I’ll admit, that kind of took the edge off my night’s sleep.
After that, I did have one brief dream about getting trapped inside a gigantic banana split. I only mention it because I think it might be symbolic somehow. Like maybe the ice cream represents fear of the chill darkness, and the nuts and bananas stand for my state of mind at the time. Or maybe I was just having a sugar craving. Who knows? When I woke up, I was chewing on my pillow.
That wasn’t all I was doing. Almost as soon as my eyes slid open, I jumped to my feet and started bouncing up and down on my bed, doing the Texas two-step.
“So that’s how they’re planning to summon me,” I said to myself, dancing over to my bedroom door. It’s times like this when I’m glad I have my own room. Fortunately, my evil twin brothers, Mason and Cooper, who share a room down the hall, sleep like rocks. I had begun to boogie-woogie down the hallway toward the stairs, and was making plenty of noise, too, but neither of them even opened an eye.
Noisily I hoofed it down the stairs and then slid out the front door and toddled off down the street toward Jamey Fitzhughston’s house and the shrine to the pompon Athena.
Should I be honest? I didn’t want to go. I had this funny feeling in the pit of my stomach. Well, not a funny feeling so much as an ache. And not in my stomach so much as in my feet, because even with my gift, I still wasn’t the most graceful dancer, and I kept stepping all over myself. But what I’m trying to get at here is that I was scared. And even though I kept telling myself, “That was only a dream,” I couldn’t shake my sense of dread—no matter how many times I shook my bootie.
I’m sure I must have looked like a total lunatic, or at least, a Britney Spears wanna-be, shuffling down the street like that in the lamplight. Fortunately for my reputation, it was about two o’clock in the morning and none of the neighbors were up. For some reason, though, I had the eeriest feeling that somebody was following me. I didn’t know why, exactly, but every time I turned around, I expected somebody to be standing there. Don’t ask me who. But that feeling just wouldn’t go away.
By the time I got to the sanctuary, I was doing that bizarre little dance from Pulp Fiction. You know the one I mean, right? Maybe you haven’t seen Pulp Fiction, but don’t worry, I haven’t, either. I know the dance, though, because my cousin Amy saw the movie, and then she acted it out for me, scene by scene. Amy’s kind of weird. I’m not, of course. I mean, I was just dancing down the street in the middle of the night. Nothing abnormal there!
Tina was waiting for me on the other side of the wall. “You know the way inside,” she whispered.
“Sure,” I said, following her through the scary black back door.
“Oh, by the way,” Tina said and added “turkey.” Finally I stopped dancing.
I thought I locked the back door behind me. At least, I was pretty sure I did . . . kind of . . . I mean . . .
Oh, well.
Tina had already disappeared by the time I got into the kitchen. Even though I had done it before, I was still totally nervous about climbing through the oven. But I didn’t have much choice. If I didn’t show up at the ceremony, the other cheerleaders would come and get me. I knew that for a fact. It didn’t matter how bad I wanted out. They needed a mascot—so they needed me.
The oven seemed a lot darker than I remembered, and so did the staircase. And as if that wasn’t spooky enough, I also thought I could hear somebody behind me, breathing ever so quietly. But then, whenever I turned around, the noise just stopped. So I figured it must be my imagination.
I had to cross the canal myself, which, I must say, I didn’t enjoy. I felt kind of like Charon, the skeleton guy who rows across the River Styx. Of course, I didn’t know what Charon looked like, so I formed a mental image of Karen, this annoying, whiny little girl I used to go to Brownies with back in second grade. Boy, Karen was a real brat. And it seemed like she always had a runny nose. And one time she slept over at my house, and when it was time for breakfast . . .
Just when I had gotten myself all worked up remembering that little girl Karen, I looked up and realized I was on the other side. Quickly I jumped off the raft and walked up to the steaming green door.
Nobody would dog-paddle across black, bubbling water, would he? I mean, that doesn’t seem logical, right? So those swimming noises must have been my imagination, too. I sighed deeply and knocked on the door, three times in the middle, the way I had seen Tina do it.
After only a few seconds the door slowly creaked open, and I joined the rest of the cheerleaders inside. I thought I closed the door, but evidently I left it open a crack.