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  For Jim Alexander

  ONE

  TAKING A BREAK behind Grandma’s House I run into Moze Gooch. He’s got his head off and he’s smoking. He knows he’s not supposed to smoke in the suit. It gets in the fur and makes it stink worse than usual.

  “You’re not supposed to smoke in the suit,” I say.

  “My, what a big mouth you have,” he says.

  “No, really,” I say pointing to the cigarette.

  He takes a drag. “My, what big eyes you have,” he says. He thinks this is funny on account of he’s playing the Big Bad Wolf. I’ve heard him use these lines before. I want to say something clever but he’d easily beat the clever out of me. He’s older than me and big. His nose is crooked. His left ear looks like my cousin Ida’s scrunchie.

  “Shove off or I’ll huff and puff…” He takes a deep breath like he’s going to blow someone’s house down but the smoke catches in his throat and he just spazzes out coughing. Idiot.

  He checks his watch then puts his wolf head back on. He glares at me. Five seconds. Ten. His painted-on mouth is laughing but I can guarantee you he is not laughing behind there. Fifteen seconds. The last of the cigarette smoke escapes through the vent holes in his cartoon eyes. I snap his picture, then run as he chases me into the park.

  The Park: Fairy Tale Place. Built in 1967. Bypassed since 2009. That’s when the new water park with the Aqua Loop opened off Route 8. We’re no longer what you call a destination spot, but we still get some locals, grown-ups who were tortured here as kids and now have kids of their own to torture.

  But I’m the one being tortured today. About a million degrees on the thermometer and I’m sweating like a pig. A real pig, not a smiley concrete pig like at the straw, stick, and brick houses over on Pork Avenue. Most days I do custodial work, sweeping up ticket stubs and popcorn, but today Dad’s got me painting the toadstools, polka-dotted carved toads with seats on their heads. There’s like a hundred dots on each one and I have to touch up all of them. I told Dad if he wanted to punish me with extra work I would drive the Storybook Train or helm the Jolly Roger Boat. Dad’s just being ornery for some reason.

  Okay, there was this:

  Dear Mr. and Mrs. Hobble,

  I regret to inform you that Augie has failed his Creative Arts final project. He may however redo his project for a remake grade, a course of action I strongly recommend.

  IDEAS due: July 1

  FINAL due: August 28

  Much luck, much inspiration,

  —Mr. Tindall

  R. L. Tindall

  Creative Arts, Room 12-B

  Gerald R. Ford Middle School

  “Creativity is contagious, pass it on” —ALBERT EINSTEIN

  Who fails Creative Arts?

  That was exactly what Mom was wondering last night.

  “Who fails Creative Arts?” she said.

  “I know. It was stupid,” I said.

  “What did the other kids do for their projects? What did Britt do?”

  “Britt made a self-portrait with papier mâché that, if I have to be totally honest, looked more monkey than Britt.”

  “So, you go to summer school?” said Dad. “I was really counting on you to help out around the park.” By “help out” he meant help him. He’s the manager of Fairy Tale Place.

  “No, I just need to make up the one project. I can still work at the park.”

  “Well, you better make it a good one,” said Mom. “No Elmer’s glue and macaroni.”

  “No Mom.”

  “Nothing with Popsicle sticks.”

  “No Mom.”

  Later in my bedroom I tossed the Popsicle sticks I was going to use on my project into the trash and took out a blank notebook.

  I sharpened a pencil.

  I opened the book to page one.

  I sharpened another pencil.

  I closed the book.

  The cover said RETURN TO with blank lines for a name and address. I wrote in my name, AUGIE HOBBLE, and my address.

  I opened the book again.

  I stared at the blank page.

  I closed the book.

  I watched cat videos on YouTube.

  TWO

  FAIRY TALE PLACE is made up of four lands: Storybook Village, Birthday Town, Fort Fortitude, and the North Pole. It’s decorated with lots of stripes and polka dots and molding called dentil because it looks like teeth. But most of our dentil is missing or crooked like the plastic gag teeth people wear on Halloween.

