But here in the girls’ showers she would come clean nonetheless. She could use a good shower, Marlo thought, with clouds of delicious, fragrant steam curling up and around her.
The trio were stripped down and pitchspork-prodded to the shower stalls. A gnarled she-demon turned a corroded metal wheel and a vicious torrent of sand and bitter cold air shot out of the three spigots. The girls screamed as they were rubbed raw by the abrasive arctic blast.
When the frigid sandstorm finally ceased, the girls were thrown stiff, stained towels. They painfully wiped away clots of caked sand from their tender, stinging skin.
At the next stall over, Bordeaux shook a small desert out of her bleached hair. “I am going to need, like, so much conditioner,” she whined.
Bordeaux turned toward Marlo and stared like a bored cat that had just spied a twitching mouse. “Hey! No boys allowed in the shower, perv,” she smirked.
Marlo exhumed a clod of grit from her ear.
“What?” she replied.
Lyon, tall, lean, and so flawless that she scarcely looked human, stood just outside the shower stalls.
“You’ve got a couple of zits on your chest, perv,” she said icily, pointing to Marlo’s underdeveloped upper body. “I guess you ran out of room on your face.”
The two girls cackled. Marlo touched her cheek. It felt like chocolate chip cookie dough, heavy on the chips.
Marlo’s face turned red. Her blush throbbed. Humiliated, she quickly wrapped herself in a towel and ran off as the cruel blond goddesses laughed at her. Their hoots and howls echoed off the wet tiles.
“Nice try with the water alarm,” Lyon snorted.
“I don’t think Miss Boredom appreciated it, though,” Bordeaux added.
“But I’m sure you two can bury the hatchet during your detention!”
“Enough!” barked a she-demon from the hallway. “This is a strictly No Joy Zone.”
Marlo wept silently in front of a mirror as her tormentors giggled quietly in the other room. Wiping her puffy, red-rimmed eyes, Marlo caught her reflection. Her face, much to her shock, was covered with pimples that formed the shape of an upside-down star. Marlo clutched her cheeks, feeling so ugly that she half expected her reflection to crack before her very eyes.
Suddenly the mirror shattered into a hundred pieces.
Marlo gasped.
A filthy head peered back through the broken mirror. If this was a demon, Marlo thought, it certainly was one of the lesser demons. Actually, it looked a lot like her brother.
“It’s me, Milton!” Her brother extended a dirty hand. “C’mon! We don’t have much time!”
Marlo’s zit-studded face was slack with shock. “How did you find me?”
“We got a map,” Milton panted. “The girls’ and boys’ bathrooms share the same plumbing. We’re off to find the Secret Toilet.”
“We?” Marlo peered inside the putrid tunnel just beyond the broken mirror. “The Secret Toilet? Have you lost your mind?”
“We have to hurry,” Milton whined. “She’ll be looking for us…Principal Bubb.”
At the sound of the demoness’s name, Marlo clutched her towel around her and carefully crawled through the jagged portal. “And to think, I just took a shower.”
Despite the stench, it was comforting to see her brother’s dorky face.
“This better be worth it, short bus,” she complained.
Having a brother was weird, Marlo pondered, unconsciously echoing her brother’s earlier thought. It was like having a heart-shaped bruise.
22 · THE FLUSH OF YOUTH
MILTON, MARLO, AND Virgil trudged through the humid darkness. Milton and Virgil’s flashlights flickered before them, with Virgil’s beam often resting on Marlo.
Marlo sighed. “A little more light in front and less behind, Supersize,” she grumbled.
“My flashlight must be, uh, falling off my head or something,” stammered Virgil.
“Yeah, well, your big noggin is going to fall off if you keep staring at my butt.”
“Hey, give him a break,” Milton protested. “His map helped us find the Girls’ Unrestrooms. And maybe it can help us find this Secret Toilet.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Marlo snorted, shaking her head.
Milton stared at his sister, the beam of his flashlight caressing her fresh crop of acne. “What’s that all over your face?”
