ll that spring Honey prayed to Walt Disney. From her bedroom in the rear of the rusty old trailer that sat in a clump of pines behind the third hill of the Black Thunder roller coaster, she prayed to God and Walt and sometimes even Jesus in hopes that one of those powerful heavenly figures would help her out. With her arms resting on the bent track that held the room's only window, she gazed out through the sagging screen at the patch of night sky just visible over the tops of the pines.

"Mr. Disney, it's Honey again. I know that the Silver Lake Amusement Park doesn't look like much right now with the water level down so far you can see all the stumps and with the Bobby Lee sitting on the bottom of the lake right at the end of the dock. Maybe we haven't had more than a hundred people through the park in the past week, but that doesn't mean things have to stay this way."

Ever since the Paxawatchie County Democrat had printed the rumor that the Walt Disney people were thinking about buying the Silver Lake Amusement Park as a location for a South Carolina version of Disney World, Honey hadn't been able to think of anything else. She was sixteen years old, and she knew that praying to Mr. Disney was a childish thing to do (not to mention questionable theology for a Southern Baptist), but circumstances had made her desperate.

Now she ticked off the advantages she wanted Mr. Disney to consider. "We're only an hour from the interstate. And with some good directional signs, everybody on their way to Myrtle Beach would be sure to stop here with their kids. If you don't count the mosquitoes and the humidity, the climate is good. The lake could be real pretty if your employees made the Purlex Paint Company stop dumping their toxics in it. And those people who are carrying on your business now that you're dead could buy it real cheap. Could you use your influence with them? Could you somehow make them understand that the Silver Lake Amusement Park is just what they're looking for?"

Her aunt's thin, listless voice interrupted Honey's combination of prayer and sales presentation. "Who're you talkin' to, Honey? You don't have a boy in that bedroom, do you?"

"Yeah, Sophie," Honey replied with a grin. "I got about a dozen in here. And one of 'em is gettin' ready to show me his dingdong."

"Oh, my, Honey. I don't think you should talk like that. It's not nice."

"Sorry." Honey knew she shouldn't bait Sophie, but she liked it when her aunt fussed over her. It didn't happen very often, and nothing ever came of it, but when Sophie fussed, Honey could almost pretend she was her real mother instead of her aunt.

A burst of laughter sounded from the next room as the Tonight Show audience responded to one of Johnny's jokes about peanuts and President Carter. Sophie always had the television on. She said it kept her from missing Uncle Earl's voice.

Earl Booker had died a year and a half ago, leaving Sophie the owner of the Silver Lake Amusement Park. She hadn't exactly been a ball of fire when he was alive, but it was even worse now that he was dead, and Honey was pretty much in charge of things. As she drew back from the window, she knew it wouldn't be much longer before Sophie fell asleep. She never lasted much past midnight even though she hardly ever got out of bed before noon.

Honey propped herself up against the pillows. The trailer was hot and airless. Despite the fact that she was wearing only an orange Budweiser T-shirt and a pair of underpants, she couldn't get comfortable. They used to have a window air conditioner, but it had broken down two summers ago just like everything else, and they couldn't afford to replace it.

Honey glanced at the dial on the clock sitting next to the bed she shared with Sophie's daughter, Chantal, and felt a twinge of alarm. Her cousin should have been home by now. It was Monday night, the park was closed, and there wasn't anything to do. Chantal was central to Honey's backup plan if Mr. Disney's employees didn't buy the park, and Honey couldn't afford to misplace her cousin, not even for an evening.

Swinging her feet down off the bed onto the cracked linoleum, she reached for the pair of faded red shorts she'd worn that day. She was small-boned, barely five feet tall, and the shorts were hand-me-downs from Chantal. They were too big for her hips and hung in baggy folds that made her toothpick legs seem even skinnier than they were. But vanity was one of the few faults Honey didn't possess, so she paid no attention.

Although Honey couldn't see it herself, she in fact had some cause for vanity. She had thickly lashed light blue eyes topped by dark slashes of brow. Her heart-shaped face held small cheekbones dusted with freckles and a pert little excuse for a nose. But she hadn't quite grown into her mouth, which was wide and framed by full lips that always reminded her of a big old sucker fish. For as long as she could remember, she had hated the way she looked, and not just because people had mistaken her for a boy until her small breasts had poked through, but because no one wanted to take a person seriously who looked so much like a child. Since Honey very much needed to be taken seriously, she had done her best to disguise every one of her physical assets with a perpetually hostile scowl and a generally belligerent attitude.

