Down With the Shine (10 page)

“What’s your wish?” I asked.

“Can’t tell ya.”

“You have to tell me. That’s how it works.”

“Well, ookay.” He blinked at me and then swung his head in Turlington’s direction. “Whadda I wish for?”

Turlington thinks for a second then says, “Midas touch. That’s a wish.” He turns to me for confirmation. “Right? That’s like, totally a wish.”

“Yeeee-ahhh,” I answered slowly. I think their whole baked vibe was getting into my head too. “That’s like when everything you touch turns to gold. That’s like, a big wish.”

“Suh-weet!” Turlington and Zinkowski said as one.

I raised the jar of moonshine once more. “To everything you touch turning to—”

“Wait, wait,” Zinkowski broke in with a giggle. “Not gold. I want everything I touch to turn to Cheetos—” A snort of laughter made it impossible for him to speak and the hilarity was so contagious that all three of us cracked up so hard we had to lean on one another to keep standing. Eventually, we got ahold of ourselves and Zinkowski finished. “The Cheetos touch. That’s what I want!”

And that’s the wish I granted.

Oh, hell. Now I understand the panic.

I quickly fill Smith in.

I guess it’s a sign of the human ability to adapt that he is barely fazed by the information. In fact, like me, he seems more bummed by the apparent dissolution of Turl + Zinc.

“Wow, that sucks,” Smith whispers as we creep down the hallway. “You think Zinkowski’s mad at Turlington for giving him the idea for the wish?” He jerks a thumb
back in the direction we just came. “They certainly seem to think he’s coming for them.”

I shrug. “I don’t—”

Abruptly, I fall silent as the sound of pounding footsteps approaches behind us.

“Go,” Smith whisper-yells as he starts to run, and I take off behind him. When we reach the dining room where we left Larry, all the furniture is gone. Most of the shattered glass too. Instead, piles and piles of Cheetos fill the room. Orange cheese dust fills my mouth as it falls open in shock. This was clearly the center of whatever was happening overhead. I cough and gag, wondering if some of these Cheetos might have been people.

“Come on,” Smith urges, glancing back to make sure I haven’t fallen too far behind.

Panicked again, I break into a run, but instead of gracefully catching up with Smith, my feet slip and I crash into the center of a mini Cheetos mountain.

They spray up around me. Lying on the ground, half-buried in Cheetos, I decide not to call after Smith. Without me slowing him down he’ll have a greater chance of getting the hell out of this nightmare. I owe him at least this for taking on that crazy mob armed with nothing but a tire iron.

Of course, at the exact instant that I decide to give Smith up, he reenters the room. “What are you doing?”

“I’m okay,” I answer. “Just go. I’m right behind you.”

Smith looks over his shoulder, as if assessing the danger. Then his gaze returns to where I am still gasping for air on the floor, surrounded by Cheetos dust. I make a move, like I’m getting up, so he’ll feel free to move on, but instead it has the opposite effect. Smith launches himself toward me and in one fluid motion, grabs hold of my hand and pulls me to my feet.

“You set the pace,” he says, no doubt noticing the way I’m huffing and puffing for breath. Distant shrieks send chills down my spine and I leap forward, only to be quickly jerked back like a yo-yo at the end of its string.

As I stumble toward Smith he tries to pull away, but our hands are firmly stuck together and the move sends me further off balance so that in a panic I grab for him and we become even more tangled until gravity has its way with us and we both end up on the floor.

Well, to be more specific, Smith is on the floor and I am on Smith.

It is not the worst place to be. Except for the fact that the room is covered with Cheetos dust and the boy who caused this destruction may return here at any moment.

Smith stares up at me in horror, hopefully because of the Zinkowski thing and not because he is realizing that he may now be stuck with me for good.

His free hand comes up and one finger gently traces a line across my cheek. “You got a little something right there,” he says with one of those crooked Smith smiles. And then while I am frozen in this gootastic state, Smith lifts his head just enough to flick his tongue across the tip of my nose. “And there too,” he adds.

I can feel myself go red as the furnace of longing flares up inside me. Embarrassed and afraid that Smith is messing with me, I force out a laugh. “Ha, funny,” I say, the way a robot who is still trying to understand the concept of humor might.

