by Sarah Cannon
Snooks is amazingly fast for a pajama sack of rabbit parts. I was afraid I’d have to carry him, and instead I have to run to keep up. As we begin flashing past shelves full of groceries, zombie rabbits cackle and store employees curse. Stock comes crashing down from the big steel shelves.
Snooks looks back at me, worried. “Emergency, right? I told them to make lots of trouble, make people with name tags cry. Good?”
“Good,” I pant. “Snooks, do you know a good way to get out?”
“Away from the crying,” he counsels. I wish he would be a bit more specific.
Sugar appears in front of us, ears vibrating and teeth biting his chin in nervousness. He waves his stubby arms at us frantically, and dashes away between shelves. I hope he’s beckoning and not waving us off, because I’m following him.
There’s a huge commotion going on in the center of the stockroom. Forget marshmallows. I am making these weirdos some S’MORES, because I have a totally clean shot toward wherever Sugar is taking me, which, as far as I can tell, is … uh-oh.
Seriously?
Into the dark, gaping mouth of the conveyor belt.
He’s right to do it, I know that. But I can’t shake the idea that things are alive in there, and given the big rubbery hand that lives in the freezer case, I don’t think that’s completely out of the realm of possibility. Imagine every time you ever thought someone was going to reach out from under your bed and grab you. Now imagine a tunnel full of those hands, because that’s what I’m picturing.
Behind me, I hear a sound so horrible that at first I don’t understand who’s making it. Then I turn to look, and Greeley, roaring, is coming at me across the stockroom like a silverback gorilla in full charge. His big white teeth are bared. As he comes, he rips a metal support from the wreckage of a toppled shelf.
That’s all the encouragement I need. I leap up onto the conveyor belt.
“WAH!” yells Snooks, looking back over my shoulder, and I lunge forward just in time. The shelf leg crashes down on the belt behind me. I scramble after the rabbits into the conveyor tunnel’s lightless maw, and a moment later the leg whispers through the dank air, grazing the top of my head as it goes by. I cry out. When I check my head, it’s wet with blood.
Behind me, Greeley howls with laughter.
“Have fun in there, kid!” Then he yells something in a language I don’t understand, and laughs some more. It frightens me more than anything else that has happened so far. If he thinks my exit strategy is good news, that’s very very bad news for me.
Even so, at first I think I’m in luck, because the belt is turned on, so we’re practically flying, like we’re running on the moving walkways at the airport, only with crawling and desperation.
Then snickers and gibbers begin to echo off the walls, and worse, there are places where there is no echo, and that means those are openings.
Something grabs my leg. I lose my balance and land on my stomach, spread-eagled on the conveyor belt. Whatever’s got me yanks me backward, and I scream, grabbing for the edges of the belt, which scrape my fingers. I hang on for dear life, but the hand is so strong. Its nails cut into my leg through my pants, and I feel a hot trickling of blood down my leg. I can’t let go to fight, or it will drag me down, down underneath to where the conveyor machinery churns, Morlock-style. I don’t understand how it’s keeping its hold on me, because the belt is still moving.
Another rough yank drags me backward, and the friction where my hands are gripping the edges of the belt cuts my fingers. I scream again, and a deep, feminine voice chuckles below me.
“Snooks! Help!” I yell, not knowing what exactly I expect him to do, only that it has to be him, because there’s no one else.
Pattering feet are coming my way, and I call again, desperate now, because the hand has switched from yanking to a slow, playful drag, increasing in intensity until I’m being stretched like a rubber band. It goes slack suddenly, and I hold my breath, but it doesn’t let go, and starts making sharp, rhythmic pulls accompanied by giggles. It’s playing with its food, I think, feeling sick.
There’s a shrill war cry, and Sugar leaps over my arm and rushes toward my feet. From the noises he’s making, he’s biting whatever’s got me, but I’m having a hard time believing those baby teeth of his are going to do any good. Snooks is crouched by my face, and whatever he’s saying, it sounds urgent.
“… find something sharp, be right back, you stay put. Okay?”
Finally, my mind makes sense of his words, and I struggle to answer before he bounces off and vanishes.
