Girl on the Ferris Wheel

by Julie Halpern

  That’s actually a good question and I’m not sure I have an answer, but I try anyway. “It kind of felt like she was done hanging out with me. Like she just wanted to go home.”

  “Did you kiss her good night?”

  “We shook hands.”

  Now Nicky’s other eyebrow joins the first, so they’re both in an elevated state of … what? Surprise? Pity? Comedy? “Did you ask her for another date?”

  Damn. Another really good question. Maybe next time I should bring Nicky with me.

  “No.”

  “I think you’re supposed to do that.”

  “Yeah.”

  We’re both silent for a minute. Nicky looks at me expectantly, like he’s waiting for me to catch up. And I do. “You think I should ask her now?”

  He looks at the clock on the wall. It’s ten P.M. Not too late. I nod and pick up my phone, and then stop.

  “Where should we go? The movies?”

  “The Greek festival is next weekend.”

  You know the scene in the movie where the protagonist somehow doesn’t see the really obvious thing everyone in the audience sees? Like in Percy Jackson, when the entire audience knows that some random person is a demonic creature sent to destroy him, but Percy is just oblivious? That’s what it was like with the suggestion of the Greek festival. Not only will Eliana have to meet my family, and not only is it the complete opposite of the quiet two-person date she suggested, it will absolutely shine a spotlight on the overwhelming Greekness of clan Digrindakis; I will be exposed for how weird I am.

  But I think of none of that. Instead, I tell Nicky, “Good idea,” and start typing my text to Eliana.

  Eliana

  I’m snuggled under my blankets replaying the football game when I hear my phone buzz. Janina and I already finished a quick debriefing of the evening while I brushed my teeth.

  JANINA: How was the game?

  ME: Oh, you know, gamey.

  JANINA: So you didn’t kiss him?

  ME: How did you know?

  JANINA: No exclamation points.

  ME: Ah.

  JANINA: Will there be another game?

  ME: I don’t know. I bailed kind of early. He probably thinks I’m a freak who doesn’t even like him.

  JANINA: But you do, right?

  ME: Yes. Which means I’ll probably never hear from him again. Sigh.

  JANINA: On that cheerful note, I really have to rinse this bleach off my lip.

  ME: Say what?

  JANINA: Moustache issues.

  ME: Uhhhh …

  JANINA: Good night!

  When I hear another buzz, I roll over and paw for my phone, which always somehow creeps slightly out of arm’s length away. The effort of having to roll over, thus unwrapping my burrito-like state, annoys me, and I’m about to curse whoever texted me when I see it’s from Dmitri.

  I sit up sharply.

  DMITRI: Hey! Since football isn’t your thing (or mine), I was wondering if you wanted to go to a Greek festival with me next Friday. Rides, food, Greeks … and me!

  I sit with the text a moment, nearly cuddling the phone. With a burst of energy I type:

  ME: yed

  and hit the send button before autocorrect or I manage to fix the spelling.

  I scramble to edit and end up sending the exact same wrong word.

  ME: yed

  Crap.

  ME: YES

  I text. All caps.

  After a minute, I receive a reply.

  DMITRI: I am glad that yed, yed, and YES you can come.

  ME: Good night, Dmitri.

  It feels brazen to type his name.

  DMITRI: Good night, Eliana.

  Dmitri

  I’m not really sure how I’m supposed to act when Eliana and I see each other at school on Monday. Are we boyfriend and girlfriend? Are we just friends? We have a second date, so I figure we have to be something.

  I keep looking over my shoulder as I drop my stuff in my locker, scanning the hallway for Eliana—I don’t want to have to wait for film class—but there’s no sign of her. I wish our lockers were closer. Damn, I think I really like this girl.

  “You shook hands good night?”

  Reggie can be ninja-like in creeping up on people. Even with me surveying the hall, I didn’t see her coming. It must be all the gymnastics. And the fact that she’s under five feet tall.

  “How did you know we…,” I start to ask, but honestly, I’m not in the mood for Reggie and her ring of information. “Never mind.”

  “Seriously. That’s lame even for you.”