After slipping on a pair of flattened blue rubber flip-flops that had long ago conformed to the bottoms of her feet, she shoved her hands through her short, chewed hair. She performed this action not to straighten it but to scratch a mosquito bite on her scalp. Her hair was light brown, exactly the same color as her name. It liked to curl, but she seldom gave it the opportunity. Instead, she cut it whenever it got in her way, using whatever reasonably sharp implement happened to be handy: a pocketknife, a pair of pinking shears, and, on one unfortunate occasion, a fish sealer.

She closed the door behind her as she slipped out into a short, narrow hallway carpeted with an indoor-outdoor remnant patterned in brown and gold lozenges that also covered the uneven floor in the combination living and eating area. Just as she had predicted, Sophie had fallen asleep on an old couch upholstered in a worn tan fabric printed with faded tavern signs, American eagles, and thirteen-star flags. The perm Chantal had given her mother hadn't turned out too well, and Sophie's thin salt-and-pepper hair looked dry and vaguely electrified. She was overweight, and her knit top outlined breasts that had fallen like water balloons to opposite sides of her body.

Honey regarded her aunt with a familiar combination of exasperation and love. Sophie Moon Booker was the one who should have been worrying about her daughter's whereabouts, not Honey. She was the one who should have been thinking about how they were going to pay all those bills that were piling up and how they were going to keep their family together without falling into the peckerhead welfare system. But Honey knew that getting mad at Sophie was just like getting mad at Sophie's daughter, Chantal. It didn't do any good.

"I'm going out for a while."

Sophie snorted in her sleep.

The night air was heavy with humidity as Honey jumped down off the crumbling concrete step. The trailer's exterior was a particularly jarring shade of robin's-egg blue, improved only by the dulling film of age. Her flip-flops sank into the sand, and grit settled between her toes. As she moved away from the trailer, she sniffed. The June night smelled like pine, creosote, and the disinfectant they used in the toilets. All of those smells were overlaid by the distant, musty scent of Silver Lake.

As she passed beneath a series of weathered Southern yellow-pine support columns, she shoved her hands in the pockets of her shorts and told herself that this time she would keep going. This time she wouldn't stop and look. Looking made her think, and thinking made her feel like the inside of a week-old bait bucket. She moved doggedly ahead for another minute, but then she stopped anyway. Turning back the way she had come, she craned her neck and let her gaze move along the sweeping length of Black Thunder.

The roller coaster's massive wooden frame stood silhouetted against the night sky like the skeleton of a prehistoric dinosaur. Her eyes traveled up the steep incline of Black Thunder's mountainous lift hill and down that heart-stopping sixty-degree drop. She traced the slopes of the next two hills with their chilling dips all the way to the final spiral that twisted down in a nightmare whirlpool over Silver Lake itself. Her heart ached with an awful combination of yearning and bitterness as she took in the three hills and the steeply banked death spiral. Everything had begun to go wrong for them the summer Black Thunder had stopped running.

Even though the Silver Lake Amusement Park was small and old-fashioned compared to places like Busch Gardens and Six Flags over Georgia, it had something none of the others could claim. It had the last great wooden roller coaster in the South, a coaster some enthusiasts considered more thrilling than the legendary Coney Island Cyclone. Since it was built in the late 1920s, people had come from all over the country to ride Black Thunder. For legions of roller-coaster enthusiasts, the trip to Silver Lake had been a religious pilgrimage.

After a dozen rides on the legendary wooden coaster, they would visit the park's other more mundane attractions, including spending two dollars a person to take a cruise up and down Silver Lake on the paddle wheeler Robert E. Lee. But the Bobby Leehad fallen victim to disaster just like Black Thunder.

Almost two years ago, on Labor Day 1978, a wheel assembly had snapped off Black Thunder's rear car, separating it from the other cars and sending it hurtling over the side. Luckily no one had been hurt, but the State of South Carolina had closed down the roller coaster that same day, and none of the banks would finance the expensive renovation the state required before the ride could be reopened. Without its famous attraction, the Silver Lake Amusement Park had been dying a slow and painful death.

Honey walked farther into the park. On her right a bug-encrusted light bulb illuminated the deserted interior of the Dodgem Hall, where the battered fiberglass cars sat in a sleeping herd waiting for the park to open at ten the next morning. She passed through Kiddieland, with its miniature motorcycles and fire trucks sitting motionless on their endless circular tracks. Further on, the Scrambler and Tilt-a-Whirl rested from their labors. She paused in front of the House of Horror, where a Day-Glo mural of a decapitated body gushing phosphorescent blood from its severed neck stretched over the entryway.