“Snooks. Snooks! I have something sharp. I have a knife in my pocket. Get it!”
There’s another yank that just about takes my leg off. I scream again, but the light at the end of this nightmare carnival ride is getting brighter. I can see the plastic strips that hang down across the entrance. I squeeze the belt despite the pain blossoming in my hands.
“Which pocket? This one?”
“No. Other side. Snooks, please hurry!”
The Oddity Bodkin slides from my pocket. “Ooh, shiny,” says Snooks admiringly, then he’s gone. A moment later, there’s a bloodcurdling, gurgling scream, and the hand slides abruptly from my leg. I drag myself forward and turn to look over my shoulder. In the growing light, I see a big blue arm slide down the conveyor belt and off. Snooks leaps lightly from its wrist back up onto the belt, and stabs the hand once before it vanishes, for good measure. Sugar kicks it as it goes.
“Good! You go away and you like it! Your person is foul!” he shrieks.
Snooks cheers approval, brandishing the knife. The blood on it might be smoking a little bit. I take it back, wiping it on the conveyor belt, but keeping it out and ready. I pull my legs in to keep them as far from the edge as possible.
“You guys…” I wheeze a little as the plastic strips slide across my face and we roll out into the slanting evening sun. “You guys, thanks. Thank you.”
Snooks shrugs. “I get the bathroom first,” he says, and hops down onto the asphalt.
Figures.
Did Greeley see my face? I don’t think so. First I was facing away from him. When I looked back, I had my hat pulled down. Then I remember a little wrinkle. A wrinkly little wrinkle.
“Hey, Sugar, remember that Dewey kid that was working up front? He knows who I am.”
Sugar snickers. “You sure?”
I remember shoving my hair back out of my face and telling that little worm I’m my daddy’s girl.
“Yeah, I’m really sure.”
“Heeee’s not,” says Snooks in a cheery little singsong.
I frown, slithering down off the belt to crouch against the side of the building. I look Snooks in his wide, creepy little eyes.
“What did you do?”
“We asked if he remembered you, and he said yes. We told him the answer was no, but he kept forgetting. So we jogged his memory.”
“On the head! With a can of pineapple juice!” says Sugar, puffing up with pride.
Snooks nods. “We had to jog it a couple of times. But he remembers not to remember you now.”
I have got to install a second lock on my bedroom door.
Snooks and Sugar head straight back into the store through the conveyor belt. I limp through the parking lot, car to car, and make my way across the street and behind Bodega Bodega. Cayden’s there, but Xerple isn’t. He must still be wreaking havoc with the zombie rabbits. I’ve never been so glad to see Cayden, but—
“Where’s Raymond?” I ask.
“Here,” he growls, ducking down behind me. He’s got a cut on his forehead, and his hair’s all wild. He takes a good look at me, pulls a tiny first aid kit from his backpack, and starts roughly doctoring my cut-up leg. I roll up my bloody, shredded pants as well as I can, and wince at the nasty cuts in my calf from the blue arm’s fingernails.
“Did the cameras get us?” I ask, sweating from the deep sting of the disinfectant.
He scowls. “Not when I was don
e with them, they didn’t. It’ll be days until they find the mess I made so they can fix it.” Woe to anyone who ever thinks Raymond is hired muscle and nothing more. He’s the Swiss Army knife of friends. He’s smart and he’s tough.
And he’s furious.
Chapter 19
Who’s Fooling Who?
It’s late in the day for visible heat waves, but I’m pretty sure I see them rising off Raymond. He watched the cameras before he sabotaged them, so he knows perfectly well what happened to me in the store.
We snuck to the outskirts of town as fast as we could go with me limping, but I’m seriously worried that we should have gone our separate ways and done everything in our power to look like we’d been home all afternoon. Instead, we skulk our way over a ridge and into the nearest sagebrush.
“Bets is going to kill me if I don’t come home,” I say.
Raymond scowls, and I can practically hear him saying Greeley almost killed you. If he says it out loud, I’m going to grab an ocotillo branch and beat him within an inch of his life. But all he says is, “Maybe she won’t find out.”
