She cocked her head and eyed me skeptically. “You say that every time. Lawrence, have I ever steered you wrong?”
I thought about all the great advice she always gave, the millions of times she told me exactly what I needed to hear even though I didn’t want to listen, and the countless moments she’d been there for me like few others had. “Ugh, okay, let’s do it before I change my mind.”
Marisol took my change of heart as her cue to pull me toward the ticket booth and buy us each a ride. At the end of the day, with the park nearly closing, there was practically no wait, which left me no time to try to bail at the last minute. We handed our tickets to the barker and squeezed into the seat, a measly bar pressing down on our lap as its only safety measure.
“This?! This thing is what’s holding us in?!” I cried.
“Only like three people a year die on this coaster, so your odds are pretty decent,” Marisol joked as she took my hands from where they were clutching the handle for dear life, and raised them in the air along with her own, the safety check not even completed yet.
“Oh my God, I don’t know about this, Marisol. I think I need to get off.”
“You can’t get off now! Just breathe and enjoy the ride!”
My peripheral vision was starting to narrow, and the world was getting dark around me as panic set in. “No, seriously, I have to get off. Please let me off.” I used my hands that were still raised in the air with Marisol’s to wave furiously to the young man operating the ride.
“The guy is all the way at the front. Just relax, I promise you, it’ll be over before you even know it.”
“Sir! Sir!” I started screaming, my arms flailing to the point of looking like I was trying to fly away. “I need you to let me out. I need to get off the ride. Like right now!” Sweat was pouring off my forehead, and my hands, which had moved to gripping the bar, were now contorted into two birdlike claws I couldn’t unclench.
Marisol, seeing the color drain from my face and the sheer terror in my eyes, said, “Okay, okay. Let’s get some help. Sir! Sir!” she screamed along with me.
A different teenager in a red Cyclone shirt finally looked in our direction and raised a hand in the air to signal to the operator to halt the ride.
“She needs to get off, please ask them to lift the bar,” Marisol instructed, my hands still as rigid as the rest of my body.
The safety latch popped open, and the kid swung the metal bar up to allow us out. Marisol waited for me to get up, but I was still frozen, stuck in the seat.
“C’mon Avery, you’re okay. I got you.” Marisol tucked her hands under my armpits and hoisted me up, the worker extending his hands to steady me, and I climbed out with the help of Marisol’s guidance.
We exited the ride and I immediately plopped down on a wooden planter, beads of perspiration still pouring down my cheeks and back.
“I’m so sorry. I really didn’t mean to push. I swear, I thought you really had it this time. But, I mean, on a positive note, that’s the farthest you’ve made it like ever! Like the ride almost actually started this time,” she joked and leaned into me playfully.
“Silver lining.”
“Silver lining,” she repeated. “Well, either way, you’ll get that white whale someday, Ahab. I just hope that you still had a good time even though you may have PTSD forever.”
I looped my arm through hers and gave it a hard squeeze. “Of course I did. It was just what I needed, like always.”
Seven years had passed, almost a decade of heartbreaks and missteps later, and now I stood in front of the Cyclone by myself, wishing like hell that Marisol was beside me coaxing me back onto the ride. But she wasn’t. This time I’d need to do it alone, with only the memory of Marisol’s encouragement to push me to take the leap I’d always been too scared to take on my own. With a trembling hand, I pulled a ten-dollar bill from my pocket and shoved it into a ticket machine that had certainly been a new addition since the last time I’d been there. The contraption spit out a voucher for the ride, along with my change, and I snagged it before I could talk myself out of riding.
I handed the young kid my ticket and climbed into the seat, sliding all the way to the side as if to let someone in next to me, but the spot remained empty. It was like stepping back into a memory, the smell of the salty air and the worn red leather snapping me right back to that day with Marisol almost ten years ago. I could practically feel the weight of her body up against mine, smushed into the tight roller coaster car.
Instinctively, I white-knuckled the handlebar as it locked into place, and my chest tightened as the familiar sensation of crippling fear started to trace its way through my veins. But I wouldn’t get off the ride. Not this time. Come hell or high water, I was going to see this thing through.
As soon as the car started to inch up the track, I sucked in a deep breath, the air inflating my diaphragm and pushing my stomach against the safety crossbar. I closed my eyes and could hear my heartbeat competing with the coaster climbing up the first monster hill. Awash with a mix of dizziness and exhilaration, I focused on the past several months, each ratcheting up of the coaster marking a shift in memory—click, Adam getting arrested; click, reuniting with Gabe; click, going back to Mimi’s; click, moving to Bushwick; click, meeting my new roommates; click, crushing the Marley audition; click, Gabe proposing; click, and now hanging in the balance was my uncertain future. Click, click, click. I couldn’t see beyond the crest of the top, which was rapidly approaching. Though not seeing the track scared the crap out of me, I recalled Marisol’s constant advice to just have faith—leap and the net will appear, right?
And as we climbed to the top and the wheels began to tip over the peak, I slowly opened my eyes to take in the view, the tracks still invisible underneath me. This was it. Releasing my grip from the crossbar, I outstretched my arms as high as they could reach to throw my hands into the air, let out a long, loud, cathartic “MOOOOOOOOO,” and finally . . . let go.
Chapter Forty
“The lips, the teeth, the tip of the tongue. The lips, the teeth, the tip of the tongue,” I repeated over and over to my reflection in the dressing room mirror after already having done the crazy electric eel exercises. Charlie was right. The techniques helped, if for no other reason than to distract me from the nervous energy burbling up from deep in my gut.
Joanna, the casting assistant, rapped lightly on the open door. “About ten more minutes, then we’ll take you in. How do you feel? You good to go?”
I smiled warmly through my nerves, eyes bright and feeling prepared mentally and physically. “As ready as I’ll ever be,” I responded.
“Try not to be nervous,” she said. “Trust me, we want you to succeed as much as you do. I’ll come back to get you in a few.”