“Eat it, silly.” Tiffany tried and failed to pull Manning onto the seat with her. “What are you doing?” she asked him. “She won’t get on. She’s afraid of heights. Come on.”
He sat and pulled the metal bar over their laps. As the wheel moved forward, hot tears pierced the backs of my eyes. Something about all of this was beginning to feel cruel and unfair, and that made me feel helpless. Maybe that was what Manning had been talking about earlier—injustice.
“You got a ticket?” the attendant asked me.
“Oh. No.” There was no way in hell I was getting on without Manning, I retreated and ran right into the person behind me. I whirled around, backing away. “Sorry. Go ahead.”
Manning and Tiffany rose into the night sky together. Neither of them looked back at me.
5
Manning
If someone’d asked me a week ago what a typical Saturday night looked like for me, it wouldn’t’ve involved any of this. A Ferris wheel, pink cotton candy, and a pair of girls, one of which was only sixteen.
The wheel churned forward and stopped a few times. Tiffany tore off some cotton candy and put it in her mouth. I didn’t know what I should expect during twenty minutes alone with her, but she’d become shyer without an audience.
“I don’t know what my sister told you, but I’m not stupid,” she said gently. “I can get a job, but nothing’s really interested me so far.”
“She didn’t say that.”
“She’s annoying. Sometimes she doesn’t even do anything and she still annoys me.”
It wasn’t a word I’d use to describe Lake, who was relatively quiet compared to Tiffany. “How come?”
“It’s like she thinks she’s better than me. Just the way she talks or the things she does.”
“Yeah but what?” I asked. “What does she do?”
“She just, like, gets straight A’s and it’s all my parents can talk about for a month. It’s lame. If I’d really wanted to be a nerd, I could’ve been, you know? I’d rather enjoy my life.”
I looked Tiffany over. That might’ve been true to some degree, but I didn’t buy all of it. “You don’t think your sister enjoys life?”
“Everything she does has a purpose. She only takes piano lessons to be ‘well-rounded.’ And so she doesn’t disappoint my dad like I have.”
Up until this moment, I’d only really seen Lake as smart, driven, and curious. Maybe because I’d only really seen Lake. I hadn’t stopped to wonder how many dinners Tiffany must’ve sat through hearing about Lake’s accomplishments. “I’m sure that’s not true.”
“It is.” She shuffled her feet on the floor of the car. “Whatever.”
The wheel jerked into motion, sending us higher. “I think Lake looks up to you,” I said.
“Why would she?”
“You’re her older sister.” If I’d been better at expressing myself, I would’ve told her how much it bothered me to see siblings not getting along. But that wasn’t something you thought about until you’d lost one, and then it was too late for that kind of lesson. “Cut her some slack. She probably just wants you to be nice to her.”
Tiffany scowled. “Nice?”
“Yeah. Like inviting her to come here. That was nice.”
Her expression eased as she twisted her lips. “I see. Okay. Maybe.”
A girl in the car above us laughed loudly at something the man with her said. She launched forward to kiss him. Tiffany noticed and smiled.
I preferred Tiffany this way, without all the drama. It made me uncomfortable when she was forward, the way she’d been in the car on the way over. I wasn’t sure how I felt about her. With long blonde hair and even longer legs, and blue eyes a shade icier than her sister’s, she was attractive as hell. I just wasn’t all that attracted to her. Her attitude’d put me off that first day.