It was something close to exhilarating witnessing this glorious, noisy chaos through someone else’s wide and unjaded eyes. Part of living in New York—even the neighborhoods far less gaudy and circus-like than this one—is losing yourself in crowds, subsuming yourself and your better nature under the currents of the city streets. What it took me until that moment to realize was that it was also quite possible to find yourself in that same loud thrum, to become alive to yourself only when surrounded by countless others. In my mind I juxtaposed Ashleigh’s lonely cursor blinking on a computer screen—hers or mine or anyone’s—with this glittery blond ball of something—energy, potential, nerves, whatever—that was bouncing around in front of me. The two were inextricably related but powerfully different—like a world-class athlete and his pale weakling of a shadow.
Forward and forward we pushed through the crowd. The only thing that could finally bring Ashleigh Bortch to a complete standstill—to shock her out of her New York rhapsody—was the sight of the Cyclone. It looked, as it always did, like a long-forgotten erector set, something as old as the Pilgrims and as dangerous as one of their smallpox-laden blankets. The car rushing along its dipping tracks sounded like a skeleton in a hurricane—rattling and clattering and about as far from reassuring as you could imagine. Even before noon, there was a snaking line of gawping Brooklynites waiting to test their luck against the great beast. Everyone knew the thing had to topple sometime. But they also knew that the odds of it happening on their heads were remote.
Ashleigh whistled. “Whoa,” she said.
“Yup,” I said.
“That’s…that’s crazy.”
“I know it.”
“I’m scared just looking at it.”
“To be honest, so am I.” We stood for a moment, heads tilted, mouths open. Annoyed thrill seekers pushed at our backs and sighed loudly as they navigated around us. “Hey, Ashleigh, why don’t we get a snack and go check out the boardwalk? That might help us build up our courage.”
“OK,” she said, turning. “I’m starving.”
“You did just have breakfast, didn’t you?”
“That was nothing,” she said. “I’m a big eater. You had like no food in your house. You totally have an eating disorder.”
I led her along the Astroland fence toward the ocean. “That’s crazy. I do not.”
“Then why don’t you have any food in your house?”
“Because…because I’m lazy and don’t eat at home very much.”
She skipped ahead. “Mormons have to keep a year’s supply of food in their pantries at all times—that way we’re prepared for tough times.”
“Yeah? Well, this is New York. My apartment doesn’t have a pantry. My apartment barely has a bedroom.”
Up on the boardwalk we dodged oncoming Rollerbladers and approached the food stall closest to us. Ashleigh seemed overwhelmed by the choices—everything from cotton candy to shrimp platters with a side of corn on the cob. Luckily for me, not even Ashleigh’s boundless appetite was up to a fried clam roll before noon. I steered her toward a funnel cake instead and let her carry it—steaming hot and smothered with powdered sugar—over to one of the wooden benches facing the ocean. We sat and picked at the scorching dough, and soon our fingers were slick and powdery with sugar. I should have brought sunglasses, I realized, as I felt the sun draw a trickle of sweat from my brow. The sky over the beach was washed-out, white-hot, and blank, and the ocean roared and tumbled in a long gray-blue expanse before us. A seagull pimp-strutted along the railing that separates the wood from the sand and eyed our snack suspiciously. I kicked at the air to make it fly off; I wasn’t looking for a repeat of yesterday’s airborne snatch-and-grab on the roof.
“Wow,” Ashleigh said. “I’ve never seen the ocean up close before.”
“You haven’t?”
Her voice was small. “Nope.”
We sat for a while and took in the sight.
“This is totally fun,” said Ashleigh.
“Is it what you expected?”
She licked her fingers. “Not at all.”
“Sometimes that can be a good thing, though, right?”
“Yeah, I guess so.” She smiled. “Sometimes.”
“Ashleigh, I have to ask you. What did you think you were going to do here? Just start an entire new life? You didn’t even bring anything with you.”
