Wax

  Questions were still coming fast and furious​—​If the Bursaws I just met are wax Hollows, then what happened to the real ones? And where is Blake?

  Or rather, What have they done to Blake?

  But Dud wasn’t letting up. “What does this button do?”

  “Locks the doors.”

  “What does this button do?”

  “Opens the window. But don’t​—”

  Dud opened the window. A gust of wind punched through the car, lifting the blanket off Wax Dud II in the back seat and blowing out the flame of the message candle.

  “Dammit, Dud! We need that candle lit!” she shouted, reaching back to cover the sculpture again.

  He gave her a repentant look. “I’m sorry.”

  She’d had misgivings about removing the candle from the safety of her home, but things were escalating, and she needed to read Madame Grosholtz’s words as soon as they were exposed. But perhaps assigning Dud to candle watch had been a mistake. “Look around the floor. Maybe you can find some matches​—”

  “Achoo!”

  “Yeah, I’m aware that this car is an allergy factory. I’ll get it cleaned as soon as we get this pesky wax-demon problem taken care of. But for now, please look for the matches​—”

  “No need.”

  Poppy looked at him. Then at his lap.

  “Did you just . . . sneeze that candle lit?”

  He grinned. “I did.”

  Like he’d sneezed the television on fire. And why not? He had a flame in his body, after all.

  The boy was a human lighter.

  “Well,” Poppy said, “that’s convenient.”

  Dud cupped his hand around the candle, now taking his keeper-of-the-flame role seriously. “Where are we going now?”

  “Back to the factory. You don’t have to come in; I just want to check something. In fact​—” Out of habit at this point, she dialed Blake’s number again, rehearsing what she was going to say when his voice mail picked up. But this time​—​

  “Hello?”

  “Blake!” She pulled over into an illegal parking space. “You picked up!”

  “Yeah. It’s my phone.”

  “Where have you been? I’ve called a million times, left a million messages, you weren’t in school​—”

  “I was sick. Didn’t my dad tell you?”

  “Well​—​yeah, but​—”

  “But what?”

  Poppy paused. He sounded different. Gone was the intensity from his voice, the reckless fury that had surfaced when it seemed that his family was in danger.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  “I’m fine, Poppy. Talk to you later.”

  Poppy stared at the phone as the call ended. “Not Hogwash?” she said. “Not Your Porkness? Nothing about my hooves?”

  Blake had never once called her by her real name. Maybe he really was sick.

  Or maybe he’d caught something much worse.

  Poppy swung out of the parking spot, bouncing Clementine up onto the curb as she pulled a U-turn. A chorus of honking erupted. “They’re sticking their fingers up,” said Dud, putting his hand through the window to do the same and pleasantly waving it at the enraged motorists. “Hi!”

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  The Grosholtz Candle Factory wasn’t as crowded on a Monday afternoon as it had been over the weekend, but Poppy still had to bob and weave past a group of retirees clustered around the main entrance in order to get to the BiScentennial display.

  As promised, two new candles: Cup o’ Joe and Forever Young.

  Poppy picked up the brown Cup o’ Joe, sniffed, and was bombarded with the distinctive roasted notes of coffee. “Excuse me,” she said, flagging down the nearest Waxpert. “When were these candles made?”

  “Oh, the Chandlers manufacture them overnight,” the Waxpert said, “then prepare the display before we open every morning. They’ve spearheaded this BiScentennial campaign all by themselves!”

  “I see,” Poppy said shakily as the Waxpert left. “Thanks.”

  Unnerved, she stepped around to the other side and sampled the other candle​—​but abruptly clapped her hand over her nose at the mix of Orbit gum, cheap body spray, and all the alcohol and pot and sweaty smells of a raging Saturday-night party.

  Blake. Without a doubt.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  “STOP EVERYTHING!”

  Poppy stampeded down the aisle of Gaudy Auditorium like a spooked buffalo, waving her arms and bringing the “Do-Re-Mi” number onstage to a screeching halt.

  “What now?” cried Jill. “We were getting something done for a change​—”

  “Awesome! Then you won’t mind if we pause for a moment to do something else.”

