The Sleepover (17 page)

“That's wonderful, dear.”

“And you? Whom are you speaking with?”

I have a horrible thought the very instant Madame Mesmer turns to me. I can't be sure about my subconscious, but I know exactly who my conscious would have chosen to get a phone call from, and that is a big problem. A
very
big problem, considering he's sitting right next to me at this exact second. I blush and avoid looking at Jake. Basically, I've been trying to avoid looking at Jake ever since Veronica pushed play on this train wreck, but now I'm doing it with two bright red spots on my cheeks. This could be catastrophic.

Please say Taylor, too. Please say Taylor, too.

But I can tell by the dreamy look at my face in the video that I am not chatting with Tay Tay.

“Jaaaaaa-ke.”

Oh God. Oh God, oh God, oh God. My voice was even all singsongy. This is not happening. I can't look, but I hear Jake cough and shuffle his feet.

This. Is. Not. Happening.

“How lovely,” Madame Mesmer says.

Madame Mesmer moves on to Anna Marie. I let out my
breath, but I still refuse to bring my eyes anywhere near the same zip code as Jake's. Maybe ever again. He won't think that's weird at all, right?

“Anna Marie, who are you speaking with?”

The sound of Anna Marie answering, “My dad,” makes me push aside my own (horrible, horrible) woes because there is my friend. Happy and healthy and right in front of us. She looks so ordinary, like she will never be anywhere but right there next to us. Not gone who knows where only a few short hours later.

Except, she's not exactly happy on-screen. In fact, she has a tear running down her cheek. I lean in closer to the laptop. Why is she crying? Madame Mesmer asks her the same thing.

“Things kind of stink with me and my dad right now,” Anna Marie answers.

Madame Messmer swallows and then says, “Okay, listen to me, Anna Marie. When I next snap my fingers, you are going to feel all your guilt and anger evaporate. You will be happy again and you will be speaking to . . . to . . .”

She pauses and looks around the room, clearly grasping for a name. Her eyes settle on the poster of Great Britain above the bar in the corner.

“You will be speaking to . . . Harry Potter!”

Madame Mesmer snaps.

Immediately Anna Marie's expression lightens, and she
starts murmuring intently into the phone. Something about Horcruxes.

Veronica is up next, and Madame Mesmer moves in front of her and asks who she is talking to. Oh, this should be good. Who would Veronica most like to talk to? I can't begin to guess.

Veronica puts her finger up and continues chatting into her bear paw slipper. After a second she says, “Okay. Hold on.”

“Whom are you talking to?” Madame Mesmer repeats.

Veronica's face lights up. “Oh, I'm speaking to the squirrel who lives in the tree outside my house. This is amazing.”

Madame Mesmer's eyebrows shoot to the sky.

Jake's do too. Probably. I still refuse to look at him, but I can hear it in his voice when he asks, “In the realm of all the possible phone calls to get from anyone in the entire world, you chose to hear from the squirrel outside your window?”

Veronica shrugs. “Well, yeah. Squiggles is the best.”

Back on-screen a snippet of “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” rings out, and Madame Mesmer dives for her bag. She fishes out a cell phone, stealing a glance back at us chatting away on our own “phones” before answering.

“What? Really? But I'd have to leave now. Yes, but I'm in the middle of— No, of course I want to meet him. You've been trying to set us up for months. Oh, I forgot. When does he go back? Okay. Okay. So it's now or never, I get it. I don't know how, but let me see if I can figure something out here.
I'll call you back when I'm on my way. Order a drink for me. I'm coming!”

Madame Mesmer stuffs her cell back into her purse and glances around the room, clearly calculating something in her head. This is why she ditched us while we were still hypnotized? For a blind date? Seriously?

“Okay, girls. Say good-bye to the person, or, erm, animal, on the other end of the phone and hang up, please. Now, we have about twenty minutes left in this party. Except I'm going to give you a bonus so we can do something really special. I have to get going, but that doesn't mean this part of the show has to end at all. Here's how it's going to work: I want you girls to have fun like you've never had fun before, until you can't stay awake anymore! When I say
party down
, you girls are going to do all the best sleepover activities you can think of. You are going to have the best time ever. And in a little while, I'm going to call you. When you hear my voice on the phone, I'm going to say, um . . . ‘New York.' Those are your trigger words, and when you hear them, you will snap out of your hypnosis instantly. Does that sound like a good plan?”

