by Jamie Canosa
“Sure.”
He placed our order with a wiry brunette woman—Janine, I assumed—while I staked out a table near the back of the bunch. Nothing as far as the eye could see but dirt, grass, and blue skies. Good thing we were headed nowhere because we appeared to be right smack in the middle of it.
I could hear the faint conversation of the two men, paying us no attention. The sound of Caulder’s voice carried on the breeze. A rare Indian summer day had the sun warming my shoulders. It was peaceful. Shutting my eyes, I soaked it all in.
“Let’s eat.” Caulder sat across from me, kicking out his legs so that his feet nearly brushed mine beneath the table.
Foot-long franks and a basket of fries never tasted so good. Drowning a deep fried potato in ketchup, I popped it in my mouth and had to hold back a groan.
“No music.”
I choked down the food in mouth, wracking my brain for a coherent response to Caulder’s random statement. The best I could come up with was, “Huh?”
“Music. We’ve been doing nothing but listening to it for the past few hours. There’s none here, so it looks like we’re going to have to actually talk to each other.”
“Oh.” Because I was such a great conversationalist.
“So . . .”
Please don’t ask about home. Or Mom. Or Michael. Or—
“How’s work going?”
Holding my relief to a minimum, I offered up a token frown. “It’s work.”
“Right. So not exactly balloons and parades, then?”
“Not exactly. What about you? How’s school going?”
Caulder had his dog halfway to his mouth when I threw out the question. Pausing, he grimaced at it and dropped it back in its sleeve. “It’s going.”
Somehow that didn’t seem genuine. “Really?”
He sighed and tossed his hair from where it was falling over his forehead. A lethal maneuver I was certain he was completely oblivious to. “It’s going . . . slowly.”
“How so?” I chewed another bite, barely registering the hot grease in my mouth as I awaited his thought-out response.
“I’m only taking online courses right now. Making up work and retesting for classes I should have completed last year. I tanked them, but the school is giving me ‘special consideration due to traumatic experiences’. Evidently, watching your brother die earns you a second chance.”
My shoulders sank almost as deeply as my heart, watching him sit there, frowning at the table. Neither of us touched another bite until he blinked up at me and shook his head.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to take it there.”
“No. It’s okay.” There were things he needed to talk about. Things he needed to get out. Things I could be there to listen to. “How’s the second chance working out?”
“Better than the first. But I’m already so far behind. I wasted freshman and most of sophomore years on business classes I thought I’d need. Then Kiernan got diagnosed and Dad . . .” He swallowed hard though he hadn’t touched his food and took a steadying breath. “I had to transfer schools when we moved and not all of my credits transferred with me. What was supposed to be my senior year was spent retaking mostly sophomore and junior level classes. And now, here I am, a super senior relearning the same stuff yet again. Then there’s medical school, residency, licensing . . . At this rate I’ll be a corpse before I’m a doctor. Sometimes I wonder if I should even bother anymore. Maybe medicine just isn’t where I’m meant to be.”
So he was studying medicine. No real surprise there.
“Well, it’s your life, but as someone who’s been your patient already . . .” My thumb ran over the single scar left behind on my palm, remembering the way he’d drawn me back from the edge that night with his quiet confidence. “I think you’d make a really excellent doctor. Is that what you’ve always wanted to do?”
Picking at the remaining fries at the bottom of the baskets, I swirled one in the puddle of ketchup with no real interest in eating it.
“Not always.” Cal’s hands dropped from the table to scrub his fashionably faded blue jeans. “I don’t know how much you know about my family. My father, in particular.”
“Not much. Other than he’s a grade-A jerk.”
The corner of his mouth tipped up in a barely there smile. “Well, prior to being a jerk, he was, and still is, the CEO of an international corporation known as Parks and Steiner.”
“Never heard of it.”
“I’m not surprised. They own parts of different companies that make lots of different things. They’re more a ‘behind the scenes’ type company, buying and selling. You won’t see their name on anything and I doubt anyone outside the business world really knows much about them.” He shook his head, that smile turning to a look of disgust. “I always thought I’d work for him one day. Follow in his footsteps, ya know?”
“And now?”
Despite his attempts to mask it, the pain he was in was almost palpable. “Now, I don’t want anything to do with that man, or his company, or his money. Though he does keep sending it, which I’m thankful for, for Mom’s sake. She doesn’t need anything else to worry about.”
“How has she been?” Missing her was an ache I was constantly aware of in the back of my mind. How many moments had come and gone where my first inclination was to talk to her about them before I remembered that it wasn’t an option?
“About the same. She was disappointed that she missed you the last time you came to the house, though. Made me promise to bring you over again soon. She’s actually off tomorrow if you . . .”
He trailed off, reading my hesitation loud and clear. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to see her. I just—
“I get it. You don’t know what to say to her.” He got it. “You’re afraid of saying the wrong thing. Of making things worse.” He really got it. “I don’t know what to say to her, either. She lost her son. How do you make that better? And you. You lost somebody you loved. Somebody you counted on. I don’t know how to make that better, either.”