“That was the point, kind of.” She turned her face to the ocean. “I mean, I brought my Discman. I brought a few T-shirts and, like, some underwear. I brought some money and some goldfish crackers. And I brought Bear.”
“You brought what?”
She blushed. “Bear. He’s a—it’s a stuffed animal. Shut up, OK?”
“Hey,” I said, tearing at the cake, “whatever gets you through. I used to have a stuffed animal too. I wouldn’t sleep without it.”
“What was it called?”
“Well…it was a rabbit. So…”
Ashleigh flicked powdered sugar at my eye. “What was it called?”
I sighed. “Honey Bunny.”
Ashleigh laughed so hard she snorted. “Ohmigosh. That is so cute.”
“I’m glad you find it amusing.”
“When was this?”
“Ohhh, I dunno.” I acted like I was casting my memory way back into the past. “A long time ago. Like when I was…nineteen?”
She kicked at my shins. “Come on.”
“I’m kidding. When I was like two or three, I guess.”
“I bet you were a happy little kid.”
“Yeah, I guess I was.”
“Lucky.”
I looked at her, squinting my eyes in the glare. Behind us three boys clattered by on scooters, hooting and exhorting one another to go faster, faster, faster. “Yeah, I guess I was that too.”
Neither of us said anything for a time, just watched the ocean pull back and roll in, pull back and roll in. A bored, bronzed lifeguard sounded his whistle occasionally, but for the most part the morning bathers behaved themselves, splashing gaily in the shallows or floating lazily on inflatable tubes shaped like crocodiles.
“OK, I’ll admit that I didn’t think all that much. I just did it. I figured that…that other people would help me with the hard part.”
“Ashleigh,” I said, still staring at the horizon. “The hard part is the life you just left.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” I said. “You are seventeen years old, and you have an entire life in front of you. I know it’s impossible to imagine, but there is so much out there. There is so much life beyond those mountains. And you can have it, if you really want it. But the sucky part is that you just can’t have it yet.”
“But I can’t survive there. I can’t. I just can’t.”
“You can, Ashleigh. You will, believe me. You have no idea how fast time really is. Between when I first started talking to you online last year and now—that must have felt like an entire lifetime for you. A different grade, a different set of problems, different dreams. Hell—sorry, heck—last year you told me you still listened to Britney Spears.”
She blushed horribly and pushed my side. “Just to be, like, funny! Not for real!”
“Whatever you say.” I laughed. “But all that time for you was like a blink for me. When we started talking I had my air conditioner on, and when you showed up yesterday I had it on again. That’s a full human year. And by the time you get to be my age it goes like that.” I snapped my fingers. “And I bet when you’re twice my age it goes twice as fast as that.”
“Weird,” she said.
“Yeah, I know it. Life is long, kiddo. But it goes really fast. You can’t mess up your future now by staying here. Not when you haven’t even gotten to it yet.”
She chewed more funnel cake, then chewed my words over in her mind. “You shouldn’t just let a year go by like that,” she said finally.
“What? We’re not talking about me, Ashleigh. This is about you.”
“Well it can be
about youuu”—she drew out the word, making fun of me—“too. You’re not that much older than me, you know. You’re not like my parents.”
“I certainly hope not.”
“Don’t worry—you’re not. They’re not nearly as messy as you.” She stuck her tongue out at me, then got serious. “But if what you’re saying is true and time is so super fast, then shouldn’t you be doing more with it? If I had the freedom you have—if I could, like, decide to hop on a train and come out here every day, or go to concerts when I wanted to, or just sit in a park and daydream—I would totally use it. I wouldn’t just think about whether my stupid air conditioner is on or not. That’s not how I’d want to keep track of my life.”
It’s a humbling feeling being put in your place by a seventeen-year-old, but it’s not altogether unpleasant. I just let her words penetrate my skull; I didn’t stop them at the border of my brain because she was twirling her hair in her fingers or because she dotted her Is with hearts. I remembered the way she had struck me online, and I tried to see that phantom person in the young girl with powdered sugar on her face sitting next to me. And I could. Somewhere in this young body was a serious person who I had met in a serious way. And she had just seriously stuck it to me. “You’re right,” I said.
