Modelland (40 page)

But they’d learned the hard way. Abigail Goode’s legs had been deeply gashed by the unseen critters. One of the pug-sized creatures had extracted a three-inch chunk from Abigail’s mother’s shaggy buttocks. Lynne, the Pilgrim who had passed her Modelland prime but was still intent on reaching the peak, had lost the middle finger on her left hand when she’d batted at something crawling up her thigh. Lynne had wailed not in physical pain, but for the middle finger she’d planned to use to flip off one particular person once she was crowned an Intoxibella at Modelland.

Only Creamy and Myrracle remained calm. Creamy had packed her own special concoction made from insect repellent, paint remover, and turpentine to spray on Myrracle’s and her own limbs. The brew protected them from harm somehow, allowing them to be calm spectators of the vicious action the storms brought on. But they didn’t let anyone else see the potion—let alone
use
it.

Now, Lynne chanted a rhythmic phrase each time she stabbed at one of the Tumble Terrors. “Intoxibella Larcenina! Intoxibella Larcenina!” Before losing her middle finger and a bit of her sanity, Lynne had confessed to the group that Larcenina was the name of the Intoxibella with whom her husband was having a torrid affair, and for whom he had abandoned Lynne. Larcenina was the reason Lynne had embarked on this unauthorized trip to Modelland.

“Shut up already!” Creamy yelled. “I’ve told you a thousand times. Larcenina won’t be an Intoxibella any longer, once everyone finds out she’s mating with a civilian!”

“I know!” Lynne answered. “And when I make it to Modelland and become an Intoxibella, he won’t be able to resist me and he’ll leave her.”

Creamy chuckled. “Hate to break it to you, wrinkle-face, they won’t pick you with that finger missing.”

Lynne’s mouth fell open. “Who are
you
calling wrinkle-face?”

Meanwhile, the twisted, rabid, hunchbacked figure the Pilgrims had named Hunchy expertly speared a Tumble Terror and hurled it to the ground. Then he took off his boot, revealing razor-sharp claws, lifted his foot, and sliced the creature’s human torso. It yelped in a deep, human-sounding voice.

Hunchy reached into the fresh gap in the torso, sifted through various organs that were still operating, and pulled out the pancreas. He then placed the entire bloody organ in his mouth.

An unsatisfied look illuminated his face and he quickly spat the pancreas out, wiping his tongue of any trace remnants. The sweetbreads he desired, the reason for his trek, were so close, yet so far, within a certain pale-skinned Unica who resided in Modelland.…

Macy Kamata slid his backpack straps over his shoulders and glared at his group. “Okay. Today marks our passage through the first level of the barrier.”

“Are you friggling shticking me?” yelled Jessamine. “Only the FIRST friggling level?” She looked like she was going to burst a blood vessel. Jessamine was the prickliest of the Pilgrims, and she clearly gave Myrracle a serious run for her money in the beauty category, with her thick cocoa-brown hair, warm sepia skin, and bright tiger-striped eyes.

“Get ready, Pilgrims,” Kamata said. “This is the part where you all will crap your pants.”

The group shifted nervously.

“Now assemble the camp for the night,” Kamata said. “We attack zone two tomorrow. Hurry now … packs and food in the middle. Sleeping bags in a circle.”

“Excluding my daughter and me,” Creamy interjected. “We’ll sleep in our blow-up tent, as usual.”

Lynne rolled her eyes.

Myrracle and Creamy climbed inside the tent they’d brought from home. Myrracle handed Creamy some of her freeze-dried mango rations. “You have to eat, Creamy.”

Creamy wrinkled her nose. “You know me. I can’t eat that. Old food, dehydrated, then wrapped airtight to allow it to fester and get even older? No thanks. I’ll eat more of those tree saplings along the way. I’ll be fine, Myrracle dear.”

Just then, an eerie song floated into the cozy white tent. Myrracle unzipped two inches of the tent’s zipper and peered outside. The Pilgrims lay in a circle, their backs to the heap of backpacks piled in the center. Their eyes were closed. Long silver plants that resembled musical instruments had wrapped themselves around the heads of the snoring Pilgrims and were starting to enter their mouths. All the while, the strange stalks emitted a spooky, haunting melody.

