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“We worked with this company that does proms and had really good prices. They seemed so smooth, and they talked up a local amusement park. We bought the package, and then called the amusement park to confirm, and we got screwed. Now we have lost the fundraising money and the awesome event venue we thought we would have, and it’s all my fault.”
The Ohio girl looked tearfully at them through her webcam.
Hardison cleared his throat. “Okay, thanks for letting us know. I understand that this represents a lot to you, but our cases are often a little higher-stakes. We’ll have an answer for you in an hour.” He closed the chat window.
“Here’s the bad news, I did some checking, and their money is long gone, and so is the fake company. I’ve set up some pitfalls for them in the future. We can give them money from our own stuff, but we can’t make the bad guys pay right now, and what the kids really want is their fancy prom.”
“Let’s go steal prom!” Parker cackled excitedly
“No, we’ve done that. This one’s at an amusement park.” Eliot inclined his head.
“Let’s go steal amusement!”
“...yeah, sure.”
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“It’s so loud and bright. Why do I have to wear these clothes?” Parker complained over her earbud.
“We gotta blend in a little bit, have fun with it! Play a game, ride a ride, try funnel cake.”
“What’s funnel cake?”
“It’s like a… big weird donut sort of, with powdered sugar, hot from the fryer.” Hardison nodded, cocking his head slightly. “Eliot? Check in please?”
“I found a Guess-Your-Weight booth that just made a fat kid cry, so I’ll be redistributing these plush turtles for the next fifteen minutes, talk to you then.”
“Eliot…” Hardison didn’t sound disappointed, just a little cautious about the whole blending in bit.
“What? I convinced the teenager running the thing to take a break. I mighta broken the giant scale a little though.”
Hardison and Parker smiled a little to themselves. Things were quiet over the coms until the sound of chewing.
“You GUYS. You mrvr tolb be about funnel cake? You can get it with ice cream on it!”
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Hardison stepped out of his computer cubbyhole at Park Ops and shook his head. He walked outside, where a boy and his mother were standing in the shade, sharing an Icee and applying sunscreen.
“But why do we have to go all the way over here, mom?” He was bouncy and impatient. “We haven’t ridden anything but the skyride!”
“You heard the man, we need to get an official height because you’re just about tall enough. Then we can ride some more rides together. Don’t forget to put sunblock on your ears, honey.”
“What if I’m not all the way tall enough for the Raptor? I’ve been waiting to ride the Raptor for years and it’s soooo frustrating.”
“Excuse me, I’m sorry to interrupt,” Hardison said in his easiest voice, pulling out his phone and tapping the screen. “My app clocks you at fifty-three and three quarters inches. That’s a quarter inch short for Raptor. But if you were to take a quick stop in the bathroom and fold your socks down into your shoes with a couple paper towels and then come back, well, I’d have no way to tell if you’d done that, since you’re wearing sneakers.”
The boy’s eyes lit up.
Hardison paused. He knew where all the stamps were anyway. As well as the single-use fastpasses that they sometimes gave out to apologize for a poor experience.
“Or, if you don’t want to loosen your laces, you could just follow me inside right now without saying a word and we’ll get that taken care of by somebody who actually studies the safety diagrams and knows that that quarter-inch is well within specifications and tolerances for this particular Bolliger and Mabillard. Not a word.”
Both boy and mother made zipped-lips motions.
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“Hardison.” Parker’s mouth was set and serious. She was twitching just a little, but considering she had eaten six funnel cakes that day, Hardison thought she was doing pretty well.
“Parker.” He inclined his head.
“I want to do the talky part.”
“Which talky part?”
“The part where they talk when they buckle you in. I can do it. I want to do it.”
“But not the buckling?” Hardison nodded and found the tab open with the employee shift calendar. “Magnum’s got an opening in fifteen minutes, think you can get there? Wear this badge. I’ll take care of the talker.”
He turned his back and Parker and the badge were gone.
Sure enough, in fifteen minutes, over the coms, everyone was treated to a few variations on this theme:
“Wellllllcome riders to the aabsolluuuuute wildest time on Magnum, the world’s first hypercoaster and the world’s tallest roller coaster for fiiiive years! We’re gonna send you up two hundred and five feet, drop ya down almost a hundert and ninety five goin’ up to seventy-two miles an hour. Are you ready? ARE YOU READY? We’re ready. Ready-ready. Clear. You’re clear and outta here, enjoy your ride on Magnum XL-200 at Cedar Point, America’s Rrroooockin’ Roller Coast, Ride On.”
Hardison texted Eliot, who was nudging security cameras all over the park. “Is this the best thing you ever heard or do you want me to mute her?”
Eliot’s reply dinged back immediately. “She sounds so freakin happy keep it”
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“Frontiertown’s the best part of the park. It’s got trees.” Eliot could smell the leaves, the lake, and someone’s spilled lemon freeze melting on the path. He could hear distant screams, but they were joyous. He just needed to get to a couple more places in the park to make sure that all of the security cameras were pointing the correct directions, but in the meantime he could have a little fun and maybe talk to a ten-year-old in a ragged basketball jersey who looked like he was spooked out of his sneakers.
“It’s got this coaster too, and Steel Vengeance. I’m too scared to get in the line for Steel Vengeance. I might walk through and not do this one, either.”
“Well, back when it was the Mean Streak I really liked it, haven’t tried it yet, but what is it about Maverick that’s less scary?”
