The bus, old yellow cheese wagon that it was, pulled into the Fun Time Land parking lot. Melody looked out the window and rolled her eyes. So lame. Senior field trips were supposed to be fun: Late night trips to REAL amusement parks like Six Flags, or lock-ins on a college campus with chaperones that were shitty at their jobs. They weren’t supposed to be day trips to some dumb baby park.

As if in confirmation, Melody spotted another school bus, repainted white and covered in tiny rainbow handprints. Great. They’d probably be the only kids here who didn’t need help wiping. Not kids, Melody reminded herself. Not her at least. Her birthday had been two weeks ago, (and some days it felt like she still had the hangover she’d earned). Grown-ass woman right here! All she had to do now was mark time for a month until she got her diploma. And if that meant going to some local kiddie tourist trap it was still better than Mrs. Jenson’s Fifth Period English class.

She slumped forward, resting her head on the leather bench seat directly in front of her while the rest of these plebs just nattered away about unimportant bullshit. Please just let this day be over with quickly. The sooner she was passed out at home, the better.

A quick poke on her shoulder reminded Melody that she wasn’t the only person suffering here. She pushed her mop of blonde hair out of the way and looked to her sidekick. “Yeah?”

“You alright?” Beatrice asked. Beatrice was one of the few people that Melody felt something besides simmering contempt for; a bright spot since Mom and Steve had dragged her to this town last year.

“Not really,” Melody grumbled. “This is going to be soooo boring.”

Beatrice was unusually smiley this morning. “It’s cool. It’s tradition. For a lot of us, this was our first field trip. So it’s kind of...I dunno..poetic or something?”

Melody lilted her head to the side and looked at her friend like a particularly judgemental cat looks at a mouse. Beatrice was cool, but sometimes the girl needed a little help. “You’re right,” Beatrice corrected herself. “Lame. Totally lame.” Much better.

“I’m just glad you’re here to get me through it,” Melody allowed herself a moment of genuine human emotion.

“Aw,” Beatrice chirped. The puppy had been given her bone. “Thanks Mel! Love you!”

“You too, Bea.”

“Besties!”

“Besties.”

They hugged; Beatrice squeezing a little harder than Melody.

Heavy steps clomped to the front of the bus. Loafers, gray slacks, and a boring white polo, Dean Garfield took the sage. “ALL RIGHT, PEOPLE! LISTEN UP!” A voice like a drill sergeant and jowls like a bulldog, the dean knew how to command attention.

Everyone stopped talking. “You all are seniors! Most of you are eighteen if not close!” There was a smattering of cheering that was cut off with a glare. “BUT...right now, you are under school jurisdiction. That means that if you get hurt or injured here, the school is liable. So for safety purposes, everyone is going to be grouped up and have an adult chaperone. ”

“I’m an adult!” Melody shouted out with no small amount of cheekiness in her voice. “I’ll chaperone!” She couldn’t help herself. The old bulldog gave her a look and she looked back, unblinking. Beatrice clasped her hand and she squeezed back, keeping her mouth shut. Melody wasn’t that stupid.

Her silence was enough. “Everyone is going to be grouped up and have a school approved volunteer.” Dean Garfield continued. “Everywhere you go will be as a group.”

Chet Masters almost shouted out “Even the bathroom?!”. Almost. One of Chet’s friends was kind enough to elbow the wind out of him before he could be heard from the back.

“Paradoxically,” Dean Garfield said, “you’re also representing our school. So if you make an ass out of yourself, it makes everybody look like an ass.” Hearing the old man- the actual adult- curse made a round of chuckles bubble up around the bus. “Or do you want a diploma from a bad school? Think about how everyone talks about Liberty High.” That got another round of chuckles, but this one was infinitely more thoughtful. For some, where the degree came from mattered. It’s why snooty old people name dropped Harvard and still wore their class rings.

“Go ahead and stand up,” Dean Garfield said. “File out of the bus and you’ll be sorted into your travel groups.” Silence and quiet compliance followed as the herd of highschoolers stood up and made for the center aisle. “I gotta go give that speech to Bus 2,” the old man said and walked down the steps to the outside. A second later he popped his head back in. “Oh yeah,” he smiled. “AND HAVE FUN!”

