My skin turned clammy. Why hadn’t I told Marsh not to talk to the police? Because that’s the first thing he would’ve done, that’s why.
“Well, isn’t that funny?” I heard Officer Shelley say. “It just so happens I’m searching for a young girl. Her name wouldn’t happen to be Phoebe, would it?”
“It is,” Marsh said.
As heavy boots approached the car, I made myself into a ball, pressing my face into the vinyl of the seat as if that would camouflage me somehow. Shelley had overcome Hal and killed him. And now he had me. My shoulders tensed in anticipation of the door popping open and a hand seizing my arm.
“Afternoon, Reverend,” Shelley said at the window.
I heard panting and dared a peek. Officer Shelley held up Pan-Cake, legs dangling, tongue lolling. For the first time, she wasn’t growling at him.
“Found this little lady running free in the fairgrounds,” he said, scratching behind her ears. “Figured Phoebe would be mighty heartbroken if she was lost. Hello, Phoebe.”
I sat upright and studied Officer Shelley. He had the same large frame, the same pale mustache, the same gunmetal eyes, but . . . something was different.
“Here you are.” Shelley set Pan-Cake in Marsh’s lap. Marsh spluttered like she was a king cobra until she leapt over the backseat and frantically licked the sweat off my neck.
Shelley reached into his holster, and my heart skipped a beat. But instead of pulling out a gun, he pulled out a rubber bone and squeaked it. Pan-Cake stopped licking and stood at attention on my lap.
“Hope you don’t mind,” Shelley said. “I stopped by the store and bought her this so I could get her to come to me.” He handed the bone to Pan-Cake, who folded her paws around it and started squeaking gratefully.
Officer Shelley tipped his hat to us and winked. “Reverend Marsh. Phoebe. You two have yourselves a lovely day now.”
He hooked his thumbs in his belt and then ambled down the street whistling.
• • •
We continued to the motel in silence, save the squeak squeak squeak of Pan-Cake’s new toy. Even though I had no idea what was happening to me, my plan hadn’t changed. I wanted to get as far away from this town and all of its oddities as quickly as possible. In the meantime I still felt like me. I wasn’t craving blood or raw fish or anything like that. I just hoped that kept up until I found Ma.
When we pulled into the parking lot, I thanked Marsh and then went straight to the manager’s office.
“Hello, Phoebe dear,” Ethel said.
“Oh.” I came to an abrupt stop. “Hello.”
When I’d seen Ethel a few hours before, she was nearly shaking out of her skin, having just seen a man get shot through the neck and chest. But now she was grinning ear to ear. She was wearing her knee braces . . . but they were on backward. Almost like she didn’t know what they were for. For some reason this sight chilled me deeper than a well-meaning Officer Shelley.
“Would you order a cab for me?” I asked the manager, my voice trembling.
The manager furrowed his bushy eyebrows. “You owe for last night and tonight.”
“I’m not staying tonight,” I said.
“Well, you still owe for the last. You’re a nice young lady, but we’re not running a shelter here.”
Ethel giggled, showing gray teeth.
“Of course not,” I said, hiding a shudder. “Back in a jiffy.”
I ran up the motel steps, Pan-Cake squeaking alongside me. I opened the door and then froze. The room was dank and shadowy and smelled like a dying greenhouse. Three pods lay on the beds, their tops open like half-peeled eggs. My stomach soured when I realized that whatever crawled out of those things were currently wearing officer badges and knee braces.
I might not have dared set foot in that room, but then Pan-Cake leapt up onto the bed, curled up among the pods as if they were old friends, and chewed on her squeaker toy. I took a breath and then swept inside, beelining past the bed. I threw open the closet door, hauled out the suitcase, unzipped the side pocket, and reached inside. My hand slid to the bottom. There was no money.
I flipped the suitcase upside down, dumping the clothes onto the floor. I unzipped every zipper and pulled the pocket lining inside out until the suitcase was disemboweled on the carpet.
Someone had stolen Ma’s money. Hundreds of dollars. Maybe thousands. Who would do such a thing? I bit my thumb. Not only did I not have enough money to pay for the motel, I didn’t have enough money to catch a cab away from Pennybrooke and its pod people. I was stuck.
