Extraordinary<li> (13 page)

“Hey, guys,” I said. “Have you been turning my car into a den of sin?”

“We might ask you the same question about Doug’s grave!” said Amber.

I laughed and got in the driver’s seat.

“So, tell me,” said Amber. “Yes or no?”

“Yes,” I said, as we deluded ourselves that
maybe
Jason and Mutual didn’t know what we meant.

Amber squealed and kicked my seat. I think she was almost as excited as I was.

My car started right back up, and we headed into downtown for dinner at the Noire Cafe (which had been a goththemed restaurant a while before, but had turned into a nice Italian place now that the goth craze had settled down), then drove around to see the sights of Des Moines. Which, again, mostly add up to a giant umbrella statue and a big fiberglass cow.

But I liked both of those, and Mutual seemed impressed. He was impressed by everything. I don’t want to say he was seeing layers and layers of meaning in everything, like Shakespeare, but he almost seemed like he was.

This was the Mutual I’d been waiting for.

“Where to now?” I asked when it got to be about ten o’clock. I’d never gone out enough for my mom to bother giving me a curfew, and Jason wasn’t in the habit of honoring his. I didn’t want the night to end.

“Wherever,” said Amber.

“What do people usually do at this hour, anyway?” I asked. “Besides go to strip clubs or bars or parties in people’s basements.”

“Sometimes my coworkers and I go play Pac-Man at the coin laundry place after work,” said Jason.

“Pac-Man?” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “You know, the video game.”

“Yes, I know what Pac-Man is. But why?”

“They have one of the old machines at this one laundry place on Merle Hay Road that’s open all night,” said Jason. “We go out there at, like, midnight to play Pac-Man, drink cans of pop, and talk to whoever’s there.”

“What kind of people do you meet in a coin laundry at midnight?” I asked.

“Weirdos, mostly,” he said. “Night owls. That and people whose washing machines are on the fritz.”

“Sounds good to me,” I said. “Want to head over there?”

“Sure,” said Jason. “Only it might be too crowded. Like, half the restaurant industry goes there to party after work now. My crew was into it back before it was cool, though.”

Amber laughed. “I love it,” she said. “You were into
Pac-Man
before it was cool!”

“Well, okay, we were into it about thirty years after the first time it was cool,” he said. “But before it got cool again.”

“When it was just you and the nighthawks at the coin laundry,” I said.

I pulled onto Merle Hay Road, and Jason pointed me over to a laundry place near Douglas Avenue. Inside, there were about four people doing laundry. I thought they might be hippies, but it was hard to tell if they were bohemians or just kind of dirty.

Jason changed a twenty in the bill slot and bought us all grape sodas from a vending machine, and we gathered around the Pac-Man game.

I watched Jason go through a game first (he was pretty good), and then watched Amber play (she sucked), and sort of got the hang of it by observing. If you’re a quick study, Pac-Man is not the hardest game to master. When it was my turn, I knew what to do.

It was a fun way to cap off an evening, and the grape soda was a nice touch. Purple stuff, you know. It gave Mutual nice, grape-flavored breath (even though grape-flavored stuff does not taste remotely like grapes, or any other fruit that occurs in nature, for that matter).

I guided Mutual’s arms around my waist. He still seemed a tiny bit shy about touching me or kissing me, and I wanted to get him over that as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, the radio was playing one Beatles song after another. Mutual said he’d heard most of them on the radio and sang along with the ones he knew.

I thought a bit about John Lennon. He was a pretty violent person at first, but with help from his wife, he became totally peaceful. If he could do it, I could. I was never as mean and sardonic as he was at my age.

Or Alley Rhodes, for that matter—people used to call her the Ice Queen of the Vicious Circle. But Doug had helped her change.

I might have been turning into a violent, bitter girl instead of the charming free spirit Mutual had seen me as when I was eleven. But I could change.

Between songs, the DJ came on.

“Weird night in Des Moines,” he said. “In addition to the Weather Beacon, we’re getting reports of purple stuff all over the place. We just had someone call and tell us that that
statue of the naked angel on a tricycle down at the mall is also purple.”