A chorus of whoops, claps, and stomps greeted that last announcement. For a complete tool, the guy did have a flash of showmanship. As soon as she got her diploma, Melody might even tell him that, she’d decided.

It wasn’t long before middle aged housewives and unemployed dads wielding clipboards started herding the seniors up.

Thankfully, both Melody and Beatrice managed to weasel into the same peer group. Everyone was put into groups of six. And true to society’s puritanical roots, they were very much unisex. Boyfriends and girlfriends gave each other goodbye hugs and snuck kisses (or didn’t sneak them). The few same sex couples that were out gave each other knowing winks and held hands. Cheeky bastards.

A forty something lady with a short “Mom-cut” handed out tickets to the group. She stopped and eyed Mel and Bea. “Are those outfits dress code?”

Great. One of those. Melody clicked her tongue. “Dress code is for school.”

“And we’re at a school event.” She looked down at her clipboard. “Juniper? Melody?”

The two pointed at each other, hiding their shit eating grins and laughter...poorly. Juniper was absent today, but Mom-cut didn’t know that. A quick over the shoulder look ensured that Beatrice’s actual group would be going on without her. No one with any brains wanted to incur the pair’s wrath. “Do me a favor.” Mom-cut pushed on. “Stand up straight. Arms down at their sides.”

Ah, the old fingertip test. “Really?” Melody said, crossing her arms. “This isn’t middle school.” Such bullshit. She was wearing overalls. The leggings stopped well above the knee, showing off her gorgeous thighs, but it’s not like anyone could see her junk. Shouldn’t she be applauded for wearing something that made it harder to pee?

And Bea had a perfectly acceptable, very tasteful, skirt on. Who cared if people could tell what color her panties were every time she bent over? Certainly not Mel. Definitely not Bea. Melody wasn’t even sure Bea knew how many times she’d given people a peak when she dropped something, and she was such a good friend, she was positive that Bea didn’t want to know.

“Yeah.” Beatrice echoed. “We’re all adults here…” She looked to Melody. Melody nodded her approval. “So...yeah. Adults…”

Mom-cut was not having it. “You heard what the dean said.” She started waving around the tickets like they were carrots on a stick. Melody hated carrots, but it was better than being talked at in a parking lot. “You represent more than just yoursel-”

An unexpected ally came into the fight. “Don’t worry about it, Mom,” Gretchen Simone said. “Just give them their tickets and let’s get going.” So this was Gretchen Simone’s mother. Interesting! Also explained why Gretchen was such a pathetic bug. Getchen was the anti-Bea. Total snitch. Total narc. Good grades. Needed constant reminders about how much she sucked.

Mom-cut Simone looked back at her narc of a daughter. “Alright sweetie,” she said. “You’re right.” She handed out the last two tickets. “Here you go girls.”

“Thank yoooouuu…” the pair said, taking their tickets. The smile was fake. The tone was fake. It was all fake, and everyone kind of knew that. It made it all the sweeter, because there was no penalty for insincere apologies. Mom-cut started to lead the way past the ticket taker for Fun Time Land.

The little exchange with Mom-cut, had caused the group to lag behind. The entire senior class was in front of them, moving in tight little clusters at the front of the park. Undoubtedly, they’d all start to spread out as it opened up to the different sucky rides and lame attractions. But right now, they were all traveling as one big group of rowdy teens with exasperated parents dotted in every now and then.

Melody looked around the park at the other guests. It was about what she expected: Tourists who couldn’t afford to go somewhere good, retirees walking down memory lane, and other schools who wanted an easy field trip but didn’t have a budget. Mostly Elementary schools by the look of it.

At least they didn’t have to wear group T-shirts like...she paused to read...Mrs. Wilkerson’s Toucans.

Being right about how much this was going to suck didn't improve her mood.

Time to pass the time and poke the bear; the cuddly cuddly wimpy cowardly bear. Melody slid up next to Gretchen. “And thank you, sweetie. I needed the backup there.”

Gretchen kept looking straight ahead. A coward’s response. “Get over yourself,” she mumbled. “I just want to ride a few coasters.” The group was past the gate and well into the park proper by this point. Signs to the various attractions were pointing the way towards winding roads meant to obfuscate a person’s view. Amusement parks did this to force exploration.

“They’re all old and lame.” Melody scoffed. She just couldn’t help herself. “None of these rides even go upside down.”

