“Hang on,” Hazel said.
Please see me, Alec silently pleaded. See me.
“Oh, don’t worry about the arm, hon. I can fix that when we get home,” said their mom.
Then he heard the worst sound. He heard Hazel choke on a sob.
“Oh, honey …,” their mom said.
“He hates me,” said Hazel.
“He doesn’t hate you. He’s never hated you.”
That was the thing, though. Alec had hated her. It was the worst, most awful confession he never made, but he didn’t have to, because his sister had known all along.
What she didn’t know—what he hadn’t told her when he should have—was that he didn’t hate her anymore. If he was telling his own deepest, darkest secret, he’d have told her that he hated himself far more than he ever hated her.
And he’d liked himself more this past week than he had since the day she was born, and it was because he’d spent it plotting with her.
“C’mon,” their mom said, and he could practically hear her squeezing Hazel’s shoulder. “This will blow over. These things always do. Let’s not let it ruin your birthday.”
No. No! Alec tried to scream. Don’t leave me! I can’t move!
But it was no use. No matter how loud the voice was in his head, he couldn’t push the sound from his throat.
Panic was rising at the base of his skull, and he was beginning to wonder what would happen if nobody came back here to look for him. Would they simply go home without him? Would anyone even miss him?
Alec stared hard into the now-green eyes of the bear and mustered every ounce of strength he could find in his core. It seemed to take everything he had, but suddenly, the bear before him was gone, hiding on the other side of Alec’s closed eyes.
He’d figured out how to close his eyes.
Good, now breathe. Just count to ten and keep breathing, he told himself.
He pulled a deep breath in through his nose, out through his mouth, and repeated the exercise ten times, and just as he reached the tenth exhale, he felt the tips of his fingers twitch.
He was so excited, he opened his eyes, and he was stunned to find himself very much alone behind the shelving unit.
The bear was gone, its custom platform empty.
Where … ?
But he didn’t have time to think about that now. He had just regained the tiniest bit of movement in his fingertips, and he wasn’t about to stop there. He closed his eyes once again and repeated the breathing, hoping it would do the trick again. Sure enough, as he reached ten, he found with great relief that he was able to wiggle his big toe.
He repeated the exercise over and over, re-teaching his body how to move, and pretty soon, he could bend his knees and his elbows and even turn his head.
The thumping in the bin behind him started up again, and he was suddenly furious that the sound returned now when it was too late to do him any good.
Oh, shut up.
Unfortunately, even though his limbs had begun to cooperate, his voice still hadn’t returned, nor had his ability to even open his mouth.
No time to worry about that now, he thought.
He was starting to feel his motor function come back online, perhaps a bit clumsily, but so long as he could eventually get himself to stand, that’s all that really mattered. Surely once his parents and Aunt Gigi saw him, they’d see he was in need of help. He simply had to get out of this back room.
It seemed like he had to squeeze every muscle in his body in order to get his feet under him. He continued to close his eyes and breathe, taking encouragement from the small victories: leg bent, leg tucked, body balanced, other leg bent. And though it took forever, at long last, he managed to stand straight on two legs.
The strangest thing, though, was that it almost seemed like he was still sitting. The shelf seemed so much higher than it had initially. In fact, the entire room looked bigger somehow, like the ceiling had risen.
He moved stiffly at first, his legs jerking more than walking, and he had to work extraordinarily hard to get control of them, but after several steps and as many pauses, Alec managed to find a rhythm adequate enough to move him to the other end of the room.
But when he came upon the door, he was stunned to find that he couldn’t reach the handle. It was at least a foot above his head.
What?
Using the same practice he’d employed to get his legs working, he closed his eyes and took several deep breaths, and eventually, he was able to raise his hands high enough over his head to wiggle the handle of the door.
He pushed through the door after managing to nudge the handle enough to open it, and when he stumbled into the hallway, Alec again had to do a double take to make sure he was in the right place to find his way back out to the restaurant.
The hallway was much longer than it had been before. It seemed almost endless, and he felt so small inside of it.
But Alec pushed on. He only had to get back to the party room. He only had to make his way back to his family. They would know what was wrong. They would know how to help him.
The end of the hallway was blocked by yet another door he’d remembered being much less of an obstacle. The handle was even higher here than it had been in the storage room, and no matter how high he stretched his arms into the air, he couldn’t reach the lever that would let him back into the restaurant.
Don’t panic, he told himself. Someone is bound to come back here at some point.
He had to wait a lot longer than he thought he would. Slumped against the wall to the side of the door, Alec tried not to let his mind wander too far. He was afraid he’d slip back into the trance he’d somehow fallen into in the storage room.
The way that bear had gotten into his head … there was nothing natural about it. He wasn’t sure what or how, but something had happened to him, something horrible.
He just hoped it wasn’t irreversible.
He hoped a lot of what happened today could be reversed.
All of a sudden, the door swung wide, nearly crushing Alec behind it, and he had to throw himself through the opening before the door slammed shut again.
Nose on the floor of the Freddy Fazbear carpet, he was again surrounded by the piercing screams and jangling game bells of the arcade.
The second Alec landed on the floor, he felt the wind knocked squarely out of him.
