“Your girlfriend?” I asked, though I was pretty certain.
“Mm-hmm. Anna. We send a picture every night before bed. It’s almost ten o’clock East Coast time, so it’ll be lights-out for her soon.”
“Oh yeah, she’s in Maine, right? Camp counselor?”
“Yep. Camp Harakawa.” Dylan posed with a big bite of funnel cake in his mouth, then flashed a selfie and sent it to Anna. “She’ll like that one,” he said. His phone dinged again and he snorted as he read the text. “Anna wants me to win her a stuffed animal. What is it with girls and stuffed animals?”
For a fleeting second, I thought about Carrots, the stuffed rabbit I slept with until I was five. Okay, maybe six. Six and a half. Mom still kept him in a shoe box wrapped in tissue paper, even though he’d lost an ear, a cottontail, and most of his fur during his years of loyal service. Good old Carrots.
“No idea,” I said.
“Me neither. All right, let’s go lose some money! I think I saw some stuffed owls back there.”
“Anna like owls or something?”
Dylan shrugged. “She loves the Harry Potter movies. I think there’s owls involved.”
“Chlorophytum comosum,” I mumbled to myself.
“What’s that?”
“Nothing.”
We continued on through the flashing lights, buzzing alarms, and screeching sirens. As we passed two guys trying their might at a speed-bag game, my breath caught in my throat as I spotted a tan girl with black, wavy hair watching them. My eyes lit up, and I lifted my hand to wave but pretended to slick my hair back instead when she turned and I realized it wasn’t Rose.
Luckily Dylan hadn’t noticed. He stood with his arms crossed, facing a tent, frowning. A vinyl banner read: TAKE HOME A GOLDFISH!
I stood next to Dylan. “What’s up?” I asked.
“You know, the fact that this still exists is a complete travesty.”
I watched as a young girl tossed Ping-Pong balls into bowls of colored water. They all missed, bouncing off the rims. “You mean how all these games are rigged?”
“Oh, they’re definitely rigged, a travesty in itself. But I’m talking about the goldfish, my friend.”
Just then, the young girl sank a ball into a bowl and squealed. Moments later, out came her prize. The attendant handed her a clear plastic sack of water containing her new pet goldfish.
Dylan continued. “Ten years ago, man. It was traumatizing.”
“What happened?”
Dylan shook his head at the memory. “I’d completely mastered the arc. One after another, boom, boom, boom, sinking them like LeBron James. I won seven goldfish that night. Seven. I was the happiest kid at BuffaloFest. I named them after the seven dwarfs. But what I didn’t realize at the age of six was that fish need a certain amount of oxygen to survive. Oxygen they aren’t going to get in a plastic bag. So that night they swam in their aquatic hourglasses, the minutes ticking away until their deaths.”
“Didn’t your parents tell you to put them in a bowl?”
“Yeah, well, my sister was babysitting me that night and she was too busy messaging her boyfriend to give me the requisite goldfish survival tips. So come morning poor Dopey was belly-up. Next went Happy, who was obviously unhappy, flapping himself in a circle with one gill on the surface. By lunchtime Sleepy was dead as a doornail, not sleeping, as I initially thought. Then Grumpy’s eyes glossed over, Bashful sank to the bottom, and Doc developed a weird twitch before succumbing to Death’s cold grasp himself. That night, Goldie was the last to go, having watched all six of his friends go before him.”
“Wait, Goldie? I thought the seventh dwarf was Sneezy?”
“Fish don’t sneeze, dude.”
“Good point.”
Dylan rubbed his chin and shook his head, staring at the goldfish game. “Why some animal rights coalition hasn’t shut this operation down still baffles me.”
I pictured my mom standing vigil in front of the booth holding a sign that said GOLDFISH ARE PEOPLE TOO. I put a hand on Dylan’s shoulder. “It’s okay, man. I’m sure they’re in a better place now, with fishbowls the size of Nebraska and unlimited fish flakes.”
Dylan sighed. “I hope so. All right, onward. I have a prize to win.”
For the next half hour, we tried our luck at the ring toss, whack-a-mole, and milk jugs, only to walk away empty-handed. We considered entering the rubber ducky race, but decided we were a decade too old for that. Finally, after making nineteen points in sixty seconds at a basketball shootout game, Dylan was the proud new owner of a four-foot-tall stuffed giraffe.
“Perfect,” he said, shoving it under one arm. “All right, dude. One more thing we have to do before we leave.”
“After you,” I said.
ELEVEN
I FOLLOWED DYLAN AS HE CUT BETWEEN TENTS, LEADING US TO THE far edge of the carnival. Beyond the Ferris wheel and bumper cars lay a row of food tents. Grill smoke hovered above us. The smell of cooked meat made my mouth water instantly, despite having eaten a pound of deep-fried sugar earlier.
“Had to give you the traditional carnival fare first, but this is where the real food’s at,” said Dylan, forging ahead.
As we neared the tents, I could make out some of the names: Bobo’s Gyros, Billy Bob’s BBQ, Wang Chung Cantonese, Papi’s Tenderloins, and Arduini’s World Famous Pizza. Dylan insisted I’d have to try all of them at some point—apparently they were as integral to Buffalo Falls’s infrastructure as the roads and bridges—but tonight, pizza from Arduini’s would suffice.
As we walked up, I said, “You’ll have to understand my skepticism about the ‘world famous’ part. I am from the pizza capital of the nation.”
Dylan grinned. “You’ll thank me later.”
At the counter, a girl our age stood smiling, her light brown hair framing her face. “Hey, Dylan! How’ve you been?” she asked.
“I’m good, I’m good. Finally walking again.”
A sympathetic look flashed across her face. “Oh, I heard about that. Your leg all better now?”
Dylan shrugged. “Ninety percent. Getting there. Kaylee, this is Zeus.” He threw his arm around my shoulder and presented me. “His family just moved here from Chicago.”
She looked at me a moment. Then her eyes widened and she pointed at me in recognition. “World history? Mr. Donahue? Second period?”
I dug through my memory but didn’t recognize her. “Uh, yeah. Did we meet?”
She laughed. “No! You were scary. We thought you hated us.”
My stomach sank. “Really?”
She laughed again. I could tell she laughed a lot, but not in a ditzy way. “No, I’m totally joking! I just remember you sitting there, not talking to anyone. But I’m sure it was weird for you, being the new guy thrown in at the end of the year.”
“Yeah, it was a little weird,” I lied. It had been more than weird.
“Well, maybe we’ll have another class together next year!”
I smiled. She had a cute sprinkling of freckles across her nose. “I promise not to look like I hate everyone if we do.”