Rapacia: The Second Circle of Heck (2 page)

2 · THE TAKiNG TREE

“ONCE THERE WAS
an oleander bush that loved a little boy. Every day on his way to school, the boy would pass by the poisonous shrub, trembling with fear. The bush would sway its pointy, spear-shaped leaves coquettishly, and the boy would blanch, clutching his inhaler
.

“One day, the boy hobbled past the bush. The bush waved its branches, stretching its blooms, which, if ingested, cause vomiting and fierce abdominal pain. The boy, shambling with terror, tripped on one of the bush’s lower branches and fell. He lay on the ground, crying. The oleander bush drank in the boy’s tears through its roots. The bush was happy. But it wanted more. Much more.”

Rapacia, the circle of Heck reserved for greedy kids, wasn’t exactly what Marlo had expected, she thought as she and the girls sat at the Grabbit’s cast-iron feet. Marlo had prepared herself for some kind of a haunted
nunnery, a deathly dull place devoid of anything worth wanting.

But, instead, she found herself trapped in a dazzling treasure trove, like that cave in
Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves
—not that Marlo had actually
read
the book, per se, but she
had
skimmed the report she’d tricked Milton into writing for her.

“The boy grew older. One day, he shuffled quietly past the bush, praying it was dormant, when it shook itself awake
.

“‘Give me some money,’ the oleander hissed
.

“‘But I have no money,’ the boy croaked in reply. ‘Just allergies.’

“‘Get me some money or I will rub you with my jagged, prickly branches.’

“So the boy fetched the bush some money. And the bush was happy. But it wanted more. Much more.”

During the course of the Grabbit’s horrible fable, Marlo stared at a sparkling crystal chandelier above her that grew fainter and fainter with each passing moment. In fact, all the long-eared vice principal’s prized possessions were steadily evaporating into nothing.

Several burnished brass chutes supplied fresh valuables for the creature to covet, but as soon as they appeared, they began their slow fade into nothingness. It was as if the whole warren were caught in a state of pointless, perpetual
vanishment
.

“And time went by and the boy came back, now an old sagging sack of withered flesh draped casually over a skeleton
of brittle bones. The oleander bush perked up as it smelled the boy approach
.

“‘I want—’

“‘I have nothing left to give,’ wheezed the ninety-year-old boy
.

“‘Then I have a gift for you,’ the oleander bush replied coolly
.

“‘What?’ the boy whispered, clutching his tightening chest
.

“‘Release.’

“The boy smiled a weary smile and stooped down, grabbing a fistful of leathery leaves in his arthritic hands
.

“‘Come, boy,’ the bush said. ‘Sit down and rest … forever.’

“And the bush was happy.”

The Grabbit stopped, its maliciously merry expression expressing nothing. The silence made Marlo uneasy. Awkward. Anxious. She traded looks with the other girls, seated cross-legged just beyond the Grabbit’s metal feet.

“So, I take it that you’re the nasty bush and humanity or something is the little boy” Marlo hypothesized aloud. “Always feeding something that will never be full until someone else is all used up. Right?”

The girls eyed Marlo with amusement.

“Ooh …
snap!”
Lyon snickered to Bordeaux.

Even more than she disliked being reprimanded in rhyme by a large, freaky metal rabbit thing, Marlo
loathed
Lyon Sheraton.

Coveting, wanting, grabbing things she didn’t pay for—this was Marlo’s domain. But Lyon practically ate greed for breakfast—after her chef had prepared it, of course. With the Sheraton billions to fund her every whim, Lyon had barely had a chance to feel a desire before it was met. Marlo, on the other hand, had been forced to work hard to take what didn’t belong to her. It wasn’t fair.

Now the Grabbit, having concluded its sick story, resumed its previous state of eerie inactivity, rumbling in subsonic ripples that made Marlo’s flesh crawl. Perhaps it was in “sleep” mode, or whatever, Marlo thought as she slowly rose and feigned a stretch while the other girls—after sharing an uncomfortable silence—chatted among themselves.

