Girl on the Ferris Wheel

by Julie Halpern

  “What,” she says, turning back to me, her voice both restrained and dripping with venom, “were you doing looking at another girl’s underwear?”

  “I wasn’t. I mean, I couldn’t help but notice it because her skirt was so short. Honest. It was like a car wreck. I couldn’t look away.”

  Janina bites a fingernail while she processes this information. “You really hurt her feelings, you know.”

  “I do know. I’ve tried to apologize like a million times.” I sound like I’m whining, but I can’t help it.

  “Yeah, she told me.”

  “I even wrote her a song.” I reach into my backpack and pull out the laminated piece of paper. For a second, just the briefest second, Janina’s eyes soften. Then they turn back to stone.

  “Give me that.”

  I do as I’m commanded.

  “Will you give it to Ellie?” I ask as Janina reads the lyrics. “Is she even here today? I didn’t see her in film class.”

  This makes Janina’s head jerk up. “She didn’t tell you?”

  “Tell me what?”

  “She dropped film class, Dmitri.”

  “Because I looked at another girl?”

  “No, just before winter break. And Ellie’s not here today. She wasn’t feeling well.” Janina gives me a long hard look before asking, “You know why Ellie missed some school last year, right?” There is caution in the question.

  “I didn’t know she had missed school last year.” This conversation is confusing the crap out of me. Wait. Ellie dropped film class … before winter break?

  “Look,” Janina says, “I’ll make sure she gets this.” She waves my lyrics at me. “Just don’t do anything else stupid.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Just don’t do anything.”

  Janina spins on her heel and walks away, rereading my song as she goes.

  “Don’t do anything stupid,” I say to myself as the bell rings. I’m not sure that’s possible.

  Eliana

  “Eliana?” My mom raps gently on my closet door. She gave me a pass yesterday from going to school since it was the first day after vacation, and I basically took advantage of how busy she was going to be getting herself and the other kids ready. “One day. That is all you get. We can’t start this again, Eliana. You beat this, and you move on.” She dictates this speech, abbreviated from one I’d heard dozens of times last year before my hospitalization. I hear both the hope, that I will beat this, and the fear, that it’s all happening again. I feel exactly as she does except a million times worse because I do not want to be the old me again. I don’t want to be crazy, depressed, hospitalized Eliana. I don’t want to have to give up my clothes and my shoes and my laptop in order to talk about myself in a sterile room on therapeutic couches for weeks until I’m “better.” Because what would be the point? I’m obviously not better. I’m obviously never going to be better.

  “El?” It’s 7:12 A.M. Day two of the week after winter break. My clothes haven’t been changed in three days, and I’ve now watched all eight Harry Potter movies two times each and reread books four and six. My high octagonal window twinkles with frost crystals. It is too cold to get out of bed, even if I wanted to. Which I do not.

  “El.” Mom is more insistent now, stating instead of questioning. Soon it will turn to demanding. I have been here before. I will be here again.

  “Tomorrow, Mom. I promise I’ll go tomorrow,” I groan from under my protective layer.

  “Tomorrow is not good enough, Eliana. Because we both know that if you don’t go back today, you will be saying the exact same thing tomorrow. And tomorrow will turn into a week, and then two weeks, and then we’re back in that whole stream of shit again.”

  My mom is swearing. That is a rare occurrence and one that doesn’t bode well for me. When she swears, she means business. Usually it takes several hours of me pleading not to go to school to crack her calm and collected facade. She has lost all patience for me, for this, having been through it before. She is tough-loving me, something we both learned during hours of family therapy last year. I don’t like how it sounds coming out of her. I don’t like that she’s talking to me this way. I don’t like that I drove her to it.

  “Eliana!” Mom pounds on the door once, hard, with the palm of her hand. I assume it’s the palm. I hope I haven’t driven Mom to punching my closet door.

  “What?” I yell back. I try to feel angry at her, mad that my mom won’t let me do what I want to do. Mad that she won’t leave me alone. But I know she wants me to be normal again. Because I want it, too. I’m failing both of us.

