Don't Drink the Punch!

by P. J. Night

  Kayla noticed he had a single crutch.

  “Nice going, klutzo!” Alice giggled, giving Tom a little shove to the chest. “Why do you even play basketball? I mean, it’s not like you’re very tall—no offense.”

  Tom grinned. “No offense taken. But I do play pretty good offense.”

  Kayla smiled a little at his joke, but Alice didn’t seem to get it. “Come over here. There’s a chair you can sit in.”

  She led him across the room toward where Nick and Scott and Anthony were standing awkwardly in a clump, holding their punch cups. Kayla watched as Alice pushed Tom down into a chair next to the table and then ladled out some punch for him and put the cup into his hands. He glanced back at Kayla and gave her a little smile and a shrug.

  “She’s trying to make Nick jealous,” said Pria, who was suddenly standing next to her. Kayla hadn’t known she was there.

  Pria nodded miserably. “She was just flirting like crazy with Scott, too. Isn’t it enough that all the rest of the seventh-grade boys already like her? Does she have to go and flirt with our crushes too?”

  Kayla was excited that Pria was opening up to her—maybe she and Jess were getting a little tired of Alice’s attitude too. But before she could say anything, a voice boomed out loud and clear.

  “Attention, everyone!”

  Across the room, Alice motioned to Tom to stand up from his chair. Then she turned the music down and climbed onto his empty chair. Everyone stopped talking to listen. Kids from the other room put down their Ping-Pong paddles and pool cues and filed into the room. Alice looks beautiful, Kayla thought. She seemed to grow more radiant simply by being stared at. Her perfectly cut, close-fitting red dress accentuated her slim figure and her long, toned legs, which were somewhere between supermodel and superathlete. Kayla looked at the boys, most of whom were standing together in one group. It was true. They were all obsessed with Alice. Who wouldn’t be? Even Tom seems dazzled by her beauty, she thought miserably.

  “I would like to make a Valentine’s Day toast!” Alice started to say. “Everyone raise your glass!”

  A vision of Matilda’s face flashed before Kayla. She remembered the gleam in her eyes behind those thick glasses as she’d talked about the potion. Everyone was raising a cup.

  “You too, Kayla!” commanded Alice from across the room.

  Kayla realized that everyone in the room was looking at her. She picked up the cup she’d set down earlier and raised it along with everyone else. Everyone drank.

  Kayla put the cup to her lips and took a tiny sip. It tasted bad and reminded her a bit of medicine.

  She spat the punch back into her cup and set it down on the table. Her mouth felt all tingly and numb. Something was definitely not right, though no one else seemed to mind the bitter, numbing taste, or else they were too scared to insult Alice.

  Across the room, she noticed Tom, who was chatting away with Nick and still holding his cup. Had he had any punch?

  “Tom! You didn’t drink any yet!” she heard Alice say, and watched her jump down from her chair, light as a cat. Kayla watched Tom raise his cup to his lips.

  In two bounds Kayla had crossed the room, bumping into several people as she did so. Tom didn’t even see her coming. A second later she’d knocked the cup from his hand and onto the floor. Tom almost toppled over with surprise.

  The room fell silent, except for the music, which someone had turned back up.

  Tom blinked at the spreading puddle of red punch on the off-white carpet. Then he looked at Kayla, his eyebrows raised in a question.

  Kayla didn’t dare look at Alice. “Did you drink some?” she said to Tom.

  “Uh, yeah, I did. It’s pretty good,” he said.

  She turned to Alice. “I’m so sorry about the carpet,” she said, although her voice felt pinched and thin, the way it sometimes does in a dream when you’re trying to scream and find you can’t. “It was an accident. I’ll go get something to clean it up.”

  “Look at the carpet!” she heard Alice say as Kayla bounded up the stairs to the kitchen. But all Kayla was thinking about was seeing if her mother was still at the party. She had to make sure her mother had left—and if she was still there, that she didn’t drink any of that disgusting punch.

