a
he dead possum's still there." Oswald was looking out the passenger
window at the gray, furry corpse on the side of the road. Somehow it
looked even deader than it had yesterday. Last night's rain hadn't
helped.
"Nothing looks deader than a dead possum," Oswald's dad said.
"Except this town," Oswald mumbled, looking at the boarded-up
storefronts and the display windows, which were displaying nothing but
dust.
"What's that?" Dad said. He was already wearing the stupid red vest
they put him in when he worked the deli counter at the Snack Space.
Oswald wished he'd wait to put it on until after he dropped him at school.
"This town," Oswald said, louder this time. "This town looks deader
than a dead possum."
His dad laughed. "Well, I don't guess I can argue with that."
Three years ago, when Oswald was seven, there had actually been stuff
to do here—a movie theater, a game and card store, and an ice-cream shop
with amazing waffle cones. But then the mill had closed. The mill had
basically been the reason the town existed. Oswald's dad had lost his job,
and so had hundreds of other kids' moms and dads. Lots of families had
moved away, including Oswald's best friend, Ben, and his family.
Oswald's family had stayed because his mom's job at the hospital was
steady and they didn't want to move far away from Grandma. So Dad
ended up with a part-time job at the Snack Space, which paid five dollars
an hour less than he'd made at the mill, and Oswald watched the town die.
One business after another shut down, like the organs in a dying body,
because nobody had the money for movies or games or amazing waffle
cones anymore.
"Are you excited it's the last day of school?" Dad asked. It was one of
those questions adults always asked, like "How was your day?" and "Did
you brush your teeth?"
Oswald shrugged. "I guess. But there's nothing to do with Ben gone.
School's boring, but home's boring, too."
"When I was ten, I wasn't home in the summer until I got called in for
supper," Dad said. "I rode my bike and played baseball and got into all
kinds of trouble."
"Are you saying I should get in trouble?" Oswald said."No, I'm saying you should have fun." Dad pulled into the drop-off line
in front of Westbrook Elementary.
Have fun. He made it sound so easy.
Oswald walked through the school's double doors and ran smack into
Dylan Cooper, the last person he wanted to see. Oswald was apparently the
first person Dylan wanted to see, though, because his mouth spread in a
wide grin. Dylan was the tallest kid in fifth grade and clearly enjoyed
looming over his victims.
"Well, if it isn't Oswald the Ocelot!" he said, his grin spreading
impossibly wider.
"That one never gets old, does it?" Oswald walked past Dylan and was
relieved when his tormentor chose not to follow him.
When Oswald and his fifth-grade classmates were preschoolers, there
was a cartoon on one of the little-kid channels about a big pink ocelot
named Oswald. As a result, Dylan and his friends had started calling him
"Oswald the Ocelot" on the first day of kindergarten and had never
stopped. Dylan was the kind of kid who'd pick on anything that made you
different. If it hadn't been Oswald's name, it would have been his freckles
or his cowlick.
The name-calling had gotten much worse this year in U.S. history when
they'd learned that the man who shot John F. Kennedy was named Lee
Harvey Oswald. Oswald would rather be an ocelot than an assassin.
Since it was the last day of school, there was no attempt at doing any
kind of real work. Mrs. Meecham had announced the day before that
students were allowed to bring their electronics as long as they took
responsibility for anything getting lost or broken. This announcement
meant that no effort would be made toward any educational activities of
any kind.
Oswald didn't have any modern electronics. True, there was one laptop
at home, but the whole family shared it and he wasn't allowed to bring it
to school. He had a phone, but it was the saddest, most out-of-date model
imaginable, and he didn't want to take it out of his pocket because he
knew any kid who saw it would make fun of how pathetic it was. So while
other kids played games on their tablets or handheld consoles, Oswald sat.
