thing,” Richie said.
“Yeah,” Buzz said.
“All the animals do it in the dirt,” Richie said.
“Yeah,” Buzz said. “Let’s be natural, just hang loose and be real
natural.” “Stifle yourselves,” Liz said. “There’s a lot more carnival
to see.
Come on.
Let’s go.”
Amy tucked in her T-shirt, and Buzz gave her one more wet kiss.
Back on the midway, Amy thought the rides seemed to be spinning faster
than before. All the colors were more vivid, too. The dozens of
different sources of music seemed louder than they had been ten minutes
ago, and each song possessed a subtleness of melody of which she hadn’t
been previously aware.
I’m not totally in control of myself, Amy thought worriedly, dizzily.
I’m not out of control yet, but I’m liable to wind up that way. I’ve
got to be careful. Sensible. Watch out for that dope. That damned,
spiced-up dope. If I don’t watch myself, I’m going to end up in a
bedroom at Liz’s house, with Buzz on top of me, whether that’s what I
really want or not. And I don’t think that’s what I want. I don’t
want to be the kind of person Liz and Mama say I am. I don’t. Do I?
They rode the Loop-de-Loop again.
Amy clung to Buzz.
After spending Monday morning and part of the afternoon at the
fairgrounds, watching the carnies set up their equipment, Joey hadn’t
intended to return to the carnival until Saturday night, when he would
run away forever. But Monday evening he changed his mind.
Actually, his mother changed it for him.
He was sitting in the family room, watching television, drinking Pepsi,
when he accidentally knocked over his glass. The soda splashed on his
chair and spilled all over the carpet. He got a bunch of paper towels
from the kitchen and cleaned up the mess as best he could, and he was
sure that he hadn’t permanently stained either the carpet or the
chair’s upholstery.
In spite of the fact that the damage wasn’t serious, Mama was furious
when she walked in and saw him with handfuls of Pepsi-soaked paper _ towels
Although it was only seven-thirty, she was half drunk
already.
She grabbed him and shook him and told him that he behaved like a
little animal, and she sent him to bed more than two hours early.
He felt miserable. He couldn’t even turn to Amy for sympathy because
she was out somewhere, on another date with Buzz. Joey didn’t know
where she and Buzz had gone, and even if he did he v couldn’t run after
her, whimpering about how Mama had shaken and scared him.
In his room Joey sprawled on the bed for a while, crying, utterly
disconsolate, angered by the injustice of it all–and then he thought
of the two pink passes that the carny had given him earlier in the
day.
Two passes.
He would use one to get into the fairgrounds on Saturday evening, when
he would try to join up with the carnies by telling them that he was an
orphan and had nowhere else to go. But that left one pass, and if he
didn’t use it between now and Saturday, it would only go to waste.
He sat up on the edge of the bed and thought about it for a few
minutes, and he decided that he could sneak off to the carnival, have a
lot of fun, and sneak back into the house without his mother knowing
that he’d been gone. He got up and pulled the drapes shut, so that
hardly any of the fading, summer-evening sunlight reached into the
room. He took a spare blanket and an extra pillow from his closet and
used those to form a dummy under the covers. He switched on his dim
night-light, stepped back from the bed, and studied his handiwork
critically.
Even with the splinters of light showing at the edges of the drapes, he
thought the dummy would pass Mama’s inspection. Usually she didn’t
come to his room until eleven o’clock at the very earliest, and if she
waited that long tonight, until well after dark, when the room would be
illuminated by only the night-light, the trick would surely work, she