“Dammit!” Zac yelled, pulling the car over to the side of the road. The gas station was a good half a mile away and the car was out of gas. “Not only am I going to shoot him, I’m going to cut up his body and throw it around while I dance on his grave!”
“Zac, calm down. We can walk to the gas station.”
“I don’t want to walk to the gas station. I want to go back to the hotel and sleep.”
“I’ll go. You can stay here,” I offered, looking over at him.
“I’m not about to let you go out there by yourself! And certainly not at night. You’ll get abducted.”
“Here in Kentucky? Zac, nothing’s going to happen to me. Let me go, I want you to stay here with the car.”
“I’m not staying here with the car knowing you’re out there by yourself. No one is going to steal the car. I’m sure because the car is pure crap. We’ll both go the gas station.” We both got out of the car and started walking along the street. I saw the gas station up ahead, but I really didn’t feel like walking there.
“I don’t think I want to go anymore, Zac.”
“Well you’re not staying in the car by yourself. Either way we’re both walking to the gas station.” I opened my mouth to speak. “No I’m not going to carry you.”
“Dammit.”
The gas station really wasn’t far away, but I wasn’t in the mood for walking along a dimly lit street at night, even if Zac was with me. But, we got there. The place was fairly deserted, not many people were out now anyway. There were two cars getting gas, one of which left once we got there. We went inside.
“Why don’t you get a drink or something?” Zac asked me. “I’ll take care of this.” I wandered over the refrigerators, looking for something to drink. I picked out a drink and walked back towards the front of the store. I put my drink on the counter and waited for Zac to finish whatever steps there was to getting a gas can and getting it to the car. I really didn’t know how to do it, nor did I care.
“Hey, look,” Zac said, as he was filling the gas can with gas. “A carnival.” I looked to where he was pointing. I could see it, a lit up Ferris wheel down the road. “You up to it?”
“I’m always up for carnivals.”
He grinned. “Then I guess we have to go.” We walked back to the car and put the gas in before driving the car to the gas station and filling it up all the way. After paying for the gas and getting out of there, we found our way to the carnival.
He parked close to the carnival. It was in a field at a school, but there was a lot of people there and many rides. “What kind of carnival person are you? Do you ride all the rides or are you strictly a Ferris wheel type person?” Zac asked me.
“Oh, I do everything. All the rides, all the fun houses, down to the caramel apples and cotton candy.”
“Good, me too.” He purchased some tickets for us and we hit the fun house first.
“Zac, wait up!” I said, running after him into the house of mirrors. He turned around and grinned, his reflection bouncing off a maze of mirrors. “Oh no you don’t, you are not going to try and make an ass out of me here.”
“Try and find me.” He laughed and headed off again, guiding himself perfectly through the maze of mirrors to the other side.
“Zac!” I wasn’t quite as good as judging the mirrors as he was, and found myself nearly running into a lot of them. I heard his laughter on the other side of the room, already outside of the maze of mirrors.
“Come on, Nic. I know you can do better than that.”
“Zachary Hanson when I get you I swear to God I will beat the living shit out of you.” I heard his laugher again, this time more faint, and he disappeared. I struggled to get through the maze (mazes aren’t my thing, I prefer rides to fun houses, but what can you do?) and came out on the other end in front of a three separate stairways. The middle one didn’t move, while the other two moved up and down and sideways. Zac was already at the top, sitting at the stairway that didn’t move, waiting for me.
“Goddammit, Zac!”
“What? I thought you liked fun houses.”
“Yeah, when I can get through them. That one was too confusing.”
“Come on up,” he told me, smiling. “But you can’t come up this way, you have to go up the ones that are moving.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Dude, the point of this is to not being able to do stuff and have fun until you fall over laughing!” I gave him a look. “Come on, it’s easy.” He jumped down to where I was. “Just follow me.” I followed him up the stairway, laughing each time either of us made a mistake and nearly fell off. When he reached the top, he turned around and held out his hands for me to grab. “Come on, I’ll pull you up, slowpoke.”
“Oh, go fuck yourself.”
“I’ll get arrested if I do that here,” he said, smiling. “Come on.” I grabbed his hands and he pulled me up to the top level. I ran over to a spinning circle on the floor, and stood there, watching the room spin around me.
Each time I was in Zac’s direction, I saw the full-hearted smile on his face. “Come on, babe, get dizzy with me,” I said. I reached out my hand, but I was still spinning so it was hard for him to grab it. When he was close enough, I pulled him onto the spinning circle, and we spun around and around, giggling.
