Page 21 of Love at Full Tilt

The Last Steps Immersive Experience

Vale of Villainy, Fableland

Orlando, FL

DEBBIE LEMON

*preens before a horde of zombies shambling toward her*

“Don’t you think chain saws make lovely prom accessories?”

—Last Steps (1:24:18)

“I probably should have mentioned this earlier, but I may have wet myself the tiniest bit the last time I was at a haunted house.”

I can’t believe I just admitted that out loud, but as I read the terrifying warning sign at the front of the queue for Last Steps, it seems like good information for Mason to have.

Especially since, according to him, we’re going to need to get to the end to find Debbie Lemon.

He snorts. “There’s a bathroom near the fried dough stand.” He points behind us at the double doors swinging shut, locking us in.

I narrow my eyes at him. “It was not my fault.”

“I’m going to need more information,” he says.

I sigh. “Two years ago, this production company put on a haunted house in an abandoned warehouse a few towns over from us. It was professionally done—actors and costumes and makeup artists, the whole thing. Tess and Issy wanted to go, but they didn’t want to leave me out.”

We shuffle forward in line, watching as groups of people disappear through the double doors at the opposite side of the room.

“On top of the regular haunted house stuff, this place had floaters. They wandered around the people waiting in line and circulated in the warehouse, too. The three of us were going through a room made up to look like an abandoned hospital. Rusted metal-framed beds, syringes strewn across the floor, cracked linoleum, and flickering fluorescent lights. An old wheelchair in the corner kept rolling back and forth on its own. And in the last bed, as far away from us as possible, there was a lump under the sheets. It was quivering.” I pause to meet Mason’s gaze. “Quivering.”

He grins.

“So, like fools, the three of us wander toward it to figure out what we’re looking at. It’s too big to be a baby or an animal. But it’s not big enough to be an adult. And when we get close, we realize it’s moaning.” I scrub my hands over my face as the sound plays in the back of my head.

“And we’re so focused on the bed, we don’t hear the floater come in. He comes right up to me and whispers, ‘You’re doomed.’ I screamed. Oh my God, did I scream.” I run my hand down my throat. “I swear I have scars from it.”

“Okay, I would have punched the guy,” Mason declares.

“I might have, if I hadn’t been so mortified about wetting myself. A little. Just a little.” I feel the heat in my cheeks. A few minutes ago, he said I was beautiful, and now I’m doing everything I can to torpedo that image.

“If it helps, I once nailed my boot to the floor at a construction site.” From the gravity in his voice, you’d think he was in a church confessional. “It went through my sock too. It’s a miracle I didn’t get my own foot.”

I laugh. It takes effort not to press my hand over my chest to stop my heart from wildly beating. This is the magic of Mason. No one else has ever made me feel so at home in my own skin.

The family of four ahead of us steps into the attraction, and I can see that there’s nothing beyond those doors but darkness.

Mason and I scoot a little closer together as we approach the attendant. She’s tanned and blond and dressed like a gym teacher: tight white tee, tiny green running shorts, a whistle around her neck. She’s doing a terrible job of pretending she’s not gawking at Mason.

My stomach ties itself in a bow.

The girl hands him a glow stick and shepherds us to the threshold. “Follow the white line,” she says ominously. Then she shuts usin.

Without the ambient light from the entrance, the only thing breaking up the dark is the sickly green glow that halos Mason’s left hand. He holds the stick out so we can find the line on the floor.

“Tell me more about this job with your parents.” He’s whispering, as if to avoid disturbing anything in the room. His voice is already so quiet that I have to lean in to hear him. A few strands of my hair feather across his arm.

I shrug, although I’m not sure he can see me. “It’ll be the same as what I do now. Keeping the office organized, doing the paperwork for sales. Eventually they want me to become a salesperson.” I sigh. “It could be worse, I guess. Tess is always reminding me I should be grateful.”

The white line guides us around a corner, and the darkness thins as we cross into a high school gym.

To our right, metal bleachers steeple toward the ceiling.

Animatronic couples in flouncy pastel dresses and awkward tuxes hold hands or make out on the benches.

A few people sit alone with cups of punch or stare, bored, at the crowd dancing on the basketball court.