  “I do mind. A great deal.”

  “Too bad. I’m mutinying your mutiny.”

  Powerless to stop her, the members of the Giddy Committee reluctantly obeyed as Poppy spent the next ten minutes placing them in various spots around the stage. “Jesus, move a few steps downstage. No, down stage. Walk toward me. How do you guys not know your stage directions by now?”

  Jill tapped her on the shoulder. “Where’s your, um, cousin?”

  “Waiting in the car.” Guarding that candle with his life, I hope.

  “Hope you parked in the shade​—”

  “Shh! I’m trying to concentrate!”

  The world premiere of Poppy Explains the Horrible Wax Situation Using Her Actors as Stand-Ins was only minutes away, and preliminary reviews had already panned it, calling it “confusing,” “impossible,” and “I feel as though I have been miscast.”

  This last comment was from Connor, of course, who was not happy with his role as Madame Grosholtz. “I can do so much more,” he insisted, swishing his cape. “I know stage combat.”

  “Connor, I literally just need you to stand there while I narrate and explain to you guys what’s going on. These aren’t actual roles. This isn’t an actual show. You get that, right?”

  “But how come Jesus gets to be Big Bob Bursaw?”

  “Born talent, bitches!” Jesus shouted.

  “Okay, you know what?” Poppy said. “Forget it! Everyone off the stage. Just find a seat and listen to me.”

  The members of the Giddy Committee sat in the audience in a clump, the old seats making heinous creaking noises, while Poppy sat on the edge of the stage and beheld her captive audience.

  “Once upon a time,” she said in her best Narrator voice​—​because a fake performance was still a performance​—​“there lived a woman named Madame Tussaud.”

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  When Poppy finished her monologue, the members of the Giddy Committee shifted nervously in their seats, not knowing whether to believe her or challenge her or run screaming to the next available extracurricular activity.

  “Prove it,” Louisa said.

  Poppy locked onto Louisa’s cynical, beady eyes. “I can’t prove it,” she admitted. “It’s all been conjecture up to this point, but honestly, there’s no other explanation! Tell them, Jill!”

  “There’s no other explanation,” Jill said. “Except for, you know, the thousands of other explanations.”

  “Seriously,” said Louisa. “Never thought I’d have to say this to someone over the age of ten, but the Hollow Ones legend isn’t real, Poppy. People can’t be made out of wax. Candles can’t be made out of people. What drugs are you on?”

  “Drugs are not rad,” said Connor.

  “Wait, who’s got the drugs?” Jesus asked, perking up.

  “I am not on drugs, you guys!” Poppy shouted. “How else do you explain Dud?”

  “Who’s Dud?”

  Poppy bit her lip. With all the insanity she’d heaped upon them, she didn’t want to add Dud to the pile.

  “Let me put it this way,” she said. “Think of the Chandlers as matches. Just like you’d use one matchstick to light the individual candles on a birthday cake, the Chandlers li
t copies of themselves inside the individual wax sculptures of Miss Bea and Big Bob. Now Miss Bea and Big Bob are imposters, walking around as if they’re the real thing, when in fact they are clones of the souls of Anita and Preston Chandler! Respectively!”

  She was met with blank stares.

  “You guys. I am telling you that the Chandlers kidnapped two prominent members of our community. Maybe they are being held hostage. Maybe they are dead. Maybe they have been turned into candles. Is none of this a cause for concern?”

  She was met with silence.

  “Well, how about this: if Blake​—”

  “Oh, here we go,” Jill interjected. “Best buddy Blake again.”

  Poppy eyed her​—​but maybe it was best to leave Blake out of this for now. “If,” she reworded, “the Chandlers were able to get to the Bursaws​—​arguably two of the most untouchable people in Paraffin​—​then aren’t you worried that any one of us could be next?”

  Jill shook her head and stood up. “We need to get back to rehearsing for the parade, Pops.”

  “But it could happen again! We need to stop them! If they’ve already gotten to Blake​—”

  “Blake again, huh?” Jill snorted. “You know what? How about you take five and join us once you’ve . . . regained your composure.”

