Joyland Read Online Free Page A

guilt, no darkness to the daylight. With twenty-five cents Chris experienced explosions of colour, the graphics on the screen somehow representative of all the beautiful, violent things he did not yet know.
    He crossed this street again and again. The candy-coloured cars flew by him and he proceeded with minimal caution toward his destination, as if drawn by a homing instinct.
    Joyland was located three blocks down from the one-level house where he lived with the people who had emerged into reliable unmysterious figures: Mom, Dad, and Tammy. South Wakefield lay like a plain white dot on a large dark screen — population 9,000, situated in Southern Ontario. As minute and unremarkable as a fly on a lily pad. Beyond Running Creek Road, there were six factories, five churches, four elementary schools, three sports stores, two arcades, one strip mall, and a movie theatre that had been turned into a “gentleman’s club.” Chris was fourteen years old and Joyland was the only place where he felt himself shine.
    During the day, the road was like a fluorescent tube, sunlight thrown from it, blinding. A rumble of transports and supply trucks thrummed from one end to the other, heading on through, down into the States. At night, the hose of the highway lay silent, turned off. Only the occasional truck, trying to make some time, threw up grey dust in its wake. Joyland sat on the other side like a small black hole in the pocket of the night.
    The stunt in the road hadn’t been Chris’s idea.
    Tammy sent home long ago, J.P. and Chris sprawled on the curb opposite the arcade, leaning back on their hands, drinking grape pop. Over the course of the night, the misplaced patch of boys grew in the stretch of cement in front of the Twiss’s Gas ’n Go. In addition to Christopher Lane and John Paul Breton, gathered a standard post-Indian-Creek-Grammar-School group: David White, Kenny Keele, and Dean and Reuben Easter. Pinky Goodlowe had been too steamed to stay. He’d jumped on his BMX and ridden away, massive knees hitting the handlebars.
    “Man! I dunno, we got this sort of, like, bottomless summer now. Eight whole weeks of nothin’. How many days of pure street hockey d’you think you can stand? In a row, I mean?” J.P. spoke specifically to Chris, the others oblivious to the gravity of the situation. Chuckling, David had pressed his crotch against a gas hose, pretending to pump the pump. Between his legs the nozzle hooked in — blank tin body and glass face — the machine reduced to the simplest notion of female, something entered.
    Chris shook his head. “The crescent’s good for it, I guess.”
    “Yeah, but my folks hate it. They’ll beat my ass.” J.P. stretched his legs out in front of him, bent slightly at the knees. “Straight days of hockey, draggin’ the freakin’ nets back and forth every time a car wants in or out. The neighbours’ll be over yellin’ at my mom before the week’s out. What else we got?”
    “I don’t know.” Chris tilted his head back and let the last swig of pop ripple through his throat. “Swim, bike, TV, soccer, baseball, the usual . . .”
    “Pffft. Boring, bo-ring.” J.P. squeezed his bicep, the muscle bulging up around a mosquito that had landed there. He watched its back end fill with blood. When it burst, J.P. wiped the residue off with two fingers and leaned over to rub them on Chris, who lurched up and away a few feet. J.P. reached round and rubbed them on the ass of his shorts.
    “I don’t know why you do that. You still get the bite, ya know.” Chris scrambled back down, settled on the curb more upright.
    “’Sfun,” J.P. shrugged.
    David dropped to the curb beside them, followed by Kenny, Dean, and Reuben. Behind them, Johnny Davis had claimed a seat atop the mailbox in mute sixteen-year-old oblivion, with the exception of the odd fartish exhalation.
    The side door to Joyland opened, rapping across the concrete night. They all stilled, watched Mrs. Rankin reach up to