What Happens Now (18 page)

“That’s everyone’s worst fair fear! We should go on it and replace that memory with a better one.”

“I don’t know. It was pretty traumatic.”

“Come on,” I said. “Otherwise the ride will always taunt you.”

He shook his head, but let me drag him toward the entrance.

Once we were on the ride with the bar clicked into place, he pulled me across the red vinyl seat toward him and put his arm around my shoulder. I took a little mental picture of us.
This is what it looks like when you have the thing you’ve dreamed about.
I wondered if anyone watching had any idea of the path we took to get here. How amazing it was. Or if we were simply another anonymous couple in a sea of anonymous couples, which to me was its own kind of amazing.

As the ride started moving, I turned to Camden and kissed him. I was worried about losing our wigs, and that felt strangely thrilling along with the rush of spins and twirls. He slipped his hand between the plaid shirt and Satina’s uniform top. Nobody would be able to see that—we were moving too fast. After a while, it seemed like we were the ones staying still.

I was a little uneven when my feet hit the ground after the ride was over. Camden steadied me and I steadied him back. The crowd was getting thicker now, jostling us as we tried to have a moment of stillness.

“This is a lot of people,” said Camden, looking uncomfortable for the first time all night.

“I know somewhere private.” And I did. On the far side of the kiddie ride area, between the haunted house ride that was not at all scary and the back of a goldfish-toss game, there
was a patch of grass where I once changed Danielle out of wet underwear and into fresh ones. I led Camden there.

“Do crowds make you nervous?” I asked when we rounded the corner. He answered by putting his hand on the waistband of my leggings and pulling me toward him against a telephone pole. Then he put both palms on either side of my face and stared at me, something strong and determined in his eyes.

“Do you know that I haven’t been to a fair since I was ten?”

“Because of the puke?”

He laughed, then his features settled into something more serious. “My mother thinks the fair is too commercial and exploits the animals. She’s always said it was something people went to because they thought they were supposed to. That it was expected of them. And we were beyond that.”

“Did you feel like you were missing out?”

“Yes.”

“Well, if it helps, I’ve gone every year. And I still felt like I was missing out.”

“You didn’t feel like you were, you know, part of something bigger?”

“Not really. I felt like that something bigger evaluated me, then decided it didn’t want me.” I paused. “I know what your mom is talking about. There’s an expectation here to have a certain kind of experience. No matter how much fun I had, it never felt like the right kind. Until tonight.”

Camden looked at me sadly now. He took his thumb and ran it along one side of my face, right where my hairline started.

“I guess we’re the same that way.” And he kissed me, almost urgently this time. I felt the kiss shoot into the back of my neck and then travel down the center of my body, into my limbs. It filled me with sudden understanding about Camden. He wanted to
belong
. He craved the exact rituals and traditions his mother wanted them to live above.

I felt closer to him now than ever before, right there against the telephone pole. Where all we could hear were the sounds of little kids screaming and three different pop music songs blaring from three different rides.

Finally, he pulled away.

“I want to win you something,” he said with a grin. “Something big and cheaply made and ugly.”

I wanted that. I wanted what it would mean.

“Come,” I said.

Fifteen minutes and thirty dollars later, Camden handed me a large stuffed penguin with dreadlocks and a Rastafarian hat.

“He’s hideous,” I proclaimed. “I love him.”

“And now you have to carry it around for the rest of the night, right? As a trophy to show you’re with a guy who’s really good at throwing things at other things?”

“I don’t mind,” I said, not wanting to tell him the full truth. That at least three good fantasies I once had about him involved exactly this kind of thing.

I texted Kendall.

Everything OK?

She answered back:

Yup.

Not
great
or any other adjective that might indicate they were doing more than taking pictures of sheep.

I started to type, asking her if she wanted to meet up with us.

But then I stopped after the
want
. What did
I
want? I did not want her to meet up with us, yet.

Instead I wrote:

Text me later.

Much later, I hoped.

“Let’s ride the Ferris wheel,” I said to Camden.

“Now that the temporal anomaly has been fixed, I’d love to.”

