They give me pills through a slot in the door. A voice on the other side instructs me to take them. I tuck them under my tongue and open my mouth wide for the camera.
This is all I know.
This is not all I remember.
* * *
“It’s called a No-Tell Motel for a reason, dipshit.” My brother held the keys to his car just out of my reach. “And if you want to borrow the No-Tell Chevelle to get there, my silence is gonna cost you.” Matt stood, palm up and waiting.
I slapped the wrinkled bills into his hand. “Fine, but remember. You promised. You can’t tell anyone. If Mom and Dad ask, you have no idea where I am.” My friends were heading east, to the beaches of South Padre Island for Spring Break. Everyone was expecting me to be there. A week of drink-puke-repeat with twelve guys crammed into three hotel rooms wasn’t my idea of a good time, but it did sound like a pretty good cover.
Matt pocketed the cash and was already halfway to the garage door. “Whatever,” he mumbled. He tossed the keys over his shoulder and disappeared into the house.
I fumbled with the locks and dumped my duffel bag into the back seat of my brother’s piece-of-shit car. “Come on,” I whispered, my eyes closed as I turned the key in the ignition and the engine sputtered. I gave it a little gas to keep it from stalling and peeled out of the driveway before my brother could change his mind.
This week… it was going to change my life. It would be unforgettable.
Ten minutes later, Cora’s screen door flew open and she rushed the car with a reckless, wide smile. Tossing her small suitcase in the back, she dropped into the passenger seat. She smelled like strawberry shampoo and tasted like mint mouthwash when she leaned in for a kiss before buckling in.
“You ready?” I looked deep into her eyes. They were shadowed, like maybe she hadn’t slept last night. “Because we could forget it, if you’re… you know—”
“I’m ready,” she said. Her hand was clammy over mine.
My breath rushed out with a nervous laugh. Her cheeks flushed and she looked away, wearing the sweetest smile I’d ever seen. Suddenly, none of this felt like enough for her. Not this crappy car. Not the cheap hotel we were heading to. Not the economy pack of condoms in my duffel or the clumsy way I’d probably screw up putting them on. But a couple months back, when she was tucked in the crook of my arm and I’d had this crazy compulsion to tell her how I felt about her — to say everything all at once and way too fast, and not really what I’d meant to say at all — I’d asked her what she dreamed about instead. She’d said she dreamed about getting out of Harlingen, Texas and traveling the world. With me.
We were quiet as we drove to the border crossing at Los Indios and the bridge came into view. I didn’t think the thirty-minute trip to Mexico was exactly what Cora had had in mind when she’d told me she’d wanted me to take her to exotic places, but spring break was only a week long, and we only had a few hundred dollars saved up between the two of us. I slipped the border patrol officer two folded bills, an amount I hoped would be enough, and gritted my teeth while I waited for him to take it. Heat waves danced off the dusty hood of the Chevelle and it dripped a dark circle of oil on the pavement. Cora chewed her nail in the front seat, pausing to swat flies. Her collarbone was shiny with sweat. This week, this trip, this first time for both of us… it was the best I could do. I pushed the money closer to his hand.
The officer smiled knowingly. “It won’t be the same when you come back,” he said.
I thought I new what he meant. Crossing back into Texas would be difficult. But I couldn’t worry about that now. The only bridge I was ready to cross was the one right in front of me.
“I’m counting on it,” I said.
The officer glanced around cautiously, making sure no one saw him take the money. It felt awkward, walking back to my car without some show of gratitude, and yet I wasn’t sure he expected any.
“Nos vemos,” I said instead. We see each other.
But he didn’t look at me as he waved us through the checkpoint.
* * *
We drove a little over an hour to the auto hotel I’d read about online, and idled by the intercom in front of a high iron gate. When I pushed the button, a disembodied voice asked in Spanish if I was paying by the night or by the hour. Six nights, I told her, passing the cash through the slot. I fidgeted through the silence that followed, my thighs stuck with sweat to the seat.
“342,” she replied. The gate buzzed and slid open, exactly the way I’d read about. We would pull through a long alley to the open garage bay with our room number on it. The garage door would close behind us, locking us safely away. No one would see us. No one would know we were here.
