“Paula?” I smacked my iPhone and yelled at the screen, “Paula!”
But she was gone, and I had no signal now.
Wait…
I got one bar—and nope.
No signal again.
I tried sending a text:
Are you all right?
MESSAGE FAILED.
Something was wrong—really wrong with her.
I’m on my way Paula! I’ll be right there.
But first, I needed to figure out where the heck I was. I took a moment to survey my surroundings. A dark road. The broken pine box in a drainage ditch. Nearby, the entrance of a winding driveway flanked by palm trees. Up on the hill, a castle—yes, the castle. I cackled knowingly, because that landmark told me exactly where I was—on the East Side of New Stepford. Our library’s up there on the estate, but it’s closed now and wouldn’t open until morning. To my left, I caught sight of Old Lemon upside down in the gutter. Norman ditched her too—of course he did. When I stumbled into the trench to flip over my moped, I realized that I was still a little high, but I was determined to ride to Paula’s anyway. I didn’t care if I got caught. What were the cops going to do? Revoke a driver’s license that I didn’t have? Be my freaking guest.
“I’ve got news for you, Norman,” I muttered as I rolled Old Lemon onto the hard top, “We’re not trash!”
Finally, I hopped on my moped, started her up, steered toward home, and opened the throttle all the way. Soon, I was doing a whopping 28 mph—speeding in New Stepford. In ten minutes, I made it from the East Side to South View Drive where I turned into the entrance of our development. Old Lemon bucked hard over the first speed bump and nearly wiped out. So I had to weave through our sleepy neighborhood of cookie-cutter houses and white picket fences at under 10 mph just like I’d done a thousand times before. When I finally got close, I killed the motor and coasted the rest of the way to Paula’s house. Then I stashed Old Lemon in the juniper bushes between our houses and dashed across her lawn. Her front door was hanging wide open, and I heard mambo music blasting inside. I sprinted up to her porch, and before I reached the threshold, I could tell that her home was in complete chaos.
Was this how Norman felt when he found me?
No. This was a million times worse.
This was…
What the hell was this?
The stench of liquor smacked me in the face as soon as I stepped through the front door. Paula had created a minefield of Hennessy XO all around the living room. Two inches of brandy filled the bottom of trays, bowls, pans, and buckets all around me. I even discovered sponge cake floating in an inch of liquor on the bottom of a laundry basket. Paula was making tiramisu—and a whole damn lot of it too. I was almost afraid to venture into her house any farther, but I had to help her. As I tiptoed through the obstacle course, liquor-soaked carpet squished underfoot.
Oh, my God—
Remember how I went nuts rearranging my bookshelves by color? Well, instead of using books, Paula had done something unbelievably gruesome. She’d made her rainbow by nailing our fish to the living room wall.
“Jesus, Paula!” I gasped.
Her gory exhibition started on the left with the red devil looking paler than ever, almost pink. Paula had hammered a big nail right through his gills, and blood splattered the wall all around him. Thank goodness I was already coming down from my banana high, because I couldn’t imagine processing this while still tripping.
Next in her sickening rainbow, was—
Oh no! My pretty girl! Paula had butterflied the orange blood parrot and splayed her against the wall with a nail through each of her sides. I used to watch that gorgeous fish lay clutches of eggs on the old log in the bottom of the tank. Blood parrots are infertile hybrids, but Kate sure tried anyway. You had to admire that about her. But now she was gone, and I could feel her pain. Could I taste pain? Because a bitter metallic flavor crept up the back of my throat, and I had to make a fist to stop myself from gagging. I felt repulsed—absolutely horrified—completely in shock.
Next, Paula had nailed our gold ram through his orange eye. Then she’d nailed our green terror through the mouth. And lastly, the Jack Dempsey hung from his tail with his gray head bashed in. He was so badly mangled that I could barely recognize him, but I knew his blue spots anywhere. And Smokey, our two-foot-long pleco, was dead on the floor. I guess it took three nails for Paula to stick him to the wall, but judging from the looks of it, his violent thrashing must’ve ripped him right off. Poor Smokey only ever wanted to suck algae and pretend he was a catfish. Now he was lying in a puddle of his own blood at my feet. I was heartbroken.
