by Nikki Roman
“Spencer, I’m scared!” I yell and then the ride drops us, stopping only a few feet from the ground and rocketing skywards again. The riders all scream in unison, some terrified, others having the time of their life. Me, I start to cry.
I squeeze Spencer’s hand until mine is white and his is purple. He laughs uncontrollably as I scream on the third drop. We bounce like we are in an elevator, stuck between floors. Then, finally, and thankfully, the ride meets the ground for the last time.
“You big baby!” Spencer makes fun of me. “You’re crying!” He shakes the blood back into his hand, I do the same.
“It was scary. I didn’t even want to go on,” I say, my feelings hurt.
“Okay, it’s over now. I’ll get you cotton candy for being so good,” he says.
“Better be the blue kind,” I say.
“Blue it is.”
We pass the swinging pirate ship, flying UFOs and a corn dog stand before we find the cotton candy vendor. Spencer’s eyes keep following the rides, his pupils swinging with the pirate ship and bobbing up and down with the UFOs.
“Go on two of my rides and then you can pick again,” I say. He returns his attention to me, but shrinks back when his eyes meet my face. “What’s wrong?”
“Jesus, your nose. It’s bruised and swollen,” he says, grabbing my chin.
“It does hurt a little… is it that bad?”
“I’m getting you ice.” He butts to the front of the line and asks for a bag of ice. Wrapping it in cheap, brown napkins, he presses it against the bridge of my nose and I hold it there.
“Maybe we should skip the cotton candy and just go on the Ferris Wheel now,” I say. “I’m getting tired and my nose is pretty sore.”
“That’s a good idea. Let’s go,” he says. “Hold my hand, it’s crowded here.”
The Ferris Wheel is an outdated white painted piece of steel; the buckets, once bright colors, have all faded to pastel. Industrial sized light bulbs glow a muted orange, decorating the outside spokes of the wheel. Popcorn lights, some fried, run along the inner spokes. Romantic is hardly the word I would use to describe it.
“It’s cute,” Spencer says, squeezing my hand to excite me.
“If it doesn’t fall apart,” I grunt.
Against my many objections, out of fear of our bucket tipping, Spencer sits on the same side as me. The buckets ascend their arc to the top and I dig my nails into the meaty part of Spencer’s forearm.
“We’re getting high… really high.” I can almost see the top of the Mega Drop.
“Don’t be scared, it’s fun. See,” he says making the bucket rock.
I squeal and dig my nails deeper into his flesh. Up here, the festival looks like a smudge of blinking lights, people the size of ants running this way and that. At the top of the Ferris Wheel, I let go of Spencer’s arm, my head pressing ever closer to his shoulder. Glowing lights against the dark of night make me feel sleepy and safe.
“My tired baby,” Spencer says, kissing my head. “We’re on top of the world.”
Not the whole world, but part of it. A part of the world where people take risks for a thrill. Go against human nature to feel alive and be on the edge of death all at once. Whether it’s the sudden plunge of the mega drop, or the disorientating spin of the tea cups, during that ride—they live.
That’s where we all are, I think. On the Mega Drop, climbing to the top point of success, and plummeting in an instant to defeat. That is where I stay with Spencer, wedged in a Mega Drop of emotions.
“I’ll put a festival in my heaven, right next to my stage,” he says.
“What do you think Miemah’s heaven looks like?”
“I don’t think she has one.”
The buckets sway at this high point; soon they will circle back down.
“Please, Spencer, create one for her,” I say.
I snuggle up to him and he gives in.
“Fire. On the ground, in the air, and all around her. Volcanoes spewing lava and blowing smoke. All the water and food blazing… pretty much like being trapped inside of a fireplace, only it never burns out. No one comes to toss water on it.”
“That’s hell.”
The Ferris Wheel resumes and we descend.
•••
“Carousel next.”
I keep my sentences short now. My heart is breaking; I keep seeing Miemah trapped in her burning car, her eagle wings bursting into flames. Brass knuckles pounding on the windshield to escape the building fire and smoke.