My eye caught the light of the ham radio, and I snatched up the speaker.
“Hello?” I said into it. “Liz? Liz, please. I need your help.”
There was only crackled silence.
I didn’t want to spend another second near those pods, even if they were empty. I hefted the ham radio, heavy as a slab of concrete, into my suitcase and hauled it downstairs to the parking lot, determined to walk somewhere and hitch a ride before the manager caught me. But then what? I couldn’t pay for a motel room. I couldn’t buy food. And I was transforming into . . . something. I sat on the curb and covered my face and tried not to scream.
“Are you . . . all right?” a voice asked.
I looked up and found Reverend Marsh standing over me. He interlaced his fingers in front of his waist. Almost as quickly, he unlaced them, and then raised his hand and held it there awkwardly.
“Would you . . . like me to pat your shoulder?”
I stared at that hand, as pale as a naked mole rat.
“Sure,” I said.
Marsh set his trembling hand on my shoulder. At that touch, everything I’d been holding deep in my well came gushing up: Ma, the Buried Lab, the straitjacket, Hal, Daddy’s eyes, everything. As the tears fell, I pressed my cheek onto Marsh’s hand. His breath intensified, but he kept it there for three seconds before pulling away.
“Perhaps I should call a psychiatrist.”
I wiped my eyes. “No. Please. I just lost my grip for a moment. I’m . . . I’m fine now.”
“Good,” Marsh said, getting up and patting his pockets. “That’s good. Come along.”
“Where are we going?” I said, grabbing my suitcase.
“It would not be becoming to have a young lady at my house, but I have a cot at the church.”
I sniffed. “Thank you,” I said, and started crying again.
“It is . . . no problem.”
Marsh’s eyes uncomfortably searched the sky, the motel, the car, anything but me.
Marsh tried to stick me in the church’s storage room at first, among the boxes of old choral books and plastic-wrapped nativity scenes for Christmastime. The ceiling was so low and the shelves so close, I felt just like a sardine in a tin can.
“Um, could I sleep in the chapel?” I asked. “So, uh, God can see me better.”
The reverend gave a flat grin and nodded.
As he set up the cot in front of the pulpit, I stared at Daddy’s silhouette, glowing in twilight behind a stained-glass window of Jesus and some lambs. Did I need to tell the reverend I might be a danger? That depended on what type of danger I was becoming, I supposed.
“This is a radio,” Marsh said, clicking on a wooden Sears Roebuck, “but it must remain on this station. This is a house of the Lord. Not one of those hop socks.”
Women’s voices filled the rafters with a quiet hymn. My dress was still damp from where Marsh had instructed me to dab my fingers in a copper bowl of water and touch my forehead, stomach, and shoulders.
“The dog,” he said, looking at Pan-Cake, who had abandoned her squeaker toy and was sniffing around the votive candles. “Will it be a problem?”
I remembered the odd question Hal had asked, whether she got plenty of water and sunlight.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“Very well,” Marsh said. “In the morning, we shall discuss what’s to be done with you. “Until then, I bid you good night.”
; “Why are you being so nice to me?” I said.
“I am a man of God,” he said. “And”—he rubbed his hands together—“I have regretted what I said about your mother. Even Jesus fraternized with whores.”
“My mom is not a whore,” I said.
His eyes avoided mine. “Yes. Well . . .”
He swiftly exited through the back door.
I was alone in the big, dark space with only Pan-Cake and stained-glass Jesus and his lambs to keep me company. Even though I hadn’t been in many churches, this one was pretty standard I guessed. Cleaner maybe. There was an organ against the back wall, a pulpit, and six windows that faintly lit the space. The dozen or so rows of pews had been polished until they gleamed. The air was thick with the smell of Pine-Sol.
I opened my suitcase and plugged in the ham radio next to the Roebuck. I tried to make contact with the Buried Lab again. Still nothing. I covered the radio with my suitcase so Marsh wouldn’t ask any questions about it, kicking myself for dumping my clothes and leaving them behind.