Before Smith can laugh or lick me again, I scramble off him.

Or I try to scramble off.

Actually I do more than try, I fight for it. But every time I make a little progress, he pulls his hand—and mine along with it—causing me to topple over again. It’s possible that he might be feeling equally frustrated as I do the same thing to him. A new and intense sympathy for the plight of conjoined twins fills me as we both become increasingly orange colored with the amount of Cheetos grit covering our bodies.

Finally, by unspoken mutual agreement, we stop and simply lie side by side, catching our breath.

“I didn’t mean to get us stuck together,” Smith says.

“I know.”

“I wasn’t thinking.”

“I know.”

“I’m—”

I hold my breath, wondering if that long withheld word of apology might finally exit Smith’s mouth.

“You think this was Cheetos’s last stand?” he asks instead.

I laugh despite myself and Smith joins in.

Everything is as awful as it can be . . . except there are worse people I can imagine being stuck with. In the grand scope of things, this is a tiny setback and one that can—with a bit of elbow grease—be reversed.

“We got unstuck the last time,” I say. “I’m sure we can do it again.”

So we pull and pull and pull. Nada. Smith pulls a credit card out of his wallet and gets a tiny corner of it wedged between our hands, but when he tries to force it further, it snaps in half.

Smith’s face is white. Blood drips from where the plastic sliced across his hand. And we are stuck.

“I couldn’t,” Smith says in a tight voice.

“Hey.” I give him an awkward pat on the shoulder. “We can try again later, right?”

Smith, like all people not used to losing, shakes his head. Playing cheerleader is just as foreign to me, but I give it a try anyway.

“C’mon Smith. Time to get up and get out of here. Be a fighter. Or a runner! Like at a track meet, except if we lose we might die.”

Okay, so no one’s gonna be hiring me to give motivational speeches anytime soon. And yet somehow it does the trick. Smith nods. Slowly, each of us checking with the other before making a move, we sit up and at last make it to our feet.

If our hands weren’t already attached it would be a perfect moment for a celebratory hug.

Instead we start moving. Fast. Yet quietly. Tippy tippy toe. Quick. Quick. Quick. After all the people running around earlier, the quiet and emptiness now seems ominous.

We are almost at the front door and I am about to tell Smith that I can’t leave without Larry, when a long curtain twitches and Larry bounds out. It’s amazing he’s lasted this long in here when he thinks under a table and behind a curtain are good hiding places.

“Lennie!” he yells, having apparently learned nothing
from the last time we did this. But no, he quickly slaps a hand over his mouth, before whispering from behind it, “Sorry.”

I’m not about to wait and see if the mob comes after us again. I grab hold of Larry with my free hand. “Let’s get out of here,” I say, and then lead the charge to the front door.

P
erhaps it is a bit of an exaggeration to say we run for our lives.

We run as if we believe we can leave the insanity behind us, as if the insanity isn’t clasping our hands together. As if I am not the very person who unleashed all of it in the first place.

Once we reach the Cherokee, Larry slips into the backseat while Smith and I fumble around a bit, trying to figure out how we can get in while holding hands. Finally, Smith shoves me inside and I clamber over the center console and settle myself in the passenger seat. As he starts the car, Smith glances over his shoulder. And then continues to stare. And somehow I just know.

“She’s gone, isn’t she?”

“Yes.” Smith grinds the word out between his teeth.

Luckily (if such a word can even apply in this instance),
he spots her almost immediately, playing some one-on-one with Seanie, who apparently survived his run-in with Bat Boy.

Stomping on the gas, Smith sends us rumbling over the grass. Chunks of lawn go flying into the air as we skid to a stop by the basketball court.

“Time to go, Dyl,” Smith calls out the window in this pleasant sort of way.

“Umm . . .” Larry stutters from behind me. “Isn’t she—”

I spin around and give him a hard look. “No. Now, ssshhhh.”

I look back out the window to see Dyl toss the ball to Seanie. She says something I can’t make out, then jogs over and hops into the backseat. Before the door is fully closed, Smith is rocketing across the lawn once more—this time headed toward the street.

As the brick columns flanking the end of the driveway get closer, I twist in my seat to face Larry, who looks nervous.

“It’s gonna be okay,” I tell him. “We’re getting you out of here.”