ONE FISH, TWO FISH.
RED FISH, BLUE FISH.
OMG, shut up! What’s WRONG with you?
IT IS FROM A CHILDREN’S BOOK.
But our library doesn’t have children’s books.
NOW YOU ARE BEGINNING TO UNDERSTAND.
Understand what?
You () {
count (by twos);
}
I counted the dead fish—two, four, six—but Paula and I shared seven aquatic pets. Where’s Oscar? Was he hiding in the tank? Could my favorite fishy still be alive? I’d been so spellbound by the slaughter that I didn’t even think to look inside the hundred-gallon aquarium. When I finally did, I found a disaster. The lid, cast aside. The light, broken. The filter, sucking air. The twin heaters, sizzling. The water, dark with blood and only nine inches left in the bottom of the tank. Oscar was all alone in there, hiding behind a log in the corner and gasping for air with his swollen red gills.
He was dying!
I found a yellow plastic Wiggly’s Market bag on the floor, snatched it, then dunked it in the aquarium. After some fumbling and fussing, I scooped Oscar up with some dirty tank water. Then I popped open a gallon of fresh aquarium water that we always kept stocked next to the stand and added half to the bag. Finally, I tied the handles in a tight double knot and checked for leaks. Luckily, there were none, but if I tipped the bag too far, pink water oozed out the top.
“You’re all right. You’re all right,” I told my fish. “I’ve got you.”
Behind me in the kitchen, I heard Paula say, “I must look horrible.”
I turned to face my best friend. Her hair was a frizzy mess full of fish guts. Her makeup smeared from battle. Her dress stained with blood. But I couldn’t even be mad at her, because I could relate to her bizarre rainbow fixation. It was a side effect of seeing infrared for the first time. Me? I focused on books—her, fish. We both used whatever we had on hand.
“Uh—wow.” She pointed and stared at my forehead. “Now that’s a statement.”
“What is?”
She gestured toward a bloody decorative mirror next to the red devil. “Have a look at yourself.”
I checked my reflection. Across my forehead, written in Norman’s sloppy chicken scratch, with thick black Sharpie, in all capital letters, was the word—
BROKEN
And I gasped, “Oh, my GOD!”
Paula nodded, “I know, right?”
“Why does he hate me so much?” I licked my thumb and rubbed at the permanent marker, but it wouldn’t come off. “How can someone be so cruel?”
Her espresso machine gurgled.
“Coffee’s done!” Paula poured espresso into one of the liquor pans on the floor. Then she suddenly snorted a line of coke off her messy kitchen counter.
“Oh, my God, Paula. Cocaine? Really?”
She smiled, then did another bump.
“We’ve never done coke before,” I objected. “We agreed not to.”
“Things change.” She cackled and wiped at her powdery nose.
“It looks like a bomb went off in here, Paula,” I said as another empty yellow grocery bag drifted past me like a kitchen tumbleweed.
“I’ve gotta little side project going.” She told me that to make LSD in your kitchen, you grind 150 grams of morning glory seeds then soak them in 130 milliliters of petroleum ether for two days.
LSD? At least she wasn’t cooking meth.
“As you know, lysergic acid diethylamide is a potent hallucinogenic.” She pointed to a multi-layered contraption in her kitchen sink and explained, “You filter this solution through a fine screen. That’s what I’m doing now. I’ll let this liquid go down the drain and then spread the seed mulch onto cookie sheets. Once it air dries, you soak the pulp in 110 milliliters of methanol. Since my original recipe only yields five capsules—” Paula laughed with a crazed enthusiasm that I understood on a primal level, then gestured toward an unopened case of wood alcohol in the dining room. “—I had to multiply—a lot. Anyway, in two days, there’s another process where you save the liquid. Things get mixed. It’s complicated. But in the end, you get this yellow gummy residue.”
