Prom Nights from Hell Read online

  I laughed, thinking it a good sign that he was showing off for me. The Madame Z experience hadn’t gone as intended, but who knew? Maybe it would end up having the desired effect after all.

  Madame Z pointed at me with the lit end of her cigarette, and I ducked my chin contritely, like Sorry, sorry. To distract myself, I focused on the strange and varied clutter on her shelves. A book called Magic of the Ordinary and another titled What to Do When the Dead Speak—But You Don’t Want to Listen. I nudged Will with my knee and pointed. He mimed choking the poor deceased bastard, and I snortled.

  Above the books I saw: a bottle of rat poison, an old-fashioned monocle, a jar of what looked like fingernail clippings, a stained Starbucks cup, and a rabbit’s foot, claws attached. And on the shelf above that was…oh, lovely.

  “Is that a skull?” I asked Will.

  Will whistled. “Holy cannoli.”

  “Okey-doke,” Yun Sun said, averting her eyes. “If there really is a skull, I don’t want to know about it. Can we leave now?”

  I took her head in my hands and pointed her in the right direction. “Look. It still has hair!”

  Madame Z snapped her cell phone shut. “Fools, every one of them,” she said. Her pallor was gone; apparently talking to Silas had shaken her out of her funk. “Ahh! I see you found Fernando!”

  “Is that whose skull that is?” I asked. “Fernando’s?”

  “Oh God,” Yun Sun moaned.

  “Wormed his way to the surface after a gully washer, out in Chapel Hill Cemetery,” Madame Z told us. “His coffin, that is. Crappy wooden thing, must’a been from the early nineteen hundreds. No one left to care for him, so I took pity on him and brought him here.”

  “You opened the coffin?” I said.

  “Yep.” She seemed proud. I wondered if she’d worn her Juicy Couture during the grave robbing.

  “That’s gross that it still has hair,” I said.

  “He still has hair,” Madame Z said. “Show some respect.”

  “I didn’t know dead bodies had hair, that’s all.”

  “Skin, no,” Madame Z said. “Skin starts to rot right away, and believe me, you don’t want to smell it when it goes. But hair? Sometimes it keeps growing for weeks after the deceased has made his crossing.”

  “Wowzers.” I reached down and tousled Will’s honey-colored curls. “Hear that, Will? Sometimes the hair keeps growing.”

  “Amazing,” he said.

  “What about that?” Yun Sun asked, pointing to a clear Tupperware container in which something reddish and organlike floated in clear liquid. “Please tell me it didn’t come from Fernando, too. Please.”

  Madame Z waved her hand, like Don’t be ridiculous. “That’s my uterus. Had the doc give it to me after my hysterectomy.”

  “Your uterus?” Yun Sun looked ill.

  “I’m going to let ’em toss it in the incinerator?” Madame Z said. “Fat chance!”

  “And that?” I pointed to a clump of dried-up something on the highest shelf. This show-and-tell was proving far more enjoyable than our actual readings.

  Madame Z followed my gaze. She opened her mouth, then closed it. “That’s nothing,” she said firmly, although I noticed she had a hard time tearing her eyes from it. “Now. Are we done here?”

  “Come on.” I made praying hands. “Tell us what it is.”

  “You don’t want to know,” she said.

  “I do,” I said.

  “I don’t,” Yun Sun said.

  “Yes, she does,” I said. “And so does Will. Right, Will?”

  “It can’t be worse than the uterus,” he said.

  Madame Z pressed her lips together.

  “Please?” I begged.

  She muttered something under her breath about idiot teenagers and how she refused to take the blame, whatever came of it. Then she stood up, pawing the top shelf. Her bosom didn’t jiggle, but stayed firm and rigid beneath her top. She retrieved the clump and placed it in front of us.

  “Oh,” I breathed. “A corsage.” Brittle rosebuds, their edges brown and papery. Sprigs of graying baby’s breath, so desiccated that puffs of fiber dusted the table. A limp red ribbon holding it all together.

  “A peasant woman in France put a spell on it,” Madame Z said in a tone that was hard to decipher. It was as if she were compelled to speak the words, even though she didn’t want to. Or, no. More like she did want to but was struggling to resist. “She wanted to show that true love is guided by fate, and that anyone who tries to interfere does so at her own peril.”