“GOOOOAAAAAALLLL!” he heard someone call, and then he heard others laugh, but that was all as he soared through the air, still trying to find his breath.
He landed with a painful thud, this time faceup and staring at the etched glass lampshades that covered each of the tables in the pizzeria. Feet pounded all around him, dangerously close to his head, and he winced as sneaker after sneaker narrowly missed squashing some part of him.
Why is everyone acting like they don’t see me?
No sooner had the thought occurred to him than he was grabbed roughly by the arm and clutched tightly into an itchy wool vest.
“I saw it first!” said a voice, and suddenly, someone was tugging hard on his leg.
“No, I called dibs!” said the kid holding him, and how big were these kids that they were able to play tug of war with him?
“No me!”
“Me!!”
His leg was being pulled so hard, he was terrified it might come off any second. He wanted to go back to not being seen.
Then, just as quickly as the tug of war had started, a voice in the distance yelled “Pizza’s here!” and he was again dropped onto the carpet.
He lay there on his side trying to recover himself, but a stroller wheel wobbled straight for his head, and he squeezed his eyes shut as he awaited certain death.
“Jacob, move that thing out of the way, would you?” said the person behind the stroller, and someone nudged Alec with their foot, wedging him against the baseboard.
Move that thing? Alec thought, and if he weren’t so out-of-his-mind confused and in a fair amount of pain, he might have been of
fended.
He managed to brace himself against the wall and get to his feet, but he was so wobbly, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to make it across the room without falling over.
Still, he was determined. He had to make it back to the party room. He just had to make it back to his family. Surely they’d be looking for him by now, wouldn’t they?
Alec wobbled and weaved across the eatery, dodging stomping feet and spilled colas, getting sprinkled with Parmesan and crushed peppers from tableside shakers. After several near-death experiences, Alec found his way to the other side of the cavernous room amid the throngs of kids and families.
As he rounded the corner, he spied the enormous cylindrical tube that made up the Wind Tunnel, now dormant and awaiting the next birthday kid once Hazel’s party was over.
Then there was his family—his mom in her dark jeans and his dad in his comfiest corduroy slacks and his flannel shirt, Aunt Gigi with her hair pulled back in her headband.
And there was Hazel, her blonde ringlets hanging in front of her face but still not obscuring the smile that couldn’t help but light up the room. Her friends were leaning back in their chairs, rubbing their full bellies and rifling through goodie bags as they waited for their parents to pick them up.
They all looked so happy. Hazel especially beamed. It was like someone had switched the light on inside of her again. She was all at once relieved of the burden Alec had placed on her by being … himself. Except not the self he wanted to be, not anymore. He wanted to be the reason she would smile like that more often. He was ready.
That’s when Alec saw that, in fact, he was the reason she was beaming.
There, sitting across the table from his sister and their parents, was … Alec.
It was the same rumpled T-shirt he’d thrown on that morning before the party, the same ripped jeans. The same unruly golden curls that provided the counterbalance to Hazel’s perfect ringlets. It was his light-green eyes, his slightly crooked teeth, his lanky limbs.
And he was smiling. Smiling right back at Hazel.
Hey, Alec said, the voice in his head quiet at first, but quickly, it was screaming.
Hey! That’s not me! That’s not me!
But anyone looking at the kid across from Hazel would beg to differ. In every way, this person was most certainly him. Those questioning it might point to the fact that he wasn’t sulking like the Alec they knew. He wasn’t glowering at his sister the way he was known to do more often than not.
But he had seemed to be making an effort all week to turn over a new leaf, hadn’t he? His parents had been trying this new technique, a method endorsed by a reputable doctor and best-selling author. Some kids just took longer to come into their own.
Wasn’t it nice that Alec had managed to do just that, and on his sister’s birthday of all days? How sweet. How perfect.
What a family they were turning out to be.
Alec forced his stiff legs forward and tumbled into the party room, but he could barely see above the table when he got inside. He thought maybe he could try climbing one of the table legs, but it was too slick.
He moved from kid to kid crowding around the table, doing whatever he could to attract the attention of just one of them. He had to get on top of that table. He had to look into his mom’s eyes. She’d have to recognize him then, wouldn’t she? Of course she would!
Look down! Someone please just look down! His mind screamed, but just as before, his throat refused to release his pleas.
It’s a bad dream. This has to be some crazy, elaborate nightmare.
But it didn’t feel like a nightmare. In fact, nothing had ever felt more real in his entire fifteen years.
He spied the girl called Charlotte sitting curled up in a chair in the corner, clutching her stomach. She was the only kid not talking to someone else. She was his best chance at attracting attention.
But as he waved his arms to try and flag her interest, she turned suddenly and spewed all over his head, warm vomit dripping into his eyes and running down his face.
“Oh! Oh no, Charlotte, honey, is your stomach still bothering you?”
Alec could barely see through the puke pouring in rivers over his eyes, but the sound of his mom’s voice was such a relief. In a minute, this whole insane day would come to an end, and he’d be able to rejoin his family.
“Oh, gross!” someone shouted, and to his horror, it was his own sister. “She puked on one of the bears!”
Wait, what?