“You’re a geek.” Then I kissed him.

It wasn’t as romantic as I thought it might be, since it stopped and started so much. But for those thirty seconds when it was our turn to hover at the very top of the wheel, I rested my head on Camden’s shoulder and hugged my penguin. The breeze there felt like no breeze I’d ever felt before, and from up high the entire fair looked like something we could simply scoop up and tuck inside our jackets. Freeze it, frame it, call it perfect.

When we got off, we spotted Max and Eliza waiting in line for the swinging pirate ship. People were staring at them in their costumes, but they didn’t seem to notice.

“Oh, good!” said Eliza. “I really don’t want to go on this. Max doesn’t understand what a pukefest it can be. Also, I think his wig will fly off.”

“But it’s a pirate ship!” Max said, jokingly pushing out his
lower lip. “I love pirate ships!”

“It looks innocuous,” I told Max, “but I’ve seen it make grown men cry.”

“We’re going to get something to eat,” said Camden. “Come with us instead.”

Eliza patted Max on the back. “Sorry, kid. After dinner we can go on the helicopter ride, and you can make whirring noises while you make it go up and down.”

Max stepped out of the line and gave Eliza a dirty look. She didn’t see it, but I did.

The fair had gotten really crazy now; it always ended up stupid-packed after work hours. I’d seen a few people from school so far, but they hadn’t recognized me. I hoped more would show up. I wanted them to see me, and to see me with Camden and Eliza and Max. I loved the thought of them gossiping tomorrow.
Did you see that guy Ari was with? And she was wearing a wig!

We were waiting at the Greek gyros stand—the one my mother always said was surprisingly authentic—when I heard someone call my name.

“Ari?”

I turned to see Brady. And Lukas. And a bunch of other people from school.

“Hey, Brady.”

“Why are you guys dressed like that?”

“It’s a long story,” I said.

“It’s really not,” said Eliza, stepping up next to me. “It’s a
cosplay thing. We were here taking some photographs.” She turned to me. “See? Short story. Not even. Just facts.”

I looked at Lukas, who quickly shifted his glance from me and examined Max. He laughed. “Dude.
Silver Arrow
, right?”

Max smiled hesitantly. “Yes.”

What Lukas knew about
Silver Arrow,
he knew from me. It felt wrong, stolen, hearing him say the name. His eyes slid over to Camden and me again, then quickly back to Max, not sure what to do with the situation.

Without Kendall here, I wasn’t sure either.

Then suddenly, from somewhere, somebody shrieked. We all turned to see a ripple in the crowd surrounding the next booth.

There was a guy doubled over, vomiting.

“Classy,” said Eliza.

A woman came up to the guy and grabbed his shoulders, but he sank onto his hands and knees and kept retching.

We all looked at one another. Even Brady and Lukas. Lukas and I exchanged a glance and I shrugged. It seemed rude to act as if this wasn’t happening, but it also seemed rude not to.

Camden was the only person not ignoring it. He was staring.

“Camden,” I said, nudging his hand. “Don’t.”

But Camden froze, his eyes locked on to the situation like he was seeing something we weren’t. I turned to look at the guy again.

Now the guy was convulsing.

“Oh my God,” I said. “He’s having some kind of seizure.”

“Camden!” shouted Eliza. “Go help him!”

Max gave Camden a gentle shove on his back. “You’re the hotline guy. You go talk to him, keep him calm. I’ll get help.”

Max took off running toward the first aid tent, but Camden didn’t move forward.

Now the guy was flat on the ground, his body doing things he had no control over. The woman sank down on her knees next to him, holding out her hands like she knew she wanted to put them on him, but wasn’t sure where. She didn’t seem all there.

“What do you do in these situations?” I asked Camden. But Camden stood frozen, watching. His mouth a flat line, his eyes dull and stony.

The crowd, which had now formed a circle around the area, parted to let a pair of paramedics through. A security guard trailed behind them.

“Clear the area, folks. Let them do their work.”

Max reappeared, out of breath, and took Eliza and me gently by the arms.

