A Bad Day for Voodoo

CHAPTER 7

“Are we lost?” Adam asked.

“No,” I said. “The GPS says we’re going the right way.” “This isn’t the way I went.”

“Sometimes in the modern age you can reach a destination using more than one route.”

I did have to admit that I wished the GPS had an Avoid Scary Neighborhoods setting. The sun had set, and this was the kind of place where you really didn’t want your car to break down after dark. I don’t mean that in a cannibal-rednecks-with-chain-saws way, but muggers and drug dealers were worrisome enough. Most of the buildings seemed to be warehouses, and the ones that were actual businesses seemed to be closed. It was kind of strange and eerie.

“You don’t have to be sarcastic,” said Adam. “I’m making up for what I did.”

“No, you’re not. You’re sitting in the back. You didn’t even offer to pay for gas.”

“I don’t have any money.”

“I know that. So how did you get the doll?”

Adam didn’t reply.

“I’d really like to know how you got the doll,” I said.

“What does it matter?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I guess that if you robbed a convenience store to get the money to buy the doll, that’s probably something I should know.”

“It wasn’t anything like that.”

“Also, you never answered the essence question.”

“Essence?” Kelley asked.

“He needed my essence to give the doll its power.”

“Do you really want to know?” Adam asked.

“Yes.”

“It’s kind of gross.”

“Tell me.”

“Do you remember when you spent the night at my house a couple of weeks ago, and we decided to go swimming, and you asked if you could borrow some toenail clippers? Well, we’d never emptied the trash in that bathroom, and I was pretty sure that nobody else had clipped their toenails in there since then, so I dug out a few of them.”

Kelley suddenly rolled down her window, as if she were going to be sick and didn’t want to do it in my mom’s car.

“Are you serious?” I asked.

I saw Adam nod in the rearview mirror.

“So you sat there, digging through the bathroom garbage in search of my toenails, and still thought this whole thing was a good idea?”

Adam shrugged.

“Our friendship is over.”

“I figured.”

Kelley still had her window down and was breathing in fresh (actually, not so fresh) air. This was really more of a windows-up kind of environment, but I didn’t say anything.

Finally she rolled her window back up and turned around to look at Adam. “You,” she said, “are vile.”

“What is this? ‘Pick on Adam’ Day?”

“Yes. That’s a great idea. Let’s make a week out of it. You suck, Adam.”

“Okay.”

“You get negative points in every possible category of human existence.”

“I’m not sure what that means, but okay.”

“If you were lying in the desert miles from civilization and I had a bottle of water, I would—”

“Okay, okay,” I said. “Everybody in this car understands that Adam sucks. We can let it go now.”

We stopped at a red light. The street was empty except for a really skinny guy in baggy jeans and no shirt. He was on my side of the vehicle. His head was shaved, and his body was covered with approximately eighty billion tattoos. The centerpiece was Mickey Mouse doing something of which the Disney lawyers would almost certainly not approve.

He looked at us and smiled.

Not a “Hey, how ya doin’, welcome to the neighborhood!” friendly smile. More of a sinister smile. I didn’t like that smile at all.

He stepped off the sidewalk and approached the car.

“You should go,” said Kelley.

“It’s a red light.”

“Just go.”

“It’s got a camera!” I’d been in favor of those controversial cameras when they were announced, because I had no plans to run red lights, but now I wished I was a registered voter with a say in the issue.

The man was right there. He tapped on my window. Not knowing what else to do, I rolled it halfway down.

“We don’t want any marijuana,” I told him, feeling like an absolute dork after I said it. I’m proud of the fact that I’ve never done drugs, but I could not possibly have said, “We don’t want any marijuana,” in a way that made me sound less cool.

He held out his palm. “Got a buck?”

“Oh yeah, sure.” I started to reach for my wallet and then decided that this was not the best scenario in which to do such a thing. The guy didn’t look homeless. He still looked pretty darn sinister.

I dug through the change next to the drink holder. “I’ve got, uh, twenty-five, fifty, sixty, sixty-five, seventy, seventy-one, seventy-two, seventy-three cents. Is that enough?”

“It’ll do.”

I tried to give him the change, but I was so nervous that I moved my hand too fast and I forgot that the window was halfway up and my hand smacked into the glass and coins flew everywhere.

Why was the light still red? This was the longest red light in the history of traffic.

“You gonna pick it up?” the guy asked.

The light turned green.

And then the gun came out.

I guess he had it in the back of his underwear, which is not where I would choose to keep a gun. Half of my brain shrieked, Drive! Drive! Drive! while the other half politely suggested that because the barrel of the gun was about twelve inches from my face, I should not make any sudden moves.

I froze.

Kelley froze.

I didn’t dare take my eyes off the gun to peek in the rearview mirror, but I’m pretty sure that Adam froze too. Or fainted.

Time stood still, because time loves to make moments like this last as long as possible.

You’re probably familiar with the concept of the unreliable narrator. When I read Catcher in the Rye in English class, we discussed how Holden Caulfield may not be telling us the truth about everything that happened. However, I can assure you that I am being one hundred percent accurate and honest when I tell you that the first thing I was able to say was, “Argh-ugh!”

I said, “Argh-ugh!” again to make sure my message was clear.

“Your phones,” he said. “Drop your phones on the floor.”

I quickly took my cell phone out of my pocket and tossed it on the floor. Fine. No problem. Happy to do it. If I wasn’t willing to slam my foot on the accelerator, I certainly wasn’t going to take the time to dial 911 with a gun in my face.

I heard the thumps as Kelley and Adam tossed their phones on the floor as well. (So if Adam had fainted, it was only briefly.)

“Now get out of the car,” he said.

Aw, crap.

“Get out!” he repeated, kicking the door.

For a fraction of a second I thought the wisest thing to do would be to duck down, floor the accelerator, and hope for the best. But that essentially meant that I’d be ducking out of the way so that Kelley could get shot. I’ve admitted to a lot of dumb and/or selfish and/or cowardly things so far (see pretty much this entire book), but I wasn’t going to let my girlfriend get shot.

Granted, if we both could have ducked at the same time, that would have been pretty awesome. Unfortunately, I couldn’t think of any way to communicate to her that she should duck except for shouting, “Duck!” which probably would have given our plan away.

So I opened the door and got out of the car.

The carjacker kept the gun pointed at me. He was one twitchy guy. “Just stay calm,” I told him, as if that piece of homespun advice might change his behavior.

“Both of you! Out!” he shouted, pointing the gun at Kelley and then at Adam. They both got out and put their hands in the air, even though the hands part hadn’t been specifically requested.

Where were the other cars? Where were the helpful pedestrians? If I survived the night, I was definitely leaving a one-star review for that brand of GPS.

“Sir, I really need to get something out of the trunk,” I said.

“No, you need to step out of the way before I put a bullet in your mouth.”

“Please, it has no value. I just need—”

The guy pushed me out of the way. He got into the car, slammed the door shut, and sped off.

“Quick! Get the license plate!” Adam shouted.

“License plate? It’s my car!”

This was beyond insane. My parents were going to absolutely freak. And the doll.what was going to happen to the doll? I didn’t know much about the carjacking business, but I was pretty sure my mom’s beloved automobile was headed for a chop shop. They could have a car taken apart in minutes.

Or what if he drove it into a lake? Would I drown?

What was I supposed to do? Find a pay phone, call the cops, and hope that nobody took an interest in the box with the weird symbols in the trunk?

And of course, I had oh- so-cleverly let the guy know that there was something important in there.

I had no choice. If I didn’t want to, y’know, die, I had to get that doll back, no matter what.

“Come on!” I said as I began to chase after the car on foot.