Inferno Park (24 page)

“We don’t need those lame, stupid boys, anyway. Let’s go exploring by ourselves.” Elissa said. She grabbed Tamara by the wrist and pulled her down the midway.

“Wait! I can’t walk and eat,” Tamara giggled. She shoved the rest of her fudge into her mouth, then licked her fingers.

“Come on!” Elissa tugged on her wrist, and Tamera stumbled forward, still giggly with her sugar high. They walked on past the game booths, eventually emerging into the brightly painted, music-filled central plaza. Even the little stage near the concession area was lit, with its red curtain drawn back and tied, but nobody was there.

Elissa glanced around to make sure nobody was in earshot. Jared and Becca were exploring Haunted Alley, stupid Heath was pounding away at the Whack-A-Frog, and most importantly, Finn and Derek were far back along the midway.

“Why are you flirting with Finn?” Elissa whispered. “You know I like him.”

“I am not!” Tamara looked startled.

“You’re letting him flirt with you, then,” Elissa said. “You always take the guys I like.”

“No, I don’t.”

“We started hanging out with Scott Jensen because I liked him, and you ended up going out with him,” Elissa said. “And now it’s the same thing with Finn. You’re going to end up with him, not me. I can tell.”

“I can’t help it if some guys like me instead,” Tamara said.

“They
always
like you instead, because you’re pretty and I have a big butt and a weird face. That’s the problem.”

“You do not have a weird face! You have a cute face.”

“Whatever.”

“I never do anything to take these guys from you, Elissa. They just come after me. What else am I supposed to do?”

“Um, try saying no, you’re not interested? Steer one my way occasionally?”

“Oh, okay. I guess I could. I guess I always just let these things happen.”

“But you won’t go out with Finn? Or do anything with him?” Elissa asked.

“Nah, I won’t. Hey, look, the wishing well. Remember that?” Tamara pointed to the brick well with its cheerful little wooden roof and roped bucket.

“You promise you won’t do anything with Finn?” Elissa asked.

“I promise.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. You know I’m good at
not
doing stuff. Finn will just be one more thing I don’t do. Like laundry. And homework,” Tamara said, and Elissa laughed.

Elissa read aloud the poem painted on a sign over the well:

Some wishes come true,

Some others are lost.

You’ve nothing to lose,

Give your coin a toss!

“Okay, let’s do it.” Elissa dug into her pocket, picked out two pennies, and gave one to Tamara. “Have a wish on me.”

“Thanks!” Tamara smiled at her for a long moment, then turned and flicked her penny down the well.

“Hey, I wasn’t ready yet!” Elissa said.

“Oh, was I supposed to wait? I didn’t think about it. Maybe I have another one.” Tamara opened her purse.

“No, it’s okay.” Elissa balanced the penny on her thumb and index finger and aimed it into the darkness below. The wish came to her mind, unbidden but inevitable:

I wish I was prettier than Tamara
, she thought.

She flicked the coin down the well, watching its tumbling copper glint until it was out of sight.

Elissa felt a stab of shame. Why had she wished to be prettier than Tamara? Why not simply wish to be pretty? Or to genuinely not care about her looks or what people thought of her? Or wish for something practical, like a million dollars?

“It’s just a stupid wish,” Elissa whispered, shaking her head to try and clear the bad feeling.

“What did you say?” Tamara asked, still smiling at her.

“I said, let’s go see this park! Right? And if any of the rides are open, we find the highest, fastest one and ride the hell out of it.”

“That’s what I was just thinking!” Tamara replied.

Hand in hand, friends again and drunk on beer and sugar, they staggered toward the high, pulsing lights of Space City, where most of the big rides could be found.

“American Rockets? That’s one of the highest in the park.” Elissa pointed to the glowing stripes of neon and rows of colored bulbs flashing up and down the ten-story central tower of the rocket ride. The four rocket cars flashed and pulsed with their own lights, sitting on their launch pads and ready for riders.

“Maybe,” Tamara said, but she didn’t sound sure.

“The UFO Spinner?” Elissa pointed to the flying saucer with hundreds of brightly colored, flashing lights on its silver shell. “It just goes around and around and pushes you back against the wall. It doesn’t go up high or anything. Maybe later.”

“Maybe later,” Tamara agreed.

