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Cassie didn’t consider herself an insecure person, generally speaking. But the whole situation with her birthday left her questioning a few things, namely whether her friends were really her friends.
The invitations had gone out a few weeks ahead of time, after all, and she’d been told, she’d been told to her face by a number of friends that they would be there. And then no one showed up. Not a word of apology, or that they suddenly couldn’t make it, or that they would be late. Just a big fat radio silence.
The fact that everyone apparently forgot how to use their words on the same night left a really, really sour feeling in Cassie’s stomach. It felt targeted, or like a big prank that her entire class and then some had played on her.
Gregory had literally saved her birthday, and she spent the following week riding the high of meeting Roxy.
And maybe she’d been a little petty and just hadn’t said anything about it to her friends. Maybe she kept smiling to herself and pretended like she hadn’t even noticed they hadn’t showed up. Maybe she reveled just a smidge in some of the quietly guilty glances she caught in the corner of her eyes and always ignored.
She found out eventually that one of the popular girls in another class had thrown a last-minute party—not even a birthday party, just a random, for-fun party—and invited their whole grade. Minus Cassie.
Whether there’d been instructions not to tell Cassie that they were ditching her or if everyone individually made that decision, she didn’t know. She didn’t even know why that particular girl disliked her, though it’d been that way since the start of the year. Whatever her issue was, that brat positively fumed over the fact that Cassie came to school pleased as punch over how her birthday turned out, and Cassie didn’t mind reveling in that either.
She’d admittedly grown a little distant from her friends in the few months since then, the whole birthday issue left unresolved, but the thing was—Cassie didn’t really miss them.
Maybe she was biased, but since meeting him, Gregory did a lot that really served to show the difference between how he treated her and how her former friends had. And it was kinda like seeing bright colors for the first time after living with dim and dull hues. Either Gregory was just in a league of his own, or her friends hadn’t been real friends to her.
But back to the insecure thing. She wasn’t usually, but finding out where she ranked in priority with her former friends was making her a little bit sensitive and cautious now.
Gregory had been to her house before—for dinner and sleepovers and to hang out (the much more grown-up version of a “play date”)—and it’d been great. Fantastic. An absolute blast. Her dad liked him and was always glad to have him over, especially knowing how he’d made Cassie’s birthday so awesome.
But Gregory never invited her to his house.
And she really didn’t want to feel this way, but it was making her a little unsure. Just a teeny tiny bit, honest. She didn’t think he was faking their friendship! She really didn’t! She just—she didn’t want to seem like too much.
With Gregory as her best and pretty much only friend, Cassie was anxious about being overbearing or obnoxious or clingy. And sure, he never complained or made faces or seemed even a little bit exasperated with her…
But that was how anxiety worked. It didn’t matter that there wasn’t any proof that he felt that way, she was still on edge about it.
It didn’t take long for her worries to start distracting her—enough so for Gregory to notice.
“Cassie? Are you okay?” he asked.
Cassie snapped out of her thoughts to find him frowning at her. She was absently gnawing on her lip and hadn’t been paying an iota of attention to anything he’d been saying for a few minutes now. Her paintbrush was drooping in her lax hold and had dripped onto the picnic table.
Well, it should have dripped on her sketchbook, but Gregory had apparently slid it to safety before she could ruin her work.
“We can pack it up for today if you want,” he offered. “It looks like something’s bothering you.”
She debated for a moment whether to bring up the issue to him. And everything she knew about Gregory indicated he would want to know if something he was doing bothered her. Or not doing, as was the case.
“A little,” she admitted. “I, um…”
He scowled. “Is it those jerks at your school?”
“No, no, they’re fine. It’s just…” All that worrying, and she’d never spared a thought to how she would bring it up if given the opportunity. “How come you never invite me to your house?” she blurted out.
Gregory looked taken aback for a second, before he made a sheepish face. Rubbing the back of his neck, he admitted, “I’d kind of wondered if you’d say anything about that.” He cleaned his paintbrush and set it aside. “We’ve known each other for a while now, and I think… I think it’s safe to tell you. I trust you, Cassie.”
