Girl on the Ferris Wheel

by Julie Halpern

  I attempt to reassure my mom—and myself—that this is a temporary setback, based purely on situation and not chemical makeup. “I’m okay, Mom. School has been kind of stressful, and I ate this burrito thing at lunch yesterday. It was a bad choice. But I promise I’ll go tomorrow.” I hear myself say the p-word and cringe. It’s such a fake, bullshitty concept, and I regret it. She’s heard that word a million times before, and it has lost all sense of truth and meaning.

  It’s enough to get me out of school for a day, at least. “You can stay home if you meet Ava and Asher at the bus stop. And put in some laundry.” Mom hustles around the kitchen, tucking plastic sandwich bags into lunch boxes and screwing lids on water bottles.

  I consider asking her why I need to be the one to do either of those tasks when her husband is home all freaking day doing god knows what in the basement, but I got out of school with an empty promise and don’t need to push it.

  After everyone is out the door (except, as always, my dad), I escape to the cozy confines of my room-hole and plunk down on the futon. If I pause for two bathroom breaks and bring up a Pop-Tart for lunch, I can get through three and a half Harry Potters before the wee ones’ bus lands. The movies have a trancelike power over me, and the day flies by without me thinking much about my actual life.

  I curse the clock at 3:20, close the lid of my laptop, shuffle halfway into my Converse, and trudge to the bus stop across the street. The sun is blinding after a day spent with only a small octagonal window of light for seven straight hours. I shield my eyes with a hand salute until the bus arrives and the shadow looms over me. Asher and Ava seem relatively excited to see me, with big hugs from both and a sloppy kiss from Ava. I summon enough energy to make them an after-school snack of Goldfish, almonds, and Panda Puffs cereal (my patented snack mix). Isaac and Samara walk in twenty minutes later, offer indifferent hi’s, and head straight to the puzzle table for homework. I pop in a DVD of Scooby-Doo for Asher and Ava and Facetime Janina, who should just be leaving cosmetology school.

  She answers as I plop myself down at the kitchen table. “Hey!” She smiles warmly through the phone. “Where were you today? I swear I saw lover boy looking around forlornly for you.”

  I feel a twinge of hope at that but also know she’s kidding. “I stayed home. Stomachache. Didn’t really feel like going to school.” I detect a drop in the smile from Janina and know she’s thinking just what my mom was: Is this happening again? So I lay on the smile extra thick. “No worries. I’m okay. You stay home sometimes. Everyone does, and they don’t get guilt-tripped about it.”

  “True. You’ll be back tomorrow, though, right? It’s Friday. Dmitri’s show is Saturday.” Janina singsongs this information, as though tempting me. It’s not tempting, though. It’s traumatizing.

  “I don’t know if I want to go,” I sigh.

  “You want to go. You will go. Even if you don’t actually want to go. We’re going.”

  “Um. Okay.” We stare each other down through the phone screen until Janina cracks and laughs lightly. “Gotta go! I’ll see you tomorrow. Promise?”

  “I promise.” And there it is again. Right after I say it, I know I won’t go to school. It’s a terrible feeling. It’s like I’m stabbing myself in the face over and over and I know it hurts and is bad for me, but I can’t stop doing it. And even while I’m doing it, I’m telling myself, “You should really stop because stabbing yourself in the face is probably going to leave scars and think of all the blood you’ll have to clean up and you’ll look so much better if you don’t have a face full of stab wounds and you, you know, still have eyes and all.” But I can’t stop doing it.

  If I go to school, I’ll have to see Dmitri. I’ll have to explain why I wasn’t in school today. That’s humiliating.

  I spend the hours until my mom comes home trying to concoct a story that will get me out of school tomorrow, one that won’t feel like I’m backpedaling or breaking promises. And then, like a gift from the heavens above, Ava throws up on me. Three hours later, I’m praying to the porcelain gods alongside her.

  It’s a vomit-filled miracle.

  Dmitri

  “Dude,” Chad says, “stop calling it the Seventh Street Entry. Everyone cool just calls it the Entry.”

  Drew rolls his eyes. “Do you call it the Entry?”