Cora pushed open the door to Room 342 and peeked inside. She dropped her suitcase at the threshold, her mouth falling open with surprise.
“It’s nice!” she said. “Look at that shower! You could fit six people in there! And the bed! It’s huge!” She fell back against it, then giggled at the mirrors on the ceiling.
I adjusted the front of my shorts, trying not to imagine all the things my brother had told me happened in places like this. I wasn’t sure I believed all of it, but I guess some stories sound a whole lot crazier than others. I picked up the TV remote and tucked it away inside the dresser. According to my brother, these places only carried one kind of channel, and I wasn’t really needing any encouragement in that department.
Cora bounced off the bed and wandered to a rectangular opening in the wall, her face flush with excitement. Or maybe nerves. It was hard to tell. She peered inside, finding a turntable with a menu. I stood close and leaned over her shoulder as she flipped pages of pictures of sweating cold beers beside shots of tequila with wedges of lime, chicken mole, pozole, and carne asada, all of it priced half as much as it’d be back in Harlingen. On the last page was a list of other things you could pay to have delivered to your room, none having to do with food. Cora’s cheek was hot against mine.
She cleared her throat softly, sounding hesitant and uncertain as she turned to face me. “It says we use the phone to call in our order, and leave the money on the turntable. They deliver the food through the window, I guess.”
Our eyes held as we both registered a peculiar sound behind the wall. On the other side of the delivery window, the squeaky wheels of a push cart made a slow pass by our room and Cora’s brows arched high with a curious smile. One day, maybe I would take her around the world. But this first, the two of us in this room, right here and now… This was real. This was really happening. “Do you want to order some food?” I asked, hoping to God she didn’t.
“Maybe later,” she said, taking my hand and tugging me gently to the bed.
* * *
I woke up just after sunset in a tangle of damp bed sheets, Cora asleep next to me and a half-eaten tray of cold chilaquiles and two empty beer bottles on the dresser across the room. It felt strange, to be naked, stretched out on a bed with her. To not worry about who might walk in or how much time we had until one of our parents came home. I curled up against her. Heat radiated from her body and the sheets were soaked with sweat.
“Hey, Cora.” I stroked the hair that stuck to her cheek. “I think you have a fever.” Her eyes were glassy and slow to wake. She muttered something about being cold, and snuggled into me. When she fell back to sleep, I eased out of bed and checked the menu on the turntable, but there was nothing in it to bring a fever down. We’d passed a small pharmacy on our way here. It wasn’t far… a short walk. I scribbled a note on the back of a gas receipt and left it on the nightstand before sneaking out the door.
I left the garage open just high enough to crawl back under and squeezed through an opening in the gate, following the sound of mariachis and the smell of elote vendors that wafted through the streets. My head felt strangely light as I dodged the headlights of oncoming cars, and I was exhausted by the time I reached the sign for the farmacia, which turned out to be a small counter within a convenience store, the medications tucked between shelves of cheap liquor, cans of beans, and tourist-trap trinkets. As I struggled to decipher the labels, men came in off the street to offer me hand-rolled cigarettes and small bags of weed, and I waved them away. All I wanted was to pop a couple Tylenol and crawl back into bed with Cora, but the pharmacist was nowhere in sight.
“You’re looking for this?” a man asked behind me. Impatient, I turned around, ready to tell the guy off, but stopped myself before the words were out. He was old, his eyes milky with cataracts. He held out a bottle of green liquid, the color and consistency of NyQuil.
“How’d you know?” I asked, reaching for my wallet. I must have looked as sick as I was beginning to feel.
His clouded eyes seemed to focus somewhere to the left and behind me. He slipped the bottle in a brown bag and passed it to me with a smile. “Lucky guess,” he said.
I stumbled off the curb, waving goodbye, feeling woozier by the minute. My feet felt like lead and my head began to pound. I twisted open the bottle and took a swig, the licorice and alcohol and menthol searing my throat. I focused on the dim light of the hotel in the distance and belted down another. Two tablespoons. That’s what the bottle back home had said, wasn’t it? Or had it been three?
