by Sarah Cannon
“No. They are supposed to buy flat-screen TVs and polar fleece pullovers. I’m supposed to learn about Lewis and Clark, not the body snatchers who returned to Washington in their stead to spread misinformation. We are supposed to have our pizza delivered in thirty minutes, not have thirty minutes to find it before it self-destructs—”
“I thought you enjoyed that—”
“When we talk about politicians being dummies, that’s supposed to be a METAPHOR. It is very suspicious that my parents don’t think anything is wrong.”
“Maybe they just like Oddity.”
“Right. And our new dog.”
Xerple is yawning, and his top lip wraps all the way backward over his head. When his mouth finally shuts, he glances around, spots a bag of coffee beans on the counter, jumps over there, and enthusiastically tips the contents of the bag into his gaping maw. “Mmmmm,” he says, crunching away.
Cayden rubs his forehead. “I have to memorize twenty spelling words of ancient Sumerian origin by Monday morning,” he says with a groan. “Why am I even talking about this?”
As he drifts away muttering, our conversation in the shack replays in my head. He promised me we’d find out what happened to Pearl, but neither of us agreed on how, or how soon. I’ve wasted so much time already. I have to figure this out now.
If only I could make sense of the door in the freezer. Part of me has been worrying away at the problem for hours. I was all the way at the back of Greeley’s, so I don’t see how there could be any more store behind the creepy puppet door. I also can’t imagine how I’m going to get back in there to find out. My eyes start to water.
Cayden returns with a broom and dustpan to clean up the coffee-bean bits Xerple left all over the floor. I wipe my cheeks in a hurry while he’s occupied, and look up at the ceiling to coax the rest of the tears back into my eyes where they belong.
That’s when it finally clicks. It’s like Cayden’s house vanishes, and all I can see is Greeley’s. More important, I can see what’s behind Greeley’s. Havasu Hill.
I turn to Cayden.
“Study over the weekend. Right now, you need to come with me.”
“I already hate this idea,” says Cayden. “Where are we hypothetically going?”
“To spy on Mr. Whanslaw.”
“I’m sorry, did you say you were planning to go get murdered by Mr. Whanslaw?”
He follows me out the back door anyway, locking it behind him while Xerple runs in circles around his feet. The aliens have dispersed, but as we start across the yard toward the street, a rectangle of light appears ahead of us, on my front walk.
“Shhhh!” I whisper, and pull Cayden against the side of his house. An enormous shadow swallows the patch of light, then I hear the front door click shut. A minute later, the dome light in Daddy’s truck comes on as he gets in. His taillights kick on. I watch their red glow travel down our street. He turns, and they vanish as he pulls through the middle of town, then reappear as the truck begins to climb up Havasu Hill.
“Well,” I huff, stepping out onto the grass, “that does not look like working late to me.” I think of all the hemming and hawing Daddy and Aunt Bets have been doing, and shake my head. This stops now.
They ought to know better than to think they can keep secrets from a Roundtree girl.
Chapter 22
Spang in the Middle of It
Daddy doesn’t go all the way up Havasu Hill. And when you’re only halfway up, you’re neither up nor down—you’re at Oddity Middle School.
There are a lot of cars in the lot for this time of night, but it looks like whatever’s going on has already started, because everyone’s inside by the time we get there, and the front doors are locked.
Not a big deal. We all know how to break in, in case we’re ever outflanked and ousted from our own school—which will never happen, obviously, but it’s good knowledge to have all the same. There are rotating security systems inside to keep us from sneaking in to pull pranks on the weekends, or so we’re told. I don’t believe it, any more than I believed Mama and Daddy when they claimed they armed a laser security grid in the stairwell on Christmas Eve to keep us from capturing Santa.
Anyway, any countermeasures would be turned off right now.
We find the right exterior vent cover, the one that’s solid and fake, instead of a complicated double-baffle meant to let air in and keep small invaders out. We still have to crawl through air vents, though.
