The Big Summer

by Jamie B Laurie

  I felt at times as though I was vertical crowd surfing. And I wondered if it might not have been a good idea to leave a little earlier. I hadn’t anticipated all the traffic. I glanced down at my watch and started hurrying. Of course, nobody took that very well.

  Eventually, I saw the bright, electricity-draining luminance that was the amusement park. Huge multicolored flags waved from the turrets of the ticket booths that lined the entrance, and the amusement park’s enormous sign was lit up like a Christmas tree.

  I half expected some fireworks to start spitting out from between the wooden planks of the boardwalk and for a parade of clowns and stilt walkers to drop from the various shop roofs.

  “Will!” I heard my name called and saw a hand waving at me from the front entrance. I made my way over to it and was relieved to find that it was, in fact, a perfectly safe Hannah and not some tourist tragically drowning in the sea of humanity.

  “Hey, what’s up?”

  She spread her arms (as far as she could, which wasn’t much) and yelled, “I’m going to Funland!”

  “Hey, Will,” Daniel said unassumingly from just behind her. He smiled embarrassedly at his sister’s enthusiasm.

  “Hey,” I replied. “Uh, Hannah … look at all these people. It’s going to be a madhouse in there.”

  She grabbed my hand and pulled me through the people to the park’s entrance, and I turned anxiously to make sure that Daniel wasn’t swept away by the current.

  “Allow me to explain why you’re wrong,” Hannah told me with a little smile. “As a rule, parents hardly ever take their kids to Funland. At the end of a long day at the beach, the poor parents are tired. To make their kids feel like they’re getting a special treat, they’ll be permitted an ice cream … maybe a funnel cake too. And that’s when the kids start begging for the extraordinary privilege of going to Funland. The parents latch onto this idea and promise that they’ll go at the end of the week, but only if the kids are on their best behavior.”

  “And …”

  “And they never end up going because the kids will inevitably have done something to get the privilege taken away. It’s all a clever mind game, rather brilliant albeit cruel and lazy on the parents’ behalf.”

  “So …”

  “So in reality, Funland is never terribly busy.”

  At that point, we had arrived at the entrance. Past the turnstiles, I saw that Hannah was right; there weren’t all that many people.

  “Are we going Dutch tonight?” Hannah asked.

  Daniel reached into his pocket. “I’m buying. You got it last time, Hannah.”

  “Wait, but—”

  He smiled. “Don’t sweat it, Will. Consider it your welcome gift to our lovely town of Seaside City.”

  I grumbled under my breath. But secretly, I was happy. Him paying meant I didn’t have to take out my wallet, which wasn’t exactly the coolest on the block. It was made of duct tape and contained my bookstore rewards card and the condom I’d gotten from my sex ed. teacher at school (I was probably the only kid in my class awesome enough to never have used it, or else the only one to actually keep it in his wallet).

  “Don’t worry,” Hannah said, thumping me on the arm. “You can get it next time. Oh, and then it’ll probably be the three of us and the rest of the gang. So you’ll be covering an even bigger bill. Think of it like interest.”

  “Remind me again why you’re my sister,” Daniel teased, flipping through a booklet of tickets.

  Hannah pushed through the turnstile and stuck out her tongue at him. “I’m the counterbalance to your overly-good goodliness.”

  Though I probably should have protested on the whole money thing, I pushed through the turnstile and found myself in the most magical place on earth.

  Funland was like being thrown into a washing machine full of highlighter ink and candy apples. Bright, fluorescent light spun in circles in every direction. Sweets were offered at every turn.

  If the entire world were like Funland, there would be no more wars. Only happiness, love … and the occasional bout of excessive vomiting.

  “For you,” Daniel said at my side, handing me some tickets. I held them with the zest of a child being given the key to a candy shop … or really, anyone being given the key to a candy shop … unless that hypothetical person were allergic to candy … or he or she just didn’t like candy … in which case they shared none of my excitement.

