She nodded and returned her attention to her ice cream, and it was only because Joshua knew her so well that he spotted the slight, involuntary shudder. “At least I didn’t look like a long-haired hippy geek,” she teased.
“I liked my hair longer,” Joshua said, relieved that she had been able to let the moment pass. He was proud of her.
“Right.” She snorted a laugh and only prevented spraying chocolate mint ice cream all over both of them by clasping her hand to her mouth. Then she sang out mockingly, “You were so cool.”
“Shut up.” Joshua could feel his face redden slightly.
“You look okay now,” she said in a voice that had dropped to a deeper, more natural place. For a split second, Joshua saw Joy’s expression open up as though she’d drawn aside a heavy shade, and he got a glimpse of the complete person that was growing inside of her. Then they both felt the prickle of a blush and cast around for a distraction.
It happened as Joshua turned his gaze back to Simon and his friends. The figure of the little dog was hovering again, just over Simon’s right shoulder, and then the dark male figure appeared over his left, and this time, the man was looking straight at Joshua.
The malevolence in the direct look made Joshua feel as though he’d been plunged into arctic water. “Holy shit,” he said in a breath that was forced from his lungs.
“What?” Joy had tracked his gaze, but of course, she saw only the colored lights streaking across the people in the crowd.
Both images had faded as quickly as they had appeared, but Joshua was shaken. “Damn it, I wish that wouldn’t happen when I wasn’t expecting it.”
Joy laid a hand on Joshua’s arm. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” He tried to laugh. “It was the two figures I told you about, the dog and the man who looks so evil. But this time the man wasn’t looking at Simon. He was looking at me.”
She nodded slowly. “Tell that fucker he’s breaking the rules.”
“What rules?”
Looking slightly embarrassed, Joy shrugged and said, “I’ve been reading up on this seeing-dead-people thing a little.” She licked her ice cream and avoided eye contact. “I mean, more interesting than what they make you read at school, that For Whom the Bell Rings.”
“Tolls,” Joshua corrected automatically.
“Whatever. So, supposedly there’s rules. They’re not supposed to scare you.”
“Really?” Joshua was watching her, feeling pleased. She was taking an interest in his unusual ability. “Who makes up these rules?”
“I don’t fucking know. Who am I, John fucking Edward?”
Whenever Joy felt threatened or insecure, she reverted to her old favorite word. He let the subject pass, but he knew that she was right. One way or another, negative energy from such a powerful source must be blocked, and he assumed he would have to learn to do it.
The four boys were walking toward them through the crush of people near the food stalls, their eyes shifty, constantly glancing, moving with a jerky self-consciousness that seems to permeate the youth of their particular culture and social class. Joshua rose to his feet and called out casually, “Yo, Simon.” At the same time he steeled himself to block any vision, to place a barrier between his mind and what he had come to think of as the other side.
Simon’s eyes cut quickly to see who had addressed him, and while Joshua thought it would be exaggerating to say that Simon relaxed when he saw the two of them, he at least looked less afraid and more simply uncomfortable.
“Yo, Joshua. Wha’s up?” The younger boy sauntered over with practiced nonchalance and pressed his fist against Joshua’s. Joshua responded in kind, following the unfamiliar protocol.
“Not much. Meet my friend Joy.”
Simon’s eyes only flickered over Joy as his gaze passed by her in sweeping looks, like an oscillating fan. “Wha’s up?” he repeated.
Not to be out-cooled, Joy responded with a “Jus’ hanging.”
“That’s cool,” Simon said. His eyes roved past again, on their ceaseless surveillance of his surroundings.
“Who’re your friends?” Joshua asked, and hoped he didn’t sound as intimidated as he felt by the cold, unfamiliar, staring trio.
“Oh.” Simon turned and gestured to them. “This here is Tic, Juice, and Loc.”
“But not necessarily in that order,” said the tallest and meanest-looking of the group. The other two snickered sycophantically.