“There’s the Brain-Scrambler!” Elissa pointed to the twelve-foot scientist with the oversized brain, his giant lava-lamp flask glowing red. He stood sentry by the entrance to the white dome enclosing the ride. The words PROFESSOR ATOMIC’S BRAIN-SCRAMBLER! glowed and flashed across the top of the dome, accented with neon test tubes. “I always loved that big alien professor guy.”

“Me, too.”

“Oh. Oh!” Elissa stopped walking and put her arm across Tamara’s stomach to stop her, too. Then she pointed up at the monster ride glowing and flashing ahead.

The Moon Robot was a Zipper-style ride. Its central structure was an oval-shaped steel axis, about fifty feet from end to end. The entire oval rotated like a windmill, and a large wheel spun at either end of it. Twelve little cages, each barely big enough for two riders, spun end over end while zipping around the outside of the oval like the teeth of a chainsaw. The entire structure glowed with purple and gold neon.

“Moon Robot,” Elissa breathed. “Probably the best ride in the park, and they’ve got it running again! This is the one for us, Tamara. It has to be.”

“Oh, yeah, it’s totally us!” Tamara beamed, the thousand lights of the Moon Robot reflecting in her wide eyes. She was always so agreeable that Elissa suspected she found making her own decisions to be too much hard work—Tamara could be profoundly lazy when not excited by something new and shiny.

Tamara was usually willing to go along with other people’s ideas, so Elissa did find it entirely possible that Tamara hadn’t set out to steal the guys Elissa liked, but had just passively gone along with their interest in her. It was just Tamara letting other people make her choices, as always.

Elissa took her arm, and they dashed together through the empty waiting area for Moon Robot, giggling as they ran back and forth between the railings. They blew drunken kisses at the giant toy robot that decorated the waiting area.

“How do we get on it?” Tamara asked as they approached the concrete slab of the loading area for the ride.

The Moon Robot ride stopped rotating. The outer cable brought one of the twelve caged cars down to the very bottom of the ride, directly in front of them. It stopped abruptly, and the door of the empty cage swung wide open, as though inviting them in.

“Wow,” Elissa said. “Okay, but how do we start it and stop it? We need a rope or a boy or some other tool.”

“All of our rides are now fully automated,” a flat voice said behind them. Both girls jumped and shrieked in surprise.

The man approaching them must have emerged from the ride operator’s booth, which was shaped like an Apollo space capsule with black-tinted windows. The booth’s round door stood open now, with the lights of a control panel glowing somewhere deep inside the dim booth.

He was in his thirties, or his forties, or his fifties, his face bland and expressionless, his eyes an almost colorless gray. He wore a candy-striped white hat with a matching suit, a bow tie, and a red handkerchief tucked into his coat pocket like a goofy rich guy in an old movie.

The girls gaped at him, afraid to speak. They glanced at each other—fight or flee? Tamara would probably wait for Elissa to decide.

He looked between them, then up at the glowing tower of the ride.

“The Moon Robot,” he said. “The best ride in the entire park, some would say. Rapid rotation, tremendous G-forces, all while riding six stories into the air. For those who need a good, solid jolt of fear. Is that what you’ve come to find?”

Tamara gave Elissa a shocked, helpless look.

“Um.” Elissa cleared her throat. “We’re sorry, we thought the park was closed...”

“It is. But you’ve come inside anyway.”

“Yeah.” Elissa trembled. “Are you the security guy? Because we can just leave. You don’t have to...get us in trouble.”

Tamara nodded vigorously, her eyes wide.

“I am not the security guy,” he said, with just a little smile at the very corners of his lips. “I am the new proprietor. As you can see, our renovations are making rapid progress.”

“Oh, yeah, uh-huh,” Elissa agreed quickly.

“It looks great!” Tamara said. “It’s all so pretty. And
new
.”

“I am pleased to hear that you approve,” he said, though his face didn’t show any particular pleasure, or anything at all. “You are squarely in my target market, after all. Your demographic provides my most valued customers.”

“Really?” Tamara asked. For some reason, she seemed to enjoy hearing that she was part of a valued target market.

“Young, bright, wandering souls desperately seeking a good time,” he said with a slight nod.

“That’s totally us! Right, Elissa?”

