Chapter 6 Where are my fellow prudes?
Where are my fellow prudes?
Josie
ON THE Lost Star show, there’s this transportation device that looks like a futuristic pen; you draw a doorway in the air with it and then walk through into a completely different place.
What I wouldn’t do for one of those things right now.
I don’t even care what’s on the other side.
A raging hurricane? A two-hundred-foot drop-off?
A gas station men’s room at the Yeehaw Junction? Whatever it is, I’ll take it.
But because I’m living in this stupid, low-tech world and the universe hates me, I move on to the final round.
I just told the Mexican bus story on national TV. Why did I do that?
It’s Sean’s fault. He got me flustered. It was that mouth. Those “c’mere to me” eyes. Everything about him flusters.
The booths our celebrity crushes were sitting in are rolled away.
Our chairs are taken, too. Why are they taking our chairs?
I don’t do well with uncertainty. There are big red dots on the floor I hadn’t noticed before.
We’re supposed to stand on them. Oh, please, please, please let mine be a trap door that drops me into a pit of foam chunks.
No such luck.
I do my best to stand still instead of swaying from side to side like a human metronome. I don’t want to give anyone a reason to look at me. I need to get kicked out of this contest now. Manifest failure, Josie. It’s not that hard. You can do this. You’re fine. Everything’s fine.
Beside me, a fellow contestant chuckles at something on her phone as she waits out the reset period, and I instinctively glance at her screen. She’s scrolling through memes on Instagram. It’s a nice distraction—the dogs, the cats, the pithy captions. Just what I need to settle my nervous system.
Then, her thumb swipes upward, and my insides seize up like a pair of rusty scissors. Is that…?
No, it can’t be. But it is—a video clip of a puppet that I know all too well.
Chuy was designed to look like a duende, one of those mythical so-ugly-they’re-actually-kind-of-cute little house goblins that nibble off the toenails of little children at night.
But he doesn’t look very cute in this particular video as a teenage girl in pigtails and overalls snatches him off of another teenage girl’s lap and hurls him onto a Day of the Dead altar, knocking over several candles and a bottle of aguardiente in the process.
“You’re the bitch!” she shouts. “I hate you! And your stupid puppet, too!”
As if on cue, everything flammable ignites, tongues of flame leaping up into the black sky. This particular version of the meme reads in all caps: WHEN THE STARBUCKS BARISTA SPELLS YOUR NAME WRONG.
Gulping down a bout of shame and nausea, I home in on the pigtailed girl’s fury-twisted sneer flickering in the firelight.
For the hundred-thousandth time, I tell myself that there’s no way anyone would recognize her today.
Her hair is no longer long and dark blond.
She’s not one hundred pounds soaking wet anymore.
Her youthful features have sharpened with age and wisdom and regret.
In fact, you’d probably need facial recognition software to confirm that that girl is me.
Please don’t tell me this stupid meme is making a comeback!
The last time I saw it was five years ago, but it was only circulating in Spanish.
The media jumped all over it, though, reminding everyone that Chuy was not only “killed” that night, but that whatever was left of him had gone missing as well.
When Chuy didn’t show up in a dumpster or wood pile in the days that followed, everyone assumed I’d taken him with me when I ran away, and that I was either hiding him or had disposed of him somewhere outside of Mexico City.
One well-known psychic suggested I’d used witchcraft to turn Chuy into a baby so I could raise him as my own (untrue).
Another claimed he’d be found in a flat in England (unlikely).
Occasionally, in the years that followed, there would be a Chuy “sighting.” Most of those were fake, although one of them was an actual old photo of Chuy at Castillo Studios from before his accident.
Nobody figured that out, or, if they did, nobody admitted it.
I suppose it made better TV to keep the story alive.
And clearly, it’s still alive.
The unhappy noise that escapes me must be louder than I realize because the woman with the phone looks up and locks eyes with me. My heart makes one brief, swollen thunk inside my throat, the question hanging in the air like a caption: Did she recognize me?
No, Josie, of course she didn’t. To her, the meme is just a meme, not a clue to an unsolved mystery, and I’m just a nosy fellow contestant, not a puppet-torching ex-diva on the lam. Although, she is the right age to have studied our materials in school.
