Gumdrop Angel (Five Nights at Freddy's Read online

  Title Page

  Gumdrop Angel

  Sergio’s Lucky Day

  What We Found

  About the Authors

  Teaser

  Copyright

  Angel opened her eyes and saw … nothing. Darkness. Had she gone blind? She tried to blink but found she couldn’t. Was she even worse off now than before?

  She felt weak and heavy. Her body ached. Angel raised her hands to try and rub her eyes, to clear the guck from them, but her hands whacked against something hard.

  Trying not to panic, she groped around to figure out what she’d hit. All she felt was wood, flat, smooth, unrelenting wood, surrounding her.

  She was in some kind of box! A very small box.

  Angel tried to scream, but her mouth wouldn’t work properly. She began writhing her body, flailing her limbs. But it did no good. She just kept banging against the box.

  She was trapped. And she felt really strange, woozy, like she was going to pass out.

  Why was this happening to her?

  * * *

  Angel really wished she had earplugs. And nose plugs. And blinders.

  No, skip all that.

  Angel really wished for the ability to teleport. Yeah, that would be good. If she could teleport, she could just instantly go someplace else.

  But first she’d have to be invisible so she could get away with teleporting. Or maybe she could have superpowers so she could just obliterate everything that was here.

  No, that might be a little extreme. Teleporting would be good enough.

  Where would she go? Pretty much anywhere but here—a landfill, a sewer, the most dangerous part of town. She could think of a million horrible places that would be an improvement on her current situation. After all, what could possibly be worse than here?

  Angel and her family were in Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, and if there was a place on earth that was more like hell than this, Angel didn’t know about it. Freddy’s was bad enough on its own: a relentlessly bright and cheery place with decor in strictly primary colors and a headache-inducing black-and-white checkerboard floor. But then you added the children. No, not just children. Amped-up children. Crazed, overexcited, peeing-in-the-ball-pit, puking-in-the-arcade children. Not much was worse than a few dozen little kids having a birthday party. It was obnoxious mixed with miserable topped with Shoot. Me. Now.

  Angel looked around, and she had to admit that some of her distaste—all right, maybe all of it?—could have been related to envy and resentment. Her birthday had been the month before, and no one had thrown her a party of any kind.

  Maybe at some point in Angel’s life, she could have appreciated a kid’s birthday party. Theoretically, she would have liked having her own birthday party here when she was little. She was sure if she’d had a party, she wouldn’t have been as loud and insufferable about it as the kids in Freddy’s were. She would have been happy, yes, but she would have been graceful about it … at least, she liked to think so. But then again, she’d never get to test that theory.

  Seeing as her dad—not her current pathetic excuse for a stepdad, but her biological father (equally pathetic, apparently)—left when she wasn’t even walking yet, her mother had to be both the moneymaker and the full-time parent. During those years, her mom had disappeared into her job, while somehow staying in a constant state of broke. There was just never enough money for things like birthday parties. Now that Angel’s mom had married Myron—aka “call me Dad,” no, thank you very much—parties like this were in the budget, but, well … Angel was older and so over ostentatious displays of birthday frivolity.

  And, come on, was a little kid’s birthday honestly important enough to spend thousands of dollars on balloons, pizza, soda, cake, candy, and presents? No way. It was a waste of resources. That money could’ve bought Angel a car or paid tuition for the performing arts college she wanted to attend. Thankfully, Angel had qualified for a student loan, based on her mom’s low income in this last year before she married Myron. But Angel shouldn’t have had to get financial help, not when Myron could more than afford to pay her way. She never did call him “Dad,” but that was because he hadn’t earned it. Wasn’t a “dad” supposed to pay for his kid’s education?

  Angel looked at the woman who had gotten her into this screwed-up situation: her mother—her weak, self-interested, gold-digging mother. If only her mother paid half as much attention to her daughter as she did to her own looks. Still reasonably young, Angel’s mom had bouncy short blonde hair, bright blue eyes, and a face she spent thousands of dollars a year to keep pretty. Forget homework help or mother-daughter dates; Angel’s mom was too busy spending half the day working out or updating her wardrobe at the mall.