“Ha!” I said. “Tonight is the Feast of St. Jennifer the Purple!”

“Let’s take some callers,” the DJ said. “Caller, you’re on the air.”

“This is some kind of post-human crap,” said the voice of a guy who sounded like a farmer. “Whole town’s gone to hell since they all moved here.”

“And let’s not forget it’s homecoming season,” said the DJ. “I’m sure we’ve all heard the usual rumors that the vampire who attacked that girl three years ago is somehow still alive, or his clan is in town for revenge.”

“They have to come sooner or later,” said the caller.

“The president of the Human/Post-Human Alliance, whatever that is, has said that an ‘honor guard of vampires’ is on call to deal with any issues,” the DJ said. “Call me crazy, but it doesn’t make me feel much better.”

“Is that your group?” Mutual asked me.

I nodded.

The next caller said that he thought painting things purple was something vampires did to celebrate after attacking someone, like how the Death Eaters in the Harry Potter books cast the Dark Mark whenever they kill.

“Man,” I said. “I’m so sick of all this ‘trouble with a capital T and that rhymes with P and that stands for post-humans’ crap. I owe post-humans a lot, you know.”

Mutual squeezed my hand.

I guess he thought I meant that if it weren’t for his vampire parents, I wouldn’t have him. Which was true.

But I actually meant my fairy godparent. Who was technically a pre-human, but, well, same difference.

He had painted the town purple just for me, and made my wish come true.

After three cans of grape pop, I excused myself to take a pee and found a swear word scrawled in the mirror of the ladies’ room.

I stared at it for a second before opening the stall door to find Gregory Grue sitting on the toilet.

Most of you have probably figured out by now that the longhaired muscular guy you’ve seen pictures of is actually Mutual, not Fred, like we’ve been saying it is.

Yeah. We like to
tell
people Mutual is Fred, so they won’t send him hate mail.

So you’re also probably wondering what, exactly, Fred had to do with the whole story.

Well, it’s coming up.

I jumped in shock when I saw Gregory sitting there, but I really wasn’t scared so much as surprised to find him in the stall of the women’s bathroom.

He was sitting on the toilet (with his pants up, thank God) holding a bottle of beer and reclining against the tank.

“Hoo hoo!” he said, raising the bottle like he was giving a toast. “It’s a wonderful night for laundry! A wonderful night for drinks!”

“God!” I said. “You shocked me.”

“I come like a mole and go like a weasel, kiddo,” he said. “Happy?”

“Yes, thank you,” I said. “I’m happier than I’ve ever been in my life.”

He grinned, but it wasn’t a happy grin. More of a wicked one.

“That’s just swell, kiddo,” he said. “But you know what? Two of your three wishes were for misery, not happiness. You wished for Corey to get rejected—which happened, by the way. That Emily girl wouldn’t be caught dead with a guy who stank of granola.”

Something in the way he was talking made me shiver.

“And let’s not forget the thing that you were wishing for the hardest of all,” he said. “For revenge on Cathy.”

He took a sip of his beer, and I felt a chill, like a cold drink, run down
my
throat, too.

“So, giving me her part in the play was how you granted my wish, huh?”

“Just the start, girly girl,” he said. “Oh, she’s really gonna go through it. We People of Peace really aren’t in the business of making people happy, you know. We didn’t call
ourselves
the People of Peace—the humans in the villages did. It was sort of like saying ‘nice doggie’ to a dog you know is gonna bite your ankles. And you—you’re just as bad as we are! You get three wishes, and two out of three are for other people to be miserable! Hoo hoo!”

I felt my insides starting to curl around inside me.

Because he was right.

It was just like me—the girl who smashed things and
spent half her time imagining the violent deaths of people who annoyed her—to wish for misery over happiness.

I didn’t like where this was going.

“Now, for instance, did you ever hear about Cinderella?”

“Sure.”

“You know how that story really went, right? Back before they cleaned it up for the cartoons? How her stepsisters cut their toes off to fit into the glass slipper, then got pecked to death by birds?”