He bites his lip. “They said it would hurt. They said—”

I never find out what else they said because at that minute we hit the edge of Michaela’s property and Larry shrieks. It is this horrible high-pitched sound of agony that is its own type of painful just listening to it. On the
bright side, it lasts only a few seconds. On the less bright side, this is because Larry begins to violently convulse.

Dyl reaches for Larry, while I scream, “Back up! Back up!”

Smith has already reversed by then, but is so shaken by hearing Larry that he slams us into one of the brick columns.

Foam drips from Larry’s mouth as I yell at Smith, “Go! Go! Go!”

Smith manages to get us away from the column, and then backs up again until we are once again parked on Michaela’s rolling green lawn.

The convulsions stop immediately. Larry’s eyes roll up into his head and a second later he goes limp.

Throwing my door open, I jump out of the car—only to be yanked back by Smith’s hand glued to mine. “Let me go!” The words come out shrill and full of unshed tears. Using all my weight, I jerk my body away from Smith’s again and again, but our hands might as well be welded together. I slump back into my seat, curling into myself and finally giving in to tears.

After several long moments of my silent sobbing, Dyl’s hand lands on my shoulder. “He’s okay. Still breathing. Heart beating. All the good stuff.”

That should make me feel better. It doesn’t, though.
I did this to him. I brought him to Michaela’s party and told him it would be fine. I made him drink and make a wish. I called him names because I was stupid and drunk and angry. And when he needed my help, I promised him it would be okay. I told him I would fix everything and nearly killed him instead.

I hear the car door open and the sound of Seanie’s voice. “He okay?”

“Yeah,” Smith answers. “Can you get him back up to the house?”

“No!” Swiping away tears with the back of my hand, I turn to face Larry once more. His expression is so peaceful I could almost believe he’s sleeping. Except his skin is scary white and the breaths coming from between his parted lips are thin and raspy.

“We can’t leave him here,” I protest.

Smith gives my hand a tug. He looks almost as freaked out as I feel. “If you want to stay, I’ll stay with you. I mean”—he holds up our attached hands with a caustic smile—“I go where you go, right?”

I blink at Smith, wondering if I’ve had a full mental breakdown and am imagining him saying these things. Reaching out with my free hand, I pinch his arm. It feels solid and real. The despair that had been crushing me lifts just a bit.

“Focus, Lennie,” Smith says, bringing my gaze back up to his face. “We can stay, but I’ve been thinking. . . . You know how I told Turlington you needed to go home and get some shine to grant more wishes?”

“Yeah.” I nod and then force a watery smile. “You’re so full of shit.”

“But what if I wasn’t?” Smith replies. “Couldn’t you get someone to wish that all the wishes from last night were unwished or something? You could at least try. Or, I don’t know, maybe you should ask your uncles what to do.”

“I thought you didn’t trust them to not lock us all in the basement?”

“That was before I saw this.” He sweeps a hand out indicating Michaela’s house. “It’s bigger than I thought. There’s no way you can fit all of this in your basement. Your uncles are our only move at this point.”

He’s right. Of course, he’s right. And I probably shouldn’t have left my house until I fully understood this thing.

“That might be the best way to help Larry . . . and everyone else.” Smith adds softly, pushing his advantage.

“Okay,” I nod. “Okay.”

Awkwardly I contort until I can place my free hand against Larry’s cheek. He feels hot to the touch. I look up at Seanie. “Let him lie down somewhere. Get him
something cold to drink. Maybe a cool washcloth too. Or a warm one. I don’t know. Ask someone. Tell everyone to be nice to him and if anyone tries to mess with him, well, tell them I’ll wish ’em an endless lifetime of gym classes with Mr. Proler. Got it?”

Seanie nods.

I nod back and it feels official. Like an oath.

I keep my hand pressed against Larry. “It’ll be okay,” I promise him, even though he’s unconscious and can’t hear me. As Seanie grabs Larry beneath the armpits and pulls him from the car, I make another promise, this one to myself: I will do everything in my power to make sure it isn’t a lie.

Next time everything will really and truly be okay.

W
e ride in shell-shocked silence. The dashboard clock says it’s 12:46 p.m. It seems unbelievable that this day still has so many hours left in it. I close my eyes, exhausted. I want nothing more than to go home and crawl under my covers.