“Really? Well, maybe we both are.”
“OK, deal,” I said, and held out my hand to shake. Her palm was sticky but warm.
“Deal,” she said. “Now what about that roller coaster?”
It wasn’t until they were actually strapping us into the second car from the front that I remembered that, for all my tough talk, I had never actually ridden the Cyclone myself. I decided not to share that with Ashleigh, since she looked to be about two or three shallow breaths away from full-fledged hyperventilation. Instead I let my heart attempt to jackhammer its way out of my ribs in relative silence and tried to put on a brave face. The girl behind us was quietly sobbing, and it was starting to get to me too. “You sure you’re all right with this?” I asked.
“I think so,” Ashleigh said. “I mean, I’m not usually the kind of person who likes roller coasters.”
“But?”
“But, like, I’m not usually the kind of person who runs away to New York City either.”
Under our feet we felt the car grumble to life. The groaning, unsteady response of the ageless white wood supporting us would have been audible to a deaf man. “You know what, Ashleigh?”
“What?” Her hands gripped at the sticky metal bar that was going to keep us from being flung to our deaths. At least in theory.
“I think you’re wrong. I think you’re exactly the type of person who likes roller coasters.”
She flashed me a brilliant smile as we shuddered into the first incline.
Up, up, and up we went, like patients in a sadistic dentist’s chair. To our right, Coney Island was spread out before us, a view that stretched all the way to the ocean. The sun felt hot on the back of my neck. I tried to remember the last time I had been on a roller coaster but couldn’t.
“Look!” Ashleigh was elbowing me in the side. “Look down there!”
I turned. She was pointing excitedly to the crowd gathered near the entrance to the Cyclone.
“Doesn’t that guy look just like you?”
I did my best to sit up and peer over the rail. At first I saw only a mess of people, tiny as ants. But I followed Ashleigh’s outstretched finger until I saw a solitary figure, hair running wild, standing apart from the crowd in his sunglasses and staring directly at us with an enormous shit-eating grin on his face. It couldn’t be.
“Wow,” said Ashleigh. “That guy is totally you!”
I leaned over more, trying to get a better glimpse. It couldn’t be, really. It didn’t make any sense. Just when things were starting to make sense. The figure pulled his right hand out of his pocket and started to wave, and that was when we reached the summit and spilled forward, racing down, down, down and then twisting around the track with all the subtlety of a punch in the face.
My stomach did a triple lutz, then made a nosedive for my ankles, and my hip began smarting from bashing against the side of the car on every turn. Ashleigh was screaming, a high-pitched primal yawp, and soon she was clutching my arm harder than she was the safety bar. The coaster didn’t so much take us for a ride as it rode us—every twist, every roll penetrated to the bone. The sea air rushed against my face, and my eyes were full of tears. It was utterly punishing, this feeling: being totally at the mercy of something inanimate and huge and ferocious and unrelenting. I felt like I was shaking more than the wooden structure, and I squeezed my eyelids shut as we whooshed and galloped. It seemed like it would never ever end.
But all of a sudden it was over. We slowed and rattled and came to an ungraceful stop back where we had started. Ashleigh had yet to let go of my arm, and when she did her fingernails left a flurry of scratches on my bicep like malicious paper cuts. I gasped for breath and opened my eyes. We had survived. We were safe.
“That was incredible!” Ashleigh yelled. “Can we do it again?” Her face was a lusty shade of crimson. Even the mookish attendant let out a chuckle as he helped lift her out of the car.
Unsteadily, I climbed out and joined her on the platform. “Maybe in a few minutes,” I said. “I think I dropped my intestines somewhere over the second dip.”
