Jeff Strand: A Bad Day for Voodoo

“Doesn’t matter. It doesn’t need to. What’s important is that it has his essence.”

“If you’ve spent the past week collecting Mr. Click’s essence, our friendship is over.”

“Nah, just one strand of hair. Found it right on his desk. No problem at all.”

“Where did you get the doll?”

“It’s a place called Esmeralda’s House of Jewelry. But they have voodoo stuff too. It’s across town on Duncan Street, where all of those small shops are.”

Duncan Street was where tourists went to be scammed. Not that Geyser, Florida, attracted a lot of tourists. We didn’t even have a geyser. The city was named after William Geyser III, who invented some breakthrough in construction in the late 1800s that nobody in Geyser really understands, but that was enough to make him rich and get a city named after him. His statue in our central park was actually built as somebody else in 1913, but that guy turned out to be a bank robber, and the other city sold the statue to us, and everybody agreed to pretend that William Geyser III had worn a beard and gained a few pounds.

Geyser was an okay place to live. We were big enough to support two Walmarts but not big enough that any cool bands ever played here. The city had a bizarre design—we had wealthy, gated communities right next to neighborhoods where you could get knifed for pocket change and a few Tic Tacs. Most of my friends and I lived in the middle-class areas. I sure didn’t plan to live here past high school, but I also wasn’t looking to pack up my stuff and hitchhike to LA or anything like that.

“I can’t believe you went all the way to Duncan Street for that junk.”

“This creepy old lady works there. She did all of the enchantment and everything.”

“For eighty bucks?”

“Well, yeah, and also a trade.” He pulled up his shirtsleeve, revealing a bandage. “A pint of blood. I’m not sure what she’s gonna do with it.”

I gaped at him. “You gave her blood ?”

“Why not? My mom donates blood for a Popsicle and a free Thermos. Why not some virgin blood for a discount on a voodoo doll?”

“I can’t believe you!” I said, silently vowing that in college I’d find friends who were less deranged. “How could you possibly think this was real?” I asked, shaking the doll.

“Stop that!” he shouted, grabbing the doll away from me.

“You could snap his spine! Look, Tyler, this is serious stuff, and you can’t goof around. We’re not eleven years old anymore.”

At that point, I realized to my slack-j awed, bug-eyed, gasp- inducing amazement that Adam actually believed in the doll. He truly thought that this ridiculous little doll could harm Mr. Click. I’d always known that he wasn’t Adam Westell, Boy Genius, but this was far beyond anything I would’ve expected from him.

“Humor me,” he said, carefully placing the doll back in the box and closing the lid. “If it doesn’t work, then I’m dumb, and you don’t have to pay back the eighty bucks. If it does work.c’mon, imagine how sweet it’ll be to jab a pin in that thing right in the middle of class!”

“What’ll happen?”

“His leg will hurt. Right in the middle of class!”

“And why exactly is that awesome?”

Adam sighed. “He’s standing in front of the class, talking about some war. You poke the doll in the leg. ‘Ow! Ow!’ Mr. Click gets a sharp pain in his leg! You poke the doll in the arm. ‘Ow! Ow!’ Sharp pain in the arm! He’ll be freaking out! Poke him all over the place. He won’t know if he’s having a heart attack or his appendix is going to burst or if he caught an STD.” “And that’s hilarious?”

“Do I really need to explain why having Mr. Click feel pain is a good thing? The guy is Satan in a blender with Hitler!”

“You know you wasted your money, right? It’s the most wasted eighty bucks you’ll ever spend.”

“I did it for you.”

“Well, in the future, don’t do things like that for me. Figure out other things to do. Buy me a gift card. C’mon, Adam, voodoo dolls aren’t real! What’s the matter with you?”

Adam traced his index finger along one of the symbols on the box lid. “I’m not saying that I completely believe it, but you should’ve talked to that old lady at the shop. She was really convincing. The way I look at it, even if the doll turns out to be a complete rip-off—”

“Not if. When.”

“—if the doll turns out to be fake, it’ll still make you feel better to jab pins into it during class, right? Like when you put somebody’s picture on a dartboard? That always feels good.” “I’m not doing it.”

“I went to a lot of trouble to figure out a way for you to get even with Mr. Satan Hitler. You’re not even going to humor me? How is your life worse if you poke pins in a doll?”

I supposed Adam had a point. This was really stupid, but it wasn’t like he was asking me to run naked through a pep rally. (He had in the past, and I had declined.) Ultimately, sticking a pin into a doll was not a big deal.

“Why don’t you do it?” I asked.

“I’m not the one who got screwed. I deserved my F. This is about you.”

“All right. Fine. Whatever. How does it work?”

Adam grinned. “Exactly the way you’d expect a voodoo doll to work.” He removed the box lid and picked up a pin from inside. “You stick the pin into the doll, and Mr. Click feels it. Take it out, and the pain goes away.”

“Does it have to be that pin?”

“Nah. The old lady just threw in a couple of them for free.”

“Have you tested it?”

Adam shook his head. “It’s no fun if you can’t see his reaction. Do it today in class. Don’t tell Kelley.”

That wasn’t going to be a problem. Kelley kind of liked Adam, dubbing him “quirky,” but if I told her that I was thinking about playing along with a voodoo-doll scheme, she would’ve instantly broken up with me. She was very practical about those sorts of things. “Dabbling in the nonexistent supernatural realm? New boyfriend, please.”

When we got to school, I put the box in my locker and went to algebra class. I didn’t think about the doll much during the day because, as I’ve said before, it was stupid. Between sixth and seventh period, I went to my locker, took the doll out of the box, and put it in my backpack.

I wished that I could just lie about it (“Pinned it. Nothin’.”), but Adam sat right next to me.

Is it possible that maybe, just maybe, a small part of me believed that the doll was truly enchanted with the magical power of voodoo? Was there some insignificant part of my psyche that wanted vengeance with such intensity that I subconsciously convinced myself that this could work?

Nope. The doll was a bunch of crap.

When I sat at my desk, I left my backpack unzipped on the floor next to me. I wasn’t going to actually take the doll out, because voodoo or not, I sure didn’t want anybody to see me holding a doll in history class.

The bell rang, and Mr. Click gave us his traditional afternoon scowl. “Did everybody read pages two-forty through two-fifty- three like you were supposed to?”

Most of the kids nodded.

“Good. Then this pop quiz should pose no problem.”

The class groaned. Mr. Click handed a stack of papers to the first kid in each row so they could pass them back. I had a sudden desire to poke a voodoo doll right between the eyes, but I definitely didn’t want him to see me reaching into my backpack before a quiz. The quiz sucked.

After ten minutes, Mr. Click told us that our time was up and to pass the quizzes forward. As we did so, Mr. Click stared right at me, and his beady eyes seemed to say, “I know you have a voodoo doll in your backpack, and if you try to stick a pin in it, I will destroy you and everyone you’ve ever loved.”