  Maybe Angel’s mom would have been halfway decent if she’d had a good partner by her side. But then again, maybe not. Angel’s mom wasn’t exactly a paragon of patience or understanding. She also wasn’t very good at cooking, cleaning, organizing, or planning. She didn’t have a cool job like film editor or fashion designer or talent agent. From observing her friends’ mothers, Angel thought these were the qualities that went into being a great mom. The qualities her mother had—an expert at improving her own looks, a whiz at makeup and clothes shopping, a world-class champion of flirting with men, a connoisseur of sleeping in, and a master of self-absorption to the point that she forgot anything not associated with her own happiness—did not make her good mom material.

  Behind Angel, a little girl squealed, hitting decibels that should have been illegal. Angel put her fingers in her ears.

  “Stop that,” Angel’s mother snapped. “You’re eighteen, not eight.”

  Oh, right. And that was her mother’s other notable quality: star of bowing to whatever man was paying the bills at the time. The truth was that Angel’s mom didn’t like loud, screaming children any more than Angel did, but right now, she was playing the role of Myron’s wife. And Myron’s wife was the mother of a five-year-old. This meant Angel’s mom had to pretend she was happy to be at this party, and part of that pretense was to chastise Angel for dropping the act.

  Angel rolled her eyes. Her mother was pathetic. So was Myron. And so was Ophelia, Myron’s revolting daughter. The whole family was pathetic. Even Angel was pathetic because she had to be part of this family.

  She needed to get out of it.

  She’d come so close to surviving her childhood without facing the stepdad thing. The whole time she’d been growing up, her mother had been looking for “the right husband and father,” the right husband and father being one who had lots and lots of money. Angel had lost count of the number of men who had come and gone over the years. There’d always been some guy. Some of them had kids. Some of them didn’t. But when Angel had been dragged along on “family dates,” she’d had the comfort of knowing it was temporary. She didn’t have to go home with the guy or the kids. But then her mom had met Myron. And Ophelia came with Myron.

  Who named a kid Ophelia? Ophelia was Hamlet’s lover, a woman who’d gone crazy because Hamlet had seemingly gone crazy. Did that seem like the best inspiration for a baby’s name?

  Curious about Ophelia’s name, Angel had looked up the meaning of it. Ophelia was a Greek name, she discovered, and it meant “help,” as in, “Help, I was named after a tragic mental case.” It had made her laugh when she’d read that. She could hear Ophelia’s chirpy little kid voice saying it now.

  Speaking of the annoying squeaky voice …

  “Don’t you want some pizza?” Ophelia asked Angel.

  Before Angel could answer, Ophelia said, “I’ll share mine.” Then she pushed a slice of the foul-smelling excuse for pizza toward Angel’s face.

/>   Angel hated Freddy’s pizza—the sauce had way too much basil, which gave it the offensive smell and made it, as far as Angel was concerned, inedible. Ophelia missed Angel’s mouth, and smeared Angel’s jaw with sauce. She could feel her hair sticking to it, too.

  Angel slapped Ophelia’s hand. “Get that away from me.”

  Ophelia’s face crumpled. She jerked back, and the pizza slice flew out of her hands, landing facedown on Angel’s chest, before sliding into her lap.

  Angel jumped up, and the pizza fell to the floor. She looked at the red stain on her good jeans. “You little brat!” she yelled at Ophelia.

  Ophelia’s chin quivered. Tears spilled from her eyes. “I was just trying to share.”

  “Don’t yell at your sister!” Angel’s mother cut in.

  “She’s not my sister!” Angel shouted. She grabbed for some paper napkins and wiped at her face and hair.

  As she did, she noticed several kids and adults at surrounding tables were staring at her. Great. She’d managed to make a spectacle of herself, even in a room full of manic kids. She felt her face redden, and she sat down.

  “Angel,” Myron growled, throwing her a scathing look, which he reserved exclusively for his stepdaughter these days.

  He turned to Ophelia. “Come here, my princess.”