"Chantal?"

There was no answer.

Removing the flashlight from its hook behind the ticket booth, she walked purposefully up the ramp into the House of Horror. In the daytime the ramp vibrated and a loudspeaker emitted hollow groans and shrill screams, but now everything was quiet. She entered the Passageway of Death and shone her light on the seven-foot hooded executioner with his bloody ax.

"Chantal, you in here?"

She heard only silence. Brushing through the artificial cobwebs, she passed the chopping block on her way to the Rat Den. Once inside, she shone her flashlight around the small room. Scores of glowing red eyes looked back at her from the one hundred and six snarling gray rats that lurked in the rafters and hung from invisible wires over her head.

Honey regarded them with satisfaction. The Rat Den was the best part of the House of Horror, because the animals were real. They had been stuffed by a New Jersey taxidermist in 1952 for the spook house at Palisades Park in Fort Lee. In the late sixties her Uncle Earl had bought them thirdhand from a North Carolina man whose park near Forest City had gone bust.

"Chantal?" She called out her cousin's name one more time, and when she got no response left the House of Horror through the back fire exit. Dodging power cables, she cut behind the Roundup and headed for the midway.

Only a few of the colored light bulbs strung through the sagging pennants that zigzagged over the midway were still working. The hanky-panks were boarded up for the night: the milk-bottle pitch and the fish tank, the Crazy Ball game, and the Iron Claw with its glass case full of combs, dice, and Dukes of Hazzard key chains. The stale smell of popcorn, pizza, and rancid oil from the funnel cakes clung to everything.

It was the smell of Honey's rapidly vanishing childhood, and she breathed it deeply into her lungs. If the Disney people took over, the smell would disappear forever, right along with the hanky-panks, Kiddieland, and the House of Horror. She clasped her arms over her small chest and hugged herself, a habit she had developed over the years because no one else would do it.

Since her mother had died when she was six, this was the only home she'd known, and she loved it with all her heart. Writing the Disney people had been the worst thing she'd ever had to do. She had been forced to suppress all of her softer emotions in a desperate attempt to find the money she needed to keep her family together, the money that would keep them out of the welfare system and allow them to buy a small house in a clean neighborhood where they could maybe have some nice furniture and a garden. But as she stood in the middle of the deserted midway, she wished that she were old enough and smart enough to make things turn out differently. Because most of all, she couldn't bear the idea that she was losing Black Thunder, and if the coaster had still been running, nothing in the world could have made her give up this park.

The eerie night quiet and the smell of old popcorn brought back the memory of a small child huddled in the corner of the trailer, scabby knees drawn up to her chin, light blue eyes large and stunned. An angry voice from the past echoed in her mind.

"Get her out of here, Sophie! Goddamnit, she's givin' me the willies. She's hardly moved since she you brung her here last night. All she's done is sit in that corner and stare." She heard the crash of her Uncle Earl's meaty fist on the kitchen table, Sophie's monotonous whine.

"Where am I gonna put her, Earl?"

"I don't give a shit where you put her. It's not my fault your sister went and got herself drowned. Those Alabama welfare people had no right to make you go get her. I want to eat my lunch in goddamn peace without her spookin' me!"

Sophie came over to the corner of the trailer's living area and poked the sole of Honey's cheap canvas sneaker with the toe of her own red espadrille. "You stop actin' like that, Honey. You go on outside and find Chantal. You haven't seen the park yet. She'll show it to you."

"I want my mama," Honey whispered.

"Goddamnit! Get her out of here, Sophie!"

"Now see what you done," Sophie signed. "You got your Uncle Earl all mad." She grasped Honey's upper arm and tugged on it. "Come on. Let's go get you some cotton candy."

She took Honey from the trailer and led her through the pines and out into the scorching sun of a Carolina afternoon. Honey moved like a tiny robot. She didn't want any cotton candy. Sophie'd made her eat some Captain Crunch that morning, and she'd thrown up.

Sophie dropped her arm. Honey already sensed that her aunt didn't like to touch people, not like Honey's mother, Carolann. Carolann was always picking Honey up and cuddling her and calling her sweetie pie, even when she was tired from working all day at the dry cleaners in Montgomery.

"I want my mama," Honey whispered as they stepped through the grass into a colonnade of great wooden posts.

"Your mama's dead. She's not—"

The rest of Sophie's reply was drowned out as a monster screamed above Honey's head.

