The Ferris wheel had just passed the three-o’clock position—the point at which they switched from going backward to forward. Which meant there was now less than a quarter of the circle between them and the top. Anabelle gripped the side of the basket and told herself not to look down.
“That Wood kid,” her dad whispered, pointing down at Tobin. “He’s leaving, too, right?” Even his whispers were loud.
Anabelle nodded.
“I cant believe a father would act like that at such an important time.” He covered his extended index finger with his hand so only she could see that he was pointing down at Steve, who was still cursing like crazy despite the fact that Jonah had gotten away.
Anabelle put her finger to her lips. “Not everybody’s father cares as much as you do,” she said. The basket got higher and she lost sight of Tobin. He was starting to drift behind them.
“I know, I know. I just can’t believe you’re actually starting college,” he said, his hand quickly tapping his chest, water pooling in the corners of his eyes—just how it always started.
“Promise me, no sobbing,” Anabelle said, shrinking in her seat.
“Oh, Annie,” her dad said, mid-sniffle, “I can’t promise any such thing.”
“Come on, you’ve had eighteen years to prepare for this,” Anabelle said as they rose past the mast of the pirate ship. Its lights twinkled and swung under the star-studded sky.
“Eighteen years! Eighteen years?! Just yesterday I was taking you for a ride on the Teacups.” He pulled off his glasses and wiped the tears away with the backs of his wrists. “The carousel!”
“Kiddie rides,” she said. “And I’m not a kid.”
He sighed and petted the back of her head. “Hey, how’re you doing with this?” he asked, pointing toward the ground.
“Totally fine,” Anabelle said overconfidently, as if trying to convince herself. Right? she thought. It is totally fine. To prove it, she looked down over the side of the basket. They were right about at two o’clock. Maybe two-thirty. Steve had finally wandered off, and a new line was forming for the Ferris wheel. This really isn’t so bad, she thought, and stuck her neck farther out over the side.
Then she saw the floor of WhirrrlyWorld directly beneath them, and she suddenly felt like she did when she was seven years old. She whipped her head back to face forward, then pulled her legs into the basket and brought her hands up to either side of her face as blinders.
Waves of screams echoed from the roller coaster, the swings, the pirate ship. It sounded like everyone was having so much fun. She wished she could be feeling that way, too. Instead, her head was back out in the middle of the ice, spinning: What kind of person hooks up with his best friend’s mom? What kind of person am I to pine for someone like that? Was there anyone out there who was right for her? Anyone at all? Or did everyone who seemed great at first turn out to have some fatal flaw?
“Earth to Annie!” her dad said, waving his hand in front of her face. “You there?”
“Yeah,” she said, removing her blinders and looking straight at his long, jowly face. “I’m here.” She didn’t want to make him think she couldn’t handle the ride—then he’d just start to panic.
“Well, we were having a conversation, remember?”
“Sorry,” Anabelle said. “I zoned. What was the last thing you said?” Everything was okay, she told herself. All she had to do was fix her eyes on the dots of light reflecting in his glasses.
“I was talking about how it’s not possible that you’re going to college yet. How you’re still our little baby!” His voice sounded all whiny.
Anabelle shook her head and rolled her eyes. “I told you,” she said. “I’m grown up now.”
And then it came. The first sob. Not quite a camel but getting there.
A lot of the noises Anabelle’s dad made sounded like animals: his laugh was an excited ape; his nose-blowing a trumpeting elephant; and his sobs—well, she’d only recently figured out what his sobs were when they’d gone on a family trip to the zoo. She and her parents and her little sisters had followed a low-pitched groaning sound, and it had led them to the camels. The guy camel was behind the lady camel, and she was moaning and foaming at the mouth. All the girls in the family were grossed out, but Anabelle’s dad got all teary and went on about how beautiful it was that they were witnessing such a raw act of nature. Those “raw nature” noises sounded familiar to Anabelle somehow. And after listening for a while, she realized that her dad’s sobbing—when he really got into it, with the deep inhaling—sounded just like the humping camels.