After just sitting became intolerable, he took out a notebook and pencil
and started to draw. He wasn't the best artist in the world, but he could
draw well enough that his images were identifiable, and there was a certain cartoony quality about his drawings that he liked. The best thing
about drawing, though, was that he could get lost in it. It was like he fell
into the paper and became part of the scene he was creating. It was a
welcome escape.
He didn't know why, but lately he had been drawing mechanical
animals—bears, bunnies, and birds. He imagined them being human-size
and moving with the jerkiness of robots in an old science-fiction movie.
They were furry on the outside, but the fur covered a hard metal skeleton
filled with gears and circuits. Sometimes he drew the animals' exposed
metal skeletons or sketched them with the fur peeled back to show some of
the mechanical workings underneath. It was a creepy effect, like seeing a
person's skull peeking out from beneath the skin.
Oswald was so immersed in his drawing that he was startled when Mrs.
Meecham turned off the lights to show a movie. Movies always seemed
like a teacher's final act of desperation on the day before break—a way to
keep the kids quiet and relatively still for an hour and a half before setting
them loose for the summer. The movie Mrs. Meecham chose was, in
Oswald's opinion, too babyish for a roomful of fifth graders. It was about a
farm with talking animals, and he had watched it before, but he watched it
again because, really, what else did he have to do?
At recess, kids stood around tossing a ball back and forth and talking
about what they were going to do over the summer:
"I'm going to football camp."
"I'm going to basketball camp."
"I'm going to hang out at my neighborhood pool."
"I'm going to stay with my grandparents in Florida."
Oswald sat on a bench and listened. For him there would be no camps
and no pool memberships and no trips because there was no money. And
so he'd draw pictures, play his old video games that he'd already beaten a
thousand times, and maybe go to the library.
If Ben were still here, it would be different. Even if they were just
doing the same old stuff, they'd be doing it together. And Ben could
always make Oswald laugh, riffing on video game characters or doing a
perfect impersonation of one of their teachers. He and Ben had fun no
matter what they did. But now a summer without Ben yawned before him,wide and empty. Most days Oswald's mom worked from 12 p.m. until 12 a.m., so his dad
had to make dinner. Usually they got by on frozen meals like lasagna or
chicken potpie, or on cold cuts and potato salad from the Snack Space deli
that were still good enough to eat but not good enough to sell. When Dad
did cook, it was usually things that just required boiling water.
While Dad got their dinner ready, Oswald's job was to feed Jinx, their
very spoiled black cat. Oswald often thought that he used about the same
amount of cooking skill in opening Jinx's can of stinky cat food as his dad
used in his dinner preparations.
Tonight Oswald and Dad were sitting down to plates of blue-box mac
and cheese and some canned corn his dad had zapped in the microwave. It
was a very yellow meal.
"You know, I was thinking," Dad said, squirting ketchup onto his
macaroni and cheese. (Why did he do that? Oswald wondered.) "I know
you're old enough to stay home by yourself some, but I don't like the idea
of you staying by yourself the whole day while your mom and I are at
work. I was thinking you could ride into town with me in the mornings and
I could drop you off at the library. You could read, surf the net—"
Oswald couldn't let this one slide. How out of date could his dad be?
"Nobody says 'surf the net' anymore, Dad."
"They do now … because I just said it." Dad forked up some macaroni.
"Anyway, I thought you could hang out in the library in the mornings.
When you get hungry, you could head over to Jeff's Pizza for a slice and a
soda, and I could pick you up there once my shift's over at three."
Oswald considered for a moment. Jeff's Pizza was kind of weird. It
wasn't dirty exactly, but it was run down. The vinyl on the booth seats had
been repaired with duct tape, and the plastic letters had fallen off the menu
board above the counter so the listed toppings included pepperon and am
urger. It was clear that Jeff's Pizza used to be something bigger and better
than it now was. There were tons of unused floor space and lots of unused
electrical outlets along the base of the walls. Also, on the far wall was a
small stage, even though there were no performances there, not even so
much as a karaoke night. It was a strange place—sad and not what it had
once been, like the rest of the town.
