Gumdrop Angel, page 5
Okay, that was the easy part. Now she had to get to Freddy’s.
She couldn’t walk. It was too far. Not to mention, she didn’t want to be seen.
She looked at the digital clock on her nightstand. It was 11:35 p.m.—dark, but it wasn’t late enough for the streets to be totally deserted.
She thought about biking, but even that would take her a long time. No. The dreadful jelly-scales were spreading too fast. She needed to drive. She’d take her mother’s sports car. She’d driven the car plenty of times. Sometimes, when Myron wasn’t around, her mom would tell Angel she wanted to go on a drive and she felt like being chauffeured. Angel loved driving the zippy car. She wished it were hers.
So driving the car wasn’t an issue, but getting it away from the house might be. Could she deactivate the alarm, get into the garage, open the garage door, start the car, and leave without anyone waking up?
She had to. She had to get this handled or her life was going to be totally ruined.
Angel grabbed one of her scarves and wrapped it around her head so it would obscure her face as much as possible. She tucked her hair behind her ears.
Suddenly, Angel thought of the way Dominic had tucked her hair behind her ear. Her eyes filled with tears. It figured. Story of her life. I meet an amazing guy and I start turning into a clammy reptile, she thought.
Would Dominic still like her when he saw the way she looked now? Was he as one-dimensional as all the other guys she’d met—the ones whose interest only went skin-deep? If he was, that was the end of it. Even if he wasn’t, how could they go out with her looking like this? How long would it take for this to go away? Would it be gone by graduation? By the time she left for the summer workshop?
Why couldn’t things go Angel’s way for a change? It really wasn’t fair.
* * *
By the time Angel got into her mother’s bright yellow sports car, the squidgy reptile skin had completely covered Angel’s arms. She assumed it was heading down her legs, too, because they felt funny. Her stomach felt strange as well, kind of heavy. She noticed that when she sat down in the driver’s seat of the car; she was shorter in the seat than she ever had been before. She had to adjust the rearview mirror downward, and she usually had to adjust it upward because she was a little taller than her mom.
When she noticed this, she lifted her shirt to see what was happening. She let out a little scream. Her stomach had gotten so elastic that it was kind of collapsing in on itself when she sat down.
Was she going to be able to get to Freddy’s before she was too pliable to do anything at all?
Angel backed down her driveway and pressed the button to close the garage door. Her neighborhood was an expanse of darkness broken up by outdoor porch lights. In the distance, a dog barked, but otherwise, the only sound was the car’s engine. None of the houses near hers had lights in the windows. It didn’t look like anyone was staying up late to see Angel taking her mother’s car out for a spin. Good.
Angel pointed the car in the direction of Freddy’s, and she resisted the urge to stomp on the accelerator. Speeding through town wasn’t the thing to do right now. So she drove, well, like an angel—careful to obey every traffic law so as not to draw any attention to herself. Being in the highly visible expensive car made being unobtrusive a little challenging even under normal circumstances, and these weren’t normal circumstances.
Most of the trip was quiet and uneventful, but a block from Freddy’s she had a scare. Waiting at a red light, she heard the grumble of some kind of muscle car come up next to the sports car. She didn’t look over, but the driver of the car whistled and called out, “Want to have some fun, honey?”
Angel clutched the steering wheel harder. Or she tried to. When she couldn’t get the grip she wanted, she looked down to see why.
Oh no!
Her fingers were turning into segmented chunks of mucous-like material that turned her stomach. They didn’t even look human anymore.
The driver in the car next to hers called out again, and she glanced at the driver’s door to be sure the locks were engaged. She also lowered her hands to the bottom of the steering wheel so the driver couldn’t see them in the relentless intrusion of the streetlights.
The guy in the muscle car kept up a rude, suggestive patter while the light stayed red. What was taking so long for it to change?
Eventually, it turned green. The muscle car sped off. Angel let out her pent-up breath. She drove the rest of the way to Freddy’s without encountering another vehicle.
When Angel finally pulled her mom’s little sports car into the parking spot closest to the front door of Freddy’s, she looked around at the brightly lit lot. Thankfully, no other cars were in it. She was alone.
Now, scanning the area again, she opened the driver’s door and headed toward Freddy’s entrance. Before she got there, Dominic opened the door and looked out at her.
Angel’s steps faltered. Even though she needed Dominic’s help, she still didn’t want him to see her this way. She looked down and let her hair fall forward over her face.
“Angel?” Dominic called out. “It’s okay. Don’t worry about how you look. I don’t care about that. I just need you to hurry so I can help you.”
Angel glanced at Dominic through the veil of her hair. His expression was somber. His lips were pressed together, and his eyes looked red. Had he been crying?
He really seemed to care. This made Angel trust him even more. She walked forward and put her malformed hand in his strong, perfect one.
Without any comment about her hand or any of the rest of her, he led her into Freddy’s. “Come on. I’ll take you to the back.”
Angel let Dominic pull her down the hall. She looked up. The place looked much different now than it had a few hours ago. Not just because it was empty and quiet but because … because why?
Angel frowned. Was it the lighting?
