The True Meaning of Smekday Page 8

  At the end of Broadway I should have been able to see the Snow Queen’s Castle, but I couldn’t. Then I saw why. Most of it had been vanished by the Boov’s guns. It was horrifying, somehow. It was like a person with no head. There was a little bit of tower here, half a drawbridge there, but the rest was sliced clean away. I thought of an old photo of my mom, taken when she was younger than me, waving from the drawbridge of this castle and wearing one of those rubber mouse noses that everyone buys. I hoped she’d never have to see it like this.

  And I wondered if this had any bearing on the message I’d seen:

  HUMANS

  GO TO THE KINGDOM

  MEET UNDER THE CASTLE

  —BOOB

  That had been it, hadn’t it? I’d taken a picture of the message but left it in the car. I supposed that even if the castle was gone I could still look under it. Was there a downstairs? I’d never noticed one before. I was staring ahead of me and thinking this when I saw what looked like a collie dog in front of a fire hydrant.

  “Hey,” I said. “Here, boy.”

  Now, the thing about Happy Mouse Kingdom, if you don’t already know, is that some things are smaller than normal, and some things are bigger. You can see what looks like a huge Bavarian ski lodge or something, then get closer and realize it’s only ten feet tall. They really screw with your sense of perspective. So that’s why you can get pretty near a dog in front of a hydrant before you notice the hydrant is as big as a refrigerator and the dog is as big as a lion, and is shaped liked a lion, and is, actually, a lion.

  “Oh,” I said, stepping back. My mind raced. Part of it thought, Well, naturally, some of the animals must have escaped from the Wild World Animal Park, and part of it tried to remember if anyone in school ever told us what to do when faced with a lion; but no, of course they didn’t, they were too busy teaching really useful things like the state capitals.

  “The capital of Florida is Tallahassee,” I told the lion as I backed slowly away. “The official beverage is orange juice.”

  The lion grunted and crouched low on his haunches. He stalked. The word for what he did was definitely “stalked.” I’m certain that this word was coined just for lions; everyone else made a poor business of it.

  “I probably don’t taste good,” I offered as I edged toward a shop corner. “You won’t believe what I’ve been eating.”

  The lion’s rear quivered impatiently. Then he suddenly stretched back like he was coiling his springs, and I took off running.

  I ran like I never had. I drew air so hard it felt like pins in my chest. I weaved back and forth, around lampposts and in and out of alleys, hoping it might make a difference, hoping that lions weren’t so good at hunting if their prey suddenly ducked behind a gift shop. I could hear his round paws pounding behind me, and the huff of his breath. And I realized that if I was looking for evidence that I’d lost my mind, I could do a lot worse than thinking I was being chased by a lion through the empty streets of Happy Mouse Kingdom.

  I thought about what I had. I had some cheese crackers in the pocket of my cargo pants. I had a camera and a pack of chocolate Ding-A-Lings in my camera bag. I had a turkey baster that made noisy bubbles when you squeezed it. I had my car keys, but unless I was going to scratch FART into the side of the lion, I didn’t think they would help.

  I leaped for the lowest branch of a tree and pulled myself up. Suddenly I felt a jerk, and the cat’s claws were hooked through the strap of my bag, pulling me down.

  I screamed and batted at the paw with my fist. Finally I saved the camera, and the bag’s strap broke, and I left it to the lion as I hoisted myself higher, branch by branch.

  The lion hunched over the camera bag, sniffing. He ate my Ding-A-Lings.

  “Lions don’t climb trees, right? That’s leopards,” I said between rapid breaths. I was full of butterflies. “Or panthers. Leopards or panthers.”

  The lion finished his snack and turned his attention to me again. He circled the tree, then stretched his tawny body up the trunk, sinking his claws deep into the bark.

  “Lions don’t climb trees!” I yelled.

  I got a good look at his body now, his thick ribs nearly pushing through that bristly hide. I’m no lion expert, but his eyes looked sunken, and his legs were lanky and thin. He was old and he was starving.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry you can’t eat me.”