A beckoning, shimmering gleam had snagged Marlo’s eye like a fishhook. The lurid glow trickled into the warren from the gilt ceiling grate above and beyond the Grabbit.

Marlo grazed the wallpaper with the tip of her finger as she made her way nonchalantly around the Grabbit. Upon closer inspection, she realized that the
intricate wallpaper was a collage of international currencies lacquered against the warren’s walls. After a futile attempt to peel off a cool-looking French franc, Marlo sidled along the chamber’s edge until she was just beneath the grate.

Marlo climbed up on a lushly upholstered antique love seat. She stretched up onto her tiptoes, scrunched one eye closed, and squinted through one of the grate’s ornate wrought-iron loops as if it were a telescope. Marlo couldn’t believe her eye.

Above her was a gargantuan, spiraling structure that blinked, buzzed, and hummed with frantic activity. Marlo gasped and gave her eye a quick rub with her fist. It was a
mall
—a grand, majestic, and stupefyingly wondrous shopping complex that made the Mall of Generica back home in Kansas seem like an Amish garage sale.

Marlo’s mind could barely process the assault of information pounding into her eye. The mall was like the inside of a massive electric wedding cake—indulgently filled with hundreds, maybe thousands, of stores—and iced with a glittering, stained-crystal ceiling. Marlo counted ten, eleven … thirteen tiers, until her own tears blurred the sight into a kaleidoscopic smear.

Her ring finger stung as if she had plunged it into a beehive. She held it up to her face, expecting it to be pricked and swollen. It was fine.
That tingle
, she thought
as she scrutinized her undamaged hand,
it’s like when I see a primo shoplifting opportunity … only this time the feeling is off the charts
.

The sensation branched out through her body like slow, creeping lightning.

Right above her was …
everything
It was heartbreakingly beautiful. It was mind-bogglingly exciting. It was sticky-finger-lickingly good.

It also seemed tormentingly out of reach. If only she could think of some way to get up there, some artful ruse, even a somewhat convincing excuse …

Marlo stumbled off the love seat with shock.

Lyon snickered into Bordeaux’s ear. “Ooh …
two
snaps!”

The African-English girl scowled at Lyon and Bordeaux. “If you two skinny gorms say ‘snap’ one more time,” she said, “I’ll
snap
you like a crisp.”

Lyon glared at the dark fuzz nesting atop the girl’s lip. “And
who are you
, Miss Mustache?”

“The name’s Jordie,” the girl replied, squaring her jaw like a sawed-off shotgun. “And you
don’t
want to brass me off.”

Marlo rushed over to the Grabbit. “What is that wonderful place … up above?” she asked, staring up at its unreadably jolly facade. The half rabbit, half robot—
rabbot
—quivered back to pseudo-life.

“Mallvana?”
Lyon spat, the corner of her lip tugged up to her nose as if by an invisible pulley. “You’ve
got
to be kidding me.”

“See for yourself,” Marlo said, pointing back to the warm golden sheen of the ceiling grate.

Lyon popped her pink bubble gum with explosive disdain. “It’s probably some dumb trick,” she sneered, “like the one fate played on your face.”

Bordeaux giggled like an asthmatic shih tzu. “Three snaps, you’re out!”

Jordie stood up, nostrils flared. “I warned you, ya saft bint!”

Lyon rose to her feet, still exuding haughty runway perfection despite her
GRANDMA’S MY NAME AND SPOILING’S MY GAME
sweatshirt. She trained her cornflower-blue eyes on Jordie. “Zip it, hair lip,” she hissed between wet chomps of gum. “No one here speaks fish and chips, anyway.”

Jordie glared at Lyon with dark, simmering, seen-it-all-before-and-didn’t-like-it-the-first-time eyes. Her jaw shifted from side to side, as if she were carefully considering which part of Lyon to hurt first.

