Girl on the Ferris Wheel

by Julie Halpern

  “Once I went to a movie where a guy’s head got chopped off, and someone in the audience yelled, ‘His head hurts now! His head hurts now!’” Dmitri and I laugh, and it sets off a tickle fight that has us tangled up in a knot of arms and legs. We kiss again because it’s pretty much impossible not to when we’re this close.

  And then the basement door squeaks open. “Ellie?” It’s Asher. “I had an accident, and Samara won’t clean it up!”

  From behind him, Samara yells, “I didn’t sign up to clean up your pee, Asher!”

  “See?” I say to Dmitri, as we undo our snuggly pretzel.

  “Think Isaac would clean up the pee if I gave him twenty bucks?” Dmitri asks, pulling me back down to the couch as I attempt to stand up.

  Then we hear the sound of the front door squealing open, and Mom and Dad are home again. Shortest date ever.

  “Welcome to my life, Dmitri.”

  He smiles, and I’m so glad he’s in it.

  Dmitri

  My three favorite things about Chad, in order, are:

  1. The knowledge that someday he’s going to die.

  Nope. Nothing else. That’s all I’ve got.

  This is the first time Eliana has come to rehearsal, and Chad decided to be Chad the second we walked through the door.

  “Oh cool, it’s the girl on the Ferris wheel. How’d you like the way I sang that song to you?” Then he blew her a kiss and started cackling.

  I was about to say something to put him in his place, but Kyle beat me to it.

  “You’ll have to excuse Chad, Eliana, he has a medical condition called penilopia.”

  I could see the twinkle in Ellie’s eyes. She knew where Kyle’s joke was going before the punch line but played along anyway. “What’s that?”

  “He’s a dick.”

  “Whatever,” Chad muttered, turning his back on the communal laughter and pretending to scribble lyrics in his notebook.

  In addition to the band, Kyle’s and Drew’s girlfriends are here. They’re sitting side by side on a crappy little couch shoved against the only unoccupied space of wall in the room. It reminds me a bit of the couch in Ellie’s basement, the one she claims has an infestation of “couch bugs.” (That hasn’t stopped us from snuggling on it to watch movies.)

  Ellie and I have had exactly seven dates since the day I followed her into the bathroom. While she has repeatedly made sure I understand the error in judgment that propelled me into the girls’ room in the first place (and I do, I really do), and even though we haven’t said it out loud yet, we’re definitely boyfriend and girlfriend. I mean, I visit her locker between every period, even though my locker is really far away; we hang out on weekends; and I text her almost every night. Aw, who am I kidding, I text her every night.

  Anyway, it’s gotten serious enough that I figured I could invite Ellie to see Unexpected Turbulence practice. I think she must really want to, because she asked me last week, “What the hell do you do at rehearsal anyway? Tell stories about your female conquests? Sneak beers? Have pillow fights?” That last one made me laugh out loud. It seemed like she wanted to see how the sausage was made, so to speak, so I asked, and she said yes. (Well, she said no the first two times I asked, but I figured she was being polite.)

  The room at Ace is so small that there’s really no physical space for Eliana other than on the couch. And that’s where Ellie sits, between DiDi (Kyle’s girlfriend), and Gwen (Drew’s girlfriend). They scooched apart when Ellie sat down, to make room, but really there wasn’t room. I think it’s kind of cute the way they’re all smooshed together. I’m sure Ellie and I will laugh about it later.

  DiDi and Gwen are both super nice. They’re seniors at Walter Mondale and hang around with this clique of popular girls. They groom themselves in the vein of Janet Leigh from Psycho—what did Eliana call her? Bullet Boobs? Not that they have big boobs or anything, just that they’re really well put together. Not that Eliana’s not well put together. Arrrrggggghhhh! Being a boyfriend is a lot harder than the brochure makes it out to be. Anyway, seeing Ellie between DiDi and Gwen is cool. It feels right.

