"Are you sure you really want to do this?" Mr. White asked, at least two seconds belatedly.
By this point, Alton had already scrambled most of the way up the chain link fence. His movements were quick and smooth, the toes of his shoes slotting neatly into the gaps, fingers lightly finding purchase. The metal was rusty, but did not scratch him. This was far from his first time going over a fence.
"Positive," he called back, giving her a grin over his shoulder. Mr. White stood below, tilting her head upwards, lips a narrow line.
"Why," Alton added, letting an edge of mockery slip into his tone, "could it be you're afraid?"
He gave a wide theatrical flourish with his left hand, hanging to the fence with his right loosely wrapped around the top, level with his knees.
"Feel free to wait for me if you'd prefer," he added. "I can try to make this quick."
"Oh hell no," Mr. White replied, a more determined expression settling over her features. She made her way to the fence and began her own ascent, a couple feet to the right of Alton. "I used to do this sort of stuff all the time. I just thought you might get cold feet."
Alton swung his legs over the fence, one after the other, his center of mass soon following. The fence rattled as Mr. White made her way up, rather more cautiously; Alton looked at the ground, assessed, pushed off, and dropped the ten or so feet to the dry grass on the other side, letting the momentum carry him a few steps onwards, absorbing the impact. Turning, he saw Mr. White more hesitantly perched at the top of the fence, her knee-length blue pleated skirt draped awkwardly as she straddled it. He could tell she was gripping tightly even without a clear view of her knuckles.
"You know," Alton said, walking back towards the fence, "you didn't have to go that far to convince Numbers we're just putzing around the mall all day."
"What's that supposed to mean?" She repositioned, reconsidered, finally made her way entirely to the proper side. It looked like she was planning to slowly climb her way down.
"I mean you're dressed for shoe shopping, not breaking and entering," Alton said. "Here, I'll catch you."
She opened her mouth, closed it, scowled, then nodded. Alton watched her take a deep breath, then push off. As she did, there came a loud ripping sound. A split second later, she dropped into his arms, Alton again letting the momentum carry him backwards a bit.
The moment her feet touched the ground, Mr. White spun, examining herself.
"Shit," she muttered, "shit."
"I'll wait here if you want to go get changed," Alton offered.
She hit in the arm, hard enough he felt it, not enough to hurt. Her skirt was torn about two thirds of the way up her right thigh, in ragged imitation of the slit on a prom dress. It was clear at a glance, as she tugged at it, that her leg had not been scratched in kind. Alton turned away, letting her adjust herself as he gazed out over the vista before them.
All along towards the sea stretched the derelict remains of an amusement park. A still Ferris wheel towered high, with a rollercoaster beyond, all skeletal white beams and struts. The pathways were lined with shuttered stalls, windows barred and prizes removed but faded signage intact, promising photographs, funnel cake, toys to be won, skill to be displayed, fun to be had, fried clams and corn dogs. The foliage, once neatly maintained, now grew wild or lay desiccated. The garbage cans were full not of plastic bottle and candy wrappers but of chunks of drywall, wires and cardboard boxes, building materials Alton couldn't identify—the detritus of construction or deconstruction.
"We're not gonna spend all day here, right?" Mr. White asked, walking up beside Alton and squinting at the expanse of decay, then at the sky. "I think it's going to rain."
"I thought you did this sort of thing all the time?"
She kicked a chunk of brick that had come loose from the pathway, not hard enough to move it more than a few inches.
"It's been a while," she admitted.
"Let's look around," Alton said, "keep our options open. I'm sure there's somewhere with a roof."
She grunted, granting grudging assent at least for a the moment, and they set out, walking down the winding path, taking in the ruin around them. It was fascinating to Alton. He didn't even have to close his eyes to repopulate the place in his mind. He could see young couples trading gossip over cotton candy, parents standing beneath oversized umbrellas as they kept half-attentive watch over their offspring, a group of middle school boys laughing and bickering as they made their way towards the rollercoaster, the tallest among them—the birthday boy—the one least convinced he was actually up to the trial.
"Why'd you want to come here, anyways?"
He contemplated Mr. White's tone for a second, assessing what she was expressing and searching for. He decided to give her this one at face value.
"I came here once as a kid," Alton said. "Always told myself I'd come back, but never got around to it."
He shrugged.
"Life is short. Who knows if I'll get another opportunity?"
"Mm hm." It wasn't as mocking an utterance as it could have been. Alton wasn't bothered either way. They walked another fifteen seconds in silence.
"How's it living up to your expectations?" Mr. White asked.
"Exceeding them completely," Alton said with a smile.
It was true. The last time he'd thought about this place, he'd told himself that he didn't regret his failure to return. When one door opened, another closed, as the cliché went, and while there was a certain undeniable appeal to the raw hedonism of an amusement park even at his current age, the more innocent magic of it had long fallen away. Alton did not consider himself particularly susceptible to nostalgia, and yet when he had heard from Carlos that the park had closed down, it had stirred something difficult to categorize within him. In a way, it was more of a reminder of the fragile transience of life than the disappearance and all-but-certain deaths of his classmates. They were just people, but this park had been magical to Alton, once, a part of his past and a piece of his aspirations, something he had yearned for but been unable to attain. It hadn't bothered him much when he knew that he could have it again at any time if he only said the word, but shut down? That was something else entirely.
But when one door closed, another opened. It hadn't taken long at all to track down an urban exploration discussion board, make an account and read what other intrepid souls had to say about the place and its security (or lack thereof). Alton had spent just enough time on the site to plan an avenue of attack, but had avoided pictures as best he could. He didn't want other people's experiences. This adventure was for him.