“Hold on, I’ll get one of the staff to come and clean it up,” their dad said.
“Here, let me help,” Aunt Gigi said, and he watched from his periphery as beautiful, wonderful Aunt Gigi hurried to his corner of the room.
Thank you, he whimpered in his head. His aunt Gigi would know what to do.
But instead of coming to Alec’s aid, Aunt Gigi gently pulled Charlotte from her chair and sat her on the bench closer to Hazel and the fake Alec, who passed napkins to her so she could clean herself up.
“Have some water,” Hazel said, offering her a cup.
“Here, you got some in your hair,” the fake Alec said.
Then he turned to Alec. His eyes—his stolen green eyes in his stolen body—gleamed at Alec as he stood in the corner, dripping in vomit, watching his family welcome him into their fold.
And then the fake Alec smiled.
“Yes, just over here. Sorry. I think we ruined one of your bears,” Alec heard his dad say from outside of the room, and just then, a Freddy’s employee arrived with a mop and bucket.
“Not a problem, sir. We’ll take care of this mess. You just go back to enjoying your party.”
And with that, Alec was tossed into a bucket and rolled away, his vision still obscured, but not too much that he didn’t see the fake Alec wink at him from the table before returning his attention to a smiling, laughing Hazel with her smiling, happy family.
In the bucket, Alec was quickly rolled to the back of the pizzeria once again, the doors he’d worked so hard to move thrust open and shut with ease by the employee. He made a quick stop in the men’s room, where he shoved the wheeled bucket and mop into the corner and rung out the rag in the maintenance sink before slopping it over the side of the bucket, flecking the mirror beside them with large droplets of water.
Alec turned slowly to the mirror he only then realized he was parked beside.
There in the reflection stared a blue-eyed, two-foot Freddy Fazbear, its hair matted and starting to crust over with puke, its arms extended and ready for a hug.
This can’t be. This can’t possibly be.
But Alec had no time to contemplate what it was and what it wasn’t. Before he knew it, they were on the move again.
The employee pinched Alec’s paw between two fingers.
“Yick,” he said, scrunching up his nose before holding Alec as far in front of him as he could. “Into the bin for you,” he said.
He kicked open the men’s room door and traveled quickly down the hall to the storage room Alec had escaped to earlier.
Wait, he tried to say. Wait!
But as ever, it was no use.
The employee pulled a collection of keys from a retractable cord on his belt loop as he made his way to the very back of the storage room toward a familiar, large green Dumpster.
“Which one is it?” he muttered to himself before landing on the right one. “Aha! Here it is.”
Then the employee stuck the key in the padlock over the bin’s lid, and with a sharp turn to the left, the padlock sprang open.
“Have fun with your little buddies!” he said, and released his pinch on Alec’s paw, sending him falling through the air and into the bin.
The light from the room illuminated his surroundings in the bin long enough for Alec to see why it hadn’t hurt when he fell in. His fall had been broken by dozens of plush bears that looked exactly like him.
Dozens of discarded Lonely Freddys.
“Nighty night,” the employee said, and
just like that, the light above him extinguished with the closing and locking of the lid.
Panic seeped into Alec’s pores … or what might have once been pores.
In his head, he screamed and he screamed. But in the end, the only sound that crept from his unhinged, stuffed bear mouth was the tiniest squeak.
“Help!” he thought he heard himself say.
Then he realized it hadn’t been him at all. It had been the bear beside him in the bin.
Then it was the bear on the other side of him.
Pretty soon, it was every bear in the bin, their thin, muted screams for help swallowed by the metal and darkness that entombed them. Alec and his new friends.
Dozens of the lonely ones.
It was just like Oscar to be on the losing end of the deal.
It had always been that way, from the time his dad went to the hospital for a tonsillectomy and contracted a fatal infection, to the time that they had to move to the cheaper end of town, to all the times Oscar had to help his mom at the Royal Oaks Nursing Home while the rest of his friends spent their allowances at the mall.
So it was no surprise to Oscar when he learned that the Plushtrap Chaser—a light-activated chomping green rabbit, and by far Oscar’s favorite character from the Freddy Fazbear world—would go on sale on the most ridiculous day, at the most ridiculous time imaginable.
“Friday morning. Friday morning!” Oscar steamed.
“Man, you’ve gotta get over it,” said Raj, kicking the same stone down the sidewalk he’d been torturing the entire way to school.
“But the injustice of it!” Oscar said. “It’s a kids’ toy. Why would it go on sale when every kid in the known universe is in school?”
Oscar swatted at a low-hanging tree branch like it wronged him.
“Did you hear Dwight already got one?” Isaac asked, bringing up the rear.
“What?” Raj stopped for a minute, now adequately outraged. “He hadn’t even heard of Freddy Fazbear before last year!”
“Apparently his dad ‘made a call.’ His dad’s always ‘making a call,’ ” pouted Isaac.
“Dwight’s a jerk,” said Raj, and on this, the boys all agreed. It was so much easier to hate Dwight than to admit they weren’t the types who had dads who could make calls to get ugly green rabbits that stood the height of a toddler and maintained the speed of an actual rabbit.
Fetch Page 12
