Hellhole (9 page)

Max nearly dropped the phone. “Huh?”

“Just Glue It. Around six thirty, back door, near the dumpsters.”

“Uh, okay. Sure. Thanks!”

Max hung up, so thrilled at this positive turn of events that he forgot about the vengeful swinging phone book, still hell-bent on destroying his crotch.

MAX SPENT THE REST OF THE DAY
sitting in his living room, looking at his dinosaur watch, and listening to Burg play
Call of Duty.
It wasn't the game Max would have chosen; the near-constant firing of machine guns didn't exactly soothe his troubled soul. But as long as virtual soldiers were being killed downstairs, no real people were being killed upstairs. Hopefully his mom would think he was the one playing, and not abandon her Sunday reruns to come out and investigate.

At one point—and then another point, and another—Audie rang the doorbell and demanded to be let in, but Max had turned off all the lights and locked all the doors. He knew that she knew that he wasn't really out, but there was no way he was letting anyone inside the house, for their sake and his.

He made a peanut butter sandwich. He ate it.

He did a crossword puzzle. Then another.

He killed a fly, taking note of the way the gunshots stopped for a brief moment as the yellow goo oozed out onto the table, as if Burg could sense the death. As if he were enjoying it.

Max shuddered a little.

He shuddered some more.

When six o'clock finally rolled around, he stood up, opened the basement door, and crept halfway down the stairs.

Burg was sitting on the couch in his underwear, shouting at the TV screen, and bending an old tennis racket in half, violating rules four, two, and three, respectively. The presence of his mom's old tennis racket meant that Burg had ventured into the storage/workshop area of the basement, which would probably lead to some troublesome developments in the future, but for now, all Max wanted to do was get out of the house, and fast.

“I'm going out,” he announced in a voice that was more high-pitched than he wanted it to be. “To, uh, steal you some dinner.”

“Great!” Burg said. “I'll have twin lobsters, a filet of elk loin, a vat of truffle oil, and a package of Twinkies.”

Max sighed. “I can obtain exactly one of those items.”

“Ugh,
fine.
Make the elk rare, with a side of mint jelly.”

Max stood there a moment longer. Once he was satisfied that Burg was well into what he called his “Gutsplosion Campaign,” he snuck back upstairs to peek into his mom's room. She appeared to be sleeping, but then she stirred and waved him in.

“Hey,” he said softly. “I was just gonna run out for some food. How are you feeling?”

“Exhausted,” she muttered, still half asleep. “Must be that marathon I ran yesterday. Rocketed right past the Kenyans. ESPN'll be here later for an interview. Put out some quiche.”

“Got it. Quiche. Anything else?”

He was answered with a snore.

 

Sweat was becoming a big problem in Max's life. The amount of time he spent in the throes of nervous panic had gone up exponentially, and with it, the amount of perspiration. Not only had Burg somehow settled the basement into a permanent setting of a hundred-plus degrees, but now that Max had been forced to interact with a strange girl about a subject he had no earthly idea how to broach in a tactful, non–police-alerting manner, his hands were the clammiest they'd ever been. They became so wet on the way to the craft store that they kept slipping around the handlebars of his bike, at one point causing him to veer into traffic and almost be run over by a Little Debbie delivery truck, because getting flattened by a giant supply of devil's food cake mix would have been just the most darling, ironic cherry on top of the shit sundae his life had become.

Just Glue It sat between a seafood restaurant and a laundromat in a small block of storefronts along Main Street. Max hopped off his bike and walked it down the narrow alley behind the building, scrunching up his nose as he passed several trash cans and a river of malodorous, fishy slime snaking its way out the back door of the restaurant.

At last he reached what he assumed to be the craft store's dumpster, judging by the amount of sparkly debris surrounding it. He propped his bike against the wall, took out a granola bar, and waited, chewing and wondering how it had come to pass that every major traumatic event in his life these days seemed to involve a splash of glitter.

The back door abruptly slammed open.

Startled, Max began to choke on a cashew. Really choke—airway blocked, face turning blue, fingers clawing at the wall, as if tunneling through to the store and grabbing a handful of pipe cleaners was the best way to resolve the situation. Without missing a beat, the door opener smacked him hard on the back.

Out came the nut. It ricocheted off the dumpster and sped off into the trees, where—Max fleetingly thought in what had to be a flash of near-death psychosis—it was found by a lucky squirrel, taken home to its squirrel family, and enjoyed as a jubilant part of Squirrel Thanksgiving, which, as everyone knows, traditionally takes place not in November, but in September, when half-swallowed flying nuts are more plentiful.

At some point Max realized that he was saying all of this out loud to the girl, who was standing there and listening and not, astonishingly, emptying a can of pepper spray into his face.

“What are you babbling on about?” she asked.

Max blinked and cleared his throat a few more times, his mind settling back down to a level of low-to-moderate insanity. Only then did he feel ready to make eye contact, and when he did, he thought he might start choking again.

It was Brown Ponytail. The one who came into the Gas Bag the day before. She wore a blue and green plaid skirt—the kind worn as part of a Catholic school uniform—plus sneakers, no socks, and a white polo shirt with rhinestones arranged in the shape of dancing teapots.

A year earlier, some of the douchier boys at school had compiled a ranking of the girls in their class, from hottest to ugliest, and if Max recalled correctly, Lore had ended up somewhere near the bottom. (It had stuck in his mind because she shared a last name with Dennis Nedry, the traitorous computer programmer in
Jurassic Park,
which was infinitely cool, though at that point he hadn't been able to put a face to the name.) He thought it was a mean thing to do anyway, especially since he was sure that if there had been a list for the boys, he'd have ended up so far down at the bottom he'd have fallen off, like a grungy barnacle clinging to the underside of a boat.