  “Get out of your closet, take a shower, put on some fresh clothes, and I will drive you to school.” Mom breathes out as calmly as she can, speaking through gritted teeth.

  “Do I have to?” I ask, pretending like I have a choice. Pretending I’m some regular teenager trying to convince her mom that she doesn’t really need to go to school and deserves a second day of hooky.

  “Yes,” Mom argues, and I hear a click as the locked door to my room opens. “Thank you, Samara.” Mom looks back at my sister, who escapes with her bent hanger/lock opener.

  Mom is dressed for work in a pair of black pants and a striped long-sleeved t-shirt. Her closet is filled with slight variations on this look. In fact, she owns six pairs of the same exact pants because, as she puts it, “Who’s going to notice that their high school science teacher wears the same pants every day?” I choose not to tell her about the student teacher I had freshman year who ran out of the class crying after a group of students made fun of her, to her face might I add, about the few outfits she alternated between each day she attempted to teach us. I can still picture her sad little ballet flats.

  God, everything is so sad.

  “Up!” Mom shoots out her arm at me, a direct order to get out of the blankets and into the world. I look at her with pleading eyes, but she is stoic. She must have practiced long and hard because my pathetic puppy face used to make her crumble.

  “I don’t know if I can, Mom.” I really don’t. What if I get to school and I can’t sit through my classes or I freak out and run through the halls like a total lunatic? What if I need to see Mr. Person, but he has someone else in his office or worse—he turns me away because he doesn’t want to see me anymore? Because we’ve already done all of this?

  “Eliana, you can do this. You have been doing it. You are a strong, brave girl who has been through some stuff and made it to the other side. Not every day is going to feel wonderful. But that doesn’t mean that you are going to completely shut down again. I know you aren’t. Really.” Mom pulls the covers down so she can take hold of my hand. I don’t know if she truly believes what she is saying. I certainly don’t. But I don’t want her to be disappointed in me. Not for one day, anyway.

  I let her pull me out of bed.

  “That’s my girl. Now get in the shower. You stink.” Mom pushes me along with a smack on my tush. “You have ten minutes, and then we have to go. I only got a sub for my first-period class.”

  I slog my way through a shower, letting the water fill my open mouth. I gurgle, and the water bubbles over my tongue.

  School won’t be that bad. Janina’s locker is next to my new one. I can skip lunch and hide out in a corner of the library to read book number seven. I can sneak into a girls’ bathroom if I see Dmitri in the halls. Not that that stopped him before.

  Why can’t everything be the way it was the night of the Greek festival? Full of hope and promise and excited touches?

  I miss those things. I knew they had to end sometime, though. Keinehora and yin and yang and all that.

  I bet he’s already written a song for her.

  Dmitri

  When I rewind the VHS of our relationship—okay, stupid analogy, but Ellie and I have this film thing between us, and her dad has all those old videotapes, and, well, you know—anyway, when I look back, I think it all started to go south on date number five. Two weeks before
Christmas break. At the bowling alley.

  Before I explain, I know what you’re thinking. Things went south when I ogled Meg’s royal blue underwear. And they did. They totally did. I suck. I know that.

  But really, if I replay everything that happened between me and Ellie, Christmas was the first reel, not the last. And it started with the bowling date.

  Eliana and her father had picked me up at home, and from the moment I got in the car, I could tell something was wrong.

  “Hey!” I said to Ellie, likely with an idiotic grin on my face because I was so happy to see her. “Hi, Mr. Hoffman.”

  “How goes it, Dimmi?” Ellie hated when her dad tried to sound young or cool. And apparently, she really hated it that he called me Dimmi.

  “Dad, his name is Dmitri.” The acid in her voice could’ve eaten through bars on a prison window. Truth is, I kind of liked her dad being familiar. It was a refreshing change from Basil and Aphrodite Digrindakis, the official poster children (poster parents?) for the Twin Cities Hellenic Society. Okay, my parents are not actually on a poster, but they probably should be.