Honey screamed then, too. All the grief and fear that had been building up inside her since her mother had died and she was snatched away from everything familiar were released by the terror of that unexpected noise. Again and again she screamed.

She had a vague idea what a roller coaster was, but she had never ridden one, never seen one this size, and it didn't occur to her to connect the sound with the ride. She heard only a monster, the monster that hides in the closet and skulks under the bed and carries off little girls' mothers in fearsome fiery jaws.

The piercing screams spilled from her mouth. After being nearly catatonic for the six days since her mother had died, she couldn't stop, not even when Sophie began to shake her arm.

"Quit that! Quit that screamin', you hear?"

But Honey couldn't quit. Instead, she fought against Sophie until she broke away. Then she began running beneath the tracks, arms flailing, her small lungs heaving as over and over she screamed her sorrow and fear. When she came to a dip in the track too low for her to pass beneath, she grasped one of the wooden posts. Splinters dug into her arms as she held onto the thing she feared most in the confused belief that it couldn't devour her if she clasped it tightly enough.

She wasn't aware of the passage of time, only the sound of her screams, the sporadic roar of the monster as it rushed overhead, the rough splinters of the post digging into the baby-soft skin of her arms, and the fact that she wasn't ever going to see her mother again.

"Goddamnit, stop that noise!"

While Sophie stood helplessly watching, Uncle Earl came up behind them and dragged her off the post with a bellow. "What's wrong with her? What the hell is wrong with her now?"

"I don't know," Sophie whined. "She started doin' that when she heard Black Thunder. I think she's afraid of it."

"Well, that's just too goddamn bad. We're not coddling her, goddamnit."

He snatched Honey up by the waist and pulled her out from beneath the coaster. Walking with great loping strides, he carried her through the clusters of people visiting the park that day and up the ramp into the station house where Black Thunder loaded its riders.

A train sat empty, ready for its next group of passengers. Ignoring the protests of the people waiting in line, he pushed her beneath the lap bar in the first car. Her shrill screams echoed hollowly beneath the wooden roof. She struggled desperately to get out, but her uncle held her fast with one hairy arm.

"Earl, whatcha doin'?" Chester, the old man who ran Black Thunder, rushed up to him.

"She's goin' on a ride."

"She's too little, Earl. You know she's not tall enough for this coaster."

"That's too damn bad. Strap her in. And no goddamn brakes."

"But, Earl..."

"Do what I say, or pick up your paycheck."

She was vaguely aware of the loud objections of several of the adults waiting in line, but then the train began to move, and she realized that she was being delivered into the very stomach of the beast that had taken her mother.

"No!" she screamed. "No! Mama!"

Her fingers barely met at the tips as she clutched the lap bar in a death grip. Sobs ripped through her. "Mama... Mama..."

The structure creaked and groaned as the train crawled up the great lift hill that had helped create the legend of Black Thunder. It moved with sadistic slowness, giving her child's mind time to conjure ghastly visions of terrifying horror. She was six years old and alone in the universe with the beast of death. Utterly defenseless, she wasn't big enough, strong enough, old enough to protect herself, and there was

no adult left on earth who would do it for her.

Fear clogged her throat and her tiny heart throbbed in her chest as the car climbed inexorably to the top of the great lift hill. Higher than the tallest mountain in the world. Beyond the comfort of clouds. Above the hot sky to a dark place where only devils lurked.

Her last scream ripped from her throat as the car cleared the top, and she had one glimpse of the terrifying descent before she was thrown into the stomach of the beast to be gobbled up and gnawed apart through the darkest night of her child's soul only to...

Rise again.

And then pitch back into hell.

And rise again.

She was plunged into hell and resurrected three times before she was hurled out over the lake and down into the devil's spiral. She slammed against the side of the car as she catapulted in a deadly whirlpool straight down into the water, only to level out at the last second, barely two feet above the surface, and

be shot back to higher ground. The coaster slowed and gently delivered her to the station.

She was no longer crying.

The cars came to a stop. Her Uncle Earl had disappeared, but Chester, the ride operator, rushed up to lift her out. She shook her head, her eyes still tragic, her tiny face chalky.

"Again," she whispered.

She was too young to articulate the feelings the coaster had given her. She knew only that she had to experience them again—the sense that there was a force greater than herself, a force that could punish but would also rescue. The sense that somehow that force had allowed her to touch her mother.