That being said, the pizza was decent, and more important, it was the
only pizza in town if you didn't count the kind from the frozen food department at the Snack Space. The few good restaurants in town,
including Gino's Pizza and Marco's Pizza (which, unlike Jeff's, had real
pizza maker names), had closed their doors not long after the mill had.
"So you'll give me the money for pizza?" Oswald asked. Since Dad's
job loss, Oswald's allowance had dwindled to practically nothing.
Dad smiled—a kind of sad smile, it seemed to Oswald. "Son, we're bad
off, but we're not so bad off I can't spot you three-fifty for a slice and a
soda."
"Okay," Oswald said. It was hard to say no to a warm, gooey cheese
slice.
Since it wasn't a school night and wouldn't be again for quite some
time, Oswald stayed up after Dad went to bed and watched an old Japanese
monster movie, with Jinx curled up purring on his lap. Oswald had seen a
lot of B-grade Japanese horror films, but this one, Zendrelix vs.
Mechazendrelix, was new to him. As always, Zendrelix just looked like a
giant dragon thing, but Mechazendrelix reminded him of the mechanical
animals he drew when he stripped them of their fur. He laughed at the
movie's special effects—the train Zendrelix destroyed was clearly a toy—
and at how the actors' lip movements didn't match the dubbed-in English.
Somehow, though, he always found himself rooting for Zendrelix. Even
though he was just a guy in a rubber suit, somehow he managed to have a
lot of personality.
In bed, he tried to count his blessings. He didn't have Ben, but he had
monster movies and the library and lunchtime pizza slices. It was better
than nothing, but it still wasn't going to be enough to keep him going all
summer. Please, he wished, his eyes closed tight. Please let something
interesting happen.Oswald woke to the smell of coffee and bacon. The coffee he could do
without, but the bacon smelled amazing. Breakfast meant time with his
mom, often the only time he got with her until the weekend. After one
necessary stop, he hurried down the hall to the kitchen.
"Well, look at that! My rising sixth grader has risen!" Mom was
standing over the stove in her fuzzy pink bathrobe, her blonde hair pulled
back in a ponytail, flipping—oh, yum, were those pancakes? "Hi, Mom." She opened her arms. "I demand a morning hug."
Oswald sighed like it annoyed him, but he went over and hugged her. It
was funny. With Dad, he always said he was too old for hugs, but he never
turned down his mom's open arms. Maybe it was because he didn't get to
spend much time with her during the week, while he and Dad spent so
much time together they sometimes got on each other's nerves.
He knew Mom missed him and felt bad for having to work such long
hours. But he also knew that since Dad's job at the Snack Space was just
part-time, Mom's long hours were most of the reason the bills were getting
paid. Mom always said that adult life was a fight between time and money.
The more money you earned to spend on bills and necessities, the less
time you got to spend with your family. It was a difficult balance.
Oswald sat down at the kitchen table and thanked his mom when she
poured his orange juice.
"First day of summer break, huh?" Mom went back to the stove to
scoop up a pancake with her spatula.
"Uh-huh." He probably should have tried to sound more enthusiastic,
but he couldn't muster the energy.
She slid the pancake onto his plate and then served him two strips of
bacon. "Not the same without Ben, huh?"
He shook his head. He wasn't going to cry.
Mom ruffled his hair. "I know. It's a bummer. But, hey, maybe a new
friend will move to town."
Oswald looked at her hopeful face. "Why would anybody move here?"
"Okay, I see your point," Mom said, piling on another pancake. "But
you never know. Or maybe somebody cool already lives here. Somebody
you don't even know yet."
"Maybe, but I doubt it," Oswald said. "These pancakes are great,
though."
Mom smiled and ruffled his hair again. "Well, I've got that going for
me anyway. Do you want more bacon? If you do, you'd better grab it
before your dad gets in here and vacuums it all up."
