handled everything so much better than I did. Especially since fifteen minutes ago she was this fluffy blond cheerleader every guy in school was all trembly about and every girl was maxing mom’s Visa to be just like.
“Oh, Lake, do you want to come out with Conner, Brad, and Tim for sushi?”
“Oh, Lake, do you want to come out with Mitch, Reed, and Billy for skeet shooting?”
“Oh, Lake, do you want to come out with Kirsty, Gwen, and Kirsty to a musical about Princess Di?”
Back then, Lake wouldn’t have looked in my direction if I was en fuego and she was holding a perfume extinguisher. But then at a football game she fell from the top of the cheerleader pyramid, jazz hands all the way down.
Fade to Blue Page 4