She rode Black Thunder a dozen times that day and on through the rest of her childhood whenever she needed to experience hope in the protection of a higher power. The coaster confronted her with all the terrors of human existence, but then carried her safely to the other side.

Life with the Booker family gradually settled into a routine. Her Uncle Earl never liked her, but he put up with her because she became a much bigger help to him than either his wife or daughter. Sophie was as kind as it was possible for someone entirely self-absorbed to be. She made few demands other than to insist that Honey and Chantal go to Sunday school at least once a month.

But the great wooden coaster had taught Honey more about God than the Baptist Church, and the coaster's theology was easier to understand. For someone who was small for her age, orphaned, and female to boot, she drew courage from the knowledge that a higher power existed, something strong and eternal that would watch over her.

A sound coming from inside the arcade jolted Honey back to the present. She reprimanded herself for getting distracted from her purpose. Before long, she was going to be as bad as her cousin. Walking forward, she stuck her head into the arcade. "Hey, Buck, have you seen Chantal?"

Buck Ochs looked up from the pinball machine he was trying to fix because she had told him that if he didn't get at least a few of the machines running she was going to kick his big old ugly butt right back to Georgia. His beer gut pushed against the buttons of his dirty plaid shirt as he shifted his weight and gave her his doltish grin.

"Chantal who?"

He laughed uproariously at his wit. She wished she could fire him right there on the spot, but she had lost too many men already because she couldn't always meet her payroll on time, and she knew she couldn't afford to lose another. Besides, Buck wasn't malicious, just stupid. He also had a disgusting habit of scratching himself right where he shouldn't when females were present.

"You're a real joker, aren't you, Buck? Has Chantal been around?"

"Naw, Honey. It's just been me, myself, and me."

"Well, let's see if one of you can get a couple of those damned machines working before morning."

With a quelling look, she left the arcade and continued to the end of the midway. The Bullpen, a run-down wooden building where the unmarried male employees bunked, sat in the trees behind the picnic grove. Only Buck and two others lived there now. She could see yellow light seeping from the windows, but she didn't go closer because she couldn't imagine Chantal visiting either Cliff or Rusty. Chantal wasn't one to sit and talk to people.

The uneasiness that had been growing inside her ever since she had realized how late it was settled deeper into her stomach. This was no time for Chantal to disappear. Something was definitely wrong. And Honey was afraid she knew exactly what it was.

She turned in a circle, taking in the dilapidated trailers, the midway, the rides. Dominating it all were the great hills of Black Thunder, stripped now of all their power to hurl a frightened young girl to a place where she could once again find hope in something eternal to protect her. Hesitating for only a moment, she began to head down the overgrown concrete walk that led to Silver Lake.

The night was deep and still. As the old pines closed over her head, shutting out the moonlight, the calliope sounds of "Dixie" began to drift through her memory.!!!Ladies and gentlemen. Children of all ages. Take a step back in time to those grand old days when cotton was king. Join us for a ride on the paddle wheeler Robert E. Lee and see beautiful Silver Lake, the largest lake in Paxawatchie County, South Carolina....

The pines ended at a dilapidated dock. She stopped walking and shivered. At the end of the dock rose the ghostly hulk of the BOBBY LEE.

The Robert E. Lee sat right where it had been anchored when it had sunk in a winter storm a few months after the Black Thunder disaster. Now its bottom rested in the polluted muddy ooze of Silver Lake fifteen feet down. All of its lower deck was underwater, along with the once-proud paddle wheel that had churned at its stern. Only the upper deck and pilothouse rose above the lake's surface. The Bobby Lee sat at the end of the dock, useless and half submerged, a phantom ship in the eerie moonlight.

Honey shivered again and crossed her arms over her chest. Watery moonlight etched ghostly fingers over the dying lake, and her nostrils twitched at the musty scent of decaying vegetation, dead fish, and rotting wood. She wasn't a chicken, but she didn't like being around the Bobby Lee at night. She curled her toes in her flip-flops so they wouldn't make any noise as she took first one and then another step along the dock. Some of the boards were broken, and she could see the stagnant waters of the lake below. She slid forward another step and stopped, opening her mouth to call out Chantal's name. But creepy-crawlies were strangling her voice box and nothing came out. She wished she'd stopped at the Bullpen and asked Cliff or Rusty to come with her.

Her cowardice made her angry. She was having a hard enough time as it was getting them to follow her orders. Men like that didn't respect women bosses, especially when they were only sixteen. If any of them ever found out she was afraid of something as foolish as an old dead boat, they'd never listen to her again.