  The lion lay back down on the ground, never taking his eyes off me. I didn’t want to use the turkey baster. It would alert J.Lo to where I was, but it would alert every other Boov in town as well. I looked around. I was pretty sure I could crawl along one of the tree limbs and climb onto the roof of the Haunted House.

  The lion whined.

  “This is the best I can do,” I said, tossing him my cheese crackers. “I saw a peacock near the sundial, if you like that sort of thing.”

  He sniffed at the crackers and ate them, wrapper and all. I shinnied along a branch, then another, and dropped onto the roof of the house. With a little maneuvering I made my way to an open window, pushed aside the skeleton leaning out of it, and went in.

  It was dark, of course, and the air was thick and close. There wasn’t a real room inside—just a catwalk. Looking downward through the elaborate stage set of the Haunted House was pointless. It could have been a bottomless pit, for all I could see. Here and there, a bit of moonlight slipped through a window or gap and bleached some of the darkness a dim blue.

  I could only feel my way along the catwalk, searching for a way down. Strange shapes loomed out at me from every angle. In the dark every loop and coil of wire was a jungle vine or snake, and every theater light hung from above like a one-eyed bat. It might have been scary if I were the type who got scared. As it happened, I did feel sort of breathless and jumpy, but I think you have to expect that when you’ve just finished a lot of running and you haven’t been eating well.

  Anyway.

  I found the way down by nearly falling off the edge. There was a sort of open tube running along one wall, formed from hoops and slats of metal. Inside the tube was a ladder.

  Here’s the thing: I thought the ladder would end when I got to the ground floor, so I wasn’t paying much attention until it hit me that I’d been descending for a long time. Too long. I looked out around me and saw nothing. Really nothing. Like, you don’t have any idea what nothing looks like, because there’s always some light somewhere, leaking under a door or through a window crack. This was black like death, This was honest-to-God-can’t-see-your-hand-in-front-of-your-face dark. Pardon my language.

  At one point I thought I’d come to the bottom. I reached out with my foot, but couldn’t find the next step. Aha, I thought, the floor must be right below. So I stretched my leg out some more, and suddenly the section of ladder I clung to slid downward like the bottom of a fire escape. My stomach lurched, then lurched again as the ladder butted against something. There was the loud clang of metal on metal. And now I could feel another rung below. My ladder had only met up with another ladder, and I began to wonder if it would ever end.

  The sensible thing would have been to turn back, to climb back up until I at least saw a window again. But I picked this time to remember part of the secret message:

  MEET UNDER THE CASTLE

  and it made me think, Is this what they meant? Am I underground?

  It didn’t seem so crazy if I thought about it hard enough. Maybe the Happy Mouse Kingdom people had underground tunnels so they could go from place to place without disturbing the guests. Maybe they even had a little subway under here, or something. Something that would lead to the Snow Queen’s Castle.

  So I kept going. The length of ladder that had so unexpectedly dropped now sprung back up as I let go. I descended another twenty, maybe thirty, steps before I ran out of rungs again. This time my foot found a hard, concrete floor, and I stepped away.

  I reached out with both arms, swung them in slow, wide arcs, like I was trying to swim. I began to touc
h things around me. Strange things. Something that I hoped was a coiled hose. Something that I hoped was a sponge. I felt a stack of shelves, and these were filled with plastic bottles and maybe buckets, and one object that felt like the worst thing in the world but which turned out later to be a sandwich.

  Then I felt the cage. It was all around. I was in some kind of chain-link cage, maybe six feet by ten, and I couldn’t feel any opening. And I thought, Okay, that’s it. They caught me. And it was a few panicky seconds before I reasoned that if the Boov wanted to capture someone, there was probably an easier way to do it than to hope they’d see a message in Pig Latin that would lure them, like, a hundred miles to a theme park, where they’d be chased by a lion into a tree and onto a roof and then down a ladder into a cage that they could just climb back out of whenever they pleased. So I groped around a little more and eventually found the rack of flashlights.