“Come on,” he said.

We took a few steps away and I turned to make sure Camden was following us. But he wasn’t there.

“Where’s . . . ?” I started to ask.

But they kept walking, so I kept following, not wanting to lose them in the crowd, too. I death-gripped my penguin and followed them past all the other food booths, into the tent with
all the hot tubs on display, then finally a booth selling wooden chairs and porch swings.

Eliza sat down in a swing and took a deep breath, patted the spot next to her. I sat. She began to push us gently back and forth with her feet.

“That was a drug thing,” said Eliza.

It took me a few seconds to figure out what she was talking about. “Oh. The guy?”

“Yeah.” She looked up at Max now, and smiled. “Hey. You’re good in a crisis.”

“Thanks,” he said, and sat down in an Adirondack recliner across from us.

“You may have saved his life. The rest of us were all standing around like idiots.”

Max shrugged. “See. You may treat me like a child, but I don’t always act like one.”

Eliza’s expression shifted from smug to stung. Dressed as she was like Atticus Marr, it seemed even more out of place.

“If you have something to say, Max, say it. Passive-aggressive doesn’t work on me.”

They stared at each other. I stood up. “I’m . . . uh . . . going to see if I can find the others.”

Then I walked as fast as I could without actually running. I checked my phone and saw that two messages had come in.

Camden’s said,
Meet me at that fence place.

Kendall wanted to know where we were. I told her to meet
me behind the kiddie haunted house in ten minutes.

At the place which was now
our
place, Camden sat on the grass hugging his knees to his chest. His wig gone, his hair rumpled and misshapen. The first thing I wanted to do was put my hand in it and rumple it myself.

Instead, I kept my distance and asked, “Are you okay?”

He looked up at me. There were giant tears trailing down his cheeks.

“Camden? What’s going on?” I crouched down and put the penguin on the ground, but was still hesitant to reach out for him. “Did you know that guy?”

Camden wiped his nose with the sleeve of Azor’s uniform. “No. But I . . . I’ve seen that before.”

“Eliza said it was probably an OD situation.”

Camden closed his eyes tight and nodded.

I thought of the guy’s body convulsing, the woman too checked out to know what to do.

“Tell me,” I said.

“Here?” he asked, his eyes still shut.

“Why not?”

“Because I wanted to be Azor for you.”

“You were. You are.”

“Not
now
. Not
this.
”

“Then be Camden for me.”

Camden laughed and opened his eyes, his eyelashes glistening. In those eyes, I saw something I hadn’t yet glimpsed in
him. Something wounded and secret and ashamed.

“I was twelve,” said Camden, taking a deep breath. “We were living in Florida with my mom’s boyfriend.”

I shifted my position so I was sitting cross-legged on the gravel. “Go on.”

“He and Mom had friends over; they were partying hard while I was trying to sleep. He came into my room thinking it was the bathroom, and then he just . . . he was on the floor . . .” Camden shook his head as he often did, like he was rattling something free. “I had the phone in my hand like this, on the line with 911.” He curled one hand into a tight claw that held an imaginary receiver. “But he died right in front of me.”

We were silent for a moment. I had no idea what to say.

“Is the guy okay?” asked Camden. “The one we saw?”

“I don’t know. Should we go find out?”

Camden shook his head. “That was mortifying over there, that I choked under pressure. I could have comforted the woman, at least. I have the training. I mean . . . the whole experience in Florida was one of the reasons why I wanted to volunteer at the hotline to begin with. I want to help people, not be a bystander my whole life.”

“You will,” I said.

“This is a goddamn upstate New York county fair! Not some crappy apartment in Gainesville! This kind of thing should not be happening at a wholesome family event.” He stood up and shouted at the sky. “We came here to get away from all that
shit. I was supposed to be done with it. Done!”

I stood up, too. He turned to me.

“I have to go home. I have Max’s keys. The others can ride home with Kendall, right?”

“The others?”

He caught my arm and grasped it. “Will you come with me?”

I wasn’t sure what that meant. What would happen once we reached the Barn.

I didn’t care.