Short-changed

“C’mon, Billy!”

He snapped his gaze up from the palms of his hands. His heart leapt into his throat, his stomach sank. Billy’s body was already riding the roller coasters right beyond the amusement park’s turnstiles. Two sets of anxious, questing eyes savaged Billy to the brink of tears.

“I’m short,” Billy exposed the crisis.

Tom, the smart aleck of the trio, took initiative for a merciless moment.

“You must be this tall,” he gestured, “to ride the rides.”

Emily slugged Tom in the shoulder - a non-verbal exhortation for silence. Turning to Billy, she asked, “Did you have enough money when we left?”

“Duh!”

“Ok,” Emily contemplated the kerfuffle more deliberately, “what about at Mr. McConnell’s soda fountain?”

“Billy does love his fizzy drink!” Tom jested. His smile evaporated under Emily’s withering glare.

As they walked, Billy retraced the day’s events back in his mind. The ticket booths and turnstiles loomed by the time he recounted each transaction fully.

“Mr. McConnell did short-change me!”

Billy was furious. The school year began next week. This was his last chance to ride the newest addition to the amusement park’s repertoire of madness - the Perfidious Peril. Billy’s face flushed with heat. How could that stupid, old man miscount the coins? It was simple arithmetic. Two plus two level math that Billy himself had graduated from already. His open palms balled into fists around the remainder of his insufficient - effectively insignificant - money.

The others looked on, but Billy recognized the shift in their collective gaze. The pity had flown the coop; nervous excitement occupied the stead. He felt himself telling the others to go on without him, to have fun and let him know how the Perfidious Peril was. He couldn’t hear the words over the shattering of his heart. Emily and Tom fled, barely concealing the relief spread across their grinning faces.

Emily turned back before the ticket booth, “Hey, Billy, check the picnic area. Maybe a clumsy parent dropped a coin or two!”

“Or the parking lot,” Tom added. A mischievous grin erupted once Emily had crossed over to the great beyond. “Even if you don’t find money, at least you can say you went to a park!”

They were gone.

Billy stuffed his clenched hands into his trouser pockets and breathed deeply. The tears welled as he caught sight of the Perfidious Peril’s dazzling neon cars jet through an inverted Immelmann roll. The train vanished in the ensuing dive drop. The jollity of the park laughed in his face. The tinny carousel music, the loudspeaker announcements of the next stage show, the alluring wafts of elephant ears and cotton candy in the breeze. They all barked with hilarity at Billy’s misfortune.

The boy slowly shifted. Wretched inertia propelled him unwillingly from his loitering. Miserable, he drifted towards the picnicking pavilion. It was an accursed place; Billy could peer right through the fencing. He glimpsed up at the bordering coaster. Was it as recent as Mr. McConnell’s soda fountain when Billy declared he’d skip all the old rides, like the Iron Rooster, to ensure he’d have time to ride the Perfidious Peril twice? Looking up at the aging mainstay, Billy yearned to soar even on that old bird.

A horde of summer campers stormed the pavilion. Billy considered begging. The words of his father echoed inside his head. No good, rotten winos and panhandlers, his father had said. Billy sickened at the thought.

The parking lot seemed impossible. Billy scanned the boundless black. Where do I even begin, he demurred. But what luck! Billy spotted movement out on the edges of the empty space. He moved closer.

“Crows!” Billy gasped. Everyone knew gulls meant food waste, but crows signaled something shiny.

Billy sprinted towards the blackbirds on the blacktop. He waved his arms causing the miffed birds to scurry for the heights. The crack of glass under his shoe alarmed Billy to a halt. The area sparkled under the blazing sun. Billy pussyfooted around the minefield. The crows took note and flocked to an even greater standoff distance.

The reflective shards blinded Billy as he pranced daringly between their sharp teeth. A fast food bag, seized by a gust, tumbled by as Billy reached the crows’ convergence. The scene of destruction only unraveled itself then. Billy surmised someone had left the lot in a hurry - maybe there had been an emergency!

Billy gleaned the haphazardly discarded items. The splayed glass suggested the three broken bottles - the labels quite evident now - were rocketed off of the departing vehicle. A black purse shed its chameleon shroud. Billy’s heart jumped. His salvation was within arm’s reach. He crept a step closer, stalking his inanimate prey.

The purse laid on its side, its contents strung out like a gutted animal. A small battery, a sunglasses case, a metal lip balm container - perhaps what attracted the crows - and a little black notebook. Billy followed the items back to their source. Just peeking out from within the purse was a wallet. Billy gulped. He wondered what his father had to say about thieves. Billy tried to justify his action; by the strictest definition, he wasn’t a cutpurse in this scenario.

He stepped forward. The metallic lip balm container screeched between the pavement and his outsole. He shuddered at the nails on a chalkboard sound. He looked down expecting a gooey mess stuck to his shoe. But hark! A coin!

Billy plopped down on his haunches and struggled at the greasy, balmy coin. He flipped the coin to its tail side to banish any lingering distrust before wiping it clean. He turned the piece again to address his new favorite dead president.

“Thank you, Mr. Obama!” Billy shouted with glee.

Billy carefully pocketed the twenty thousand dollar coin and hustled back across the parking lot whooping and hollering.

A hovercar dropped vertically to its parking spot behind Billy. The 2:13 transcontinental maglev Shinkansen flashed by overhead in all its mute glory. Billy didn’t deign to notice. Likewise, he ignored the adjacent school’s holoscreen welcoming class of 2420 to its next term. School could wait. He had just overcome one perfidious peril, now onto the next.