By the time we let ourselves down on a science lab table, we’re cobwebby and cross, but to my surprise, Cayden’s only puffing a little bit.
“Those safety drills are paying off, Chicago boy!” I say.
He smiles behind that swingy hair.
Voices, amplified by microphones, echo down the empty hallways with their well-buffed floors. They lead us to the cafeteria. We hug the doorway, peering in.
The scorched curtains have all been removed from the stage, though I still detect the twinkle of fire-suppressing powder here and there when I look closely. There are rows of chairs set up on the cafeteria floor with an aisle down the middle. On the stage, at a row of folding tables, sit the members of the WUT, and at their center, presiding over the meeting, is Greeley.
You’d never know he’d been bellowing at me mere hours earlier. He’s as groomed as ever in his turned-up white shirtsleeves. His iron-gray hair gleams under the stage lights. His voice is grandpa-kind as he addresses the big man standing at a microphone in the aisle—my daddy.
“Sir,” Daddy says, “I don’t question my need to serve this community, and show my gratitude to the Protection Committee. But adults make an informed choice to participate in the Sweepstakes. My Pearl—”
I gasp to hear Daddy say her name out loud.
“—is a child. Even if she signed her name like you say, her mother and I did not give her permission, and she couldn’t give informed consent to something like this.”
Greeley holds up a calming hand. “I assure you, the young lady was quite excited to be chosen.”
My daddy rubs a hand over his shaved head, a sure sign he’s trying to keep his temper. “But there’s just no way a child can be as useful.…”
Useful for what?
“The puppets know their needs. Their reasons are not for you to fathom.”
“They are for me to fathom when they involve my child!”
Greeley leans forward, smiling that big, toothy smile of his.
“I suggest you think carefully about that statement. Why, every last person in this town exists at the whim of the Protection Committee. You are alive because of their careful stewardship. So you see, in a larger sense, your daughter is not yours at all. She is part of the Protection Committee’s flock.”
A week ago, when he said flock I’d have thought of the puppets as shepherds.
Now I’m thinking wolves.
Cayden is pulling on my arm. I start to shake him off, and he points. An elderly couple is working their way up the side of the gym toward us, casting worried looks over their shoulders at my daddy. Other people are rustling in their seats as well. No one is used to anyone questioning the Protection Committee. If we don’t get out of here, we’re going to be seen. We ghost our way back down the hall and around the corner; then I have an idea, and freeze.
Cayden looks back at me. “What?”
“Wait here. I need to get something.” I reach for the handle of the door to my left, which leads backstage.
To his credit, he doesn’t look surprised, only resigned. When I ease open the door, he takes the handle and motions me to go. Clever boy. Since I don’t have to baby the door shut and keep the latch from clicking, I’m up the short flight of steps and back in a twinkling.
All I saw of Greeley was the brim of his hat, but my hands are shaking. I press the brown grocery bag full of masks close to me to keep it from rattling, while Cayden shuts the door and slowly lets the latch button rise.
In no time, we’re back in the lab. I boost Cayd
en into the vent and hand the bag up. Then Cayden pulls me up after him. As I army crawl through the ducts, pushing the bag ahead of me, I think about Daddy. I sold him short. He’s trying. It’s not his fault the grown-up way’s not working.
My turn.
* * *
What’s on top of Havasu Hill? A mansion. What’s in the mansion? A bunch of puppets I used to think were heroes. Really, there are only four of them, but four is enough, when they’re so creepy.
“But everything here is creepy,” whispers Cayden, as we prowl closer to our destination.
“What on earth do kids do where you’re from?” I whisper back. “I still just … I don’t even. If you’re not foiling evil plots, what do you do all day?”
“I don’t know. Watch TV. Play video games. Play a little ball outside. Go to the mall.”
“Do the mannequins ever try to take over the mall?”
He sighs, the way I used to when he couldn’t fend off leopards by himself. “No. We buy hot pretzels with cheese sauce instead of curdish substance for Humans Class B. And we shop at Hot Topic, not Sanctioned Slogans.”