"Sure." It was Oswald's personal policy never to refuse more bacon.
The library was actually kind of fun. He found the latest book in a science-
fiction series he liked and a manga that looked interesting. As always, he had to wait forever to use the computers because they were all taken by
people who looked like they had no place else to be, men with scraggly
beards wearing layers of ratty clothing, too-thin women with sad eyes and
bad teeth. He waited his turn politely, knowing that some of these people
used the library for shelter during the day, then spent the night on the
streets.
Jeff's Pizza was as weird as he remembered. The big empty space
beyond the booths and tables was like a dance floor where nobody danced.
The walls were painted a pale yellow, but they must have used cheap paint
or only one coat, because shapes of whatever had been on the walls before
were still visible. It had probably been some kind of mural with people or
animals, but now it was just shadows behind a thin veil of yellow paint.
Oswald sometimes tried to figure out what the shapes were, but they were
too blobby to make out.
Then there was the stage that never got used, standing empty but
seemingly waiting for something. Though a feature even weirder than the
stage lay in the back right corner. It was a large rectangular pen
surrounded by yellow netting, but it had been roped off with a sign that
said DO NOT USE. The pen itself was filled with red, blue, and green plastic
balls that had probably been brightly colored once but were now faded and
fuzzy with dust.
Oswald knew that ball pits had been popular features in kiddie
playlands but had largely disappeared because of concerns about hygiene
—after all, who was going to disinfect all those balls? Oswald had no
doubt that if ball pits had still been popular when he was little, his mom
wouldn't have let him play in one. As a licensed practical nurse, she was
always happy to point out places she found to be too germy to play in, and
when Oswald would complain that she never let him have any fun, she'd
say, "You know what's not fun? Pinkeye."
Except for the empty stage and the ball pit, the strangest feature in
Jeff's Pizza was Jeff himself. He seemed to be the only person who
worked there, so he both took orders at the counter and made the pizzas,
but the place was never crowded enough that this was a problem. Today,
like all other days, Jeff looked as if he hadn't slept in a week. His dark hair
was sticking up in weird places, and he had alarming bags under his
bloodshot eyes. His apron was stained with both recent and ancient tomato
sauce. "What can I getcha?" he asked Oswald, sounding bored."A cheese slice and an orange soda, please," Oswald said.
Jeff stared off into the distance as though he had to think about whether
the request was a reasonable one or not. Finally he said, "Okay. Three-
fifty."
One thing you could say about Jeff's pizza slices: They were huge. Jeff
served them on flimsy white paper plates that were soon stained with
grease, and the corners of the triangles always overlapped the plates' rims.
Oswald settled in to a booth with his slice and soda. The first bite—the
tip of the triangle—was always the best. Somehow the proportions of all
the flavors in that bite were perfect. He savored the warm, melty cheese,
the tangy sauce, and the pleasantly greasy crust. As he ate, he looked
around at the few other customers. A pair of mechanics from the oil
change place had folded up their pepperoni slices and were eating them
like sandwiches. A table full of office workers clumsily attacked their
slices with plastic forks and knives, so they wouldn't drip sauce on their
ties and blouses, Oswald guessed.
After Oswald finished his slice, he wished for one more but knew he
didn't have the money for it, so he wiped off his greasy fingers and took
out his library book. He sipped his soda and read, falling into a world
where kids with secret powers went to a special school to learn how to
fight evil.
* * *
"Kid." A man's voice startled Oswald out of the story. He looked up to see
Jeff in his sauce-stained apron. Oswald figured he had outstayed his
welcome. He had sat in a booth reading for two hours after having bought
a meal that cost less than four bucks.
"Yes, sir?" Oswald said, because politeness never hurt.
"I got a couple more cheese slices that didn't sell at lunch. You want
'em?"
"Oh," Oswald said. "No thanks, I don't have any more money." He
wished he did, though.