“They’re still cool,” Bea butted in. Melody shot her sidekick ‘the look’, again. “I mean, lame. Stupid. They suck. I’ll be riding them ironically.”

Melody turned her head to her sidekick. “No you won’t.”

“I won’t?”

Melody pointed to a sign pointing off to the far right. “Beer Garden,” Melody said. “How much you wanna bet we can score some?”

Bea licked her lips. “I do like beer…”

Gretchen snapped her head around so fast her ponytail could have cut through steel. “No!” She hissed. “You are NOT messing this up for me, Melody!”

Melody couldn’t resist. “I’m Juniper,” she said, pointing to herself. “Or did you miss that part?” The girls couldn’t get in trouble if they didn’t get noticed. And if they got noticed, it’d still be hard to catch them if Mom-cut didn’t know their names.

“I thought I was Juniper,” Bea said. “Am I Melody, now?”

A sly smile came to Melody. “Maybe.” Only real obstacle was goodie goodie Gretchen. Melody could handle it. “Gretchen doesn’t know who we are, right? Maybe Gretchen doesn’t know where we went. She doesn’t even know our names, does she?”

Melody took a peek at Gretchen. The meeker girl kept staring straight ahead, still intimidated. Good. She was grinding her jaw, a nervous tick when she was thinking, Melody had learned. Good. Gretchen was a wimp, but not stupid. “We just disappeared and Mommy has no leads to go on, right?” Melody waited for that to sink in. “Unless you want to spend all day chasing us. Cut into your widdle fun time. Chaperones can’t leave their group.”

“You two are gonna get in so much trouble,” Gretchen whispered.

“Nah,” Melody waved the idea off. “Probably just get chewed out. We’ve been chewed out before. And we’ll only get chewed out if we get caught.”

A fork in the road was approaching them. The left led to rickety roller coasters and a game row with rigged contests and overpriced prizes. The right snaked around and took guests to The Kiddie Korral, and the Beer Garden. Their window of opportunity was closing.

Gretchen wasn’t stupid. She was weighing her options, Melody could tell. Bea wasn’t stupid, either. “Come on, Gretchen,” she whispered. “Just don’t tell. That’s all we’re asking. We won’t be bothering you.”

“This will probably be the last time we do a school field trip,” Mel added. “Do you really want it to be with us?” Good move. Go for the disgust card.

Staring ahead, Gretchen nodded. “I don’t see you. I don’t know you. Go before I change my mind.”

In the same insincere honeyed voice she’d used on Gretchen’s mother, Melody whispered the closest thing she could manage to actual thanks “Byyyye,” she cooed. “You kids have fun.” The group went left. Mel and Bea went right.

The two walked fast, in rapid tiny steps, just waiting to hear a deep adult voice call out after them, or to hear the pounding of feet chasing them. None came.

“Don’t look, don’t look, don’t look, don’t look,” Bea squeaked.

Arm in arm, Melody leaned over to her sidekick. “I’m not. I’m not.” Melody took a quick glance back over her shoulder. “I’m not. I’m not.” The two grinned as if they were master criminals on the run from the law. “Okay,” she finally said. “I think we’re good.” The two stepped off to the side and breathed a sigh of relief. For the last hundred yards or so they hadn’t been looking where they were going as much as they were just going. Now they were taking the time to actually navigate.

“Now where is that beer?” Melody asked herself, reading the various signs posted up. “Amphitheatre? Nope. Souvenirs? Nope.”

Bea started helping. “Bathrooms? Nuh-uh. Petting zoo? No thanks. Kiddie Korral?”

The two shared a look. Ugh. Little kids. “No,” they said in unison.

It was Bea, bless her heart, that found the sign pointing to what they were really looking for. “Beer Garden! Over there!”

The two started walking. Paved sidewalks gave way to more sophisticated looking cobblestones. Ah yes, the Beer Garden: For people who wanted to get drunk and pretend that they weren’t at a third rate theme park with no other theme than, ‘This is a thing’.

“How are we gonna get any?” Bea asked as they started following the correct sign.

Melody patted the bib on her overalls. “I’ve got my fake I.D.. Never leave home without it.” She could see that her sidekick was still worried. “They might not even card me,” she said. “It’s beer. Not liquor. What do they care if we have a sip?”