  “All right, everyone, saddle up.” This is Chad’s cue that he wants us to run through our set. As I’m counting us in, I see DiDi and Gwen put their earplugs in. Crap. I forgot to tell Ellie to bring earplugs. The look of panic on her face is a palpable thing. The nanoseconds of time between each of the four clicks of my drumsticks, setting the tempo for the song, unfold in some weird, altered state of time. Part of my brain wonders if I can tap some inner Flash superpower and leave between clicks three and four to get earplugs for Ellie. Then I snap back to reality and bring us in on the crash cymbal.

  I think Ellie screams, “Oh my god!” but we’re so loud I can’t be sure. I’m the only one who notices. She squeezes her arms from between the Bullet Boob girls, elbowing DiDi’s actual boob in the process, and plugs her ears with her fingers.

  Unfortunately, the way UT runs through a set at rehearsal, we don’t stop for thirty solid minutes. But Eliana is a trouper. She’s all smiles when we’re done. It’s not a smile I’ve seen on her before—more teeth than usual, and her eyes are squinted a bit—but she’s smiling, and that’s what matters.

  Damn, I think I’m really falling for this girl.

  Winter

  Eliana

  “You want to drop out of your film class?” Mr. Person has on a hideous red-and-green sweater that I can only hope is in on the joke. He seems more annoyed than usual. The day before winter break should not do that to a person. Or a Person.

  “Maybe. I’m not sure. And it’s not dropping out if I do it at the semester, right? It’s just a change in schedule. I remember this from last year. I can get my A and then switch into a different class, first day of the new semester in January. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.” I spread on a cheesy smile for extra “eezy.”

  “What’s wrong with film class?” Mr. Person leans back in his chair and attempts to pull a pencil with a filthy eraser nub out of a mug reading “You Got to Coordinate.” He tugs too hard, and the mug topples its contents all over the floor. I lean down to help him pick up the pencils and stretched-open paper clips.

  “Nothing is wrong with it, per se. I just need a change. I’ve already seen all of the movies anyway.”

  “What would you take instead?” Mr. Person attempts to act casual by placing the pencil in his mouth, then realizes it’s the pencil tip and pulls it out with disgust. He eyes the eraser side, and seeing it is no better, flings the pencil across his desk.

  “You tell me. What’s available?” I consider picking up the pencil and putting it back in the “You Got to Coordinate” mug, but Mr. Person did have it in his mouth. Would it help convince him I need to change classes?

  Initially I had tried to convince Mr. Tannis that he should mix up the seating assignments in film class. But he was very confused and asked way too many questions. I wasn’t about to tell him that I just needed a little bit of space from my boyfriend because sitting next to him during film class and having him whisper sweet nothings in my ear is crazy distracting. Dmitri doesn’t always want to take my not-so-subtle ignoring him as a hint, but I also don’t want to have to directly tell him that it is kind of embarrassing to be the girl in the back of the classroom with her boyfriend staring at her instead of the movie. Switching classes is the obvious right choice here.

  Mr. Person squints at his desktop and clicks around. “The sheer variety of options is staggering,” he drolls. “You have study hall A, study hall B, shop, and yearbook.”

  “You know I can’t waste my time in study hall, although B sounds complex with a hint of mystery.” Mr. Person does not smile. What would he rather be doing with his time? “If I join yearbook, would I have to, like, talk to people?” I wonder if the Person family call themselves People when there is more than one of them around.

  “You could just sit there with your mouth shut for the next five months. I don’t know if anyone would mind. Perhaps they’d
even appreciate it.”

  “Yowch, Mr. P. You are extra sassy today. What I meant was would I have to do interviews and walk around the school with a camera around my neck, taking pictures of exciting things like kids leaning against lockers and running in track meets? Because I see myself as more of a behind-the-scenes type of gal.”

  Mr. Person is the king of the extra-long beat. He pauses first to the point of humor, and then he extends it to the maximum for discomfort. Did I overstep with the “sassy” remark?

  “These are questions for Ms. Wendell. I’m sure she will shove you into a corner by your lonesome, if that is what you so wish.”

  “Going anywhere for winter break, Mr. Person?” I cheerily ask.