A flutter of wings burst from behind her as an owl swooped out over the lake from the trees. She sucked in her breath. Just then, she heard the distant sound of a moan.

She didn't have any patience with superstition, but the menacing shape of the dead ship looming at the end of the dock had her spooked, and for a fraction of a second she thought the sound might be coming from a vampire or a succubus or some kind of zombie. Then the moon skidded out from beneath a wisp of cloud and common sense reasserted itself. She knew exactly what she had heard, and it didn't have anything to do with zombies.

She tore down the dock, her flip-flops spanking her heels as she sidestepped the rotted boards and dodged a pile of rope. The boat had sunk five feet from the end of the dock, and the upper deck railing, broken like a gap-toothed smile, loomed ahead of her above the water level. She raced toward the piece of plywood that served as a makeshift ramp and dashed up its incline. It sprang beneath her ninety pounds like a trampoline.

The bottoms of her feet stung as she landed hard on the upper deck. She clutched a piece of the railing to balance herself and then ran toward the staircase. It descended into the murky water. Even in the darkness, she could see the white belly of a dead fish floating near the submerged stair treads. Throwing her leg over the peeling wooden railing, she raced up the section of staircase that still rose above the surface of the water to the pilothouse.

A man and woman were sprawled near its door, their bodies intertwined. They were too caught up in each other to hear the noise of Honey's approach.

"Let her go, you peckerhead!" Honey shouted as she reached the top.

The figures sprang apart. A bat flew out from the broken window of the pilothouse.

"Honey!" Chantal exclaimed. Her blouse was open, her nipples silver dollars in the moonlight.

The young man she was with sprang to his feet, jerking up the zipper of the cutoffs he wore with a University of South Carolina T-shirt that had "Gamecocks" written across the front. For a moment he looked dazed and disoriented, and then he took in Honey's chewed hair, tiny stature, and the hostile scowl that made her look more like an ill-tempered ten-year-old boy than a young girl.

"You go on, y'hear?" he said belligerently. "Y'all got no business here."

Chantal rose from the deck and lifted her hand to close the front of her blouse. The movement was slow and lazy, just like all her movements were. The boy draped his arm around her shoulders.

The familiar way he embraced Chantal, as if she belonged to him instead of to Honey, ignited her already simmering temper. Chantal was hers, along with Aunt Sophie and the ruins of the Silver Lake Amusement Park! Using her index finger as a weapon, she pointed down to the deck by her side. "You get over here, Chantal Booker. I mean it. You get over here right now."

Chantal stared at her sandals for a moment and then took a reluctant step forward.

The college boy grabbed her arm. "Wait a minute. Who is she? What's she doin' here, Chantal?"

"My cousin Honey," Chantal replied. "She runs things, I guess."

Once again Honey punched her finger toward the deck. "You bet I run things. Now you get over here this minute."

Chantal attempted to move forward, but the boy wouldn't release her. He curled his other hand over her arm. "Aw, she's just a kid. You don't have to listen to her." He gestured toward the shore. "You go on back where you came from, little girl."

Honey's eyes narrowed into slits. "Listen to me, college boy. If you know what's good for you, you'll pack that undersized pecker of yours right back in your dirty underwear and get off this boat before you make me mad."

He shook his head incredulously. "I think I might just throw you right over the side of this boat, baby face, and let the fish eat you."

"I wouldn't try it." Honey took a threatening step, her small chin jutted forward. She despised it when people made fun of the way she looked. "Maybe I better tell you that I got out of reform school just last week for knifing a man who was a lot bigger than you are. They would have give me the electric chair, but I was underage."

"Is that so? Well, I don't happen to believe you."

Chantal signed. "Honey, you gonna tell Mama?"

Honey ignored her and concentrated on the boy. "How old did Chantal tell you she was?"

"None of your beeswax."

"Did she tell you she was eighteen?"

He glanced at Chantal, and for the first time he looked uncertain.

"I might of known," Honey said with disgust. "That girl's only fifteen years old. Didn't they teach you anything about statutory rape at the University of South Carolina?"

The boy released Chantal as if she were radioactive. "Is that true, Chantal? You sure look older than fifteen."

Honey spoke before Chantal had the chance. "She matured early."

"Now, Honey..." Chantal protested.

He began easing away. "Maybe we better call it a night, Chantal." He sauntered toward the staircase.

"I had a real good time. Maybe I'll see you again sometime, all right?"

"Sure, Chris. I'd like that."

He fled down the stairs. They could hear the sprong of the plywood plank and then a thump as he landed on the dock. Both girls watched him disappear into the pines.

