The Bazaar of Bad Dreams

Besides, he loved the little cock-knocker.

‘Just hang out here,’ George said. ‘We’ll be back in a couple of hours.’

‘Hang out with who?’ Pete asked. It was spring vacation, and all of his friends, the ones his mother would have called ‘age appropriate,’ seemed to be somewhere else. A couple of them had gone to Disney World in Orlando, and when Pete thought of this, his heart filled with envy and jealousy – a vile brew, but strangely tasty.

‘Just hang out,’ George said. ‘Go to the store, or something.’ He scrounged in his pocket and came out with a pair of crumpled Washingtons. ‘Here’s some dough.’

Pete looked at them. ‘Jeez, I’ll buy a Corvette. Maybe two.’

‘Hurry up, Simmons, or we’ll go withoutcha!’ Normie yelled.

‘Coming!’ George shouted back. Then, low, to Pete: ‘Take the money and don’t be a boogersnot.’

Pete took the money. ‘I even brought my magnifying glass,’ he said. ‘I was gonna show em—’

‘They’ve all seen that baby trick a thousand times,’ George said, but when he saw the corners of Pete’s mouth tuck down, he tried to soften the blow. ‘Besides, look at the sky, numbo. You can’t start fires with a magnifying glass on a cloudy day. Hang out. We’ll play computer Battleship or something when I come back.’

‘Okay, chickenshit!’ Normie yelled. ‘Seeya later, masturbator!’

‘I gotta go,’ George said. ‘Do me a favor and don’t get in trouble. Stay in the neighborhood.’

‘You’ll probably break your spine and be fuckin paralyzed for life,’ Pete said … then hastily spat between his forked fingers to take the curse off. ‘Good luck!’ he shouted after his brother. ‘Jump the farthest!’

George waved one hand in acknowledgment, but didn’t look back. He stood on the pedals of his own bike, a big old Schwinn that Pete admired but couldn’t ride (he’d tried once and wiped out halfway down the driveway). Pete watched him put on speed as he raced up this block of suburban houses in Auburn, catching up with his homies.

Then Pete was alone.

He took his magnifying glass out of his saddlebag and held it over his forearm, but there was no spot of light and no heat. He looked glumly up at the low-hanging clouds and put the glass back. It was a good one, a Richforth. He’d gotten it last Christmas, to help with his ant farm science project.

‘It’ll wind up in the garage, gathering dust,’ his father had said, but although the ant farm project had concluded in February (Pete and his partner, Tammy Witham, had gotten an A), Pete hadn’t tired of the magnifying glass yet. He particularly enjoyed charring holes in pieces of paper in the backyard.

But not today. Today, the afternoon stretched ahead like a desert. He could go home and watch TV, but his father had put a block on all the interesting channels when he discovered George had been DVR-ing Boardwalk Empire, which was full of old-time gangstas and bare titties. There was a similar block on Pete’s computer, and he hadn’t figured a workaround yet, although he would; it was only a matter of time.

So?

‘So what,’ he said in a low voice, and began to pedal slowly toward the end of Murphy Street. ‘So … fuckin … what.’

Too little to play Paratroops from Hell, because it was too dangerous. How sucky. He wished he could think of something that would show George and Normie and all of the Raiders that even little kids could face dan—

The idea came to him then, just like that. He could explore the abandoned rest area. Pete didn’t think the big kids knew about it, because it was a kid Pete’s own age, Craig Gagnon, who’d told him about it. He said he’d been up there with a couple of other kids, ten-year-olds, last fall. Of course the whole thing might have been a lie, but Pete didn’t think so. Craig had given too many details, and he wasn’t the kind of kid who was good at making things up. Sort of a dimbulb, actually.

With a destination in mind, Pete began to pedal faster. At the end of Murphy Street he banked left onto Hyacinth. There was no one on the sidewalk, and no cars. He heard the whine of a vacuum cleaner from the Rossignols’, but otherwise everyone might have been sleeping or dead. Pete supposed they were actually at work, like his own parents.

He swept right onto Rosewood Terrace, passing the yellow sign reading DEAD END. There were only a dozen or so houses on Rosewood. At the end of the street was a chainlink fence. Beyond it was a thick tangle of shrubbery and scraggly second-growth trees. As Pete drew closer to the chainlink (and the totally unnecessary sign mounted on it reading NOT A THROUGH STREET), he stopped pedaling and coasted.

He understood – vaguely – that although he thought of George and his Raider pals as Big Kids (and certainly that was how the Raiders thought of themselves), they weren’t really Big Kids. The true Big Kids were badass teenagers who had drivers’ licenses and girlfriends. True Big Kids went to high school. They liked to drink, smoke pot, listen to heavy metal or hip-hop, and suck major face with their girlfriends.