  We have seventy-eight workers, which is not enough. There’s always something going wrong or breaking down. That’s why I help out and why I have to know the rules. What are the rules? These are the rules.

  RULE #1 We are HOSTS not employees.

  RULE #2 The visitors are GUESTS not customers.

  RULE #3 When the HOSTS are in the park they are ON STAGE and must remain IN CHARACTER for the GUESTS.

  Dad says the worst thing a host can do is BREAK THE ILLUSION we are creating for the guests. So even though I’m not a costumed character when I walk ON STAGE I’m still a part of the show. If Santa says, “Ho, ho, ho, Augie, there’s fresh cocoa in Mrs. Claus’s kitchen,” I don’t say, “We’re in the desert. It’s a kajillion degrees in the shade.” What I say is, “Marshmallows too?” If Cowboy Roy says, “Noon stage runnin’ late again?” I say, “Appears so, pardner,” even though we have no stagecoach.

  RULE #4 B.R.A.V.O.

  What is B.R.A.V.O.? Dad says a successful theme park must have B.R.A.V.O.

  B for Beauty

  R for Rides

  A for Adventure

  V for Value.

  When your hosts deliver all four your guests receive the lucky

  O for a Once-in-a-lifetime theme park experience.

  These are Dad’s rules. Whenever he recites them he finishes with a fist pump and a “BravO!” He tells me he’s worked on these rules a long time. But I’m pretty sure he took them all from Disneyland.

  The area behind the park, what we call backstage, is where the hosts take their breaks. That’s where I am now, behind the North Pole in a pink mushroom-shaped hut trying to blink the toad dots from my eyes. I’m working on an idea in my Creative Arts notebook about snowflakes. Scientists say no two are alike. Thing is, how do they know if they haven’t checked them all? I thought a comic about the FBI (Flake Bureau of Investigation) might have some potential. So I’m drawing variations of flakes when a head pops in the window. It’s my best friend Britt Fairweather.

  “Tree house?” he says.

  “Tree house,” I say.

  We’re making a tree house. Actually, we haven’t started yet, but we’ve spent the last couple of days hauling supplies and tools out to an area behind the park called the North Woods. The woods go on for about a quarter mile or so and our tree house will be at the far end where hardly anyone ever goes, before where the woods become desert and rocks and nothing b
ut desert and rocks for miles.

  “Let’s see what you’ve got so far,” says Britt, nodding to my notebook. I show him my sketches.

  He studies the seven sketches for about a minute then points at each one. “Junk, junk, junk, junk, junk, junk, and lemee see, hmm … Oh right: junk. Really, I am more than happy to help you with papier mâché,” he says.

  I close my book and hide it in a crack in the mushroom wall. The thing with Britt, he cracks wise but in reality he’s pretty soft and gets bullied more than any guy I know, including me, so I cut him a boatload of slack.

  “Let’s find my dad,” I say.

  Dad is working with Hank the handyman on the refrigeration system at Charley’s Chocolate Factory. We’ve been having problems with melting candy. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? True, that’s a book by Roald Dahl. But our Charley is spelled different. This is one of the unfortunate things about the park: the attraction names. When attendance fell and guests started calling Fairy Tale Place Very Stale Place, Dad updated a bunch of the attractions. Fear of what he called “frivolous litigation” kept him from using the real names, but it didn’t stop him from using variations of those names: the Sweet Dreams Candy Shoppe became Charley’s (with a Y) Chocolate Factory. The Little Bo Peep Hut became Shriek’s Cottage (Shriek, the big Blue Ogre). The playground is called Lord of the Swings. The arcade is the Hunger Video Games. We have Star Trak, a rail ride, and Bart Sipson’s Sippee Cup cart. Recently we were told by some lawyer to change the name of our Internet café, Charlotte’s (Worldwide) Web. No one’s told us to change the name of the diaper changing station, Winnie the Poo’s, though I wish they would.