  “Thanks,” I told him. I noted, now that we had some space to breathe, that he was wearing a pair of tight black jeans and a blue plaid flannel shirt over a white V-neck. Very nice.

  We rode the Pirate Ship (which swung you back and forth) first, and then the Captain Nemo (which did roughly the same thing), and then the Half-Pipe (again, a fairly similar motion).

  “Ooh, let’s go on the UFO,” Hannah suggested eagerly. She nodded in its direction.

  “You don’t scare me,” Daniel told her. “I’m the king of the UFO.”

  “Yeah? Well … I’m the queen of the UFO.”

  “Incest,” I murmured.

  The UFO was a merciless ride where the participant enters the appropriately named vessel and leans against a panel on the tilted wall. Once the door has closed, the space ship spins extremely fast, which employs a great deal of centrifugal force to pin its occupants to the walls as the floor drops from beneath their feet.

  We hurriedly clambered on board.

  “I want my usual spot,” Hannah said, brushing past some younger kids to get there.

  “We always ride on this side. It’s boring,” Daniel complained.

  “Fine,” Hannah told him. “You may go wherever you choose.”

  “Come on, Will.”

  Daniel led me to the complete opposite side of the ship, where we leaned up against neighboring panels. He waved to his sister, and she rolled her eyes.

  The ride attendant closed the door and headed to the center console. He pressed a few buttons, and blaringly loud music began to play. The UFO slowly started to spin.

  “Woohoo!” Hannah squealed loudly, bopping her head to the music and pumping her fist in the air.

  Quickly, the vessel began to pick up speed. I began to feel the pressure. Beside me, Daniel stuck out his arms and laughed. I imitated him and found it increasingly hard to hold my arm out. Daniel let his fall back. It was a strange sensation that very rapidly beat out the strength of my arm muscles.

  As though it weighed a million pounds, my arm was sucked against the wall—

  But it didn’t land on the wall … it landed on Daniel’s arm so that my hand completely covered his. Trying to remove it was no use. We were glued together (and I loved every second of it).

  Our connected skin quickly became the least of my worries as I started to worry about the effect the ride was having on my anatomy. My heart felt as though it was pressing deeply into my spine. The blood in my brain was clotting at the back of my skull.

  I screwed my eyes shut, acutely aware of the fact that my lashes were bowing down submissively.

  “You okay?” Daniel shouted over the music. I couldn’t turn my head, and it was hard to breathe. It felt as though I had a boa constrictor hugging my chest.

  “Yeah,” I choked out.

  His index fingers moved ever so slightly back and forth in a very limited but comforting gesture beneath my hand, and I focused on that as the ride mercifully (thank the Lord in heaven above) began to slow.

  At a certain point, as the cells in my body were able to expand, I peeled myself away from the wall. But I kept my hand firmly pressed against Daniel’s, maybe with more force than was needed.

  The ride slowed to a complete stop, and the attendant used his powers of teenage laziness to waltz sluggishly to open the door. For a moment, he struggled with the latch, and I felt the UFO shrink as the crashing, initial waves of a panic attack washed ov
er me.

  We were trapped; we were never going to get out! The stupid thing was going to start spinning again, and I’d be pinned onto the wall until I became one with the wall …

  Then the door opened, and I shouldered past a few younger kids to be the first one out. My legs shook like Jell-O, and I clutched desperately to the railing as I disembarked, wobbling down a few steps.

  Dashing off to the side of the path through the amusement park, I leaned over with my hands on my knees and tried to catch my breath. I put two fingers to my wrist and then to my neck, and I felt my pulse racing. My face was burning up, and a sheen of sweat trickled down my forehead.

  “Will, are you okay?” I felt a hand on my shoulder, and then Daniel was kneeling down at my side. His brow was furrowed in concern.

  “Yeah,” I said. I swallowed. “Yeah.”

  “Hey, it’s okay,” he soothed, his hand rubbing gentle circles on my back. “It’s okay.”

