along a final stretch of dark tunnel, giving riders a chance to calm
down. In those last few seconds, before they returned to the fake
cavern from which they had started, it was just possible for a kid to
scramble back over the lap bar and shoehorn himself into his seat.
Jeremy knew he could do it: he was not worried about getting caught. Tod
didn’t have to worry about getting under the lap bar again, either,
because by then Tod would be dead; he wouldn’t have to worry about
anything ever.
“I don’t want to be kicked out for daredeviling,” Tod said as the train
approached the halfway point on the long, long initial incline. “It’s
been a neat day, and we still have a couple hours before Mom comes for
us.”
Mutant albino rats chattered at them from the fake rock ledges on both
sides as Jeremy said, “Okay, so be a dorkless wonder.” He continued to
extricate from the lap bar.
“I’m no dorkless wonder,” Tod said defensively.
“Sure, sure.”
“I’m not.”
“Maybe when school starts again in September, you’ll be able to get into
the Young Homemakers Club, learn how to cook, knit nice little doilies,
do flower arranging.”
“You’re a jerkoff, you know that?” o, you’ve broken my heart now,”
Jeremy said as he extracted both of his legs from the well under the lap
bar and crouched on the seat. “You girls sure know how to hurt a guy’s
feelings.”
“Creepaaoid.”
The train strained up the slope with the hard clicking and clattering so
sacred to roller coasters that the sound alone could make the heart pump
faster and the stomach flutter.
Jeremy scrambled over the lap bar and stood in the well in front of it,
facing forward. He looked over his shoulder at Tod, who sat scowling
behind the restraint. He didn’t care that much if Tod joined him or
not.
He had already decided to kill the boy, and if he didn’t have a chance
to do it at Fantasy World on Tod’s twelfth birthday, he would do it
somewhere else, sooner or later. Just thinking about doing it was a lot
of fun.
Like that song said in the television commercial where the Heinz ketchup
was so thick it took what seemed like hours coming out of the bottle:
An-tic-ipaaa-aa-tion. Having to wait a few days or even weeks to get
another good chance to kill Tod would only make the killing that much
more fun. So he didn’t rag Tod any more, just looked at him scornfully.
An-tic- i-paaa-aa–tion.
“I’m not afraid,” Tod insisted.
“Yeah.”
“I just don’t want to spoil the day.”
“Sure.”
“Creepazoid,” Tod said again.
Jeremy said, “Rocket jockey, my ass.”
That insult had a powerful effect. Tod was so sold on his own
friendship con that he could actually be stung by the implication that
he didn’t know how a real friend was supposed to behave. The expression
on his broad and open face revealed not only a world of hurt but a
surprising desperation that startled Jeremy. Maybe Tod did understand
what life was all about, that it was nothing but a brutal game with
every player concentrated on the purely selfish goal of coming out a
winner, and maybe old Tod was rattled by that, scared by it, and was
holding on to one last hope, to the idea of friendship. If the game
could be played with a partner or two, if it was really everyone else in
the world against your own little team, that was tolerable, better than
everyone in the world against just you. Tod Ledderbeck and his good
buddy Jeremy against the rest of humanity was even sort of romantic and
adventurous, but Tod Ledderbeck alone obviously made his bowels quiver.
Sitting behind the lap bar, Tod first looked stricken, then resolute.
Indecision gave way to action, and Tod moved fast, wriggling furiously
against the restraint.
“Come on, come on,” Jeremy urged. “We’re almost to the top.”
Tod squeezed over the lap bar, into the leg well where Jeremy stood.
He caught his foot in that restraining mechanism, and almost fell out of
the to take a fall. They weren’t moving fast enough. At most he’d