Marlo went from brash to bashful. “It’s, uh, a hormonal thing,” she replied, brushing her hair into her face. “A girl thing. If you don’t stop bugging me about it, I’ll tell you.”
The tunnel echoed with a low grumble. Marlo looked back at Virgil. She scowled at him.
Virgil glanced ahead, worried. “That wasn’t me.”
The three children stared down the tunnel into the impenetrable darkness. It rumbled like the irritable bowels of a giant who had just eaten a ton of spicy Chinese takeout.
Milton screamed as several tons of sewage exploded into the tunnel.
23 · FROM MALL RATS TO SEWER RATS
ON THE SURFACE, Milton thought, people are always talking about how there is a “light at the end of the tunnel.” But the only thing at the end of this particular tunnel was tons of sewage. And every ounce of it had swept him, his sister, and his new friend miles down a subterranean poop chute.
“Wow,” mumbled Virgil, his face slick with stinking muck. “That was one wild ride!”
The surge of sewage had blasted the fugitive threesome through miles and miles of uncharted pipe. They were spun around so much in waves of waste they had no idea which end was up. Marlo clutched her once merely dirty towel with one arm, while the other wrapped around a rusty metal ladder welded to the inside of the pipe. Apart from the appalling smell, she looked as if she had just emerged from a therapeutic mud bath at some expensive spa.
“Second to that church summer camp Mom and Dad made us go to, that was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever experienced,” Marlo said through clenched teeth.
Milton didn’t answer. He was clinging to the ladder, paralyzed by disgust. Virgil was a few rungs below. He wiped away thick globs of crud from his eyes and consulted his map, which was now, basically, a piece of used toilet paper.
“I think we’re here,” he said, pointing to a patch of brown on the back of the slimy map that illustrated a dense network of pipes, tubes, and channels.
Marlo knelt beside Virgil, who stared at her, grinning like an idiot.
“Oh yeah,” she said sarcastically, squinting at the map. “We’re just a few turds away from home. All we have to do is turn left at the reeking dung heap.”
Virgil snickered. “You’re funny.”
Marlo smirked at her rotund traveling companion. She was both highly irritated and strangely touched at being Virgil’s crush.
Marlo examined the bottom of the map and scratched away a film of filth with her fingernail, revealing the words “Netherworld Novelty Corp.” She gave a dry, humorless laugh and wiped away a budding tear.
“Figures…a big fat practical joke…on us.”
Virgil gazed at Marlo with a hurt expression. She put her dirty hand on his dirty shoulder.
“Not you. You’re just gullible.”
Marlo looked over at her brother, who was still shaky from what would be known from then on only as “the incident.” He seemed like a newborn foal, trembling and swaying and slick with feces.
“Hey, freak show…short bus…Milton.”
Milton gasped for air, as if he had risen to the surface of the ocean. Marlo put her hand on his shivering shoulder.
“Whoa, get a grip, geek,” she said while wiping some grime from Milton’s one lens. “We’ll get you a nice, hot shower and a series of allergy shots when we’re outta here. Promise. Cross my heart and hope to die again.”
The animal-formerly-known-as-Cerberus, ferreted away in Milton’s backpack, sneezed and squirmed. Milton snapped out of his stupor and looked down the putrid pipe.
“Which…
way?” he muttered.
“Huh?” Virgil grunted as he tried to right himself in the slick puddles of waste.
Milton opened his mouth, but, instead of words, out came a few half-digested Brussels sprouts and liver lumps.
“Charming.” Marlo grimaced.
“Where the sewage…s-somewhere up there…,” Milton stammered, his quivering finger pointing at the blackness ahead. “If all this…stuff…came from the Surface, the Stage, the place we call home, then it would only make sense to follow the pipe…upstream.”
“What about that Secret Toilet of yours?” asked Marlo. “Shouldn’t we go back to finding that?”
Milton shook his head.
“We’ve washed away too…too far.” He coughed. “We’d spend most of our time backtracking to where we came from.”
“And,” said Virgil as he sloshed toward the Fausters. “If all this stuff goes down to…the hot place…to make it even worse, I guess…”
Milton shuddered at the thought.
