Funhouse Read Free

and her friends had pushed through the crowd, made her stomach curl up in fright. Scattered among the bright chunks of broken metal were many of her friends, their bodies crumpled like used paper napkins. Some were unconscious. Some were not as lucky, and cried out in pain.
    “There’s Sheree Buchanan,” Gina whispered, pointing. “There, lying beside the hot-dog stand. I ran into her earlier. She was wearing a purple shirt just like one I bought last week.”
    Tess moaned low in her throat. Poor Sheree. She would never be the same.
    “Dade Lewis is dead!” a girl standing behind Sam cried out. “He’s dead!”
    A collective gasp of dismay rose up from the crowd.
    Dade Lewis? Tess couldn’t believe that. Dade was obnoxious, but he was so healthy, so full of life. The girl must be mistaken.
    A boy in jeans and a T-shirt ran past Tess, his hand over his mouth, his face sweatshirt-gray. Doss followed him, returning a moment later to say without emotion, “He just came across Joey Furman’s leg. Minus Joey. Shook the kid up real bad.”
    Gina gasped as her hand flew up to cover her mouth. Tess leaned against Sam, all breath completely stolen from her. Joey Furman? He was on the track team, with Guy Joe, Sam, and Beak. Every time she’d seen Joey lately—on The Boardwalk, in town, or at school, he’d been running. And now he’d lost a leg to The Devil’s Elbow?
    Doss Beecham was an insensitive clod, she thought, as Doss left to help on The Boardwalk. Talking so matter-of-factly about what had happened to Joey, as if the loss of his leg were no more important than a pimple on his chin! Didn’t Doss have any feelings?
    She spotted Beak among the volunteers, bending and stooping, his lanky form lifting metal and tossing it aside, as he tried to stay out of the way of the paramedics. His thin face was flushed with exertion and distress.
    “There’s Beak,” she told Gina, nodding toward their friend. She was relieved that he hadn’t been a passenger on The Devil’s Elbow when it crashed. It was his favorite ride.
    Gina simply nodded when Tess mentioned Beak. She was still trying to take in the nightmare around her.
    “I’m going with Beecham,” Sam told Tess, handing her his earphones. “You stay here with Giambone. And stay out of the way.”
    Ordinarily, Tess’s temper would have flared at the command. But nothing tonight was ordinary. Besides, she figured, in this case Sam was probably right. She and Gina could be the most useful by helping to move the crowd back. The policemen weren’t having much luck getting onlookers out of the way.
    Tess and Gina spent most of the next hour cajoling bystanders, gradually talking them into moving back from the accident scene, leaving the site open for emergency personnel and the cleanup crew.
    When the last of the ambulances had departed, sirens wailing mournfully, and the crowd had wandered off, Tess and Gina collapsed to sitting positions, their backs against a cotton-candy booth left untouched by the disaster. Tess’s thin face and Gina’s round one were totally devoid of color, their eyes full of pain and shock. Doss and Sam joined them, their own faces and clothes dirty. Sam had a small cut on one hand. They sank down beside the girls and rested their heads against the booth.
    Tess’s brother, Guy Joe, a tall, broad-shouldered boy with a square, handsome face and deep gray eyes, arrived, his denim cutoffs smeared with grease from his cleanup efforts. Trailing along behind him was Sam’s sister Candace, a pale, thin, blonde girl. Candace never wore jeans, and the pink dress she was wearing now was much too large for her, billowing around her like a tent. A heavy hand with an eyebrow pencil made her look far more ferocious than she really was. Tess couldn’t understand why Mrs. Oliver, who was tall, beautiful, and very elegant, never took the time to teach her own daughter about clothes and makeup. But tonight, that didn’t seem very important.
    “Well, at