  We stayed like that for a few minutes, until I caught my breath and the ground stopped zooming in and out like a broken camera.

  “I’m so sorry,” I mumbled. “I don’t know what happened there.”

  “No, no,” he said.

  I sucked in a few breaths of the salty sea air. With Daniel’s arm to steady me, I eventually stood upright. He still wore an expression of anxiety, and I managed a sheepish smile.

  “That was fun,” I said.

  He coughed out a laugh. “Definitely.”

  “I don’t think physics is my friend. I think I’ll stick to studying it in school … and not actually testing it out myself.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Daniel replied, still eyeing me as though I was going to drop dead at any moment.

  “Well, that was sufficiently embarrassing,” I murmured self-consciously. My cheeks were on fire.

  “Hannah?” Daniel said over his shoulder. “You don’t look so hot.”

  “I never look hot,” she replied, wobbling over towards us. Her face was pale and sweaty. “This never happens. I’m supposed to be the UFO champion.”

  “You’re still the UFO champion,” Daniel muttered soothingly, wrapping his arm around her shoulders. “You want us to walk you home?”

  “No,” she answered. “I don’t think my pride could handle needing to be walked home by my brother. I’ll head home on my own. I don’t want to ruin your night.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked. Instantly, I wondered if that sounded bad. Should I have insisted we walk her home? Was it selfish of me that I wanted her to call it a night so I could spend some one-on-one time with Daniel? Probably.

  “I’ll be fine.”

  Daniel nodded after a moment, his brow furrowed adorably in concern. “If you say so. Just know that if you end up dying on the way home, Mom and Dad will blame me.”

  “I’ll try not to die,” Hannah answered with a weak smile. And then she stumbled away with a halfhearted wave.

  Daniel looked at me and shrugged. “It’s just us now, I guess. Uh, unless you’d rather head home.”

  “I’m good,” I told him. “I mean, I think I am. I’m starting to feel better and all, but I could totally start throwing up and bleeding from my eyeballs any second.”

  “Good to know,” he replied with a nervous chuckle. “But I mean … like, if you wanted to call it a night because el best amigo isn’t here.”

  “Oh … no!” I said too enthusiastically. “You’re not that bad for company.”

  “I try so hard.” He laughed. “Nice to know it’s all paying off.”

  We started walking (away from the UFO, thank you very much).

  “Definitely. Your clever act is working. You’ve got the world fooled that you’re really a nice guy. But I know the truth.”

  He smirked. “I hope my evil plans for world domination are safe with you.”

  “It wouldn’t matter, anyhow,” I told him. “You’re such a good actor that nobody would believe me. I’d get put away as a nutcase, and you’d be free to continue your scheming.”

  “And the award for the world’s best-ever actor goes to …”

  “Daniel Clark,” I finished. Narrowing my eyes suspiciously, I murmured, “If that is your real name.”

  He gave me his best poker face, and then we both cracked up. “You’re really weird,” he told me, bumping into me playfully.

  “And you’re quite … quirky yourself,” I said.

  “I got it all from Hannah. She must have peed out some of her wacko genes at some point during those long months in the womb.”

  I nodded. “It makes sense.”

  We continued on for a bit, glancing around. The sky was ink black, stars twinkling like fabulous little rhinestones. This only served to highlight the bright neon of the amusement park. A spectacle of multicolored dots danced and raced along the spokes of the Ferris wheel. The rides were a fast-forwarded blur.

  The amusement park as a whole was rather enchanting, but my brain is strangely hardwired so that neon lights make lots of things seem somewhat trashy. So the flashing signage for a ride called The Music Box made me think of a brothel, and the neighboring stand (its flashy sign boasting: Try Our Famous Candy Apple!) made me think of one of the entertainers.

  “You look so intense, Will,” Daniel commented. “What are you thinking about?”

  “Just that I hope Candy Apple is using protection over at The Music Box.”

  “Huh?”