“Okay, no problem,” Spencer says. He checks me over but my face reveals nothing.
I don’t wrap my fingers around his when he tries to hold my hand again. I put both my hands over the ice on my nose and walk blindly in the direction of the carousel. Somehow, I lose him on the way there; he falls a few steps behind and when I turn to find him, I see him standing amongst a crowd of moving people, anger on his face.
“You could have waited,” he says gruffly, meeting me at the gate. The ride conductor lifts the latch and sweeps his arm out motioning for us to find a horse.
“Let’s sit the in the carriage,” I say. It’s the only non-moving piece of the carousel. I sit in front of Spencer and monitor his facial expressions. The punch that set my head off balance has put our relationship on the fritz, too. Miemah, that devil, she can ruin lives from her grave.
The soft tinkling of music issues from speakers hidden on the carousel and the horses start to gallop in place. Amongst the gold leafed images of medieval horse dousing, there are mirrors. I can see mine and Spencer’s pouting reflections in them.
“Hey!” I hear above the music. “Hey, you can’t do that! You can’t get on while it’s moving!” The ride conductor is shaking his fists at someone.
I look back at the mirrors. Indigo; the word is there like dry ice refusing to mix with the air. Indigo, the color of the bridle that the ceramic horse next to me is chomping on. Indigo, the color of the sky, spotlighted by a concrete moon. Indigo, the color of my bruised and swelling nose. But, most of all, Indigo— the name by which my Allies call me.
Feet slapping against the metal platform gives way to my albatross. It beats wings to me. Spencer tilts his head and smiles wanly. “What is it?” he says.
My bag of ice drops to the bottom of the carriage; pushed to the end of the seat, my elbow juts out the fake window, having nowhere else to go.
“Indigo, isn’t this a fine coincidence? Meeting you here! And you brought your little girlfriend too! What a surprise indeed,” Cairen says.
“Bailey?” Spencer asks.
“Oh, what, don’t remember me? But I remember you so well!” Cairen says.
“Bailey, come sit by me,” Spencer says his mouth tightening around his words.
I rise to leave my seat, but Cairen pulls me into his lap and crosses his arms over my stomach. He rolls his hands into fists and, with all his bejeweled rings, digs into my ribcage.
“Ah!” I cry out, my hand reaching for Spencer. But his hands are wound tight into little balls, hanging at his sides.
“Don’t move,” Cairen says, digging his fists deeper. “Does he know about the gang?”
“What gang?” Spencer swallows hard as if trying to eat his own vomit.
“It’s not what you think, Spencer. He made me join!” The ride picks up for a second go around.
“You’re in a gang?” He looks from me to Cairen for an answer.
“I’m her master,” Cairen says with a cruel grin.
“Bailey, is this true?”
Tears prick my eyes; I squirm under Cairen’s fists. I shake my head and a clutch of sobs follow. When I push against Cairen the pain worsens; I have to find a way to break free.
“He’s not my master, he’s my leader,” I say, although to Spencer ‘master’ and ‘leader’ must be one and the same.
“I brought my friends with me,” Cairen says, “would you like to have a go at them, too?”
Spencer’s mouth drops and his eyeli
ds widen, exposing the whites of his eyes.
“No one is fighting anyone,” I say.
Spencer picks his mouth back off the ground.
“This is how it works,” Cairen says, his voice imprisoning, leaving no room for argument. “She’s mine, now. She happens to be one of my favorite girls…just look at those eyes and how pretty they are, shining with tears. Oh, she’s a favorite for sure.”
I have never seen Spencer look so confused before. His eyes dart between Cairen and I, trying to make sense of it all.
“Indigo,” Cairen says, “my little pet, what happened to your nose? I don’t remember hitting you.”
Spencer clenches his jaw shut and lowers his brow.
“You slugged her didn’t you? You’re trying to dominate her. I’m afraid it’ll never work, she only submits to one man and that man is me; Cobra Cai,” he flicks his tongue in that awful, demonic way he always does after saying his street name.