Forcing himself to remember his own words to Joy, Joshua stepped toward them and offered his hand. They each shook it politely, and on closer inspection, Joshua realized that their outwardly tough presentation was as thin a veneer over deep insecurity as was Simon’s, and probably his own—to a lesser degree.
“You guys rode the Figure Eight yet?” he asked, choosing a neutral, comfortable subject.
“Not yet,” the stocky boy, Juice, answered. “I think I might puke.”
“Yeah,” Joshua said, crossing his arms and looking up at the spinning cage. “It’s not so much the puking as having it hit you in the face when you spin back around.”
They liked that. Smiles of amusement broke out all over. Joy contributed. “I like the Sizzler best. It’s spinny but without having to revisit your lunch.”
“Yeah, Sizzler’s cool,” Loc said, and Joshua saw him give Joy an appraising look. She seemed to meet with his approval.
“Well, we’re going over to the arcade,” Joshua said. “Catch you guys later.”
A quartet of variations on “Cool. See you around.” Simon added to Joshua, “See you Monday.”
As they strolled toward the crazily lit bank of arcade trailers, Joshua jostled Joy’s shoulder and said, “See? They’re not so bad.”
Joy just narrowed her eyes at him, but she said, “No, you’re right. They seem okay. You can’t always judge people by first impressions. I mean, fuck”—she smiled sheepishly—“I should know that better than anybody.”
“Yeah.” Joshua screwed up his face and pretended to be trying hard to remember. “As I recall, the first time I saw you, you were pretty damn scary.”
The fist that caught him in the upper arm was so fast and forceful that only the powerful editing force of his teenage embarrassment could keep him from crying out, much less from smacking her back.
As he was massaging his injured limb, a voice called his name. “Joshua, Joy, over here!” Looking up, he saw his mother’s friend Leah and waved back. The use of his arm caused him to wince and cast a resentful glance at Joy.
They met just in front of the balloon dart game, and Leah introduced the man she was with as a fireman named Weston. He was tall, obviously in peak condition, and Joshua immediately felt lacking, a sensation that was multiplied as he noted Joy’s surreptitious glances up at Weston’s chiseled jaw and his striking blue-eyed, black-haired combo as niceties were exchanged. Weston’s physique was so impressive that Joshua found himself rolling his shoulders back and tensing his muscles in a competitive effort.
“Where’s your mom?” Leah asked.
“She was going to a party later on with Luke and Whitney.”
“And you guys weren’t invited?”
“Nope. Thank God,” Joy piped in.
“Besides, I got the distinct feeling that Mom and Sterling might like to get me out of the house,” Joshua confessed, feeling a flush of embarrassment heat his cheeks. As much as he liked Sterling, it was still damn awkward to think of his mother being sexually active.
“Good for them,” Weston said lightly, and Joshua watched the same flush he had felt—though he imagined for quite a different reason—appear on Leah’s cheeks.
“You guys want to spend twenty bucks to see if you can win a one-dollar prize?” Joshua hurriedly changed the subject, gesturing to the cheap stuffed animals suspended by their necks from the roof of the game trailer like some bizarre, gang cartoon hanging.
“No. Thank you though,” Leah said.
“We were just on our way over to the Fer
ris wheel.”
“Oh, that sounds like fun,” Joshua said. He turned to Joy. “We haven’t done that.”
Joy punched his tender upper arm again. “We’ll pass,” she said brightly. “I’m kind of in the mood to rescue one of those purple giraffes from imminent asphyxiation.”
Weston glanced up at the blank-eyed grins of the assorted, oddly colored menagerie and commented, “They seem to be enjoying it.”
“Nonetheless . . .” As Joy reached for Joshua’s arm, he flinched slightly and she gave him a sad shake of the head. “C’mon. See you guys later!” she called as she led Joshua over to the cashier.
“What do you have against the Ferris wheel?” he demanded.