  “My in-laws are coming in tonight to stay with us. For two whole weeks.”

  “You must be overjoyed,” I note, although he clearly is not.

  “That’s one way to put it.” Mr. Person turns toward his desktop and poises his hands for typing. “So are we making this change official, or would you like to mull it over and come bother me again after winter break?”

  “By ‘bother,’ you mean make your day a little brighter, right?” I smile, but Mr. Person isn’t breaking the facade today. I was hoping he’d encourage me to make this choice, tell me how smart it is for someone of such a young age to want to expand my horizons with a subject out of my comfort zone. And that it is totally, completely not a sign that Dmitri and I should break up just because I want to move out of one measly class we share together. It’s not like I’m telling him I can’t spend Christmas with his entire, ginormous Greek family for my first Christmas ever as his Jewish girlfriend of a few months.

  Did I just shudder?

  “I’ll take yearbook for five hundred, please,” I tell Mr. Person.

  “Five hundred what?” he asks as he types the change into the system.

  “That was a Jeopardy! reference. I assumed you watch Jeopardy!. You have that Alex Trebek–moustache look about you.”

  Mr. Person stares straight at the computer screen and answers, “He shaved his moustache.”

  “Aha! I knew you watched his moustache.”

  Mr. Person dramatically bounces his middle finger on the enter key.

  “‘So let it be written, so let it be done.’”

  I guffaw at Mr. Person’s Ten Commandments reference. “I knew you wouldn’t disappoint me, Mr. Person.”

  He offers a half smile, and I know he still loves me. In that guidance counselor, totally platonic and usually annoyed way of love.

  Love.

  Now how do I break the news to Dmitri?

  Dmitri

  “Weird how?”

  “I don’t know, just weird.”

  Nicky and I are sitting across from each other on the floor of his bedroom, a chessboard between us. I have only four pieces left (king, knight, bishop, and pawn); Nicky has ten pieces left (enough, including his queen, that it’s not worth naming them all). He’s going to win. He always wins.

  My father likes to claim that chess was invented by the Greeks, but it wasn’t. Nicky researched it and found out chess originated in India, long after ancient Greece was dead and buried.

  “India?” my father blustered when presented with the evidence. “όχι!” No. Don’t try to confuse prejudice with the facts.

  “So Eliana was just weird?” Nicky makes air quotes around the words “just weird.”

  “Like every time I tried to hold her hand or put my arm around her, she found a way to, I don’t know, disentangle herself.”

  Nicky looks up. “Good word.” I’m pretty sure my brother sees me as a complete moron. I suppose next to him I kind of am. “Where were you?”

  “The mall.”

  “The mall?” He says the word like it tastes bad.

  “Yeah.”

  “Ellie wanted to go to the mall?”

  “I don’t know, I guess so.”

  “You don’t know?”

  My brother can be relentless with his questions. “I mean, I suggested it, but lots of kids go to the mall to hang out.”

  “Dimmi, Eliana is not lots of kids.”

  Sometimes I think Nicky knows Ellie better than I do. The times she’s been to our house, the two of them seem to get on really well, like they understand each other better than I understand either one of them. That’s probably why I’ve asked for Nicky’s advice tonight.

  I move my bishop across the board to challenge his rook, but Nicky shakes his head. “That will put you in check.” He’s right. The bishop is protecting my king from one of his aggressive little pawns. I move it back.

  “Things were great for a while after we kissed that first time, at the Seventh Street Entry gig, but now it’s like something’s changed. Like maybe I’m doing something wrong.”

  “Like taking her to the mall.”

  “Would you forget about the stupid mall!”

  Nicky looks up at my little outburst, smirks, and shakes his head. “Why don’t you just ask her?”

  “Ask her what?”

  “Ask her if something’s wrong.”

  I think about this for a minute as I stare at the chessboard. The advice seems so simple that it has to be true. But asking her would feel like walking naked into a minefield with no metal detector or bomb-sniffing dog. I don’t want to get blown up, especially if I’m not wearing any clothes.

  There are only two moves I can make on the board: my king one space to the left or my pawn one space forward. The walls are definitely closing in. I move my pawn.