The cot groaned when I lay on it, threatening to snap shut and suffocate me in the night. I covered myself with one of the slimy blankets Marsh had pulled from the donations box, while Pan-Cake scratched at the space between my ankles, making herself comfortable. The women singing on the radio gave me a pearly feeling that I tried to keep inside by hugging myself while I closed my eyes.
Sleep wasn’t having me. The moon beamed through the stained glass. Little shapes swarmed through the darkness of the rafters, like locusts, making the air of the room buzz.
He called Ma a whore.
A new feeling rose in my chest, as hot and urgent as molten metal. My hands felt like two vices that could tear a church pew right off its bolts. I wanted to use it as a club to smash through everything in the church—the organ, the pulpit, Jesus and his lambs, the radio, whose heavenly music sounded warbled and nauseating now. And if Pan-Cake crossed my path, I’d snatch her up, take her little head, and—
I blinked, trying to banish the locusts. Where did those thoughts come from? They didn’t feel like me.
I felt dizzy, like the floor was tilting, and there came a groaning from the rafters, like I was in the hull of a ship. Wait . . . that wasn’t the rafters. My stomach was grumbling. I had to eat and I had to eat immediately. The day had been so full of chaos I’d barely taken a bite. Except the giant lunch at school, I reminded myself. And the drugstore breakfast. But my stomach seemed to have forgotten all about those.
I leapt off the cot, throwing Pan-Cake to the floor, and strode up and down the aisle, trying to figure out how I could get some food. My hands worked, wanting to strangle whoever had stolen the money from Ma’s suitcase.
That’s when I saw the clasp on the donations box, gleaming in the moonlight.
• • •
“I’ll take a root beer float, a grilled cheese, a cheeseburger, a chicken-fried steak with mashed potatoes, a side of fries, and”—I counted the money on the counter—“an ice cream sundae.”
Joe, the owner of the malt shop, peered over my shoulder. “Where’s your family?”
“It’s for me,” I said.
“Careful, young lady.” He patted his stomach, bulging under his apron. “You don’t want to end up like me.”
He gave me a number, and I sat in a booth. I clutched my fork and gazed at the curdled clouds outside of the neon-washed plate glass window at Daddy’s dumb face, trying to blink away the buzzing locusts and forget my grumbling stomach before I shattered every dish in the malt shop.
Some greasers gathered around the jukebox kept flashing looks my way. Their eyes slipped under the table to my legs. One of them peeled off the group and came over, running a comb through his black wave of hair, and slid across from me.
“Hey, baby.”
“I’m just waiting to eat,” I said. The locusts fizzed against the window.
The greaser licked his lips and drummed his fingers on the table. He had cigarette stains on his teeth, and I could see the comb soaking grease through his T-shirt pocket.
“Me and the fellas are gonna drive up to Sugarman’s Pass,” he said. “I’m sure we could find something for you to, heh, eat up there.”
I felt a cramp in my hand and looked down to find that I’d bent my metal fork perfectly in half. I handed the bent fork to the greaser, and he stared at it, visibly shaken.
“On second thought . . . ,” he said, and left.
He was lucky that fork didn’t end up in his eye.
The food arrived, and I started stuffing my mouth with French fries as fast as I could swallow, washing them down with the shake. Then I finished the cheeseburger in five bites. It was like plugging into an electric socket. My skin started to glow. My head tingled. Suddenly, destroying the malt shop seemed like the silliest idea in the world. The clouds outside weren’t curdled, they were fluffy. And Pan-Cake. How could I ever hurt that lolling ball of marshmallow? I also felt a pang of guilt about stealing from the church, but I figured it was better than smashing it to bits. I didn’t feel too bad about scaring the pervy greaser.
I started in on the grilled cheese. So much had happened in the last few hours, I’d barely had time or energy to think. I tried to organize what I knew about the Buried Lab and Daddy and Hal and the pods. It was like only a couple dots were connected, but I had to guess at the whole picture.
As Liz said, there was always a scientific explanation for each disaster: radiation for the ants, a transmittable virus for werewolves, a solar flare for killer vines. Even when the Buried Lab tried to re-create these monsters, they learned the science down to the atom for times when Daddy started getting bored: In case of emergency, release monsters on unsuspecting town.
