Joyland

hero?”
    That was pretty close, but I didn’t want to say so. “The parents were okay. The kid sat in the corner, reading Screen Time and saying she spied Dean Martin with her little eye.”
    “Forget the local color and cut to the chase,” Tom said. “Did you get any money out of it?”
    I was preoccupied with thoughts of how the little girl announcing the celebrities with such reverence could have been in a flatline coma instead. Or in a casket. Thus distracted, I answered honestly. “The guy offered me five hundred dollars, but I wouldn’t take it.”
    Tom goggled. “Say what?”
    I looked down at the remains of the s’more I was holding. Marshmallow was drooling onto my fingers, so I tossed it into the fire. I was full, anyway. I was also embarrassed, and pissed off to be feeling that way. “The man’s trying to get a little business up and running, and based on the way he talked about it, its at the point where it could go either way. He’s also got a wife and a kid and another kid coming soon. I didn’t think he could afford to be giving money away.”
    “He couldn’t? What about you?”
    I blinked. “What about me?”
    To this day I don’t know if Tom was genuinely angry or faking it. I think he might have started out faking, then gathered steam as full understanding of what I’d done struck him. I have no idea exactly what his home situation was, but I know he was living from paycheck to paycheck, and had no car. When he wanted to take Erin out, he borrowed mine . . . and was careful—punctilious, I should say—about paying for the gas he used. Money mattered to him. I never got the sense it completely owned him, but yes, it mattered to him a great deal.
    You’re going to school on a wing and a prayer, same as Erin and me, and working at Joyland isn’t going to land any of us in a limousine. What’s wrong with you? Did you mother drop you on your head when you were a baby?”
    “Take it easy,” Erin said.
    He paid no attention. “Do you want to spend the fall semester next year getting up early so you can pull dirty breakfast dishes off a Commons conveyor belt? You must, because five hundred a semester is about what it pays at Rutgers. I know, because I checked before lucking into a tutoring gig. You know how I made it through freshman year? Writing papers for rich frat-boys majoring in Advanced Beerology. If I’d been caught, I could have been suspended for a semester or tossed completely. I’ll tell you what your grand gesture amounted to: giving away twenty hours a week you could have spent studying.” He heard himself ranting, stopped, and raised a grin. “Or chatting up lissome females.”
    “I’ll give you lissome,” Erin said, and pounced on him. They went rolling across the sand, Erin tickling and Tom yelling (with a notable lack of conviction) for her to get off. That was fine with me, because I did not care to pursue the issues Tom had raised. I had already made up my mind about some things, it seemed, and all that remained was for my conscious mind to get the news.

    The next day, at quarter past three, we were in line at Horror House. A kid named Brady Waterman was agenting the shy. I remember him because he was also good at playing Howie. (But not as good as I was, I feel compelled to add . . . strictly in the cause of honesty.) Although quite stout at the beginning of the summer, Brady was now slim and trim. As a diet program, wearing the fur had Weight Watchers beat six ways to Tulsa.
    “What are you guys doing here?” he asked. “Isn’t it your day off?”
    “We had to see Joyland’s one and only dark ride,” Tom said, “and I’m already feeling a satisfying sense of dramatic unity—Brad Waterman and Horror House. It’s the perfect match.”
    He scowled. “You’re all gonna try to cram into one car, aren’tcha?”
    “We have to,” Erin told him. Then she leaned close to one of Brad’s juggy ears and whispered, “It’s a Truth or Dare thing.”
    As Brad considered this, he touched the tip of his tongue to the middle of his upper lip. I could see him calculating the possibilities.
    The guy behind us spoke up. “Kids, could you move the line along? I understand there’s air conditioning inside, and I could use some.”
    “Go on,” Brad told us. “Put an egg in your shoe and beat it.” Coming from Brad, this was Rabelaisian wit.
    “Any ghosts in there?” I asked.
    “Hundreds, and I hope they all fly right up your ass.”

    We started