Bea was slowing down already, her own self-doubt quashing her courage. “What if they card me?” she asked. “I don’t have mine.”

Not breaking her stride, Melody grabbed Bea’s wrist. “Then you’ll stay back and I’ll buy the beer. You’re overthinking it,” she giggled. There was a statement Melody never thought she’d get to say. Before she could get over her own little joke, Bea dragged her to a sudden jerky stop.

“Hey!”

“Oooh!” Bea pointed down to a wafting ten dollar bill. “First glass is on me!” She bent down to pick up the money. Melody grabbed the collar of her shirt and yanked her back up. A passing group of park goers now knew that Bea’s underwear was red today. “Hey!” Bea squeaked. “What was that for?

Melody picked up the bill, instead. “In case any bulls escaped the petting zoo.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind. Just know that I saved your life.”

Without further comment or questions from her sidekick, they followed the path to their own personal main attraction. The roar of wooden coasters faded out and muted; replaced by the chirping of birds and the droning of violins being piped in from speakers hidden by strategically placed fern trees. Much less amusement, more park, in this section. Good.

“Do you think we have to drink in the garden, or can we just buy and walk around?”

“Drink it there,” Melody said. “Less risk of getting caught.”

“Good point,” Bea agreed. “We’ll look super classy too. Sipping and enjoying the um...taste of the...uh...hops. Is that what old people say when they’re talking about beer?”

“Yeah...sure…” Melody said. She was planning on gulping hers down as fast as possible. She wasn’t in it for the taste. The mere state of being buzzed would help make this crap day just a touch more bearable.

The path wound a bit, causing the main area of the Beer Garden slowly curve into view. A good thing too, as it turned out. A crackle of static and a garbled drone could be barely heard over the quiet laughter of adults and a string quartet CD. “Be vye. Misting singers porridge. Peep hole leafing hair groots. Pee onna foot ow.”

Bea planted her feet back and shot her hand out to the side, blocking Melody’s path. Melody stopped and looked over. “What’s up?” Bea had the focus of a basset hound that’d just sniffed a rabbit.

“That’s a school issue walkie talkie,” Bea said. “I’d know it anywhere” It’s true. All the administration staff kept walkie talkies on them, sending messages and calling for reinforcements when fights broke out or the Superintendent paid a surprise visit or some other emergency warranted the attention of more than one professional killjoy. Discretion was generally ignored on the little black rectangles. The language wasn’t coded as much as unrecognizable thanks to poorly aging technology.

Bea and Melody had spent so much time in Dean Garflield’s office, caught so many random updates blaring across the ancient speaker, it was a wonder it didn’t haunt their dreams. And Bea had started freshman year. If old ass walkie talkie had been a foreign language, Bea would be fluent. “Be advised,” she translated. “Missing seniors reported. People leaving their groups. Be on the lookout.”

This. This kind of thing is why Melody kept Bea around. “I think I know whose walkie that is,” Melody said.

“Roger that.” Through the ferns the pair could make out the vaguest outline of a certain bulldog of a human being. “I’m on the lookout. Nobody in the Beer Garden. That’d make it too easy anyways.”

Bea elbowed Melody. “How about that!,” she whispered excitedly. “He was drinking on the job, too!”

“Shut up, Bea”

“Sorry, Mel.”

“Why would they even bring the walkies?” Melody hissed.

“Probably in case somebody like us skipped.”

They about-faced and began heading back towards the park’s main walkways. “Just keep walking. Keep it cool. No need to freak out.” Melody didn’t know if she was talking to Bea or herself.

“HEY!” An all too familiar voice called out. “YOU TWO!”

Rigidly, Melody leaned over to her sidekick. “Just keep walking. He might not be talking to us.”

The pounding of feet reverberated off of cobble stone and into their ears. “BEATRICE AND MELODY! I’M TALKING TO YOU!” Or maybe he was. The two delinquents didn't need to tell each other to run. They just did. “AND THAT’S NOT DRESS CODE!”

Shit shit shit!

A knowledge of basic tactics would have told the pair to split up and take separate routes as part of an escape maneuver. But loyalty trumps sense. More importantly, Bea was too scared to let Melody out of her sight and Melody had no way to trip her sidekick without falling herself.

