Marcus gives a small smile. “Judge away, Zadie Cartwright.”
We walk another few steps and then Marcus is distracted again. “Fuck, why is the food so good in your memories?
“Do you want some fish sticks?” Marcus shouts toward me, closing in on somebody else’s food. “These are some good-looking fish sticks.”
“No, thank you.” I don’t hide my repulsion.
He chews with aggression. “It kind of boggles the mind, doesn’t it?”
“How you can eat so much of other people’s food and not get sick?” I ask.
“I was going to say, I don’t get why some things we can, like, manipulate. Like say, food. Game machines. We can touch each other,” he says, taking that time to touch my cheek. I freeze at his nearness. He never takes his eyes off me. “And other things,” he says quietly, “we just pass through, completely inconsequential.”
“I know,” I whisper.
“How’s your head?” he asks again.
“It’s always fineinthe dreams.”
Marcus is frowning. “I really think we should find a way to stop doing this,” he says in a soft voice.
I’ve only just realized how close we’re standing, but I don’t take a step back. “Doing what?”
“These dreams,” he says, gesturing around us. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“I need to find out what happened between Jason and me,” I say.
I regret saying his name as soon as I do. It’s like turning on the lights in the middle of a dark theater, a blender in a library; it disrupts everything about the moment.
“Yeah,” Marcus says. “I guess you do.”
We start walking again until I stop at a tent on our right, trying to read the descriptive panel in front of it.
“So what was so great about the last time you were here?” Marcus asks, and there’s a new distance in his voice. A cautiousness.
I can’t hide the smile in my voice. “Well, over spring break, Jay picked me up in the morning and refused to tell me where we were going. He stopped at a gas station, and we loaded up on junk food, and then we rode in his car for like three hours, listening to country music.
“Finally, we pulled up in this parking lot. It’s way in the back outside,” I tell him. “I never told Jay, but I was a little bit disappointed that the whole thing had been about getting to a carnival. I mean, carnivals are fun, but they’re not, you know,romantic.
“But Jasonmadeit romantic. We walked in those gates we just came through, and the first thing we did was buy corn dogs.” I point out the corn dog stand not far from us.
“I could really use a corn dog right around now,” Marcus says. “I should’ve taken that guy’s corn dog.”
I ignore him. “Then, we got our faces painted over there. Jason was…The lady painted this little sunflower on his face.” I lookaround. “I thought we might have seen them…us by now, but maybe we’re not coming.”
“You and Jay?” Marcus asks, and I nod.
“Want some onion rings?” He raises his voice as I start to walk away from him.
“Gross. Race you to the bumper cars?” I say, then burst into a run as I get deeper into the carnival.
“You sure you’re up for that?” Marcus asks, but he’s already running straight for me. I look over my shoulder at him, pump my arms and legs even faster, but he’s closing in on me. I take a wild right turn and keep sprinting.
I can see the bumper cars up ahead, just a few feet away, when I feel Marcus grab my waist. As I try to wriggle out of his hold, I stumble over my own feet, and we fall in a heap on top of each other.
I’m laughing too hard to breathe and then he’s laughing too, and we are a rowdy messy pile on the ground in the middle of a carnival and our faces are dangerously close, our smiles wavering. Marcus moves in even closer, and I start to shut my eyes.
But right before I do, I see them.