An old Whitney Houston song my mother likes to belt out croons from speakers in the corner of the room.

“You can be grateful and still not love what you’re doing,” Mason says.

“My father started plans to open the store a month after my mother found out she was pregnant with me because he wanted to build something he could leave me. He wanted to give me a legacy. The grand opening was on my first birthday. It was literally decided from birth that this is what I would be doing.” I try my best not to sound bitter, but the words slice at my tongue.

Mason listens without pushing me to say more.

I appreciate it. I’m tired of defending how I feel about my future.

I’m not like Tess. I’m not fixated on having stocks and 401-whatevers and all the other stuff she talks about like she’s an accountant, not a soon-to-be college freshman.

I just want to be happy. And to feel like the life I’m living is mine.

Mason and I pause when we reach the dance floor. The white line we’ve been following zigzags straight through the crowd. Goose bumps rise up on my arms and across the back of my neck. It’s a tight squeeze in spots and who knows what’s lurking in there.

“This is messed up,” he mutters.

I smack his arm. “You’ve been here before.”

“It doesn’t make it any less creepy.”

I groan. At this rate, I’m definitely going to wet myself again.

And the worst part is, we have to go single file. “I’ll go first,” he offers.

“So something can eat me from behind?”

He laughs. So loud it echoes around us. My insides flutter, light and airy and manic, like moths are dancing in all my organs.

Over the past two days, that laugh has become one of my favorite sounds.

I want to hear it again and again, and a million times more.

I want to be responsible for every one of them.

“Then you go first.”

I squawk. “I’m not going to be some zombie appetizer.”

He groans and rubs his forehead with his palm. “Lia, I can’t do both.”

I huff out a beleaguered sigh. “Fine. Go.” As soon as he walks in front of me, I grab the back of his shirt and ball it in my hand.

You’d think being close enough to the animatronics that I can stare them in face would make them look less real, but between the costumes and the dim lighting and the whole atmosphere of the room, I have to search for clues—the way their chests don’t rise and fall with breaths, the stilted manner of their blinking—to be certain they aren’t people.

Identifying those tics makes me feel better for about ten seconds.

But then I see them through the forest of bodies, a couple toward the edge of the crowd.

They’re people, not animatronics, I realize, as the guy spins the girl and dips her, and then they share a kiss.

They must have been at it for a while now, becausetheir labored breathing breaks through the piped-in music.

I wait for them to charge us or turn into zombies or something, but they keep dancing, and even though they’re good, the whole thing feels creepier than any monster. It’s like they’re ghosts caught in an endless time loop.

My fingers dig more deeply into Mason’s T-shirt.

Once we’re past the dancing couple, we push through a wall of silver and green streamers back into darkness. I don’t know how they do it, but the music fades out as well, so only our footsteps and breathing disturb the silence.

Forget his shirt. My hand clamps his biceps.

Mason raises the glow stick to illuminate my face. I see his jaw feather in the eerie light. The green turns his eyes into kaleidoscopes, a circle of gems refracting. “Will you share one of your stories?”

I choke on his unexpected request. “What?”

“One of the ones you want to pitch when you work here.” The way he says when, not if, turbo-charges my heart.

“It’s…um…not really fully formed yet.”

“I don’t care. I want to hear it anyway.”

I haven’t even told my friends this idea. Still, I can’t say no to him. I don’t want to. “Her name’s Princess Caelyssa Whitepetal. She has a body like mine, and long golden-blond hair she keeps braided down her back. She’s a ranger.”

“Like a park ranger?”

I snort. “No. Like a hunter. She’s a master at the bow and arrow. She can weave her way through any forest like it was her home. She has a unique connection with wildlife.” I fall quiet. “That’s all I’ve got so far.”

His arm presses deeper into mine. “Keep working on it. I want to hear more.”

At that, my heart pounds so hard in my chest I’m surprised it doesn’t burst out. He keeps doing this, making everything that’s always been so out of my reach feel suddenly attainable.

We’ve been walking down the same dark corridor for long enough that if not for the unbroken white line at our feet, I’d be certain we got lost. Finally, we reach a new set of streamers, and when we cross through them, we find ourselves back in the gym.