But Max didn't think she was ugly at all. Dark birthmarks peppered her pale face, as if she'd been splattered by a paintbrush. Big brown eyes that looked perpetually sad blinked back at him. She was taller than he was, and a shade on the curvier side—wide hips, chipmunkish cheeks—but her shoulders were broad and her arms looked strong. Strong enough to dislodge a cashew, at least.

“I'm fine now,” said Max. “Airway cleared. Thanks. For that.”

She stared at him quizzically, then reached behind the dumpster and pulled out a bike of her own. Max's insides gave a happy leap. What had Audie always told him?
Find something in common to bond over. Establish a connection.

“You have a bike,” he said unnecessarily.

She stared at him. “Yep.”

“I also have a bike.”

“I can see that.”

“We are connected, then,” he said. “Through the bikes.”

She raised an eyebrow. “I'm sorry, did you say we went to the same school? Are you sure you don't go to a . . . special school?”

“No, same school.” Max pointed at her ponytail. “And I saw you the other day. At the Gas Bag. You came in with your friends.”

She studied him. “Oh yeah, that
was
you,” she said, nodding slowly. “You look different without your vest.”

“Do I?”

“Yes. Less concave.”

Max wasn't sure whether this was a compliment or an insult, though he suspected the latter. “Are you the one who picked out the Cheetos?”

“I'm sure not the one who wanted all that soy nonsense.”

She spoke in the most deadpan voice Max had ever heard. It made him think of a seismometer, the kind of device that measures earthquakes, and how her inflections wouldn't even register as a tremor.

“Anyway, they're not my friends,” Lore added. “We got grouped together for an ethics debate project and were heading over to Krissy's house to work on it.”

“Oh,” said Max. “How did it go?”

“They thought ‘euthanasia' referred to ‘children in Asia' and supported it wholeheartedly. How do you think it went?”

Max responded by continuing to gawk at her, zeroing in on her hair. Messy bangs in irregular lengths swept in front of her eyes, and now that he got a good look at it, the brown ponytail in question didn't really resemble the tail of a pony or any other member of the equine family. It was more like a volcano. Situated high on the top of her head, it steadily gushed hair out on all sides, so that it fell around her head like one of those circular curtains in a hospital room.

Thus far in life, Max had had limited experience with the opposite gender, but he was almost positive that
your hair looks like either a volcano or one of those circular curtains in a hospital room
was not one of the things girls liked to hear. He'd certainly never heard Tom Hanks say it to Meg Ryan.

“I like your shirt,” he said instead.

She looked down at the sparkly teapots. “I don't. My boss made it. She said a bedazzled shirt would project an ‘air of craftiness' to the customers. I think it projects an air of ‘I'm a fifty-three-year-old hoarder who lives chest-deep in alternating layers of fast-food wrappers and dead cats,' but what can you do?”

Max gave a commiserating shrug, as if he encountered this problem all the time. “Nothing,” he agreed. “Once I had a shirt that—”

“Okay,” she said, crossing her arms, “as much as I love the smell of rotting fish heads and the stirring conversation topic of ‘shirts,' could you get to the part where you tell me why you need to know about Satan? Because I spent a large portion of my day explaining to a blind old lady the difference between sequins and spangles, and I'd really like to go home.”

“
Is
there a difference?”

She gave him a death glare. “I'm leaving.”

“Wait, wait!” He moved to block her path. “Okay. Satan.”

He stopped there because he didn't know how to start. This would be hard enough to explain to anyone, but this girl was a lot more direct and confident than he'd expected her to be, and he was starting to get a little scared of her.

He took a deep breath and the word-bile spewed forth. “I was digging over on Ugly Hill the other day and I opened up a hole and something came out of it and his name is Burg and I think he's the devil and he ate a stick of butter and I have to find a house for him to move into and I'm really up shit creek without a paddle and I need your help or he's gonna kill my mom or at the very least kill all our houseplants.”

Lore held up a finger. “Fun fact: I didn't understand a word you just said.”

Perhaps that was for the best. Max gushed out the rest of the air in his lungs, composed himself, and started over again with a less alarming approach. He didn't want to frighten her away. “I would like to know more about devils.”

“Why?”

“I'm . . . dabbling in recreational Satanism?”

This turned out to be the wrong tactic. Her eyes narrowed. “I do
not
have time for this,” she spat. Her tone was angry, but Max thought it sounded as if her voice had gone up an octave. And she was speaking a lot faster than she had before. “What happened—you got a little crazy with a Ouija board and now you're looking for tips on the best way to draw a pentagram, best brand of black eyeliner?”

“No,” Max insisted. “You don't understand.”

She put on her bike helmet and snapped the strap shut. “Listen, if sitting around in your bedroom and reciting terrible gothic poetry is what gets you through high school without jumping in front of traffic, fine. But there are
actual
evil things in this world, and I'm not wasting my time with any of this wannabe satanic bullshit.”

Max was getting desperate. He didn't know what else to do, short of throwing her over his shoulder and lugging her back to his house, caveman-style. Girls weren't usually on board with that, though.

She started to walk her bike down the alley at a rapid clip. Max followed, trying not to slip in the dumpster juice. “But I'm not a wannabe!” He reached out to grasp her handlebars—

And she stopped. Her eyes fixed on his hand. The mark on his hand.

For a split second her eyebrows went up.