Already more at ease since he hadn’t gotten mad, Cassie swished her own brush in her cup of water, then gave him her full attention.
“My living situation’s a bit… unusual, to say the least.” He chuckled. “But it’s home, and my family may not be the most conventional, but I love them.” Gregory leaned forward over the table, a serious expression settling over his amusement. But not even that could dim the spark of mischief in his eyes. “You’ve gotta swear to keep everything I’m about to tell you a secret, Cassie. Pinky promise.”
She firmly held out her raised pinky, and they shook on it. “I won’t tell anyone,” she swore. Gregory had shared secrets with her before, and they were always absolutely wild. It made sense, she supposed, that the trend would continue even in the seemingly mundane parts of his life.
“I’ll give you the short explanation, and if you want the rest, I’ll tell you the whole story. But the thing is—my parents died a few years ago, and I ended up on the streets.”
Immediately mortified, she opened her mouth to apologize and tell him he didn’t have to explain anything more, but Gregory reached over and slapped his palm over her mouth with a grin.
“I’m not some homeless waif, so don’t worry about it. Like I said, I’ve got an awesome adoptive family and a super cool place to live, even though it’s not what most people would consider a family and a home. Thing is—you’ve met them, and you’ve been over a bunch.” His eyes were bright with amusement.
Cassie’s thoughts raced because she had no idea what he was talking about because the only place they regularly met outside of parks and libraries and cafes was—
“The pizzaplex?” she blurted out, muffled by Gregory’s hand.
He pulled away, snickering. “Yep!”
“And the—Freddy?”
“All of them, really, but Freddy’s pretty much my dad.”
She gaped at him. “I want the full story,” she decided.
“And you still promise not to tell? Because, like, everything’s great now, but there was some, uh…” He laughed sheepishly. “A lot of crazy stuff happened before we reached the happy family part.”
“Cross my heart and everything. C’mon, please, I have to know!” Curiosity ate at her, and she was already imagining what sort of wild things he might tell her.
“It’s a long story,” Gregory said. “How about I tell you tonight?” And before she could reach over the picnic table and throttle him, he said, “Sleepover at my place?”
Warm happiness filled her heart. Gregory really was a fantastic friend.
• • •
Her dad dropped them and Cassie’s overnight bag off at the pizzaplex. Gregory’s cover story wasn’t actually too far off from what she had, at times, assumed for herself: that his dad worked at the pizzaplex, which was why Gregory spent so much of his time there.
He’d frequently mentioned his family when he’d stayed over, Cassie had realized. Sometimes it was to tell stories, sometimes it was to answer questions, but “my aunt did this” or “my uncle said that” were common enough phrases she’d heard from him. And Gregory had more than once handed over his cell phone so his dad and Cassie’s could discuss sleepover arrangements.
She felt a little silly for not making the connection before, but she figured she could be forgiven, considering he was right about it not being the most conventional.
Instead of going to Rockstar Row, he led the way to the basement, seamlessly slipping past anyone who might reasonably think a couple kids didn’t belong in the employee areas.
“There’s a lot of stuff down here that has been collecting dust for years, and I’m pretty sure everyone’s forgotten about a lot of it,” he told her. “Better yet, there are a lot of rooms that are either completely unused or so stuffed with junk that no one dares touch them anymore.”
Cassie wasn’t a huge fan of the basements herself. It was dark and musty and creepy, but when Gregory unlocked and pushed open a door that, to her, looked no different from any of the other bland, often-stained doors, it was like stepping into an entirely different world.
For starters, the walls were painted with an absolute riot of color. It definitely wasn’t a professional job, but that just made it even more awesome—because it was clear all the animatronics had helped to… leave their mark, let’s say. Doodled flowers and graffiti and stars and an entire mural of a forest scene and a splashed outline of Gregory that had to have been made by him standing there while someone threw the entire contents of a bucket of paint at him—there was so much to look at. Polaroid pictures filled the wall beside a jumbo beanbag, a missing poster with Gregory’s face was framed by the desk, and a collage of the bands’ individual posters stood guard over the bed.
