“Yeah, and then I puked afterward,” Brooklyn scoffed.
“So I take it you don’t want to ride it, then?” I asked him, and he vehemently shook his head.
“No fucking way. I still don’t understand how it even works.”
“Centrifugal force,” Alec chimed in, keeping the slight monotonousness I’d learned was his usual tone. “Although actually, the reason you’re pushed back against the wall is the result of inertia. For every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction. So as the wall pushes on you as the rider, your body pushes back against the wall, which creates friction, thus making you feel like you’re stuck to the wall.”
“You’ll have to excuse Alec.” Brooklyn draped his arm over his friend’s shoulders. Alec wasn’t short, but he looked it next to Brooklyn. “He forgets that not everyone is as fluent in nerd as he is.”
“Well, I thought that was a very eloquent explanation,” I told Alec with a nod. “I’m with Brooklyn, though, that doesn’t make me feel any better about going on it.”
“Maybe you should brush up on your nerd, then.” Alec directed his comment to Brooklyn, wiggling out from underneath his arm. Their personalities were oil and water, but at the same time, they exuded a similar type of energy, bouncing off one another with an ease that was expected of two people who had been friends as long as they had. Middle-school playground love never died.
Neon lights from the rides dotted the pavement as we walked along the side of the carnival where all the games were set up underneath faded white tents. Alec had fallen back in step with Nikki and Stella, strolling a few paces behind Brooklyn and me, and every so often I could hear hushed whispers and silly giggling.
“I’m sorry, y’all have something to say?” Brooklyn called over his shoulder.
“What? I’m just trying to get some funnel cake,” Stella shot back, which got Nikki to laugh.
Brooklyn stopped abruptly and grabbed my arm, pointing at one of the baseball throwing games.
“I’m doing that,” he said.
Stella scoffed. “You know there’s other ways to stroke your ego, dear brother.”
“I always need my ego stroked,” Brooklyn replied, and before Stella could respond, he pulled me in the direction of the booth.
It seemed to be a typical baseball toss carnival game: six cans were stacked neatly on a wooden pedestal, and if you knocked all of them over in a certain number of throws, you’d win. To me, all carnival and boardwalk games were the same, designed to sucker people in by making it seem easy enough at first and giving you a false sense of confidence. You’d hit a few, but it was always impossible to knock them all down, so you’d throw more money down, telling yourself you werejustclose enough to try again. Eventually you’d walk away defeated, with no stuffed teddy bears and an empty wallet.
The kid running the booth couldn’t have been older than seventeen. His shaggy blond hair flopped into his face, which was turned downward, engrossed in his phone. He looked up at us with a deadpan expression.
“If you can knock them all down in three throws, it’s free,” he said with a shrug.
Brooklyn elbowed me. “What do you want?” he asked, gesturing up at the array of large plushies that hung above the booth.
“You haven’t even thrown a ball yet. Besides, didn’t you have surgery on your arm?”
“Do you know how Tommy John surgery works?” he asked me. I shook my head, and he leaned down closer to me, as if he was letting me in on some big secret. “To repair the torn ligament, theyuse a grafted tendon from another part of your body, and it’s usually your ass. Most guys come back stronger after the surgery because of it.”
I scoffed. “You’re joking.”
“Nope.” He popped his lips, casually flicking the baseball up in the air and catching it with the same hand. “I’ve got a scar and everything. I’ll leave that to your imagination.”
“Oh, thanks.” I snickered.
“Well,we’regoing to get fried Oreos, because nobody else wants to watch you show off,” Stella interjected, pulling away both Alec and my sister. When I made eye contact with Nikki, I half expected to see some semblance of panic, but there was none. In fact, she grinned a wide white-toothed grin at me before folding into thecrowd. Normally the obvious conspiring against me would be annoying, but it was nice to see her starting to really trust herself again.
“You didn’t answer my question.” Brooklyn nudged me, forcing my attention back to him and the way he effortlessly rolled the ball between his hands. God, even the way the muscles and ligaments inhandsflexed was attractive.
I tried to blink the thoughts away. “Sorry, what question?”
“What do you want?” He pointed back up at the comically large plushies.
“Okay, hotshot, I’ll humor you. That one.” I pointed at a big green plush of Reptar fromRugrats.
“Good choice.” He smirked before taking a measured step back. In one fluid, effortless motion he drew his arm back and threw the ball with perfect precision, hitting the bottom left can and causing half of the stack to topple. He picked up the second ball and glanced back at me for what felt longer than only a moment, his lips lifting into a faint smirk. Then he threw the ball with such force it knocked the rest of the cans clean off the pedestal and hit the back of the booth with a booming thud. Because of course he had the skill and the wherewithal to outmatch a carnival game, and while I had anticipated that, I was still surprised athowskillful he was.
“You’re not half bad,” I offered coyly.
