“It’s awesome. Or, well, actually maybe it was only one of those things that was awesome because I was a kid, but basically, you get on these little floating boats and you’re pulled along a waterway through an old mill and you wind up at a mine shaft.” Two of us would barely fit on one boat, but the thought of Adam and me riding the Old Mill together sounded so silly to me that I had to try. “We’re making new memories, remember? And if we want to get you to feel the feels, trust me, this is a good one. It’ll be fun. You’ll see.”
I led him up the short flight of steps, forked over my last few tickets, and lowered myself onto the bench of one of the miniature boats. It was shaped like a mill chute, and when Adam followed in after me, the water splashed up around us. He caught himself on the sides for balance and, once settled, peered down into the murky river below.
There was a click, and then the boat dropped down a couple inches, and we began floating into a tunnel.
We were quiet for a moment. The air became dank and musky, and we were immersed in total blackness. I listened to the calming churn of the water.
“What are you feeling right now?” I asked as the boat slid from pitch-black into a well-lit portion of the ride decorated with cheesy animatronic farm animals that greeted us. We passed a bunny waving his carrot. “First thing that pops into your head, go.”
“Nothing.”
I sighed. “Think, Adam. You have to be feeling something. You just need to learn to express it, okay?”
He dipped his finger over the side of the boat and let it trail through the water. “Like what?”
“I don’t know. People can feel all kinds of things. Happy, sad, angry, in love, nervous, scared.”
“I was scared earlier.”
“And now?”
We floated into a room littered with trees with trunks that had faces and waterwheels that scooped up buckets of water and poured them out the other side.
“Now, I’m not scared anymore.” He paused. “Because we’re off the big sky wheel.”
I pinched my lips together. Nothing, nothing, nothing, we kept running up against this great big wall of nothing. We may as well beat our heads against it. After only a couple minutes, we were nearing the end of the ride. I knew because at the entrance of a dark cave was a white and pink sign that read TUNNEL OF LOVE. I scrubbed a hand over my face. I needed something momentous—no—better yet, something memorable.
We passed beneath it and the light disappeared. The tunnel was so dark, the hand in front of my face went missing.
I turned in my seat to face him. “Adam, this is purely for academic purposes, okay? And for the furtherance of science.”
Before he could ask questions, I reached up and put my hands on either side of his face, and in the name of science, the most noble of pursuits for truth and knowledge known to man, I squished his cheeks together and pushed my lips firmly onto his.
It was then that I made an important discovery. All those stories about couples getting hot and heavy in the Tunnel of Love had been grossly exaggerated. The word tunnel itself was generous. Even if I’d wanted to, there would have been no time to get hot or heavy, let alone both. No sooner had I planted my lips, which I realized way too late probably felt like snakeskin, than our tiny vessel had floated clear of the tunnel.
The carnival lights hit my face, and my eyes snapped open. Adam’s eyes were round saucers an inch in front of my own. He yelled and jerked away. The boats of the Old Mill were not deep-sea vessels, it turned out, and they weren’t made for the pitches and waves of the ocean. The boat tilted with Adam’s weight. Dirty water rushed over the side. I shrieked. Adam tumbled overboard, and when the boat tipped back the other way, I was next.
TWENTY
Progress. Real-world memory creation and emotional stimuli appear to have stimulated at least a portion of the neocortex whereby the subject has exhibited signs of nuanced human interaction such as good humor, increased verbal context, and self-expression.
*
Last night I had a dream that I came across a dead body while walking in a cotton field. The cadaver stared at me through hollowed-out eyes, its bald scalp glowing in the moonlight. It reached its hands out for me, scratching my jeans with the exposed bones in its fingers. I didn’t scream. I didn’t even run. Instead, just before I woke, I dropped to my knees and kissed it.
I couldn’t avoid Adam forever.
Could I?
I stared down the long hallway where he was shoving textbooks into his locker like I was staring down the barrel of a gun. I took a deep breath and clenched the strap of my bag. Okay, so maybe I’d taken the experiment too far. I could admit that. It was too soon, too weird. Oh god, the look on his face. I might as well have caught him on the toilet. That face.
Trust me, if I had any ego about such things, it would be officially obliterated. But there was no rewinding time and no amount of silent car rides and eye contact avoidance was going to fix it. Besides, we weren’t twelve.
I came to a deliberate stop at his locker. “Hello, Adam.” He jumped and dropped his book bag. Balanced books splattered to the floor. “Let me help.” We both bent down at the same time and knocked heads. “Ooof!” I nursed the spot on my forehead.
“Did I do that?” Adam reached to touch the mark but poked me in the eye as I was already staging my recovery to collect a book.
“Ow!” I cried.