I bulge my eyes at him. “What are you talking about? In a few minutes, it’s going to be pretty obvious.”
“You can pull the sleepover trick,” he says.
“Oh my gosh, Raymond, that’s the oldest trick in the book! You know she’ll check up on me, and your mom and Jefa won’t lie to her.”
Cayden looks scared to death to be out here, which goes to show he can get smarter if he tries, but he also looks like he has a plan. It’s an interesting combination.
“I know Bets won’t believe you’re at Raymond’s,” he says, “but I bet she’d believe you were at my house. We haven’t known each other long enough to get in much trouble together yet.”
“You lit me on fire,” says Raymond.
There’s a brief silence.
“Cayden, my aunt is diabolically smart. She is going to call your parents.”
Cayden pulls out his cell and checks the display. “Huh. Full bars.” I assume he means real ones, not heinous snacks. He frowns for a second then shakes his head a little and dials. I can hear his mother’s ridiculously happy greeting from here.
“Hey, Mom. No, we’re out for a walk. I won’t get dehydrated. Yes, I brought Signal Boost. Red. Hey, I wanted to tell you that Raymond and Ada and I are going to be down in the basement until really late. We downloaded a new Minecraft modpack, and we’re going to have a marathon. Yeah, hopefully … the Wi-Fi was working yesterday, but not this morning. That’s okay, Mom. I know you guys are trying. Listen, I promise we’ll be quiet. Is it okay if they stay over? Okay. Cool. But don’t come down or anything, please? It’s embarrassing. Okay. Okay.” He looks at us, cups his hand, and mutters, “I love you, too. Bye.”
“Cayden, this doesn’t solve our problem at all. She’s never going to keep that promise. She’ll be down there every five minutes, offering us Full Bars.”
He shifts around, opening and closing his mouth several times. Finally, he says, “Look, I don’t know what’s in Signal Boost, but my mom and dad have started literally collapsing in the middle of whatever they’re doing at eight thirty every night. I had to lie and tell them they’ve always gone to bed at eight, because one night my dad was walking around when he passed out, and he fell down the stairs. I’m seriously ready to buy them crash helmets. Get your aunt to call them before eight, and we’re in the clear until morning. That leaves plenty of time to figure out how to handle this.”
My aunt is no fool. This is going to take some doing. I pull out my own phone. Figures I’d have less bars than Cayden. Freaking Splint.
“Hey, Aunt Bets?”
“Where are you, young lady?” Uh-oh. I think fast.
“I’m over at, um, Eunice’s place.”
“Oh.” Aunt Bets sounds surprised. Jackpot. “That’s nice. You and Eunice used to be such good friends. Is her mother home?”
“No, just her invisible dad.” Parents never want to come right out and call Eunice a liar about that.
“Well … that’s nice of you, to spend some time with her.” I can tell Aunt Bets is picturing me carefully pretending Eunice’s dad exists all afternoon.
“Yeah, well. She really likes Cayden.” I figure I’m skating a fine line here. If I sound too nice and helpful, it will make Aunt Bets suspicious. Cayden’s raising his eyebrows at me, but I just shrug. Aunt Bets is snickering, which is an amazingly good sign.
“Well, he’s a nice boy. Nice-looking, too.”
“Bets! Stop that!” I mean it.
“Hey, you can’t say you haven’t noticed. That boy’s got style like this town hasn’t seen before.”
“RaymondandIarestayingovertheretonightifthat’sokaybecauseit’sokaywithhisparents.”
“I’m sorry, what? You find Cayden adorable?”
“NO I DO NOT. We. Are staying. Over. There. Tonight.”
“With Eunice?”
“No, not with Eunice. Her invisible dad said no.”
“All right. I’ll check in with Cayden’s folks.…” She pauses threateningly, to see if I’ll cave, but getting around her has helped me make guile an art form.
“Okay, cool,” I say. “Don’t bother bringing snacks over. They’re really into these Full Bars they get from Greeley’s, and they’re all excited to share them.”