  “Yes, that’s what I’m telling you!”

  “Then not everyone cool calls it the Entry.” Kyle laughs.

  “Ha. Ha,” Chad answers, drawing out each syllable. “I just don’t want us to seem like Podunks.”

  “Just be yourself, Chad,” Kyle says, “and relax.”

  We’re in the cramped backstage area of the club. There’s some graffiti on the cinder-block wall, some ratty old furniture, and that’s pretty much it. Drew and Kyle are using electric tuners to get their instruments in sync and Chad is doing push-ups. He wants us to think he’s some kind of buff god, but I’m pretty sure he only ever exercises when other people are watching. As for me, I’m pacing.

  It’s five minutes to showtime and I’m starting to freak out. There are like 250 people here. We’re used to playing for audiences of twenty or thirty, so this feels huge. For the most part they’re not here to see us; the headliner, Pig Pimples, won’t go on until 10:30, and it’s only 8:25 now. (It was Kyle who figured out the name Pig Pimples was a play on Hogwarts. I wish we’d thought of that. Genius.)

  The stage lights, which are low, scatter illumination on the row of people right up front and since we’re first on the bill, that’s mostly our crew. There’s Kyle’s girlfriend, Drew’s girlfriend, Nicky with his friend Jason, and Reggie, who I’m blown away to see is wearing all white—white Sex Pistols tee, white skirt, white tights, even white go-go boots. The way her outfit contrasts with her black hair and thick black eyeliner, she looks kind of amazing.

  The one person I don’t see is Eliana.

  I’ve been checking every few minutes for the last hour, but there’s no sign of her. I even looked outside the front door by the legendary wall of stars, and nothing.

  The wall of stars outside the door to the Entry—there, I said it right—is like the Hollywood Walk of Fame for notable bands that have come through the Twin Cities. Hanging just above the upper left-hand corner of the door, in a spot of what I think must be supreme honor, is Hüsker Dü. Someday Unexpected Turbulence is going to have one of those stars. I can just feel it.

  Anyway, when I don’t find Eliana anywhere, I text her. No surprise that she doesn’t text back. I’m stewing over this as I pace a groove into the floor of the green room when a thirtysomething man pokes his head in. “Unexpected Turbulence, let’s get this started.”

  “Bring it in.” Chad does this before every gig. He has us form a small circle, or, since there are four of us, I guess a kind of square, put our hands in the middle, and chant “U.T., U.T., U.T.!” Then we break our hands apart dramatically. It’s a dumb ritual, but I think each of us likes it in his own way. And by now it would be bad luck not to do it.

  Showtime.

  There are some whoops and hollers from our friends up front, along with some half-hearted claps from those farther back, as we take the stage. The spotlights are now on full, so any hope of finding Eliana is lost; everyone beyond the first row of people standing up against the stage is in silhouette.

  Chad takes the mic out of the stand, puts it to his lips, and lets out a booming “Helloooooooo, Minneapolis!” We practiced this over and over; it’s my cue to start the thundering beat of our first song and I don’t miss it. I begin with fast-paced eighth notes on the floor tom and alternating quarter notes on the bass and snare, all with a ferocity I didn’t know I had. Two measures later, Chad, Drew, and Kyle thunder in and we’re off and running.

  I’ve read stories about athletes getting in the zone during big games—there’s a scene in this dumb Kevin Costner baseball movie where he’s on the mound in Yankee Stadium and shuts out all external stimuli other than the batter and umpire, and just pit
ches—and that’s what happens to me. Everything outside the music melts away; the four of us become one with the audience and I experience a kind of high I’ve never felt before. Is this what sex feels like?

  By the time we’ve played through most of our half-hour set, the smattering of applause has swelled to a torrent. The entire room is shimmying and shaking and practically convulsing to the music. People seem infected with the groove we’re laying down. I feel powerful and humbled and grateful and euphoric all at once.

  When we finish a song called “Tire Swing”—a Kyle-written love song with a very sad and dark undertone—it’s time for “Girl on the Ferris Wheel.” Chad looks to Kyle to start the guitar part that leads us in, but before he does, Kyle turns back to face me.

