Wax (13 page)

It was a messy affair, as usual. Despite years of practice, Poppy routinely got toothpaste on seemingly every surface other than her teeth​—​the sink, the mirror, the floor, her pajamas, her hair. But she was so distracted that night, she barely noticed.

I am harboring a fake wax thing,
she thought, wondering if perhaps enumerating her many problems would help her solve them quicker.
The police will soon suspect me of arson, if they haven't identified me already. My best friend thinks I'm nuts. And my parents think I'm an expert on Africa.

She was so lost in thought that when she walked back into her bedroom, she didn't notice Dud until it was too late.

Poppy screamed, every drop of blood in her body rushing right into her face.

10

HER PARENTS COULD BE HEARD HURRYING DOWN THE HALLWAY,
but Poppy cut them off at her bedroom door, closing it behind her. “What's wrong?” her father asked.

“I . . . stubbed my toe,” Poppy explained. “I'm fine.”

“Are you sure?” her mother asked. “That scream, my goodness​—​we thought you were being stabbed!”

“What a colorful imagination you have! But honestly, I'm fine. Going to bed for real now. Good night!”

Once they'd walked back to their room, Poppy reentered her own room and faced Dud. It took a monumental amount of self-control to say rather than shout, “Why are you naked?”

Dud put his hands on his exposed hips. “What's a naked?”

“Why,” she seethed, staring intently at the floor and definitely
not
at anything else, “aren't you wearing any clothes?”

“Because it's time to wear the sleeping bag?”

Poppy blindly pawed for the sweatpants her father had lent Dud, averting her gaze.
Avert.
AVERT.
“The sleeping bag is not something you wear, it's something you put yourself
into.
Where are your pants?”

“But I put my arms
into
my sleeves​—”

“Dud? Pants?”

“—​and I put my feet
into
my shoes​—​”

“Found them!” Poppy shoved the pants up against his anatomically correct pelvis, then practically threw herself onto the other side of the room. Her face felt as if it were about to burst into flame. “Get dressed. Now, please.”

He gave her a look of concern, dropping the pants in the process. “What's wrong, Poppy?”

“Nothing. Just​—”

Don't look at it, don't look at it.

. . .

OH GOD I LOOKED AT IT.

“Clothing is important,” she blurted. “I'm wearing clothes. Everyone wears clothes. It's rude to suddenly not be wearing clothes.”

“Oh. Okay. Sorry.” He put the pants back on and grinned. “Good?”

“Good. I'm going to open a window, it's broiling in here.”

“Is it?”

“It's
sweltering.
”

She opened her window and sat on the sill. The crisp fall air thwacked her back like a spray of cold water. It felt amazing.

It smelled less than amazing. The ever-present stench of the town mixed with the smoke of the factory fire to create heretofore unsmelled levels of stink. She glanced at Mount Cerumen in the distance, its façade still hazy.

She looked back at Dud, his nudity startling her once more. “Can you put your shirt back on too?”

Dud picked up his shirt but stopped there. “Wait. Can I ask a question? What are these things?” he asked, pointing to his chest.

Poppy calmly licked her lips and focused on keeping her voice even. “Nipples.”

“What do they do?”

“For boys? Nothing.”

“What do they do for girls?”

“Um, well​—​when women have babies, milk comes out of them​—”

“Milk comes out of the babies?”

“No, milk comes out of the nipples.”

“Milk comes out of the
nipples?
”

“Yeah, to feed the babies.”

“Wow.”

They sat quietly for a moment. Poppy fanned herself. Dud thought some more.

“Poppy?”

“Yes?”

“Where do babies come from?”

“It is officially bedtime.” She sprang up from the sill and shut the window. “If you require further information, I think we still have that educational DVD my mom bought for me. I can dig it out of the basement tomorrow​—”

“Wait, wait!” Dud bit on his fingernail. “Can I ask one more? It's not about nipples.”

“Look, the film will explain​—”

“What's this thing?” He started to pull down the waistband of his shorts.

