Wonderland (15 page)

NINETEEN

O
scar had been tasked with expediting Ava Castro’s transfer from food services to Elm Street, a process that normally took up to four weeks, provided that the Wonder Worker qualified for the new job. But Bianca Bishop had spoken. Ava was the daughter of Seaside PD’s deputy chief, she reminded Oscar, and it was in the park’s best interest to keep the girl happy.

Oscar was more concerned with making the girl’s mother happy. He hadn’t heard from Vanessa at all since the day Homeless Harry showed up in the midway, and he’d been thinking about her. A lot.

“Bianca thinks Ava will work out well,” Oscar was saying to Anne-Marie Riker now. Anne-Marie was one of the Elm Street managers, a busy but friendly woman who always preferred to handpick her own Wonder Workers. “I’ll send her over tomorrow at 10 a.m. I’d consider it a favor if you worked with her personally.”

“But she’s only fourteen, Oz.” The displeasure in Anne-Marie’s voice was obvious. “I’m not sure I have anything appropriate.”

“You’ll find something.”

The subtext was clear. This was not a request. Anne-Marie, five rungs down in the Wonderland food chain, knew damn well she had no choice in the matter. If the VP of operations asked you to do something, you did it, no questions asked.

With that taken care of, Oscar swiveled his chair to face the window, where the Avenue was bustling below. Soundproofed walls and windows prevented any sounds from penetrating into the administrative building, and it was as if the mute button had been pressed on
Wonderland: The Movie
. There was no comparison between the original World of Wonder and the park as it was today. Wonderland had evolved significantly over the past twenty years, and the new version was bigger, brighter, and busier. Back in the eighties, there had been no purple uniforms, no Human Resources Department, no employee handbook, no weekly pep talk emails to the Wonder Workers. There was certainly no Bandstand Amphitheater or summer concert series, and the midway back then had contained maybe fifteen games at most, all independently owned by whichever “carnie” had paid to set up shop in the park. Jack Shaw’s vision for World of Wonder had been disjointed at best, but nobody had seemed to mind back then.

Little did the public know that he’d built World of Wonder as
bait
. Because Jack Shaw had been a monster. And what better way to prey on boys of a certain age than to build an amusement park, which made
them
come to
him
?

The abuse hadn’t happened right away. Oh, no. And it hadn’t happened to every boy who’d worked for Shaw. Not at all. Jack Shaw was particular about the boys he chose, and he targeted only a certain kind of boy. The ones whose fathers weren’t in the picture. The ones whose mothers were too busy to notice anything was wrong. The ones who wanted—
craved
—his attention, who wanted to feel special, who were missing a father figure and who would do anything to please Shaw and win his approval.

Boys like Oscar.

•   •   •

It had been Isabel Trejo’s idea that her son apply to World of Wonder. Oz hadn’t been interested at first. Who had the time or energy for a job? He was fourteen, and baseball was his life. Posters of Cal Ripken, Jr., wallpapered his room. He played in leagues year-round and was a rookie on his high school junior team, with dreams of making varsity the following year. It was likely to happen, his coach assured him, as long as he stayed focused.

So when the news hit that business tycoon Jack Shaw was returning to Seaside to build an amusement park, Oz merely thought it was a cool idea. World of Wonder could be a good place for him and his friends to hang out, because there wasn’t a whole lot to do in Seaside. And sometimes you needed a break from baseball, you know?

Isabel Trejo, of course, had a lot of opinions about the new amusement park.

“It’s either gonna be the greatest thing Seaside has ever seen, or the ugliest thing Seaside has ever seen,” she’d told her teenage son over breakfast. She turned her mouth to the side so she wouldn’t blow a stream of smoke into his face while he was eating his eggs. “This town could use a pick-me-up, sure as shit. An amusement park will bring in the tourists, who’ll need places to eat and sleep and party. Hell, maybe we’ll finally get a shopping mall. Or a movie theater that shows more than two movies. But the whole thing could also flop.”