The concrete floor was barely even visible beneath the mishmash of rugs, ranging from basic rectangles to a pretty funny one of an old-timey dead body chalk outline to a giant fuzzy pond with little fish and lily pads printed on it.
When Gregory flicked the light switch, instead of the stark overhead fluorescents blinding them, fairy lights strung up along the entire border turned on, alongside at least three floor lamps with colored shades positioned around the room. It was much cozier without being too dim.
The ceiling was a perfectly done blue sky with fluffy clouds, soaring birds, some steampunk-style airships, and a bright, stylized sun. To Cassie’s shock, a tiny artist’s signature was curled around one of the clouds: it’d been done by Moon.
It was a bedroom. A real, actual, awesome bedroom just hidden in the basement of the pizzaplex.
“It’s a pretty big step up from a cardboard box,” Gregory said proudly, hands on his hips.
She snorted. “I have to admit, I wasn’t expecting this.”
“Believe me, neither was I when I decided to stay.” He pointed to where she could put her bag, then grinned. “You know what’s one of the best parts, though?”
“What?”
Gregory went over to the beanbag—more specifically, to the low table in front of it, where a box of pizza sat. To her astonishment, when he flipped open the lid, wisps of steam rose into the air.
“Room service,” Gregory told her, taking a slice and flipping back into the giant bean bag. He patted the space beside him. “Take a seat, Cassie. Like I said, it’s a long story.”
She joined him, delighted to find half the pizza had her favorite toppings. The bean bag was the perfect balance between firm and squishy, and they had each gotten a second slice before Gregory seemed ready to start.
“You don’t have to tell me,” Cassie interrupted before he could even get the first word out. “I don’t—if you really don’t want to, or if you think you have to, then—”
“I want to tell you. Honest.” Gregory looked contemplative for a moment. “I think it’s time I told someone, y’know?”
“If you’re sure,” she stressed.
“You’re my best friend, Cassie.” He waved his crust around. “Like, you’ve earned the tragic backstory.”
“Well, in that case.” Cassie wiggled to get comfy, giving him her undivided attention. “I’m ready.” She had a feeling it’d be a wild story, maybe not always a good one, but at least she knew already that it ended happily.
Gregory cleared his throat and finished off the last of his slice. “I want to start by saying this is all going to sound way worse than it was. Or at least, way worse than I felt it was.” He laughed. “You know me, Cassie, I’m a menace.”
“You are a menace,” she agreed.
“And it was nice to be able to really embrace that, y’know? So I want you to keep this in mind: I gave as good as I got.”
“Gotcha.”
And then Gregory told her the story, from start to finish, about what happened to him on one particular night five months ago. He told her about being locked in the pizzaplex, about his would-be murderer, about the way the animatronics who he now called his aunts and uncles had hunted him. About how sometimes, he hid or ran—but other times, he fought back or laid traps. About Freddy, who had protected him and helped him and cared for him from the beginning.
And then he told her about the monster.
Gregory led her by the hand through a convoluted maze of hallways and staircases until he was pushing through a door into a big dirt tunnel. He chuckled as she sputtered.
“Wha—this is just right here, beneath the pizzaplex?” she said. “How? Why?”
“Excellent questions,” Gregory said. “And unfortunately, I have no answers for you. This place has been here since before the pizzaplex was built.”
“How do you know? Couldn’t it have come later?”
He offered her a knowing smile but didn’t answer.
They went down the tunnel, both flicking their high-powered flashlights on. Other than a few floodlights near the entrance, all the others were dark.
“The generators stopped worked a long time ago,” Gregory explained, circling one with his beam. “Right about when their source of power was destroyed in a fire.”