  CHAPTER 11

  Kayla burst into the kitchen. It was oddly quiet. Through the large window over the sink, she could glimpse the snow coming down. It looked like it had finally started to snow heavily.

  She crossed the kitchen and went through the swinging door that led to the large, open pantry. Still not a soul to be seen. Where was everyone?

  At the other end of the pantry was an open doorway that led into the large dining and living rooms. A man was leaning against the doorjamb with his back to her, probably chatting quietly with someone next to him that she couldn’t see. She could hear music playing. Not the same kind of music they were playing downstairs, but it was reassuring to see that people were in there.

  She stepped across the pantry and stood behind the man. He was a large man; she had no idea whose dad he was, but he certainly took up most of the doorway.

  “Excuse me?” she said tentatively. “Um, sir? Can I just squeeze by you?” Her voice came out sounding high and barely audible.

  The man didn’t budge.

  Kayla’s fear for her mother made her bolder than usual. “Sir, I just need to . . .” She put a firm hand on his arm and tried to guide him over to the side of the doorway, so she could squeeze past.

  For a strange moment the man felt weightless. Then, with a sickening feeling, she realized he was falling. Falling over. Over to the side, in the direction she had nudged him ever so gently.

  Kayla screamed, or tried to. Instead of a scream, a strangled, unearthly sound came out of her throat. The man toppled over like a tall tree beneath a woodsman’s ax. She tried to shriek again, several times, in rapid, gulping succession, but the sounds came out as mere squeaks, and then she couldn’t seem to make any sound at all. She stared in horror at the man lying on the carpet, the crystal punch cup in his hand, his eyes open but unseeing. For a moment she couldn’t take her eyes off the cup, which hadn’t broken on the thick carpet. With the red punch stain next to him, seeping under his face, which was turned to the side, he looked . . . dead. But he couldn’t be dead. He was still breathing, although it was barely noticeable.

  “I’m—I’m so sorry, sir!” she tried to say, but no sound came out of her mouth. Her tongue felt thick and uncooperative, as though she’d just left the dentist after a major round of Novocain.

  She raised her eyes to look around the room. She froze and staggered backward, nearly falling.

  Eight or nine parents were in the room. Some were clustered around the table, which was filled with platters of food, drinks, and the large punch bowl in the center of it. Several others were standing around the outer area of the room, in little groups. No one was moving. No one was speaking. Everyone was still as a statue, frozen in mid-gesture. One man held the ladle of the punch bowl suspended above his other hand, which held a crystal punch cup, as though he’d been frozen mid-pour. A woman had one arm raised halfway to her open mouth, a small finger sandwich in her hand.

  Kayla was suddenly struck by the memory of an experience she’d had when she was a little girl. She and her father had been hiking together on a wintry day, she in her little pink plastic kiddie snowshoes, and he in his grown-up trekking gear. They were on a trip north together, she couldn’t remember why, and he’d wanted to show her one of his favorite places from his boyhood. She’d been amazed by the snow and the cold, having lived all her life in Texas. And then they’d come rather suddenly upon a brook. She’d stopped and stared at the waterfall, which had frozen in a perfect ice sculpture of its watery state; it looked as though a wizard had waved his wand and stopped the rushing waterfall instantaneously.

  She blinked her eyes, hoping and praying that she was just imagining things. That she was the one who had gone crazy, not the whole world
. But the people remained as still as statues, the cheerful music sounding almost mocking in that terrible room.

  Her mother. Sudden, wild terror clutched her heart. She had to see if her mother was here. Hadn’t she said she’d just stay a few minutes? Hadn’t she said she’d leave as soon as she could? Kayla stepped to the window, which overlooked the front yard and the sweeping driveway, to see if she could find their battered old minivan. Outside the snow was swirling thickly. It was impossible to see past the arc of the floodlight, and the parked cars she could see were already blanketed with a thick coating of snow. It was impossible to tell whether her mom’s minivan was one of them.

  She hurried past the frozen people in the dining room, taking great care not to touch them, and into the large living room.