We all nod.

“Whose phone would you like me to call?”

Paige raises her hand and recites her number at Madame Mesmer's prompting.

“Got it. Okay, are we ready for some fun, girls?”

Again, four nods, and Madame Mesmer gathers up her belongings and collects the scarves she'd draped over the lampshades.

“Okay, then . . . party down!”

As she heads for the basement stairs, the camera swings away from her and shakily captures the basement steps as the person recording runs up them.

No need to guess who that was.

“I'm gonna kill Madame Mesmer,” Paige says, as the video ends and the screen goes black.

“Not if I get to her first,” I murmur. I am scarred for life over that fake phone call to Jake. For life. Not to mention all the rest of the chaos the whole hypnosis thing caused. Anna Marie missing, obviously. But all the other crazy things we did last night too. Just . . . everything.

Jake frowns and drums his fingers on his leg. “This doesn't really explain the amnesia, though. If she did call and say, ‘New York,' which makes sense since it doesn't seem like you're under hypnosis now or you'd still be partying instead of trying to find Anna Marie, you'd have your memories of the whole night, right? She didn't make any mention of not remembering things. So I don't get it.”

We're all quiet for a second, considering. He's right. Ever since waking up this morning, I've felt and acted like my
regular self. Well, no. That's not true. My regular self would never run through the boys' locker room or sneak into my school when it wasn't open. My regular self would never be part of a blackmailing scheme or escort a hedgehog float through town or ride behind Jake Ribano on a dirt bike. Definitely, definitely not. But I have to say, I didn't feel like I was under any influence when I chose to do those things. It just felt like I did what needed to be done in the moment to get our friend back safely. And I would do all those things again. Even if regular Meghan wouldn't.

Or maybe . . . maybe, this is regular Meghan. Just a new kind of regular.

Everyone else is quiet, trying to figure out the hypnosis stuff, but I'm quietly trying to figure out the Meghan stuff. Is this a new me? I've always been so good and followed every rule my parents or school or anyone else laid out, but maybe there's a whole other side of me that's a little bit of a rebel. Not like a lawbreaker or anything (float stealing aside!) but maybe someone who doesn't sit back and accept everything exactly as instructed. Maybe someone who lets loose and takes chances and has a little more fun. This is a lot to think about.

Paige scrolls through her cell phone and speaks into the silence. “I definitely don't remember any phone call. I remember everything from the moment I woke up, but no phone call. Although, this is superweird.” She holds up her phone.
“My whole call history has been erased. Why would I have done that?”

She scrunches up her face and shakes her head. Then she adds, “Do you think the hypnosis could have just worn off from sleep?”

Jake considers. I steal tiny glances at him (okay, fine, so I can't exactly go an entire lifetime without looking at him. Or an entire morning, apparently) until he says, “I don't think so. Not with what I read anyway. What happened when you woke up? Tell me everything you do remember.”

I stare off into space, trying to re-create my morning. I woke up. No, I was woken up! “I remember rolling over the remote,” I say to Paige.

Paige nods. “Yeah, I remember that too. I woke up when the TV switched on. It was still connected to the Xbox from when we played Summer Dance Party last night and the music was superloud and—”

“What song?” Jake interrupts.

Paige swishes her lips side to side, straining to remember. But I already do.

“ ‘American Boy.' My mom doesn't let me listen to hip-hop, and I hadn't heard it before last night. It's really catchy.”

“True dat,” adds Veronica.

Should I have just told Jake I'm not allowed to listen to hip-hop music? Will he think I'm a total baby?

He doesn't seem to have an opinion either way. He just locates the remote and switches on the TV. The game screen appears immediately, and a voice belts out:
“Take me on a trip. I'd like to go someday. Take me to New York. I'd like to see LA.”

“New York,” Paige and I say breathlessly in unison.

