by Paula Stokes
He looks over at me again. There’s something different about his voice. It’s so gentle, so smooth, like rain falling against stained-glass windows. The image freaks me out. This music is apparently making me crazy.
“I’m just thinking about something,” I reply.
Now he’s got both eyes back on the road. “I thought maybe you were going to start crying on me.”
“Don’t worry.” I try to infuse my voice with sarcasm. “The last thing I plan to do is break down on our fake date. I am all business.” The dreamy instrumental song ends and something more upbeat comes on. It’s got a catchy hook but the guitars are a little shrieky for my taste. “This music is giving me a headache,” I mutter.
“You’re giving me a headache,” Micah says, but he turns the volume down a notch.
The afternoon sun blasts me head on. I don’t usually wear sunglasses because they make those ugly red marks on my nose, but today I wish I had some. I turn my face back to the side to protect my eyes. Strip malls slide past me, one after the next. Gaudy billboards line the highway. UP TO 50% OFF. ONE DAY ONLY. THE BIGGEST DEALS ARE HERE. Lies. All lies.
“I remember when this whole area was fields,” I say, immediately regretting it. I sound like my grandpa.
But for once Micah doesn’t jump on an opportunity to make fun of me. “Me too,” he says. “My dad used to take us camping out here.”
“Oh,” I reply, startled by the mention of his dad. Micah’s father, a guitarist for a local rock band, was killed in a convenience store robbery back when Micah and I were in fifth grade.
It was big news in Hazelton. Everywhere you went in school, people were clustered together talking about it, how terrible it must have been for Micah, who was waiting out in the car when the robbery occurred. Micah, who wandered into the store right in time to see his dad bleed to death. Those were the rumors anyway. No one ever dared to ask if they were true.
What do you say to someone who’s dad has just been shot and killed? If you’re a member of Mrs. Simonson’s fifth-grade class, not much. You tiptoe around the person, trying not to make physical contact in case “dead dad” is contagious. You offer timid smiles and awkward greetings until eventually the person snaps, knocks over a couple of desks during class, gets in a fight with the security guard, and then disappears until the beginning of the next school year.
We didn’t talk much in middle school. Micah didn’t talk much to anyone. I feel the urge to apologize for the shitty way I treated him back then, but I can’t quite make the words come out.
“I’ve never gone camping,” I say finally. I lick my lips and peek over at Micah.
He catches me looking and misinterprets my distress as being about our fake date. “You’re not going to freak out if this plan doesn’t work, are you?” he asks. “Because I’ll be fine either way.”
And just like that, the moment passes. It’s probably for the best. I bet he doesn’t even remember the way everybody acted back in elementary school. Or if he does, he wouldn’t want me to bring it up. I stare through the smudgy glass. A megamall. An electronic sign. More empty promises. I tuck the book back in my purse.
“I’ll be okay,” I say without turning to face him. It’s the least convincing answer ever, but Micah doesn’t question it and I’m glad. How am I supposed to explain to him I won’t be okay if our plan doesn’t work? That without Jason I’m not even sure who I’d be anymore.
Kendall is the one who is going to really freak out when she finally hears about the breakup. Jason must not have told her or else I’m sure she would have called me. The three of us spent a lot of time together last year because her boyfriend, Nicholas, went off to college in California at the start of our junior year. When they broke up officially a couple months later, Kendall decided high school guys were lame and college guys were only out to score. I hated seeing her alone, so whenever Jason and I went out—to the movies, to the soccer park, to someone’s party—I always invited her along. Jay never seemed to mind and Kendall loved it. Maybe if she stays in New York for most of the summer, I can win him back before she even hears about the breakup. I don’t want her to feel like she has to pick between us, because I know I’ll lose.
Micah’s voice cuts into my thoughts. “Hey. Thanks for telling my mom I don’t smoke.”
“You thought I would narc you out on our first fake date?” I force a smile. “Don’t you think she knows, though?”
“Probably. But I try to hide it. My grandma died of lung cancer and if Mom even smells smoke on me, she gets pissed. I plan to quit . . . eventually. It’s just been hard.”