“So,” Dyl pipes up from the backseat. “I was dead, huh?”

From our connected hands I feel a tremor go through Smith. I stare out my window, unable to look at him or Dylan.

“Yeah,” Smith finally answers after clearing his throat a few times. “You were . . .”

“Dead,” Dyl helpfully finishes for him. “Seanie said it was a few months ago.”

“Helpful of him,” Smith mutters.

Dyl ignores this.

“Seems like a long time to be dead and then, ta-da, be somehow back alive again. I mean, I guess anytime you’re dead it’s weird to suddenly not be dead, but you’d think it’d be better for it to happen closer to the time of death so you’re not, like, a rotting stinking decaying zombie.”

“You’re not a zombie and you’re not decaying,” Smith snaps at her.

“No,” she agrees in a soft voice, which immediately makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. The soft voice is almost always a precursor to the screeching loud voice. “But I do have these weird lines all over me and I feel kind of achy. What happened to me?”

I expect Smith to dodge the question. Instead he goes with a blatant lie. “Car accident. Bad one.”

I stifle a groan, but Smith must know what I’m thinking ’cause he glares at me, making it clear he wants me to keep my mouth shut.

Dyl, meanwhile, keeps asking questions. “Was I driving or was it someone else? Was it a drinking thing? Were you or Lennie in the car? What—”

Smith cuts her off. “You were alone. It wasn’t your fault. The other guy . . .” Smith stops and sighs. “It’s hard to talk about, Dyl. Could you just . . . You’re here, okay? You’re alive. Let’s focus on that.”

Dyl was always quick to argue and never hesitated to
push back against Smith when she felt he was bossy or full of shit. To my surprise, though, she says nothing, and a strained silence fills the entire car.

It’s a relief when we pull up in front of my house. I don’t care if my uncles yell at me. Hell, at this point I’d welcome it. Anything to break this terrible quiet tension.

As I climb over the middle console and exit the driver’s side door behind Smith, I hear off-key singing emanating from the house.
That’s not a good sign
, I think, at the same time that Smith asks, “What is that noise?”

I don’t blame him for not being able to recognize the loud caterwauling as that of human voices. My uncles only sing when they’re so deep in their cups they can barely speak. It’s like something in their brains says speech is nearly impossible so the only choice is to try and harmonize.

It sounds like they’ve chosen “Whiskey in the Jar,” which is one of a handful of Irish drinking songs in their repertoire. Usually they’re too far gone to remember the verses, so they repeat the chorus on an endless loop, in this case,
“Whack for the daddy-o, there’s whiskey in the jar.”

As I push the front door open, I turn back to Smith and Dyl. “Let me handle them, okay?”

“Wait.” Dyl grabs hold of Smith and my connected hands. “First I want to know what’s up with this.”

This time, instead of a stupid lie, Smith tries to evade the question. “It’s a wish thing, Dyl. We’ll explain everything later.”

“I want to know now,” Dyl stubbornly insists. “Seanie explained about Lennie and the shine and the wishes. So what I want to know is, what wish caused this night-of-the-living-dead thing I’ve got going on?”

“Dyl, we got bigger things to worry about right now, so maybe we could wait to play catch up later.” Smith brushes her off so easily, as if he’s already forgotten what it felt like to lose her forever.

In response, Dyl makes this sound in the back of her throat that I instantly recognize as her super-pissed-off growl. Trying to head off a full-on sibling explosion, I say something—
anything
—to try and break the tension. “What wish caused this? That’s a tongue twister, huh? Betcha can’t say that ten times fast.”

This earns twin sighs of disgust. They’re back on the same page, but not for long, because Dyl quickly turns her attention to me. “I’m gone for a few months and you team up with Smith? That’s low, Lennie. I hope you used protection and didn’t believe Smith when he told you not to worry about stuff like STDs and birth control, ’cause his magic penis would take care of everything.”

“His what?! No! Smith and I are not— We
didn’t— No. No. No. That’s not what happened. Or will ever happen.” I am incoherent while beside me Smith is suspiciously silent. No sighs. No snorts. No nothing. Realizing I should follow his example, I shut my mouth and refuse to let any more words tumble out of it.