"On the house," Jeff said. "I'd just have to throw 'em out anyway."
"Oh, okay. Sure. Thanks."
Jeff picked up Oswald's empty cup. "I'll get you some more orange soda while I'm at it.""Thanks." It was funny. Jeff's expression never changed. He looked
tired and miserable even when he was being extra nice.
Jeff brought two slices stacked on a paper plate, and a fresh cup of
orange soda. "Here you go, kid," he said, setting down the cup and the
plate.
"Thank you." Oswald wondered for a minute if Jeff felt sorry for him,
if Jeff might think he was terribly poor like the homeless people who hung
out all day in the library, instead of just the regular, barely-making-ends-
meet poor that he was.
But then Oswald figured if there was free pizza sitting in front of you,
maybe it wasn't time to worry about the reasons for it. Maybe it was time
to eat.
Oswald had no problem polishing off the two huge slices. For the past
month, his appetite had been unstoppable. When Mom cooked him piles of
pancakes in the morning, she said he must be having a growth spurt,
causing him to eat like he had a hollow leg.
His phone vibrated in his pocket the second he sucked down the last of
his soda. He looked at his dad's text: will be out front at jeffs in 2
min.
Perfect timing. It had been a good day.
* * *
The days at the library and Jeff's Pizza started to add up. The first couple
of weeks had been great, but now the library didn't have the next book in
the series he was reading, and he had grown bored with his online fantasy
game, which, while advertised as free, now wouldn't let him advance any
further without paying money. He had gotten tired of not having anybody
his age to hang out with. He hadn't gotten tired of pizza yet, but he was
starting to imagine that he might in the future.
Tonight was Family Fun Night, a one-night-a-week event that varied
depending on Mom's work schedule. Back when the mill was still open,
Family Fun Night meant dinner in a restaurant—pizza or Chinese or
Mexican. After their meal, they'd do some fun activity together. They'd go
to the movies if something kid friendly was playing, but if not, they'd go
to the bowling alley or to the roller rink where Mom and Dad used to go
on dates when they were in high school. Mom and Dad were great skaters
and Oswald was terrible, but they'd skate on either side of him holding his hands and keeping him up. They'd usually top off their evening with a
waffle cone at the ice-cream place downtown. Oswald and Mom would
make fun of Dad because no matter what ice-cream flavors were available,
he always got vanilla.
Since the mill closed down, though, Family Fun Night had turned into
an at-home affair. Mom would make something for dinner that was easy
but festive, like tacos from a mix or hot dogs. They'd eat and then play
board games or watch a movie they'd rented from Red Box. It was still
fun, of course, but sometimes Oswald wished aloud for the old days of
seeing new movies at the theater and having waffle cones after, and Dad
had to remind him that the Important Thing Was That They All Got to
Spend Time Together.
Sometimes when the weather was nice, they'd have a Family Fun
Night. They'd pack a picnic of cold cuts and salads courtesy of the Snack
Space and head over to the state park. They'd eat their dinner at a wooden
table and watch the squirrels and birds and raccoons. Afterward, they'd go
for a walk on one of the hiking trails. These outings were always a nice
change, but Oswald was also aware of why these were the only Family Fun
Nights that ever got them out of the house: Picnics were free.
Tonight they were staying in. Mom had made spaghetti and garlic
bread. They had played a game of Clue, which Mom won as she usually
did, and now they were piled up on the couch together in their pajamas
with a huge bowl of popcorn between them, watching a remake of an old
science-fiction movie.
Once the movie was over, Dad said, "Well, that was pretty good, but not
as good as the real version."
"What do you mean, the real version?" Oswald said. "That was a real
version."
"Not really," Dad said. "I mean, it was set in the same universe as the
real version, but it was kind of a cheap knockoff of the one that came out
when I was a kid."