  Ophelia, crying hard now, crawled into Myron’s lap. “She hit me, Daddy. I was just trying to share my pizza.” Ophelia raised her arm for Myron’s inspection. There was nothing on her arm except pizza sauce, but Myron looked at the poor offended arm and kissed it. Then he turned on Angel.

  “I didn’t hit her,” Angel said before he could say anything. “I shoved her hand away.” That wasn’t technically true, but Angel would get grounded for a year if she admitted to hitting Ophelia.

  Myron opened his mouth, but he was cut off by one of the animatronic performers on the stage in front of their table. Being “the birthday girl,” Ophelia had to have a prominent place in the audience for the Fazbear Extravaganza show. They were two feet from the stage. If Angel had wanted to, she could have reached out and swiped frosting off Ophelia’s five-foot-tall layered cake. It was sitting onstage, to the side of where the animatronics were going to perform.

  Angel had been dreading the big show because she knew it would be loud and chaotic—over-the-top. Now, however, she was grateful for it. It was drawing attention away from the family drama playing out at their table.

  Ophelia immediately forgot the assault on her precious arm. She turned to Myron. “Up, Daddy, up!” He dutifully repositioned her on his lap so she could stand on his thighs. The full skirt of Ophelia’s yellow frilly dress puffed up into Myron’s face. He kept a grip on Ophelia with one hand and shoved aside the tulle with his other.

  Ophelia stared up at the stage with bright eyes. She wiggled her hips and threw her arms around in an awkward dance of some kind.

  Angel hated Ophelia. The kid was a nuisance, always dragging out a board game or begging to “play pretend” with Angel. She would jump into bed with Angel almost every night with a book and a whine of “Will you read to me?”

  Sometimes, Angel did read to Ophelia, but she resented the time it took. Angel was busy; she didn’t have time for a little sister.

  And then there were the horses. Ophelia had a thing about horses. Her whole room was filled with them: plush horses, plastic horses, wood horses … posters, photos, and oil paintings of horses. She had a huge rocking horse in her room, and—though she was getting too big for it—she “rode” it every day. So did her dolls. That was Ophelia’s world. Horses and dolls. It was, in fact, the theme of today’s party, too. Angel was so sick of horses … of hearing about them, reading stories about them, being forced to join Ophelia in playing with them.

  When Ophelia had demanded that her birthday party be at Freddy’s, which was, sadly, her favorite restaurant, Angel had pointed out that a party at Freddy’s wouldn’t be a horse-themed party, which was also what Ophelia wanted. Freddy’s didn’t have horse characters. But Ophelia wasn’t deterred. She wanted what she wanted.

  Usually, Freddy’s parties were Freddy themed. So Myron had to negotiate with Freddy’s manager to bring in special themed napkins, plates, hats, and decorations. He also bought every kid in the place a horse toy. Angel had heard enough pretend neighing today to last a lifetime.

  “I love my party, Daddy,” Ophelia cried out. She grinned, revealing pizza sauce–stained teeth and looking for all the world like some kind of cannibal. It wasn’t a pretty picture.

  Not that any picture with Ophelia in it could be pretty. No matter how you dressed her up, Ophelia was truly an ugly little girl. Poor kid. That was the only thing that made Angel feel an ounce of kindness toward her. No question Ophelia was a thorn in Angel’s side, but the poor thing couldn’t help how she looked. Just as Angel got her mom’s looks, Ophelia got Myron’s.

  For reasons Angel couldn’t fathom, her mom thought Myron was a catch—not just because of the money; she actually thought he was handsome. Angel thought Myron was a gorilla. Tall and trunk-shaped, Myron had dark brown hair … all over his body. He was the hairiest man Angel had ever seen. Now, of course, Ophelia didn’t inherit that trait from her daddy, but she did get his prominent brow ridge, large nose, and small eyes. She also got his long arms. She looked like a chimpanzee, which was sad. Chimpanzees were cute, but kids who looked like chimpanzees weren’t.

  On the stage in front of Ophelia, Freddy’s animatronics were getting ready to perform, and an announcer, a male Freddy’s employee wearing a top hat and a bright red tuxedo, was chattering away with the crowd. The announcer was young and blond, round-faced, and perpetually smiling.