Before Cassie could demand some clarification, they rounded a slight curve in the tunnel, and up ahead of them was a building. Cassie gaped at it as they got closer, shining her flashlight across the decrepit sign above the doors.
“Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza…?” she read, trailing off in shock.
“It’s how I know this all predates the pizzaplex,” Gregory explained. “That place is old, Cassie. It’s not some prop building. It was an actual pizzeria that people went to. I guess it was on unstable ground. And eventually, it just sort of…” He chuckled and gestured at it. “Got eaten by the earth. And that was it. There’s not a lot of history that I could find, but what there is… bad things happened there. No one missed it, I think.”
“And they built the pizzaplex on top of it. That makes no sense.”
Gregory pushed open the door, pieces of loose shattered glass tinkling to the filthy floor. Gregory’s words about a fire suddenly made sense as Cassie stepped inside. Everything was singed at best, absolutely charred at worst. In the middle of the main room they were in was yet another hole, this one surrounded by a barrier of junk and wooden sawhorses.
“We won’t go down,” Gregory assured her. “But I wanted to show you this place because this is where it ended. This is where the monster was.” He walked toward the hole and peered over the edge with a look of mixed grief and frustration.
“You went down there,” Cassie realized.
He nodded. “Freddy and I both did.” He turned away from the pit. “We shouldn’t have. He shouldn’t have. The monster tried to take over his body; it hurt him. It was—it was awful.”
If Freddy had been out of commission…
Cassie shivered. “You fought the monster.”
He looked older then. It was something in his eyes. “I killed the monster.”
“What was it?”
“It used to be a man, I think. I don’t know what it was by the end.”
She looked around the ruined room. There was a heaviness in the air, and it wasn’t just because of the dust.
“I don’t regret that part,” Gregory suddenly said. “I don’t regret killing it, or even most of the rest of what happened that night. I…” He shrugged. “I kinda had fun with it, y’know? It was an adventure, and bad guys get killed in adventures. That’s not the part that I have nightmares about.”
Nightmares. Of course he had nightmares about the time a bunch of robots and apparently a monster tried to murder him. But knowing Gregory and how good he was at going along with absolutely crazy ideas and having a thrill-seeker sort of personality—yeah, she imagined he had kinda enjoyed the rush of it all.
But also knowing Gregory, there was one thing that would’ve stuck with him as bad.
“It’s what the monster did to Freddy,” Cassie guessed.
“Yeah,” he sighed.
She went and peeked down into the pit herself. It was unbelievable how deep it went, and how scary it looked to reach the bottom.
“So me not inviting you over wasn’t just because the pizzaplex is basically my house,” Gregory said. He shrugged, and she thought he seemed a little embarrassed. “It’s that my nightmares are… I mean, I’m not—I’m not peaceful when I’m having a nightmare.” He fiddled with his fingers. “I tend to scream, and if it’s really bad, I’ll, like, half wake up? But I’m really out of it, which is bad enough, but… I can get a little violent when I’m like that. The thing is—it really only happens when I’m here. So your house was safe, but mine… isn’t.”
He looked so distressed about it that Cassie simply had to go and wrap him in a hug. She hated talking about her genuinely distressing nightmares to her own dad; she couldn’t imagine sharing something so personal with a friend, no matter how close they were. Scary nightmares were one thing, and they could almost be worth laughing at in the light of day. But nightmares based on memory?
Yeah. Cassie understood that all too well.
And because he’d been brave enough and kind enough to share something so personal about himself, she offered a piece of her own guarded heart back. “It doesn’t happen very often now,” she said quietly, “but I used to scream and cry in my sleep. I was really young, but my mom’s accident…” She shuddered.
“Brains are stupid sometimes,” Gregory said.
“Yeah.”
He tilted his head to rest his cheek against the top of hers. His grip on her arm was reassuring, and Cassie couldn’t have said who was doing the comforting anymore. Or maybe, most definitely, they both were. And that, she decided, was what made them such good friends.