“Let’s alternate,” you said, resting your hands on my hips.
The first pose was silly; I crossed my eyes and made a fish face. For the next one, we tried to look tough, all cocked eyebrows and mafioso sneers. On the third one, you tickled my ribs, so I was frozen mid-laugh, my face contorted in giggles while I tried to swat you at the same time. Once you stopped, I turned to tell you off but we were so close our noses brushed and I could feel your body tense under mine. So in the last split second before the flash went off, I whipped my face forward. When the photos came out a few minutes later, the last frame was just me looking nervous and blank-faced while you stared meaningfully into my ear.
“We definitely nailed it,” you said, tucking the strip into your pocket.
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I put off the Cyclone as long as possible, but by the late afternoon we’d eaten enough popcorn and churros to fuel a small circus, and I was getting tired of swinging up and down the boardwalk on the crutches. After our tenth game of Skee-Ball, I could tell your heart was someplace else, so I screwed up my courage and lied and told you I was ready.
“One ride,” I said.
“Seriously?” You picked me up and spun me around, and when we stopped, our bodies pressed against each other for just a few extra seconds too long. I tilted my face up and thought, dizzily, this is it.
But it wasn’t; you broke away and handed our prize tickets to a couple of little kids playing a basketball free-throw game nearby.
“Let’s go,” you said. “The line is probably insane.”
The old man with the boombox was still in his spot under the beach umbrella, and as we walked by he started playing Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance with Somebody.” I stopped cold. People like to talk about things being “their jam,” but most of the time they’re just posturing or trying to sound cool. But that song . . . that song was what I’d listened to in my room growing up, when I’d practiced my first “routines.” My mom had it in a box of cassette tapes she’d kept from high school, and I’d always loved the way Whitney looked on the cover, lifting up the bottom of her tank top with her hair all big and unkempt like she gave zero shits. That song was my jam.
“What?” you asked, smirking at me. “You look like you’re about to toss those crutches in the air like Tiny Tim and bust out the Running Man.”
“Shut up!” I said. “This is my favorite song.”
You just smiled and shook your head. “Of course it is.”
Half an hour later we were still in line, waiting under the shuddering support beams of the behemoth roller coaster, watching its little cars clatter and clack up and down a track that still looked to me, ten years later, like it had been built out of popsicle sticks by kindergartners as a joke.
“I can tell you’re freaking,” you said, laying a gentle hand on my back. “You’re making that mad face.”
“I don’t like heights,” I muttered, in between deep breaths.
“You were fine yesterday with the presage lift.”
“Yeah, well—that was because of you.”
You wrapped your arms around me from behind, resting your chin on my head. “Good thing I’m here now, too, right?” you asked, and I could feel the vibration of your voice in my whole body. “But if you’re really that scared”—you squeezed me gently—“we don’t have to.”
I leaned back against your chest and thought about suggesting that we elevate on the much tamer Wonder Wheel instead, but then the ride was slowing to a stop and the last group was stumbling out, and all of a sudden I was handing your abuela’s crutches to the bored-and-or-stoned-looking operator, and then we were in. It was too late to change my mind.
“You OK?” you asked, trying but failing to hold my left hand, which was gripping the safety bar like a vise.
“Don’t ask,” I said as the ride lurched into motion. Immediately, we were inching up a steep incline that would send us careening down an 85-foot drop at a 58-degree angle. A sign at the top read, STAY SEATED! DO NOT STAND UP! For anyone with a death wish, I guess.
“It will be fine,” you said, adopting your Mr. Dyshlenko voice again. “You just have to hold on, hold on”—you gripped the bar, making a grim, nervous face—“and let go!” You threw your arms up like you were doing the wave at a ball game.
“I’m not doing that,” I said, closing my eyes, wincing, waiting for the drop.
“Come on,” you whispered. “Just look. It’s amazing, you’ll see.”
I shook my head and squeezed my eyelids shut even tighter. “That’s easy for you to say. Nothing scares you.”
“That’s not true.”
The car was slowing down, gravity pulling us back. We were almost there. I could barely get the words out. “Name . . . one . . . thing.”
There was a pause, and then you said, “Kissing you.”
“What?” Without meaning to, I let go of the bar and opened my eyes, just in time to see the world drop away. You grabbed my hand, and then we were in free fall.
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