  The first couple I tried worked. I swished them around and saw I was in a supply cage, mostly full of cleaning products. The buckets were buckets. The horrible thing was, in fact, old peanut butter. And there was a gate on one end. I slipped one of the flashlights into my waistband and emptied all the batteries from the rest into my pockets. I grabbed a bottle of glass cleaner because it comforted me to hold something in my hand that had a trigger, such as it was.

  I pushed out through the gate. Far above was some massive shape hanging from the ceiling. In the dim light I could make out shutters, windows, and shingles. Spare parts, I figured, for the house aboveground. Around me was only darkness, even with the flashlight. The walls of this room were too far away, or there weren’t any walls at all. I crept steadily forward, and soon my light found a squat little something in the corner. It looked like an engine, or part of a lawn mower, and I was pretty sure it was a generator. With any luck it had gas in it, so I searched around for the rip cord and gave it a tug. The thing sort of shuddered and coughed, so I pulled it again. And again. On the fourth try it growled to life, and all over and around me lights began to wink and flicker, and soon I could see it.

  It was the Haunted House. Hanging upside down. From the ceiling. I was in a big room, an enormous room, a room like half a football field, and there was an entire Haunted House hanging upside down in the middle of it.

  It was perfect in every detail: the broken shutters, the bent weather vane, even the fake black cat screeching silently over the front porch. On the ceiling itself was a little plot of land, fake grass and mud, with gravestones and wiry trees hanging down like stalactites. Or stalagmites. I can never remember which is which.

  I sat heavily on the floor, dumbstruck. I wondered how I’d know if I was crazy. Is there a blood test, or can you just pee in a cup or something? Once I was in a bicycle accident, and I lay in the street for a long time afterward. People surrounded me and wouldn’t let me stand up until the paramedics arrived. When they did, they asked if I knew who the president was, and what state I lived in, and how much was three times seven. When I answered everything correctly they seemed pleased, so they asked my name and I said “Gratuity,” and then they wouldn’t let me up until I told them it was “Janet.”

  Anyway, sitting there, I decided to test myself again. But this time the president wasn’t the president anymore, and I didn’t have a home, and my name was still my name. I could do the math, sure, but I decided all the same to just lie down for a while. I gazed at the roof of the house like I was flying.

  Eventually I had to take my eyes off it, so I looked around the cavernous room. It wasn’t really just rectangular. It had wide scoops on opposite ends, like wings. Like a huge half-pipe. And all around were doors marked with bright signs. One door said

  FROGWORTH’S HOPPING PAD

  TOONTOPIA

  ABRAHAM SUPERLINCOLN’S TIME MACHINE

  and another said

  BIG ROCK CANDY MOUNTAIN

  GALAXANDER’S LUNAR LANDER

  But I knew I didn’t have time for those. What I really wanted was through door number three:

  MISTER SCHWA’S GRAMMAZING

  VOCABULARCOASTER

  SNOW QUEEN’S CASTLE

  The second thing; not the first one.

  I didn’t really want to leave the room without some clue as to why the Haunted House, or a haunted house, was dangling from the rafters like that. There had to be a sign somewhere with an explanation. But I had things to do. J.Lo would start to worry. I pulled open the door to the castle slowly and quietly, and left the mystery and the humming generator behind.

  If I’d been expecting anything remarkable behind the door, I was wrong. It was only a dark hallway, and I flicked my flashlight back and forth in front of me to guard against any surprises. The corridor curved slightly to the right. I passed a door to the Mister Schwa ride, and the corridor curved back, and I saw a light. Not my light, but something soft and orange down the hall. I switched off the flashlight and saw the outline of another door, maybe fifty feet ahead.

  I raised my bottle of glass cleaner and fingered the trigger as I crept forward. There were voices. Laughing. In a weird way you can always tell when a sound is a person’s voice, and usually tell that they’re speaking English, even when you can’t make out anything they’re saying. I relaxed a little and reached for the door handle, and suddenly felt something against my shoe. Something that gave a little, like a rubber band, and just as I realized what I’d done, there came a great loud noise of cans and spoons clattering together at the edges of the hallway.

