“All this time, I thought Ms. Chaucer was spoiled,” said Holden. “I’m kind of shocked she settled for this dump.”

“Maybe she was into the occult?” I offered.

“Welcome to the seedy underbelly of the drug world,” Imogen whispered.

“It was Adderall,” said Wynonna, exasperated. “Adderall is not part of the seedy underbelly of any drug world. God, why did I even tell you about that?”

“I feel like I’m in Breaking Bad,” Imogen squeaked.

Wynonna sighed, looking the Amityvale Theater up and down. “This place does look like it was baptized in unholy water. Or tetanus. You know what? Maybe prom’s overrated.”

Both Imogen and I reacted in various stages of panic, directed at no one in particular.

“What, are you afraid all the Shakespeare kids will be more thug than you?” said Holden.

He then proceeded to do voices.

Holden’s “voices” were—as all “voices” are—terrible. One voice sounded like Jason Statham if he was deaf to his own voice. The other sounded like Rocky Balboa after Creed turned his face into a soufflé.

Holden Balboa: “Whaddaya in here for?”

Holden Statham: “I’m in here for armed robbery and murder and hate crimes against kittens.”

Holden Balboa: “Whadda YOO in here for, Wynonna Jones?”

Holden’s Wynonna-voice was basically Lisa Simpson. It’s like he wasn’t even trying.

Holdonna Jones: “I broke a window with MY BIG BUTT.”

Wynonna’s nostrils flared like a pair of kilts in a Scottish hurricane. She unceremoniously exited the Subaru, slammed the door behind her, and marched toward the serial-killer-corpse-storage theater.

The rest of us followed—very reluctantly. Holden’s amused chuckle faded like a wisp of smoke.

The Amityvale Theater wasn’t much better on the inside. It was all deteriorating motif-patterned carpet, splotchy black-painted concrete floors, less-than-sturdy-looking pillars, and walls that used to be red but now required a fresh coat of blood. Er, paint. (No, definitely blood.) If you craned your neck back, the ceiling was a spiderweb of wooden framework, and between those, actual spiderwebs. We passed a tomb of a box office, a moldy concession stand, and proceeded down a long, narrow—but surprisingly well-lit—corridor.

“Did they actually use this place?” asked Holden.

I shrugged. “All of their actual performances were either at the Varsity Center or the McLeod Theater at SIU.”

Wynonna rolled her eyes. “You would know that, wouldn’t you?”

Imogen walked with quiet steps, head lowered, like she was traversing the lawless jungle of the Darién Gap.

“This is where the drug deals transpired,” she whispered.

We pushed through a pair of gloomy double doors into the actual theater room.