  “Don’t you have someone else to bother?”

  “Not at the moment.” A smile loaded with mischief plays across Reggie’s face, and it makes me soften. This is classic Reg. She’ll dig at a person, like she’s picking a scab on their arm—too personal, too invasive, and kind of gross. But she does it in a way that is somehow charming and endearing. Although I might be the only person to see it that way. She doesn’t have a lot of friends.

  “You know you’re supposed to kiss the girl good night, right? Do I need to teach you everything?”

  “Not that it’s any of your business, but her mother was right there.”

  “Yeah, okay, probably a good choice not to kiss then. But a handshake?”

  “She shook my hand.” I’m feeling exasperated. “Look, can you just let it go?”

  “Whatever, lover boy, whatever.” And then Reg, as she is wont to do, wanders off.

  A second later there’s a tap on my shoulder. I turn around, and for an instant, I think no one’s there. Then I see Eliana on the other side of me. The old fake shoulder-tap trick; I cannot believe I fell for that.

  “I cannot believe you fell for that,” she says.

  It doesn’t matter. It’s Eliana. She’s here. She sought me out. I feel like the Grinch when his heart grew three sizes that day.

  And she’s smiling. Wow … that smile.

  “That girl is weird,” Eliana says, nodding down the hall just as our last view of Reggie is swallowed by the growing mass of students heading for homeroom.

  “Don’t I know it,” I mutter.

  “A former girlfriend?” Eliana tries to pass the question off as playful, but doesn’t do such a good job of it. This is my first-ever encounter with anything that even remotely smacks of jealousy.

  “Huh? Oh god, no. We’ve just been in school together for like a million years is all.” I feel kind of bad for downplaying my relationship with Reggie—she really is one of my best friends—but right now I need to remove any reasons for Eliana not to like me.

  “So what does a non-Greek girl wear to a Greek festival?” she asks, noticeably changing the subject.

  “Hmmm … Well, my grandmother wears nothing but shapeless gray dresses, so maybe that?”

  Eliana’s eyes dart to the side for a second before landing back on my face. In poker this would be called a tell. She doesn’t know I’m kidding. Part of me wants to see if she’ll actually find a shapeless gray dress to wear. While that would be a pretty funny prank, I have to believe doing so would be an unforgivable offense.

  “I’m kidding,” I tell her.

  Where she shoved me at the football game (when I startled her), now she punches me. Hard. Really hard.

  “Hey!”

  “If I had shown up dressed the same as your grandmother, only to find out you were kidding, I probably would have killed you. Just so you know.” But she’s still smiling.

  The bell rings, and on instinct—just like that Russian guy’s dog and the dinner bell we learned about in science last year—we turn in opposite directions to head to class.

  “Dress like you would for a state fair,” I tell her over my shoulder.

  “I’ve never been to a state fair!”

  “Oh. Then go with the gray dress.”

  “Dmitri!” She’s laughing now and I grab her arm to stop her.

  “What period do you have lunch?” I ask.

  “Sixth
.”

  The air goes out of my sails a bit. “Oh, I’m fifth.”

  “It’s okay. I don’t eat lunch with people who don’t take fashion seriously.”

  I pause for a second to look Eliana up and down. Faded blue jeans, navy blue sweater with loose threads, Converse that have seen better days. “Really?”

  She sees me evaluating her fashion sense and then blushes. “Don’t push your luck, buster.” And she punches me, again. I rub the spot on my shoulder, which will very likely be sporting a bruise later today. I might have to talk to her about these random acts of violence. “And no, not really. See you in film class.”

  And with that, she’s gone.

  Eliana

  I wish I could live through a shopping montage. Like in the movies when one person tries on outfit after outfit, and their friends shake their heads no, until the perfect outfit rears its fashionable head and then everyone is all, “That’s it! That’s the one!”

  Instead, Janina is crammed into my room-hole, attempting to coerce me into buying something—anything—online other than a black t-shirt and skinny jeans.

  “Look at this sweater. It’s pink and fuzzy! Like a pink baby bunny!” Janina rotates the laptop to expose a ridiculous cotton candy explosion of a hoodie.

