We took off.
The remainder of the ride was a haze of track, sky, and terrified screaming. I even swallowed my gum on one of the coaster loops. That was pretty memorable. Memorable because I was choking for the last few seconds of the ride and prayed my mother’s infamous Jesus-take-the-wheel plea before I realized that I would, in fact, live.
Snake didn’t ask about my outburst after that. By the time we hopped off the GateKeeper, he was so ready to surge his adrenaline on the next ride, he all but forgot about it. Jeanine and Meg patiently waited on every parent-ridden bench in every neck of the park until dinnertime, when we forced down Meg’s homemade gluten-free tuna sandwiches at the picnic tables. Afterward, Snake bought us hot dogs when Meg was in the bathroom, and we scarfed them down so fast we could have given the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest winners a run for their money.
At eight, we made our way to the family side of the park where the middle-aged parkgoers (see: Jeanine & Meg) took their inner daredevils for a spin around the carousels. Snake, unenthused by the concept of sitting on a plastic unicorn while a harmonica track crooned a slow and torturous tune, led me a little ways down the hill toward the far end of the family section. The sun had almost fully set by then.
Twinkling multicolored lights strung by ropes glimmered against the sky. A classical song was drifting through the noise. Snake retained bits and pieces of the melody and hummed it quietly.
As we trekked down the hill, I knew exactly where he was leading me. Straight ahead, prismatic and rotating against the sky, was the dreaded Ferris wheel. A line was backed up to the bathrooms, a bunch of crazies waiting to dangle from faulty cords above asphalt demises. Okay, maybe I was overhyping the likeliness of imminent death. Regardless, it was still the scariest thing I would have ever done if I agreed to it. Second to jumping out of a window, of course.
“Aren’t you slick?” I taunted once we reached the line. “Butter me up like you’re taking me somewhere special, and we end up at the wheel of peril.”
“Taking your aversion to a beloved theme park attraction into account, I still concluded that it would be romantic.” The yellow, blue, and pink lights from the wheel cast colorful dots across his face, enhancing his usually dull eyes.
“Because I would be scared, and you’d have to hold me? Get some new material, dude. That method is tired.”
“You mock it now, but once we’re up there, you’ll be in my lap. Guaranteed. And I may have used a cheap and worn-out method, but I’d still be winning.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, you’ll need me and have to painfully admit it.”
“Ha.” I laughed. He never failed to wow me with his expertise in being a presumptuous dick. “Once we get up there, we’ll see who needs whom.”
He smiled as a dash of pink flicked on the wheel, glowing against his teeth. The line moved faster than expected, five-year-olds putting me to shame with their smiley anticipation. And in spite of the fact that I grew closer to peeing my pants with each step we took toward boarding, I held a smug grin on my lips so Snake knew just how much I didn’t need him.
Gluten-free tuna sandwich almost found its way back out of my mouth when my phone buzzed in my pocket, stunning me out of my terrified observation of the wheel freezing at the tiptop. I was going to die up there for sure.
I checked the phone screen. A text from Carla.
Hey, Reggie. I was just making sure you were okay because your parents came by my house this afternoon looking for you. They said you didn’t come home today. Are you with Snake? Let me know if you need anything. Not like I care, obviously ;)
Great, my parents were scouring the town for me. Who knew how many people my crazy mother had harassed? My dad was probably being towed around on his leash all day, while my mom stapled flyers to telephone poles and plastered my face on milk cartons. The wheel of peril wasn’t looking so bad after all.
“Is that Carla?” Snake asked, reading over my shoulder.
“Nosy much? And yes.”
“Did she say anything about me?”
“I’m genuinely curious how your head fits on your body.”
“I’m not being arrogant. I’m just wondering, jeez.”
“She was informing me that my parents went to her house looking for me this afternoon. Which proves that Karen doesn’t know me at all, because one, I would never have a sleepover with Carla Banks. And two, I would never have a sleepover with Carla Banks while the dam around her uterus could burst at any moment.”
“The doctor said it’ll probably be a few weeks. And your mom, while a tad on the screwy side, is doing what any good mom would do.”
“I don’t think we’re talking about the same mom.”
“All I’m saying is, don’t make idiotic mistakes and try to fix them by making more idiotic mistakes.”
“Don’t use my words against me. Idiocy is your thing.”
“Idiocy is widespread. And you should be grateful that she cares, at least. Even if you resent the way she does it.”
He was giving me this bizarre, raised-brow, life-coach expression that was very dadlike and particularly unsettling. Snake had never looked like he could be someone’s dad until that moment. And even then, he was a deranged, pretty-boy-meets-grunge-dude version.
We made it to the front of the line, and Snake bumped my shoulder as the girl motioned us into the cart. I slapped him so hard the girl shot me a troubled look before she closed our door. Snake wearing a white T-shirt that read ALWAYS THE VICTIM wasn’t helping my case.
Snake cuddled next to me in the middle of the seat (a completely unwarranted move, I might add). He held his hand on his thigh with the palm facing upward, waiting for me to grab it. He would be waiting a while.
“When the ride starts moving, just think comforting thoughts,” he said, as a family of four loaded into the cart in front of us. “Like how you’ll be on here for the next fifteen minutes without a chance of getting off, and if we get stuck at the top, the fire squad has to take us down via crane. Also, a cord snapping is always a feasible outcome.”
“As long as you think about how your not-so-clever little plan to get me in your lap will end with you suspended in the air next to a very mean and very angry girl who will have no witnesses for the things she could do to you.”
“Is that supposed to be a threat?” He smiled. “Sounds pretty great to me.”
Of course it did.
A creaking noise resounded, and we began to move. Backwards. Slowly. I shut my eyes, holding my lids together so tightly it gave me a headache. I could feel Snake’s warmth beside me. I could feel him staring. One thing was different, though. He didn’t smell the same.
Keeping my eyes shut, I said through clenched teeth, “Snake?”