“Why would it flop?” Oz asked, swallowing the last of his omelet.

“Because it’s a risk, Ozzie Bear. This is Seaside. Pretty beach or no pretty beach, we’re three hours south of Seattle, two hours west of Tacoma, and three and a half hours north of Portland. We’re in the middle of bumfuck nowhere. Finish your eggs. I want you in line by eight thirty.”

“Ma, I said I don’t want to work there. I’m playing in two baseball leagues this summer.”

She eyed him through a cloud of smoke. “You think I give a shit about baseball? Baseball doesn’t pay the bills. You’re fourteen and it’s time you got a job. The house payment ain’t getting any cheaper, and your dad ain’t kicking in shit. Gas costs money. Clothes cost money. Baseball costs money. Food costs money, and god knows you eat more each week than a small village in Africa. Life costs money, Ozzie Bear.”

And cigarettes cost money
, Oz thought.
So does wine.
What do you spend a week on booze and smokes, Ma?

“You have zero work experience, and a job at the amusement park is your best bet for getting hired. I read in the paper they’re looking to hire a hundred people minimum for the summer. No reason one of them can’t be you.” She took another drag on her cigarette. “Now finish your milk and I’ll drive you over. Wear your raincoat. You could be in line for a while.”

It was the first Monday of March break, and World of Wonder was conducting a hiring fair all week. You could fill out the job application while waiting in line, and be granted an interview on the spot. If they liked you, you were hired, it was as easy as that. Oz knew of at least five other boys his age who were planning to apply. The park would hire all week until the positions were filled, and the fair started at 9 a.m. He joined the line at 8:45. There were already sixty people ahead of him, most of them under the age of twenty-one.

By 11 a.m., Oz left the park with a couple of tax forms to fill out and a summer job lined up. Training was to begin a week before school let out in June, and they didn’t mind that he played baseball.

“We wants kids like you,” the hiring manager had said. “Kids who exude energy and fun. If you give your supervisor your baseball schedule, we’ll work around it.”

The first summer at the park was the greatest of his life. Oz hadn’t expected to enjoy working so much, but every day was awesome. World of Wonder was small enough to feel intimate, but large enough to attract a ton of tourists from the surrounding areas. Every day brought new adventures, and he had opportunities to work in food, guest services, and once, when Colin Brace was out with the flu, his supervisor allowed him to operate the Wonder Wheel.

And Jack Shaw himself was around a lot. All the kids, boys
and
girls, loved him. When Jack Shaw stopped to talk to you, it was like you were the only person in the world who existed at that moment. He talked to you like you were a real person. He asked for your opinions. He laughed at your jokes. When one of the managers mentioned that Oz played baseball in a summer league, Shaw had showed up at the game, bringing popcorn for everybody. Oz had been floored, and then floored again when his coach told him that World of Wonder was now his team’s official sponsor.

By the second summer, Seaside was a changed town. To handle the increase in summer tourism, several bed-and-breakfasts had opened up in Seaside, along with two new motels. Several new restaurants popped up, too. Isabel Trejo, a longtime housekeeper at the White Oaks Inn, had finally been promoted to head of housekeeping. A new housing complex just off the main strip was proposed, and there was talk that the mayor was meeting with developers to renovate the downtown area. There were rumors of a cineplex. Earl Schultz had just been promoted to deputy chief, and there was finally money to hire additional police officers. Crime rates went down. Life in Seaside was good.

And then it wasn’t.

The rumors started to swirl. A fourteen-year-old kid named Danny Moskowitz had gotten wasted at a party near the end of summer and had drunkenly told his friends that Jack Shaw, Seaside’s most important resident and the owner of World of Wonder, had sexually assaulted him inside a dungeon underneath the park.