“Cal.” He was struggling with a problem that simply had no solution. “It’s not your job to make it better. I don’t think it’s even possible.”
A cloud seemed to settle over him, though the day remained clear and bright, as he twisted his napkin until it tore in half. “She hasn’t . . . Jade, she hasn’t cooked once since the funeral.”
That was . . . shocking. Mrs. Parks loved to cook. It was her passion. Things were worse with his mother than Cal had let on. He knew it and now so did I.
“What if . . .” Was I being too presumptuous? But I couldn’t do nothing. “What if I gave her a reason to?”
“Dinner?” Hope sprung in his eyes that made my fingers strain towards his. I wanted to hold his hand and tell him everything would be alright. “Tomorrow night?”
“Do you think she would—?”
“I think she would love that, Angel. Thank you.” His relief was like the passing of a storm. “I can’t—”
“I don’t wanna eat!” A little brown haired boy plopped down at the table next to us and dropped his head to the splintered wooden surface.
“You have to eat something other than cotton candy and popcorn.” A tall, thin woman in a maxi dress slid in beside him with a smile. “It’s just a hotdog, not the end of the world.”
“But we wanna go to the carnival.” A girl joined them, shoulders sagging dramatically with a pout only a pre-teen could pull off.
“We will. After you eat.” The woman caught us watching and rolled her eyes with a good natured laugh. “You’d think they’d never seen a carnival before.”
I could feel the kids’ pain. A carnival. Who would want a hotdog over that?
“Where is it?” Caulder startled me, speaking loudly enough to be heard over the children’s continued grumbling.
“Not far.” She hushed her kids before pointing down the road in the direction we’d been heading. “A few miles down. You can’t miss it.”
&nbs
p; “Excellent.” Caulder balled up his napkin and dropped it on the tray. “You ready?”
I looked over my empty hotdog sleeve and the few remaining fries at the bottom of the plastic basket, and nodded.
“Great. Let’s go.”
“Where?”
He gathered up the rest of the trash and stood. “To a carnival.”
***
It was a scene of spectacular chaos.
Bright blinking lights in loud colors surrounded us. Rides twisted and turned and spun at heart-stopping speeds and fear-defying heights. There were people everywhere. The ground was a rutted mess, carved by the thousands of feet that had come before us.
Festive music grinded from speakers strung along the tops of makeshift booths set up all along the fairway. Shots and dings of people trying their luck at various games mingled with the hundreds of voices all shouting to be heard over one another.
The smell was almost overwhelming. Funnel cake, ice cream, cotton candy. There was enough sugar in the air to fall into a diabetic coma just by breathing.
I was fascinated. Completely swept away by it all—and by the crowd, for several steps beyond where Caulder had suddenly stopped moving.
He stood like a rock, parting the river of people that tried to continue to push me along as I fought my way back to him. He was bumped and jostled repeatedly, but didn’t seem to notice, all of his attention riveted to an enormous Ferris wheel towering above us. Where the bulbs hadn’t burnt out, it blinked in red and white like a warning sign, heralding the dangers of coming any closer.
“Hey.” I tugged lightly on his shirt sleeve to bring him back to me. “Where’d you go?”
“What? Sorry.” He shook his head, ridding himself of whatever had stolen his mind. “Nothing.”
“You had one of those moments, didn’t you? The steal-your-breath kind?”
Caulder pulled in a deep breath and his gaze shifted back to the ride. “Did you know Kiernan loves Ferris Wheels? I mean love loves them?”
Loves. Not loved. Caulder was still hanging on tight to his brother with both hands, refusing to let him go. Maybe he wasn’t ready. Maybe he couldn’t. Maybe he never would. But if he didn’t, Kiernan’s ghost would haunt him forever. And that broke my heart.
“There was this one time we were at a carnival a lot like this in Spain. He made me go on the Ferris wheel like twenty times in a row. I thought I was going to be sick.”
I glanced back up at its foreboding light display and noted that sickness was, evidently, a common occurrence with that particular attraction. “Let’s do it.”
“Really?” Caulder’s eyes dropped to mine and the need I saw in them wiped away the last of my doubts.
“Yeah.”
***
I knew it was a bad idea before I did it, but I did it anyway. I looked down.
It wasn’t a bad idea. It was the worst idea in a long history of terrible ideas. We were dangling about a million miles in the air, kept from plummeting to our deaths by little more than some rusty nuts and bolts and a fraying belt buckle.
“Are you okay?”
Without realizing it, I’d latched on to Caulder like a wild cat, impaling the skin on his forearm with what little claws I had.
“I . . . um . . .” Couldn’t form a coherent thought other than, Holy hell, we’re going to die! Probably not what he wanted to hear.
“You’re not afraid of heights, are you?” His concern might have gone a bit further if he hadn’t said it with a smile.
“Afraid? N-no. More like . . . petrified.”
“Angel . . .” Now he was laughing at me. “Then why did you want to get on the Ferris wheel?”
“I didn’t.” I really, really, really didn’t. In fact, for once I’d be more than happy to accept Caulder’s money. All of it. And offer every last cent to the man at the controls if he’d just get us down. Now.