Cobblestones quickly turned into flat gray concrete and the roar of the coasters thundered into the air. “There!” Melody pointed. “Gift shop!” Amongst all the towering distractions, tackily decorated food carts, and signs pointing the way to more of the same, a single, rectangular building stood out like a sore thumb. The Fun Time Land Gift Shop might just be big enough to get lost in and open enough to not get caught. Better than getting into line for a flume ride, anyhow.

They weren’t dead if they weren’t caught. Due process and all that shit. The two dashed in and put on the brakes so as not to ram headfirst into a rack of overpriced t-shirts. Several other groups of their peers were in the gift shop; chatting, checking their phones, and generally lingering. Better yet, bored chaperones were either busy doing the same or on the hunt for the rare and elusive (some might say mythical) theme park gift store bargain.

With just a moment to breathe, a dab of common sense careened into both girls’ brains. “You go left, I go right,” Melody said to her sidekick. Beatrice nodded and obeyed, with the two splitting up and mixing in with other bored seniors. The key, Melody found was staying close enough to the different pockets of seniors without making enough of a stir to be noticed by them.

From off a nearby rack, Melody quickly grabbed a jacket and baseball cap; slipping the former on and cramming her hair beneath the latter. Instant disguise. Bea, meanwhile, was busying herself pretending to look at merchandise, bending over and flashing her bright red panties everywhere.

Fuck.

Dean Garfield was on their trail within thirty seconds, but thirty seconds was all they’d needed. The fact that he’d not called out their names or otherwise was proof. Melody’s ears pricked up. “Still looking,” he said. “They’re around here somewhere.”

“Okay shun?”

“Gift shop.”

“Tenth-floor. Floppy hat”

Thinking quickly, Melody dug her phone out of the bib of her overalls and texted:

“Stand up. Walk out. Slowly.”

Please vibrate. Please vibrate. Bea stood up and patted her thin bag that was barely a purse. Good! Vibrate! She wasn’t checking it however. Instead she looked around warily and started to edge her way out of the gift shop.

She was too scared to check her cell phone in public! Gawd! At least it was getting the same end result. Now it was Melody’s time to move. Just under Dean Garfield’s radar, Melody moved from cluster to cluster, not making a sound. The dean was moving towards the cashier, likely asking the poor bored thirty-something whose life hadn’t worked out like he planned if he’d seen any girls fitting Mel and Bea’s descriptions.

Yeah right. Good luck with that. All highschoolers looked the same to adults, the same way all babies looked alike to teens. With Dean Garfield’s back to her, Melody took her chance and fast walked her way out of the gift shop.

BEEP! BEEP! BOOP! BOOP!

FUCK! She’d forgotten to take off her disguise and the alarm went off. “Mel!” Beatrice shouted. “I just got a text from you!” The shitty hat and crappy jacket went airborne and ended up in a decorative hedge just before Melody grabbed her sidekick’s hand and took off at a run. “Where are we going?!”

“Shut up and just run!” Melody panted.

“Kay!”

The crowd whizzing by them as they ducked and weaved through the crowd, they took the first turn they saw. “LEFT!” Melody commanded. The two turned and broke line of sight from the shop, hopefully before any school administrators had poked their head out and looked around. They didn't do DNA testing for shit like shoplifting, right?

Breaking into a full out run, the girls jumped the log fence in front of them with Bea giving anyone that looked in the right moment a good glimpse of her bright red panties and Melody grateful that her own overalls were too short to get snagged on a loose nail.

A quick touch confirmed that the criss crossing logs they’d hopped over weren’t wood at all, but sculpted concrete and stone made to look wooden. The two hunched down low, the barrier only coming up to their waists otherwise.

“Please don’t see me please don’t see me please don’t see me,” Melody prayed in a whisper.

When no one called out their names, and no garbled messages of walkie-talkies invaded their ears, the pair stood to their full height, only hearing the high pitched screams and cries of giddy children. “That was close,” Bea said.

“Yeah,” Melody agreed. “So much for beer.” She shifted her weight and felt an odd sensation, as if the ground were not quite solid. “Where are we?” The two turned around.

A Playground. It was a playground. A fucking playground. An admittedly expensive playground, but a playground all the same. Foam padded ground squished beneath their shoes. In the event of some idiot toddler tripping over their own feet they’d be fine. A series of jungle gyms, low to the ground playground equipment, ball pits, giant connect four games, and bounce houses dotted the landscape.