  For the sake of the Giddy Committee, Poppy obeyed. But as she watched them get back to their places onstage, she couldn’t help but obsess harder.

  She looked back down at her notebook, at the doodles she’d scribbled in biology.

  One fire, many flames.

  She stopped.

  Frowning, she looked closer at the cells she had drawn in class.

  “Viruses!” she shouted.

  Jill, delivering a halfhearted pep talk to the Giddy Committee, put a hand over her brow to squint at Poppy in the audience. “I know you’re a little rusty on this one, Pops, but infectious diseases don’t figure into The Sound of Music as much as you’d think.”

  Poppy summoned every ounce of righteousness and redemption she’d been storing up since Triple Threat. “The Chandlers are like a virus. They’re replicating bad cells​—​copies of their souls​—​and passing them off as normal, healthy cells so that the body​—​Paraffin​—​won’t catch on to what they’re doing, won’t notice that anything is wrong! Meanwhile, they’re slowly taking control of our town, and if no one tries to stop them, it’ll happen again. And again! And if we don’t stop them soon from spreading, it’ll be too late!”

  She stood there before them, frenzied and panting and full of every hope she’d scrounged from the bottom up.

  “Am I right, or am I right?”

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  “I am right,” Poppy grumbled as she trudged through the school parking lot. Jill had asked her, once and for all, to leave the auditorium. And then Jill had locked the door.

  Screw Jill, she thought. And screw the Giddy Committee. I don’t need them. I’ve got a human lighter. Go Team Wax.

  A positive attitude was key.

  Her spirits lifted higher when her car came into view, Dud excitedly beckoning from within. “There are more words!” he said, handing her the magnifying glass as she sank into the driver’s seat. “Important words, I think!”

  Poppy read aloud:

  “AND NOW THEY HAVE GONE AND DONE SOMETHING TRULY REGRETTABLE. I DO NOT KNOW WHAT IT IS​—​ALL I KNOW IS THAT THEY HAVE BEEN GIVING ME PHOTOS OF TOWNSPEOPLE, I ASSUME, AND FORCING ME TO SCULPT THEIR LIKENESSES. MY GUESS IS THAT THEIR DELUSIONS OF GRANDEUR HAVE REACHED NEW HEIGHTS, THAT THEY WISH TO INFILTRATE MORE PEOPLE IN THE TOWN AND TO SOMEHOW BUILD UP THEIR FACTORY PROFITS IN THE PROCESS. WHICH IS WHY I AM DOING SOMETHING I SHOULD HAVE DONE MANY, MANY YEARS AGO​—​BURN DOWN MY STUDIO AND END MY UNNATURALLY LONG LIFE, THEREBY TAKING AWAY THE CHANDLERS’ ABILITY TO CONTINUE THEIR REIGN OF TERROR. SOME DAMAGE IS DONE​—​I CANNOT TAKE BACK THE HOLLOWS I HAVE ALREADY SCULPTED​—​BUT PERHAPS IF THIS CANDLE FINDS ITS WAY INTO THE RIGHT HANDS, THEY CAN STILL BE STOPPED.”

  “Are we the right hands?” Dud asked.

  Poppy had gone pale.

  “I guess we’ll have to be.” She swallowed and lifted a limp fist into the air. “Go Team Wax.”

  16

  Stay on the road

  ON THE DRIVE HOME, THE THOUGHTS SWIRLED AND TORNADOED, jumped and bucked, but they always landed on the same conclusion: Keep it together, Palladino.

  That, more than anything, had to remain her strategy. No matter how much she knew, no matter what she suspected, she could not let on a thing. Not to the authorities, not to the Chandlers, not even to her parents.

  After giving Dud a quick lesson on what he should say if her parents asked how school had gone, she parked Clementine in the driveway, took the key out of the ignition, and placed her head on the steering wheel.

  “Now what?” asked Dud.

  “Now we unload you from the back seat.”

  As quietly as possible, they removed Wax Dud II from the car. Poppy decided to store it in the gardening shed in the backyard; winter was on its way, so there wasn’t much of a chance that her parents would be looking in there anytime soon.

  Wax Crawford, on the other hand, was to stay in the trunk. Possibly forever.

