The class bell tolled as Marlo and Colby stepped into a room resounding with crazy drumming and chanting. There, in front of a circle of students with conga drums for desks, were three old men wearing neckties and grass skirts. Marlo recognized Mr. Nixon but didn’t recognize the other two men, though they all wore a similar expression of assumed importance and, unfortunately, not much else.
“Ah, the late, hardly great Mr. Fauster and some anonymous shifty-eyed ragamuffin,” Mr. Nixon replied with a deep rattle. “To your drums … if it’s not too much trouble.”
Marlo brushed past the chalkboard by the door, which—scrawled across it in fancy cursive letters—read: “Voodoo Economics, taught by dead presidents Fillmore and Pierce with special guest Mr. Nixon.”
Marlo made her way to an empty drum in the back of the room. Next to it, a boy was stooped over, scratching his calf.
“Excuse me, Itchy McScab, but is this drum taken?” Marlo asked the boy’s back.
With deep brown eyes daubed onto a stark white canvas of a face, the boy looked up at Marlo with sullen charisma.
“Zane!” Marlo yelped girlishly.
Zane Covington, the cool British exchange student she had met back in Rapacia! While the particulars of Marlo’s Infernship were still just vague smears finger-painted across her memory, Zane’s brief appearance had had a profound effect upon her psyche. Even in his flame-print pants and writhing, lice-encrusted shirt, he was still a “smashing bloke.”
Impulsively, Marlo bent down to give him a hug. Zane recoiled.
“Whoa, mate,” he replied with a look of sour shock. “I’m a Brit. We don’t do that.”
As the boys on either side of Zane snickered, the full awfulness of her situation drizzled foully down upon Marlo, as if incontinent pigeons had suddenly flocked overhead.
I’m Milton, she thought sadly. I’m finally next to a boy that doesn’t make me want to dry heave, and I’m my brother. My skinny, gross boy of a brother.
Marlo tried to pull herself together.
“I, um, am Milton,” Marlo managed as she sat down behind the conga drum. “You saved me from becoming a big gold statue back in Mallvana—you know, the Grab-bit’s big ceremony?—when King Midas tried to grab me … he actually grabbed this big sort of centipede demon guard thing—yuck, huh?!—that had grabbed me, really, but …”
Zane’s eyes became faraway, as if his mind had booked a flight to an exotic locale. Marlo sighed.
“I’m Marlo’s brother … Marlo Fauster.”
Zane’s eyes returned home, suddenly, from their short vacation, not even taking time to flip through the mail.
“Marlo?” he said in his faintly posh accent. Zane examined Milton’s face. “Yeah, I suppose there is a resemblance.”
Marlo shut her eyes.
I do not look like my hideous, mutant, goody-goody, sci-fi convention–going, comic book–collecting geek of a brother! Marlo screamed in her head.
“Have you heard from her?” Zane asked. Marlo was filled with a sort of full-body nausea. It was weird. She was queasy all over but didn’t want it to go away. It was like being on a roller coaster that only went down.
“Not in a while,” Marlo replied, opening her eyes. “But last time I saw her, she seemed great. And she looked really good, too! You know … for a sister …”
Suddenly, someone thwacked Marlo’s drum, nearly causing her to jump out of her brother’s skin.
“Mr. Fauster,” the overweight, piggish-looking man said as he leaned into Marlo. “Do you have any idea who I am?”
Marlo looked the shirtless geezer up and down.
“No, but let me guess,” she replied crisply. “You used to be really important, or so you thought, and—in the end—that didn’t really matter. Now you’re down here in a grass skirt with two other bygone bozos forced to deal with brats like me—a fate you can’t stand, but there you go. You were famous, though no one here knows who you are, and—to you—I’m nothing, but here we are in the same room. It’s kind of funny, but no one is laughing.”
The man’s torso flushed crimson with rage.
“I’m Millard Fillmore,” he hissed, “the thirteenth president of the United States of America!”
“That’s what I meant,” Marlo said, sharing a sideways smirk with Zane.