“But you said—”
“You wanted to.” I probably wouldn’t have blurted it out like that under normal circumstances, but images of falling to our imminent demise had eradicated my ability to think about anything else. “I could see it on your face.”
“You came up here for me?” He gently pried me from his arm—not an easy task—and laced his finger through mine. “Even though you were afraid?”
“It was something you needed to do.” I didn’t need to see his face to know that it was true. I’d known it from the minute he’d laid eyes on that stupid wheel of death. Which was good, considering I couldn’t drag my gaze away from the dizzying sight below us. My mind kept imprinting what my guts would look like down there, scattered across the hard black concrete.
“Jade.” A moment passed before a strong hand cupped my jaw and tipped my head back to look up at him, instead of down. “Angel.”
“What?”
“Thank you.” The laughter was gone from his face. Replaced with . . . resolution? Whatever it was he needed to do up there, he’d accomplished it. “You were right. I needed this.”
“Well . . . then . . . good. That makes the minor stroke I’m having worth it.”
His eyes crinkled at the corners as the smile sprang back onto his face. “Come here.”
He pulled his hand from mine, wrapping his arm around my shoulders, and slid me closer. All of which set the car swinging, and being the epic warrior princess that I was, I immediately buried my face in his chest not wanting to see the ground as it came up to meet us.
My entire body bounced with his laughter, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t moving one more inch.
A loud crack sounded and my scream was muffled in his shirt. Like thunder. Only the skies were clear. Not a cloud in them. It was the ride. I knew it. The whole thing was about to come tumbling down—
“Look, Angel.”
“Nuh-uh.” No way.
“Jade.” His hand, which had been warming my back, clasped my shoulder and sat me back in the seat. “Open your eyes.”
Another boom sounded and Caulder settled me when I jumped as red sparkles exploded in the air. Another and gold glitter rained back down to Earth. Fireworks. They were shooting off fireworks. And from up there, they looked close enough to touch.
If someone had told me thirty seconds ago that I’d be opposed to reaching the bottom before the ride was over, I would have thought them nuts. But there I was, hoping the ride never ended. Unfortunately it did. We came to a stop at the bottom and the attendant lifted our lap bar.
Another explosion sounded and I could still see bits of the beautiful lights that followed, but now the view was impaired by tents and rides.
“C’mon.” When Caulder offered me his hand, I took it.
Suddenly we were racing past game booths with carneys hocking their cheap prizes, and a slightly creepy clown, holding a batch of balloons, which Cal took an unnecessarily wide arch around. Throngs of people blocked our path, but he expertly navigated our way to the edge of the fairgrounds, where we burst into a wide open field.
The sky cracked above us and I looked up in wonder as flashes of purple twinkled against a pure black backdrop. One after another, booms echoed through the night, followed by bursts of fantastic color. Some formed shapes. Some came at the same time, overlapping one another. All of them were beautiful. But the finale was the best. Endless explosions drowned out all other sounds. Giant white sparklers shot from the ground, while the sky lit brightly with every color imaginable.
If I could’ve picked a single moment to stay and live in forever, that might have been it.
When the echoes finally subsided and the last of the sparks flickered out, casting us and the handful of others who gathered to watch in shadows, I realized it wasn’t just the fireworks that made the moment perfect.
The temperature had taken a nosedive and my arms were covered in goose-bumps, but my back felt warm and cozy from the hard chest it was leaning up against. And the rest of me felt inexplicably hot, which may or may not have stemmed from the thick arm wrapped snuggly around my waist.
Daring a peek over my shoulder, I found Caulder’s gaze lingering on the darkened sky with that same unfathomable look.
“Did Kiernan love fireworks, too?”
“No.” His eyes fell to me, examining my face for a long moment before—with a squeeze that felt a little like hesitation—he let me go. “But I’m getting the impression someone else does.”
Is that what he was doing? Was he building a memory? Every time he saw fireworks from now on, would it make him think of me? Was it wrong to hope the answer to that was yes?
Eight
“Wake up, Angel.”
Groaning, I twisted my head away from the cold, hard surface it was resting against and blinked the dimly lit interior of Caulder’s car into focus.
“You’re home.” He sounded about as excited about that fact as I was.
I didn’t remember falling asleep on the drive home, but I must have.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—” The clock on the dash caught my eye. 12:34. The fair was only about three hours from home, yet it had taken us nearly four-and-a-half to get back? “Did we just get here?”
“Not really.” Caulder scratched at the back of his neck, an embarrassed smile barely visible through the dark shadow on his jawline. “We’ve been sitting here for a while.”
“Why didn’t you wake me sooner?” Yawning, I stretched out the crick in the side of my neck.
He shrugged and, though it was hard to see his eyes, I could feel his gaze on me. “You were sleeping. And you kind of looked like you needed it.”
I must have. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I had a really great time today.”
Memories of music and hotdogs and fireworks washed over me. Memories I knew I’d hold in my heart for a lifetime. “Me, too. Thank you.”