  More frozen grown-ups. At least a dozen. She recognized both Pria’s and Jess’s mothers. They were sitting on the sofa together. Mrs. Patel’s mouth was open, as though she was chatting, but she didn’t move. Several others stood in clumps, looking like someone had taken a still photograph of a lively conversation. There was Mr. Grafton, Alice’s father, standing in a corner, frozen in mid-tap over his smartphone. He looked like a mannequin in a men’s store. There was Mrs. Grafton, standing with a woman Kayla didn’t know, gesturing to a fancy Chinese-looking vase on a side table. Kayla tried to wail with horror, but her throat had closed up, as though she was being partially strangled.

  She had to find her mother or be absolutely certain she wasn’t here. If she hadn’t been so desperate to find her, Kayla would have been more focused on trying to figure out what could possibly be going on. After all, people didn’t just freeze like statues. For now, though, she just wanted to find—or actually not find—her mother.

  She made her way through the room and then across the hall in front of the central staircase. She walked into the study, where they’d piled all the coats. No one seemed to be in there. She turned and looked back across the hall into the living room, at the horrible, frozen figures. She took a tiny step back, stumbled, and fell, coming very close to bashing her head on the coffee table. As she lay sprawled on the floor, she looked up.

  Her mother was sitting on the couch, almost buried by mounds of coats. She had her coat on and was leaning down, as though in the middle of fastening her boot. And like all the others, she was frozen.

  Kayla tried to shout, moan, cry, anything, but once again no sound came out of her mouth. She scrambled to her hands and knees and stood up shakily. She reached out a hand to touch her mother. Her mother’s cheek was warm, her eyes bright but unseeing. She wasn’t dead. A dead person wouldn’t feel warm. Right? she reasoned to herself desperately.

  Her phone. She would dial 911. She pulled it out to make the call and then remembered. She couldn’t speak. Should she dial it anyway? She’d seen a movie once where a person who was tied up and gagged managed to dial 911. Even without hearing anyone speak, the operator had sent help based on the location of the call. But what could they possibly do when they got here? People didn’t just freeze. They wouldn’t know what to do or how this had happened.

  How did this happen? Kayla wondered. Her mind was rapidly calculating, and then it stopped. She knew the answer. It had to have been the punch—it had frozen everyone who drank it. That was why she couldn’t speak. She’d taken a sip and spat it out. So she wasn’t frozen, but the punch had somehow paralyzed her throat and voice.

  Kayla tried to remain calm. Had she swallowed any of it? If even a tiny drop had found its way down her throat and was now coursing through her system, she could be moments away from becoming frozen herself.

  In a sudden flashback, she remembered how just a few days ago she’d wished her mother would lose her voice, so that Kayla wouldn’t be embarrassed by her mother’s accent. She closed her eyes, trying to blot out the guilt.

  She hurried into the kitchen and back toward the door leading down to the basement, filled with dread. If people upstairs were frozen, what would she find when she went downstairs? What if she was the only person in the house who could still move? She had to go down there and find out.

  She put a hand on the basement door. Then she heard a movement behind her in the kitchen. She whirled around.

  CHAPTER 12

  Bulbous black eyes. A smushed-in face. Flopped-over ears. A ridiculous curled tail.

  Buttercup.

  Kayla let out her breath and realized she’d been holding it for quite some time. The dog stared up at her questioningly. He was probably as freaked out as she was. Even though she’d noticed that his saggy face always seemed to have a worried expression on it, the worry was more pronounced than usual now. While he’d never shown much interest in her before, he was wagging his tail ever so slightly, as though seeking reassurance from her, the only other being who seemed to be mobile in that terrible house. Grimly she leaned down and patted his head, and then she opened the door and headed down to the basement.

  The stairs creaked as she inched down each one. She couldn’t yet see any kids—frozen or otherwise—but she could hear the music from the karaoke machine blaring and nothing more. That same eerie almost-silence she had experienced upstairs.

  She was halfway down the stairs when the lights went out.