Dad always had to be so opinionated. He could never just watch
something and enjoy it. "So the best movies are always the ones that you
watched when you were a kid?" Oswald said.
"Not always, but in this case, yes." Dad was settling in, Oswald could tell, for one of his favorite things: a good argument. "But the special effects in the original version stink," Oswald said. "All
those puppets and rubber masks."
* * *
"I'll take a puppet or model over CGI any day," Dad said, leaning back on
the couch and propping his feet on the coffee table. "That stuff is so slick
and fake. It's got no warmth, no texture. And besides, you like those old
Zendrelix movies, and the special effects in those are terrible."
"Yeah, but I just watch those to make fun of them," Oswald said, even
though he really did think Zendrelix was pretty cool.
Mom came in from the kitchen with bowls of ice cream. Not as good as
the waffle cone place, but nothing to turn your nose up at, either. "Okay, if
you guys don't cut out the nerd argument, I'm going to pick the next
movie we watch. And it's going to be a romantic comedy."
Oswald and his dad shut up immediately.
"That's about what I thought," Mom said, passing around the bowls of
ice cream.
* * *
As Oswald was lying in bed sketching his mechanical animals, his phone
vibrated on his nightstand. There was only one person other than his
parents who ever texted him.
Hey, Ben had typed on the screen.
Heyback, Oswald typed. Hows your summer?
Awesome. At Myrtle Beach for vacation. Its so cool. Arcades
and mini golf everywhere.
Jealous, Oswald typed, and he meant it. A beach with arcades and
mini golf really did sound awesome.
Wish you were here, Ben typed.
Me too
Hows your summer
OK, Oswald texted. He was briefly tempted to make his summer sound
cooler than it was, but he could never lie to Ben. Been going to the
library a lot, lunch at Jeffs Pizza Thats all?It did sound pathetic compared with a family trip to the beach. He
texted, Pretty much yeah
I'm sorry, Ben texted, and then, that pizza place is creepy
They chatted a little while longer, and although Oswald was happy to
hear from Ben, he was also sad that his friend was so far away and having
such a good time without him.
* * *
Monday morning, and Oswald was in a bad mood. Even his mom's
pancakes didn't help. In the car, Dad turned up the radio too loud. It was
some stupid song about a tractor. Oswald reached for the knob and turned
it down.
"Hey, dude, driver picks the music. You know that," Dad said. He
turned the awful song back up even louder.
"It's bad music," Oswald said. "I'm trying to save you from yourself."
"Well, I don't like those video game songs you listen to," Dad said.
"But I don't just barge into your room and turn them off."
"Yeah," Oswald said. "But I don't force you to listen to them, either."
Dad turned the radio down. "What's with the attitude, son? Whatever's
bothering you, it's not just that I like country music."
Oswald didn't feel like talking, but clearly he was being forced to. And
once he opened his mouth, he was surprised to feel complaints erupting
from him like lava from a volcano. "I'm tired of every day being exactly
the same. Ben texted me yesterday. He's at Myrtle Beach having an
awesome time. He wanted to know what I was doing, and I told him I was
going to the library and Jeff's Pizza every day, and you know what he
texted back? 'I'm sorry' and 'That pizza place is creepy.' "
Dad sighed. "I'm sorry we can't go on vacation and have an awesome
time, Oz. Things are hard right now where money's concerned. I'm sorry it
affects you. You're a kid. You shouldn't have to worry about money. I'm
hoping they'll move me to full time at the store in the fall. That'll help a
lot, and if I get promoted to deli manager it'll be another dollar-fifty an
hour."
Oswald knew he shouldn't say what he was about to say, but here he
went anyway. "Ben's dad got a job that pays even better than his old job at the mill Dad tightened his grip on the steering wheel. "Yeah, well, and Ben's dad
had to move five hundred miles away to get that job." His voice sounded
tight, as tight as his grip on the wheel, and Oswald could tell his jaw was
clenched. "Your mom and I talked a lot about it, but we decided not to
move, especially with your grandma living here and needing help
sometimes. This is our home, kiddo, and things aren't perfect, but we just
have to make the best of them."