  She moved to return the corsage.

  “Wait!” I cried. “How does it work? What does it do?”

  “I’m not telling,” she said stubbornly.

  “‘I’m not telling’?” I repeated. “How old are you, four?”

  “Frankie!” Yun Sun said.

  “You’re just like all the rest, aren’t you?” Madame Z said to me. “Willing to do anything for a boyfriend? Desperate for a heart-stopping romance, no matter the cost?”

  I felt my face go hot. But here it was, out on the table. Boyfriends. Romance. Hope flickered in my chest.

  “Just tell her,” Yun Sun said, “or we’ll never get to leave.”

  “No,” Madame Z insisted.

  “She can’t, because she made it up,” I said.

  Madame Z’s eyes flashed. I’d provoked her, which wasn’t nice, but something told me that whatever it was, she hadn’t made it up. And I really wanted to know.

  She put the corsage in the middle of the table, where it sat doing absolutely nothing.

  “Three people, three wishes apiece,” Madame Z declared. “That’s its magic.”

  Yun Sun, Will, and I looked at one another, then burst out laughing. It was ludicrous and at the same time perfect: the storm, the wacko, and now the ominously issued pronouncement.

  And yet the way Madame Z regarded us made our laughter trickle off. The way she regarded Will, especially.

  He tried to resurrect the hilarity.

  “So, why don’t you use it?” he asked in the manner of a teenager being helpful and polite.

  “I did,” she said. Her orange lipstick was like a stain.

  “And…were your three wishes granted?” I asked.

  “Every last one,” she said flatly.

  None of us knew what to say to that.

  “Well, has anyone else used it?” Yun Sun asked.

  “One other lady. I don’t know what her first two wishes were, but her last was for death. That’s how the corsage came to me.”

  We sat there, all silliness squelched. The situation felt unreal, yet here we were, in this moment.

  “Dude, that’s spooky,” Will said.

  “So…why do you keep it?” I asked. “If you’ve used up your three wishes?”

  “Excellent question,” Madame Z said after staring at the corsage for a few heavy seconds. She pulled a turquoise lighter from her pocket and struck a flame. She picked up the corsage with a fierce determination, as if committing to a course of action long overdue.

  “No!” I yelped, snatching it from her grasp. “Let me have it, if you don’t want it!”

  “Never. It should be burned.”

  My fingers closed over the rose petals. They were the texture of my grandfather’s wizened cheek, which I stroked when I visited him at the nursing home.

  “You’re making a mistake,” Madame Z warned. She reached to reclaim the bundle, then jerked her hand back convulsively. I sensed the same internal warring as when I first goaded her into speaking of the corsage, as if the corsage had an element of actual power over her. Which was ridiculous, of course.

  “It’s not too late to change your fate,” she managed.

  “What fate would that be?” I said. My voice broke. “The fate where a tree falls in the forest, but poor me, I’m wearing earplugs?”

  Madame Z fixed me with her thick-lashed eyes. The skin around them was as thin as crepe paper, and I realized she was older than I origi
nally assumed.

  “You are a rude and disrespectful child. You deserve a spanking.” She leaned back in her swivel chair, and I could tell—snap, like that—she’d released herself from the corsage’s unhealthy hold. Or perhaps the corsage had done the releasing? “You keep it, that’s your decision. I take no responsibility for what happens.”

  “How do you use it?” I asked.

  She snorted.

  “C’mon,” I pleaded. I didn’t mean to be a brat. It was just that it was so terribly important. “If you don’t tell me, I’ll do it all wrong. I’ll probably…I don’t know. Destroy the whole world.”

  “Frankie…let it go,” Will said under his breath.

  I shook my head. I couldn’t.

  Madame Z clucked at dim, foolish me. Well, let her.

  “You hold it in your right hand and speak your wish aloud,” she said. “But I’m telling you, no good will come of it.”

  “You don’t need to be so negative,” I said. “I’m not as stupid as you think.”

  “No, you’re far more stupid,” she agreed.

  Will jumped in to redirect, because that’s what he did. He hated all unpleasantness. “So…you wouldn’t use it again, if you were able?”