It’s hard to explain, but as I followed the skipping seventeen-year-old back out to the sidewalk and felt my legs reassert themselves under me, it seemed like I really had dropped something up on the coaster, something that had been weighing me down. It wasn’t my intestines and it wasn’t my pride, either. With each wobbly step I felt, if not reborn then certainly reimagined, as if the new, ocean-and-exhaust-scented air that had pushed into me had been an oil change for my soul. All the tiny hairs on my arms were standing ramrod straight. I cracked my knuckles and got my bearings. Ashleigh was jumping up and down in place, clapping her hands, reliving every one of the two hundred or so seconds we had spent on the Cyclone. My eyes—dry now, thankfully—scanned the crowd for the doppelgänger but turned up nothing. Had he really been here? And what could he have wanted?
“What are you looking for?” Ashleigh finally seemed to be settling back to Earth.
“That person you saw from up there,” I said, my pupils moving from face to face. “The one you said looked like me.”
“Come on,” said Ashleigh. “Don’t be so, like, full of yourself!”
“I’m not,” I said, though I didn’t believe it.
“Well don’t be so paranoid, then. Come on—let’s get something else to eat!”
We stayed at Coney Island until just past noon, strolling the midways, playing Skee-Ball, and even taking a turn on the strange Matterhorn-themed ride that spins riders past spray-painted images of the Swiss Alps and giant rest-in-peace portraits of Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls, while blasting hip-hop from Hot 97 at eardrum-exploding volume. Ashleigh managed to put away a tub of popcorn, a stick of cotton candy, and a twisty rainbow-colored lollipop that was longer than my forearm. A few times as we walked Ashleigh tried to hold my hand, but I managed to slip away from her grasp. There was no sign of the doppelgänger, and after a while I forgot to keep looking for him. I felt the hint of a sunburn on the bridge of my nose and the memory of the Cyclone wind on my brow. It had turned out to be a pretty good morning.
But on the F back to my apartment, I told Ashleigh that she had to go home.
“OK,” she said.
I was stunned. “Really? ‘OK’? That’s it?”
She kicked at the peeling linoleum floor. “Yeah, I guess. I mean, I hate it there. But it wouldn’t really work with me here. You don’t have enough room in your apartment.”
“Uh, no. No, I don’t.”
“We can still be friends, though, right? I mean…” She blushed. “We are, like, friends, right? In real life?”
“Absolutely,” I said. “You’re a good friend, Ashleigh.”
She blushed
more deeply. “And I can still write to you and complain about stuff, right? Because I’m serious. I’m going to have a life just like yours. I’m going to do it.”
I laughed. “I don’t think my life is one to shoot for, Ashleigh. Aim higher.”
“Ok, I promise.” She sat silently for a time, staring out through the glare at the streets passing below us, her body leaning gently on my side. “I feel better,” she said suddenly. “I guess it just helps knowing that all of this is out there.”
“I’m glad,” I said. “Sometimes it’s hard to get outside of yourself, or to imagine anything outside of your daily routine.”
“Yeah. That’s why you’ve gotta shake it up sometimes, right?”
“That’s right,” I said. “That’s exactly right.”
Back at my apartment Ashleigh took a shower while I searched the Internet for flight information. There was a plane leaving JFK for Salt Lake at 5:15 p.m., and for a little over eight hundred dollars it was possible to buy a one-way ticket. Ashleigh, of course, had no money left, so I typed in my emergency credit card number on the purchase screen. My parents hadn’t specified whose emergency the card was for. And it was better than getting hauled in for aiding and abetting.
I heard Ashleigh rustling around in the living room, so I called out to her. “OK, you’re all set. I’ll get you a car service, but you’ll have to head to the airport pretty soon.”
She came through the door wearing a sky blue T-shirt that said INSIDE WE ARE ALL BROKEN on it and holding the mix CD I had made for Cath Kennedy. “What’s this?” she asked.
“Oh…it’s just a CD I made.”
“Can I take it for the plane? I don’t have anything new to listen to.”
“Sure,” I said, pushing back from my desk. “Be my guest.”
“Just one more thing,” she said, lightly resting her hand on my shoulder. “I don’t want to go alone. Would you please just come with me?”
Miss Misery Page 21
