Page 217 of What We Burn

We rise above the carnival in a slow, creaking arc. The boardwalk spreads below us, lights and music and the dark line of the ocean beyond. Eli’s grip on the safety bar is white-knuckled.

“You okay?” I ask.

“I don’t like heights.”

“You climb onto rooftops for surveillance.”

“That’s different. That’s work. This is voluntary stupidity.”

I take his hand off the safety bar and thread my fingers through his. He resists for half a second, then gives in, his grip transferring from the bar to me with the kind of pressure that says if we die, we die holding hands.

“Look,” I say, pointing toward the water. The sun has fully set and the ocean is a black mirror under the stars, the carnival lights reflecting off the surface in smears of color. It’s beautiful in the cheap, temporary way that fairgrounds always are, nothing built to last, everything designed to make you forget that it won’t.

“It’s nice,” Eli admits. Like the word costs him.

“It’s more than nice.”

“Fine. It’s very nice.”

“Say it’s beautiful, Eli.”

“It’s adequate.”

I laugh and lean my head on his shoulder and his arm comes around me, and the gondola rocks gently at the top of the arc, and for a few seconds, the whole world is just the lights below, the stars above, and a man who’s learning to hold things without crushing them.

When we come down, Milo is waiting with two corn dogs and a theory about how the ring-toss game is rigged using weighted bottles.

“The center of gravity is off by three degrees. I’m going to beat the system.”

“You’re going to get us kicked out,” Holden says.

“I’m going to beat the system AND get us kicked out.”

He does, in fact, beat the system. He also gets us kicked out. But not before winning a stuffed penguin the size of a toddler, which he presents to me with the solemnity of a man proposing.

“His name is Gerald,” Milo says. “He’s our son now.”

“We have a fish named Frank, Knox won a bear—what’s the bear called?” I ask him.

“Bear,” Knox grunts.

“Bear, then. And a penguin named Gerald.”

“We’re building a family, kitten. One carnival prize at a time.”

The drive home is warm and quiet. Knox and me in the truck, Gerald and Bear buckled into the back seat because Knox insisted, Frank the fish in a cupholder. The others are in Milo’s truck behind us. The group chat pops off.

Milo:

Best. Night. Ever.

Eli:

Can you focus on driving, please?

Milo:

Why did you text me that when you could have just said it? You’re in the back seat.