  Without time to blink Nicky moves his rook all the way down one of the ranks. He could have put me in check with his queen; since he doesn’t, I can only guess he’s setting me up for the final kill. He’s really good at thinking two or three or five steps ahead.

  “That’s just not how relationships work,” I tell him, trying to play the I’m-dating-someone-and-you-never-have card. But even as I say it, I know it’s BS. Truth is, I’m too scared to ask Ellie what’s wrong.

  So, of course, my brain, being my brain, goes in the opposite direction. “Maybe I should tell her I love her.”

  Nicky looks up at me. I mean really looks at me. He squints his eyes and cocks his head a bit to one side. He even sniffs like he’s trying to smell something. It’s unnerving.

  “What?” I ask.

  “I’m trying to tell if you’re on drugs.”

  “Very funny.”

  I move my pawn another space. I have only one space to go before I get my queen back. Nicky moves a bishop in a way that doesn’t seem to be helpful to him at all.

  “Do you love her?”

  “Yes!” Even I can hear that my answer has too much force. “I mean, I think I do.” My pulse starts to race. “I mean, yeah, of course I do.”

  “Look,” Nicky says, “you’re right. I’ve never been in a relationship. But if you ask me, and you did, it sounds like maybe Eliana just needs some space. Like this is all new to her, and she’s still figuring out what it all means. Telling her you love her will be like trying to hold her hand or put your arm around her times a billion.” He pauses and watches me for a moment. How did my little brother, with his too-short corduroy pants and his too-small polo shirts, get this wise? It must be all the books. Then he adds, “That or she just really hates the mall.”

  “Jerk,” I answer. I move my pawn forward. “Queen, please.” My voice is smug, my comeback in the game about to get underway.

  He replaces my pawn with a queen, then slides his bishop—the one that seemed useless—backward across the board, and captures the newly rescued queen. I see now this was his plan all along, as the bishop now threatens my king. I have nowhere to go.

  “Checkmate,” he says. I can only shake my head.

  “I’m going to bed.” I get up to leave.

  “Dimmi,” he says when I’m at the door.

  I turn to face him. “Yeah?”

  “Eliana’s a special girl, but I think maybe a fragile girl, too. Just try giving
her some space. Don’t rush things.”

  Hmm. I don’t feel like I’m rushing things, or crowding her. Am I?

  No, I can’t be. I didn’t even text her tonight. Well, I did, but only once. Maybe I should text her again now, just to say good night.

  Nicky’s words evaporate in the air and get left behind as I take my phone out of my pocket and head back to my room.

  Eliana

  “The mall?” Janina is on the other end of Facetime, wearing an expression that mirrors my own incredulousness.

  “Right?”

  “Does he know you at all?” she asks.

  “To be fair, there was a valid reason for being there. He was looking for a Christmas gift for Nicky.”

  “That at least makes a little sense. But the mall? Who even goes to the mall anymore except old ladies who walk around it five times in giant white gym shoes before they hit their Weight Watchers meeting?”

  “That was quite an image, Nina.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Yeah, it was weird. It felt so of another era. Like, what’s Chico’s? And why would anyone voluntarily enter it?”

  “My grandma loves her some Chico’s. Don’t knock it until you’ve worn one of their color-blocked jackets.”

  “Did you chug a tureen of coffee today or something?” I ask.

  “Maybe. Or two. Did you have fun at all?” Janina’s image joggles as the background moves up and down, up and down.

  “What the heck are you doing?”

  “Squats,” she answers. “Fun. Did you have fun?”

  I consider the question. “What is fun, really? Were there Ferris wheels? No. Mass quantities of kitties frisking about? No. Bungee jumping? Maybe.”

  “You can have fun without doing actual obvious fun things. Did he at least hold your hand?”

  “Yes,” I say, exasperated. “Like, the whole time. I couldn’t even pick my nose if I’d wanted to.”

  “A.” Janina squats on each point for emphasis. “You have a second hand. B. Why would you want to pick your nose in the middle of a mall?”