  “Dad, can I cut out?” I say.

  “Finish those toadstools?”

  “Most of them.”

  “How about your Creative Arts assignment?”

  “I’m working on it,” I say, giving Britt a look.

  “Be home for supper.”

  Hank offers us what looks like a melting brown potato. “Chocolate Oopah Loopah?”

  Hank is covered from head to boot in chocolate and grease, the Oopah Loopah dripping down his arm.

  “Hank, look at you,” teases Dad. “You’re a mess. You should get into a better line of work.”

  “What,” says Hank, as he does a thousand times a day, “and get out of show business?”

  Britt, me, and all the tree house supplies we can carry struggle on our bikes to the North Woods. As we pedal Britt is saying things like the tree house should be “architecturally balanced,” “aesthetically pleasing,” “green engineered,” but I’m not really listening. I’m monitoring my front tire. Low again. It’s got a slow leak Dad promised to patch, but until that time I pump it somewhere between two and two thousand times a day. I tell Britt I’ll catch up as I hop off my bike to fish in my bag for the pump.

  That’s when I hear it. The horrible sound.

  “Oh Brittany … Yoooo hoooooooooo.”

  Fifty yards up the road I see Hogg Wills swing down from a tree to body block Britt and his bike. Hogg, humongous, long fingernails, unwashed hair, stinky pulled-from-the-hamper-smelling clothes, nods at our supplies.

  “Building a dollhouse?” he says, tipping Britt off his bike and onto the ground.

  Tripp Vickles, Hogg’s lackey, drops from another tree. “Did the girlie-girl dirty her girlie panties?” he says, watching Britt scrape at the mud on his jeans.

  Bullies are dropping from the sky like frogs in a Bible story. I pray that’s all of them, but mostly pray they don’t hurt me too much as I come from behind my flat tire in what I admit is not so big of a hurry. But I’m saved when a car slows and Mr. Pennycross from the post office rolls down his window. “Hogg, Tripp. You boys playin’ nice?”

  “Oh, yes sir,” says Hogg innocently.

  “Good afternoon, sir,” says Tripp.

  “Howdy Britt,” says Mr. Pennycross.

  Britt stands and reclaims his bike from Hogg who was failing miserably at attempts to pop a wheelie. Britt walks it to Pennycross’s car. “This is the new model, isn’t it sir?”

  “Why, no Britt. In fact it wasn’t the new model when I bought her used four years ago.”

  “You’d never know it,” I say, picking up my step. “You take good care of her.”

  Hogg and Tripp wait for Pennycross to leave, but Mr. Pennycross, wise to the ways of bullies, isn’t budging.

  “All right boys,” says Mr. Pennycross. “Run on home now.”

  Hogg brushes past and whispers, “Better watch your back, Hobble.” Part of me is hoping I don’t lose my lunch and part of me is like, wow, Hogg Wills knows my name.

  Tripp is taking his time. Mr. Pennycross asks if we’d like to hear the horn and he gives it a blast and Tripp stumbles on my two-by-fours. He quickly jumps up like he meant to do it and the two bullies storm down the street karate-chopping mailboxes and kicking trash cans.

  Britt gives me the silent treatment the rest of the way. When we get to the tree house site I say, “When Tripp fell I should have said, ‘have a nice trip.’ Ho, ho.”

  Britt mumbles something while examining a rip in his snap-button shirt.

  “What?” I say.

  “I didn’t say anything,” he says.

  I shimmy up the tree trunk, struggling with a two-by-four. Britt begins work on a walkway of stones. He gets the walkway sort of outlined, then takes a break to push a garden gnome up on the branch where I was planning to put the front door. A walkway? A garden gnome? I don’t think Britt knows the first thing about tree houses.