Mr. Fillmore lunged at Marlo across the drum, before being restrained by a skinny, nervous old man with wavy salt-and-pepper hair.
“Millard,” the man said in a quavering voice. “You know what Principal Bubb said about strangling students.”
Mr. Fillmore composed himself as much as a half-naked senior citizen can.
“Yes, Franklin, that it should never be done during class. What we do on our own time is our own business.”
“Benjamin Franklin?” Colby said, peeking through a gap in his hair. “Like the guy that discovered kites?”
Mr. Nixon smacked his drum impatiently. “Franklin Pierce,” he clarified. “The fourteenth president of the United States, and can we all please get back to the subject at hand?” he said, his jowls hula dancing with outrage as he and the other two teachers trudged back to the chalkboard.
Zane leaned in close to Marlo.
“You’ve got your sister’s nerve,” he whispered.
Marlo slid back in her chair with a dopey grin smeared across her brother’s dopey face.
“You don’t know the half of it,” she murmured.
Mr. Nixon scratched a series of short, seemingly contradictory phrases on the chalkboard: “Spending saves money. Tax cuts increase tax revenue. More for the rich means more for the poor. Increased supply equals increased demand.”
He beamed at the words on the board.
“That’s our lesson, in a nutshell,” he said, the ex-president’s face threatening to slide into his grinning mouth. “Therein lies the beauty of Voodoo Economics, its simplicity and eerie ability to solve every financial problem at once.”
The African American boy with the ski beanie raised his hand. Mr. Fillmore glanced down at the student roster on the teachers’ desk.
“Yes, Mr.… Cummings?”
“Yeah, Darnell Cummings,” the boy said as he folded his arms and sat back in his chair. “I used to work after school as a janitor at MIT and had a gift for math, despite my blue-collar roots. But achieving my dream of being a math wiz meant turning my back on my working-class neighbor and best friend—”
“Sounds like something out of a movie,” Mr. Nixon said dubiously. “Your point?”
“My point,” Darnell continued, “is that nothing on the chalkboard makes any sense.”
Mr. Nixon pounded his fists on his drum.
“That’s because it’s magic!” he shrieked. “That voodoo that we do that’s so swell! It’s not supposed to make sense … it’s supposed to make dollars! Lots of them!”
Mr. Pierce hiked up the sagging grass skirt that kept drifting below his blinding white belly.
“Maybe if they saw it in action, Mr. Nixon,” he offered.
“Of course,” Mr. Nixon said as he turned to erase the chalkboard. “Let’s start with a clean slate.” He stooped down to retrieve a piece of fallen chalk.
“And no more wisecracks,” Mr. Nixon said, giving the students an entirely new and unwelcome view of the thirty-seventh president of the United States.
He scratched the words “trickle down” on the chalkboard.
Mr. Pierce let loose a salvo of conga slaps. “Now, students, chant after us,” he hollered. “Trickle down to make profits go up! Shine the crown to fill the beggar’s cup!”
As the students apathetically smacked their drums and mumbled along with the three half-naked politicians, the PA speakers in the classroom’s ceiling squealed and squawked.
“This is ARGH—Ahoy Rogues, Guerillas, and Hearties!—your pirate radio station!” a gruff, salty voice thundered through the speakers. “I’m yer marnin’ DJ, Calico Jack, broadcasting live—or as live as could be expected, considerin’—from the corner o
f None of Yer Beeswax and Wouldn’t You Like to Know?!”
The dead presidents clapped their ears.
“What is that infernal racket?” Mr. Fillmore spat.
Pirates? Marlo thought as the students around her sat up straight, roused awake by the salty spray of chaos. Taking over a classroom through a PA system?
“In our roving ramshackle studio,” Calico Jack continued, “we’ve got the one and only Truthador here to play for us one of his puzzling yet catchy-as-a-wet-hacking-cough-below-deck musical yarns. So, without any more of me bilge,” Calico Jack said, punctuating the word “bilge” with the prerecorded sound of a toilet flushing, “here be the Truthador!”