  “Why would anyone want to wear something that looks like a skinned, dyed animal? Plus, pink?”

  “You would look nice in pink. And in something without a hole in it.”

  “Some of us don’t have the luxury of buying new clothes all the time,” I argue.

  “I’m not even saying new. We’re thrifty. Hell, you can rifle through my closet. This is a date plus parental units. I’m merely looking out so you make a strong first impression.” Janina swishes my bangs out of my face.

  “Do I really need to woo them with my clothes? It’s a festival in fall. We’ll be wearing jackets. Why do you care so much about this anyway? You’re usually pretty chill about me being my old, surly self.”

  “You’re right. I’m sorry. You just seemed so excited after your football thing—”

  “I did?” My face warms.

  “You’re blushing! See, pink does look good on you!”

  I smack Janina on the arm.

  “Dude. You may need to tone down the random acts of violence.” Janina rubs the spot where I so lightly tapped her.

  “But then how will I show Dmitri that I’m dominant?” Janina scrunches her forehead at me. “I kid. Ha. See how light and funny I am? Not a care in the world. Now help me pick the least worn-out shirt to wear to the Greek festival.”

  I try on six different t-shirt and hoodie combos while Janina checks her phone, managing to give me five thumbs-down and one side-to-side “so-so” hand gesture for the final one.

  “We have a winner!” I decide.

  Greek festival, here I come. With or without my montage.

  Dmitri

  My father’s view of American culture is frozen somewhere around 1957. That doesn’t really make sense, since he was born in 1960 and came here in 1982 to attend graduate school. He should be fascinated with Bon Jovi, DeLoreans, and President Reagan. And while he does put Reagan on a kind of pedestal—we have a framed portrait of Ron and Nancy in our living room—the rest of his worldview is from an older time. Case in point: the Cadillac.

  It wouldn’t be so bad if Dad had a cool, vintage, convertible Caddy with tail fins. No, we cruise the streets of suburban Minneapolis in a black 2008 Cadillac DTS. It looks like it belongs to a fleet of cars from a limo service that’s fallen on hard times. Like you call 1-800-WE-RIDE-U (because who else would still use a 1-800 number) and this is the car they send, complete with a geriatric driver with a white shirt, black vest, and one of those stupid caps. But because it’s a Cadillac, Dad believes it makes him seem important. Like he’s Frank Sinatra.

  I hate this car.

  When Eliana asked if we could meet at the festival, a wave of relief washed over me. Having her ride with my family, in the Caddy, would be worse than dental surgery. And dental surgery, in case you didn’t know, sucks.

  We’re in the “land-boat” (Nicky’s name for the Cadillac) on the way to the church when I spring the news on my family that I have a date.

  “Dimmi-moo!” Yia Yia exclaims. That’s something Greek grandmothers do. They add a “moo” syllable to the end of someone’s name to show affection; Nicky-moo, Yani-moo … you get the idea. It always sounded normal to me—I used to even kind of like it—until friends caught wind and made it a focal point of teasing. There are only so many times you can hear your bandmates call you Dmitri-moo before it starts to get under your skin.

  “It’s not a big deal, Yia Yia,” I say. “She’s just a girl from school.”

  “Who this girl? Does she go our church?” My mother’s question underscores a certain kind of prejudice that exists in our community, and that probably exists in other immigrant communities, too. My mom starts with the blind assumption—no, not an assumption, a core belief—that this girl is Greek. It’s inconceivable that she could be anything else.

  “No, Ma, she doesn’t.”

  “What church she go to, then?” I can hear the confusion as my mother tries to sort out the location of the next closest Greek Orthodox church, and, doing the math, wonders how I could have met a girl from so far away.

  “She’s not Greek.”

  Lesson Number One from Dmitri Digrindakis’s forthcoming bestseller, How to Stop a Conversation in a Greek Family Dead in Its Tracks: Tell them your girlfriend is not Greek.

  The only sound is the whine of the DTS’s balding tires against the blacktop.