I wedged myself back through the bars of the iron gate and ducked under the garage door I’d left slightly open. Inside, it was pitch black and I used the wall to hold me up as I felt my way to the room. I eased open the door, listening for the soft sound of Cora’s breathing as I flipped on the bathroom light.
The room was silent.
“Cora?” I whispered.
I switched on the light beside the bed.
It was empty, the sheets and comforter perfectly made.
“Cora?” I called, looking for the note I’d left on the side table. It was gone. Everything was gone. The luggage, the food, her strawberry shampoo. I threw open the door and flipped on the garage light. The Chevelle wasn’t there. Not a drop of oil stained the concrete where it had been.
Wrong room. It had to be the wrong room.
I opened the garage bay and checked the number. 342.
But that was impossible.
“Cora!” I shouted, banging on the next door, then the next one. The ground swam beneath me. I turned a slow circle, looking for my brother’s car, calling her name. “CORA!”
A light blinded me, and I threw my hands over my eyes. A private security guard armed with a heavy flashlight shouted in Spanish for me to quiet down. He snatched the bag from my hands and withdrew the bottle, aiming his light into the shallow pool of amber liquid that remained. A fat tequila worm drifted at the bottom.
“What is your name?” he demanded.
“I’m… I…” My mind spun, unable to find any traction. “I don’t know,” I answered, consumed by a fresh wave of panic.
He picked up a walkie-talkie. “…borracho,” I heard him say.
“No,” I said, backing away, my eyes swimming over the long line of garage doors, unable to find 342. “I am not drunk! That was not tequila! It was medicine! I’m sick!” I stumbled backward against the gate. “That’s it. I’m just sick,” I told myself. The security guard argued with the person on the radio, presumably over what to do with me.
Twisting sideways between the bars, I ran into the darkness.
* * *
I was breathless when I reached the pharmacy. The man with the cloudy eyes was sitting on the sidewalk, propped against the side of the building. At the sound of my voice, he reached out his hat, rattling the loose change inside it.
“That bottle you sold me! What was it?”
He answered in rapid Spanish, something about never having seen me before. I kicked the hat from his hands, scattering coins into the street.
“English! Speak English! I know you can!” I shouted.
He shook his head, his white eyes wide and confused.
“You know me! I know you know me! I was just here! Tonight! You gave me a bottle of something. Something green!”
A siren wailed, coming closer.
“Please!” I pleaded. “I’m looking for a girl. She was in that hotel.” I pointed down the dark road behind me, past the red and blue flashing lights coming closer. “In room 342! She’s gone. I don’t know where to find her!” My stomach lurched and I swallowed back the urge to be sick. Bracing myself against the wall, I bent to look in the old man’s face. “I know you know me.”
The heavy fall of boots closed in behind me.
His filmy eyes darted everywhere, blindly searching for mine and focused on nothing.
This man, this place, what he’d said… It was the truth.
But it was not real. It couldn’t be.
I fell to my knees, shouting Cora’s name, like it could wake me from this fever dream. The police wrenched my arms behind my back and dragged me away.
* * *
It took two weeks for my family’s lawyer and the US consulate to find me and have me transferred from the padded hospital room in Matamoros to a secure psychiatric ward in Harlingen. In both countries, I told my story to anyone who would listen, but no one believed me.
My brother picked at the tray of half-eaten food across the room, trying hard not to look at me. I had never dated a girl named Cora, my parents insisted over and over. And no girls had been reported missing from Harlingen that fit her description. Room 342 did not exist, the attendants of the small auto hotel said, and my brother’s car didn’t appear on any of the security surveillance footage. Even if they had seen me before, they would never admit it.
It’s called a No-Tell Motel for a reason, dipshit.
They found my brother’s Chevelle, empty of oil in a field just north of the border, but Mexican Immigration had no record of my crossing. The officer I’d bribed claimed he’d never seen me before.
It won’t be the same when you come back.