Chantal sighed, eased down onto the deck, and leaned back against the pilothouse. "You got any cigarettes on you?"

Honey pulled out a crushed pack of Salems and handed it over as she lowered herself next to her cousin. Chantal slipped the matches out from under the cellophane and lit the cigarette. She took a deep, easy drag. "Why'd you go and tell him I was only fifteen?"

"I didn't want to have to fight him."

"Honey, you weren't gonna fight him. You didn't even come up to his chin. And you know that I'm eighteen—two years older'n you are."

"I might have fought him." Honey took the cigarettes back but, after a moment's hesitation, decided not to light one. She'd been trying for months to learn how to smoke, but she just couldn't get the hang of it.

"And all that stuff about reform school and knifing a man. Nobody believes you."

"Some do."

"I don't think it's good to tell so many lies."

"It goes along with being a woman in the business world. Otherwise people take advantage of you."

Chantal's legs stretched bare and shapely from beneath her white shorts as she crossed her ankles. Honey studied her cousin's sandaled feet and polished toenails. She considered Chantal the prettiest woman she'd ever seen. It was hard to believe she was the daughter of Earl and Sophie Booker, neither of whom had ever won any prizes for good looks. Chantal had a cloud of curly dark hair, exotic eyes that tilted up at the corners, a small red mouth, and a soft, feminine figure. With her dark hair and olive skin, she looked like a Latin spitfire, a misleading impression since Chantal didn't have much more spirit than an old hound dog on a hot day in August. Honey loved her anyway.

Cigarette smoke ribboned from Chantal's top lip into her nostrils as she French-inhaled. "I'd give just about anything to be married to a movie star. I mean it, Honey. I'd give just about anything to be Mrs. Burt Reynolds."

In Honey's opinion, Burt Reynolds was about twenty years too old for Chantal, but she knew she could never convince her cousin of that fact so she played her trump card right off the top. "Mr. Burt Reynolds is a southern boy. Southern boys like to marry virgins."

"I'm still sort of a virgin."

"Thanks to me."

"I wasn't gonna let Chris go all the way."

"Chantal, you might not of been able to stop him once he got worked up. You know you're not real good at saying no to people."

"You gonna tell Mama?"

"A lot of good that'd do. She'd just change the channel and go back to sleep. This is the third time I've caught you with one of those college boys. They come sniffin' around you just like you're sending out some kind of radio signal or something. And what about that boy you were with in the House of Horror last month? When I found you, he had his hand right inside your shorts."

"It feels good when boys do that. And he was real nice."

Honey snorted in disgust. There was no talking to Chantal. She was sweet, but she wasn't too bright. Not that Honey had room to criticize. At least Chantal had made it through high school, which was more than Honey had been able to do.

Honey hadn't quit school because she was dumb—she was a voracious reader and she'd always been smart as a whip. She'd quit because she had better things to do than spend her time with a bunch of ignorant peckerhead girls who told everybody she was a lesbian just because they were afraid of her.

The memory still made her feel like crawling away somewhere and hiding. Honey wasn't pretty like the other girls. She didn't wear cute clothes or have a bubbly personality, but that didn't mean she was a lesbian, did it? The question bothered her because she wasn't absolutely sure of the answer. She certainly couldn't imagine letting a boy touch her under her shorts like Chantal did.

Chantal's voice interrupted the silence that had fallen between them. "Do you ever think about your mama?"

"Not so much anymore." Honey picked at a piece of splintered wood on the deck. "But since you brought up the subject, it wouldn't do you any harm to think about what happened to my mama when she was even younger than you. She let a college boy come sniffin' around her, and it ruined her life."

"I don't follow you. If your mama hadn't slept with that college boy, you wouldn't of been born. Then where would you be?"

"That's not the point. The point is—college boys only want one thing from girls like you and my mama. They only want sex. And after they get it, they disappear. Do you want to end up all by yourself with a baby to take care of and nothing except the welfare system to support you?"

"Chris said I was prettier than any of the sorority girls he knows."

It was no use. Chantal always managed to get sidetracked when Honey was trying to make a point. At times like this, Honey despaired over Chantal. How could her cousin ever manage life if Honey weren't around to look after her? Even though Chantal was older, Honey had been taking care of her for years, trying to teach her right from wrong and how to get along in the world. Knowing about those things seemed to come naturally to Honey, but Chantal was a lot like Sophie. She didn't have much interest in anything that required effort.