Micah pulls off the highway. The outer part of St. Louis is all industrial buildings and vacant lots. As we head toward the river, we pass Union Station and the hockey arena. On the left is a green space dotted with random modern art and panhandlers. The courthouse looms in front of us.
“We’re almost there,” Micah says.
I focus on my lap, wishing I could rewind to before Bianca and I came up with this silly plan. This can’t be what Dead Chinese Warlord had in mind by deception and leveling the battlefield. This is like me putting down my weapon and going to grab a bite to eat with a random nomad who accidentally wandered into the war, isn’t it?
I need to get it together. Don’t be a coward. Don’t worry too much. I remind myself of the five deadly faults I’m supposed to be avoiding. I’m just nervous because I’ve never gone out with another guy before.
Micah turns left onto a one-way street. He switches lanes to avoid a parked delivery truck and then dodges a giant pothole. He’s a really good driver, but the stop-and-go traffic is making me queasy. I watch out the side window as the city flies by. Through gaps in the skyline, I see the sun reflecting off the top of the Arch. Jason and I went there together last year for a history class field trip. There’s a museum at the base of it and a tiny elevator goes up to a viewing area where you can see the whole city. We went up to the top with most of our classmates and kissed every time our teacher wasn’t looking.
Micah cuts through a decidedly seedy area of North St. Louis where the redbrick houses sit so close together you could probably reach out your window and into your neighbor’s house—if it weren’t for the bars on the windows. A man sits on one of the porches, drinking straight from a whiskey bottle. A pit bull paces back and forth in front of him. I slouch down in the car. A train whistle blows from somewhere nearby and I flinch.
As Micah slows the car to a stop, I peek out the window and see a two-story house that is straight out of a horror movie. The bricks have been covered in white paint that has worn away in uneven scabby patches. My heart thuds against my rib cage as I check out the boarded-up windows and the field of three-foot-tall weeds in the front yard.
“Are we lost?” I ask hopefully, double-checking to make sure my door is locked. “Or have you brought me here to kill me?”
Micah grins as he shakes his head and points toward a wooden sign half-buried in the high grass. I can barely make out what it says: MIZZ CREANT’S HOUSE OF TORTURE.
Chapter 10
“IN ALL FIGHTING, THE DIRECT METHOD MAY BE USED FOR JOINING BATTLE, BUT INDIRECT METHODS WILL BE NEEDED IN ORDER TO SECURE VICTORY.”
—Sun Tzu, The Art of War
“House of Torture?” I ask through clenched teeth.
Micah laughs, a big belly laugh like Trinity. “Read the fine print,” he says.
I squint. Underneath the big, bloody word torture, someone has stenciled something in black ink. “And pancakes?” I turn to him. “Seriously?”
“Trust me, we’re only indulging in the food today,” Micah says. “Unless you’re into—”
I lash out with my fist and it connects with a pyramid tattoo on his right bicep.
He doubles over in pain. “Ow. That tattoo is brand new.”
“No it’s not.” My eyes turn to slits. “You’ve had that for, like, a year.”
He gasps in mock surprise. “Why, Lainey. And here I didn’t thin
k you paid me any attention.”
My face flushes. “I don’t,” I insist, but it just sounds defensive. “How many tattoos do you have anyway?” I ask. “Your mom doesn’t care?”
“I have three. When I turned sixteen, she told me I could get whatever I want, as long as she gets to do them.”
Besides the pyramid, he’s got a tattoo of three overlapping circles on his neck. For a second, I wonder where the third tattoo is, but that’s probably one of those “Don’t ask if you don’t want to know” questions. “Wow. Your mom must be really cool.”
Micah fiddles with his barbed-wire bracelet. “I think she sees it as safe self-destructiveness, you know? Better for me to get a tattoo or pierce an eyebrow than to go buy drugs if I’m feeling like shit.”
I wonder what else besides Micah’s dad dying made him feel bad enough to turn to “safe self-destructiveness.” His eyebrow ring is new. Did he do it when he was hurting about Amber? Before I can even decide if I want to ask him, he opens his door and slides out of the car. “Come on. Quit stalling,” he says.