“Kiddie Korral” the sign read. “Ages three and under.”

“Fuck.” Melody said.

Bea agreed. “This isn’t good.” If they couldn’t hide in a crowded gift shop, they stood no chance here. Curly topped little girls and carrot topped toddler boys waddled along on the padded ground. If these kids were two, they were only just, and the ground wasn’t the only thing that was padded. Between waistbands poking out the top of shorts, distinctive bulges below the belly button, skirts that were like scaled down versions of what Beatrice was wearing, and a couple of kids whose parents just didn’t give a damn about pants at all, it was fairly evident that every kid was diapered here. One kid looked like she might have been wearing really short jeans, but it was just those faux denim diapers that got popular every summer. “We’re gonna stick out like sore thumbs.”

Like conditioned animals, both girls could hear the static and garbled chatter of school issued walkie-talkies, even from across the playground. Their pursuers weren’t here yet, but they were close. Beatrice made to hop back over the fence the way they’d come. Melody’s hand landed on her shoulder. “Maybe not,” she said. “Look over there.”

“Ollie! What are you doing you silly boy?” A voice called out. A little boy hung from a rope net, giggling as he dangled upside down. The ladder couldn’t have been more than four feet, but somehow this kid with curly black hair had managed to get himself tangled up and was avoiding having the soft spot on his head squashed by a thread. A lady, a girl really, rushed up and hoisted the kid out by his armpits before setting him down. “Go play somewhere else,” she said, before giving him a pat on the butt, sending him waddling off towards a bouncy house.

The girl couldn’t have been older than twenty. Most of the adults couldn’t be old enough to drink.

Another lady was playing peekaboo with a baby crawling through a log tunnel. “Where’d Emma go?!” she’d coo. Then the tot in the pink dress would crawl out and giggle. “There she is!” The kid would stand up and waddle to the other end of the tunnel, and it’d start all over again. “Oh no! Emma’s gone!” Girl deserved a Daytime Emmy. More importantly, girl was maybe a year ahead of Bea and Melody. Most were. A few bored looking old maids and ex-housewives sat on benches like mother hens overseeing the chaos, but all the adults in the thick of it were barely legal.

Just like Melody. Just like Bea. “This is perfect,” Melody said. “Let’s chill here for a minute. We’ll blend right in.”

“But Melody,” Bea said, “everybody else our age has those shirts on.” Bea was right. All of the young ladies chasing down, playing with, and wrangling toddlers were wearing white t-shirts covered in rainbow handprints. Remembering the bus, Melody didn’t have to guess where they were from. Even daycares took field trips.

Melody waved off the concern. “We’re not staying the day,” she said. “We’re just hanging for a couple of minutes.” Bea didn’t seem convinced. Time for a demonstration. “Keith!” Melody called out to literally no one. “Careful sweetie! Don’t fall!” No one at the playground even turned their heads. “See?” Melody said. “It’s like Jurassic Park. No one cares.”

A few steps away from the guardrail on the spongy turf proved that to be a lie. As they moved deeper with tiny children scurrying past them and screaming in merriment, the pair began to better appreciate the level of detail put into this section. “So that’s why this place is called the Kiddie Korral,” she said. “It’s all cowboy like.”

As always Beatrice had a gift for stating the obvious: Big rubber balls painted up like tumbleweeds were being clumsily pushed around. The tunnel that the baby girl kept crawling in and out of was made to look like a tipped over watering barrel. The spring horses looked more like actual horses and a nearby bouncy house was made to look like a Saloon. Cute. Campy, but cute.

“Excuse me!” A fat old woman called out. “Excuse me!” She was forty-nine if she was a day, had chins down past the collar of her cheap t-shirt, thinning hair, and was deeply in need of a bra with more support. If this is what working with kids did to a body, Melody was never going to enter the field. She might have been Dean Garfield’s sister...or his mother. “Can I help you?” (Translation: Get the fuck out.)

“We’re here as volunteers!” Bea lied (badly) before Melody had a chance to elbow her in the ribs.

Big Bertha put her hands on her hips. “Nice try, honey. I know all these girls. You don’t belong here.“ She pointed to a sign posted on the inside of the fence: “No Unaccompanied Children OR Adults.” Place was aware and hypervigilant about creepers. Good for them, bad for the girls.