Anything could set him off: an unexpected gift, a sappy film, a finely cooked stew. Or, as in this case, the realization that one of his daughters was maturing.
They hit the Ferris wheel’s peak, and there it was: full-on camel.
Anabelle tried to block out his voice and focused on the bloated yellow moon kissing the tops of the trees. Slowly, they passed the pinnacle and started descending along the other side of the circle. She relaxed her leg muscles.
Anabelle looked up to see if Tobin had noticed her dad’s noises. But there was no way she could see him from below. Great, she thought. Now, on top of everything else, someone who used to like me is getting to see the spectacle that is my dad.
Her dad took out his red handkerchief and blew his nose: wild elephant. Could Tobin hear that?
“Remember when you were a little kid?” her dad asked, sniffling. “And you wouldn’t go on all those crazy rides?” He pointed at the roller coaster.
Anabelle nodded. She didn’t get why he always had to bring this up when they came to WhirrrlyWorld. As if there was any chance she could forget.
“I had so much respect for you,” he said, with a little more elephant. “Even though all your friends would go, you just stood and waited patiently until they were ready for the lower rides. So much inner strength, so much resolve.” There he went again, blabbing about her shyness.
Anabelle didn’t say anything. She knew by now that if she showed her dad how annoying it was when he got all sentimental, it would just make things worse. And all she wanted was for him to quiet down. But he was still going, reminiscing about her childhood.
Anabelle looked up at Tobin’s looming basket. She watched it follow her as they swung around the bottom. “Once in a Lifetime” kicked on, and she started swinging her feet in rhythm with the song, trying to calm her nerves. When she was finally back up above Tobin, she peered down at the empty half of his basket. It looked so calm and quiet in there. She wished she could press an eject button and magically land right beside him.
But Tobin probably hated her. And he should. The way she’d pulled away when he’d tried to kiss her on the trampoline. It’s not that she didn’t want to kiss him; it’s just that she’d never thought of him that way before. And he’d never given her any signs that he was interested either. But she wondered now, after this summer of disasters, how things would’ve turned out if she’d given in to him that night. Could it be that he was one of those third or fourth options that Mary-Tyler had been talking about?
Anabelle felt a smack on her shoulder. She jumped, startled out of her daydream. Her dad was so into the story he was telling that he hadn’t even noticed he’d hit her. He was gesticulating madly as he carried on: “... and that time I rescued you from the big slide, remember that? You climbed all the way up there with those little twiggy legs and we couldn’t get you to slide down. Remember?” He shook her arm. “Remember I went up the ladder—not easy on the knees, I’ll tell you that!—and brought you down on my lap? On that potato sack?” He let out a long tearful sob, sending himself back into camel mode.
Down below a bell dinged furiously. Someone was a water-gun-shooting winner. Anabelle peeked over the side to see what they’d choose as a prize. But before she could tell, she turned back around. They were at the very top of the wheel, not moving. And she had this awful feeling that they’d been stuck there for a long time.
She put her hands up like before, blocking her peripheral vision. The moon was higher and smaller than the last time they’d passed it. The yellowness was fading, too.
Her dad was on to some story about how they’d hiked to the top of the bluffs.
“Dad?” she asked, cutting him off before he could get to the part when she ran and hid behind a big rock. “How long have we been up here?”
“Oh.” He wiped his eyes and looked at his watch. “About a minute. Maybe two?”
“That’s not normal, is it?” she asked, her voice timid.
“We should still be moving, right? We’ve only been around once. They shouldn’t be letting people off yet or anything.”
A smile broke through his weepy face. “Did you only just notice?” he asked, and blew his nose. Major elephant.
She turned her head toward him, her blinders still up.
“Yes.”
“Wow, you must have something big on your mind,” he said, his crying tapering off. “I thought maybe you were actually doing okay with being up here!”
