The True Meaning of Smekday (Page 18)
J.Lo shrugged. “What does these humans words say?” he asked again.
I looked at the message once more, hastily composed in spray paint, the favorite medium of anyone afraid of being caught.
“It says we need to go to Orlando,” I said. “Which we’re doing anyway.”
“Oh, good,” said J.Lo.
And that was that. There’s a saying we use these days; maybe you future people don’t say it anymore. When someone’s easily tricked, we might say that it’s “like taking candy from a baby.” The saying doesn’t mention that tricking the baby may be easy, but the candy tastes gross.
We were still about ten miles away from Happy Mouse Kingdom when I fell asleep. I don’t know how long I slept; I was really tired. J.Lo was already snoring in the seat beside me, Pig curled up among his legs, but up to now I’d been pretty alert on account of a couple of close calls with patrolling Boov. I had only the parking lights on, and I’d managed to click them off before being seen by a scooter Boov on a side street. A few miles later I had to veer away from another, a big Boov with strange orange balls like shoes on the ends of his eight legs. I don’t know if that one saw me or not, but he (she, it) was on foot and couldn’t give chase.
I was beginning to relax again when I had to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting a parade of goats in tiny cars. Just as it occurred to me how weird that was, I blinked and the cars weren’t there anymore.
“I’m going nuts,” I whispered.
I sort of remembered reading somewhere that if you’re cracking up, the best thing is to just close your eyes for a few seconds, so I did, and that’s when I realized I wasn’t driving at all. I was at school. I couldn’t imagine why I thought I’d been driving; I was just a kid, after all. There was nobody else at my school, which was also Happy Mouse Kingdom. I’d forgotten, but it was. I knew I had to find my mom so I could tell her not to get the plastic surgery. She was having her face changed to look just like Happy Mouse, because she thought it would make me love her more. When I found her, she was standing next to the Snow Queen’s Castle, and it was all right, she still looked like Mom. But no; it was too late. She did look like Happy Mouse. She was Happy Mouse, standing in the dark, as tall as the castle. When I opened my mouth to speak she put a fat, gloved finger to her grinning lips. Then with her other hand, she pointed straight down at the ground, and suddenly I tripped, and then I awoke to find we were about to drive through a Pricey’s store window.
I stood up on the brake pedal (actually the gas pedal), and we rattled to a halt just inches from a row of naked mannequins. J.Lo snorted and shouted “Habish?” for whatever reason. Then he was awake, too.
“What…what happens?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I was just…testing something.”
“Ah,” said J.Lo, nodding. “Did it work?”
“Yes. Perfectly.”
“Good. I am thinking we should stop for sleep.”
I nodded, and a few minutes later I found an underground parking garage in which to stay the night. I coasted down the ramps to the lowest level and parked against a wall. J.Lo and Pig settled into the backseat again, but I stayed perched in the front, thinking.
“Time for beds,” J.Lo said. He was staring at me from the back.
“Ummm…I think I’m going to have a look around,” I said. “On foot. I’ll be back soon; I just want to see something.”
There was a pause.
“I will come with Gratuity.”
“No…no, that’s fine. You sleep. I won’t be long.”
J.Lo’s eyes grew. He kept looking at me, and I couldn’t stop talking.
“It’s just that…about a half mile from here is this place my…mom and I used to visit a lot. I’d like to go see it. Alone. Ha-ha.” I laughed a little too loud. “Maybe she’ll even be there!”
I hadn’t really thought of that before now, but there were a lot of stranger places I could have found her.
“What is this place?” asked J.Lo. It was a perfectly reasonable question.
“Happy Mouse Kingdom,” I said. “It’s a…theme park, based on all these movies and cartoon characters. Happy Mouse, of course, and Sailor Swan, and Mister Schwa…” He was still looking at me. “The Snow Queen…” I added. “Puncinello…”
“It is a themed park?”
“Yeah. Like…a big park with rides and people in funny costumes and really expensive food. But of course, the rides don’t work now, and there aren’t any people to put in the costumes,” I said. “And there isn’t any food.”
I wanted to be careful not to make the place sound too attractive. I might have bad-mouthed it some more, except that I noticed J.Lo’s eyeballs were sort of quivering at this point. The phrase “Devastating Eye Lasers” passed through my mind, but then he just started wailing.
“You are leaving me now, aren’t you?”
I blinked. “Leaving? What, you mean leaving leaving? No, I—”
“You are! You are leaving me!”
“I promise, I’m—”
“YOU HATE ME!”
“Well, that’s—”
“You are always have hating me and now you are to leaving me all alone—”
“Oh, c’mon, I wouldn’t just leave…the car. Or the cat…”
His face looked like one of those tragedy theater masks, and he made a noise like,
“EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
EE—”
“Hey, look, keep it down, okay?”
J.Lo composed himself for a moment, but I noticed his eyes were starting to look wet. Which might have meant he was about to cry, but it bears mentioning that his face was also slowly turning yellow, so I don’t know.
“Look, J.Lo,” I said, “this is just something I have to do. My mom really loved Happy Mouse Kingdom, and…I miss my mom. She thought it was the most perfect place in the world. So clean and happy all the time, and…good.”
J.Lo sniffed.
“I just want to go and make sure it’s still there,” I said, “and then I’ll come back and go to sleep. I promise. I’m not up to anything. Or anything.”
I found I had to look away when I told him this.