Wax (32 page)

“
Hell
no.”

Poppy looked to the ceiling. “Let me try to fill in the holes here,” she said testily. “You left school. You knew Smitty was a Hollow. So you, what, stopped by his café and did a little stakeout and​—​oh, I bet you waited in the back for him to bring the trash out to the dumpster and then​—”

“Meltdown!”

“Great. That's just great.” She smushed the skin of her forehead into a lump. “Did you at least dispose of the wax?”

“Of course I did. Jesus is a professional.”

“Well, that's good if it buys us some time, but that's also bad, because people will
definitely
notice that Smitty is missing. I don't think that donut shop has been closed a day since it opened.”

“Sorry, Madame Director. Do you want to blab about this on the phone all day, or do you want me to get to work making more flamethrowers?”

Poppy fumed for a moment.

“I want you to make more flamethrowers,” she whispered, then hung up, fending off Mr. Kosnitzky's scrutiny with an innocent smile. “All done! Thanks, Mr. K.”

“Don't slam the door on the way out!”

“I have a question,” Dud said when Poppy got back into the car. “Why did you tell Jill to come to rehearsal if she's one of the bad guys?”

“Because we can't tip her off. We need to pretend that we think she's the real Jill, so that she doesn't get suspicious and tell her bad-guy buddies.”

Dud frowned. “But you also can't tell the Giddy Committee about The Plan with her there, because she'll tell the Hollows and they'll know what to expect.”

“Right. So we need to throw her off the trail.”

“How do we do that?”

Poppy narrowed her eyes and summoned the full weight of her theatrical prowess.

“We make props.”

∗ ∗ ∗

Poppy and Dud drove from Paper Clipz to Paraffin High just as school was letting out for the day. “Repeat your job back to me,” Poppy said to Dud.

“I wait in the car until you come out.”

“Right. And if you start to feel melty?”

“I start the car and turn on the air conditioning, but I don't drive anywhere, because I do not know how to drive and I do not have a driver's license.”

“Good. Be back in a bit.”

Poppy headed for the front door, easily blending in with the crowd of kids hanging around the entrance of the school. But someone called her name as she entered.

“Poppy Palladino? Is that you?”

Poppy whirled around and smiled at Miss Fitzgerald, the secretary, who was holding a coffee cup and a stack of papers. “Yes! Hi, Miss Fitzgerald.”

“Hi, Poppy! Did you leave the campus at any point today?” She frowned and started to leaf through the papers. “Your homeroom teacher listed you as present, but a little while ago a call from Mr. Kosnitzky came in, saying that he saw you in town​—”

“Oh?” Rotten Kosnitzky. “That's weird, because I was definitely here. Maybe he saw my mom and thought it was me? We look a lot alike.”

“Oh, okay!” Miss Fitzgerald smiled. “Geez, it's like we're running a truancy hotline today! We got a call from Smitty, too​—”

“Wait, what? When?”

“About ten minutes ago​—​said he saw a kid snooping around his dumpster earlier this afternoon.”

“Smitty was there? At his coffee shop? Ten minutes ago?”

“Of course he was,” Miss Fitzgerald said, laughing. “Smitty's always there.”

Poppy nearly screamed. She spun and sprinted down the hall as far as she could go, until she rounded a corner and leaned against the wall to catch her breath.

Her throat tightened as the horrible thoughts cascaded.
Smitty came back already while we were at Paper Clipz. And Jill's not Jill. And if this plan doesn't work, soon I won't be me. Mom won't be Mom, and Dad won't be Dad. It's happening TOO FAST.

Just then, a man in a suit rounded the corner and gave her a big smile.

“Hello, Poppy,” said Principal Lincoln.

∗ ∗ ∗

“No way,” Jesus's voice screeched through the phone. “No
fucking
way.”

Poppy had immediately removed herself from Wax Principal Lincoln's presence and raced into Gaudy Auditorium, where the Giddy Committee was starting to convene and where Jesus was on speaker on Banks's phone, seething.

“Jesus,” Poppy said, “you need to accept it: your blowtorch-the-world plan just isn't working.”

“Let me at him again! It'll work this time, I swear​—”

“Dude, if you bring back that flamethrower, I will not hesitate to use it on you. Understand? Just get over here
now.
”

The wobbliness in her voice made the Giddy Committee wince. “Are you okay, Poppy?” Banks asked.

No, I am not, nothing is okay, my best friend might be dead, and Dud is probably going to melt in the car,
she wanted to say​—​but she couldn't, because at that moment Jill entered the auditorium.

Wax
Jill entered the auditorium.

She lingered at the door. “Hey.”

“Hey,” said Poppy.

A million things were happening on Jill's face, and she opened her mouth to speak several times before settling on “Can I talk to you for a sec? Alone?”

Poppy nodded and got up from her seat. “Be right back,” she told the rest. “Talk among yourselves.”

As she met Jill at the rear of the auditorium, Poppy took a deep breath. Time for more Acting.

She told Jill about what had happened after they'd parted​—​the Smitty melting, the subsequent return of Smitty, the return of Principal Lincoln​—​all of it as honestly and authentically as she could, even though Wax Jill probably already knew everything. Because if she thought for one second that Poppy was holding anything back, anything at all, she'd realize that Poppy was onto her.

When Poppy finished, Jill looked worried​—​though Poppy knew it was probably more of an expression of frustration that this puny gutbag's plans were so difficult to quash. “Wow,” she said. “That's crazy.”

Poppy then remembered that she was still supposed to be mad at her for pettier reasons. “Oh?” Poppy said snidely. “You finally believe me this time?”

“Huh? Oh. Yeah.” Jill scowled, as if she, too, were annoyed about having to keep up this little charade. “I'm sorry about this afternoon. You're right​—​I should have your back.”

