Page 22 of Love at Full Tilt

Only this time, the focus is on the makeshift stage opposite the bleachers.

Toward the back of it, a DJ stands behind his turntables.

At the front, beside a microphone, a pretty blond girl in a purple sequined dress flashes a five-hundred-watt smile as she holds a crown atop her head.

The white-and-red sparkly sash across her chest reads Prom Queen .

Her voice rings out against the high ceiling as she thanks everyone for voting for her.

She’s clearly animatronic, as is most of the crowd, though Mason and I point out what look to be a few people among them. I grasp another handful of his shirt when one of the humans turns around and I swear they have red eyes. We speed-walk our way to the next room.

And find ourselves face to face with a zombie.

I scream. The sound echoes off walls I can’t see in the dark. I’ve stopped walking, and my mouth gapes, howling into the peeling flesh of this…thing…in front of me.

“Lia.” Mason takes my hand. “It’s fake.”

“What?”

“The zombies.” He points, and for the first time my vision moves beyond the creature in front of me. There’s a whole horde, a symphony of gnashing teeth and wordless groans and shuffling feet that go nowhere.

I close my eyes and count to twenty, letting my heart slow and my breathing follow. When I open them again, I’m able to view what’s in front of me clearly for the first time.

They’re ridiculous. One has an eye hanging from its socket. Another has pulled off its own arm and is gnawing on it like a dog with a bone. One toward the back has a giant hole through its chest like it got in a fight with a cannonball.

There’s nothing scary about this, I tell myself.

Mason steps a little closer. “You okay?”

I nod.

“We have to go through them, like the dancers,” he says. “You ready?”

I’m not, but I nod again anyway. You can do this, Lia.

Mason’s shoulders are taut, and his jaw clenches as we work our way through the group.

We’re both tiptoeing, as if we might shake one of these things to life if we bump it. My muscles feel like shoelaces pulled too tightly, and I can’t get a full breath into my lungs until I see the pack of zombies beginning to thin.

I drop my eyes to the white line and let my gaze cling to it like a lifeline. If I stare at my feet, then maybe everything else around us doesn’t exist. It’s like the whole “if a tree falls in the forest” thing. I just have to keep looking—

Six of the zombies break from their rows and rush at us.

This time it’s Mason doing the yelling. “Shit!” he screams. Then he grabs my arm as if I’m going to protect him.

Were we not in a haunted house, and if my bladder were not seconds from forsaking me again, I would give this guy a lecture on why in situations where monsters are trying to kill you, it’s okay to maintain conventional gender roles.

Instead, I just run, sticking to that white line like it’s the yellow brick road and I’m Dorothy.

The next curtain of streamers might as well be the gates of heaven by the way I rush at them. Once safely on the other side, I slow down and pace in a circle. My heart is still in my throat trying to strangle me.

Mason stands wide-eyed beside me, huffing breaths.

“We’re both chickens,” I mumble, laughing despite my racing pulse.

He grins. “We’re almost there. Two more rooms.”

He offers me his arm, and I clasp it tightly as we move forward.

This room looks like a parking lot, complete with life-size cars and streetlamps that climb to the ceiling.

Zombies chase promgoers around cars and into the woods at the far end of the room.

Others huddle over bodies splayed across the trunks and hoods of cars, feeding.

With only the glow stick and the dim light of the streetlamps, it’s hard to tell which are real and which are robots, and of course, the white line leads us directly through the carnage.

I can hear the soft chuff of Mason’s laughter as I curse under my breath.

“This place is supposed to be for kids,” I whisper as we pass a particularly gory scene of zombies feasting on guy in a letterman jacket. The sounds are too authentic, and there’s blood dripping on the floor. I’ll be sending an angry letter to Fableland’s CEO for whatever nightmares this provokes.

I’m about to say this out loud when one of the zombies turns its head and looks in my direction.

“Nope!” I yell. Then I’m shoving Mason in front of me.

We don’t get too far before Debbie Lemon sprints out of the darkness and rushes at the zombie. Mason turns around to watch the fight, but I press my hands to his chest and keep herding him forward.

I need that damned clue and then I need sunlight. And some kind of palate cleanser. Fourteen puppy videos might help. Or a bunch of those soothing clips of people wrapping presents. I might have wasted too many hours on those during Christmas (and failed terribly at trying to replicate them).

We reach the final room, where Debbie Lemon stands on a pile of zombie corpses as the sun rises behind her.

Her dress is ripped to shreds and covered in gore, her hair is a mess, and she’s missing one shoe, but her prom queen crown sits perfectly straight on her head.

In one hand, she holds a cup of lemonade.

“When life gives you lemons, use them to kill zombies,” she declares. One of the zombies in the pile at her feet moans, and she dumps the liquid on its face.

As we step forward, I see the red-and-white prom queen sash has fluttered to the ground. It’s a little too close to the undead bodies for my taste, but attached to its far end is the QR code.

I bend and scan it. Mason comes over to do the same.

As he reaches down with his phone, the nearest zombie juts out its head and snaps its teeth so close to Mason’s hand that he yelps and falls backward.

I can’t help but laugh. “Admit it, you peed a little,” I joke as I help him up.

“That dude’s lucky he didn’t get a shoe to the face.”

We hurry outside, and I take a deep breath of warm air. My heart is still racing as I check my phone for updates.

I’m definitely going to binge gift wrapping videos during lunch.

A similar congratulations message from yesterday pops up on my screen, confirming that I’ve made it through day three.

I can see the same banner on Mason’s phone from where he stands beside me.

Then a new notification appears, announcing that we now have access to a leaderboard so we can watch in real time as contestants finish up the day.

I’m still hoping the obscurity of the three clues means we’ve finished at the top, but my heart drops when the board appears on my screen. I have to scroll more than once to find my name, all the way toward the bottom at sixty-six. Mason is right behind me at sixty-seven.

I swallow hard against the lurch of my stomach. We barely made it through. There are only three spots left, and they fill up as I stand there staring at my phone.

We could have lost. That can’t happen. Not now. Not after Mason told me about the storytelling department. Not after I brought Caelyssa to life today.

“We were too close to getting cut,” I say, looking over at Mason.

He nods solemnly. “Did you see who’s number one?”

My gaze flicks back to my phone, and I search for the top of the list.

The face of that blonde from Hellfire stares at me from the first position. Beside her photo it reads Erica K.

“Hell no,” I mumble. “She’s not winning.”

“That means no rides, no food, no messing around tomorrow. It looks like the top ten contestants cleared all three clues today in an hour.” He points at his phone’s screen.

I don’t know how I’m going to convince Tess and Issy.

But I stare up at Mason, determination on my face. “Then tomorrow, we do it in forty-five minutes.”