  “That’s all right,” I cut in. “I don’t mind.” I didn’t want her dad to feel bad, and I didn’t want him to think I was fussy about my name. (It is not Charlie or Chuck or Chad. Please call me Charles. Who wants to be that guy?)

  Eliana rolled her eyes, clenched her jaw, and let out a long, low breath from her nose, all of which made my Spidey-sense tingle. There was danger nearby. I’d learned enough about Ellie’s moods to know not to approach this particular flavor of emotion head on.

  “So,” I offered, trying to change the subject, “ready to bowl a turkey?”

  Eliana turned to me, one eyebrow cocked.

  “It’s three strikes in a row,” her father chimed in, his voice animated. “Are you a bowler, Dim—Dmitri?”

  “I’ve bowled some,” I answered.

  “What’s your best score?”

  “One seventy-six.”

  “Say, that’s not too shabby.”

  “Daaaaaaaaaaaad,” Eliana reprimanded with a disgusted whine in her voice. Her dad shrugged, embarrassed. I squirmed in my seat and looked out the window.

  We rode the rest of the way in silence.

  * * *

  “Really, is there anything more repulsive than rented bowling shoes?” Ellie held her white-brown-and-red shoes away from her body, like she was holding a snake. After her father dropped us off, I got us a lane and we turned in our sneakers, consenting that they be held hostage until the rented bowling alley footwear was safely returned.

  Sometimes this is just Eliana’s sense of humor. She’s snarky in a really funny way, and I love it. Other times, though, that kind of biting comment can be a sign she’s in a bad mood. I wanted to believe it was the former, but given the car ride, I worried it was the latter.

  She must have seen the look on my face, the “uh-oh” look, because her free hand hooked itself through my arm and she pulled me toward our lane. “C’mon, you turkey. Let’s go bowl a turkey.”

  And then for a while, everything was fine. Not great, but fine. We bowled, we ate nachos and drank Cokes, we laughed, and we talked about nothing and talked about everything. Then I said this:

  “Maybe Chuck E. can officiate our wedding here.” I meant this as the second half of a joke Ellie had started during our prior date, at Chuck E. Cheese.

  “What?” Eliana went from relaxed to rigid faster than the speed of sound. Her “what” even made a kind of sonic boom. “God, Dmitri,” she huffed under her breath.

  I didn’t dare remind her of her proclamation at Chuck E. Cheese, that the stupid mouse from that house of horrors would be the one to unite us in wedded bliss. She’d said that, not me.

  I wasn’t sure what to do, so I sat back down while she bowled a frame.

  Sometimes Ellie and I communicate better remotely than in person, so I took my phone out and texted her. I figured it would be cute. A story we could tell our kids someday.

  ME: Hey, you okay? I’m worried about you.

  I peeked over my shoulder before throwing my next ball, watching as Ellie took her phone out, glanced at it, and sighed heavily. She put the phone away without responding.

  Not sure what else to do, I took the three steps to the line and threw my next ball. A strike. My third in a row.

  A turkey.

  Neither one of us commented on it.

  Yeah, that date was definitely when things started to come undone.

  Eliana

  I don’t know why I do the things I do. It’s like I have no control over my stupid brain. That’s why I like the quiet. Like to stay quiet. In silence, I can’t make any mistakes.

  To be clear: Dmitri was not a mistake. At least on my end. He’s a great guy. A great boyfriend (much of the time, at least). A great drummer. He even has great hair. But what is wrong with him that he chose me for a girlfriend? I made the mistake of letting him think I’m normal. That I’m capable of having a hand-holding, romantic-texting, family-meeting relationship.

  I even said that ridiculous thing about getting married at Chuck E. Cheese. And then he remembered it and had to bring it up again just to prove what a loser dork I am. Mortified. It makes my stomach wring itself into a knot just thinking about it.

  If I hadn’t gotten involved with Dmitri, then I wouldn’t have someone always here trying to see if I’m okay. He asks me that at least twenty times a day. Texts. Messages. Meaningful looks. He. Won’t. Stop.

