Free Joyland by Emily Schultz

steamboat. Her steamboat had a bell.
When Molly went to heaven, her steamboat went to hell — o
operator, please give me number nine,
and if you disconnect me, I’ll kick you in the be —
hind the yellow curtain, there was a piece of glass.
When Molly sat upon it, she hurt her little ass — k
me no more questions, I’ll tell you no more lies.
The boys are in the bathroom, pulling down their — flies
are in the garden. The bees are in the park.
The boys and girls are kissing in the d–a–r–k dark.
    Somebody shushed them — and people began to settle in more closely, shoulder-to-shoulder, a strange sense of family among strangers as hems of blankets touched. Warren brought out some Mason jars with holes punched in the lids.
    Across the yard, Shelly squealed, screwed the jar lid on, and ran over to show her mom and little sisters. Shelly was actually good at something. The first catch. Not a firefly but something rarer: a sleepy white tuft of caterpillar curled in a green leaf.
    Inside Sam’s and Tammy’s jars, the fireflies lit up sporadically, and only from their back ends. Tammy studied her insect as it crawled over the glass on eyelash-thin legs. She thought of the story Chris had told her that afternoon. Even in the dark, her head grew hot, as if from the sun.
    After the frog race, Chris’s fellow entrants had lined up along the dock. Frogs had been returned to the massive pickle jars that had been used to transport them — seven jars in a row stood in direct sun. The boys stretched out on their bellies, watching. A roll of silver duct tape braceleted David White’s wrist, the air holes in the lids Xed over. From a distance, Chris too had watched as the frogs jumped up against the glass more and more slowly until eventually they fell backward and died. Laughing, the boys pushed the jars one by one into the water. When they got up, they loped away silently — shoulders hunched, like dogs who’ve been caught pissing on the floor, tails between their legs. Except, Chris had said, no one had caught them. He didn’t even think they knew he’d seen. Where he’d stood on the bridge, Chris had watched the jars float by beneath him. Inside them — bloated and brown — rubbery carcasses he wished he could forget.
    Tammy tapped the glass with her finger. Its hollow tink. The firefly fell backward, then buzzed up again. Bees: kaleidoscopic vision , she remembered. The words appeared in her brain as if on flashcards. Bees see simultaneously from several different angles . . . Almost, she told herself, like seeing everything at once. Tammy wondered if the same held true for fireflies. She watched its rear end glint once more. Then she unscrewed the lid and let the bug flit away, a dark speck on the dark, until it had reached a safe distance again.
    When the first fireworks hit the sky, Samantha’s hair slipped from Tammy’s hand in a half-finished French braid. With the sudden flash of aqua light, Sam reared forward. Coloured dots Plinko -ed down the night. Grey-white streaked the sky like a gone-to-seed dandelion.
    “Awright!” Samantha said when the bang travelled the distance and broke.
    Far back, Shelly Pegg sat on a lawn chair, little sister in her lap, another in her mother’s. Shelly leaned against Mrs. Pegg’s shoulder in a way that made Tammy suddenly jealous. When the firework burst, the one lumpy figure they made in the night clapped with the enthusiasm of a crowd.
    Rodney put two fingers in his mouth and released a long shriek of a whistle.
    Bits of fire and ash broke apart from their compact shells, where gunpowder and chemicals — dioxides, Chris had told Tammy — pressed tight, waiting to distribute this formation of colour. As flecks of orange rained down, lighting upturned faces, Tammy glanced over to where Rodney was sitting. She tried to imagine what he looked like underneath his clothes, to see him the way Sam did. He gave no indication of being watched, and Tammy looked away. In front of