even more transfixed than me. I bet if she rolled onto her back and asked him to rub her belly he wouldn’t hesitate to comply.
“C’mon, Ginny,” Turlington coaxes in his creaky old-man voice.
With a hiss of annoyance, Ginny ceases grooming and turns her cat eyes toward me. “Lots of people ran for it this morning and they all came back so scared I didn’t bother attempting my own escape,” Ginny finally says in this low husky voice totally different from her previous high-pitched squeak. “But when I was getting some fresh air that bat came swooping down and I took off until I hit the edge of the driveway and then—” Her back arches up as in memory of that moment and I can see her fur standing on end. “It was like electricity. I was thrown backward. I think I even blacked out for a few minutes.”
“Has anyone tried to drive through it?” I ask.
She shrugs, clearly disinterested. “All I know is, I’m not going out there again.” With that she uncurls herself from the bed and stalks across the room.
“So you see”—Turlington spreads out his trembling hands—“there’s nothing to be done but sit tight until Lennie here can reverse all the wishes. That is why you came back, right?”
“Well . . .” I start to say, and Smith kicks me again.
“I think you’re right, Turlington,” Smith says.
“Yep,” Turlington agrees. “I’ve been given the wisdom of the ages, dude.”
Smith nods. “I can tell. So look, we need to get some moonshine so Lennie can start making all those wishes unwished, if you know what I mean. Think you could help us get out of here?”
Feet begin to pound against the floor over our heads, almost like a stampede has broken out. As if on cue, everyone in our watery den looks up with fearful expressions. Moments later we hear multiple fists hitting the basement door and just as many voices raised in supplication, begging to be let in. Screams begin to filter through, and in them we can hear a name. I am relieved to realize it’s not my own, but that quickly fades when I hear the gasps around me. Then that same name spreads around the basement.
Zinkowski.
I have never in my life seen so many people lose their shit so fast. It’s sheer panic. At least fifteen people try to cram themselves into a cedar closet, until one of them asks, “What if it gets Cheetos’d?” and then they all fight to be the first to wriggle back out.
“Easy with the merchandise!” Turlington cries out in his old man’s warble, as he’s lifted from the bed at the same time that another group of his followers begin to pull the pillows away.
“Turlington!” I call as he’s carried past me. “What’s up with Zinkowski? I thought he’d be here with you!”
Turlington shakes his head sadly. “Zinkowski has gone to the dark side.”
I can’t believe it. Turlington and Zinkowski are best friends in a totally bromantic way. They fling their arms around each other’s shoulders when they laugh. They finish each other’s sentences. They leave graffiti all over school that reads Turl + Zinc. They seemed like the type who would be together eighty years from now, two old men sitting on the front porch chuckling at some lame joke only they understood.
“Come on.” Smith ends my gloomy reverie on Turl + Zinc’s lost love with a sharp shove. “We gotta get out before they block the door.”
The freaked-out citizens of Turlington’s underwater world have pulled themselves together and are now working toward the common goal of carrying several sheets of plywood up the stairs to blockade the entrance.
Smith gives me another push, but I am already moving. Although I have to wonder if now is the best time to escape. You don’t have to be a survival expert to know that when all the gazelles start running away, you should follow them and not go in the opposite direction to find out what’s hunting them.
And yet, here I am undoing the chain, while Smith holds back the guy who let us in. “You said you came in peace!” he hollers, clearly feeling a bit betrayed.
“Sorry,” Smith replies, just as the door flies open. A sea of people comes flowing in, nearly pushing us down the stairs. Snagging my wrist, Smith fights against the tide and tugs me along beside him, until we pop back out again.
Seconds later, the door snaps shut behind us.
Outside of Turlingtown, the hall is