His palm flat on my back, he shoves me to Spencer. I lay my head in his lap and wait for the metal to stop banging from Cairen’s thick soled boots.
“It’s not true, not any of it. Please, you can’t believe him.”
“It sounded true enough,” he says, looking over my bent back at Cairen, joining a group of Allies. “That you crawled back to someone who hurt you terribly. Yes, that sounds exactly like something you would do. Even after I risked my life, fighting him.”
“No, no, no, no,” I say, gasping on a sob. “Spencer you can’t—”
“But I do, Bailey, I believe every word.” The carousel stops so people can get on and off. “Goodbye, Bailey,” Spencer says, kissing the top of my head.
I stare at the back of his Goodwill shirt as he exits the carousel. He melts into a crowd of people at the gate. I open my mouth to scream and stop him, lurching to my feet. The carousel starts its rotation with a quick jerk and the sleeve of my jacket catches on the bolt of a horse bridle. My jacket rips and I fall into the wet grass.
Holden, who had been standing by the gate watching the entire ordeal, leaves his place and rushes over to me.
“We have to get Spencer before he leaves,” I say.
“I saw which way he went,” Holden says. He gives me his hand, and then we barge through clusters of people, who are either too busy with eating a hotdog or keeping their child from running off, to take notice of us as we force our way through.
Sprinting to the front of the festival, where Spencer and I came in, we pass the man selling ropes of tickets and plastic bracelets. The entrance opens up to the parking lot. Spencer’s truck is pulling out.
“Spencerrr!” I scream as the truck backs up. “Please, hear me out!”
Spencer straightens the truck and accelerates from the parking lot. I catch a quick glimpse of his face through the windshield, eyes that see the road ahead and nothing else. Eyes that fail to see me crying and screaming at the top of my lungs for him to turn back around.
Holden just stands there, his hand above his eyes as he follows the truck out of sight.
“He’s gone,” I say. I bite the sleeve of Spencer’s hoodie and try to stop myself from crying.
“He’ll be back,” Holden says.
“No he won’t. Not Spencer. He ain’t coming back,” I say sucking back tears and bloody snot. “He’s long gone.”
“I’ll take you home,” he says. “Come on.”
I drag feet across the parking lot to Holden’s commercial sized van. He pulls open the back doors and I sit inside, my legs hanging over the edge. I hold my face in my hands, not paying attention to him as tears slide through my fingers and drop to my thighs.
“Don’t cry,” he says. “Spencer will be begging for you on his hands and knees once he realizes what he gave up.”
“He won’t,” I say. “At least I hope he won’t fully realize what he had with me…then he would stay away for sure.”
“He’d have to be crazy, to let a girl like you go.”
“He is crazy, but not crazy enough to want me back. And who can blame him? I’m a thug. A tramp.”
Holden laughs, despite trying to hold it in. He bites his lip and shrugs sympathetically at me, but hearing the words ‘tramp’ and ‘thug’ come out of my mouth is just too much. I start to laugh, too. And soon, we are both rolling on the floor of his van in stiches.
“Thug?” he says. “You’re the furthest thing from it!”
“I could be…if I stayed in the Allie long enough. And Spencer must think I’m one, now.” I pull my hood over my head and throw fake gang symbols with my hands. “I didn’t choose the hood life, the hood life chose me!”
“Okay, stop! You’re killing me!”
I put my hood down. “It’s funny,” I say, “when it’s just you and I making a mockery of it. But it’s not so funny when we’re actually in the Allie. Make light of it how we want, I’m still a gang member and Spencer’s still gone…”
“It was good to laugh,” Holden says. He sits up and puts his arm around my shoulders, rubbing them. “It’s okay to laugh sometimes…we’re just kids, Bailey.”
“Just kids, but we’ve seen too much and been a part of too much to laugh so freely,” I point out.
“Hey, now,” he says, “don’t talk like that. It ain’t all so bad. There’s good times, too. Life’s what you make it, right?”
“My life’s a sick joke.”