“He’s walked infinite miles down a higher-than highway. This slick creature of wiles … will never see things my way,” the Truthador sang in a grating yet oddly compelling wheeze, like a rusty old harmonica against a steady strum of harp. “Now he’s a-itchin’ to sell us all out, and max out our species’ charge card. But it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard … truth’s a-gonna fall.”
The boys began scratching themselves beneath their lice-infested shirts.
Despite the itching, there was something about the Truthador that Marlo sort of liked. Even though the song reminded her of the music her dad used to listen to in his den when he felt sad or old or sad that he was old, there was something about it that struck a chord with her. It felt real. The music also made Milton’s pendant warm and cool at the same time, a strange sensation of confidence that spread out throughout her body—or Milton’s body if you wanted to get technical.
“Though his lies can blind and twist tongues till they’re broken, I’m here to tell mankind, from down here to Hoboken,” the Truthador sang. “That he won’t kick us out, to some lame-o space junkyard. ’Cuz it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard … truth’s a-gonna fall.”
The class bell tolled and the boys flew out of their chairs. Marlo hung back, pretending she was having trouble with her weird shoe—pinched sneakers with heels so that they were always on their toes.
“So, how come you’re in Fibble?” she asked Zane. “I mean, last time I saw you, you were in Rapacia.”
Zane looked at Marlo quizzically.
“Rapacia?” he asked, puzzled. “I don’t remember you in Rapacia.”
Marlo blushed. Of course he doesn’t remember me, she thought. I was me then; now I’m not.
“Right. I meant Mallvana. Marlo was in Rapacia. We’re so close that sometimes it’s hard to figure out where I end and she begins!”
Zane shot Marlo a peculiar sideways glance, like how a psychiatrist views a patient right before deciding to up their dosage.
“Okay … sure … um, anyway, I was all twitchy back there with wanting to take things—”
Marlo’s stomach felt like a halfway house for recovering squirrels.
“Yeah,” she replied. “I know what you … I mean, Marlo would tell me how that felt. That weird, allover itchiness that begins deep in the stomach then branches out through your arms and fingers, that itch that only snatching something can scratch.”
Zane stared at Marlo, startled, as they headed toward the door.
“Something like that,” he said. “Spot on, actually.”
Mr. Pierce grabbed Zane’s hand at the doorway.
“I hope I can count on your vote,” he said, pumping Zane’s and Marlo’s hands.
Zane and Marlo walked down the hallway of ramshackle, crumbling plaster columns and flickering projections of ornate lamps and wall sconces, all painted—Marlo realized—as if with clown makeup.
“So you were talking about how you got here,” Marlo continued. “To Fibble.”
“Right,” Zane said. “Anyway, I started, um, collecting chalk. Loads of it. After a while, it was getting hard to hide it and—one day—I got caught white-handed. But I still wouldn’t bobby to it, no matter how darning the evidence was. For some reason I just couldn’t admit that I was a chalk stealer. Frightful embarrassing! Finally, after talking with headmistress O’Malley—”
“She’s awesome … I hear.”
“Yeah, all that great, flowing red hair,” Zane said with a faraway smile.
Marlo prickled with jealousy.
“Anyway, go on.”
“Right, so we both agreed that my urge to porky, that is lie, about stealing was a little stronger than my urge to nick, that is steal—at least in this case—so Grace, um … headmistress O’Malley, transferred me here.”
“Well, it’s nice to have you—I mean, a friend—here,” Marlo said, gazing into Zane’s soft brown eyes that stared back like twin chocolate pudding cups. And even though her confession had caused an outbreak of squirming lice bites over her heart, it was worth it.
8 • GETTING DOWN TO SHOW BUSINESS
INT. SMALL CAVELIKE DWELLING—NIGHT A simple, one-room home made of stone, circa AD 16. MARY, a young woman with large, kind eyes and a hood holding back her long dark hair, chases after her agitated ADOLESCENT SON.
MARY
Son! What has gotten into you?
ADOLESCENT SON
You wouldn’t understand. No one understands!
An older, shrewish woman, the boy’s AUNTIE, hovers over MARY.