Melody pointed to a toddler in green shorts and a matching shirt, his outfit having a Ninja Turtle motif. “I’m a teen mom,” Melody tried, grasping at straws. “That’s one’s mine…?” Yeah...she didn’t think that’d work either. Things went from bad to worse when Melody spied a white polo and heard the familiar squawk of a walkie-talkie coming from just the other edge of the playground.

Had to break line of sight, if only for a second! “We just want to uh…” Melody’s head was on a swivel. She looked to a jungle gym decorated to resemble a covered wagon, roof included. “Go on the playground. Just once. Relive our childhood, get it? Been coming here for years!”

“But you just-!” Melody slapped her hand over Bea’s mouth. Idiot.

“I don’t care what you- hey!” The hag didn’t have time to finish. Melody was already off, dragging Bea behind her towards the jungle gym. “Stop! Don’t make me call security!” The woman yelled, but didn’t pursue. Probably couldn’t move that fast.

Let her call security, Melody thought, they’d be gone before any park cops got to them. Scrambling up tiny steps, more like scaffolded platforms, the duo quickly but gently scooted by a group of rugrats. “Excuse me?” a girl about their age said. “You’re not supposed to be-”

“We know,” Bea cut her off. “We’re lost. We’re going.” It looked like Melody’s sidekick was finally getting the hang of things. “We just need to…” she caught sight of it before Melody, “go down the slide!”

This playground was built specifically with tiny people with tiny legs in mind; people who hadn’t completely mastered the art of walking. The way up to the slide didn’t have a ladder as much as it had a ramp. It wasn’t a real slide, not like at a bitching water park, but it was an inclined tube. Not long either, but it was enclosed and fed out facing away from from where they’d last spied Garfield.

Good enough.

“Goodbye, thank you!” Bea chirped as she crawled up the ramp. She had to crawl in order to avoid hitting her head on the plastic “canvas” of the faux covered wagon.

“I can see your underwear, you know,” the volunteer called back. The disdain in her voice was evident. “Kids,’ Melody heard her mutter. Bea went down headfirst, shrieking. Figures that Bea could have fun going down a damn kiddie slide.

Melody crawled up the ramp, making every effort to shake her ass as the snobby girl who thought she was better than them. She took just enough time to reposition herself so that she was sitting and swung her legs in front of her. “Fuck off,” she said before pushing off and sending herself into down the beige tunnel.

AND DOWN SHE WENT! Sliding, slipping, plummeting even!

One Mississippi...two Mississippi...three Mississippi! This was taking a lot longer than she thought it would, and it had nothing to do with her getting stuck. Melody would have thought that she might have gotten stuck. She was too big for the slide and skin tended to stick to hot plastic. If anything it felt like the surface was greased.

After an uncomfortable amount of time, Melody finally came out the other end and into a nasty surprise: BALLS! TONS OF THEM! Tumbling out of the tube, Melody found her world out of balance as she crashed into a moat of balls, her head plunging under a cascade of rainbow colored spheres. It WAS like a water slide, including the splash down at the end.

“Come on Melody!” she heard Bea beckon. “Get out of the way.” Thrashing awkwardly, the girl managed to right herself and stand up. Wow. Her shoulders barely crested above the rainbow spheres. Beatrice was at the far end of the pit waving to her. “Come on! So the next kid can have a turn.”

Moving her hands in a kind of breast stroke motion, Melody half walked, half swam across the balls just in time to hear another “WHEEEEE” and the clatter of balls behind her as some two year old crashed into the pit. Melody winced, but didn’t look back.

Something felt odd, and not just physically. Her shortalls felt kind of bunched up, probably a byproduct from the slide. She also felt clumsy, a byproduct of both the crash and that she was wading through a pit full of tiny plastic obstacles. But there was a strange feeling she couldn’t shake, something that was throwing something besides her stride off. Like why would a ball pit be so deep if it was supposed to be for little kids? Also, when she ran for the jungle gym, she didn’t remember seeing a ball pit at the end of the slide.

Had she just missed it? A quick peer through the mesh netting that kept the balls firmly in, helped reorient her. Bounce house to the far left. Kids pushing rubber tumbleweeds. “Come on, Mel!” Bea shouted. “Hurry up! I wanna go again!”