“It's okay. And I'm sorry for all the stuff I said.”

They hugged. Poppy imagined their bodies sizzling upon contact, like cold water hitting a hot pan, their secrets smoldering between them and rising up in a smoky cloud of deception and propaganda and
LIES
.

But it was just a plain old hug. With a lot of internal retching.

When they returned to the group​—​which Jesus had rejoined, looking pouty​—​Louisa looked at Poppy expectantly. “So what are we supposed to do now?”

Poppy pulled out a stack of still-warm, freshly printed sheets of paper and took a long, luxurious whiff. “Now,” she said, “we plot and scheme.”

She handed out the detailed instructions to each member of the Giddy Committee, starting with Louisa and ending with Jill. At the top, in gigantic letters, it said T
HE
P
LAN
, followed by a detailed itinerary and map.

“Tomorrow,” she began, “two more people will be captured, and therefore two more Hollows will be released. Melting obviously does nothing to stop them, so
instead
of destroying them, we're going to stop them from being circulated into the general populace. It's not a permanent solution, but hopefully it'll buy us some time.”

The Giddy Committee members were staring hard at the papers, their faces contorted by confusion and panic. “What​—” Connor started.

“We don't know the exact time the Hollows will be released,” Poppy interrupted. “So we'll gather in the space under the gazebo early in the morning​—​at seven a.m. We wait there until they emerge from the tunnel. When they do, we tackle them and tie them up.”

A few beats went by.

“Tie them up?” Banks said, incredulous. “That's so weak! Why not melt them?”

“Because,” Poppy said, injecting loads of impatience into her voice, “if we've learned anything from Jesus's adventures today, it's that the Chandlers find out very quickly that their Hollows have been destroyed, and they are equally quick to replace them. This way, at least they'll be stuck, immobilized, bound, and gagged, and the Chandlers won't know about it. We leave them there under the gazebo, and then . . .”

They waited for her to finish, but she didn't. “And then what?” asked Banks.

“Hopefully by then, I'll have figured that out. But this is the best I can come up with for now. Jill's right​—​slowing them down is better than doing nothing at all.”

Jill nodded.

Poppy sighed and heaved a helpless shrug. “So that's it. We'll meet tomorrow morning at the gazebo at seven.”

“What if they don't emerge until much later?” said Louisa. “You want us to skip school?”

“Yes, I do. I need every one of you to promise me that you'll show up. Is everyone onboard with this?” They exchanged wary glances with one another, but nodded. “Good. Plotting-and-scheming meeting adjourned.”

The Giddy Committee shuffled out of their seats and up the aisle, uncharacteristically silent and downtrodden, their eyes darting around nervously. Jesus headed toward the main entrance to wait for his mom to pick him up, and Louisa and Banks began their walks home. Poppy and Jill headed into the parking lot, waving to Connor as he got into his car.

Jill got into her mother's car and started it up. “See you tomorrow, then.”

“Yeah. See you tomorrow.”

Waving, Poppy backed away from Jill's car and walked across the parking lot to Clementine. “Did I do okay?” Dud asked when she got in.

“Shh. Wait,” Poppy said, watching.

Jill backed up out of her parking space, drove through the lot, turned onto the main road​—​

And drove out of sight.

Poppy exploded out of Clementine, shouting, “Go go go!” Dud followed, and Connor, waiting in his own car, did the same. Banks and Louisa could be seen running back toward the school. They all converged in the main hallway, each of them clutching their copies of T
HE
P
LAN
—​but unlike Jill's and Poppy's copies, at the top of theirs was printed, in gigantic letters:

JILL IS A HOLLOW.

THIS IS
NOT
THE PLAN.

BUT YOU MUST PRETEND THAT IT IS. GO ALONG WITH EVERYTHING I'M SAYING TO YOU—REACT AS YOU NORMALLY WOULD, ASK QUESTIONS AS YOU NORMALLY WOULD, LEAVE THE BUILDING AS YOU NORMALLY WOULD ONCE THE MEETING IS ADJOURNED.

BUT ONCE JILL IS OUT OF SIGHT,
RETURN TO SCHOOL AS FAST AS YOU CAN.

“Back to the auditorium,” Poppy said breathlessly, pulling her bulging notebook out of her bag once they all arrived. “For the
real
Plan.”

23

6:59 A.M.

Poppy looked at Blake's colossal scuba diver watch. It was the only timepiece she had left, now that her cell phone was broken. With a pang, she figured he would have been okay with her borrowing it if it helped save a life or two.

Because time, in this instance, was definitely of the essence. It wasn't going to be easy, setting off a chain of events without any of the Hollows catching on
or
warning the others
or
calling the police. It wasn't going to be easy to pick off the Hollows without the Chandlers catching wind that something was awry.

It had to go perfectly.

She looked over the inventory of items they'd gathered the night before​—​
oregano, Tackety Wax, microphone
—​and frowned when she sniffed her hands, which still smelled like lighter fluid from the fire she'd started an hour earlier. Dud was watching the fast-moving clouds; it was a chilly day, but of course that didn't bother him. Poppy, on the other hand, was wrapped up tight in a sweater, scarf, jacket, mittens, and a hat. It was a lot windier up there, and her nose was so cold, she could have chipped it off with an ice pick.

At least the view was nice.

For what felt like the millionth time, she read over The Plan. Each to-do item was to be crossed off as it was completed. Each Hollow was to be marked as witnessed (noted with a pair of eyes
) by at least one other Hollow. Each member of the Giddy Committee was to play a part, scheduled down to the minute.

“It's going to work,” Dud said out of nowhere.

Poppy rubbed her mittened hands together. “I hope so.”