“Flute Creepers,” Mrs. De La Crème whispered.

Kamata had told them that the Flute Creepers snuck up on sleeping victims, anesthetized them with Flute Sleeper venom, and then crawled into their windpipes. They digested their victims slowly over a period of weeks, working from the bodies’ deepest interiors to their exteriors, all while the victims remained alive but paralyzed, feeling every bit of the pain. The key to preventing
Flute Creeper death was for someone to stay awake throughout the night and keep watch. That was Kamata’s job. He’d failed miserably.

“Do we let them die, Creamy?” Myrracle said calmly, peering at the knocked-out Pilgrims. The Flute Creepers were now about one-third of the way inside most of the Pilgrims’ throats.

“There’s strength in numbers, Myrracle, dear. We need them for later,” Creamy said, walking up to the group. “The
mountain
needs them for later,” she added under her breath.

Mrs. De La Crème picked up one of the shank spears and hoisted it over her shoulder like a javelin. She tossed it and it struck its target, a Creeper that was halfway up Kamata’s arm.

The spear split the silver creeper in half, and Creamy reached in to grab the slithering creature’s pulsing metallic red heart. “Eww!” Myrracle cried. “What are you doing?”

“The heart of the creeper has the antivenom. The victim has to eat it to live.” Creamy opened Kamata’s mouth and moved his jaw up and down. “Ugh! Disgusting! Chew already!” she said.

Kamata’s mouth began to move on its own. Each time he bit into the creeper heart, silver and red blood squirted over his shirt onto his pants. And then Creamy went around and saved all of the Pilgrims.

Myrracle gaped. “Creamy, how do you know how to do that?”

Mrs. De La Crème looked off into the wild expanse around her, then stared cunningly at her daughter. “Personal research, Myrracle, dear. Personal research.”

Tookie ran out of the M building faster than she’d ever run in her life. The journey was a blur: she had been on the seventy-seventh floor and she knew she hadn’t taken the elevator, but she only remembered charging down a few flights of stairs. And she couldn’t recall dodging Mannecants or Gurus or snaking her way to the ground-floor exit. But she had made it out of the building without being detected.

She ran across the gold-tinted surface of the plaza. The floor bubbled, creating for the first time not question marks, as it had when Tookie had arrived at Modelland, but three-dimensional Tookies. She ignored them. The last thing she wanted to do at that moment was primp.

As she neared the D, her brain replayed the same questions over and over.
Did the BellaDonna really choose me over someone else? Is Myrracle the person I replaced? Or is it a girl in another town across the world … a girl who is worse off than even I was?

Shiraz had been right all along.
Zarpessa
had been right all along. The four Unicas had been blithely sailing along at Modelland, attending their classes, becoming more and more relaxed, and all this time, Ci~L and the BellaDonna were plotting to … 
do
things to them. To abolish them. To experiment on them. To do
gruesome
things. For the rumors always dealt with heinous tortures of the mind and the body. Acts so torturous the victims begged to be killed and put out of their misery. And when death came, it was not a reprieve, but eternal damnation.

Suddenly, something else occurred to Tookie: The bodies the BellaDonna had mentioned to Ci~L in the M. The horrible thing Ci~L had done. What if that had something to do with the experiments, torture, and sacrifice too? What if Ci~L had taken the torture too far, had done something even Modelland didn’t stand for?

The BellaDonna said Ci~L scared even her! Oh God! Ci~L is the most twisted, diabolical person here.…

Tookie headed straight for the path that led her to the D. The face-shaped hedge rustled, its expression turning from a sensitive smile to a disappointed frown as soon as it laid its ivy eyes on her.
Even the bush wants to hurt me
, she thought, barreling onward. And then,
slam!
Tookie made contact with something hard and solid.

“Whoa there, Creamy,” Bravo said, his eyes scanning her from head to toe.

Tookie gasped. “
What
did you just call me?”