  Madame Z raised her eyebrows. “Do I look like I need more wishes?”

  Yun Sun sighed loudly. “Well, I could sure use a wish or two. Wish me up Lindsay Lohan’s thighs, will you?”

  I loved my friends. They were so wonderful. I lifted the corsage, and Madame Z gasped and grabbed my wrist.

  “For heaven’s sake, girl,” she cried. “If you’re going to wish, at least make it for something sensible!”

  “Yeah, Frankie,” Will said. “Think of poor Lindsay—you want the girl to be thighless?”

  “She’d still have her calves,” I pointed out.

  “But would they be attached? And what movie producer’s going to hire a girl who’s just a torso?”

  I giggled, and Will looked pleased with himself.

  Yun Sun said, “You guys. Ew.”

  Madame Zanzibar’s breathing was uneven. She might have resolved to wash her hands of me, but her fright, when I lifted the withered rosebuds, hadn’t been contrived.

  I placed the corsage in my messenger bag, careful not to squish it. And when I drew out my wallet, I paid Madame Z twice the amount she’d quoted. I didn’t elaborate, just handed over the bills. She counted them, then assessed me in a bone-tired, orange-lipsticked way.

  Fine, then, her demeanor conveyed. Just…beware. We headed to my house for pizza, because that was our Friday night ritual. Saturdays and Sundays, too, more often than not. My parents were on sabbatical in Botswana for the semester, which meant Chez Frankie was party central. Except we didn’t have actual parties. We could have; my house was miles from town on an unmaintained dirt road, with no nearby neighbors to complain. But we preferred our own company, with an occasional pop-in from Jeremy, Yun Sun’s boyfriend. Jeremy thought Will and I were weird, though. He didn’t like pineapple on his pizza, and he didn’t share our taste in movies.

  The rain pounded the roof of Will’s pickup as he navigated the winding curves of Restoration Boulevard, past the Krispy Kreme and the Piggly Wiggly and the county watertower, which stretched toward the sky in lonely glory. The cab of the truck was crowded with all three of us scrunched in, but I didn’t mind. I had the middle seat. Will’s hand brushed my knee when he shifted gears.

  “Ah, the cemetery,” he said, nodding as we reached the wrought iron gates to his left. “Shall we have a moment of silence for Fernando?”

  “We shall,” I said.

  A bolt of lightning illuminated the rows of tombstones, and I thought to myself what eerie and disturbing places cemeteries really were. Bones. Rotted-away skin. Coffins, which sometimes came undug.

  I was glad to get home. I went from room to room flicking on all the lights while Will ordered the pizza and Yun Sun shuffled through this week’s Netflix arrivals.

  “Something cheerful, ’kay?” I called from the hall.

  “Not Night Stalker?” she said.

  I joined her in the den and sifted through the stack. “How about High School Musical? There is nothing the slightest bit creepy about High School Musical.”

  “Surely you jest,” Will said, clicking off his phone. “Sharpay and her brother doing their sexy dance with maracas? You wouldn’t call that creepy?”

  I laughed.

  “But you girls go on, knock yourselves out,” he said. “I’ve actually got an errand to run.”

  “You’re leaving?” Yun Sun said.

  “What about the pizza?” I said.

  He opened his wallet and laid a twenty-dollar bill on the coffee table. “It’ll be here in thirty minutes. My treat.”

  Yun Sun shook her head. “And again I say: You’re leaving? You’re not even staying to eat?”

  “There’s something I need to do,” he said.

  My heart constricted. I ached to keep him here, even if just for a little longer. I darted back to the kitchen and pulled Madame Z’s corsage—no, my corsage—out of my bag.

  “At least wait till I’ve made my wish,” I said.

  He looked amused. “Fine, wish away.”

  I hesitated. The den was warm and cozy, pizza was on the way, and I had the two greatest friends in the world. What else did I truly want?

  Duh, the grasping part of my brain told me. Prom, of course. I wanted Will to ask me to prom. Maybe it was selfish to have so much and still want more, but I pushed that line of reasoning away.

  Because look at him, I thought. Those kind brown eyes, that lopsided smile. Those ridiculously angelic curls. The entire sweetness and goodness that was Will.