“I swear, sometimes you are about as dense as a rock,” Joy admonished. She reached up and knocked lightly on his skull with her knuckles. “Hello? The Ferris wheel is where people go on a date to make out. And they are definitely on a date.”
“Oh,” said Joshua, feeling distinctly rocklike and wondering if he were igneous or sedimentary. “So that’s why you didn’t want to go on it,” he said, unthinkingly offering yet another display of his denseness.
Joy released his arm as though it had burned her and fumbled in her pocket for money. “Um, how many tries do you want, two or five?” She didn’t look at him, but there was no hiding the panic on her face.
“I didn’t mean—” Joshua broke off. “I mean, I just wanted to ride on it. I didn’t want to . . . Not that I wouldn’t.” He snapped his mouth closed and held his lips pressed together before he could use it to dig an even deeper hole in which to stick his stupid head.
“Relax,” she said, his obvious distress seeming to defuse her alarm somewhat. “It’s not like you’re my boyfriend or anything like that.”
“No,” said Joshua, hoping that his disappointment didn’t sound too pronounced. “Nothing like that.”
Across the baseball field Weston and Leah waited for their turn on the rickety ride. Leah was eyeing it with double apprehension. On top of the fact that the bolts on which their lives might depend looked none too tight or new, there was the other danger: At the wheel’s high point, where it stopped for regular intervals as riders disembarked or boarded directly below, the sloppily swaying seats were swathed in darkness—and uninterrupted privacy.
As though sensing her trepidation, Weston said, “It’s not that high, but we should get a good view of the surrounding neighborhood.” When she said nothing, he affected an overly proper demeanor and added priggishly, “But I’ll only do this if you promise not to get fresh with me.”
She tried to look mature as she asked, “Am I that pathetic?”
He looked genuinely startled for a moment and then as though he was considering the question quite seriously. “Pathetic? No, that is not the adjective that leaps to mind.”
She knew it was adolescent, but she couldn’t stop herself from asking, “What is?”
The line moved, and they took a few steps forward before pausing again. He seemed to find the question important. Finally he said, “Can I have more than one?”
“Sure,” she consented, and steeled herself to listen without commenting.
“Captivating, certainly. Beautiful, smart, very smart, opaque . . .”
In spite of her intentions, Leah burst out, “Opaque! What does that mean?”
“It means that I can’t see through you. You’re very hard to read, and I find that intriguing. Maybe that’s the best overall word to describe you, intriguing.”
They had reached the front of the line and it was their turn to clamber on. They stepped up onto the corrugated iron platform and then gingerly into the rickety basket. The grizzled attendant pulled the bar across their laps and grunted a monosyllable in response to their thanks.
The huge machinery ground its many wheels, and the chair moved abruptly up in a backward motion. They must have been the last of the new group to load, because it continued without stopping until it reached the top, making Leah catch her breath at the sudden height. The view of the carnival swirling below them and the dark hills rising in the distance was surreally beautiful and gave the sensation that they were floating on a sea of light.
As they hit the peak and started down again, Leah let out a small exclamation and held on tighter to the bar in front of her. “The ground just kind of went away, didn’t it?” she said, looking over at Weston’s face, dimly lit by the opalescent glow from below.
Weston was looking at her with amiable amusement. “That’s what I thought the first time I went up in a helicopter. I was sitting there and all of a sudden the ground went away. It was the most amazing feeling. I knew right then I had to learn to fly one.”
She rested her back against the side of the car so that she could face him better—and keep a safe distance. “What made you want to do what you do? I mean, it’s very dangerous, and like you said, it’s not exactly the most lucrative of careers.”
He twisted his body to face her more comfortably as well, crossing one long leg over the other to facilitate the angle; the move put his leg very close to hers, and though she was acutely aware of its proximity, she willed herself not to retreat. She was surprised to find, a few seconds later, that she had almost—but not quite—acclimated to its being there.