“You’re gonna think I’m silly.” The boy fidgeted.
“I promise I won’t laugh.” Eliot smiled easily, his best you-can-trust me smile, the one he worked on in the mirror because Parker said sometimes he still had stubborn eyes. (Okay, she called it “resting murder face,” and introduced him to the word “smizing,” and he was 73% certain that part had come from Sophie.)
“Steel Vengeance goes in and out of its own track so much it makes me nervous.”
“That’s claustrophobia, man, no shame there. This one’s all out in the open. Did you see the part where it goes over some water?” Eliot gestured to the left of the line.
“Yeah! This one’s scary too, though, I’ve never been on it.” He looked nervously towards the exit.
“Hey, look, I’m not gonna tell you not to be scared. This is a giant machine designed to toss you around and make you scream for fun, and if that doesn’t sound like fun to you, don’t get on. But if it sounds a lot like fun, just scary to do by yourself, I’ll ride next to you and tell you where the ride photo is so you look extra brave.”
The kid’s eyes went big. “Can we do Hulk arms?”
“Hmmm, Hulk arms should have a mean face. Do you want mean-face-hulk-arms or relaxed-face-thumbs-up?”
“If we relaxed-face-thumbs-up I can still hold on with one hand?”
“You got it.”
They rode it twice -
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“Parker, check in?”
“I’m in the line for the big big swings by the lake, as opposed to the little big swings in Frontiertown.”
“Windseeker not Wave Swinger, got you. Eliot?”
“Busy at TGI Friday’s in the Breakers.” His voice was soft and warm and inviting. He was charming somebody for something.
“I’m going to do a little riding, okay? I’ll have my phone, coms will be on.” Hardison closed the computer programs he’d been smoothing out details on.
It was 6pm and the richer families would be going to dinner. That wasn’t who he was looking for, though. He picked up a couple of things and walked out the door, eyes peeled at the restrooms and park benches. The people he was looking for could only afford to buy day tickets if they had a soda can with a coupon, and the worst parking, so they showed up early. They brought picnics and stayed every hour of the park’s opening that day to get maximum value, which sometimes resulted in sunburns and crankiness. They remembered their own towels for the waterslides, and their parents never let them play the ring toss or anything else. These were the kids who hunted through the arcade machines for lost quarters and tokens and dropped tickets, the ones who stared hungrily at the face painting and henna, the ones with holes in their flipflops and didn’t care, because the midway pavement was light and perfect under their feet for just one day. For them, every minute riding a ride was a good minute, and every minute spent in line had to be carefully budgeted for worth.
Found her. Girl by Millennium Force putting a band-aid on her feet. Seventeen, maybe. Big girl, big hips. Crying, but only because nobody else was around. Big black hand-me-down t-shirt, bermuda shorts with threads coming out of them, K-mart brand sneakers from ten years ago with the insole falling out.
“Hey, everything okay?”
She rolled back her shoulders, smoothing her eyes. “Not having a great day, but I’m fine. Don’t fit on this coaster, but at least the Iron Dragon’ll have me, yanno?”
Hardison pulled on his staff ballcap and gestured with his “closed” sign. “I was just about to shut down the Iron Dragon.”
“Aw hell.”
“But. It’s still safe to run. Are you the kind of person who would like to ride a coaster ten times in a row without stopping?”
“Isn’t everybody?” The kid demanded, like she was angry someone would ask something so stupid.
“You could bring somebody, maybe your parents.”
She flinched. It was a small wince, but it was clear. Her face calmed quickly, automatically picking up her phone. “Little brother?”
Hardison nodded. “Come find me at the Dragon.”
Her little brother looked about seven, thin, in clothes that didn’t fit him so great either. “Nobody does stuff like this for us,” he said bitterly, looking at the closed sign.
“You’re right,” said his big sister. “So if a time comes along when somebody might, you keep your eyes open and enjoy it as much as you can. Right, mister?” The look she gave Hardison said she’d kill him for disappointing her little brother.
Hardison just smiled and hit the gate mechanism’s “open” button. “All aboard for the Iron Dragon sunset extravaganza ride, we are set for ten times through, please raise your hand when going through the station if you’d like to stop early.”
No hands were raised except to go down the first hill.
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At eight pm they assembled at the Breakers hotel, whose staff was now ready for what they thought was a completely legitimate last-minute event. The dance floor was in place, the punch was made, and little sandwiches waited on covered trays. A DJ was set up in the corner, there was a balloon arch to take photos under, and Hardison and Eliot were having a hard time not staring at Parker, in a little luxe black number. Hardison looked edible in his black bow tie and blue blazer, and Eliot had a little bit of color to his cheeks from the sun in his snapdown Western shirt and slacks.
It was mostly up-tempo numbers, but Hardison slipped a thumb drive and a twenty to the DJ and the sweet twang of a fiddle expertly played filled the room. Parker nodded to him, taking Eliot’s hand.
“What’s this?”
“Pretty sure it’s a two-step.”
“It’s the best cover of Wagon Wheel I’ve ever heard, and yes, it’s a two-step. I mean, when did you learn to two-step?”
“Alec and I watched some YouTube videos. He said you know how to do this and waltz and something called a boot scooting boogie.”
Eliot pulled her close. “He’s gonna try to get me to dance the waltz with him, isn’t he?”
She just smiled.