“You’re silly,” he told me.
“No, this is just really fun.” I stepped off the circle and held onto the rail to keep myself standing. “Woah.” “You are such a nut.” I looked at him, still spinning around. He locked his eyes on me and walked, the circle spinning under him but he was still in the same place. “This is actually really fun, but there’s more stuff we can do here.”
He jumped off the circle and rammed himself into a punching bag, knocking himself over onto the floor. I ran over, laughing, and picked him up. “You’re calling me a nut, you’re the one on the floor.”
“It’s not my fault. The punching bag hit me.”
“I’m sure it did.” We walked through the corridor of punching bags, Zac running ahead of me and tossing one at me. I caught it before it knocked me over, and threw it back at him. He dodged it and pulled me out of the corridor. We stepped onto a moving sidewalk and waited to be lowered to the bottom level.
The last thing in this particular fun house was the red and white striped spinning wheel. I hated these; I could never get out of them without someone either stepping on my hands or me falling over constantly. Every time I was on one of these I got hurt.
“Oh God, I hate these. Why didn’t I see this before I came in here?” I asked, then smacked Zac in the arm. “Why didn’t you tell me there was one of these here?”
“I figured you saw it. Come on, all you have to do is run right through it.” He ran through the spinning wheel and to the other side. “It’s simple.”
“Oh, alright, but if I fall and break my arm you’re paying for it.” He rolled his eyes. “I’ve done it before, don’t think I won’t do it again now.”
“Alright, I’ll pay for it if you break your arm.” I took a breath and ran through it, tripping and landing in Zac’s arms on the other side. “See, it wasn’t that hard.”
“Speak for yourself. I tripped.”
“Let’s go on a ride.”
He jumped down the steps. I ran down them, and we ran over to the Zipper. “This is my favorite one.”
“Really?” I asked. “It’s mine too.” As we waited in line, I noticed a few people glance at us, mostly at Zac’s hand in mine. No one walked up to us or even said anything as a whisper behind us, which surprised me. Most of the people who had gone to the show were either on their way home or at home already, so I didn’t expect much of them to be there.
Zac gave the tickets to the carnie, who was eyeing me. I could shiver in disgust. Carnies were always so sleazy, and I don’t know if it’s that they’re trying to be or if it’s just something that comes off because they are carnies. Either way, it made me uncomfortable.
“You know, I’ve been meaning to ask you something,” Zac told me, once we were in our car, and moving towards the top.
“What?” I had no idea what he was going to ask. He had already asked me to be his girlfriend, so I had no idea what this was about.
“Why Darling? Why are you best friends with her? Looking at you and how you are, and knowing Darling like I know her…you two are completely different.”
“I guess that’s what draws us together. I’m her conscience. I can handle her doing some drugs or have a little alcohol. But when she’s doing too much, I’m the one who tells her to quit it. I’m the person that used to cover for her, when she still lived with her parents. When she was too drunk to stand up, I’d be the one to drive her home and stay up with her all night while she threw up. I remember driving her home, in a stick-shift car twenty miles when I was thirteen years old. I did pretty okay, actually. I didn’t get pulled over and we both made it out alive.”
“Does alive mean no scratches or just alive?” he asked.
“I’m not answering that.” He laughed. The ride started moving, and the car flipped over a few times. I smiled. I’d been on this ride so much I could do pretty much anything while it was going and still be okay. “I do remember lying to her parents a lot, saying that she wasn’t feeling well enough to go to school or work or whatnot because she was hung over and couldn’t stand up or be exposed to light without throwing up. But it’s Darling, she’s my best friend. She looked out for me when I needed it and I just returned the favor. It’s just she needed a lot more help than I did.”
“What’d she help you with? You’re practically an angel next to her.”
“I had my moments. I was worse off before I met her than after. I had a lot of problems before, but I don’t really want to get into that tonight. Right now I just want to concentrate on having fun.”
“Alright. Then let’s rock the boat.” He grabbed the poles on the door and started swinging the car back and forth. We flipped over and over again until the ride stopped.
“Oh come on, that was barely enough time to do anything!” I complained.
“We flipped over 27 times, Nic. I think that was enough time to do a lot of stuff.” I gave him a look. “And I’m dizzy again.”
“So am I, but I’m not complaining about that.”
We were lowered to the platform and the carnie opened the door for us. I stumbled out of car, Zac behind me. “Okay, let’s cool down for a while. You want to go to the Ferris wheel now?”
“Sure.”
