The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue (Guide #1)(51)

“I think I can unlock the gate from the other side,” Cash said. “One of you guys give me a boost and I’ll climb over.”

Topher and Joey joined hands and launched the actor upward. Cash grabbed the top of the gate and pulled himself over it—years of Hollywood stunt work had finally paid off. He swung his legs over the edge and the rest of his body went with them. The others heard the actor land with a heavy thud on the other side.

“Are you all right, Cash?” Sam called over the gate. “Please tell us you didn’t break anything.”

The gate opened with a terrible screech and Cash welcomed them into the abandoned amusement park like a deranged Willy Wonka.

“You guys have got to see this,” he said with large, frightened eyes. “This place makes Chernobyl look like Legoland.”

Topher, Joey, Sam, and Mo followed him through the gate and immediately saw what he meant. What was once a colorful, adventurous, and family-friendly amusement park was now a decaying, smelly, pest-ridden apocalyptic wasteland. There was peeling paint, mold, and cobwebs everywhere they looked. Plant life had taken over the park and there were weeds taller than Topher and grass growing between the slabs of concrete.

The front of the park was called Portville. The row of gift shops and arcades designed to look like a charming seaside village now resembled a ghost town. In the center of the park was Captain’s Cove, where a pirate ship the size of the Disneyland castle floated in a pool of green algae and dead pigeons. To the ship’s east was Hurricane Hideaway, an area of thrill rides populated by dueling families of raccoons and possums. To the ship’s west was Siren Sea, where the state’s longest waterslides emptied into the world’s largest petri dish. To the ship’s north was Buccaneer Bay, an area of kiddie rides and cartoonish statues, which after so much exposure to the elements could have been renamed Satan’s Nursery.

It was unsettling while there was still light, but the farther the sun descended, the creepier the empty park became.

“It’s getting dark,” Cash said. “Let’s make a campfire!”

They dragged a wooden statue of Captain Tydes from the base of the giant pirate ship and lit it on fire. It was a macabre move, but after it had suffered years of neglect from everything but termites, using the mascot as firewood felt strangely like a mercy killing.

“Should we tell ghost stories?” Cash asked the group.

“No!” they all said at once.

“How about a game?” Cash said. “I know! Let’s play never have I ever.”

“How do you play?” Sam asked.

“Hold up all ten of your fingers,” Cash explained. “We’ll go around in a circle and say something we’ve never done before. If you’ve done the thing someone mentions, you put one of your fingers down. The last person to have fingers up wins.”

Everybody shrugged and raised their fingers. What else was there to do?

“Let’s start with an example,” Cash decided. “Never have I ever done a line of cocaine off a CW star’s ass. Now, if I was playing with my Wiz Kids costars, that’s something I would say because I’m the only one who hasn’t done a line of cocaine off a CW star’s ass—does that make sense?”

It was hard to follow a remark like that. The others were already disturbed and they hadn’t even started the game.

“Go ahead, Topher. Give it a shot.”

“Oh geez,” he said. “Never have I ever… um, murdered someone? Is that good?”

“Nice try—but the idea is to eliminate everyone else,” Cash said. “Think of things everyone’s done but you. Joey, you’re next.”

“Never have I ever been in trouble with the law,” Joey said.

Cash was the only one to put a finger down.

“Good one,” the actor said. “And to put those judgmental looks to rest, I was lightly arrested once in 2014 for protesting this pipeline thing, but I was just trying to impress this actress I was sleeping with. Sam, now it’s your turn.”

“Never have I ever starred in a television show,” he said.

“Well, that was pointed,” Cash said, and lowered another finger. “Mo, you’re next. And let’s try to be more original, like my CW reference.”

“Never have I ever ruined a landmark,” Mo said.

Cash sighed and dropped his hands. “Okay—new game, guys,” he said. “Why don’t we just cut to the chase? Let’s go in a circle and tell a secret we’ve never shared before. Why don’t you start, Joey? I’ve got a feeling you have a secret you want to share.”

The actor gave him a playful wink. Joey glared at him like his days were numbered.

“Sure…,” he said. “This one time when I was ten, I took a twenty-dollar bill out of the offering basket at church so I could go see the new X-Men movie. My parents wouldn’t give me money to see it. They said any form of evolution, even fictional mutants, was a mark of the beast. I felt so guilty about it, I tithed all the money from my next birthday to the church.”

His confession made his friends laugh and feel sad at the same time.

“Solid secret,” Cash said. “Let’s go to Topher next.”

“Oh gosh,” he said. “The night we were all watching the season six finale of Wiz Kids at Joey’s house, I was actually supposed to be watching Billy while my mom was at a Bunco party. I gave him some cold medicine so he would sleep and ran home to check on him every commercial break.”