My brother swore he had no idea where I’d been, even after I begged him to tell everyone the truth. He looked uncomfortable. Worried and confused, like the man in the pharmacy had looked at me. Like maybe I was the one who didn’t understand the question. I rocked back and forth on the floor, dragging my nails across my skin, pulling at my own hair and saying Cora’s name over and over again, repeating the number 342 until a nurse came with a tiny cup with two green pills and a straitjacket.
“That’s right,” she cooed, feeding my arms through the sleeves. “You’re in your room. Room 342.” When she leaned across me to fasten the straps, she smelled like strawberry shampoo.
The squeaky wheels of the meal cart made a slow pass outside my door. The nurse glanced at my lunch tray. “Not hungry?”
I shook my head.
“Maybe later,” she said, guiding me gently to the bed.
This place, this room… none of it was real.
My voice trembled. “I don’t know your name.”
She smiled sweetly. “Sure, you do. You’ve been calling it all day.” She pointed to her badge and her name climbed up my throat.
“CORAAAAAAA!!!”
* * *
I am the patient in Room 342.
They give me pills through a slot in the door. A voice on the other side instructs me to take them. I tuck them under my tongue and open my mouth wide for the camera.
This is all I know.
This is not all I remember.
The theme for this rotation is Urban Legends. Maybe you’ll recognize this as a twist on the old story of the Vanishing Hotel Room.
There’s that special chill in the air, your fantasy team is probably already hopeless, and you feel a certain itch to create something new. That can only mean one thing: It’s time for National Novel Writing Month!
Every year, thousands of writers join in the month-long campaign to write a novel (50,000 words) in one month, in a collective burst of creativity that probably registers huge on the Universe’s Richter Scale of Awesome.
If you’re cracking your knuckles, readying to dive back into the NaNo ring, or if you’re a n00b to the whole crazy rigamarole, we want to help fuel your quest for 50K! So we’re bringing back our newsletter, Carpool Lane, a daily offering of inspiration, quotes on writing, resources, and of course .gifs!
Want some examples of the daily goodness we’ll be spittin’ your way? Try this (wam!) or this (pow!) or one of these (kablam!).
Don’t go into the NaNo circus without a shot of creative adrenaline — sign up now!
Welcome to YA Scavenger Hunt! This bi-annual event was first organized by author Colleen Houck as a way to give readers a chance to gain access to exclusive bonus material from their favorite authors…and a chance to win some awesome prizes! At this hunt, you not only get access to exclusive content from each author, you also get a clue for the hunt. Add up the clues, and you can enter for our prize–one lucky winner will receive one signed book from each author on the hunt in my team!But play fast: this contest (and all the exclusive bonus material) will only be online for 72 hours!
Go to the YA Scavenger Hunt page to find out all about the hunt. There are SIX contests going on simultaneously, and you can enter one or all! I am a part of the BLUE TEAM!
But there is also a red team, a gold team, an orange team, a red team, and an indie team for a chance to win a whole different set of signed books! If you’d like to find out more about the hunt, see links to all the authors participating, and see the full list of prizes up for grabs, go to the YA Scavenger Hunt page.
SCAVENGER HUNT PUZZLE
Directions: Below, you’ll notice that I’ve listed my favorite number. Collect the favorite numbers of all the authors on the blue team, and then add them up (don’t worry, you can use a calculator!).
Rules: Open internationally, anyone below the age of 18 should have a parent or guardian’s permission to enter. To be eligible for the grand prize, you must submit the completed entry form by October 5th, at noon Pacific Time. Entries sent without the correct number or without contact information will not be considered.
SCAVENGER HUNT POST
Today, I am hosting April Genevieve Tucholke!
April Genevieve Tucholke is the author of Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea and its sequel, Between the Spark and the Burn. She loves classic horror movies and coffee. She has lived in many places, including Scotland, and currently resides in Oregon.
Mad-lib blurb for BETWEEN THE SPARK AND THE BURN! (April’s husband and his librarian co-worker supplied some nouns, adjectives, and verbs, and here’s the result!)