“Let’s get some cotton candy first,” I said, walking over to the booth. There was some bored people in there, waiting for someone to come along and buy something.
“I’ll take some cotton candy,” Zac said, glancing at the price and flipping the money onto the counter.
“What color, son?” the woman behind the counter asked.
“Blue,” he said, looking at me. I smiled. He remembered that blue was my favorite color. When did I even tell him that? He took the bag of blue cotton candy and unwrapped it immediately, throwing the wrapper in the garbage. He handed me the stick.
“When did I ever tell you blue is my favorite color?” I asked.
“I think it was a few days ago.”
“Obviously, I’ve only known you a few days.”
“I don’t remember when it was, but I remember you said it.” He took a piece of the cotton candy and put it in his mouth. “This is wonderful. I know we haven’t been here that long, but since we got here no one’s come up to me asking for an autograph, no one even cares. They’re all having fun and enjoying themselves and not even bothering with me.” I decided against telling him about the people giving us looks in line. “It’s amazing to go from being everything to a whole bunch of people to being no one to nobody. I’m just another face in the crowd here. It’s great.”
“It’s amazing, isn’t it?” I asked. “To being the center of attention to a faceless person among the crowd.”
“It’s wonderful. I’ve never been able to do this before. Either I have a flashing sign saying ‘Fuck off’ on my head, or I’m just not being recognized. I get recognized everywhere I go. I always have people after me. I always have a crowd following me.” As a precaution, I glanced behind us, and there was no one following us. “I love being able to freely walk around.”
“Maybe it has something to do with me.” He shrugged. “Do you go places with your brothers? That could be it too.”
“Yeah, we do tend to go out together a lot,” he said. “But even when I’m out alone people recognize me. So maybe it does have something to do with you. You’re my lucky charm, now aren’t you?”
“Of course. I’m luck at your fingertips.”
We stopped at the rather large Ferris wheel. There wasn’t much of a line, we’d surely get on the next time they start loading people, and it seemed that the ride was almost over for the people on it already.
“Well we got here just in time,” I said. He nodded and took more of my cotton candy. “Hey, that’s mine you know.”
“I paid for it, so technically it’s mine.” He took it from me.
“Fine. You hold it.” I reached out to get some, but he held it away from me. “Zac, come on, give me some.”
“No! It’s mine! I paid for it. When you pay for your own you can have your own. Until then, you have to watch me eat it all.” He stuffed more in his mouth, grinning mischievously.
“You’re mean!”
“I know!” He smiled. “I’m kidding, Nic. Here you go.” He gave me back the stick to hold. “As long as I can still eat it, I’ll let you hold it. Otherwise it’s all mine and you get none.”
“Fine.” I glanced towards the front of the line. The carnie there was taking the tickets of the first people and letting them on the ride. There was about five or six pairs of people in front of us. Quickly we got on the ride and were sitting in a blue car.
“I love Ferris wheels,” Zac said, as we started to go up.
“Who doesn’t?” I asked. We stopped at the top, luckily. I looked over the entire carnival, lit up peacefully in the cool night. “This is so beautiful. This is the best part about carnivals, looking over the entire place from the top of the Ferris wheel.”
“Yeah. It is.” He looked at me. “Just like you.”
“That was corny.”
“It’s still true.” I blushed and looked away. “Oh, I got you to blush! I am the best!”
“Shut up. You’re a loser.”
“I am not! I’m a sex machine.” I looked at him and raised an eyebrow. “Well, at least I think so.”
“You’re so vain.”
“You think I’m vain? Have you even looked at Taylor lately? Every time you see that boy he’s checking himself out in the mirror. He is vain. I just like to kid around.”
“Obviously, if you think you’re a sex machine.”
“I am a sex machine.” I shook my head. “You don’t think so? Why? Do I not have the capability of being a sex machine?”
“I can’t believe I’m having this conversation with you. You very well might have the capability of being a sex machine. I don’t know. I personally haven’t seen that side of you yet.”
“Yet?”
“It’ll happen.”
“Soon?”
“Maybe.”
He smiled. “Can I tell you something?” he asked.
“If you can tell me you’re a sex machine you can tell me anything.” He looked away. Uh-oh. He’s looking away. He’s going to say something about his feelings. I can tell. He’s squirming. Uh-oh, I thought. “Well, I know I’ve only known you a few days, but you’ve changed everything about me. You’ve changed my entire outlook on life, and I just wanted to tell you something…” I nodded, waiting for him to say it. “I think I’m in love with you.”
I smiled. “I love you too.”