Holden can’t deny this, no one can. We sit together a while longer, our legs dangling from the van, watching the last of the festival goers climb into their cars and drive away. A few stragglers, drunken teens, loiter in the parking lot, until the the ticket vendor shoos them away.
“I have a mattress,” Holden says, out of nowhere.
I go further into the van, scooting across the floor, until I hit the edge of the mattress. Pulling the doors closed, Holden comes in, too.
I lie on my side, arms and legs tucked against my chest like I’m about to be catapulted. Holden sits under one of the windows, his eyes glowing in a mask of moonlight. I pat the mattress and ask him to lie down next to me.
He nervously starts out sitting, legs stretched out in front of him, but I pull him by his arm until he’s on his back. I kick my boots off. My socked feet knock his bare ones accidentally and his feet recoil as if my toes are made of ice.
“Hold me,” I say.
“No,” he says.
“It’s dark,” I whisper.
“You really want me to?”
“Can I lay my head against your chest?”
“If you want to…”
I move my body closer to him, my hip bones matching up with his and my head gently coming down on his chest. I start to hum Spencer’s song, the one he sings when I am in pain or scared. I hum it loud, trying to sound out the thoughts ricocheting around my head.
“Spencer and I, we do this thing where we think about what our own heaven would be like. Could you help me create a heaven for Miemah?”
“Gee, Bailey, I’m not really religious,” Holden says.
“Please?”
I need a solid place in my mind where Miemah can go in peace. I want to put her to rest, for good.
“Okay…how do I start?”
“Just describe what it looks like; the color of the sky, the grass.”
“Isn’t sky blue and grass green?”
“You have to be more descriptive than that. I can’t imagine without any detail.”
“Okay let me try again… sloping hills, soft green pastures. Topiaries of hearts, cupids, and angels. The sky? Well, it isn’t just blue; honey, this sky is sparkling like diamonds, polished silver, and glass. Rivers and waterfalls in deep blue cascade over rocks. Her heaven is aglow, blazing in a golden light.”
“No fire?” I ask.
“No fire.”
“How does it stay aglow?”
“Angels’ halos, as they float above.” He points to the ceiling.
I see it unfold before me. The diamond skies, angels with their wings flutterin
g as silently as a mute’s whistle. Miemah sitting in a pasture with the light of a hundred halos shining on her face. Truly, it is a glorious heaven to behold… but it is missing something—my own personal touch—rolling hills of lavender, its perfume carried with the wind and its hue surrounding Miemah in Indigo.
Chapter 28
Dogs don’t understand sarcasm, but they do understand commands. When I’m upset, I am like a dog. I scratch my paws on the doormat before coming through the door, I let my owners coddle me and stroke my hair. I carry Spencer like a blood filled tick on my back.
Mom and Dad are sitting at the table. They have been waiting up all night for me to come home.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” I say.
It is three AM.
“Late?” Dad says. “No, we were just getting worried. It’s okay, sweetie.”
“I went to the festival with Spencer and then we met up with some friends. I lost track of time.”
Mom forces herself to look at me, her eyes opening up at varying degrees like they are adjusting to light. “Your nose, what happened?”
“Oh, I knocked it on the Spinning Ships… that ride is intense,” I say. “Anyway, I’m beat, I’m just gonna go to bed.”
They both look at each other; who will ask me what’s wrong first? Mom is well-adapted to deciphering my emotions, regardless of how hard I try to hide them, but Dad is new to the game.
“Can I come with you?” Mom asks.
I nod.
When we get into the room, I see the bed has been made. I un-tuck the sheets, toss the pillows, and throw myself down.
“Spencer?”
“How did you know?” I mumble into the mattress.
“Because you would’ve spent the night at his house if you guys were okay.” She brings a blanket over me, and I fall more inside of myself like a Russian nesting doll. She finds my boots underneath the comforter and takes them off; she rolls my socks into tiny balls and then lies down with me.
I remove Spencer’s hoodie and tuck it under my head, a drain pipe to catch the rain falling from my eyes.
“I love you,” Mom says. Her round stomach presses against my spine as she guards me in sleep, a mother bird curled up with her hatchling.