“I’m sure it’s great,” I say. I can’t wait to level up to Human Class A. They don’t give those curdish substance. They think Class B violence is partly caused by lactose intolerance.
“What are you expecting to find at Whanslaw’s, anyway?”
I look up at the big Gothic wooden house that overlooks Greeley’s. The one we’re moving toward, when people with sense would be moving away. “I don’t know. But if there’s a tunnel behind that door, and it goes somewhere important, doesn’t it make sense that it would lead here?”
Cayden frowns. “Why, because it has Whanslaw’s face on it? Are you even sure that’s what it was? You said it was dark in the freezer.”
“Believe me, if it happened to you, you’d know,” I say. “Besides, it makes sense. Whanslaw’s the puppet in charge.” Somehow, calling him the head puppet sounds confusing.
“Is he?” Cayden asks. “It always seemed to me like they’re all equal. He doesn’t have any special title or anything.”
“I know. But they all listen to him. The way I’ve always heard it, the first two to take up with the original Greeley were him and Lanchester. And Lanchester definitely does what Whanslaw says. I’ve heard stories that Maggie and Kiyo weren’t even puppets, not at first—Whanslaw made them.”
“Made them … like he made people into puppets?”
“Or put their souls in puppet bodies. I guess it doesn’t make much difference, does it?”
Cayden stops walking.
“Cayden. He’s not going to put you in a puppet body. He only does that for his friends. You, he’ll kill.”
“You need to work on your social interactions, Ada. You are the opposite of reassuring.”
We’re close to his fence now, and should really be quiet. “I’m not trying to be reassuring. I’m trying to keep you on your toes.”
The puppets have the weirdest yard in Oddity. Spang in the middle of a square patch of sandy desert is a picket fence, and inside that is a manicured garden, complete with those bushes pruned into animal shapes, and a lush, emerald-green lawn. They even have IVY. Not the plastic kind old ladies put in pots so it looks like they garden. The real stuff. Sitting in the middle of the Garden of Eden like that, the dark gray house is even more stark. Of course, even the parts where the paint still sticks are gray. Gray house, gray wood, gray everything. But the lights are on. I see Whanslaw’s creepy puppet head bob past one of the lit windows at a slow, measured pace. A blink later, his puppeteer moves past, working the strings.
This house has always loomed in my imagination. After Pearl won the Sweepstakes, I even had a dream in which the front door was a mouth, opening and closing, saying something, though I didn’t know what. Then the door started getting closer, and closer.…
Now I have to think about how to get inside, and my stomach is shaking like it’s trying to jump right out of me. Stalling for time, I work my way around the side of the yard. I figure there won’t be another gate, and we’ll have to get creative about hopping the fence, or else go back around front. But there is a gate, leading away from town, out into nowhere. There are visible drag marks from Whanslaw’s robes, heading off into the desert, and that creeps me out more than anything I’ve seen so far.
The grass begins right at the gate in an abrupt, perfect line. There’s no wear from feet passing back and forth, no withering along the edge. It’s as richly green as sod someone laid yesterday. It has to be fake. Cayden reaches down to touch it, and for a second I reach to stop him, almost believing that alarms will sound and spotlights will glare the second his fingers make contact. But he picks a few blades and brings them up to eye level, and I smell their sharp tang at once. They are unmistakably the real thing.
This makes me not one bit less nervous when I step onto the puppets’ lawn. Explosive mines. Angry and embittered moles. Attack dogs. These are just some of the things potentially awaiting us in the fabulous world of Evil Puppet Garden.
“That should really be a band name,” Cayden mutters. I must have said it out loud.
It’s more like walking across a carpet than a lawn.… An impossibly thick, plushy carpet. It’s beautiful, but also unnatural, like a museum exhibit of a house and yard. I get the feeling that in daylight, I wouldn’t see any living things within this fence. No birds, no armaduinos. No anything.