“Oooooo-kay,” Dyl responds at last. “Chill. That was a test. You passed when you turned red at the very mention of Smith’s penis. I think you’d hyperventilate if you actually saw it.”

“Ha ha ha. You’re so funny,” I reply, trying to hold on to the last shred of my dignity.

Dyl grins. Clearly my discomfort has put her in a better mood. “I am pretty funn—” The color drains from her face and she stumbles forward. I grab her arm, holding her up. A moment later she pulls away.

“Are you okay?” I ask, even though from the way she’s still swaying the answer is obviously no.

“Fine,” she answers, shaking me off. “What are we waiting for anyway? Let’s go inside.”

I almost tell Dyl that we’re standing here because she stopped us, but it’s never worth it to argue over tiny points with her. Like Smith, she rarely concedes anything.

Still avoiding Smith’s eyes, I shove the front door open and step inside. “Hello?” I yell. “I’m back.” Either my uncles don’t hear me or they are not talking to me, because
they go on singing without a pause. Walking farther into the house, I am surprised to see my mother sitting at the bottom of the stairs.

“Hey, Mom.” As usual she seems oblivious to my voice as she stares into outer space and sucks on her cigarette.

With a shrug, I continue toward the TV room where my singing uncles stand with their arms slung around one another’s shoulders, their chests puffed out, and all three mouths open wide enough to get a good look at their tonsils.

The moment they see me, though, it’s like someone pulled the power plug—the drunken concert ends and is replaced by a steely silence.

“So you came back, huh?” Uncle Jet slurs. He squints as if trying to see me more clearly. “You make a wish to turn yourself orange?” His gaze flicks toward Smith, while at the same time he sniffs the air. “You’re both orange and you smell . . .” Uncle Jet looks at Uncle Dune and Uncle Rod. “What’s that smell? It’s sorta—”

“Cheesy,” Uncle Rod announces. “Like you wished to be a mac and cheese girl.”

“Why the hell did you wish for that?” Uncle Jet roars.

“I didn’t!” I quickly say, since I can tell he’s getting ready to lose it. “I haven’t done any more wishing.” I don’t mention that I’m here to ask about making more wishes to get everyone out of this mess. Coming clean and telling
them the whole dirty truth is not the way to handle them right now. When they get like this there’s only one way I can make them stop bellowing and actually listen to me.

I need to get on my belly and grovel.

I let my head hang low in obvious shame, before slowly lifting my eyes. “I’m sorry. I did a terrible thing and I know you can never forgive me, but I really need your help right now.” I let a single tear trickle down my cheek. It’s not hard to turn on the waterworks. At this point it’s actually harder to keep them off, but getting too weepy would send my uncles running, so I only allow that one to squeeze through and then my head falls again while I struggle to hold the rest of them in.

Uncle Jet lets loose with this huge groan/sigh combo and flops onto the couch. “Okay,” he says. “Tell us the worst of it.”

“Well . . .” I hesitate, trying to think of the best way to tell them everything in a way that won’t totally freak them out.

“She granted the wishes of all the jackasses, bitches, and douchebags from school and now they’re all trapped at Michaela Gordon’s house,” Dyl jumps in. After she died, Dyl’s constant need to charge into situations without a second thought seemed like an admirable quality, but now that she’s alive again, I remember how often I
found it incredibly irritating.

“Not
all
of them,” I interject. I should’ve saved my breath because Dyl doesn’t even acknowledge the point.

“It’s pretty bad over there,” Dyl continues. “And Smith’s hand is stuck to Lennie’s—I’m not sure why. I guess that was her wish or something. And my brother made a wish to bring me back from the dead, and hey, look”—she spreads her arms wide—“here I am!”

My gaze snaps toward Smith and I see that he looks as surprised as I am by Dyl’s interpretation of events. And guilty too. I give a quick shake of my head, trying to let him know that I have no intention of correcting her.

Anyway, it doesn’t matter, because Uncle Jet is back on his feet and roaring, “Don’t talk nonsense. You can’t bring people back from the dead with a wish. That goes against the natural order of things and none of us has got that kind of power. Tell ’em, Dune. Rod. Tell ’em.”

Uncle Dune and Uncle Rod quickly jump in shouting how we must be crazy and that telling lies isn’t gonna make it any easier to sort this all out.