“Not really,” Anabelle said faintly.
“Too bad.” He removed his glasses and cleaned them with a corner of his handkerchief. “Imagine how symbolic that would be! Conquering your problem with heights just before you plunge into your life away from home!” He shot his hand downward like a crashing airplane.
Why did he have to be so dramatic about everything?
Anabelle really wanted to get over it. She was about to become an adult, right? And what kind of adult couldn’t bear to be at the top of a Ferris wheel? Not all those people down there in lines, who’d driven miles to go on daredevil rides. Not kids who’d lived in Normal all their lives. Not anyone she knew.
This is so lame, she thought, turning her head back toward the moon. How can I be the only teenager in the world who can’t deal with a freakin’Ferris wheel? What would she do in college if all of her new friends went to a carnival and wanted to go on the Ferris wheel, but she couldn’t? So much for becoming a new person; she’d go right back to being the old Anabelle. High school Anabelle, who was too shy to do anything with bravery or conviction, except when it came to the piano. Or if it was in secret, like the Polar Bear Club.
She had to get over her heights thing. And she had to do it now. It was her last chance before leaving home.
She put her hands in her lap and leaned over, looking down. For a second she was fine. She watched the clusters of people milling around, eating cotton candy, holding hands, gripping stuffed dogs, lions, seals. There they are, she thought. And here I am. They’re down there and I’m up here. Big deal.
But then it kicked in. The thing that always happened when she was up high, on a building, a mountain, a bridge. Worse than the sense that she was bound to drop was that unshakable feeling that she was going to jump—as if she were a magnet and the earth was a giant refrigerator. She clung to the metal bar over her thighs. This is holding you in, she thought. It’s locked. But she knew how easy it would be to undo her seat belt, wriggle her legs out from under the gate, stand up, leap, and fall. And fall and fall until—splat—she’d be splayed out on the ground. There was a teenage tourist last year who’d killed himself that way. She wondered if his dad had been sitting next to him, sobbing like a humping camel.
She imagined what it must’ve been like for that kid to fall that far. Had he died in midair? Or when he’d hit the ground? Or had he hit something else along the way, like another basket or the fence around the ride?
Anabelle clenched her stomach as she pictured the fence impaling her in the gut.
She swiveled back around and put up her blinders, breathing heavily.
“Annie, sit tight,” her dad said, rubbing her shoulder. Then he leaned over his side of the basket and waved his arms back and forth over his head, as if he were stuck on a desert island and saw a plane passing by. “Hey, Mack!” he shouted. “Yeah, that’s right! Up here!”
The couple in the basket in front of them turned and gave her dad funny looks. She hoped Tobin wasn’t looking, too.
Anabelle kicked his leg. “Stop it, Dad,” she said between clenched teeth.
But he was only just getting started. “What seems to be the trouble, Mack?” he shouted.
“No, Dad.” Anabelle tugged on his arm. “Please don’t.” She was already stressed out enough, without him making a spectacle.
“We need your patience, sir!” the ride operator called from below. “Mechanic’s working on it!”
“I’ve got a daughter here!” her dad persisted. “Can’t deal with heights!”
“Dad!” she said. “It’s not a problem anymore—I’m over it!”
“Then why’d you bring her up there?” the operator called back.
Jeez, Anabelle thought. That guy must think I’m a little girl—like I didn’t make the decision to go on this ride by myself.
“Could you bring a ladder or something?” her dad asked.
“Or call the fire department?”
“DAD!” Anabelle shouted, hardly caring anymore if anyone heard her; she just wanted to shut him up. There was no way Tobin wasn’t catching all of this.
“Sir!” the guy shouted, sounding supremely irritated.
“We’ll have this fixed before we can get a ladder!”
“Fire department’s always quick!”
“Dad, would you just shut up already? Please?” Anabelle turned around to steal a glance at Tobin. She placed one hand under her eyes, to help her see only him and not the ground below.