“Whoa whoa
whoa​—”
Poppy felt the blood rising once more and put her hands out to object, but she stopped once she saw that all he'd exposed was the edge of his hip. “Wait. What
is
that?”

“I asked you first,” he replied, then laughed at his joke as if he'd invented it. “Ha
ha!
”

“It's a . . . scar,” Poppy said, lightly brushing her fingers over his skin. The mark was made up of a series of short straight lines​—​deep in the middle and raised on the edges, as if it had been gouged directly into his skin.

“What's a scar?” Dud asked.

“It's a mark that's left over after you get hurt, once the wound has healed. But​—”

“But what?”

She thought back to the rosebushes, to the lacerations that hadn't lasted for more than a few seconds. “But I don't see how that's possible with you. Unless it was put there when you were first sculpted. What if she . . . what? Why are you looking at me like that?”

Dud was frowning and somehow doing the opposite of blinking​—​every couple of seconds, his eyes widened. “Sculpted?”

“Yeah. By Madame Grosholtz. At the factory.”

He eye-bulged again. “Huh?”

She spoke slowly. “Because you're made of wax.”

He stared at her. “I am?”

“Oh, you've got to be kidding me,” she muttered under her breath.

So he didn't know. How was she supposed to explain? She had never come up against this problem before, since not a soul on earth had come up against this problem before. There were no educational DVDs on how to break the news to someone that they weren't human. There were no
Dr. Steve
episodes devoted exclusively to the subject.

Poppy opened her mouth and waited for the right words to come.
Well, sometimes when a lonely old woman and a block of wax love each other very much . . .

“Most people​—​humans​—​are made of skin and bones and blood and muscle,” she explained. “But you are made of wax instead.”

Dud cocked his head.

Off to a terrible start. “When I visited the candle factory today,” she tried again, “I met this lady named Madame Grosholtz, and I was invited into her studio, and I saw you there. You were a wax sculpture, like​—​like the crayon you sculpted at Friendly's, remember? That's what you were. And then
somehow
—​in a way that I can't explain​—​you came to life.”

“But you said I was from an island near Africa.”

“I know. That was just a little fib I had to tell my parents so they would let you stay with us.”

“What's a fib?”

“It's what people use to get through their daily lives without killing one another.”

“What is ‘killing'?”

This was not going well. “What's your first memory?” she asked, trying a different tactic. “What's the first thing you remember?”

He thought for a second. “It was dark, and then it got bright, and then I jumped out, and you were yelling.”

“Okay, well, that actually doesn't sound all that different from a regular birth, but​—​but
you're
talking about coming out of the trunk of a
car.
That's not how people are born. First they're babies, then they're kids like Owen, then they grow up. Humans don't spring into existence fully formed, like you did.”

Dud looked at his hands. “I'm not human?” he said quietly.

Poppy's shoulders slumped. This was turning out to be harder than she thought it would be. “Well, no. Not as such. But if it makes you feel any better, you're a lot more human than some of the soul-sucking monsters I've met in my life.”

Dud looked at her with big injured-puppy eyes. “Poppy, I . . .”

Oh, God.
Was he going to cry? “What?”

“The monsters I saw.” Dud said. “They were furry and had fluffy tails and ran up a tree! Then they went like this.” He put his fingertips together and mimed eating a nut.

With that, Poppy relaxed, enjoyed a silent internal chuckle, and made a mental note for next time not to get all worried about the emotional state of a lump of wax. “They're called squirrels.”

“Squirrels are funny.”

“They sure are. Now show me that scar again.”

Dud obliged. Poppy squinted at the lines Madame Grosholtz had carved. It looked as though they were arranged into letters, but​—​“AMT?” she said. “What does that mean? Amount? Anger management therapy? American musical theater?” She was really hoping for that last one, but she couldn't think of a way it could possibly apply.

She reached for her phone. “Time for a little research.”

“What's research?”