“…then,” Virgil continued, “we could get washed down to h-e-double-hockey-sticks.”
The three children shared a moment of silence.
“Well,” Marlo said abruptly, “then we’d better hurry and hope we get…wherever…before the next big flush.”
Cerberus poked his nose out of Milton’s bag and took in a big, stinky drink of air. His eyes gave off a faint red glimmer as he scanned the pipeway dutifully. Milton reached back and gave what he thought was his ferret a reassuring pat. “What’s up, little guy?”
The creature hissed.
“Is he okay?” Virgil asked.
Milton looked around with dread. “I’m not sure. He hasn’t been himself lately. Maybe he senses danger.”
“I don’t think you have to be a ferret to sense that,” Marlo added bleakly.
24 · PIPE DREAM COME TRUE
AFTER HOURS OF slogging through filth, Milton had all but given up hope. Heck was creeping into Milton’s skin. A sense of despair had taken root within him.
Yet, as they trudged through the sludge, Milton spotted a weak beam of light glimmering ahead. His heart, had it been beating, would surely have stopped at the sight. Perhaps they’d soon be waking from this nightmare, he thought. Although the realist in Milton persisted: maybe this was just another dirty trick.
At the end of the passageway was a ceiling grate. Faint beams of light trickled through.
Virgil grinned like a cat that had just eaten a flock of canaries.
“Wow,” said Marlo. “I’m impressed. You really did it, Superchunk.”
Virgil blushed. “Ladies first,” he said with a sly smile. “Just get on my shoulders and crawl through.”
Marlo stepped forward, clutching the soggy towel wrapped around her, then stopped short. Her eyes squeezed into accusing slits.
“Nice try, perv. Milton, you go first.”
“Why me?”
“Because I said so,” Marlo responded matter-of-factly.
“Oh,” Milton replied meekly. Marlo wasn’t the most logical person, but she made a strong argument nonetheless.
Desperate to emerge from this long metal intestine, Milton crawled onto Virgil’s shoulders. He lifted the grate and peered out.
“So?” Virgil asked. “Did we make it?”
“Yes,” Milton answered with a mixture of delight and suspicion. “Maybe. At least I…think.”
The grate proved to be a manhole in the middle of a vast tunnel clogged with honking cars.
Milton helped pull Virgil through the manhole while Marlo, much to her disgust, pushed. Virgil’s face was purple from exertion. He looked like a distant cousin of that annoying purple dinosaur down below…or above…or to the side…or wherever the heck they were. It sure looked like they were back home.
“C’mon,” strained Milton as sweat poured down his face. “One more time…One, two, three!”
Virgil popped out of the hole like a humongous cork in a champagne bottle of questionable vintage. Marlo struggled upward as Virgil pulled her by her arm.
“Oww,” she whined while planting herself on the asphalt. “You, baby, definitely have back.”
Virgil smiled, happy for any acknowledgment, and the three of them rose, steadying themselves against the oversized tires of a gargantuan SUV with a “Looking Out for Me, Myself, and I” sticker on its mangled bumper.
They walked down a seemingly endless row of cars. Behind the wheel of each was an angry, cursing commuter.
“It’s like it never ends,” Virgil said while staring at an old woman smashing her fist on the dashboard, knocking over a small plastic Jesus. “And they don’t seem to even see us.”
Marlo winced as the woman laid on her horn. “How come we didn’t hear any of this in the sewage pipe?”
Milton shrugged. “Maybe there’s some kind of sound insulation field or something.”
Marlo shook her head. “I don’t know. The whole thing is just weird.”
All the drivers were staring straight ahead at a bright light at the end of the tunnel. It was round, like a spotlight, radiating a pure white beam. There was movement around the edges, indistinct figures. It looked as if they were beckoning the drivers toward them. The three children squinted at the light trying to make sense of it.
“So that was the light we saw in the pipe,” Milton said.
They continued onward and passed a dented silver BMW. Inside a businessman fumed.
“Move it! I’m late!!” he screamed. “Where’d you learn how to drive—clown school?”
Virgil chortled. “Good one.”