During the party, every light in the restaurant had been on. Now, most of them were out, and the ones that were on were turned down to a dim setting. Every bright color in the place was muted. Shadows stretched down the hall ahead of her and created pockets of darkness along the walls and the ceiling. The effect was sobering, maybe even a little scary.
Taking a few tentative steps down the hall with Dominic, Angel could still see the pictures of the characters on the walls, but they looked less friendly now. Why was that? Was it the shadows? Or something else?
Angel took a few more steps until she heard a weird clinking sound. Suddenly scared for no good reason, she stopped.
“It’s okay,” Dominic said. “It’s just one of the animatronics doing daily maintenance.”
Angel nodded and began hobbling forward again.
She was feeling woozy. The edges of her vision started to get fuzzy, and her balance wavered.
Was the restaurant getting darker? No, it was the same. The problem was her—she was starting to lose consciousness.
“Dominic? I’m having trouble seeing.”
Dominic put his arm around her and started moving her more quickly along the hall. He said something to her, but she didn’t understand it. Something was wrong with her hearing now, too. It felt like she had cotton in her ears.
And she was sinking toward the floor. Her legs were going limp. They wouldn’t hold her up anymore.
“Dominic, help me!”
Dominic lifted her into his arms, and he began trotting down the hall.
Suddenly, the lights were brighter—not by a lot but a little—they didn’t seem to reveal any of the surroundings, though. Angel’s diminished vision was worsening even more. The walls and floors going past her were taking on an amorphous quality; they were losing their edges and becoming indistinct, almost impressionistic.
Angel tried to blink and bring a hand up to wipe her eyes, but her arms just swung loose at her sides. She couldn’t get them to respond to her brain’s commands.
But really, what were her brain’s commands? Her brain was meandering around as if her brain cells had turned into soft rubber. No, not rubber. She sensed they were turning into goo, like that goopy clay stuff Ophelia liked to play with, smooshing it between her little fingers like melting cheese oozing out of a grilled cheese sandwich.
“Okay, Angel. We’re here. I’m going to put you in something that’s going to help you. Do you understand?”
Angel nodded because she could suddenly hear again. Why?
Maybe it was the relief. She was getting the help she needed. Dominic knew what was going on. He said he’d explain it. He hadn’t explained, and she wanted him to; but mostly, she just wanted him to make it stop.
Maybe Dominic has an antilope. No, that isn’t right. Antidote. That’s what it is.
She tried to talk again, but she couldn’t.
She could see again, though. Like her hearing, her eyesight had miraculously cleared up. She blinked, and she could clearly see that Dominic was getting ready to lower her into a box. It was such a pretty box, a shiny wood box, its grain so swirly and lovely that Angel wanted to become part of the box. She wanted the box to embrace her, hold her, and keep her safe.
As soon as she saw the box, Angel no longer cared about what was happening to her. She didn’t care about why it was happening, either. She didn’t need an explanation. She was where she was supposed to be.
Dominic bent over and began to put Angel in the box, and she tried to speak again. She wanted to say thank you. All she could get out was “Th-u.”
“I know. I know,” Dominic said. “It’s going to be okay.” His voice sounded odd, broken, like he was crying.
Angel felt moisture on her forehead when Dominic leaned over her. Tears. She wanted to tell him it was okay. She was in the box now. It was her box. It belonged to her, and she belonged to it.
Angel felt something prying at her eyes and her mouth. She felt hands prodding the skin on her arms.
“It’s okay, Angel,” Dominic repeated. “It will be just a few hours at most.”
A few hours until what? Angel hoped it was a few hours until she was all well. Wouldn’t that be great? She had something she wanted to do. What was it?
“I’m here, Angel,” Dominic said. “You’re not alone.”
Dominic! That was what she wanted to do! She wanted to go out with Dominic. If she was better in a few hours, she’d be able to go.
Where were they going to go?
“Do you feel anything?” Dominic asked.
Angel wanted to answer that question. Yes, she felt things. She felt a hard surface beneath her body. She felt something cool under her head. She felt the warmth of the bright light shining down on her. She felt hands on her forehead.
“Close your eyes, Angel,” Dominic said.
Angel did what he told her to do. The light went away. The world went dark. She could still hear, but sounds were distorted, like she was floating in water, her ears just below the surface.
“There you go,” Dominic said. “It will be over soon.”
Good, Angel thought, and she let unconsciousness take her.
* * *
Angel woke up abruptly, as if someone poked her or shouted at her. She was fully alert. That was good, wasn’t it?
She had a vague memory of being really out of it before she went to sleep. The rash had done something to her thinking.
The rash!
Did she still have it?
Angel tried to sit up.
She couldn’t. She couldn’t move at all.
What was going on?
She tried again. It felt like she was paralyzed.
Not liking that feeling at all, Angel writhed, and hit her forehead on something hard. She squirmed some more, and her elbows and knees whacked something hard.
Not paralyzed. Confined.
In what?
For several moments, Angel fought to get free of the box she was in. She lamented Ophelia’s party, which she understood vaguely was responsible for where she was now.
But then she stopped struggling.
Angel told herself to stay calm. Take stock. Then figure out what to do next.
