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Welcome to the Wyoming Valley Mall. We hope that you enjoy your stay. Visit the Food Court; we have a McDonald’s, an Arby’s, a Peking Chef (chinese), a Dino’s (italian), an Auntie Annie’s (pretzels). We have a GAP, a BABY GAP, a LIMITED, an EXPRESS, and an OLD NAVY across the street. We also have the “noncomformist stores” such as Pacific Sunwear, Gadzooks and Hot Topic where even the “unique people” can all dress alike. We have Victoria’s Secrets for the daring, Bath and Body Works for the aromatherapied, FootLocker for the athletes in the group. We have your mandatory jewelry stores: Claire’s, Afterthoughts, and a couple of classy places which sell real diamonds and gold. We have our “anchor stores” as we like to call them, the department stores at the ends which include JcPenny’s, Kauffmans, Sears, and Bon-Ton. We have novelty stores such as Spencer’s and Cheers – full of cheesy and often offensive t-shirts and gag gifts. We have a movie theatre, four screens, very cheap rates, somewhat clean (well as clean as anywhere else, I suppose). We have an arcade and a Gertrude Hawk’s. We sport people from all over the Valley.
If you enter through the food court you will find your ghetto people, these people in business suits eating and you wonder why they aren’t anywhere else more upper class – this is because the Mall is a wonderful place to be. They prefer it to anywhere else. So will you, after you’ve spent enough time in the hippie store, or the dollar store, or the hat store full of men with mullets.
But once in a while, you enter the mall and you will find something a little different.
Such is the case when you entered it only to find the Mad Hatter and Angel Alice holding hands, their black cloaks twirling behind them, emerging from a group of people in blue jeans and sports shirts and dressy hair. The Hatter has his classic top hat on with the infamous fraction “10/9” on it, and he’s holding Angel Alice’s white gloved hand as they strive off towards some unknown destination further in the mall. You cannot imagine these people passing (much less being inside) the GAP or the Express (both amazing stores, we care to remind you, you should give them your patronage).
Mind you, it’s not everyday that famous characters enter the Mall. Groups like the choir from the Luzerne First Baptist Church come to sing, or the radio stations come by to visit (such as Froggy 101 [country], Hot 97 [top 40], 98.5 KRZ [more pop], Magic 93 [soft rock for middle-aged mothers], The X [modern rock for the middle-aged mothers to yell about], Oldies 92 [“good times, great oldies”], etc.). Sometimes we have fashion shows (like the time Hot 97 [top 40] hosted a bridal show.
You stand by the pay phones thinking about how crazy-cute those two were, and enjoying the Mall with its greasy handles and greasy atmosphere. The teenagers are just standing around, attempting to look cool, which isn’t hard to do when you’re in a cool place like this great Mall. You stand there, realize that the bastards in charge of the phones (not the people at the Mall – the people at the Phone Company) have increased the price to fifty cents instead of thirty five and are scrounging around for that extra fifteen cents (fifteen cents? Right? You’re in BC Calculus and you can’t even do basic subtraction, or was that addition?). When the telephone to your left rings. You glance around. Maybe someone is trying to get through to someone nearby, but no, either everyone nearby can’t hear the ringing or simply doesn’t care. Are you supposed to be picking it up? What if someone is calling long-distance? You wouldn’t want them to be paying all that money for just your voice – you’re not really a Someone.
As you bitterly scrounge out fifteen cents from the bottom of your ass pocket (damned tight pants, you wish people would stop staring), the phone continues to ring at you. Who could possibly be on the other end? Holding the fifty cents in one hand, you pick up the phone with the other.
“Hello?” you ask. “Wyoming Valley Mall?”
There is silence on the other end. Great, you think, yet another teenage boy jerking off to the sound of your voice. Goddamn them.
“Hello?” you ask again.
Hello.
“Hi. Um…” what does one say to a complete stranger on a pay phone in the mall?
Have you seen Alice?
You blanch. Was that the goth with the Hatter?
“I’m not sure.”
Ever since our house was hit by a tornado, she hasn’t been the same. We just want her home, safe and sound.
“That was Dorothy from the ‘Wizard of Oz.’ ”
(gentle cursing) She is there isn’t she?