  “Eliana,” he says, “right?”

  What? Why is he asking me this? I nod.

  Kyle turns back to his mic. “Our unassuming drummer—” Before he can finish there’s some spontaneous applause. “That’s right, give it up for Dmitri!” There are more cheers and I’m pretty sure I blush. “Anyway,” Kyle continues, “Dimmi wrote this next song for the girl of his dreams. Is Eliana in the house?”

  What. The. Fuck. He did not just do that.

  There are murmurs and questions and heads craning this way and that, and I think I’m going to die of embarrassment because Eliana didn’t show, when a loud, “Here! She’s right here!” booms from somewhere near the back. I know right away the voice belongs to Janina. There’s some tussling in the crowd, the front row parts like the Red Sea, and a large, long, elegant hand shoves Eliana forward until her shins bump the stage. The lights fall on her like stardust.

  She’s wearing a black shirt, blue jeans, and Converse high-tops. It’s a simple outfit she’s worn to school before, but somehow she looks different. I think maybe she’s wearing makeup, and her hair has definitely been tended to. One of the colored lights catches her eyes, which are crazy-wide with embarrassment, and they twinkle.

  She.

  Looks.

  Beautiful.

  And she came.

  She’s here.

  “Welcome to the Entry, Eliana,” Kyle says to her. “Dmitri wrote this next song for you.” Before Eliana can react, before I can say anything, he starts that captivating guitar riff. Part of me wants to kill him, part of me wants to pay him a million dollars.

  Eliana, with Janina right behind her, stands dumbfounded as we play the song. Chad half sings to her and half sings to the crowd. I concentrate on the drums, but can’t take my eyes off Eliana. She looks back and forth between me and Chad, like maybe she’s confused as to who is actually singing to her, which kind of freaks me out. It’s me, I try thinking loudly, it’s me!

  When the song is over, while the audience goes nuts with appreciation, Eliana mouths “thank you” to me, takes a step back, and is swallowed by the sea of people. We play the last song in our set, and, like Chad predicted and hoped, we’re called back for an encore.

  This gig was everything I’d dreamed it would be and more.

  When we’re done, the stage lights dim and we move quickly to get our gear out of the way for the second opening band, a three-piece that was famous in the 1980s (kind of a nostalgia act now), called the Scar Boys. I’m looking everywhere for Eliana while I move gear, but I don’t see her. I have a sick feeling in my stomach that the song was too much and she left.

  As I’m taking the last piece of my equipment—a crash cymbal—off the stage, I turn around and Eliana is standing three feet away, like she appeared out of thin air.

  “Hey!” I say with enough excitement that I probably sound deranged.

  She pauses just long enough to make me wonder if she’s okay, then steps forward, takes my face in her hand, and kisses me, hard, on the mouth.

  Someone kill me now, because I could never, ever, EVER die happier than this.

  Eliana

  “We’ll be fine, Mom. Great, in fact. The house will probably be standing when you get home. We promise. Right, guys?” Mom and Dad stand in the doorway, about to leave for their first date in forever. Dad somehow managed to put on a button-down shirt for the occasion (I’m surprised he remembered how to manipulate a buttonhole), and Mom is wearing a skirt reserved for the Jewish High Holidays. I look toward my siblings and Dmitri, who is here to help me hold down the fort. Or so I told my parents. My actual plan is to pay off Samara to give me and Dmitri some alone time in the basement while we watch a movie.

  It was my idea to put in Psycho, partially because, as it’s an Alfred Hitchcock gem, I have the excuse to give the parentals that it’s for school; but mostly because I love it so much.

  “Why did he call the movie ‘Psycho’?” Dmitri asks, as we dump my dad’s collectibles off a hideously brown-and-orange-plaid couch, once a fixture in my Grandma Eddie’s rumpus room. My dad refuses to get rid of the couch because it holds “special memories.” My standard retort for that is “and special couch bugs.” Is that a thing? Couch bugs?

  “It’s such a perfect title! Kind of random and not once referenced in the movie, but it sounds so good!” I argue. “Can you imagine what it was like to see a movie with a person brutally murdered and stuffed into the trunk of a car back in 1960? It must have been terrifying!”