Dyl puts her chin up in this way that says she’s ready to go to war. She never did like being yelled at. And finally we get the shrill voice that I’d been dreading. “You wanna read about it? Google it. I already did. It was front-page news.”

For once, Smith and I are on the same wavelength. As Uncle Jet’s face goes white, we grab Dylan and drag her into the kitchen. As we do so Smith mouths the word
front page
at me. I nod grimly, knowing exactly what he means. If Dyl read the news articles, she already knew how she died and was just testing us with the questions. And Smith, with his lies about car accidents, failed. Big time.

“Dyl, stop,” I tell her once we are out view of my uncles. “We need their help.”

“I’m alive,” she snarls back at me, still looking for a fight. “I’m alive and I’m here and I’m real and I’m not going away.” Tears glitter in her eyes as she reaches the end of this speech, and my own anger vanishes.

“Dyl.” I reach toward her, but she jerks back. “C’mon, Dyl. You’re alive. They may not understand it or believe it, but you are. We can all see that.”

“Five months later, Lennie, and you’re more full of shit than ever. Don’t tell me they’re wrong and you’re right when the only thing we know for sure is that, as usual, you don’t have a fucking clue.” Dylan spits one hurtful word after another and then spins around to escape out the back door.

When I move to run after her, Smith refuses to budge. “Maybe give her a few minutes.”

I hesitate, listening to the dogs barking like crazy. Dylan
always loved my uncles’ pack of mongrels. She’d bury herself in the midst of their furry bodies and become half animal herself as she rolled around and wrestled with them.

“Okay,” I say to Smith. “Let’s talk with my uncles while she cools off.”

But when we walk back into the TV room, my uncles are gone. “Shit,” I swear softly.

Pulling Smith behind me, I run to the front door, hoping they’re just out on the front stoop having a smoke. But again, there’s no sign of them. Or their truck.

Cursing my uncles for never being there when I need them, I go back inside and slam the door shut behind me.

“Leave it open,” Mom says from where she’s still perched on the bottom step. “Nice to get some air in here.”

I stare at her, a little shocked to hear her speak without prompting.

“Hey, Mom,” I say gently, the way you’d talk to someone who spooks easily. “Did ya see where the uncs went?”

She shrugs. “Heard them on the phone with Old Bill asking for a ride.”

Old Bill’s our next door neighbor who is passionate about the state of his lawn. In exchange for making sure the dogs never bend so much as a blade of his grass (much less whiz on it) he is my uncles’ on-call designated driver.

“That was it? Nothing else?” I can’t help but hope that
they might have left some additional crumb of information behind.

Mom shakes her head, crushing any such ideas. Then she holds up a single finger and says, “Wait.”

I wait.

“They said . . .”

I lean forward, no longer hoping, but physically needing a way out of this before the burning pit of anxiety inside me explodes. I don’t care how impossible the solution is. A magic potion we cook up by retrieving an insanely rare flower from the world’s highest mountain. An incantation spoken in a dead language that only five people on the planet know. True love’s kiss from a prince without any lips.

Just something, anything that might lead to things getting better instead of worse.

“I got it now,” Mom says, her long-suspended finger finally falling. “You’re fucked. Totally fucked. That’s what they said.”

I groan, but Mom ignores me and keeps going. “But they were gonna try to clean up your mess anyway. And you’re to stay here, no matter what . . .” She sucks deeply on her cigarette and then exhales her next words along with a lungful of smoke. “Or else.”

It’s amazing that I remain standing. That I nod and
say, “Of course,” while my chest squeezes so hard I feel like I’m dying and a part of me even wishes that I would.

“Let’s get Dyl,” I say to Smith in a flat voice. “And after that we’ll . . .” I trail off, having no idea what we should do next. My first instinct is to track my uncles down. I assume they’ll go looking for the epicenter of crazy, also known as Michaela’s house. But I never mentioned her name to them, much less her address. No matter how legendary Michaela’s parties may be, I don’t think news of them has made it to the forty-plus crowd. With any luck they’ll drive around for a while, blow off some steam, sober up, and then come back home so we can finally talk and I can get some answers. Which means that my grand plan is to sit on my butt and wait.