We follow the stepping-stones made of shards of broken mirror through the high grass and up to the porch. Someone has spray-painted a red line on one of the boarded-up windows. Scribbled in Magic Marker below it are the words: You must be this tall to enter the House of Torture (and pancakes). I try to peer through a spidery crack in the warped plywood but all I can see is darkness. Micah could be taking me to a crack den for all I know.
He practically has to yank me up the stairs. Half-rotted steps groan under my feet. A wind chime made of fake (I hope) bones and pieces of broken chain clanks in the soft summer breeze.
“I bet someone got murdered in this place,” I mutter.
“I’m about ready to murder me some pancakes,” Micah says. The door creaks impressively as he pushes on it. He holds it open for me.
The inside of the restaurant is crowded with clusters of teens and college kids who look like they could be extras on Undead Academy.
“Popular,” I say. As my eyes adjust to the gloom, I see that we’re standing in a dim room underneath a tarnished candelabra filled with misshapen red candles. The black-and-white-tiled floor is smeared with drips of crimson wax—it totally looks like a crime scene. I half expect some supermodel-hot CSI tech wearing a body-hugging gray jumpsuit to greet us. Instead, a hostess wearing fishnet stockings, a patent-leather strapless dress, and a bored expression doesn’t even bother to say hi. She stands behind a guillotine-shaped podium, clicking her sparkly, black fingernails against the wooden surface to the beat of a song she’s humming to herself.
“Hey, Lyla.” Micah strides up to her like they’re old friends. “Is Phoenix working?”
The hostess licks her lips, as if Micah has asked something extra perverted. “Are you looking for more than a server?”
“Oh no. Food only.” Micah shudders.
“Wait time is about fifteen minutes.” Lyla jots down Micah’s name on a notepad full of unintelligible scribble. “I’ll see if Phoenix is available.” She slides out from behind the podium and heads toward the kitchen.
“Who’s Phoenix?” I ask.
“Amber’s sister.” Micah rests one shoulder against the wall. The burgundy wallpaper is peeling in places, revealing plain concrete beneath.
“Oh. So Amber won’t actually be here?”
“She doesn’t work a regular job so she’s harder to accidentally run into.” He picks at a loose spot of wallpaper. “I figured the indirect route might be less obvious anyway.”
The indirect route—vintage Dead Chinese Warlord. “Wow, you’re good. It’s like you’ve done this before.” I watch the tiny scab-like flecks of maroon flutter to the floor.
Micah stops picking. “No, but I know Phoenix will report back to Amber in excruciating detail.” He winks. “Feel free to hang all over me.”
“Ha-ha,” I say. “Minimal touching, remember?” I peer past the guillotine and into the main dining room. Replicas of old-fashioned torture devices—a rack, a hangman’s platform, a dunking booth—are stationed throughout the dining area like some sort of depraved physical fitness circuit. “Where the hell have you taken me?”
“Check this out.” Micah heads toward a pair of doors marked SADISTS and MASOCHISTS. I think they’re the bathrooms, but I’m not sure. I make a mental note not to drink too much so I don’t have to find out. He points at a silver rectangle that looks like an old-fashioned pay phone. As I squint to try to read the instructions mounted above the box, Micah slides a quarter into the machine.
“Hold these,” he says, giving me a pair of brass handles attached to metal cables.
“What are—” Before I can get my question out, a wave of electric current races through my body. Ouch! I drop the handles. “What the hell?”
Micah laughs. “It’s a shock generator. I hit you with the voltage of an electric eel.”
“Dude! Why would you do that?”
He laughs again and then grabs my wrists as I lunge for him. “You’re kind of a brute, you know?”
My face crumples. Jason used to call me butch sometimes. It made me so mad. I could do fifteen really girly things an hour but the one time I punched him or belched or scored a kick-ass goal off him, he always made me feel like the least sexy person in the world.
Micah drops my hands. “What? I was only kidding, Lainey.” He backs slowly away from me like I’m a bomb in danger of detonating.
“I’ll show you brute,” I say, faking a smile. I pass the brass handles to him. “My turn.”
“Okay,” Micah says, “but be gentle. Don’t hit me with taser or I might piss myself.”