“Sure.” Elissa shrugged, just glad the guy hadn’t called the cops, so far.

“Please provide feedback on your experience as you exit the ride,” the man said. He made a flourishing gesture and the open cage and bowed his head. “Now, my ladies, your gondola awaits.”

Tamara and Elissa snickered.

Elissa led the way toward the open cage with a growing rush of excitement. Instead of getting mad at them for sneaking into the park, the guy was actually inviting them to try out the ride. She figured he must be some crazy rich guy—he would have to be, if he’d bought and restored the entire park. She wouldn’t mind making friends with a crazy rich guy like that.

“Moon Robot! Whoop!” Tamara cheered as she climbed into the little cage, suspended a few feet above the ground, and dropped into the narrow seat. The man in the striped hat held the cage to prevent it from swinging back and forth.

Elissa climbed up beside her.

“This is awesome,” Elissa whispered.

“I know!” Tamara squeaked, bobbing up and down in her seat.

“Place your hands in your laps for the safety bar,” the man said through the cage wall.

That didn’t sound right to Elissa—wouldn’t it make more sense to raise their arms out of the way while it closed over their laps? She did as instructed, though, and placed her hands on her thighs. Tamara copied her.

The steel bar swung down, and steel hoops snapped into place around all four of their wrists, handcuffing them into place. Elissa and Tamara shouted in protest.

“I apologize,” the man said, walking around to look in at them from the open cage door. “New safety regulations, you see. People could not obey a simple instruction to grasp the old handlebars at all times during the ride. So now we have these.”

With the two of them locked into place, the man leaned into the cage and reached his hands toward their faces, as if he intended to smother each of them with one hand. Elissa steeled herself, ready to bite his fingers if necessary, but he instead reached around behind their headrests, not touching them at all.

He swung a steel semi-circle out from behind each of their headrests and closed it across their necks, locking their heads against the thick, padded headrests.

“Whoa, hey!” Elissa protested.

“I’m afraid the insurance company now requires these to avoid head injuries.” He locked the neck guards into place, and then his flat gray eyes looked into Elissa’s. His gaze filled her with a creepy, squirmy feeling. “It is unfortunate, if you ask me,” he said. “A ride is much more interesting when it includes the risk of serious injury or death, don’t you agree?”

“Sure,” Elissa answered, feeling nervous now. She suddenly couldn’t believe she’d gotten on the ride, that she was trusting her life to this strange man.

He stepped back out of the cage and closed the door, then gazed at them for a moment through the wire mesh.

“Of course, I suppose injury and death are constant risks at every moment,” he said. “That is what makes
life
interesting.”

He latched the door from the outside, then turned and walked away toward the fake Apollo capsule.

“This is gonna be epic!” Tamara shrieked. She rocked back and forth, making the cage swing. If she did it hard enough, she could make their little cage flip upside down before the ride even started. Elissa remembered that from when they were kids.

“I don’t know,” Elissa whispered. “Don’t you think that guy’s kind of scary?”

“Should we be scared?” Tamara asked, her eyes widening. “This ride’s safe, right?”

“Nobody’s ridden it in five years,” Elissa whispered. “Maybe we should get off.”

A heavy chain clanked slowly somewhere behind them. Their little cage car rose, rocking back and forth as it climbed the side of the Moon Robot, up and away from the concrete below.

“Hey, wait!” Elissa screamed down at the Apollo capsule. “Wait, we changed our minds! Stop!”

“Yeah, stop!” Tamara screamed, echoing her.

The strange rich guy either didn’t hear them or didn’t care, because they continued to rise, gaining speed. The countless bright, colored lights of the park spread out below them. Music flowed from every ride and game booth, colliding into a vibrant ocean of sound—rock, country, jazz, and the obligatory calliope from the glowing red carousel across the way, which was flanked by the drowsily rotating Ferris wheel and the spinning swings.
People
died on those
tame
little rides
, Elissa thought,
and I’m riding the freaking Moon Robot
.

Off to her left, she could see the eerie, swamp-like lights barely illuminating the peaked dormers and turrets of Dark Mansion, its name glowing in ghostly green letters above the front porch area. Inferno Mountain still lay dark and lifeless, as did the bumper boats and all of Fools’ Gold, but Tyke Town was lit up just as she remembered.