The imposing girl tightened her red silk head scarf, preparing for battle. Marlo could see an ugly scar peeking out from beneath her headdress. She had a feeling that, however Jordie got down here to Heck, it wasn’t peacefully in her sleep.

But just as things were about to get hair-pullingly face-scratchingly fun, the Grabbit nipped the fight-to-be in the bud.

With a slicing sound, like two keen knives sharpening one another, a golden gate opened into a grand hallway. Unlike the dark, unsettling tunnels through which Marlo and the other girls had traveled, this passage was as gaudy and extravagant as the Grabbit’s warren. Two demons wearing green vests, brass spats, and—unfortunately—nothing else, stood in the doorway, beckoning the girls with impatient waves of their pitchsporks.

Bordeaux, the Japanese girl, and the drab stubby
girl with the unfortunate haircut, rose to their feet, joining Marlo, Lyon, and Jordie. The girls—each swaddled in sweatshirts adorned with hideous appliqués—hesitated. Marlo felt as if there was some invisible force field surrounding the Grabbit, some magical glue that made it hard to leave. She looked at the other girls, and they, too, seemed like struggling, freaked-out flies stuck fast to supernatural flypaper.

Marlo took a labored step toward the demons. She felt twitchy and uncomfortable, like she had fire ants in her pants. She strained to break free of the Grabbit’s magnetic grip, though each hard-earned stride made the feeling grow worse. The ants started to bite, the pants were now made of burlap, and her heart became so hungry it hurt.

Prodded painfully by the demons, the girls around her reluctantly shuffled away, each fighting the Grabbit’s eerie pull.

Marlo made it to the hallway, where the feeling of anxiety dulled into a gnawing sense of longing. She looked back at the Grabbit’s sneering puzzle of a face. She hated it. She loved it. She hated loving it and loved hating it.

The golden gate shut, and in that instant, Marlo felt like a newborn baby whose umbilical cord had been abruptly snipped. That confusing swirl of electricity was replaced by an excruciating emptiness.

“No!” she shouted as she ran for the door. She pounded it with her fists until a demon grabbed her by the shoulders and heaved her down the hall.

The elegant hallway featured two fading paintings: Van Gogh’s
Starry Night
and Picasso’s
Boy with Lobster
(the only way Marlo knew the names was because of the huge brass plates underneath). The paintings weren’t fading in the traditional “timeworn, sun-damaged” sense but were actually disappearing before her very eyes. She inched close to the Van Gogh and pressed her finger through the blobby golden moon until her chewed nail touched the wall. The entire place was in a constant state of ghostly redecoration.

“So sad,” the Japanese girl said.

Marlo jumped. The girl’s sudden presence startled her but distracted her from the emptiness she felt inside.

“Pretty painting is going away” the girl continued with a comic look of confusion. The mousy girl with the rat’s-nest hair
don’t
was at her side.

Marlo turned and attempted a smile. “Jujitsu,” she said.

The girl covered her mouth and giggled. “That’s
kajitsu,”
she replied. “Good day to you, too. My name is Takara.”

Takara was cool, Marlo thought. She was one of those Harajuku girls in Japan (or used to be, anyway)—the ones who dressed up in all the crazy costumes like
living, breathing pieces of art. Of course, now she was wearing a bulky beige sweatshirt with
QUEEN OF THE QUILTING BEE
written on it in sequins, but she still had her cotton-candy hair and matching lipstick.
You can take the girl out of her style
, Marlo thought with a smirk,
but you can’t take the style out of the girl
.

“Marlo,” the elder Fauster sibling replied with a lopsided grin.

“I’m Norm,” the other girl mumbled.

“Norm?” Marlo replied. “As in
Norma
?”

“Actually it’s short for Normal,” the girl replied. “My mom was so happy that I was born normal, unlike my brothers and sisters—extra toes, fingers, even nipples—that she named me ‘Normal,’ which pretty much condemned me to a less-than-normal life.”