“Ew.” I bend in to look at the five choices: 1. NERVE CONDUCTION TEST. 2. BABY ELECTRIC EEL. 3. CANINE SHOCK COLLAR. 4. CATTLE PROD. 5. TASER. “There’s no way this is really taser strength, is it? People would be collapsing on the floor.”
“Not sure. I’ve never been brave enough to try it.”
I don’t know if it’s because I’m feeling nice or because I’m skeeved out at the thought of Micah peeing his pants, but I give him a blast of baby electric eel.
He yelps. Then he grins. “You went soft on me, didn’t you?”
Before I can answer, Lyla coughs meaningfully and gestures to us with one of her glittery black talons. “Your table’s ready.”
We follow her to a booth near the back of the dining area. There’s a potted plant on the table—a Venus flytrap.
“That’s one way to take care of bugs, I guess.” I stare at the tiny teeth adorning each pair of leaves, wondering if they’re as prickly as they look.
“Check that out.” Micah nods toward something behind me.
I turn. On the far wall, there’s an old-time movie projector screen. The film is a hazy black-and-white movie from before I was born. Some guy getting electroshock treatment. His body spasms and convulses as the current moves through him. I get a little jittery just watching.
“Is there an age requirement for this place?” I ask.
“There’s the height requirement outside, but I don’t think it’s enforced,” Micah says. “But you have to be eighteen to tour the interactive torture museum in the basement.” He makes air quotes when he says the word interactive.
“What does that involve?” I try to fight back the blush creeping up in my cheeks.
“I’ve never been down there so I can’t say. Probably nothing too deviant.” He gives me a suggestive look. “You want to check it out? I bet Phoenix wouldn’t card us.”
“No,” I say quickly. A trio of girls with Kool-Aid dye jobs and big sunglasses turn to look at me from the next table over. One of them snickers. I grab the menu and hide behind it.
The food choices at Mizz Creant’s include not just pancakes, but also waffles, omelets, and other assorted breakfast items. The laminated menu is shaped like a skull and crossbones. I skim the choices under the heading PANCAKES: SAW-BERRY SURPRISE. CHOKE-A-LOT CHIP. SIN-A-MON SPICE.
A girl with short, wh
ite-blonde hair, wearing a black rubber skirt and a tank top made of what looks like overlapping safety pins, sidles up to the table. She’s got a spiked collar around her neck and rings of black eye makeup around her eyes. “Look who’s come out of hiding. What’s up, kid?”
“Hey, Phoenix.” Micah nods toward me. “This is—”
“No one cares.” The girl makes a throat-slitting gesture. “I assume you’re not here because you want me to make you my bitch, so what are you eating?”
“I like a girl who gets right to the point,” Micah says. “I’ll have the Destructor omelet. With bacon spears and hashbrowns.”
Phoenix is carrying a little notebook with the metal spiral partially unbent and formed into a shank. She nods at Micah but makes no move to write anything down. “Would you like your hashbrowns asphyxiated?”
“Oh yeah. Smother away,” he says.
She pops her gum. “And what does your rebound chick want?”
I make a noise somewhere between a gasp and a yelp. Phoenix doesn’t even glance in my direction.
“She can order for herself,” Micah says.
“Aww. Wait till I tell Amber you’ve gone all submissive.” Phoenix turns her black-ringed eyes toward me and gives me her best bored expression.
I start to order but no sound comes out. I clear my throat. “I’ll have the Saw-berry pancakes. With bacon spears.”
“Fabulous.” She spins around and heads toward the kitchen. Between the straps of her tank top, I can see part of a giant pair of wings tattooed on her back.
“She seems nice,” I say.
Micah stares at me for a second, then bursts out laughing. I laugh too. He reaches toward my face and runs his finger down the teal streak in my hair. “That was cool of you to let Trinity put this in. I can take it out later if you want.” He folds my hair up and away from my face so he can get a look at the tiny clip.
“I kind of like it.” I smile. “It makes me feel alternative.”
He snickers. “You’re about as alternative as skim milk, Lainey.” He drops my hair and runs his finger along the prickly edge of one of the Venus flytrap’s lower leaves.