Aunt Bets gnars into the phone, just a bit. I grumble back at her, because I really do share her contempt for people who don’t know the difference between factory food and fresh baked.
“Well, I guess it’ll just be your daddy and Mason tonight.”
I’m surprised. “Why? Where will you be?”
“Oh, Badri had some ideas about increasing efficiency at the bakery. I figured I’d hear him out.”
As I hang up, I wonder, Who is fooling who, here?
We reach the area where we planned to meet if we got separated. It’s far enough away from town that we won’t be easily found, and scrubby enough to give us plenty of places to hide if we need to. I whip off my trashed-out baggy brown shirt and pants, revealing the light blue tee and black bike shorts I had on underneath. Thankfully, my locket’s still safely around my neck.
I hide my dad’s gear under a tan canvas tarp I stashed out here ahead of time. I kick up sand around the edges to make it blend in, and weigh it down with a few rocks. I’ll be back for it later. Hopefully.
I pick a different spot to cache our brown clothes and ball caps. My Nopes post about Greeley’s is going to explode some heads, and if any of the Nopesers want verification, I can send them here.
Raymond gets his uniform caught on a chia bush as he’s bringing it to me. He yanks it free with a growl, and I hear something rip. He pitches the bundle to me, hard. I chalk it up to stress and hide his stuff, but when we circle half the town and he’s still growling like an aggravated honey badger, I get fed up.
“If you need to talk about your feelings, Raymond, you should just ask me,” I say.
“And you’ll what? LISTEN?” he says, so loudly his voice squeaks on the last word. That shocks me. I’ve been cackling madly every time the boys’ voices crack, and it makes them cranky. They control their voices around me as much as possible.
I say, “I know things didn’t go quite like we expected—”
“Do you even hear yourself right now?” he says. “Like we expected? Ada, we’re both bloody. We could have been caught and taken home by the cops—and Greeley attacked you!”
“You’re making it sound worse than it was,” I say. “It was a great sneak. We planned it just right.”
Cayden actually grins a bit when I say that, until he catches Raymond shooting him a dirty look. Cayden’s feeling the adrenaline this time, I can tell. He’s finally starting to get why we pull shenanigans.
Raymond doesn’t even slow down.
“If we’d planned it just right, no one would have gotten hurt. What were we thinking, doing something so dangerous?”
That seems unfair.
“We couldn’t have known it would be like that.”
“Then we stink at intel.”
When he says we, I hear you. We all remember whose idea this was, right? I can feel my nostrils flaring, and I know it probably looks ridiculous. “If that’s how you really feel, Ray-mun-do, then maybe you should take another way home.”
He scowls at me in total disbelief. “You know what? Fine.” Then, even though he’s got the whole darn desert to walk in, he pushes past me on his way back toward town.
“I can’t believe him!” I say loudly, in the direction of his departing back. “This ought to be our biggest moment. The best sneak ever.”
“Yeah,” begins Cayden slowly, like maybe he only partly agrees, and I shoot him a glare to make sure he understands that I don’t actually need him to participate in this conversation. He clamps his mouth shut like a smart neighbor boy.
A tumblegeek rolls out of the brush. I glare, and it rolls the other way. I feel like I’m getting some excellent training in being scary today.
Except I’m not so tough, am I? The truth is, there’s a creepy Whanslaw-headed door in Greeley’s freezer, and I was too chicken to try and open it.
Instead, I found out that prying into the Sweepstakes might actually get a person killed. And now Raymond is being totally holier than cow. You know how cows are sacred in India? Yeah, he thinks he’s better than them. Logic dictates that I should do the opposite of what he would do. So I’m in the right, right?
Right.
Except that I’m also freaked out. I don’t understand why anyone would hurt me for trying to find out more about something that’s happy and great. And now I’m on the PC’s radar, even if by radar I mean Dewey, who is likely having technical problems right now. I picture a rainbow spinny wheel over his head.
Cayden’s not beside me anymore. I turn to find he’s climbed a boulder to look around, making a perfect target of himself. I’m trying to decide whether to tell him to get down from there when he stiffens, and squints into the distance.