I borrowed a fork from a neighboring table and cut into the chicken-fried steak. But that had been the men’s plan. Liz had a different idea. I remembered her in the sealed submarine room, looking at me over her teacup with her pretty lashes.
I think Father—Daddy—can’t know what he wants if he’s never seen it before.
Then she’d gone to get the sugar and left me alone in that sealed room with those charcoal pyramids—every one of which was pointed at me. And then I’d felt woozy, and the lights had flickered. . . .
A bite of chicken-fried steak froze halfway to my mouth.
Liz had zapped me. My half sister had zapped me.
She zapped me with something that made the needle on the Geiger counter climb to two k.
But with what? And why?
“Hey.”
It took me a second to realize someone was talking to me. I looked up from my plate, mouth full of steak, a sheen of grease on my chin. It was the boy from the psychiatrist’s office. The Shiver survivor. Lear. He stood in front of my table, awkwardly holding his arm.
I painfully swallowed my mouthful. “Hello.”
Lear’s eye twitched. “You mind if I, um—”
He gestured to the bench across from mine.
“Go ahead,” I said, wiping my chin with a napkin while he sat.
I was grateful I’d already finished a lion’s share of the food so he wouldn’t know I was eating for a family of four.
I suddenly remembered the stolen file I had hidden in my sock. I could feel it crinkle against my ankle. Had that really only been that afternoon?
Lear looked nervous. He kept biting his lip, his eyes flashing to a group of seniors wearing letterman jackets. As soon as they left the shop, laughing and punching one another, Lear pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut tight.
“Hey, um—”
“Yeah?”
I remembered the stares I’d drawn at school that day. I remembered the whistle like a bomb dropping. Whatever was happening to me, it was drawing boys like flies to honey. It was like I was becoming more like Ma. I tucked my hair back behind my ear and tried to look halfway presentable.
Lear opened his eyes, but he didn’t look at me, just stared out the window. “Could you not tell
anyone you saw me at the . . . at the office today?”
“Oh,” I said, disappointed. “Sure. No problem.”
He nodded and got up, stuffing his hands in his pockets.
My breath caught. I didn’t want this to be over. Not that quick. Usually when I talked to a boy I thought was cute, I remembered all the parts of me that looked like Daddy, and my whole being got a tremor to it. But right then, with food in my stomach, I felt a confidence I’d never felt before.
“On one condition,” I said.
Lear froze and turned around. His forehead was all wrinkled up like he was trying not to look afraid.
“You gotta walk me home,” I said. “It’s dark out. You never know, you know?”
Lear’s mouth twitched, and he scuffed his unlaced boots. “All right, sure. I guess I could do that.”
It wasn’t the enthusiastic reaction I was hoping for, but it would do. He sat back down and picked at a stain on the table while I kept eating. Unlike Rhoda, Lear didn’t comment on the mound of food on my plate. He didn’t say much of anything.
“Don’t you want to know my name?” I said, finishing my shake.
“What’s your name?”
“Phoebe.” Right then it sounded like a car horn to my ears. “What’s yours?” I asked even though I already knew.
“Lear. Lear Finley.”
Phoebe Finley, I thought. And then, No, brain. Look what happened to the last boy you were sweet on.
“My last name’s Lane,” I said a little sheepishly.
He just nodded, becoming the first boy in the history of me who didn’t ask about my mom.
“Why were you at Dr. Siley’s?” I asked.
Lear gave me a look. My goodness, that forehead could wrinkle.
“You can’t just ask that,” he said.
“Why not?” I said.
“Well, you just can’t, that’s all.”
I was just about bursting wanting to know about the Shiver he’d survived.
“I’ll tell you why I was there,” I said.
Lear’s eye twitched. “Okay.”
I put another piece of chicken-fried steak in my mouth. “My dad was killed in a Shiver. That’s what Ma and I call the monster disasters. Happened about four years ago. He tried to stop a school bus from being dragged into the ocean by a squid’s tentacle and he drowned.” I shrugged, chewing. “Guess the school thinks my head needs a checkup every so often.”
Attack of the 50 Foot Wallflower Page 10