I wonder what else besides Micah’s dad dying made him feel bad enough to turn to “safe self-destructiveness.” His eyebrow ring is new. Did he do it when he was hurting about Amber? Before I can even decide if I want to ask him, he opens his door and slides out of the car. “Come on. Quit stalling,” he says.

We follow the stepping-stones made of shards of broken mirror through the high grass and up to the porch. Someone has spray-painted a red line on one of the boarded-up windows. Scribbled in Magic Marker below it are the words: You must be this tall to enter the House of Torture (and pancakes). I try to peer through a spidery crack in the warped plywood but all I can see is darkness. Micah could be taking me to a crack den for all I know.

He practically has to yank me up the stairs. Half-rotted steps groan under my feet. A wind chime made of fake (I hope) bones and pieces of broken chain clanks in the soft summer breeze.

“I bet someone got murdered in this place,” I mutter.

“I’m about ready to murder me some pancakes,” Micah says. The door creaks impressively as he pushes on it. He holds it open for me.

The inside of the restaurant is crowded with clusters of teens and college kids who look like they could be extras on Undead Academy.

“Popular,” I say. As my eyes adjust to the gloom, I see that we’re standing in a dim room underneath a tarnished candelabra filled with misshapen red candles. The black-and-white-tiled floor is smeared with drips of crimson wax—it totally looks like a crime scene. I half expect some supermodel-hot CSI tech wearing a body-hugging gray jumpsuit to greet us. Instead, a hostess wearing fishnet stockings, a patent-leather strapless dress, and a bored expression doesn’t even bother to say hi. She stands behind a guillotine-shaped podium, clicking her sparkly, black fingernails against the wooden surface to the beat of a song she’s humming to herself.

“Hey, Lyla.” Micah strides up to her like they’re old friends. “Is Phoenix working?”

The hostess licks her lips, as if Micah has asked something extra perverted. “Are you looking for more than a server?”

“Oh no. Food only.” Micah shudders.

“Wait time is about fifteen minutes.” Lyla jots down Micah’s name on a notepad full of unintelligible scribble. “I’ll see if Phoenix is available.” She slides out from behind the podium and heads toward the kitchen.

“Who’s Phoenix?” I ask.

“Amber’s sister.” Micah rests one shoulder against the wall. The burgundy wallpaper is peeling in places, revealing plain concrete beneath.

“Oh. So Amber won’t actually be here?”

“She doesn’t work a regular job so she’s harder to accidentally run into.” He picks at a loose spot of wallpaper. “I figured the indirect route might be less obvious anyway.”

The indirect route—vintage Dead Chinese Warlord. “Wow, you’re good. It’s like you’ve done this before.” I watch the tiny scab-like flecks of maroon flutter to the floor.

Micah stops picking. “No, but I know Phoenix will report back to Amber in excruciating detail.” He winks. “Feel free to hang all over me.”

“Ha-ha,” I say. “Minimal touching, remember?” I peer past the guillotine and into the main dining room. Replicas of old-fashioned torture devices—a rack, a hangman’s platform, a dunking booth—are stationed throughout the dining area like some sort of depraved physical fitness circuit. “Where the hell have you taken me?”

“Check this out.” Micah heads toward a pair of doors marked SADISTS and MASOCHISTS. I think they’re the bathrooms, but I’m not sure. I make a mental note not to drink too much so I don’t have to find out. He points at a silver rectangle that looks like an old-fashioned pay phone. As I squint to try to read the instructions mounted above the box, Micah slides a quarter into the machine.

“Hold these,” he says, giving me a pair of brass handles attached to metal cables.

“What are—” Before I can get my question out, a wave of electric current races through my body. Ouch! I drop the handles. “What the hell?”

Micah laughs. “It’s a shock generator. I hit you with the voltage of an electric eel.”

“Dude! Why would you do that?”

He laughs again and then grabs my wrists as I lunge for him. “You’re kind of a brute, you know?”

My face crumples. Jason used to call me butch sometimes. It made me so mad. I could do fifteen really girly things an hour but the one time I punched him or belched or scored a kick-ass goal off him, he always made me feel like the least sexy person in the world.

Micah drops my hands. “What? I was only kidding, Lainey.” He backs slowly away from me like I’m a bomb in danger of detonating.

“I’ll show you brute,” I say, faking a smile. I pass the brass handles to him. “My turn.”

“Okay,” Micah says, “but be gentle. Don’t hit me with taser or I might piss myself.”