“Listen, I have to call my mother and tell her I arrived safely – she doesn’t trust my driving –”
You know where Alice is?
“Why don’t you come over here and see for yourself? I have to call my mother. For every second I’m late she’ll dock my allowance.”
I may just take you up on that offer.
“It wasn’t an offer,” you say but it’s too late for the weird creep on the other side has hung up, and you wonder if you said the right thing right then and there, and how long it would take for this creature to get to the Mall. How did you get yourself into this? Will the entity on the other side if the phone recognize you if he/she/it sees you?
Now you call your mother, tell her that you’re there safe and have to go meet a few friends at the other side of the mall, if she doesn’t mind – yes, you love her – yes, you’ll be home by eleven – yes, you’ll call her if you wind up anywhere else – no, you will not speed on the highway – yes, you will remember headlights.
You hang up exasperated and mutter to yourself that life is impossible as long as you have parents which is pretty much until you’re middle-aged and too old to have any fun anyway – growl. Anyway, you decide it’s time to hit the stores, well, the select few you always hit – then you’ll go home. Your friends are supposed to meet you in half an hour, which is good because then you’ll have time to scout out the goods and lay claims before they can. You walk past a bench, and there lay Angel Alice and the Mad Hatter…She is nestled into the space between his neck and his head, seemingly crying. You wonder what inspired her to dye her hair black, to wear Doc Martins’ combat boots (available at a few of our fine stores, might we add), to wear loose skirts layered atop each other and an Ozzy Ozborne baby-T.
You stand there, before them, until the Hatter notices you though his blue sunglasses and asks you if he can help you. You remember the stories about how the Hatter supposedly has a ring of cocaine stuffed into the bottom of his hat around his scalp, kind of like a slow-release Nicorette patch, and that was why he was so fucked-up, but this is just a story and you decide to let it go. Anyway, you say to him that someone called on the pay phone and asked if there was an Alice there, which makes Angel Alice look up in terror, she has green eyeliner and purple eyeshadow and you wonder what happened to the Alice of the first novel. But now we’re in the third novel, in which the protagonist is plunged into the real world, and they’re standing in terror waiting for one of the Queen’s henchmen to go after the pretty Alice who is disguised as a teenage goth.
You apologize for not getting to them sooner. They tell you that this is quite all right. The Hatter slips off his hat, to reveal bleach blonde spiked hair. He looks vaguely like Leondardo DiCaprio up close and you wonder why the illustrator of the book didn’t make it look that way. The Hatter tells Alice to hide in the bathroom because the assassin probably won’t disrespect cultural courtesies by invading a bathroom of the opposite sex. You ask if perhaps there are two assassins just in case such a situation arises, perhaps one of each sex, but the Hatter says that the Queen does more crack than he does and surely doesn’t think that far ahead. She used to have advisors but she killed most of them off. You tell them this is all well and good and you hope it goes well but you have to meet up with a group of your friends so you can get some last-minute homecoming shopping in. You ask for their autograph, they use a Sharpie pen to sign the back of your left hand. You smile, make a mental note not to wash your hands thoroughly until they’re photographed.
You meet up with your friends, hit the shops, trying to find something perfect with which to wow your crush over. Sometimes you see a thin, pale man in a cloak with a sword in his belt, he weaves in and out of the people, who think that he’s some kind of a Halloween attraction. They laugh, get their photographs taken with him. This works until the mall cops are informed that no one we (the Mall as an entity) knew of had hired him, and, upon apprehension, has no decent lies, and is carried away.
The people of Alice’s world really don’t do all that well in this part of the universe, you suppose.
This is all well and good; you go home on time and hug your parents and go upstairs to sleep. You more or less don’t worry about it for the next week, and by the end of the month, it’s some kind of a rather funny story you have tried to tell to your friends but they didn’t understand so your subconscious suppresses it as some kind of a figment of your imagination, a schizophrenic fluke.
A few years later, you’re in college and a package arrives through the mail. It has been sent from the Wyoming Valley, the postmark says. You open it up to find a baggie of cocaine and a note that says Thank You from the Mad Hatter and Angel Alice. You smile, look around, and offer it to your friends. Maybe now someone will believe you.