"Honey, how come you don't fix yourself up a little bit so you could have some boyfriends, too?"

Honey leapt to her feet. "I'm not a damn lesbian, if that's what you're tryin' to say!"

"I'm not sayin' that at all." Chantal gazed thoughtfully at the smoke curling from the end of her cigarette. "I guess if you was a lesbian, I would of been the first one to know about it. We been sleepin' in the same bed ever since you came to live with us, and you never tried anything with me."

Vaguely mollified, Honey resumed her seat. "Did you practice your baton today?"

"Maybe... I don't remember."

"You didn't, did you?"

"Baton twirling is hard, Honey."

"It's not hard. You've just got to practice, that's all. You know I'm planning to put flames on it next week."

"Why'd you have to pick something hard like baton twirling?"

"You can't sing. You don't play any musical instrument or tap-dance. It was the only thing I could think of."

"I just don't see why it's so important for me to win the Miss Paxawatchie County Beauty Pageant. Not if the Walt Disney people are gonna buy the park."

"We don't know that, Chantal. It's just a rumor. I wrote them another letter, but we haven't heard anything, and we can't just sit back and wait."

"You didn't make me enter the contest last year. Why do I have to do it this year?"

"Because last year's prize was a hundred dollars and a beauty make-over at Dundee's Department Store. This year it's an all-expense-paid overnight trip to Charleston to audition for THE DASH COOGAN SHOW."

"That's another thing, Honey," Chantal complained. "I think you got unrealistic expectations about all of this. I don't know anything about being on TV. I been thinking more along the lines of being a hairdresser. I like hair."

"You don't have to know anything about being on TV. They want a fresh face. I've explained it to you about a hundred times."

Honey reached into her pocket and pulled out the well-worn pamphlet that gave all the information about this year's Miss Paxawatchie County Beauty Pageant. She turned to the back page. The moonlight wasn't bright enough for her to read the small print, but she had studied it so many times she knew it by heart.

The winner of the Miss Paxawatchie County title will receive an all-expense-paid overnight trip to Charleston, compliments of the pageant's sponsor, Dundee's Department Store. While in Charleston, she will audition for THE DASH COOGAN SHOW, a much-anticipated new fall network television program that will be filmed in California.

The producers of THE DASH COOGAN SHOW are auditioning Southern lovelies in seven cities in search of an actress to play the part of Celeste, Mr. Coogan's daughter. She must be between eighteen and twenty-one years old, beautiful, and have a strong regional accent. In addition to visiting Charleston, the producers will also be auditioning actresses in Atlanta, New Orleans, Birmingham, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio.

Honey frowned. That part bothered her. Those TV people were visiting three cities in Texas, but only one in the southern states. It didn't take much brain power to figure out that they would prefer a Texan, which she supposed wasn't surprising since Dash Coogan was the king of the cowboy movie stars, but she still didn't like it. As she gazed back down at the pamphlet, she comforted herself with the knowledge that there couldn't be a single woman in all of Texas who was prettier than Chantal Booker.

The final choices from the seven-city talent search will be flown to Los Angeles for a personal screen test with Mr. Coogan. Moviegoers will remember Dash Coogan for his many roles as the star of over 20 westerns including Lariat and Alamo Sunset, his most famous. This will be his first television show. All of us are hoping that our own Miss Paxawatchie County will be portraying his daughter.

Chantal interrupted her thoughts. "See, the thing of it is—I want to marry a movie star. Not be one."

Honey ignored her. "Right now what you want doesn't mean spit. We're pretty close to being desperate, and that means we have to make our own opportunities. Idleness is the beginning of a long slide into the welfare system, and that's where we're going to end up if we don't force things to happen." She hugged her knees, and her voice dropped nearly to a whisper. "I got this feeling way down deep in my stomach, Chantal. I can hardly explain it, but I just got this strong feeling that those TV people are going to take one look at you and they're going to make you a star."

Chantal's sigh was so prolonged it seemed to come from her toes. "Sometimes you make my head spin, Honey. You must take after that college boy who was your daddy because you sure don't take after any of us."

"We have to keep our family together," Honey said fiercely. "Sophie's useless, and I'm too young to get a decent job. You're our only hope, Chantal. Ever since you started modeling at Dundee's Department Store, it's been evident that you're the best chance this family's got. If the Disney people won't buy this park, we have to have another plan to fall back on. The three of us are a family. We can't let anything happen to our family."

But Chantal had gotten distracted by the night sky and dreams of marrying a movie star, and she wasn't listening.