“Ew.” I bend in to look at the five choices: 1. NERVE CONDUCTION TEST. 2. BABY ELECTRIC EEL. 3. CANINE SHOCK COLLAR. 4. CATTLE PROD. 5. TASER. “There’s no way this is really taser strength, is it? People would be collapsing on the floor.”

“Not sure. I’ve never been brave enough to try it.”

I don’t know if it’s because I’m feeling nice or because I’m skeeved out at the thought of Micah peeing his pants, but I give him a blast of baby electric eel.

He yelps. Then he grins. “You went soft on me, didn’t you?”

Before I can answer, Lyla coughs meaningfully and gestures to us with one of her glittery black talons. “Your table’s ready.”

We follow her to a booth near the back of the dining area. There’s a potted plant on the table—a Venus flytrap.

“That’s one way to take care of bugs, I guess.” I stare at the tiny teeth adorning each pair of leaves, wondering if they’re as prickly as they look.

“Check that out.” Micah nods toward something behind me.

I turn. On the far wall, there’s an old-time movie projector screen. The film is a hazy black-and-white movie from before I was born. Some guy getting electroshock treatment. His body spasms and convulses as the current moves through him. I get a little jittery just watching.

“Is there an age requirement for this place?” I ask.

“There’s the height requirement outside, but I don’t think it’s enforced,” Micah says. “But you have to be eighteen to tour the interactive torture museum in the basement.” He makes air quotes when he says the word interactive.

“What does that involve?” I try to fight back the blush creeping up in my cheeks.

“I’ve never been down there so I can’t say. Probably nothing too deviant.” He gives me a suggestive look. “You want to check it out? I bet Phoenix wouldn’t card us.”

“No,” I say quickly. A trio of girls with Kool-Aid dye jobs and big sunglasses turn to look at me from the next table over. One of them snickers. I grab the menu and hide behind it.

The food choices at Mizz Creant’s include not just pancakes, but also waffles, omelets, and other assorted breakfast items. The laminated menu is shaped like a skull and crossbones. I skim the choices under the heading PANCAKES: SAW-BERRY SURPRISE. CHOKE-A-LOT CHIP. SIN-A-MON SPICE.

A girl with short, white-blonde hair, wearing a black rubber skirt and a tank top made of what looks like overlapping safety pins, sidles up to the table. She’s got a spiked collar around her neck and rings of black eye makeup around her eyes. “Look who’s come out of hiding. What’s up, kid?”

“Hey, Phoenix.” Micah nods toward me. “This is—”

“No one cares.” The girl makes a throat-slitting gesture. “I assume you’re not here because you want me to make you my bitch, so what are you eating?”

“I like a girl who gets right to the point,” Micah says. “I’ll have the Destructor omelet. With bacon spears and hashbrowns.”

Phoenix is carrying a little notebook with the metal spiral partially unbent and formed into a shank. She nods at Micah but makes no move to write anything down. “Would you like your hashbrowns asphyxiated?”

“Oh yeah. Smother away,” he says.

She pops her gum. “And what does your rebound chick want?”

I make a noise somewhere between a gasp and a yelp. Phoenix doesn’t even glance in my direction.

“She can order for herself,” Micah says.

“Aww. Wait till I tell Amber you’ve gone all submissive.” Phoenix turns her black-ringed eyes toward me and gives me her best bored expression.

I start to order but no sound comes out. I clear my throat. “I’ll have the Saw-berry pancakes. With bacon spears.”

“Fabulous.” She spins around and heads toward the kitchen. Between the straps of her tank top, I can see part of a giant pair of wings tattooed on her back.

“She seems nice,” I say.

Micah stares at me for a second, then bursts out laughing. I laugh too. He reaches toward my face and runs his finger down the teal streak in my hair. “That was cool of you to let Trinity put this in. I can take it out later if you want.” He folds my hair up and away from my face so he can get a look at the tiny clip.

“I kind of like it.” I smile. “It makes me feel alternative.”

He snickers. “You’re about as alternative as skim milk, Lainey.” He drops my hair and runs his finger along the prickly edge of one of the Venus flytrap’s lower leaves.

“Gee, thanks,” I say, but I didn’t mean alternative like Micah. Or Phoenix, God forbid. I meant more like getting to be someone else for a change. No one knows me here. I can do or say whatever I want without having to worry about what anyone thinks.

“Hey. Speaking of Trin. I thought of a rule I want to make.”