Middle School: How I Got Lost in London (9 page)

NO WAY was I going to spoil this one for the rest of class. I shook my head “no” furiously.

Gordon smiled. “Well, I’ll tell you then, shall I?”

OVER A HUNDRED
years ago, two rather well-dressed Victorian gentlemen are taking a tour around the famous Madame Fifi’s House of Wax. With them is a lady in whom they both have a romantic interest.

“I say,” says one, twirling his mustache, “have you been down to this Temple of Terrors they’ve been writing about in the
Pall Mall Gazette
? They do say it’s frightfully frightful.”

“Frightfully frightful indeed,” says the second gent, as he adjusts his waistcoat on his ample stomach.

Eleanor (the lady) clutches her pearls. “Oh, Cedric, it sounds perfectly dreadful.”

Sensing their chance to impress their lady friend, both men preen.

“A lot of sensationalist rot, no doubt,” says William. “The ravings of a journalist with an overactive imagination.”

“You don’t sound terribly convinced, William,” says Eleanor.

“Oh, indeed not, Eleanor, indeed not.”

“Well, William,” says Cedric, “what say you we descend the steps to discover for ourselves just how frightening this place is?”

“What a wheeze it will be.”

And the two gents take the stone steps down into the Temple of Terrors.

“Well, I
say
!” says William. He peers around into the gloom, seeing the grotesque, waxy figures staring sightlessly back at him. His skin crawls with fear. “It’s not at all frightening, what?”

“No, not at all frightening,” says Cedric, swallowing hard and finding he has a sudden need to use the bathroom.

“Why, I would quite happily spend the night here,” says William. Who would quite happily do anything
but
spend the night there.

“And I would quite happily join you,” agrees Cedric. Who would rather eat a bowl of rancid horse manure than spend the night in the Temple of Terrors.

“Then how about a friendly wager?” suggests William. Who happens to know his friend has little spare money, and will be unlikely to take him up on the bet.

“What a
splendid
idea,” says Cedric, who unbeknownst to William has recently inherited a goodly sum from a favorite aunt.

And so, because both men are more frightened of losing face than they are of the Temple of Terrors, and because both men are so terribly determined to impress the fair Eleanor, they both agree to spend the night…

“
NEITHER MAN WAS
able to stay the whole night,” continued Gordon, as he told the tale. “They ran screaming, wide-eyed with terror, frothing with fear, gibbering about ghosts and horrors. And the very next day, both men were found at their homes…”

Gordon fixed us with a stare. You could have heard a pin drop.

“…
dead
…”

As one, we gasped.

“Both having taken their own lives.”

He mimed a noose and stuck out his tongue. “Rerk!”

We gasped again. The wax figures now seemed to crowd in on us. The low light reflected from the pale, gleaming skin of executioners and their victims. The unseeing eyes of murderers seemed to stare at us.

“And so William’s Wager remains uncollected,” Gordon said, “until the day someone brave enough to dare spend the night in the Temple of Terrors should accept the challenge…”

And with that, he moved on, wearing an air of quiet triumph. We followed meekly behind him, lost for wisecracks.

I felt an elbow in my ribs.

“I bet you’re too chicken to take up the wager,” whisper-sneered Miller, loud enough for Jeanne to hear.

“I’m not scared of a few wax models,” I whisper-sneered right back.

“Bet y’are…”

“Bet I’m not,” I said.

“Bet you’re too chicken to accept William’s Wager,” Miller said again.

“Bet I’m
not
.”

Over a century since William and Cedric had pretended they weren’t scared, me and Miller were doing the same. But William and Cedric were guys in the past, right? People were dumb then. They didn’t have TiVO or CGI or YouTube. It would be different with me and Miller, right?

Wrong.

Before I knew it, Miller and I were daring each other back and forth. And word had spread through the group. I sensed a chance—my big chance—to improve my Popularity Score and impress Jeanne and get one over on Miller—all at the same time.

I could win.

For once, I could win.

“Yeah,” I said, “I accept the wager. Just as long as you do too.”

“It’s a deal,” Miller said with a grin on his face.

He hadn’t batted an eyelid. Wasn’t fazed at all. Just accepted the bet. Which meant he was thinking exactly what I was thinking. And what I was thinking was this:

No way were we really going to spend the night in the Temple of Terrors. As soon as the teachers had a roll-call and discovered us missing they’d return to Madame Fifi’s and fetch us. Oh, sure, we were going to be in a truckload of trouble with Donatello and Dwight. But look at the positives: the increased Popularity Score, the admiration of Jeanne…The fact that I would get all this without actually having to spend the night in the Temple of Terrors. It was the best idea I’d had all trip.

Wasn’t it?

OURS WAS THE
last tour of the day, so Miller and I agreed to hang back and hide when the group returned upstairs. They’d do a roll-call on the coach, so by my estimation we had about ten minutes of hiding before we were hauled out of there.

A scary ten minutes.

A tense ten minutes.

But just ten minutes.

I ducked behind a scene from the French Revolution, coming face to face with a severed head in a basket.

The door to the exhibit closed. I heard a key turn in the lock.

And I waited.

A silence settled over the room. A sudden rumbling startled me. But then I remembered it was a Tube train passing nearby. Silence fell again. An eerie, scary silence.

I imagined the wax figures coming alive then stopped myself. How about if I imagined them dancing together instead? No, because that would still mean them coming alive. How about I just gave my imagination a rest?

I did that instead.

Then, after a while, I whispered, “Hey, Miller? You scared yet?”

There was no reply. I tittered to myself. Browning his britches, I bet.