  “Then what is she?” my father finally asks. The wariness in his tone suggests he’s wondering if I’m dating someone from another species.

  “I’m not sure. I think she might be Jewish.”

  A longer silence, the sound of the wheels somehow louder now.

  “Jewish? Like Sammy Davis Jr.?”

  I only know who Sammy Davis Jr. is because next to the framed photo of Ron and Nancy is a framed photo of the Rat Pack.

  1957.

  “Sure, but she’s not Black.” The collective exhale from my family—well, not Nicky, he’s reading a book and doing his best to ignore this exchange—fills the car with stale breath and too much carbon dioxide. I crack a window and do my best not to vomit in shame.

  I once tried to have a conversation with my parents about tolerance, about how America is a great melting pot, how people here are just people, how the color of their skin or their religion doesn’t matter. (I left gay people off the list, because, you know, Rome wasn’t built in a day.) It was right after my father had uttered a racial slur, thankfully in Greek, to describe the young Black woman who had been waiting on our table at Chili’s. The girl didn’t understand what my father said, but I think she picked up on the tone and I wanted to die. It’s true, she wasn’t the best waitress, but she just as easily could have been an inept white, or heaven forbid and forgive all that is holy, Greek, waitress. I made that point to my parents, too.

  “Of course, Dimmi,” my mother said in English. “Of course.” But she was just saying that to shut me up.

  “Please,” I beg now, “if you meet her, don’t make a big deal, okay? Just try to be normal.”

  “What? I am most normal guy you know!” My father’s Trump-like protest is left unanswered as he turns our 5,347-pound Cadillac (I looked it up) into the church parking lot.

  We’re here half an hour before the time Eliana is supposed to arrive. As my parents bark unheard instructions at our backs, Nicky and I take off to scope things out.

  The church, Prophet Elias—and now that I think about it, the names Elias and Eliana must come from the same root; I suppose that’s kind of cool—hires an outside company to run the festival, which means it has all the trappings of any other carnival or county fair. There are games (shoot the clown in the mouth with a water gun to explode a balloon, throw basketballs into a hoop too physically small to allow
the ball to pass through, knock bottles over with cruddy old baseballs), rides (a small roller coaster, bumper cars, and of course, the granddaddy of them all, the Ferris wheel), and food concessions, these provided by the congregation rather than the carnival company. There are gyros (pronounced “year-ohs,” not “jie-rohs,” oh, ye uninformed), souvlaki, moussaka, and an assortment of Greek desserts, including my favorite, loukoumades, fried dough balls dripping with honey.

  I’m checking my phone every twenty seconds to see what time it is, and to see if Eliana has texted to cancel. Reality is moving forward at a glacial pace, but at least there is no text. I should be less nervous for our second date than our first, but the proximity of my family, and the overwhelming Greekness of my surroundings, are kind of freaking me out.

  “How do I look?” I ask Nicky. He’s wearing jeans that stop two inches above his ankles and a denim jacket with an “Eat Sleep Read” button on it, so maybe he’s not the best person to be giving me fashion advice, but he’s all I have. I spent an hour trying on every piece of clothing I own, winding up with my favorite gig outfit: black jeans, white Johnny Cash t-shirt, gray sweater with a hood, and black sneakers.

  Nicky looks me up and down, is about to say something, then shrugs. “I don’t know. Good, I guess?”

  “Thanks.” I hope he hears the sarcasm in my voice. “You’ve been helpful.”

  “How is it going, Digrindakis boys?”

  We whirl around and are standing face-to-face with George Parikos; he’s Nicky’s age, my height, the weight of a sumo wrestler, and sports a heavy five o’clock shadow that probably started rearing its ugly head around one thirty this afternoon. Someday George will win Olympic gold in weight lifting. He moved here with his family five years ago, and we see him every week at church and in Sunday school. He’s kind of a cretin.

  “Hi, George,” I say. “Where’s your other half?” I ask, nodding at his “I’m with Stupid” t-shirt.

  “Huh?”

  “Your shirt. You’re supposed to walk next to someone with a shirt that says ‘Stupid.’”