The Funhouse

chances.”
        Amy slowly shook her head. “It wouldn't work.”
        “Why not?”
        “I'm not a good actress.”
        “I'll bet you'd fool them.”
        “Carrying on like that, pretending… Well, I'd feel stupid.”
        “Would you rather feel pregnant?”
        “There must be another way.”
        “Like what?”
        “I don't know.”
        “Face it, kid. This is your best shot.”
        “I don't know.”
        “I do know.”
        Amy sipped her Coke. After a couple of minutes of thought, she said, “Maybe you're right. Maybe I'll try the suicide bit.”
        “It'll work. Just as smooth as glass. You'll see. When will you tell them?”
        “Well, I had been thinking about breaking the news right after graduation if I couldn't find another way out by then.”
        “That's two weeks! Listen, kid, the sooner the better.”
        “Two weeks won't hurt anything. Maybe in that time I'll find some way to come up with the money myself.”
        “You won't.”
        “Maybe.”
        “You won't,” Liz said sharply. “Anyway, you're only seventeen. You probably couldn't get an abortion without your parents' consent, not even if you had the money to pay for it. I'll bet you have to be at least eighteen before they let you have one on your own say-so.”
        Amy hadn't considered that possibility. She simply didn't think of herself as a minor, she felt a hundred and ten years old.
        “Get your head on straight, kid,” Liz said. “You wouldn't take my advice about the pill. Now get your shit together this time, will you? Please, please, for Christ's sake, listen to me. The sooner the better.”
        Amy realized that Liz was right. She leaned back in the booth, away from the table, and a wave of resignation swept through her. She sagged as if she were a marionette whose strings had been cut. “Okay. The sooner the better. I'll tell them tonight or tomorrow.”
        “Tonight.”
        “I don't think I have the strength for it tonight. If I'm going to put on a big suicide act, I'll need to have my wits about me. I'll have to be rested.”
        “Tomorrow, then,” Liz said. “No later than tomorrow. Get it over with. Listen, we have a great summer coming up. If I go west at the end of the year, like I'm hoping to, this'll probably be the last summer you and I will have together. So we've got to do it up right. We've got to make a lot of memories to last us a long while. Lots of sun, some good dope to smoke, a couple of new guys… It'll be a blast. Except it won't be so terrific if you're walking around all bloated and preggy.”
        
        * * *
        
        For Joey Harper, Sunday turned out to be a fine day.
        The morning started with Mass and Sunday school, of course, which was as boring as usual, but then the day improved rapidly. When his father stopped at Royal City News for the Sunday papers, Joey found a batch of new comic books on the rack and had enough coins in his pockets to buy the two best issues. Then his mother made chicken and waffles for lunch, which was one of his favorite things in the whole wide world.
        After lunch his father gave him money to go to the Rialto. That was a theater, a revival house that played only old movies. It was six blocks from their house, and he was allowed to ride his bicycle that far, but no farther. The Rialto was showing two monster flicks for the Sunday matinee- The Thing and It Came from Outer Space . Both pictures were super.
        Joey liked scary stories. He wasn't exactly sure why he did. Sometimes, sitting in a dark theater, watching some slimy thing creep up on the hero, Joey almost peed in his pants. But he loved every minute of it.
        After the movies he went home for dinner, and his mother made cheeseburgers and baked beans, which was even better than chicken and waffles, better than just about anything he could think of. He ate until he thought he'd bust.
        Amy came home from The Dive at eight o'clock, an hour and a half before Joey's bedtime, so that he was still awake when she found the rubber snake hanging in her closet. She stormed down the hall, calling his name, and she chased him around his room until she caught him. After she had tickled him and had made him promise never to frighten her that way again (a promise they both knew he wouldn't keep), he persuaded her to play a sixty-minute time-limit game of Monopoly, and that was