I shook my head. I knew that all the old fairy tales used to be really gory before they got cleaned up and all, but I hadn’t heard that one.

“And do you know why Cinderella had to be back by midnight or her coach would turn into a pumpkin?”

I shook my head again.

“It was because her fairy godmother was a dick!” he said triumphantly. “A dick who wanted to see the look on Cindy’s face when the coach turned into a pumpkin and the dress turned back to rags right in front of the prince. We’re all sort of bastards like that.”

He smiled and looked terribly, horribly pleased with himself.

“But she married the prince in the end,” I said.

“Sure,” said Gregory. “Only that prince was about as charming as a wiry black hair on a toilet seat. Cindy spent the rest of her life scrubbing castle floors and squeezing out babies. When she had five girls in a row, and no boys, they got rid of her.”

He dragged his finger across his neck.

“You’re not going to make Cathy cut her toes off, are
you?” I asked. I might have been angry at her, but I wasn’t
that
spiteful. I was willing to let her keep her toes and all.

Gregory just laughed.

“She’ll still be intact if everyone plays ball, kiddo. But what you’re going to do now is the favor I asked you for, which will twist the knife even farther inside her guts. You’re going to get her boyfriend to kiss you at the dance. The guy you’ve been dreaming about!”

“
Fred?
”

“None other! That’s the guy I want you to kiss.”

“I assumed it was Mutual!”

He laughed. “It could have been,” he said. “But you also wished for Cathy to be miserable, so I went with having you kiss her boyfriend. She’ll see you kissing him and realize that you’ve taken everything from her—her part, her boyfriend, everything!”

“Oh God,” I said.

“So if you think I’m being mean,” he said, “remember—
you’re
the one who wished for what you wished for. You brought it on yourself. You wouldn’t have to kiss her boyfriend if you hadn’t wished for her to be miserable.”

“He’s not her boyfriend anymore,” I said. “They broke up this afternoon.”

“I know,” said Gregory, “but she’s just mad at him. She didn’t stop caring about him. I’d say they’ll be back together in two weeks if he doesn’t find someone new, which gives you a nice little window of opportunity. And if that dance ends and Fred hasn’t kissed you on the dance floor, you’ll die.”

And he tossed some glitter above his head and let it rain
down onto him. Some fell through the space between his legs and into the toilet.

“Well, I unwish what I wished,” I said. “I don’t want to be a part of this deal.”

“I
told
you that’s not how it works,” he said. “You don’t get a choice here. I got you Mutual back, I saw to it that that other boy ended up miserable, and now I’m granting your wish of making Cathy Marconi suffer. Now you have to get her boyfriend to kiss you at the dance, or you’ll die. Simple as that. Even if you go right back to Mutual at the end of the night, she’ll still know you did it, and it’ll haunt her forever!”

Gregory grinned and took a long chug of beer. My knees were shaking as he hopped down from the toilet and walked out of the stall, past me and over to the mirror, where he took off his hat and started dragging a comb across his greasy hair. Bits of grease actually came flying out like spittle splashing against the mirror. He ran his fingers through his hair, then smeared the grease on his overcoat before pulling a cigar from his pocket and lighting it.

And, for no good reason, he started to whistle and dance a little jig while I slumped back against the wall.

He sang a bit of “Bang Bang Lulu,” the song he’d been singing at McDonald’s. I sang “Goodnight, Ladies,” which was the same tune, right along with him to keep from hearing too much of what he was singing (none of which could be printed in a book for this age group).

When he finished up a verse about a guy with no teeth, he stood in front of me with a more serious look on his face.

“Now, let me give it to you straight, kiddo,” he said. “I’d
say the odds that you’re going to get Fred to kiss you at the dance are somewhere between slim and zilch. So the minute the dance ends, you
will
die.”

I very nearly barfed.

He took a long drag on his cigar and exhaled. This time I definitely saw faces in the smoke rings. They all looked like teenage girls. Some were in old-fashioned bonnets. One looked like she was from the 1940s, and one was a hippie. They looked like they were trying desperately to talk to me before they dissipated and vanished into the air, but no sound came out of their mouths.