  He hummed the Jeopardy! theme song. I raised the corsage.

  “I wish for the boy I love to ask me to prom,” I said.

  “And there you have it, folks!” Will cried. He was far too euphoric. “And what boy wouldn’t want to take her to prom, our fabulous Frankie? Now we’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we, whether her wish will come—”

  Yun Sun cut him off. “Frankie? Are you okay?”

  “It moved,” I said, cringing away from the corsage, which I’d flung to the floor. My skin was clammy. “I swear to God, it moved when I made the wish. And that smell! Do you smell it?”

  “Noooo,” she said. “What smell?”

  “You smell it, Will. Don’t you?”

  He grinned, still on whatever high he’d been on since…well, since Madame Z warned him away from heights. A clap of thunder rumbled, and he shoved my shoulder.

  “Next you’re going to blame the storm on the evil wish fairies, aren’t you?” he said. “Or, no! You’re going to go to bed tonight, and tomorrow you’ll tell us you found a hunched and skulking creature on your comforter, smiling a twisted smile!”

  “Like rotting flowers,” I said. “You honestly don’t smell it? You’re not playing with me?”

  Will dug his keys out of his pocket. “See you on the flip side, homies. And, Frankie?”

  “What?”

  Another boom of thunder shook the house.

  “Don’t give up hope,” he said. “Good things come to those who wait.”

  I watched through the window as he dashed to his truck. The rain was coming down in sheets. Then I turned to Yun Sun, a balloony feeling pushing everything else away.

  “Did you hear what he said?” I grabbed her hands. “Oh my God, do you think it means what I think it means?”

  “What else could it mean?” Yun Sun said. “He’s going to ask you to prom! He’s just…I don’t know. Trying to make a big production out of it!”

  “What do you think he’s going to do?”

  “No idea. Hire a skywriter? Send a singing telegram?”

  I squealed. She squealed. We jumped about in a frenzy.

  “Got to hand it to you, the wish thing was brilliant,” she said. She flicked her finger to indicate giving Will the push he needed. “And the rotting fl
owers? Verrrry dramatic.”

  “I honestly did smell it, though,” I said.

  “Ha-ha.”

  “I did.”

  She looked at me and shook her head, amused. Then she looked at me again.

  “Well, it must have been your imagination,” she said.

  “I guess,” I said.

  I picked the corsage up off the floor, holding it gingerly between my thumb and forefinger. I took it to the bookshelf and dropped it behind a row of books, glad to have it out of sight.

  The next morning I trotted downstairs, hoping foolishly to find…I don’t know. Hundreds of M&Ms spelling out my name? Pink hearts sketched in silly string on the windows?

  Instead, I found a dead bird. Its tiny body lay on the welcome mat, as if it had flown into the door during the storm and bashed its brains in.

  I scooped it up with a paper towel and tried not to feel its soft weight as I delivered it to the outside trash bin.

  “I’m sorry, little bird, so pretty and sweet,” I said. “Fly to heaven.” I dropped in the corpse, and the lid slammed shut with a bang.

  I returned inside to the sound of the ringing phone. Probably Yun Sun, wanting an update. She’d left with Jeremy at eleven last night, after making me swear to tell her the minute Will made his bold move.

  “Hey, sweetie,” I said, after glancing at the caller ID and seeing that, yep, I was right. “No news yet—sorry.”

  “Frankie…,” Yun Sun said.

  “I’ve been thinking about Madame Z, though. Her whole don’t-mess-with-fate mumbo jumbo.”

  “Frankie—”

  “Because how could Will asking me to prom lead to anything bad?” I walked to the freezer and grabbed a box of frozen waffles. “Spit’s going to fly from his mouth and land on me? He’ll bring me flowers, and a bee’ll zip out and sting me?”

  “Frankie, stop. Didn’t you watch the morning news?”

  “On a Saturday? I don’t think so.”

  Yun Sun made a gulping sound.

  “Yun Sun, are you crying?”

  “Last night…Will climbed the watertower,” she said.

  “What?!” The watertower was easily three hundred feet tall, with a sign at the bottom prohibiting anyone from ascending. Will always talked about climbing to the top, but he was such a rule-follower that he never had.