Hideaway

or getting sick.”
    “It's great,” Jeremy agreed.
    “Let's sit here and eat ice cream till we puke.”
    “Sounds good to me. But let's not waste it.”
    “Huh?”
    Jeremy said, “Let's be sure, when we puke, we just don't spew on the ground. Let's be sure we puke on somebody.”
    “Yeah!” Tod said, getting the drift right away, “on somebody who deserves it, who's really pukeworthy.”
    “Like those girls,” Jeremy said, indicating a pair of pretty teenagers who were passing by. They wore white shorts and bright summery blouses, and they were so sure that they were cute, you wanted to puke on them even if you hadn't eaten anything and all you could manage was the dry heaves.
    “Or those old farts,” Tod said, pointing to an elderly couple buying ice cream nearby.
    “No, not them,” Jeremy said. “They already look like they've been puked on.”
    Tod thought that was so hilarious, he choked on his ice cream. In some ways Tod was all right.
    “Funny about this ice cream,” he said when he stopped choking.
    Jeremy bit: “What's funny about it?”
    “I know the ice cream is made from milk, which comes from cows. And they make chocolate out of cocoa beans. But whose nuts do they crush to sprinkle over it all?”
    Yeah, for sure, old Tod was all right in some ways.
    But just when they were laughing the loudest, feeling good, he leaned across the table, swatted Jeremy lightly alongside the head, and said, “You and me, Jer, we're gonna be tight forever, friends till they feed us to the worms. Right?”
    He really believed it. He had conned himself. He was so stupidly sincere that he made Jeremy want to puke on him.
    Instead, Jeremy said, “What're you gonna do next, try to kiss me on the lips?”
    Grinning, not picking up on the impatience and hostility aimed at him, Tod said, “Up your grandma's ass.”
    “Up your grandma's ass.”
    “My grandma doesn't have an ass.”
    “Yeah? Then what's she sit on?”
    “Your face.”
    They kept ragging each other all the way to Swamp Creature. The attraction was hokey, not well done, but good for a lot of jokes because of that. For a while, Tod was just wild and fun to be around.
    Later, however, after they came out of Space Battle, Tod started referring to them as “the two best rocket jockeys in the universe,” which half embarrassed Jeremy because it was so stupid and juvenile. It also irritated him because it was just another way of saying “we're buddies, blood brothers, pals.” They'd get on the Scorpion, and just as it pulled out of the station, Tod would say, “This is nothing, this is just a Sunday drive to the two best rocket jockeys in the universe.” Or they'd be on their way into World of the Giants, and Tod would throw his arm around Jeremy's shoulder and say, “The two best rocket jockeys in the universe can handle a fucking giant, can't we, bro?”
    Jeremy wanted to say, Look, you jerk, the only reason we're friends is because your old man and mine are sort of in the same kind of work, so we got thrown together. I hate this arm-around-the-shoulders shit, so just knock it off, let's have some laughs and be happy with that. Okay?
    But he did not say anything of the sort because, of course, good players in life never admitted that they knew it was all just a game. If you let the other players see you didn't care about the rules and regulations, they wouldn't let you play. Go to Jail. Go directly to Jail. Don't pass Go. Don't have any fun.
    By seven o'clock that evening, after they had eaten enough junk food to produce radically interesting vomit if they really did decide to puke on anyone, Jeremy was so tired of the rocket jockey crap and so irritated by Tod's friendship rap, that he couldn't wait for ten o'clock to roll around and Mrs. Ledderbeck to pull up to the gate in her station wagon.
    They were on the Millipede, blasting through one of the pitch-black sections of the ride, when Tod made one too many references to the two best rocket jockeys in the universe, and Jeremy decided to kill him. The instant the thought flashed through his mind, he knew he had to murder his “best friend.” It felt so right. If life was a game with a zillion-page book of rules, it wasn't going to be a whole hell of a lot of fun—unless you found ways to break the rules and still be allowed to play. Any game was a bore if you played by the rules—Monopoly, 500 rummy, baseball. But if you stole bases, filched cards without getting caught, or changed