Free Joyland by Emily Schultz Page A

her, Samantha was absently unweaving her half-braided head. Behind her, Tammy could feel Mrs. Sturges and Mr. Riley pressing closer together. She knew they were holding hands.
    Between the inevitable smashing and trickling down, there was a sense of hovering, gapping. Suddenly, Tammy’s throat felt stretched and raw. It was from standing too close to the barbecue earlier, breathing in the lighter-fluid fumes and the air streaked by charcoal. When she ran her hand across her eyes, she was sure it was because the fireworks had a double impact, stretched out as they were, reflected in the water. It was because they were so bright.
    She wondered what her parents were doing right now, whether they had joined the crowd downtown, or were watching on the local cable channel, or were just creeping around in the dark of the house — which was how Tammy always imagined the house after she had left it. Where was Chris? she wondered.
    PLAYER 1
    Chris shot the mushrooms. He killed the spider for 600 points before it could brush against him. He loved the crueller, less-apparent elements of such games, the fact that so often, touch could kill. Zapping the centipede on the screen before him, Chris revelled in its breaking — down and down into smaller and smaller bits, each of them alive, inching its way downward.
    “Could you hit a few more mushrooms?” J.P. oozed sarcasm, completely bored by Chris’s burgeoning score. He leaned back against another machine, flexed the brim of his ball cap. Circus Berzerk was a far cry from Joyland. The plaza offered the comforts of air conditioning, but little else.
    “Technically . . . they’re toadstools.” Chris jerked his player away from a falling flea. At a certain point, shooting became a natural extension of breathing, as though Chris wasn’t playing the machine but simply existing in it. The boards passed from green and red to pink and blue to orange and yellow, his man moving to and fro in a rainstorm of colour.
    “Jesus.” J.P. snorted. “I thought you wanted to go to Doyle’s. Would you just get yourself killed already?”
    And so it ended; there was little choice for someone like Chris. High scores were lost to the whims of others. The game could go on indefinitely — infinitely, if he let it.
    Below Chris, corroded green metal opened to flashes of grey: moving, shape-shifting water. The old railroad bridge was still in use, though Chris could not fathom how. Even a few years ago there had been more gaps than bridge. He stepped carefully. J.P. was doing a play-by-play sportscast of the entire crash derby though if Chris had had any interest he would have gone himself that morning to watch. He pussyfooted one running shoe in front of the other, edging alongside a crater. With shorter legs than J.P.’s, the holes seemed to open wider beneath Chris every time he glanced down. He squashed the fear with a laugh — the briefest, most private tactic available for convincing himself he could get used to this feeling, as easily as any other annoyance. Camp pranks had once induced the same queasiness: flashlights held to illuminate the face from below, casting up a ghoulish glow, lengthening the shadows of the eyes and emphasizing the sulphurous yellow tone of human skin.
    Through the hole, the water thrashed. It ran fast for such a small river, as if it could compensate for its narrowness with its force. In less than a minute they would be on the other side. Chris could see the row of houses already. Shingles stood out from the trees on the riverbank like blackhead zits. One among them, he guessed, would be Doyle’s.
    The boys approached from the back, unable to tell whose house was whose. The yards pressed together without fences, only red cedars or unkempt raspberry bushes lining the property. In all likelihood, kids bikes lay half in one yard and half in their neighbours’. Toys — plastic shovels and naked Barbies — were thrown here and there, half-sunk in mud. A car’s viscera