Oswald felt himself crossing the line from grumbling into grounding
territory. But why did some people get the best of everything and others
had to settle for free library visits and cheap pizza? "And so every day you
toss me out on the street like garbage. If this is the best of things, I'd hate
to see the worst!"
"Now, son, don't you think that's a little dramatic—"
Oswald didn't stick around to hear the rest of his dad's criticism. He got
out of the car and slammed the door.
His dad sped away, probably glad to get rid of him.
Just as he predicted, the library still didn't have the book he wanted. He
flipped through a few magazines—the kind with exotic jungle animals,
which he usually liked, but they weren't doing much for him today. When
his turn came for a computer, he put in his earbuds and watched some
YouTube videos, but he wasn't in a good enough mood to laugh.
At lunchtime, he sat in Jeff's Pizza with his slice and soda. Every day, a
cheese slice. If his dad wasn't so stingy, he'd give him another dollar so he
could have pepperoni or sausage. But no, it had to be the cheapest pizza
you could get. Sure, money was tight, but really, was another dollar a day
going to break the bank?
Looking around the place, Oswald decided Ben was right. Jeff's Pizza
was creepy. There were those shadowy painted-over figures on the walls,
the dusty abandoned ball pit. And when he thought about it, Jeff was kind
of creepy, too. He looked a hundred years old but was probably just thirty.
With those heavy-lidded, bloodshot eyes, the stained apron, and the slow
speech and movement, he was like a zombie pizza chef.
Oswald thought about his argument with Dad that morning. Soon Dad
would be texting him, expecting him to come outside to the car. Well,
today was going to be different. Today Dad would have to come and find
him.
There was one perfect place to hide.Oswald was going into the pit.
The pit was pretty gross, really. Obviously untouched for years, the
plastic spheres were covered in a gray, fuzzy dust. But hiding there would
be a great prank on his dad. His dad, who was always dropping him off and
picking him up like somebody's dry cleaning, would actually have to get
out of the car and make an effort for a change. Oswald wouldn't make it
easy for him, either.
Oswald took off his shoes. Yes, the ball pit was disgusting, but at least
getting into it would make today different from all the other days that had
come before it.
He climbed into the pit and felt the balls parting to make room for his
body. He moved his arms and legs. It was a little like swimming, if you
could swim in dry plastic spheres. He found his footing at the bottom of
the pit. Some of the balls were strangely sticky, but he tried not to think
about why. If he was going to trick his dad, he was going to have to go all
the way under.
He took a deep breath, as if he were about to jump into a swimming
pool, and fell to his knees. That put him in up to his neck. Wiggling
around so he was sitting on the pit's floor put his head under, too. The
balls spread apart far enough that he could breathe, but it was dark and
made him feel claustrophobic. The place stank of dust and mildew.
"Pinkeye," he could hear his mother's voice saying. "You're going to
get pinkeye."
The smell really was getting to him. The dust tickled his nose. He felt a
sneeze coming on, but he couldn't move his hand through the spheres fast
enough to reach his nose and muffle it. He sneezed three times, each one
louder than the one before.
Oswald didn't know if his dad was looking for him yet, but if he was,
the sneezing ball pit had probably given away his location. Besides, it was
too dark and too gross in there. He had to come up for air.
As he rose, his ears were assaulted by the sound of beeping electronics
and yelling and laughing kids.
It took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust from the darkness of the pit
to the brightness that now surrounded him, the flashing lights and vivid
colors. He looked around and muttered, "Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore."The walls were lined with shiny arcade cabinets housing games he'd
heard his dad talk about from his own childhood: Ms. Pac-Man, Donkey
Kong, Frogger, Q∗bert, Galaga. A neon-lighted claw machine displayed
plush blue elf-like creatures and orange cartoon cats. He looked down at
the pit and realized he was surrounded by little kids wallowing in the
strangely clean and now brightly colored plastic orbs. He stood over the
preschoolers like a giant. He stepped out of the pit to find his shoes, but
they were gone.