***
The crooked-smiling cheerleader River West Redding, who danced into Violet’s life one glossy day and collapsed her world to pieces, is gone. Violet and Patricio, River’s other brother, are left to worry—until they catch a two a.m. radio program about strange events in a distant mountain town. They take off in search of River but are always a step behind, finding instead frenzied unicorns, witch bricks, and a winsome island with the thrum of something strange and vigorous just under the surface. It isn’t long before Violet begins to wonder if Patricio, the one Redding brother she thought corpse-like, has been hiding a stone of his own …
***
Wow. What a plot. A dancing, cheerleader love interest and a stone-hiding, corpse-like brother. Not to mention the frenzied unicorns and witch bricks. I’d read this.
The original blurb:
The crooked-smiling liar River West Redding, who drove into Violet’s life one summer day and shook her world to pieces, is gone. Violet and Neely, River’s other brother, are left to worry—until they catch a two a.m. radio program about strange events in a distant mountain town. They take off in search of River but are always a step behind, finding instead frenzied towns, witch hunts, and a wind-whipped island with the thrum of something strange and dangerous just under the surface. It isn’t long before Violet begins to wonder if Neely, the one Redding brother she thought trustworthy, has been hiding a secret of his own …
***
I loved this, April!!
To enter, you need to know that my favorite number is 8. Add up all the favorite numbers of the authors on the blue team and you’ll have all the secret code to enter for the grand prize!
One month to lift off, folks. So, let’s have some fun of the BEWARE THE WILD variety.
And since it’s not a party until someone says nice things about my debut novel, allow me to kick things off right with a trifecta:
“A lovely modern fairy tale as tangled and dark as the swamp it lurks in. Parker’s debut is American myth at its very best!” —Kiersten White, NYT bestselling author
“Parker has a nice touch with the Southern flavor of Sterling’s Louisiana town, steeped in superstition and silence…This engaging debut should enjoy a wide audience.” —Kirkus Reviews
“A creepy, atmospheric book that will draw readers in…Beware the Wild breathes new life into the teen supernatural genre.” —School Library Journal
Now, it’s a party. And I’ve made all sorts of goodies for you, including the GIFs above. I’m giving away bookmarks for marking books, book plates (of which there are two designs and you must pick only one, Highlander style), magnets for magging nets, and I <3 YA Books bumper stickers. All are absolutely free with your pre-order of BEWARE THE WILD.
This post is going to be long enough as is, so let’s get right to it. I’m celebrating in two ways:
Submit proof of purchase (email, scan, photo, etc. of your receipt) at [email protected], along with a valid mailing address.
On October 21st, 2014, you will be mailed a signed bookmark, your choice of a cherry blossom or gator head bookplate, a fancy schmancy magnet, and an I <3 YA Books bumper sticker. (NOTE: These bumperstickers will accompany me on the Roadside YA Tour in late October. The only ways to acquire these is to pre-order now or attend a tour event later).
Submissions for the giveaway close October 20th, 2014 at 11:59pm PST.
Now, because BEWARE THE WILD and BLUE LILY, LILY BLUE come out on the very same day and because one day long ago Maggie said to me, “Parker, stop whinging and write something good,” it’s cosmically significant that I find myself in possession of one of the oh-so-rare ARCs of BLLB. To keep myself good with the cosmos, I’m passing this good fortune on to one of you.
In addition, I’m giving away a small bundle of some of my favorite collections of words. They are: THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER by Octavia Butler, SAVING FRANCESCA by Melina Marchetta, THE BOOK OF THREE by Lloyd Alexander, and THE DARK IS RISING by Susan Cooper.
One winner will get all 5 books.
2. BOOK PRIZE:
Reblog this post and you will be automatically entered to win the stack of my favorite books along with the ARC of Maggie Stiefvater’s BLUE LILY, LILY BLUE. Only one reblog per person will be counted!
Tweet some version of “Pre-order BEWARE THE WILD! Enter to win an ARC of BLUE LILIY, LILY BLUE! *include a link to this post here* #bewarethewild” for a bonus second entry. NOTE: Please use the hashtag so I can find it!
For all the usual reasons, this contest is only open to those with a valid North American mailing address. (I wish it wasn’t so!)
Submissions for the contest close September 30th, 2014 at 11:59pm PST.
Just to be absolutely, 100%, no bones about it clear: no pre-order is necessary to enter this contest.
