“Do we have to? Look how far away it is,” Emily whined.
It had been a terrible idea to arrive at noon. Anxious mothers were riding their children up, sliding them past the fat on their hips onto their hard ribcages. Popcorn and the stubby body hair of exposed arms crackled steadily in the sun, and the sickening sweet of fried funnel cakes was so overpowering, you could feel your waistline expanding just by being near them. Ten feet away, a monotone voice called, “Get your tickets now,” but they were a buzz amongst the other hundred mosquitos, out of sight, out of mind.
“Don’t be a big baby,” Marge laughed. “We have to do everything! And we only have an hour left.”
“Let’s go! Hurry up, Emily,” Gale said snidely, and was the first one to take off running.
“I’m sure she didn’t mean it like that, Em,” Marge said weakly. “It’s been a long day--”
“I don’t want to talk about it. Lead the way, aren’t you the one who wanted to go?”
The three girls maneuvered their way through the thickets of people, shielding their eyes as they glanced up at the large mass of metal that towered above them all, awesome yet magnificent simultaneously, spinning forward for years on end, gears grinding against each other, one of the oldest inventions of all time.
“Two to a seat,” droned the ticketer.
“Marge,” said Emily.
“Marge,” said Gale.
Marge looked to the left and glanced to the right, her lips drawn in a line so taught that a tightrope walker could waltz right across. “I think I’ll just go sit with that nice old lady over there. No one deserves to be alone on a ferris wheel ride!”
“Marge,” the two girls repeated.
“I think I saw an open carriage somewhere back there. Have fun, I’ll see you both soon!”
Emily’s flip flops scraped against the pavement, clapping against the sweaty soles of her feet. Gale gritted her teeth and sat down first. The ticketer closed the door with a fleeting, “Enjoy your ride.” Then they were alone, with nothing to focus on except a faraway blob of people exiting the carnival. If either girl squinted enough, they could make out the red and white pattern of one woman’s shirt or the sunglasses on a father’s head that his toddler kept playing with.
And then they were escalating up in the air, like a swimmer breaking the thin strip of film between ocean and sky to rise and emerge, taking in their first breath. The ground looked more and more foreign as they separated from it. It was becoming harder to understand why human beings spent any time down there at all, especially when you could see everything from up here---
“What just happened?” Gale asked.
“Ladies and gentleman,” the ticketer said from her intercom. “The ferris wheel is having a bit of trouble moving. There’s no reason to panic, we’re fixing the problem now, but you might have to sit tight for a little bit. Just relax and we’ll get it working for you in no time.”
“So we’re just stuck at the top of this wheel?” a man in front of the two girls grunted.
“I’m sure it will be resolved soon,” his wife said, patting him on the arm.
Emily glanced out of the corner of her eye at Gale, whose hands were firmly planted on either side of her legs, and Gale snuck a peek at Emily, who was staring down at the carnival. The red, purple, gold, and blue streaks of dancers’ headdresses exploded and bloomed into view, and the slip-and-slide that children were shooting through looked like a slithering, spotted yellow snake from this distance.
“God, can we just go?” Emily muttered under her breath.
“Have some patience,” Gale snapped. “They’re working on fixing it.”
“No one asked you for your opinion. I wasn’t talking to you.”
“I’m the only darn one sitting next to you. If you weren’t talking to me, then who were you talking to? That pigeon over there? God? Neither of them are listening.”
Emily crossed her arms, a compactly wound pretzel that wasn’t about to let anyone else in. “I was talking to myself. Having a conversation with me, myself, and I, and you’re not allowed to listen.”
“I don’t really have a choice, Emily, I’m sitting right next to you--”
“Can we just sit in silence, please?”
“You always do this. Why don’t you want to talk about it?”
Emily folded her arms in tighter, bones gnashing against each other, smashing into her ribcage. She said nothing.
“Why are you always ignoring me? I did nothing wrong just now and you know it.”
“Stop it,” Emily hissed.
“I know why you’re mad at me. It’s because I was talking to those other girls in line, while we were waiting to go on The Voyager, right?”
“I came here today so that we could have fun together, not for you to pretend like I don’t exist.”
Gale threw her hands up in the air. “Jesus, I was just being friendly. I’m allowed to talk to other people besides you. Are you expecting an apology or something?”
Emily said nothing.
“You’re real messed up, you know. You can’t just shut down when you’re angry; you have to talk about it. That’s your problem, you know.”
No response.
Gale looked away. The parade seemed to be slowing down, with the dancers’ waving goodbye. One of them looked up at the sky for a second, her mask a carefully constructed masterpiece, painted with the finest of gold, and yet so impersonal at the same time.
“Maybe…. maybe it’s just not working anymore.”
Emily turned her head. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “This. Us being friends. Is this ferris wheel going to move or am I going to have to jump off myself?”
“Wait, why not?”
“I just feel like we’re falling apart. I’ve felt like that for a while.”
Emily swiveled to her left, so that her knee was now digging into Gale’s hip. “Listen to me, Gale. I know that you think I’m clingy, and that I’m insecure, and I put too much weight on our friendship. And all of that is probably true, but you’re a damn fool if you don’t think I’m gonna cling on for a bit longer.”
“But---”
“Are you telling me you’re a quitter?”
“That’s not what I’m saying at all.”
“Listen to me. If there’s one thing that I’ve learned, it’s that friendships are success stories. We go through obstacles and end up wanting to rip each other’s throats out, but then we always work through and we always win. We always come out stronger than we were before. You just need to fight for it. Are you telling me you’re not a fighter?”
Gale shielded her eyes. “Come on, Em.”
“I know you want your space. I’ll try and work on that. But that’s not happening today. Someone needs to hold on for the both of us.”
She paused. “Okay.”
“You said you’ve felt like that for a while?”
Gale nodded.
“Well, why didn’t you say anything?”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“About what?”
“About how you were mad at me. For talking to those girls in line.”
A light breeze was tickling the girls’ hair, fiddling with it like an absent minded mother’s fingers, and even the trees just looked like bushes on sticks from this height. In the seat in front of them, the wife who had earlier patted her husband’s arm was now making a pillow of his shoulder. The ferris wheel had imprisoned them, too, but they didn’t seem to mind.
Gale clasped the other girl’s hand. “I’m sorry.”
Emily squeezed back. “Me, too. We talked about it, can we just move on?”
At that moment, a grinding noise forced its way into their ears. “Ernie, what’s going on?” the wife in front of them asked.
They began to swing forward, the view of the sky slipping away from them as they receded. “Ladies and gentleman,” the ticketer announced over her intercom. “Apologies about the delay, but we’ve got everything working smoothly again. Please enjoy the rest of your ride.”
“The ferris wheel’s moving again,” the husband replied. “That’s what’s happening.”
“We are so yelling at Marge later. It’s her fault we’re even here!” Emily said, and Gale whooped and laughed and threw her hands in the air. Emily smirked, and then through her noodle-like arms up, too. They stayed up the whole ride, too, even when the searing pain almost dragged them down a few times. Round and round and round, sneaking brief peaks of the city before diving back down again.
When Marge found the two girls’ later, she chose not to say anything, linking arms with them instead. That was how they left the carnival, day merging with night, the way vanilla ice cream melts with chocolate to form one big slush. And the old ferris wheel kept right on spinning, doing its time.