Bravo’s smile faltered. “Creamy. Because of the whipped cream
you keep in that flower thing. Among
other
things now.” His eyebrows rose.

Tookie raised her chin a notch higher. “If you know what’s good for you, you won’t ever call me Creamy again!”

“Sorry!” He held up his palms in surrender. “Would D-Head be more appropriate? The shape of your head reminds me of the D.”

“Excuse me?” His insults were getting worse, sounding eerily similar to things Zarpessa would say.

“No, Tookie. I mean D-Head in a
good
way!” Bravo backpedaled. “It’s my favorite building here! I love uncommon beauty, and the D is a perfect example.” He looked her up and down. “It’s a curious collection of peculiar things. Apart, they would be less than ordinary, but together, they’re special. You remember me telling you I’m really into architecture, right? I’d love to show you all my favorite buildings at Modelland someday. If you’re interested, that is.”

Tookie lowered her eyes. Then she cleared her throat, remembering the task at hand. She had to get to her friends and tell them what she’d heard. They had to form a plan.

“Are you okay?” Bravo asked.

Tookie couldn’t tell Bravo what she’d just found out. She’d violated all kinds of rules, spying on the BellaDonna, being in the M building. “I’m fine.”

“Your lips look perfect,” Bravo said, eyeing Dr. Erica’s handiwork. “No swelling, nothing. They look ripe for your first kiss.”

If Tookie could have crawled under a rock and died right then, she would have. She’d forgotten about how Zarpessa had teased out her secret, taunting her for having never been kissed, making her look even more like the awkward, inexperienced, funny-looking girl she was. And yet, when she peeked up at
Bravo, he was smiling at her expectantly, hopefully. Almost like he wanted to give Tookie her first kiss
himself
.

A gust of wind kicked up, blowing around stray leaves from the bushes. A leaf landed on Tookie’s bottom lip. Smiling, Bravo reached out to brush it away. His thumb touched both of her lips, then entered her mouth a bit. He removed the last traces of leaf, but his thumb lingered between her lips just like before.

Tookie’s heart pounded. Her knees wobbled, her heart started to flutter, and she felt a warm gush through her core.
Try not to suck on his thumb again!

“You have such pretty eyes,” Bravo whispered. “They’re a mixture of chocolate and mint.”

Tookie made a face. “Yuck. I hate chocolate.”

“You might hate it, but
I
love it,” Bravo whispered.

Blood crept to Tookie’s cheeks.
Seriously?
“Look, Bravo.” She began to turn away. “I really want to hate you. I mean, you’re not my type. If you and I entered a Peppertown beauty pageant, you’d win every category. And I … well … it’s kinda obvious.”

“But you
don’t
hate me, right?” Bravo asked, almost sounding worried.

Tookie swallowed hard. “No.” She couldn’t believe she was having such a candid, honest conversation with a guy—especially
this
guy. In some ways, she wished Creamy could see her now. She wished everyone at B3 could see her too. Even though they never did.

“Good,” Bravo said. He touched the side of Tookie’s face as if she were clay and he were a sculptor. Her pulled gently on a frizzy portion of her hair and smiled. His hand then moved to the back of her neck.

“Hi,” Tookie said awkwardly to Bravo, as if she were just seeing him for the first time.

“Hi,” he said back, breaking into the lopsided smile again. He moved closer. The hairs on the back of Tookie’s neck stood up.
Is this going to be it? My first kiss? Am I ready? Is this actually happening?

But then Ci~L’s horrifying words popped into her head again. “I have to go,” she said, turning away.

“Wait up! I—” Bravo cried, but Tookie pushed past him before he could finish his sentence. She felt his eyes on her as she darted farther down the hedge, but she didn’t turn back.

Tookie ran into the D, sliding on the slick floor of her dorm room. Shiraz, Dylan, and Piper were there, in a cheerleader-type pyramid. They were yelling random things at Kamalini, who was ignoring them.

“What are you guys doing?” Tookie was so out of breath she was barely able to get the words out of her mouth.

“We’ve been doin’ all kinds of hijinks for the last half hour and she still hasn’t looked up,” Dylan answered, pointing to Kamalini.