  “Hey, don’t put that there,” I say, but he gets the gnome stuck in a fork in the branch. I try to reach it, but my floorboards buckle, then my railing falls, then I do too.

  The only thing left in the tree is that stupid garden gnome.

  “If it’s not in a tree can it still be called a tree house?” I ask. We had given up on the tree and built it on the ground.

  “I think it’s a fort now,” says Britt.

  I wanted to name it Fort Ninja. Britt “christened it” Fort Feng Shui after some term he’d read on the Internet. I’m calling it Fort Ninja.

  Britt opens his backpack and takes out a miniature Mona Lisa painted by his father. I should mention his dad is a miniature artist. By this I don’t mean to say he’s a little man who paints; I mean he makes tiny pictures. Mini illustrations of the Last Supper or mini Minnie Mouse.

  Britt hangs the mini Mona on the wall. It doesn’t look so mini in our little fort.

  Britt takes out a glass owl knick-knack and puts it on the windowsill.

  “From my mom’s collection,” he informs me. But we’re getting very un-fortlike with all this junk. “It’s a little girlie,” I say.

  “I don’t like that word,” he snaps.

  “What word?”

  “‘Girlie.’ And major thanks for all your help today with Hogg and Vickles.”

  Okay, now it’s coming out. I hoped he’d overlook that I seemed more interested in my flat tire than in joining him for a Hogg beating. I decide to address only the first comment. “Come on, when I say ‘girlie’ it’s not the same as when that hog Hogg says it,” I say.

  No response from Britt. We’re back to the silent treatment.

  “Fine,” I say. “I won’t say ‘girlie.’ I have some girlie stuff too you know. Dolls…” Actually they’re action figures, but I don’t think I should put too fine a point on it at this moment.

  “I think it stinks that you say that,” he says.

  “I said I won’t say it. So sensitive. Jeez.”

  We sit through a few seconds of what they call an Awkward Silence.

  “Are we finished?” I finally say. “Can we table it for now?” He doesn’t answer. “Can we table it?”

  “It’s tabled! It’s tabled!” he hollers. He’s quiet for a minute, then pulls out some red curtains made from Elmo pajamas and kinda mumbles, “What do you think of these?”

  “Nice,” I say.

  THREE
br />   NEXT DAY I take my notebook from the crack in the Mushroom Hut and begin to rethink the snowflake story. By rethink I mean scrap it. Britt’s right. Junk. I’m thinking maybe photography now. I like photography. At the park we have a Lost and Found: mostly sunglasses, ball caps, once a pair of dentures, and a few old Polaroid cameras from the 1990s. A Polaroid camera takes cool pictures that look like Instagram.

  Problem is all of our film is old so sometimes the pictures don’t turn out.

  Sometimes they do.

  I have some time before my project is due, so if I get enough pictures together maybe I can turn them into a photo essay.

  I take some shots of Cowboy Roy outside of Fort Fortitude. He’s my favorite host. He does pretty cool rope tricks and he’s a real good yodeler. He moseys—cowboys don’t walk, they mosey—over to me. “Howdy pardner,” he says. He wears denim jeans with buckskin chaps. He wears a bandana around his neck. He has boots with spurs and a shirt with fringe. I’m not good with ages, but he looks fairly oldish: twenty-four or twenty-five if I had to guess.

  “How’re things back at the ranch?” he asks. He means my house, but he calls everyone’s house a ranch.

  “Pretty good Cowboy Roy. How are things with you?”

  “Fair to middlin’.”

  One of his duties is to lean on a split rail fence and recite cowboy poetry or recount western lore. “Swappin’ lies and tellin’ tales” he calls it. Most guests listen for a few minutes or shoot videos with their phones till they realize how long-winded he is, then move on. It doesn’t seem to bother Roy. He could talk to twenty people or one.

  Dad sees me and calls me over. “Augie, have you met our Summer Cinderella?”

  He steps aside and I see it’s Juliana, THE Juliana, a very popular girl from my school. What is she doing here?