Standing on the colorful carpet in his sock feet, he looked around.
There were lots of kids his age and younger, but there was something
different about them. Everyone's hair was styled and fluffy, and the boys
wore polo shirts in colors lots of guys wouldn't be caught dead in, like
pink or aqua. The girls' hair was almost unbelievably big, with bangs that
stood out from their foreheads like claws; they wore pastel-colored tops
that matched their pastel-colored shoes. The colors, the lights, the sounds
—it was sensory overload. And what was that music?
Oswald looked around to see where it was coming from. Across the
room on a small stage, a trio of animatronic animals blinked their big
blank eyes, opened and closed their mouths, and pivoted back and forth in
sync with a jangly, annoying song. There was a brown bear, a blue rabbit
with a red bow tie, and some kind of bird girl. They reminded Oswald of
the mechanical animals he had caught himself drawing lately. The
difference was that he could never decide if the animals in his drawings
were cute or creepy.
These were creepy.
Strangely, though, the dozen or so little kids surrounding the stage
didn't seem to think so. They were wearing birthday party hats with
pictures of the characters on them, and dancing and laughing and having a
great time.
When the smell of pizza hit Oswald's nose, he understood.
He was still in Jeff's Pizza, or more accurately, what Jeff's Pizza had
been before Jeff took over. The ball pit was new and not roped off, all the
outlets on the wall had arcade games plugged into them, and—he turned
around to face the left wall. In the shapes of the shadows on the wall of
Jeff's Pizza was a mural of the same characters "performing" on the stage:
the brown bear, the blue rabbit, ad the bird gi rl
BeOswald's insides turned to ice water. How had this happened? He knew
where he was, but he didn't know when it was or how he got there.
Somebody bumped into him, and he jumped more than was normal.
Since he felt the physical contact, this must not be a dream. He couldn't
decide if this fact was good news or not.
"Sorry, dude," the kid said. He was about Oswald's age and he was
wearing a light yellow polo with the collar turned up, tucked into what
looked like a pair of dad jeans. The white tennis shoes he had on were
huge, like clown shoes. He looked as if he had spent a long time fixing his
hair. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah, sure," Oswald said. He wasn't sure he was okay actually, but he
didn't know how to begin to explain his situation.
"I've not seen you here before," the kid said.
"Yeah," Oswald said, trying to figure out an explanation that wouldn't
sound too weird. "I'm just visiting here … staying with my grandma for a
few weeks. This place is great, though. All these old games—"
"Old games?" the kid said, raising an eyebrow. "You're joking, right? I
don't know about where you're from, but Freddy's has the newest games
around here. That's why the lines to play them are so long."
"Oh yeah, I was just kidding," Oswald said, because he couldn't think
of anything else to say. He had heard his dad talk about playing a lot of
these games when he was a kid. Absurdly hard games, he said, on which he
had wasted many hours and many quarters.
"I'm Chip," the kid said, running his fingers through his poofy hair.
"Me and my buddy Mike"—he nodded at a tall black kid wearing huge
eyeglasses and a shirt with wide red and blue stripes—"were about to play
some Skee-Ball. Want to come with?"
"Sure," Oswald said. It was nice to hang out with some other kids, even
if they seemed to be kids from another time. He didn't think this was a
dream, but it sure was as weird as one.
"You got a name?" Mike said, looking at Oswald like he was some kind
of strange specimen.
"Oh, sure. I'm Oswald." He had been too weirded out to remember to
introduce himself.
Mike gave him a friendly slap on the back. "Well, I've gotta warn you,
Oswald. I'm a beast at Skee-Ball. But I'll go easy on you since you're new