I took his hand and held my breath, until he tugged me closer to him and rewrapped our hands so our whole arms were intertwined. The leather jacket, heavy and unfamiliar against me, something I knew instinctively that Camden would never wear. We walked away from the pavilion and back toward the midway. The sun had halfway set behind the mountains and the changing colors in the sky made the electric lights of the fair glow even more brilliantly.
Now I could take it all in. The predatory leer of game runners as we walked by and tried not to make eye contact. The little shacks that sold deep-fried everything or food on sticks that really shouldn’t be on sticks. The energy between Camden and me felt thick and awkward with questions. I didn’t expect it to be so suddenly weird, to be on our own but still in costume. Were we done being Satina and Azor? Were we just Ari and Camden now, but with accessories?
I thought back to last summer. When I came here with Dani and we went on all the kiddie rides together. When I was looking for Camden, because I was always looking for Camden. Thinking once that I saw him walk onto a ride, and waiting until it was over, and then realizing it was not him at all. How stupid I felt.
We stopped when we got to the Scrambler.
“I’ve only been on this kind of ride once, when I was a kid,” said Camden. “Some girl threw up and the barf went flying and hit me in the face.”
“That’s everyone’s worst fair fear! We should go on it and replace that memory with a better one.”
“I don’t know. It was pretty traumatic.”
“Come on,” I said. “Otherwise the ride will always taunt you.”
He shook his head, but let me drag him toward the entrance.
Once we were on the ride with the bar clicked into place, he pulled me across the red vinyl seat toward him and put his arm around my shoulder. I took a little mental picture of us. This is what it looks like when you have the thing you’ve dreamed about. I wondered if anyone watching had any idea of the path we took to get here. How amazing it was. Or if we were simply another anonymous couple in a sea of anonymous couples, which to me was its own kind of amazing.
As the ride started moving, I turned to Camden and kissed him. I was worried about losing our wigs, and that felt strangely thrilling along with the rush of spins and twirls. He slipped his hand between the plaid shirt and Satina’s uniform top. Nobody would be able to see that—we were moving too fast. After a while, it seemed like we were the ones staying still.
I was a little uneven when my feet hit the ground after the ride was over. Camden steadied me and I steadied him back. The crowd was getting thicker now, jostling us as we tried to have a moment of stillness.
“This is a lot of people,” said Camden, looking uncomfortable for the first time all night.
“I know somewhere private.” And I did. On the far side of the kiddie ride area, between the haunted house ride that was not at all scary and the back of a goldfish-toss game, there was a patch of grass where I once changed Danielle out of wet underwear and into fresh ones. I led Camden there.
“Do crowds make you nervous?” I asked when we rounded the corner. He answered by putting his hand on the waistband of my leggings and pulling me toward him against a telephone pole. Then he put both palms on either side of my face and stared at me, something strong and determined in his eyes.
“Do you know that I haven’t been to a fair since I was ten?”
“Because of the puke?”
He laughed, then his features settled into something more serious. “My mother thinks the fair is too commercial and exploits the animals. She’s always said it was something people went to because they thought they were supposed to. That it was expected of them. And we were beyond that.”
“Did you feel like you were missing out?”
“Yes.”
“Well, if it helps, I’ve gone every year. And I still felt like I was missing out.”
“You didn’t feel like you were, you know, part of something bigger?”
“Not really. I felt like that something bigger evaluated me, then decided it didn’t want me.” I paused. “I know what your mom is talking about. There’s an expectation here to have a certain kind of experience. No matter how much fun I had, it never felt like the right kind. Until tonight.”
Camden looked at me sadly now. He took his thumb and ran it along one side of my face, right where my hairline started.
“I guess we’re the same that way.” And he kissed me, almost urgently this time. I felt the kiss shoot into the back of my neck and then travel down the center of my body, into my limbs. It filled me with sudden understanding about Camden. He wanted to belong. He craved the exact rituals and traditions his mother wanted them to live above.
I felt closer to him now than ever before, right there against the telephone pole. Where all we could hear were the sounds of little kids screaming and three different pop music songs blaring from three different rides.
Finally, he pulled away.
“I want to win you something,” he said with a grin. “Something big and cheaply made and ugly.”
I wanted that. I wanted what it would mean.
“Come,” I said.
Fifteen minutes and thirty dollars later, Camden handed me a large stuffed penguin with dreadlocks and a Rastafarian hat.