The True Meaning of Smekday (11 page)

It was the Haunted House. Hanging upside down. From the ceiling. I was in a big room, an
enormous
room, a room like half a football field, and there was an entire Haunted House hanging upside down in the middle of it.

It was perfect in every detail: the broken shutters, the bent weather vane, even the fake black cat screeching silently over the front porch. On the ceiling itself was a little plot of land, fake grass and mud, with gravestones and wiry trees hanging down like stalactites. Or stalagmites. I can never remember which is which.

I sat heavily on the floor, dumbstruck. I wondered how I’d know if I was crazy. Is there a blood test, or can you just pee in a cup or something? Once I was in a bicycle accident, and I lay in the street for a long time afterward. People surrounded me and wouldn’t let me stand up until the paramedics arrived. When they did, they asked if I knew who the president was, and what state I lived in, and how much was three times seven. When I answered everything correctly they seemed pleased, so they asked my name and I said “Gratuity,” and then they wouldn’t let me up until I told them it was “Janet.”

Anyway, sitting there, I decided to test myself again. But this time the president wasn’t the president anymore, and I didn’t have a home, and my name was still my name. I could do the math, sure, but I decided all the same to just lie down for a while. I gazed at the roof of the house like I was flying.

Eventually I had to take my eyes off it, so I looked around the cavernous room. It wasn’t really just rectangular. It had wide scoops on opposite ends, like wings. Like a huge half-pipe. And all around were doors marked with bright signs. One door said

FROGWORTH’S HOPPING PAD

TOONTOPIA

ABRAHAM SUPERLINCOLN’S TIME MACHINE

and another said

BIG ROCK CANDY MOUNTAIN

GALAXANDER’S LUNAR LANDER

But I knew I didn’t have time for those. What I really wanted was through door number three:

MISTER SCHWA’S GRAMMAZING
VOCABULARCOASTER

SNOW QUEEN’S CASTLE

The second thing; not the first one.

I didn’t really want to leave the room without some clue as to why the Haunted House, or
a
haunted house, was dangling from the rafters like that. There had to be a sign somewhere with an explanation. But I had things to do. J.Lo would start to worry. I pulled open the door to the castle slowly and quietly, and left the mystery and the humming generator behind.

If I’d been expecting anything remarkable behind the door, I was wrong. It was only a dark hallway, and I flicked my flashlight back and forth in front of me to guard against any surprises. The corridor curved slightly to the right. I passed a door to the Mister Schwa ride, and the corridor curved back, and I saw a light. Not my light, but something soft and orange down the hall. I switched off the flashlight and saw the outline of another door, maybe fifty feet ahead.

I raised my bottle of glass cleaner and fingered the trigger as I crept forward. There were voices. Laughing. In a weird way you can always tell when a sound is a person’s voice, and usually tell that they’re speaking English, even when you can’t make out anything they’re saying. I relaxed a little and reached for the door handle, and suddenly felt something against my shoe. Something that gave a little, like a rubber band, and just as I realized what I’d done, there came a great loud noise of cans and spoons clattering together at the edges of the hallway.

I’m not going to write down what I said at this point.

Then the door swung forward, so I hopped back a little and saw a dark shape come at me, and that’s when I sort of accidentally squirted it where its head would be.

“Ow! Ooowwwww!” said the shape. I trained my flashlight on it, and saw it was just a kid. A boy, maybe nine or ten.

“Ooooowwwwwwwwwww!” he moaned, pawing at his face. I heard a rustle from beyond the door, and he was soon joined by other boys, six, then seven and eight of them. They looked at me like they’d never seen a black girl with a flashlight before.

“I’m sorry. That was an accident,” I said. First human I meet in three days and I squirt ammonia in his eyes. “He sca…startled me. You know, things like this happen when you just go barging through doors like that—”

“Who the hell are you?” said the biggest kid. He was maybe my age, with a dirty face and ratty blond curls. I’d also learn that he tended to swear a lot. I don’t care for that, personally, so I’m going to bleep him out from now on. “Did the Boov send you?” he added.

Two of the boys were guiding the one I’d blinded back into the room. I noticed I wasn’t being invited in.

“Did the Boov…? Of course not,” I answered. “Why would—”

“She’s probably a bleeping spy,” said the blond boy. “Probably not even a real girl. She doesn’t look right.”

“Oh,
I
don’t look right. Sure. Do you know you have a peanut stuck to your chin?”

“Shut the bleep up! You don’t get to speak!”

“
And
you smell like ice cream.”

The boy lunged forward, but he was caught by a smaller boy on his left. I stepped back and aimed the squirt bottle.

“Do that again and I’ll clean your face for you,” I said.

There was a moment of silence. Most of the boys were looking at Curly like they were waiting for orders. Instead it was the smaller boy holding him back who spoke.

“Let’s just go inside where we can all see better.”

“No!” said Curly. “No girls allowed!”

“Oh, you gotta be kidding me—”

“I’m not asking her to join,” said the boy. “I’m saying we should go inside.” Nobody did anything, so he added, “In the light it’ll be easier to tell if she’s just a Boov in a girl suit.”

“Yeah,” said Curly. “That’s good. Back inside!”