  I. Am. Not. Okay.

  And he has no idea that the more he asks, the worse I feel about not being okay.

  What must it be like to be normal?

  Dmitri

  I tried texting Ellie last night to see if she was feeling okay (I knew she wasn’t sick; she was just avoiding me), but she never answered. I also wanted to find out what Janina was talking about with Ellie having been out of school last year. How come I didn’t know this? Did Ellie have scarlet fever? Bubonic plague? Was she in juvie? I thought about texting my go-to guy—well, gal—for information, but things are weird with Reggie right now so I nixed that idea.

  Having hardly slept, I’m up early. Yia Yia is the only person in the kitchen when I come down. She’s hunched over a cup of her steaming-hot, mud-thick coffee. “The only thing Turks ever get right,” she once told me about coffee.

  “Tikanes, Yia Yia,” I mumble as I cross the room. It’s a casual greeting shared among Greeks. It takes me a beat to realize she hasn’t answered. “Yia Yia?” I ask as I turn to look at her. She’s asleep in her seat, snoring so faintly as to be inaudible unless you’re listening for it.

  She looks frail. All skin and bones under her gray dress, her cheeks sallow, her skin almost colorless. I forget sometimes just how old Yia Yia is.

  I decide not to wake her and slip out of the house before anyone else gets up. The first bell rings at 8:05, and after a brisk bike ride, I’m in the halls of Walter Mondale a full hour early. Other than the Math Club kids, I’m the only student in the building. I camp out by my old locker, hoping to catch Ellie when she arrives.

  It’s weird to watch the school come to life. Students, teachers, and administrators filter in a few at a time, the low thrum of humanity mushrooming toward a kind of crescendo. And then, at seven fifty-five, boom! Everyone, all at once.

  Everyone except for Eliana.

  I wait a full two minutes after the late bell rings before dragging myself to homeroom, where I’m admonished by the teacher and a permanent mark is made on my permanent record for being tardy.

  Whatever.

  I trudge through periods one and two before getting to the Art and Craft of Cinema. It was hard to sit through class without Ellie yesterday; it will be even harder today. Only, the desk next to me is now occupied. A girl from my geometry class, Daisy Something-or-Other, smiles at me as I take my seat, while Mr. Tannis takes attendance.

  It’s weird the way Ellie’s desk just got filled. That’s how the world works, I guess.
The little holes—or, in this case, the big holes—left behind by absences or partings just get filled in, like water finding every crack in a sidewalk; life washing over everything, partly cleansing and partly drowning it.

  “Hey,” Daisy whispers at me. Can’t she sit somewhere else? I mean, her normal seat is like five desks away, and kids don’t usually move seats. I’m just not in the mood.

  But me being me, I don’t want to be impolite. “Hey,” I say back.

  “You’re Eliana’s boyfriend, right?”

  “Yeah.” I already don’t like where this is going. “I think so.” I wish I hadn’t said that, but she glosses over it.

  “And you’re in Unexpected Turbulence?”

  “Um, yeah.” Okay, I like that question better. “How come?”

  Mr. Tannis clears his throat and stares the two of us down. Daisy, who I’m pretty sure is some sort of Queen Bee in the school, stares back at him. I don’t have that kind of moxie, so I duck my head and examine the top of my desk. It’s the oldest, worst, and least believable ruse there is. The “if I don’t make eye contact with you I can’t get in trouble” ruse.

  “Dmitri? Something you want to share with the class?” And that has to be the oldest, worst, and least believable ruse used by teachers. I mean, does anyone ever say, “Yes, in fact I do have something I’d like to share with the class. Thanks for asking!” Again, whatever.

  Anyway, Daisy stops talking after that, but she does toss a note on my desk:

  Wait for me after class.

  Freaked out, weirded out, nervous, and a little bit intrigued, I don’t hear another word Mr. Tannis says for the rest of class, which is a bummer. He’s starting a unit on film adaptations and is talking about High Fidelity, a movie I love. (I didn’t even know it was a book.)