“It's when we look up information on the Internet.”

“What's the Internet?”

“A waste of time for the most part, but it can occasionally have its uses.”

Unfortunately, all the search results were just as unlikely: American Medical Technologists, alternative minimum tax, a stock symbol. Nothing related to candles or wax or scary old ladies.

The more she stared at the screen, the heavier her eyelids grew. “I give up,” she said through a yawn. “Time to hit the hay. Maybe when I wake up in the morning, this will all have been a delightful romp of a nightmare.”

After showing Dud how to stuff himself into the sleeping bag, Poppy turned off the lamp on her nightstand and got into bed. She gave her eyes a vigorous rub, then lit her Forty Winks candle, tried to relax, and​—​

“Poppy?”

“Yeah?”

“What is hay and why would you hit it?”

“Go to sleep, Dud.”

“What is sleep?”

Poppy snapped the light on.

“You don't sleep?” she said irritably. “Close your eyes and lose consciousness for seven to nine hours?”

“That sounds scary.”

It did, now that he mentioned it. Though the idea of him watching her sleep was worse. “Well, it's kind of something most people need to do. Can you give it a try?”

“Okay!”

But once the light was off and the room was still and quiet, the demons of the day began to crawl out of the shadows. The frightening things she'd seen. The stale, dry air of the studio on her skin. She found herself staring at her beloved
Lion King
poster, Simba barely visible beneath all the autographs. This time, in the light of her candle, they looked ominous, like threats scribbled in blood.

“Poppy?”

“What?”

“Can I lose consciousness in the closet?”

Poppy turned the lamp on again. Thankful for the distraction, she got up, opened the closet door, and gestured grandly. “Go for it, kid. Just don't try on my bathing suit or fondle my shoes or anything kinky like that.”

“Okay!” Dud jumped up and hopped with his sleeping bag into the closet as if he were in a potato sack race. He settled on the floor, content. “Thank you, Poppy.”

“You're welcome. Good night.”

“Good night!”

She shut the door.

“Poppy?”

She opened the door.

“What now?”

“It's too dark in here.”

Poppy rubbed her eyes and reconsidered every fleeting thought she'd ever had about one day having children. “I can leave the light on, if you want.”

“Can I have a candle?”

“No, you cannot. This house almost burned down once today, and I see no reason to finish the job.”

“But you have a candle.”

“That's different. It's aromatherapy.”

“What's aromatherapy?”

“A bunch of hooey, obviously, because otherwise I'd be asleep by now.”

“Pleeeease?”

Poppy sighed. “Fine. I think we have some extra ones in the​—​oh, wait, I've got one,” she interrupted herself, remembering the candle Madame Grosholtz had thrust upon her. She pulled it out of her backpack and placed it on the floor next to Dud's head, taking a moment to clear away some of her more flammable items.

“I'll watch it,” Dud promised as Poppy lit the wick. “I won't let it burn anything.”

His incapacity for sleep coupled with the intensity with which he stared at the flame was enough to convince her. Besides, if her admittedly lame wardrobe burned up and she had to start again from scratch, she wouldn't complain.

She stepped out of the closet. “I'll see you in the morning.”

“Okay. 'Night, Poppy.”

“Good night.”

She pulled the closet doors shut and plunged back into bed.

All was quiet.

Until the rustling started.

She tried to ignore it. She tried to jam a pillow into her ears. But it kept going. It sounded like he was looking through her things. All her things. Every single thing.

Exasperated, she flung off the covers and marched to the closet​—​and that's when the noises stopped.

Curious, she looked in through the horizontal wooden slats.

Dud was nestled in his sleeping bag and staring at the flame of the candle, a pair of headphones pulled over his ears. He'd found her old radio, the one her grandfather had bought at a thrift shop and given to her for her seventh birthday. She hadn't had the heart to tell Grandpa that no one listened to radios anymore, but she also never had the heart to give it away, so she had stuffed it into her closet and forgotten all about it.