  Poppy clicked the shed’s padlock shut and warily eyed the kitchen window. “Now we attempt dinner.”

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  A change was taking place in the Palladino household. The stained wooden tray tables had been relegated to the basement. Trivets had been unearthed for the first time in years. And Poppy was flabbergasted to find her family seated at the dining room table when she and Dud walked in, her father at the head, carving a blob of fake meat. “Hello, family!” he crowed. “It’s Tofurky time!”

  “Good God, what is happening in here?” Poppy asked.

  “We decided,” her mother said, passing Owen a bowl of carrots, “that it’s time for us to start acting a little more civilized. Dr. Steve says that children who eat together with their families at the table accrue fifty percent more healthful benefits than those who don’t.”

  Poppy let her backpack slide to the floor while Dud took a seat next to Owen. “And you’re sure this has nothing to do with being embarrassed about our shabby lives in front of our new guest?”

  “It has nothing to do with embarrassment,” her father said, a point Poppy had to concede. She’d seen photos of her parents from the 1980s and concluded that humiliation was not something with which they had ever concerned themselves. “Besides,” he went on, “I’ll bet Dud eats together with his family on a boat or at the fire pit, or standing over the innards of a wildebeest. Isn’t that right, Dud?”

  Dud looked up from his salad, an alfalfa sprout hanging from his lip. “What’s a boat?”

  “We do eat together,” Poppy jumped in. “With the added bonus of television. What about Dr. Steve?”

  “Well, if you’ll recall, Poppy, our television exploded. And I’m sure Dr. Steve can survive without us.”

  “Dad. We are his only friends.”

  “Dud!” Mrs. Palladino interjected. “How was school today?”

  Clearly rattled by the question despite the training Poppy had given him, Dud opted to deflect. “This food is delicious!”

  Poppy’s mother gave him a confused yet pleased smile. “Thank you, Dud! It’s because I put the love in.”

  Poppy came to his aid. “Here are the exchange-student forms, by the way,” she said, grabbing the packet from her bag and holding it up so that everyone could get a good look at her ruse. “Where do you want them?”

  “Oh,” her mother said, distaste for paperwork already flitting across her face. “In that box over there.”

  Poppy gladly dropped the folder into the box, knowing full well that it wouldn’t be touched for at least a fortnight. Meanwhile, the question train had roared back to life once more. “I’m curious too, Dud,” said Poppy’s father. “How was your first day at school?”

  He coul
dn’t avoid it any longer. Dud methodically put down his fork, placed his hands in his lap, and looked at his plate. “School was fine,” he said in a monotone. “I read a poem in English, sang a song in music, and drew a banana in math.”

  “Parabola,” Poppy hissed.

  “Para . . . banabola.”

  Dammit. He’d gotten it right when they rehearsed in the car. Poppy tensed up, but her parents didn’t seem to notice his mistake. “That sounds nice,” her mother said. Maybe she didn’t know what a parabola was either. “And there were no problems getting you signed up for classes?”

  “Nope, they squeezed him in,” Poppy said.

  “And what’s your favorite class so far, Dud?”

  He snuck a wry look at Poppy. “Art.”

  “No wonder.” Her father gestured at the small army of wax figures he’d arranged on the kitchen counter, like an off-season nativity. “You’re a born artiste!”

  Dud beamed.

  Poppy choked down her carrots.

  Owen decorated his face with Tofurky.

  After dinner, Dud announced that he was going upstairs to “MAKE HOMEWORK,” which sounded so fishy that even Owen raised an eyebrow, but the adults in the household didn’t suspect a thing. “It’s amazing how well he’s already assimilating,” Poppy’s mom confided to her as they washed the dishes. “It must be such culture shock for the poor thing. Do the other kids at school like him?”

  “I have not heard any complaints.”

  “Of course not. What a fuzzy little sweetheart! I only hope no one takes advantage of him because he’s different. With all the garbage you’ve had go to through​—”

  “Mom.”

  “I’m just saying, honey. Lots of bullies at that school. I’d keep an eye on him if I were you.”

  “He’ll be fine.”