Milton saw a cell phone on the man’s dashboard. “Excuse me, sir? Do you mind if I borrow your phone?” Milton asked.
The businessman ignored him. On his radio a monotone announcer droned.
“This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. This is only a test.”
A piercing tone blasted from the speakers. It streamed from each and every car on this endless stretch of road. Marlo grabbed the phone through the man’s half-open window.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” she said.
She flipped the phone open and punched in a number. Someone on the other end picked up.
“Mom?!” Marlo said with a blend of desperation and excitement.
“You are trying to place a call way, way out of your cellular phone network,” replied a flat, prerecorded female voice. “My, we must think our calling plan grants us the ability to traverse both time and space. Didn’t you read your terms and conditions? Apparently not. Please stay on the line. An operator will be with you shortly. Estimated time of wait: forever.”
“Is it her?” Milton asked, trembling.
Marlo sniffed back an unexpected tear. Milton gazed up at her in confused anticipation. Marlo turned away suddenly.
“Allergies,” she snuffled. She wiped away some snot with the back of her hand and tossed the phone back into the grumbling man’s car.
Milton tugged on Marlo’s towel.
“Well?” he asked, scooting in front of her.
“Out of range,” she continued with a couldn’t-careless shrug.
Milton scrutinized his sister. She appeared nonchalant on the outside. But he could tell by how hard she was trying to appear nonchalant on the outside that, inside, she must be a mess. A cold chill ran up his spine. Wherever they were, Milton surmised, they were still a long, long way from home.
A big book rested on the seat next to the man: Contract Law Made EZ. There was something about the book that captured Milton’s attention. Sure, it was probably pretty boring, but if they hadn’t really made it back home—and, judging from how hard Marlo was trying to look casual, that was probably the case—it could very well hold the key to breaking his contract with Bea “Elsa” Bubb. Besides, it was something to read, and when Milton was stressed out (and he thought that dying and being sentenced to eternal torment were valid reasons for feeling stressed) reading anything—old magazines, cereal boxes, the ingredients on a tube of t
oothpaste, whatever he could get his hands on—had a calming effect on him.
“Hey, mister. Do you mind if…?”
The man, oblivious, was locked tight inside his road rage. Milton grabbed a notebook from his backpack, ripped out a page, and wrote “I.O.U. one law book.”
He folded the page, placed it on the passenger seat, and stuffed the book into his backpack.
“Look!” Virgil yelped.
He pointed toward a wide pile of jagged shadows several hundred feet down the tunnel, where the rows of idle cars seemed to end abruptly. A blazing beam of white light emanated from just beyond it. The light stroked the gloom in slow sweeps. The tunnel grew steadily wider until reaching a massive, darkened barricade.
Milton, Marlo, and Virgil jogged through the traffic jam toward the line of shadows. With each step, it became clearer that this dark blockage was a gnarled hedge of wrecked cars and that the light itself was nothing but a high-powered klieg light with a buzzing bluish white bulb. Squinting, they could make out that the gesturing figures in front of the light were animatronic robots: jerky, humanoid machines dressed as old men and women. It was like they had stumbled upon a movie premiere at a rest home.
The barricade of cars girdled a massive concrete wall, camouflaged by black paint, which seemed to signify the end of the tunnel.
The three children considered the forbidding piles of neglected cars, some with headlights slowly dying into weak yellow-orange embers.
“Here!” Marlo shouted as she opened the door of a mangled ’63 T-bird. She crawled through it and came out next to the towering rampart.
After Virgil and Milton followed Marlo through the car, Milton walked up to the wall. It was the side of a massive building that seemed to him both ancient and modern, like it had either been new for thousands of years, or was built old just yesterday. Milton noticed a shabby billboard posted on the wall several yards to his left. Etched in the pockmarked sign—surrounded by smeared graffiti scrawls—were the letters DURBR.
Virgil peered behind the light as Marlo made shadow birds in front with her hands. Her sweeping eagle, in particular, was received with an explosion of honks and screams from the traffic jam.
Heck: Where the Bad Kids Go Page 10