AUNTIE
Bah! The boy will never amount to anything! He’s brought you nothing but trouble since he was born. All those weirdos dropping by at all hours, hanging on his every word!
ADOLESCENT SON
Those “weirdos” are my friends!
AUNTIE turns her nose up and leaves. MARY tries to put her hands on the ADOLESCENT SON’s shoulders, but he shrugs them off. She sighs.
MARY
Why don’t you go to the temple? Aren’t they having a dance today? Maybe that girl you like will be there. What’s her name … Magda?
The ADOLESCENT SON blushes, embarrassed.
ADOLESCENT SON
Ah, Mom!
JOSEPH, a bearded man in a brown robe and head wrap, enters through the primitive wooden door.
JOSEPH
I’m home! Phew … what a day at the salt mines!
JOSEPH senses the tension in the room.
JOSEPH
What gives?
The ADOLESCENT SON rolls his eyes and tries to leave. JOSEPH grabs him by the wrist.
JOSEPH
Oh no you don’t. You’re staying right here and we’re talking this out.
ADOLESCENT SON
She tells me to leave, you tell me to stay … you’re both tearing me apart!!
MARY begins to cry. JOSEPH scowls, angry.
JOSEPH
Now look. You’ve made your mother cry. Apologize to her!
The ADOLESCENT SON breaks free of JOSEPH’s grip and storms out the door, stopping short to address the man.
ADOLESCENT SON
You can’t tell me what to do! Besides …
The ADOLESCENT SON’s eyes dart back and forth between JOSEPH and MARY.
ADOLESCENT SON
… you’re not even my real father!!
The ADOLESCENT SON slams the door. MARY sobs in JOSEPH’s arms.
FADE OUT
CUT TO TITLE:
TEENAGE JESUS
Milton flipped through the rest of the script, made a few suggestions—such as trimming the shoving match between Jesus and Pontius Pilate, the Judean governor’s spoiled-brat son, in the Nazareth High cafeteria scene (the whole thing was a little overwrought)—and tossed it into the “Yes” pile.
Though the scripts Milton had been asked to review as part of Marlo’s new role as production assistant had, for the most part, been derivative, cliché, and blasphemous even by h-e-double-hockey-sticks standards, they did have a certain energy to them. The shows themselves certainly weren’t any worse than the desperately-aimed-at-tweens-and-teens shows that plagued the Surface. In fact, Milton had only put one script in the “No” pile so far: The Rabid Rabbi, a show about a Jewish scholar who, after being bitten by a mad bandicoot on a religious camping r
etreat, develops treatment-resistant hydrophobia, which prevents him from administering Jewish water rituals such as the tevilah.
Two things perplexed Milton—and, thankfully, distracted him from the creepy tingle of wearing leggings. The first was the strange videocassette he had watched of The Man Who Soldeth the World. Who or what had sent it? How much of it—if any—was real? What did it mean? Milton wasn’t sure, but it cost nothing to produce, and he had a lot of slots to fill.
The second thing that perplexed Milton was T.H.E.E.N.D.’s content and scheduling strategy. All of the shows catered to specific religions and faiths, which was fine and surprisingly all-inclusive considering that the head of the network was the devil. But these shows were all set to air at the same time in the most coveted prime-time slot: Sunday at 8 p.m. It didn’t make any sense. Satan had enough decent shows to launch a successful network with a full and diverse lineup. Why would he create a network of networks, pitting his shows against one another and not even allowing people to watch them on DVR? It would create a sort of religious ratings war.…
Hmm … Milton thought. Maybe that’s what the devil is up to. Creating fundamentalist friction up on the Surface, rubbing different beliefs against each other like a Cub Scout trying to earn his fire badge …
Milton’s nostrils were suddenly filled with a noxious odor, as if someone had wrapped old sneaker tongues in seaweed and set them aflame.
“Hello … Miss … Fauster,” Mr. Welles panted, standing in the doorway of the cramped Boob Tube chomping down on a cigar. “Elevator’s … out.”
Fibble: The Fourth Circle of Heck Page 5