Of course nobody believed him. The story was ludicrous. Danny was a known partier and drug user, a kid from a broken home who had been seen on more than one occasion following Jack Shaw around like a puppy. The idea that Jack Shaw would do such a thing was too ridiculous and insulting to even entertain. And a dungeon? Seriously? What was Danny smoking?

When his friends—all employees of the park, and all fiercely loyal to World of Wonder and Jack Shaw—accused him of lying, Danny recanted immediately. He claimed that he must have been drunk and high, that of course nothing had ever happened, and he admitted to having a substance abuse problem for which he needed serious help. A few days later, he left the park to enter rehab, though nobody knew which one.

But then a few weeks later, fifteen-year-old Peter Allred made similar accusations. He’d supposedly freaked out in the middle of having sex with his girlfriend. He, too, claimed that there was a tunnel under the Clown Museum that led to a dungeon where horrible things had happened to him. His girlfriend believed him. She told her older brother about it (minus the sex part, of course), who just happened to be a rookie police officer in the Seaside Police Department. Her brother brought it to the attention of his superiors. They’d laughed at him. Then the brother—Officer Carl Weiss, who would retire as deputy chief of Seaside PD some thirty years later—laughed, too. Because it
was
crazy, right?

Except that it wasn’t. And Oz knew that it wasn’t because he’d been down in the dungeon, too. Jack Shaw, his boss, his
friend
, had gotten him drunk, and then lured him into the dungeon under the guise of showing Oz the underground tunnel he’d built, that only a handful of people knew existed, telling him that it was a cool, secret place to hang out. He’d plied Oz with drugs, first offering him marijuana, and then giving him stronger stuff, all of which had rendered him useless, unable to fight off the man he thought of as a mentor and father figure. Unable to tell him no, that he didn’t want it, to please stop.

Or
had
he wanted it? Had he asked for it? It was all so confusing. Oz loved Jack, after all. Everyone did. He’d trusted Jack, the man who told him every day how important he was to the park, how valued he was, and how he couldn’t imagine the place without him. Oz would have done anything for Jack.

And so it was easy for Oz to tell himself it wasn’t abuse. And when it happened again, it was easy to pretend he was sleeping. That he was completely unaware he was being touched. That he didn’t know he was being filmed. The alcohol and drugs made it all hazy, anyway. It was easier to tell himself that maybe he’d allowed it to happen, because the alternative was simply horrifying. Because when he’d asked Jack about it later, Shaw had expressed genuine surprise.

“I thought we were on the same page,” he’d said to Oz. “I thought you liked it. I think you’re amazing. And don’t worry, the tape is just for us. We can watch it whenever you want to. But think hard before you tell anyone about us, okay? I would hate for people to misunderstand what happened. If they think you didn’t want it to happen, that I somehow coerced you, which we both know isn’t true, then they would absolutely want to see the tape. And you wouldn’t want anyone else to watch it, would you? The things that you did? After all, you’re a star athlete, and nobody would want to know this side of you. But don’t worry, I certainly won’t tell anyone. It can stay our little secret.”

No, Oz had no plans to tell anyone. He would rather have died before letting anyone else watch the tape. The embarrassment, the humiliation . . . it would all be too great. Jack was right, nobody would understand. Not his coworkers, not his high school friends, not his teammates.

So he’d never said anything. And for a while, he’d let it continue. The perks of being Jack’s favorite were too great. He got paid more. He got all the best gigs. He could pick his own schedule. His baseball team got new uniforms, bats, and balls. The other kids deferred to Oz, and nobody ever wanted to piss him off, because he was important to Jack, and to the park.

So maybe certain things happened in the dungeon. Maybe it wasn’t really okay. Who would believe him without proof? Who would believe that he didn’t consent? Oz was fifteen when it started, old enough to know better, old enough to make it stop if he’d really wanted to.

And old enough not to want anybody to ever find out what was going on.

And hey, it wasn’t like he was ever sober when it happened. He was drunk and high every single time, anyway. Most of the time, it felt like a bad dream.