We went in. Curly marched behind me like he was my guard. The door opened onto a huge room, larger than the last. I had some idea what to expect this time, so I wasn’t entirely caught off guard by the castle hanging upside down in the middle. This one was whole. Whole and perfect, untouched by the Boov. I could have stared forever at the dancing light that flickered over each icy brick and frosting tower.

“Hey! No pictures!” Curly shouted. He was still behind me. Behind him there was a ring of candles and a little camp stove in the corner of the room, surrounded by boxes and chairs. The boys took up their seats. There wasn’t one for me, and I wasn’t about to sit on the floor, so I stood.

“Check her back for a zipper,” said Curly.

A couple of boys approached me, but a particular expression on my face made them change their minds.

“I saw some graffiti that pointed me here,” I said. “So I came. My name’s Gratuity. My…friends call me Tip.”

“Tip!” shouted Curly. He laughed like a donkey, and some of the other boys joined in. “What kind of bleeping name is Tip?”

“The kind
you’re
never calling me, you big—”

“I’m Christian,” said the boy who’d held Curly back in the hall. He had caramel-color skin and caramel-color hair, like they were both made from the same thing. All the other boys stared at me from their seats. All of them except the one I’d squirted, who was pouring water all over his red face. His eyes looked like cherries.

One by one they gave their names. There was Tanner, Juan, Alberto, Marcos, Jeff, Yosuan, and Cole. I think. They were all between the ages of maybe eight to thirteen. Curly didn’t give his name.

“Why are you here?” said Christian. “Why weren’t you on the rocketpods like all the others?”

“I decided to drive instead.”

“Liar,” said Curly.

“Anyway,” I said, “weren’t the rocketpods supposed to come here? Where is everybody?”

“Arizona,” said Christian. “The Boov decided to keep Florida for themselves.”

Arizona.
I couldn’t believe it.

“But…they promised it to us. They promised it to us
forever
.”

Curly snorted. I suddenly felt a little foolish. Naive.

“That was before they discovered oranges,” said Tanner. “The Boov really like oranges.”

“So they loaded everyone back up and took them to Arizona,” said Christian.

“They grow oranges in Arizona too,” said Yosuan.

“Bleep,” said Curly. “Nothing grows in Arizona. It’s all desert.”

“It’s not,” Yosuan said quietly. “My grandma lives there.”

I thought about J.Lo eating dental floss.

“Waitaminit. Oranges? The Boov actually eat oranges?”

“No…” said Yosuan, squinting. “They mostly wear them, I think.”

We lapsed into silence again, which Curly broke with a rude noise.

“Okay,” I said, “my turn. Which one of you guys is Boob?”

Most of the boys broke up into nervous giggling. Especially the younger ones.

“BOOB is an…acronym,” said Christian. “It stands for Brotherhood—”

“
Brother
hood!” Curly interrupted. “No girls! And no pictures!”

I gave him a sour look. “The graffiti
I
saw said ‘humans.’”

“That’s because Marcos bleeped up.”

Marcos flinched.

Christian continued as if everyone were still listening. “Brotherhood Organized against Oppressive Boov. It stands for that.”

“Shouldn’t it be B-O-A-O-B, then?”

“We really wanted it to be BOOB,” said Marcos, and all the younger boys giggled again. Christian looked pained.

“Well…all right,” I said. “So what are you guys doing?”

“Doing?” said one of the boys.

“Yeah. ‘Brotherhood Organized against Oppressive Boov,’ right? So what are you doing to fight them?”

“
Fight
them?” said Marcos. There were general snorts of disbelief from all the boys. “Have you seen those guns they have?”

“We’re…we’re not letting them have us,” someone said. “We’re not letting them tell us where to go. That’s fighting them.”

“And we’re eating all this spoiled ice cream and corn dogs, and living at Happy Mouse Kingdom!” said another. “They’d hate that, if they knew.”

The boys mostly nodded to each other, and said things like “Yeah, that’s showin’ ’em,” and, “They can’t push
us
around.” I noticed only Christian looked sort of disappointed. I imagined he and I were thinking the same thing:
Well, so much for the revolution.

The murmuring died down into uncomfortable silence. A silence as huge and awkward as a castle hanging from the ceiling.

“Okay,” I said. “Why are there upside-down buildings underground?”

“Ha! Dumbbleep. Everyone knows that.”

Christian looked at Curly. “
You
didn’t know it three weeks ago.”

“Three weeks? Is that how long you guys have been here?”

“Some of us,” said Christian. “Some not as long, some longer. Alberto and I have been here five months.”

Five months. Since the time of the invasion.

“Our parents worked here,” said Alberto. “So…so we knew about the underground…and—”

And suddenly, Alberto was crying. He made a fist with his face, and soon loud sobs filled the room.

“Oh, bleep. Here we go. You’re such a bleep, Albert.”

I didn’t know what I’d done. I looked to Christian for help, but he just continued the story.

“Our parents worked here. Alberto’s dad and my mom. They have two of every building—every big one, anyway. During the day they clean the one underground, repaint whatever needs repainting, fix stuff, that sort of thing. Then, in the middle of the night,
fllip
!”