I turtle my chin into the stretched-out neck of my T-shirt as I launch Instagram on my own phone. Maybe it’s a fluke? Thumbing through my feed, I spot the stupid meme twice more in less than sixty seconds. Both captions are in English. Both are humiliating. I scroll to the comments.
Hey, aren’t those the Bilingual Club girls from Spanish class?
Yes! I totally forgot about them until now.
OMG, look what she did to the puppet!
So much for “friends para siempre.”
Well, there you have it, folks. The curse of Chuy the Puppet has pursued me across time and borders. Fan-freaking-tastic.
I glance up from my phone to find a grip coming at me with a blindfold. I can’t do this right now—I just can’t. I back off my dot.
“Take off the glasses,” she says.
“They’re prescription,” I argue.
“Take them off.”
“What’ll you do if I don’t?”
She snatches the glasses off my face with the reflexes of a pit viper. “You signed the waiver.”
I didn’t sign the waiver, actually. I believe my waiver was forged by either my best friend or her fifteen-year-old daughter, so I have no idea what rights I’ve ceded. One of them, however, is apparently the right to back out.
I mean, I could cut and run. It’s not like this is Squid Game.
But I don’t want to make any more of a scene than I already have, especially now that my face is all over the internet…
again. I take a begrudging step forward onto the red dot and let the grip stretch a Date My Celebrity Crush!
sleep mask over my eyes, which she does with an unnecessary level of fervor.
Now I’m standing on set completely blind. Frankly, the darkness is comforting. Lonely, in a good way. I can pretend that I’m not here, exposed, my carefully curated replacement life hanging by a thread.
“All right, finalists, this is the moment you’ve all dreamed about!” Terica booms.
“There are ten of you left,” Emmy continues, “and only five celebrity crushes to match you with, so from here on out, you’ve got a fifty-fifty chance.”
Not gonna lie, the math gives me hope. I wouldn’t go into surgery with those odds.
“You’re going to be lined up opposite one of our hunky celebrity crushes,” Terica explains.
“Next comes the fun part,” Emmy says with a giggle. “You’ll have to identify which sexy superstar is standing in front of you…”
“Wait for it,” Terica teases. It’s clear they’ve rehearsed.
“… by touch alone!”
I must have misheard Emmy. By touch alone? Did the guys really agree to this? Meanwhile, the entire place has exploded into cheers. Are you kidding me? Where are my fellow prudes?
“Rules!” Terica barks, and the madness quiets. “Hands only, and only above the waist. No talking. Don’t move from your spot, but you can move the guys if you need to. The first name you speak will be taken as your answer, so no thinking out loud.”
“Questions?” Emmy asks.
I have so very many, but I’m not calling any more attention to myself.
“If you feel a tap on your shoulder, you’re group A, and you’ll go first,” Emmy says.
“Be polite!” Terica warns.
“But don’t feel like you have to be too polite,” Emmy adds. “After all, they signed up for this.”
I brace myself for the tap on my shoulder, but nothing happens.
That’s a tender mercy, because I need a freaking minute to process this.
Team A must be having a grand old time because the audience is shrieking with laughter, and Emmy and Terica are struggling to hold in their cackles.
Fine. Let them have their fun. I’ll be over here forming my losing game plan.
It’s simple, really. I need to be one hundred percent sure who’s in front of me and guess wrong on purpose. Can I do that? I’ve met all these guys before. I’ve even gotten to hug them all once, thanks to Emmy’s unflinching loyalty. But the rules are hands only.
Still, how hard can it be? I remember what they are all wearing. I should be able to identify them by their collars alone.
Team A begins to shout out their answers. Pretty soon, all five have made their choices. I already know someone got it wrong because two people named Jason Connor, and that’s impossible.
Rookies.
“Okay, Team B, you’re up!” Emmy announces. “Get those manhandling mitts ready! You don’t want to miss a nanosecond of this golden opportunity.”
I stiffen as the shadows shift around me and the air changes.
Without my eyesight, all my other senses sharpen.
There’s the clomp of expensive shoes on the wooden stage floor as the celebrities take their places.
A flutter of air over my skin as someone passes nearby.
The subtle mix of myriad colognes. A figure blocks a stage light, casting a shadow over my blindfold.
I can’t see the man who settles in front of me, but I can feel him. It’s like being in a room with a ghost.