I interrupted her, “How did you get this many morning glory seeds?”
“I had a coupon.” She pressed wet seed pulp in the sink.
“A coupon? Really?” I remembered how I’d gotten at Wiggly’s with the ‘Nilla Wafers and wondered how a little piece of worthless printed paper triggered us to act like—like—this.
“Paula, could you stop for a second?”
She ignored my request.
“Paula, listen. I know where this goes.”
“Sure, sure. So do I.”
“Okay, that’s just creepy. Please Paula, let’s get out of here. Come with me.”
Instead, she tended to her oven and mumbled, “What I really need is a chemistry lab. Dan, Dan, bo-ban, banana-fanna fo-fan, fee fi mo-man, Dan!”
“Paula!” I shouted, but then I lowered my voice because I was pretty sure she wasn’t alone in the house, “Please, Paula. Come with me. PLEASE!”
“I am sorry. This process cannot be interrupted,” she answered without looking up from her work. “System busy.”
I lunged over the breakfast bar and grabbed her by the wrist. “But I have to save you.”
“I told you, Cookie. System busy.”
Behind her, a metal cake pan fell and hit the floor like a gong, but she didn’t even flinch.
I held Oscar’s yellow bag up to show her. “I’m taking him.”
“Taking who?” she asked without looking. “Oh, the fish. Sure, sure. Take it. I’m done with those things now.”
Behind us, the master bedroom door slammed, and her pissed-off husband yelled down the hall, “It’s after midnight. I gotta get some goddamned sleep, Paula!”
“Shit,” she said, “I woke up Dan.”
“He’ll shut you down, Paula!”
She ignored me.
“PAULA!”
No response. She was lost in her process.
But I bolted through the brandy minefield and out the front door before her husband even got halfway down the hall. I couldn’t let Dan know that I’d escaped the box. He’d tell Norman, and I just couldn’t risk that. Once someone did something like what he did to me—he was sure to do it again. Next time, I might not be so lucky. I might not get air holes. I might not figure a way out. And next time, I might not be above ground. So I ran away.
Once outside, I placed Oscar in the saddle basket of my moped—oh so gently. I had to be very careful not to tear the thin plastic of his water bag. Then after backing Old Lemon out of the bushes, I heard Paula’s voice call to me from behind.
“Dan kicked me out.”
“Sons of bitches! What’s wrong with these guys?”
“He took my keys.” Tears welled up in her eyes. “He locked all the doors.”
“They can’t just throw us out on the street like garbage,” I objected, “We have rights!”
With the kitchen mania over, Paula was crashing. “He said, my house, my rules.”
“Come with me, Paula.”
“And where would we go? There’s nowhere but home.” Like a dazed sleepwalker, she shambled in a circle. Then she just stood in the middle of her front lawn, swaying in place and staring at her house like a lost zombie.
“There’s no point hanging around where we’re not wanted.”
“I bet,” she sounded like a hypnotized mental patient, “that after a good night’s sleep, he’ll change his mind. Yes. Tomorrow, he’ll forgive me. Then he’ll let me back inside.”
Nervously, I checked over my shoulder toward my house. If Norman heard this commotion, he’d come out to check, then I’d be screwed. My eyes darted back and forth between my best friend, my escape route, and my house. I needed to get the hell out of here, so I pedaled farther away down the street. No motor. No noise. And from two houses away, I shout-whispered back to her, “Don’t just stand there, Paula! Come with me!”
She either didn’t hear me or pretended not to.
“I’m sorry, Dan,” Paula pled as she shuffled closer to her locked front door. “I took a vow. I promised until death do us part, so I’ll wait right here. On standby. I will wait forever for you, Dan. Because I took a vow—until death do us part.”
And that was how I first lost Paula.