In the center of the yard, there’s a gazebo, which is almost the strangest thing of all. Nothing stays that white in the New Mexico sun. It’s surrounded by little arrangements of weeping trees and fountains of roses, so we’re seriously, dangerously close before we have a clue there’s someone in the gazebo. Several someones. We drop to the ground behind a bush shaped like a horse as a harsh, familiar female voice begins to speak.
“I don’t know why we’re giving him time to foment rebellion, when we could arrest him now. For all we know, he could be one of these Nopes people.” It’s Kiyo. Now that I know to look, I see her painted face wagging, and her puppeteer standing behind her in a dark suit, like a Secret Service agent. The more suspicious I get of the puppets, the more curious I get about the puppeteers. I look hard at this one, and she doesn’t seem as blurry as usual. Then again, it’s dark out here.
The voice that answers Kiyo has a sort of glub to it, so it must be Lanchester, the fish-headed puppet. “Not time to plot. Time to think. He still has one child left, you know. What will happen to her if he makes a nuisance of himself?” Lanchester’s latest puppeteer has a pinched little mouth. It surprises me. You know how they say people look like their dogs? Lanchester’s puppeteer should have a mouth that bisects his face. I stare at that one, too. It almost looks familiar.…
“Likely his little speech tonight was the end of the matter,” says Lanchester. “Either way, scared is good.”
“It’s never the end of the matter with these people,” says Kiyo. “They’re like devious children.”
Lanchester makes a glubbing noise that causes the braids on my head to prickle up like a chia blossom. He’s laughing. “As if all the town’s children aren’t devious. Whanslaw said one of them was openly insolent during that last school visit.”
Kiyo makes a rude noise. “Well, that’s certainly not my fault! If you recall, I wanted to change the schools to manufacturing facilities running twelve-hour shifts. But no, you and Whanslaw wanted to take advantage of their potential as paramilitary training and indoctrination centers.”
“The children were quite useful during the last armed invasion,” says Lanchester.
“As if children strong enough to run an industrial loom wouldn’t be able to wield weapons effectively,” she snorts. “As it is, you’ve taught them skills they can use against us as well as anybody. Soon they’ll be revolting. More than usual, I mean. I already found them revolting.” She snickers, her wooden chin wagging up and down.
Beside me, Cayden shudders.
“Ah, well, i
t’s not our way to waste a resource,” says Lanchester. “Today’s rebels may be tomorrow’s lackeys. At any rate, if we’re not going to have anyone yanked from their beds tonight, we might as well get some rest ourselves.”
Puppets sleep?
They sway down the steps of the gazebo, puppeteers behind them, and make for the house. We hide in the shadows until the back door closes.
“Who on earth were they talking about?” I ask.
Cayden shifts beside me. “I’ve got a guess, and you’re not going to like it,” he says.
I look at him.
“I think they were talking about your dad.”
He’s right. I don’t like it.
The whole point of being a Nopeser in the first place was to be one step ahead of everyone else, and instead I’m running to keep up. All my dad accomplished tonight was to antagonize the puppets, and they’re monitoring Nopes, too? The rude kid at school must be me. At this rate, our family’s going to be on some kind of most-wanted list. So do I go for it, and rebel like Kiyo expects? Or do I shut down our sneaks and try to distract my daddy until this all blows over?
I stare up at the house and think of all kinds of creepy things that probably aren’t true. Security systems made of puppet strings, all connected back to Whanslaw. The odds of being turned into a puppet myself. I need a look inside before I commit to one path or the other.
“Stay here,” I say.
Cayden groans a little. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to get up on the porch roof and see what I can see.”
“Ada, wait a second—”
I grab a mask from the bag, pull it down over my face, and sprint for the house before I can talk myself out of it, ignoring the stinging, stretching pain in my leg. The last bit of lawn I have to cross is totally exposed, and I hold my breath, waiting for floodlights to switch on and an alarm to blatt, but nothing happens. I make for a trellis, and scale it as quickly as I can without shaking it like a leaf.