“I suppose it was my parents,” Weston said thoughtfully. “Both my mom and dad are very socially conscious people. We were a foster family; my mom taught kindergarten in a tough school to kids who didn’t even speak English; my dad was a cop. They’re retired now. We never had a ton of money, but that didn’t seem very important. Making a heap of money just wasn’t a value that I was given, if you can call acquiring wealth a value. What was impressed on me, from a very early age, was being of service to others, and being a decent person. That was being a success. Without those things, life didn’t seem worth much.” He shrugged as though she already knew this. “I like excitement and being physical, and community is really important to me—that was drilled into my brain early too—so when I went looking for careers, fire jumper seemed to sort of leap out at me, if you’ll forgive the lame pun.”
Leah was watching him, her feelings whirling faster than the Ferris wheel. His words had brought up a deep sense of inadequacy that felt like a lump of toxic sludge that had become lodged in her chest. Being of service to others? Finding a job that would help the community? She was stunned that she had never even considered that. Had she ever even thought of helping others as part of her everyday goals? She was horrified to find that the immediate answer was no. For some reason, it had always seemed like something that would come later, once she’d amassed all the career success and financial success that she craved so desperately. Yet she had to admit that, in spite of her elevating salary and position, she still felt lacking, incomplete, as though she wasn’t there yet. She had thought that when she made more, owned more, hit some as yet unidentified goal, she would eventually feel fulfilled. She would be successful.
“So there’s the basis of my operating systems,” Weston was saying even as they passed the terminally bored attendant on the ground and started the upsweep again. “Why did you become a banker?”
Leah didn’t respond for a moment. She was trying desperately to get ahold of her whiplash reaction, to justify, rationalize, to validate, not just this answer but her entire life. Finally, as they crested the night once again, she looked at him and gave her answer. “I became a mercenary career professional because my parents are divorced, spent their entire lives competing with each other and everyone else by acquiring as much money and as many material things as they could, and I grew up thinking that’s what you were supposed to do.” Her voice sounded flat and stunned, even to her. “I thought that’s what made you happy.”
“Were they happy?” Weston asked.
“No.” Leah shook her head vehemently. “They were miserable. Still are.”
Weston threw his head back and laughed from his gut. It was a fabulous, full-bodied laugh, the kind that Leah c
ouldn’t remember having since she was a child, and maybe she had only imagined it then. When he had recovered, he looked at her with tears of mirth in his eyes and said, “And honest. I would like to add that to my list of adjectives about you, brutally, ruthlessly, fearlessly honest.”
Leah had seldom in her life ever felt two things so diametrically opposed and so strongly at the same time. She was elatedly pleased with Weston and absolutely mortified with herself. “I’ve just been so caught up with all my problems and, uh, tribulations,” she offered, knowing it sounded trite, “that I never even thought about making an effort to help other people as a part of my overall plan, if you know what I mean.”
Weston reached out and very quickly brushed a hair from Leah’s face that had caught on the edge of her mouth, retracting his hand before she had time to react to the touch. “I always found,” he said simply, “that the more you focus on good, the less bad there will be in your life. I don’t know if it really changes anything, or just the way I look at it, but it sure does feel true.”
“Can you give me an example?” Leah asked, feeling lost.
“Well, okay.” He wrinkled his brow and then said, “I came to stop a brush fire in this neighborhood, which could be considered bad, but I met you, which I think is good.” He said this so matter-of-factly and without expectation that Leah didn’t squirm at all.
“But, I’ve had so many bad things happen to me,” Leah protested weakly.
“We all have, some worse than others,” Weston said sadly. He turned away from her and faced the dark hills. “But there comes a point when you have to get over your own problems and be of service to someone else.”
“Who?” She looked at him with a dawning horror that he must think she was one of the most selfish people he had ever met. As for what she thought of him, he mystified her. He was so different from the men she’d been attracted to before, whose identities were displayed entirely in their showy vehicles and expensive homes. He actually seemed to care more about the usefulness of what he did than whether or not it impressed others. It struck her like a bomb that this might just be the difference between feeling happy or perpetually inadequate.
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