Well, him and Mr. White, dutifully bound to follow and make sure he wasn't turning around and reselling his oh-so-precious information to half a dozen other buyers, double-dipping his unique resource for all it was worth. He rather enjoyed the way she was obligated to keep him close. They were, he thought, coming to understand one another. In all likelihood, a good part of that came from the certainty that there would be quite a few of these aimless days as they waited for the feeds to go live. Mr. White, whatever her other virtues, was clearly not somebody who dealt with boredom any better than Alton did. She had been quite easy to ply when it came to planning this excursion, a ready accomplice eager to pull the wool over their patrons' eyes as to their exact destination, though she had become more and more obviously nervous the closer to actually manifesting the endeavor had come.
"Well," she said, "I'm glad. That's good."
She paused, rolled her shoulders, planted her hands on her hips.
"Maybe we'll get another amazing new adventure and get to experience jail together too," she added.
"I think they'd probably put us in different facilities," Alton said, kneeling down and picking up a small silver disc from the ground. At first he thought it was a token, which was odd; he knew that many entertainment centers used their own proprietary currencies to fuel games, but could not recall that being the case here. As he turned the disc in his fingers, however, he noted the circle cut in the middle, the perfect smoothness; it was just a washer, fallen from some toolbox or sprung loose from some dismantled piece of machinery.
"Besides," he continued, "there's no way this lands us in jail."
"That's what you think." Mr. White's voice was harsh, but playful at the same time. She wasn't as serious as she was posturing. "Cops are bastards."
"Some," Alton said. "But we're not talking about cops. We're talking about one part-time security guy sitting in a tool shed somewhere ignoring the monitors so he can finish the latest Stephen King."
"If he's reading Stephen King in an abandoned carnival, I don't want to mess with him," Mr. White said. "All it takes is one guy who wants to be a hero."
"We're not robbing a bank here," Alton replied, standing on his toes to examine a sign as they came to a three-way crossroad. He wiped a layer of dust off with a tissue he produced from his pocket. "What this guy wants is to sit around and get paid for it, and not to take any risks. If he comes and bugs us, we say, oh, sorry, must've gotten lost trying to take a shortcut to the beach. And if he really wants to push it, I have a couple hundred-dollar bills in my wallet that say he has better things to do with his afternoon than fill out paperwork, so we can take a warning and beat it."
Mr. White laughed. From somewhere in the distance came the faint rumble of thunder, or maybe a heavy door being slammed.
"You doubt my ability to talk us out of trouble with a rent-a-cop?" Alton asked in faux-outrage, giving her a lopsided grin and raising an eyebrow, then moving down the lefthand path.
"No, no," Mr. White said. The fingers of her right hand played unconsciously with the ripped edges of her skirt, flashing glimpses of tanned thigh. "It's just..."
She laughed again.
"You know what you're doing," she said. "Back in high school, I used to boost stuff from Sephora and Forever 21 and whatever all the time. And that, that was pretty much the trick, you know. Anything you're taking, make sure you have enough money in your wallet to pay for it, and if they stop you, apologize and say you had a long night and forgot you hadn't checked out yet and then go buy it and never, ever rip that specific store off again. It's like, they have enough to deal with, and they can't prove shit, so they just let you pay and leave to get you out of their hair."
"I had a few friends who used to run the same scam," Alton said, smiling at her. "You still have to be pretty slick sometimes."
"Oh yeah," Mr. White said, "it's all in the delivery."
She leaned forward, tugged on the bottom of her tank top and puffed out her chest, not so subtly maximizing the cleavage she was flashing.
"Oh, jeez, sir, I'm sorry, sir, I just, I, I had such a long day and I just wasn't thinking, I was sure the checkout was this way, this is so embarrassing, I'm sorry and I'd just be so, so grateful if you would point me in the right direction, pretty please?"
"That can't have worked," Alton said.
"Depends." Mr. White resumed her usual stance without seeming to move much at all. "You play it by ear. Obviously doesn't help if LP's a woman."
As they talked, tiny speckles dotted the ground in front of them, a rain so fine that Alton could only faintly feel it dusting against his forehead and hands. The light had gone grey, though, clouds truly rolling in now. He didn't think the weather would last too long—no more than an hour or two, based on what he'd seen online earlier, and no guarantee it would even escalate beyond a sprinkle.
"I'm sure your parents were very proud of you," he said.
"Hey, you gotta use what you've got," Mr. White replied. "You wouldn't believe how easy it is to cheat on math tests when you're a girl and the teacher's a guy. What you do is, you just hike up your skirt and write the equations on the inside of your legs. He might know you've got 'em there, but what's he going to do, call you up in front of the class and check?"
"Resourceful," Alton said approvingly. Ahead, a low building with nondescript bluish siding marked the end of their path; while a sign hung over the entryway, it was covered entirely in a moldy beige tarp.
The drops turned heavier.
"We almost done here?" Mr. White asked, adjusting the denim jacket she wore over her tank top and pointing to the latter. "I'm wearing white here."
"There are a few more things I wanted to check out," Alton said, reaching out and trying the door. With a creak, it slid open. "Why don't we step inside?"
The passage was dark, but when Mr. White pulled out her phone and turned the screen up, it was enough to illuminate the warped mirrors attached to all surfaces, some spiderwebbed with cracks. Hanging from the ceiling was a sign which Alton recalled mirrored the covered one outside.
It read: "Welcome To The Funhouse!"