In the end he suddenly got very friendly and cooperative again, and agreed I should go. He dug through his toolbox and made me take this thing that looked like a miniature turkey baster.
“If you runs into troubles,” he said, “like Boov patrols or somesuch, you squeeze this, and it to sends up noisy bubbles, and I rescue you!”
I said okay and took it. I showed him where the spare car key was, stuck with a magnet under the bumper, and then I walked to a flight of stairs that would take me up to the street. I made sure not to look back, but I didn’t have to look to feel J.Lo’s gaze clinging to me like a wet dog as I began to climb.
I could barely handle this Florida weather. Even at night I felt like a glazed ham. But I was comforted by the familiar landscape—the short trees piled thick with dark leaves, the tall, naked trees with green tufted heads. The tidy little pools and lakes that appeared over grassy hills with golf-course regularity.
It wasn’t far to Happy Mouse Kingdom, and there were still signs everywhere. I passed seven billboards, and every one was for a theme park, or a resort, or a theme park/resort. They boasted about being the most magically fun, or wildest, or most penguin-filled. They claimed to have the biggest this or the most water-slidingest that. And I thought it would make sense if everyone ended up here. We could live out the rest of our fake lives amid the fake kingdoms and worlds, the lands and resorts and outlet malls. Wasn’t this an outlet-mall America now? Just like the real one, only smaller and not as good.
A few blocks from the parking garage, I turned a corner to see a Boov walking in the same direction on the next street. He wore blue, like J.Lo, and was carrying a toolbox, and I almost called out to him to stop following me. I don’t know what it was that told me suddenly to hide—something about the way this Boov moved, maybe. Maybe it was those orange ball things on the ends of his feet. But it wasn’t J.Lo. I dropped like a stone behind a mailbox, landed right on my tailbone and bit my lip as the pain shot right up my back, all the while praying I hadn’t been seen.
The Boov that wasn’t J.Lo took something like a little rubber dome out of the toolbox. I don’t know what he pressed or pulled or said or did, but suddenly a long, straight shaft sprouted from the top, and I thought, Oh, a retractable toilet plunger.
The Boov pointed the business end of the thing at a savings bank across the street. Then, without a sound, the bank began to disappear. He started at the bottom, so soon there was plenty of noise as the building toppled forward and crumbled to pieces. The Boov just continued working on the rubble, waving the plunger from side to side until there was nothing left but a bank-shaped hole in the world.
I really hoped he didn’t feel the same way about mailboxes as he did about banks.
As I watched, the Boov skittered over to the now vacant lot and pulled something else from a loop on his uniform. It didn’t look all that different from the turkey baster in my pocket, and with good reason. Bubbles percolated from its end, one at a time, some big and some small. He was like a conductor, and the bubbles danced at his command, joining together to form a tall, boxy shape, then a ring around the middle like a Hula-Hoop. I wondered what it said. Then he scattered a handful of Ping-Pong balls over the lot, watered them, and covered each with a little jar. Satisfied, he toddled out of sight, and I heard the sound of an antler-spool scooter speeding away.
I got up from the sidewalk, rubbed my butt, and walked over to the closest jar. The ball inside had already sprouted like an onion, and transparent pencil-thin tubes slowly snaked skyward. I couldn’t tell if it was food or architecture. Maybe it was an antenna farm.
Ten minutes later I reached the edge of the Kingdom. The parking lot was a graveyard, each empty plot marked off with white paint and a low, wide headstone. It stretched out a quarter mile, divided into sections named after cartoon characters. I walked through Rumpelstiltskin, Doofus, and Duke Elliphant on my way to the big bright old-fashioned train station that made up the front gates, and as I looked around the lot, I thought, It’s clean. After everything, it’s still clean.
Mom could never shut up about that. It was part of what made Happy Mouse Kingdom the Nicest Place on Earth. It was so clean, and everyone smiled, even when they were sweeping up trash or picking up half-eaten food. I’d made a game of trying to catch one of them looking unhappy, or just normal, but when I saw a teenager beaming like a beauty queen while she cleaned vomit off the side of the Big Rock Candy Mountain, I knew it wasn’t a game I was going to win.
“This place is just perfect every time,” Mom had said as we waited to pay our sixty dollars to get in. It was maybe the third time we’d been to Happy Mouse Kingdom together, and maybe the twelfth time I’d heard this speech. “And even after thousands of people walk through here today, even after all the ticker tape and the Invisible Hobo Parade, it’ll be perfect tomorrow, too. You’ll see.”
I would see, too. We were buying a two-day pass. So while she was paying, just to prove her wrong, I carved a bad word into the paint on the base of the ticket booth. I used my house key, and I was careful not to be seen. Look, I know it was stupid, but I was just a kid, and I was going through this phase. Anyway, I was sure the swear word wouldn’t be noticed, and I’d see it the next morning, and I’d be right and she’d be wrong.
There were a lot of people there that day, and they dropped a lot of things. There was a lot of ticker tape and balloons, and of course the twice-daily Invisible Hobo Parade. And the next day it certainly looked clean. I had to give them that. But they couldn’t have thought of everything.
“Where are you going?” Mom asked as I broke away from her and ran to the ticket booth. “We already have our pass, we don’t have to pay again.”
“Just want to see something,” I called back. She probably didn’t hear me, but it didn’t matter. It would only take a second, then I’d have the rest of the day to gloat.
I pushed through lines of people and ignored their irritated looks and clucking tongues and knelt down at the base of the booth.
“No way,” I whispered.
I had the wrong booth, that was the only explanation. I dashed one row down and tried again. There was nothing there.
And then I knew I’d been right the first time. It was the booth directly in line with the Duke Elliphant sign; I’d made certain of it the day before. I went back to look again.
“What’s going on?” Mom said behind me. “Did you lose something?”