“New York,” Jake states. “That's what snapped you out of it. At least that's one mystery solved.”

Paige high-fives Jake, but Veronica isn't paying attention to the TV . . . or to us at all. She's still scrolling through Max-a-Million's YouTube page.

“Maybe this will solve another,” she says, pointing at the screen.

“A
dventures in Hypnosis” reads the name of the video. According to the time stamp, the video was posted at nine a.m. Just a few hours ago.

We all exchange looks. Veronica's mouse hovers over the play arrow. With a click, she starts the recording.

It shows Max sitting at the desk in his room, wearing a bright green
I'M WITH STUPID
sweatshirt with an arrow that points straight up at his chin. He's got that right. Behind him, hanging shelves are filled with odd Lego creations like a T. rex whose bottom half is the
Millennium Falcon
.

Max's eyes are full of wickedness as he introduces himself to his viewing audience. Ugh. Just . . . ugh.

“Welcome to Max-a-Million's, where the pranking is good. I'm your host, Max, and my motto is ‘When I'm bad, I'm better!' Let's see what fun we have for today's episode. Many of you know my sister, Anna Marie, from previous episodes.”

The screen cuts to Anna Marie wearing a bathrobe and sporting a giant towel wrapped around her hair, obviously just out of a shower. She's leaning into a mirror to apply zit cream. She's going to go mental when she sees this.
If
she sees this. No,
when
she sees this.
Stay positive, Meghan.

On-screen, Anna Marie screams when she spots the video camera in the reflection. The next shot shows Anna Marie intently playing an air guitar in her room. This time she never even notices the camera because her eyes are closed the whole time. The last clip is Anna Marie's notebook, which has doodle after doodle of
I love Graham Cabot
.

Paige sighs. “Who can blame her? Did you guys see
Triton
? He was so hot in that movie.”

I feel a little (a
lot
) weird about agreeing in front of Jake (even though I do agree, of course). I make some noncommittal sound in my throat and concentrate on the video instead.

The camera cuts back to a wildly grinning Max. He lifts one eyebrow, and his smile widens. “Yup. She's a source of endless material. If you've been following my channel, you've seen my previous videos from Anna Marie's epic birthday sleepover. We've introduced you to the cast of characters: Meghan, Paige, and the classic Veronica. We've watched them fall under the spell of hypnosis. We've watched their wild and crazy adventures as they've stolen everything from baby ducks to giant hedgehogs. And here's
the very best part: They don't remember any of it! Any of it, people!”

Max rocks back in his chair and laces his fingers behind his head, elbows wide. He continues to grin at the camera. Then he winks. Rocking forward again, he props his arms on the desk and leans close to the camera.

“Wanna know why?”

Veronica hits pause on the video. I gasp as Paige's fingernails dig into my arm. Jake says a curse word and then immediately says, “Oh. Sorry.”

I can't believe I can find a voice to talk to him after the embarrassment of basically revealing my crush right in front of him, but I manage. “It's okay. I'm pretty sure we're all thinking the same word in our heads.”

“Death is not a kind enough punishment for that little dude. . . . ,” Paige says.

I turn back to the computer. “Let's see what we're killing him for first.” At my nod, Veronica hits play again.

Max's disembodied voice says, “Roll the tape,” and the scene cuts to a spliced-in video, this time of Max, sitting at his desk, wearing a black T-shirt that reads,
IT'S MY JOB TO BE ANNOYING
, and then pulling a cell phone with a silver glitter case from his pocket and answering in a high-pitched voice. The camera is being held by someone else. Only an arm is visible, but the sleeve matches the shirt Max's friend had on last night.

“That's my
phone
!” Paige screeches, but we all shush her.

“Oh, halloo, Madame Mesmer! Yes, this is Paige. Yes, we did have so much fun tonight. What? New York? Oooooh,
New York
. Oh wow. I . . . I feel wide-awake now. That was . . . That was crazy. But in a good way. What? Oh yes, yes, of course I'll say,
New York
to the other girls. Thank you again for coming to our party. We had a great time. Okay. G'night!”