  I’m not going to write down what I said at this point.

  Then the door swung forward, so I hopped back a little and saw a dark shape come at me, and that’s when I sort of accidentally squirted it where its head would be.

  “Ow! Ooowwwww!” said the shape. I trained my flashlight on it, and saw it was just a kid. A boy, maybe nine or ten.

  “Ooooowwwwwwwwwww!” he moaned, pawing at his face. I heard a rustle from beyond the door, and he was soon joined by other boys, six, then seven and eight of them. They looked at me like they’d never seen a black girl with a flashlight before.

  “I’m sorry. That was an accident,” I said. First human I meet in three days and I squirt ammonia in his eyes. “He sca…startled me. You know, things like this happen when you just go barging through doors like that—”

  “Who the hell are you?” said the biggest kid. He was maybe my age, with a dirty face and ratty blond curls. I’d also learn that he tended to swear a lot. I don’t care for that, personally, so I’m going to bleep him out from now on. “Did the Boov send you?” he added.

  Two of the boys were guiding the one I’d blinded back into the room. I noticed I wasn’t being invited in.

  “Did the Boov…? Of course not,” I answered. “Why would—”

  “She’s probably a bleeping spy,” said the blond boy. “Probably not even a real girl. She doesn’t look right.”

  “Oh, I don’t look right. Sure. Do you know you have a peanut stuck to your chin?”

  “Shut the bleep up! You don’t get to speak!”

  “And you smell like ice cream.”

  The boy lunged forward, but he was caught by a smaller boy on his left. I stepped back and aimed the squirt bottle.

  “Do that again and I’ll clean your face for you,” I said.

  There was a moment of silence. Most of the boys were looking at Curly like they were waiting for orders. Instead it was the smaller boy holding him back who spoke.

  “Let’s just go inside where we can all see better.”

  “No!” said Curly. “No girls allowed!”

  “Oh, you gotta be kidding me—”

  “I’m not asking her to join,” said the boy. “I’m saying we should go inside.” Nobody did anything, so he added, “In the light it’ll be easier to tell if she’s just a Boov in a girl suit.”

  “Yeah,” said Curly. “That’s good. Back inside!”

  We went in. Curly marched behind me like he was my guard. The door opened onto a huge room, larger than t
he last. I had some idea what to expect this time, so I wasn’t entirely caught off guard by the castle hanging upside down in the middle. This one was whole. Whole and perfect, untouched by the Boov. I could have stared forever at the dancing light that flickered over each icy brick and frosting tower.

  “Hey! No pictures!” Curly shouted. He was still behind me. Behind him there was a ring of candles and a little camp stove in the corner of the room, surrounded by boxes and chairs. The boys took up their seats. There wasn’t one for me, and I wasn’t about to sit on the floor, so I stood.

  “Check her back for a zipper,” said Curly.

  A couple of boys approached me, but a particular expression on my face made them change their minds.

  “I saw some graffiti that pointed me here,” I said. “So I came. My name’s Gratuity. My…friends call me Tip.”

  “Tip!” shouted Curly. He laughed like a donkey, and some of the other boys joined in. “What kind of bleeping name is Tip?”

  “The kind you’re never calling me, you big—”

  “I’m Christian,” said the boy who’d held Curly back in the hall. He had caramel-color skin and caramel-color hair, like they were both made from the same thing. All the other boys stared at me from their seats. All of them except the one I’d squirted, who was pouring water all over his red face. His eyes looked like cherries.

  One by one they gave their names. There was Tanner, Juan, Alberto, Marcos, Jeff, Yosuan, and Cole. I think. They were all between the ages of maybe eight to thirteen. Curly didn’t give his name.

  “Why are you here?” said Christian. “Why weren’t you on the rocketpods like all the others?”

  “I decided to drive instead.”

  “Liar,” said Curly.

  “Anyway,” I said, “weren’t the rocketpods supposed to come here? Where is everybody?”

  “Arizona,” said Christian. “The Boov decided to keep Florida for themselves.”