She glanced up, startled. “Dress-up? Oh, good grief, Malcolm, I haven’t played dress-up since-” She broke off abruptly, recalling the beating her father had given her for liberating her mother’s makeup . “Well, not in a long time,” she temporized, covering the stumble she’d made with a bright smile. “It’s just you caught me off guard and …well …nothing’s like I expected it to be. Nothing.”
”Very little in life usually is,” Malcolm said; without a trace of a smile.
”I suppose so. But l don’t have to like it.”
Malcolm’s glance was keen. “No one said you had to, Margo. Do you think I enjoy groveling for a job every day of my life, living on rice and dried beans, and swallowing my pride when people are rude, callous, or downright cruel? But I do it and smile because that’s the price of living my dream.”
Margo chewed that over as they left Residential behind and emerged into the throng crowding Frontier Town. A kid sporting an oversized cowboy hat and an undersized leather gunbelt drew and fired his pretend six-shooter at a diving pterosaur. It splashed into a nearby fishpond.
”Got him!” the kid crowed.
Unperturbed, the pterosaur emerged with a wriggling goldfish nearly as large as it was. The kid’s father laughed and called him over. He practically swaggered back.
Margo smiled. “I’d say he’s living his dream, huh?” Then more seriously, “Not too many people ever get the chance to try that, do they? I think you’re the first person I ever met who was doing it.” Except, maybe, Billy Pandropolous, and his dream was more akin to nightmare for everyone who came close to him. “I envy you.