  Oh. I’d said that out loud. “Uh, nothing.”

  He smiled. “Like I said before, you’re really weird.”

  “A compliment if ever I’ve gotten one.”

  After a few more minutes of walking (and me inventing several fictitious pot dispensaries and a terribly scary biker bar), we had already circled the entirety of the amusement park.

  “So what’s the plan?” Daniel asked.

  “The plan?”

  He shrugged. “Well, we could continue touring Funland on foot for the rest of the night. Or we could go on some more rides … but somehow I don’t think you’re madly in love with that idea.”

  “I don’t think I’d mind terribly if we didn’t do that.”

  “I guess we could try our hand at the horribly unfair, totally rigged, exorbitantly priced games,” he suggested. “I don’t think that involves any particularly violent or jarring motion.”

  “Sounds good,” I said with a grateful smile.

  As we headed over to the game booths, I had a mental image of my ex-friends taking Daniel’s place. Knowing them and the considerable extent of their sensitivity, I probably would have received a hard slug in the arm and a “man up, faggot” as a comforting gesture. Then they would have dragged me on a million other rides until I either passed out or died. And then they would probably have dragged my limp corpse along on a few more rides because the tickets were already paid for.

  And I had to laugh, because it really wasn’t so long ago that that was my reality. I had been a nobody, obliging the every desire of people who really weren’t very nice somebodies.

  Daniel asked me why I was laughing, and I told him how nice he was compared to my old friends—really, how nice everyone was being to me versus the people I had left behind.

  But rather than laugh along with me, Daniel actually seemed to get sad about it. “I’m really sorry about everything that happened to you, Will. I don’t know what else to say other than that. I guess there’s really nothing to say. But I am sorry.”

  I shrugged. “I am too, because I let it happen.”

  “But you’re here now,” he said optimistically. “And now you’ve got some good friends who really like you.”

  “Yeah.” I smiled.

  “And one day in the future when you’ve become a professional badass, jetting all around the world and blowing your nose with hundred-dollar bills, you’ll be the one lau
ghing.”

  “Professional badass,” I mused. “I really like that.”

  “Thank you. I came up with it myself.” He chuckled. “I’ll be here all week, folks.”

  “And what are you going to do with your life, Daniel? Become a professional surfer?” I teased.

  “Uh, a vet actually,” he replied seriously, running a hand through his hair.

  “Oh.” I stopped grinning. “Sorry, that was stupid of me to say.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I tame the roaring waves with such epic awesomeness that it’s a natural assumption.”

  “It’s true,” I told him. “When I saw you that first time, it was utterly mesmerizing.”

  “I just don’t think I could go through life wearing a wetsuit. Those things aren’t the comfiest,” he said. Then he pursed his lips and waggled his eyebrows. “Though they do wonders for the figure.”

  “Yes, they do.” There was a pause. A pause for me to see the words tumbling from my mouth as I said them. A pause for me to desperately try eating them up again. A pause for me to watch as Daniel heard them. A pause to try something, anything, to save myself from requiring immediate deportation to the Moon Colony of Mortification. “Look uncomfortable, I mean. I bet the sand gets stuck in those things. Chaffing must be terrible.”

  “Oh,” Daniel said, nodding, accepting that of course that’s what I had meant, “yeah.”

  “So how about some of those games then?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  Mission status: Change of topic … successful!

  “Which one are you up for?” he asked.

  “Anything not involving feats of complex hand-eye coordination,” I told him.

  To that, he grinned smugly. “I feel like I’m going to be acquiring a great deal of cute stuffed animals tonight.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Balloon darts. But if you win one of those fuzzy green gorillas, I do hope you know that it’s mine.”

  He stuck out a hand, and I shook it firmly. “You’ve got a deal.”

  . . .

  A mere twenty minutes (and as many dollars) later, I found myself shuffling dejectedly from Funland. My pride hopelessly shattered, I could have sworn that I felt an actual pulse in the blush on my cheeks.