  “Spoiler alert,” Dmitri coughs.

  “I thought you’ve seen this,” I say, plopping down onto a lumpy cushion. Dmitri plops down next to me, arm hairs tickling my own.

  “I have. Of course I have, but I can’t be expected to remember every little detail.”

  “Being stuffed into a trunk is hardly a little detail. I’m guessing it’s all a shower scene blur in your man brain.”

  “I should be offended by that,” Dmitri says, “if it weren’t true.” I dole out an elbow to the rib. Sometimes I worry I’m too physically aggressive, but Dmitri never responds with anything but a jokey retort. So I think I’m safe. I hope.

  The opening credits tear across the screen like knife blades, the violins striking over and over. “Brilliant soundtrack,” Dmitri notes. I concur.

  The movie opens with a shirtless man and woman, dressing after a midday hotel rendezvous. I wonder if Dmitri’s uncomfortable watching this gorgeous and endowed woman in her massive bullet-boob bra while sitting next to me. The onscreen couple kisses, and the way Hitchcock filmed it allows you to hear every smeck and peck of the lips. It’s extremely intimate compared with today’s music-swelling, mood-lighting, faker-than-fake smooching we put on film. It also makes for a lot of empty airspace.

  “Did you know that actress is Jamie Lee Curtis’s mom?” Dmitri asks.

  I try not to roll my eyes. “Uh, yeah, everyone knows that. And it took her years to be able to take a shower again. Which is kind of strange, you know? I mean, if you’re in the movie and you know that you were not actually killed while taking a shower, what would be so scary about it, then? My mom had a college roommate who would never take a shower unless she knew someone else was home at the time.” Should I stop talking about women taking showers?

  There’s at least a good half hour of suspense before someone finally gets offed, and it’s every bit as brilliant as I remember.

  “Anthony Perkins is beautifully creepy, isn’t he?” I ask Dmitri. His arm is now around my shoulder. I both really want it there and really want to focus on the movie, which is confusing.

  “What exactly do you mean by beautiful?” Dmitri asks.

  “Do I detect a hint of jealousy?” I say. “After I had to watch Bullet Boobs McGee gallivanting around in her skivvies?” Dmitri chokes on my ridiculous choice of nicknames. “Yes, Anthony Perkins was crazy hot in that skinny, David Tennant, black-and-white kind of way. That makes him all the more unsettling in this movie.” Dmitri kisses my cheek, and now I’m unsettled.

  “I’ve heard he was so good in Psycho that it completely ruined his career,” Dmitri explains.

  “Did you pull up the Psycho Wikipedia page before you came over?” I tease.

  “Maybe…”<
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  There are moments that pass where I know Dmitri is looking at me, breathing on my ear in a way that suggests he’s not really paying attention to the movie. But what if my brothers or sisters burst into the basement to ask for a snack? What if they catch us mid-lip-lock and I have to explain that to my parents and I’m never allowed to watch a movie with Dimmi in my basement again? I don’t want him to think I don’t want to, though.

  “Hey.” I turn toward Dimmi, his face close enough that our noses touch. I kiss him, and the room is electrically charged. He leans in for more kissing, and I swear my siblings can hear our smacks, as though we’re part of a Hitchcock film. I push Dmitri lightly away. “I don’t want my brothers and sisters to catch us,” I say.

  “Do you think they would?” Dmitri asks. “You paid off Samara, right?” He goes in for another kiss. I hesitantly give in to him.

  “Does your brother ever interrupt you when you’re doing something, even when you ask him not to?” I ask, and his eyes click with recognition.

  “Good point.” Dmitri folds.

  Toward the end of the movie the know-it-all shrink explains the entire psychiatric reason for Norman Bates’s killer instinct.

  “This is so boring! I wish Norman Bates as Norman Bates’s mother would just kill this guy!” I shout at the screen. “Do you think people back in the day of Psycho shouted at the screen like people do today?”

  “I doubt it. Society was so much more polite, in a sort of racist, sexist, homophobic way,” Dmitri notes.