  “Is everyone having a super-duper time?” the announcer asked.

  “Yes!” all the kids shouted.

  Ophelia screeched her “yes” even louder. The sound sent a stab of pain through Angel’s temples.

  “Is everyone ready to have even more fun?” Freddy himself called out.

  “Yes!” the kids chorused.

  “Fun, more fun!” Ophelia squealed. She wiggled so spastically in her dad’s lap, he almost dropped her.

  “Are we all ready to rock and roll?” Freddy shouted.

  Everyone in the restaurant, except Angel, yelled, “Yes!” And then the restaurant was filled with cheers.

  Angel noticed Myron was giving his stepdaughter the evil eye around Ophelia’s billowing yellow skirt. Angel didn’t care. The restaurant was now far too loud for Myron to chew out Angel. Ignoring her stepdad, Angel left her family at the table and went in search of a restroom so she could try and salvage her jeans.

  The long rectangular tables in Freddy’s were crammed together, and they were all full of hyper little kids and a smattering of weary-looking adults. Angel had to twist this way and that to work herself free of the unruly pack.

  When she was almost through the melee, Angel collided with one of Freddy’s employees. As she started to say, “Excuse me,” he turned toward her. She only got her first word out because she was looking at one of the cutest guys she’d ever seen, and he’d robbed her of the ability to speak.

  “Sorry,” the cute guy said. “I should have been looking where I was going.”

  Angel opened her mouth, and nothing came out.

  The cute employee grinned at her and started to say something else, but that’s when the animatronics onstage started belting out a rock song with ear-shriveling vocals. The singers, combined with the band’s heavy-on-the drums-and-electric-guitars style, made speaking impossible.

  Angel began to move on, but the cute employee took her hand and led her out of the dining area. She thought that was a little presumptuous, but she didn’t protest because the hand was warm and strong … and it was attached to the cute employee. Also, he was pulling her away from the noise and the spastic mayhem both on the stage and in the audience.

  Aware of the pizza sauce still in her hair, Angel raised a hand to swipe at her face. She wished she had a mirror
so she could clean herself up.

  If not for the pizza sauce, Angel would have been pretty confident about her appearance. Although her mom hadn’t done much for Angel, she had passed on her good genes. Angel had her mother’s blonde hair (only Angel’s was shoulder-length), blue eyes, pleasant features, and slender body. Even though she wasn’t much for fashion and cosmetics like her mother was, Angel had her own style. She didn’t wear a ton of makeup; she simply lined her eyes with kohl and kept her lips glossed. She was into retro thrift store clothes, and she was a whiz with scarves and jewelry and other accessories. She liked playing with them so much she usually kept an extra scarf or strand of beads in her purse so she could change her look when it suited her. Today, she’d done some cool loops with a seventies belt around her narrow waist, and under that, she wore a filmy sixties peasant top that clung to her just right. If Ophelia hadn’t decided to spill sauce all over her, Angel would have been fit for a date right now.

  The cute guy led Angel down the hallway outside the dining room. The hallway, lined with cartoony pictures of Freddy’s animatronic characters, ran along the length of the dining area, connecting Freddy’s entrance with the back of the restaurant, which presumably was where the kitchen and offices were. The pictures were framed in bright yellow, and all the characters wore happy, jaunty expressions.

  A few doors opened up off the hallway, including those to the restrooms. Angel eyed the ladies’ room door as they passed it. She wished she could go in and clean herself up.

  They were headed, though, toward the front door of the restaurant. Angel wondered if the cute employee was going to try and get her to leave with him. But he just took her to the little waiting area filled with red plastic chairs, which was near the entrance.

  When they reached the chairs, the cute employee motioned to them. “Have a seat. I’ll be right back.” He darted back down the hall they’d just come down.

  Angel wondered, even as her butt hit the molded plastic, why she was so dutifully doing what the guy wanted. Had she inherited more from her mom than she thought she had? Was she turning into a male-pleasing automaton?