She scanned her body. It felt foreign, not familiar at all. But she could sense that she seemed to be in an upright position. She was standing? If she was, she was standing in some kind of a box that was so tightly fit around her that she had no leeway to move.
Angel’s breathing quickened. She didn’t like confined spaces.
She opened her mouth to call out, but her mouth was covered with something. Tape? She couldn’t get her lips to part. She couldn’t feel her teeth, either. And she was having a little trouble breathing. Her nose felt funny, like it was partially plugged with something.
Angel was on the verge of panic when, suddenly, she felt space open up beneath her feet. Then she felt the sensation of being lowered. Down, down, down.
From what seemed like a great distance, she could hear the sound of children screaming. She recoiled. She hated the sound of children screaming. That sound always reminded her of her bothersome stepsister, Ophelia.
Over the sound of the screaming, Angel heard a musical fanfare and a booming announcer’s voice. She couldn’t make out all his words, but it sounded like he was talking about someone’s birthday. And she heard, “Grand finale.”
Why did those words seem familiar?
The children’s screams turned into cheers and laughter, and Angel’s eyes were suddenly assaulted by bright, bright lights and lots of dazzling colors. She tried to figure out where she was because she had the sense she’d been here before, recently. But all she could see was light and color.
The sensation of being lowered stopped, and now Angel could feel that she was hanging in midair. She felt her body swaying back and forth, back and forth. It was not a pleasant sensation, so she tried to control the motion by twisting herself this way and that. She also flailed her arms, and she was pleasantly surprised that she could. She was hanging, but at least she was no longer confined. She kicked out her legs, and she flexed her hands and feet.
The announcer was saying something else. Angel caught the word yummy but she couldn’t work out the rest of what was being said.
The children’s clamor was getting louder, though. It felt like they were getting closer, too. Angel felt like she was being surrounded.
She moved her body around some more, doing a sort of midair dance. She wondered if she could do a somersault. She tried. No. Something was attached to the top of her head.
The announcer spoke again. His words were all run together, all mushy, until he got to his last three words. Angel heard those clearly: “Ready, set, go!”
* * *
Julie smiled up at the announcer when he said, “Ready, set, go!” She took a step toward the gummy girl oscillating from the ceiling. She so liked being the center of attention that she wanted to stretch out the moment.
She turned to look out at her parents. They beamed at her. She waved to them.
“Happy birthday, Julie!” her mom called out.
“Yay, birthday girl!” her dad shouted.
Julie grinned, and she leaned over to the gummy girl dangling in front of her. She reached up a hand, grabbed the foot, and bit off the gummy’s big toe.
“Everyone, join in!” the announcer sang out.
The other kids crowded around Julie, and they began eating up the swaying, squirming gummy candy that was unlike any other.
Sergio looked up from his drafting board and squinted in annoyance at the bright sunshine blasting through the wall-to-wall windows along the front of the office building. He shifted to avoid being blinded, and he rubbed at the afternoon kink in his neck. He checked the time on his new stainless-steel, aviator-style watch: 2:32 p.m. He peered at the sub-dials within the main dial of the watch. His watch had three sub-dials, and he had no use for any of them, but they looked impressive. And things that looked impressive made him feel impressive.
Above all, that was what Sergio wanted to be: impressive.
“I keep telling you, you have to be careful what you wish for, Serge.”
Sergio jerked toward the man who’d come up behind him, and he knocked over his coffee mug in the process. It went flying, but the man, Dale, Sergio’s supervisor, caught it. Dale was a senior manager in their architectural firm and a big guy, an ex-football player, to boot. The mug looked puny in his massive hand.
“Now you’ve gone and done it,” Dale said, flicking a few drops of coffee from his wrist. Thankfully there wasn’t much left in the mug. The sun hit the top of Dale’s shaved head, and it shined so bright it looked like a halo.
“Sorry, Dale. Didn’t mean to throw a mug at you.”
“What?” Dale looked down at the mug, then thrust it back at Sergio. “Forget the mug. You got it, Serge. You got the project manager job.”
Sergio stood, then grinned. “Really? I thought the decision wasn’t going to be made until next week.”
“It got pushed up because Sanders is leaving sooner than we thought he was.”
Sergio slid his shiny black wingtips over the gray carpet in an abbreviated moonwalk back toward the sunshine behind him. Then he twirled and did a fist pump.
Dale chuckled. “Congratulations.” He held out his hand.
Sergio shook his hand, but then he frowned. “What did you mean by what you said?”
“What did I say?”
“Well, you said two things: Be careful what you wish for and Now you’ve gone and done it.”
“Well, you do realize how hard project managers work, right? Are you ready to start living at the office?”
Sergio laughed.
Dale didn’t.
Sergio sobered. “Are you serious?”
Dale grinned and punched Sergio’s arm. “Only a little. You’ll probably only have to sleep here three or four nights a month.”
Sergio nodded as if that was just fine, but it really wasn’t.
The truth was that when he applied for the project manager job, he hadn’t really been thinking about what the job would be like. He applied because it was the next logical step up from where he was. He was on a fast track to the top, and staying on that track meant applying for promotions, whether you wanted to do more work or not.