To her horror, he was staring straight at her. Well, no, actually, not straight at her. Really, straight at her dad.
But the look on his face wasn’t the weirded-out expression she’d expected. There was a kind of yearning in his eyes—the way Anabelle imagined she looked when she saw a couple kissing who were obviously one hundred percent into each other. That allure of something you want but have never had before. She wondered why he could possibly be looking at her dad that way. What did it mean?
Anabelle must’ve been staring too long because Tobin caught her watching him. He smiled dimly and waved.
She waved back. Cool, maybe he didn’t totally hate her guts. She remembered a night, way back in the winter, when Tobin had driven up behind her and honked out the rhythm to the first lyrics in Cabaret—Wilkommen, bienvenue—and Anabelle had answered with the rhythm of the next word—Welcome—as if they were communicating in their own secret version of Morse code. It had made her feel special and completely in tune with Tobin and she wanted to feel that way again now. Maybe whistle a phrase from something and have him whistle the next part back to her. But just as she pursed her lips, a helium balloon came floating past her head and she looked down to see where it had come from. It turned out there was a guy holding a whole colorful bunch just outside the Ferris-wheel fence, watching the balloon rise. She suddenly became nauseated again, seeing how much smaller the balloons down there were than the one up near her, and she turned back around.
“Annie,” her dad said, “I don’t see why you’re so upset with me. There’s no harm in asking for help.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Anabelle said, facing him. She had only one blinder up, so she could talk to him easily but still keep herself from looking down. “I just wish you could keep this between you and me. I mean, they’ll fix it as soon as they can. And all you’re doing is embarrassing me.”
“Well, Annie. I’m sorry. Sorry I’m so embarrassing to you. But you know what? Soon you won’t have to deal with this. With me and my big mouth. So maybe you can find a way of humoring me. Just for tonight.” Spittle flew from his mouth and a few specks landed on Anabelle’s face.
She rubbed them off with an exaggerated wipe. “Okay, fine,” she said. “Do what you have to do. Call the fire department if you have to. Why not the SWAT team?” She regretted it as soon as she’d said it. She didn’t even know what the SWAT team was, or if they had one in Normal—or even a hundred miles from Normal.
She pictured that intense expression on Tobin’s face when he’d been watching her dad. Maybe he hadn’t been thinking about her dad at all. Maybe he’d met a girl this summer. A tourist girl like Mary-Tyler, and she’d gone back home and he was missing her terribly. Yeah, maybe that was it.
Through the seat, Anabelle could feel her dad’s gangly legs kicking back and forth. Her own legs were tucked in, and the vibrations made her stomach feel like a washing machine on high gear. She closed her eyes and listened to people from other baskets calling to the ride operator, demanding to know what was going on. Their calling just kept reminding her that they were stuck, and her urge to jump returned. Again, she imagined what the fall would feel like. Liberating, probably, at first. Like flying. But she imagined that her face would hit the ground before she could really get the hang of free-falling, and it was the thought of the impact, the sound of her neck snapping, that made her squirm the most. Each time she thought of that, she’d say, No, just loud enough for herself to hear. A couple of times she even imagined her funeral. She wondered who, if anyone, from school would show up. Would Matt, Lexi, or Jonah? Would Tobin?
Then her dad interrupted her thoughts—hit pause right in the middle of her instant replay. “What do you think of the dark?” he asked.
“What do you mean, what do I think?” Anabelle kept her eyes closed. “You mean, like, am I scared of it?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Are you?”
“No, it’s nice. Cozy. Time to go to sleep.” Anabelle pictured her bed and wished she was lying in it right now. “Why?” she asked. “What do you think of it?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Just wondering.”
Anabelle opened her eyes and looked at her dad, once again covering the sides of her face. “You don’t ask a question like that because you’re just wondering.”
The View from the Top Page 12