  If she’d been able to, Kayla would have begun to whimper. But no sounds came from her mouth. The music stopped. The basement was suddenly plunged into darkness. There was no sound. No talking. No movement.

  At least it wasn’t pitch black. Alice had put several candles around the room, red for Valentine’s Day, and they cast an eerie, flickering light on the people standing around the room. As Kayla had suspected, everyone was frozen.

  She picked up a candle from the table and moved through the room, the flickering flame dimly illuminating one frozen person after another.

  There was Alice, her elbows raised above her head, her hands frozen mid-fluff; she’d been running her hands through her hair at the moment she froze. She was standing in the middle of a group of boys, all frozen—she recognized Patrick Morley, Eric Ishak, Andrew Trevenen, Jason Yan. They stared down at her with their unblinking eyes.

  There were Jess and Pria, standing close to each other, Jess with her hand cupped next to Pria’s ear, as though stopped in mid-whisper.

  There was Nick, standing with Scott and Anthony. Nick was half turned toward the mirrored wall of shelves over the bar area, and Kayla noticed he was flexing his bicep, as though he’d been frozen just as he was checking himself out.

  Where was Tom? Was he one of these still, shadowy figures? He’d definitely sipped the punch. She hadn’t gotten to him in time. And no doubt Alice had refilled his punch cup after Kayla had gone upstairs. Kayla moved through the eerie room with its motionless figures, its flickering candles, and went into the next room, where the movie had been running—Alice had carefully picked out goopy love stories, although from the looks of the several frozen kids sitting in the audience, people had been chatting over, rather than watching, the movie. She made her way carefully into the game room. Several kids—all boys, it seemed—were frozen in various positions, holding pool cues, video game controllers, or twirling foosball handles. But no Tom. Where was he?

  A sob rose in her throat and stayed there. She felt like it might strangle her. She had to think, think, think.

  She had to find Matilda.

  She had to find Matilda and make her do something, give Kayla something, to undo this terrible curse, or whatever it was. But how would she find her? She had no idea where Matilda lived, and she remembered how many Warners there had been in the directory. Kayla couldn’t call her anyway—not without a voice.

  She’d go to the shop. She could walk there. Maybe, just maybe, she’d find Matilda there. Or the owner of the shop, who might know what to do, or at least how to find Matilda. Then a worried thought popped into her head: What were the chances of someone being at the shop at nine p.m. on a Saturday night, in the middle of a terrible snowstorm? She dismissed the thought. Going to the store
and looking for Matilda was her only hope.

  She made her way toward the foot of the basement steps, groping her way around frozen people, trying not to touch anyone.

  Then she felt a hand on her shoulder.

  CHAPTER 13

  She screamed soundlessly, almost dropping the candle, and whirled around.

  “Kayla!”

  It was Tom. Even in the light of the flickering candle, she could see his pale face, his wild eyes filled with horror.

  “What’s happening?” he croaked. “The last thing I remember is you going up those stairs, and people talking and Alice bugging out about the stain on the carpet and how her mom was going to be so mad. She poured me more punch, and I chugged down the whole cup because I was so thirsty, and then I can’t remember anything. It was like when the cable goes out for a second and the TV screen goes black. And then”—he was breathing heavily, on the verge of hyperventilating—“and then I guess I sort of came to, and the lights were out and everyone was, well, like this.” He gestured toward the frozen kids. “Why aren’t you that way? Why am I not that way? Is it a gas leak or something?”

  Kayla put a hand on his arm, and then pointed to her mouth and shook her head.

  “You can’t talk? Why can’t you talk?” His voice was climbing in pitch.

  She took his arm and indicated that they should go upstairs to the kitchen where there was at least a little light coming in through the window.

  He nodded and gripped his crutch, then climbed the stairs, leaning heavily on the banister as he limped on his bad ankle.

  As they emerged into the dim, gloomy kitchen, Buttercup charged toward them, barking his head off. Then he stopped barking abruptly, as though he’d suddenly remembered who they were. He plopped down on his belly, his little legs splayed out in front and behind. He put his head down on his front paws and began whimpering.