We Are the Ants(40)

Diego shoved his hands into his pockets and shrugged. “Wish I could.”

Diego had been telling us about life in Colorado to kill time while we waited to buy the bracelets that would let us on every ride at the fair. He’d casually mentioned having to go to the library to check SnowFlake, which led to the conversation we were having. “Next you’re going to tell us you didn’t have cable, either,” I said.

“No TV at all,” Diego said, a shy smile on his face that made me wonder if he was messing with us.

Audrey inched forward with the line. “Were your parents Amish?”

“Nope. Just poor.” He said it with a simplicity that expressed no regret and asked for no pity. It was just a statement of fact.

Audrey began to stammer. “I didn’t . . . I didn’t mean . . .”

Diego patted her arm. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Seriously . . . I . . . I . . .”

“Her family wasn’t always rich,” I said. “Her mom invented this recyclable paper coffee cup that holds in heat but keeps the outside from burning your hand.”

“Seriously?”

Audrey blushed and glanced at the trampled grass under her feet like she was considering digging a deep hole and crawling into it. “My . . . my mom’s a genius.”

“My mom knits sweaters for cats.” Diego’s deadpan delivery was so good that I didn’t know whether he was telling the truth, and I busted up laughing at the image of grumpy cats in ugly sweaters. Audrey relaxed; I was in awe of Diego’s ability to always know the right thing to say.

At the front of the line, Audrey and I got into a fight when she tried to pay for all of our tickets. Diego stealthily paid the admission while we were arguing, causing me and Audrey to join together in righteous indignation. But all was forgotten and forgiven by the end of our first ride on the Pirate Ship.

We stared at our twisted reflections in the mirror maze, ate powdered-sugar-dusted elephant ears, banged out our aggression on the bumper cars, and got sticky fingers from cotton candy. I was sweat-soaked and flushed, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d laughed so loudly or smiled so often without having to fake it.

Diego grabbed my and Audrey’s hands and pulled us toward the flying saucer with the garish blinking lights. “Whatever that is, I want to ride it!” His curiosity was insatiable, his joy infectious. He approached everything he did like it was both the first and last time he was ever going to get to do it.

Audrey glanced at me knowingly, and not because of the obvious UFO reference. The last time I’d ridden the Gravitron was with Jesse. He killed himself sixty-eight days later. I said, “I’m okay,” and we crowded onto the ride, shoving past some preppy parents who dragged their whining, disinterested brats alongside them. The dark, muggy interior was a nineties fossil, a dream frozen in amber. The ride whirled around and tilted up and down, but it never moved forward. We -shuffled to our narrow slats along the wall and leaned against the cracked and taped vinyl panels. I tried not to think about the parade of filthy people who had previously stood in my place, sweat matting their hair, soaking into the headrest.

“All right, partners!” shouted the lanky-haired, metal--band reject at the center of the Gravitron. “Let’s get this thing a-movin’ and a-shakin’. Yee-haw!”

“I bet he drinks heavily to smother the shame of what his life has become, and dies of liver failure by forty-three,” I said. Diego laughed, and I wanted to preserve the sound in a jar for the days when laughter was scarce.

“Yeah, right,” Audrey shot back. “Two funnel cakes says that’s you in ten years!”

“In ten years, we’ll all be gone.”

Audrey gave me a perplexed look, but Diego shouted, “Fuck that! I’m gonna live forever!” as the ride fired up and the room lurched into motion. Diego howled—earning us glares from the preppy parents who probably presumed we were drunk—and the wave of bad music continued to assault our ears as Creed blurred into Nickelback.

The trucker-hat-wearing scarecrow at the controls continued yee-hawing like anyone cared. We were swept up in the spin and in the smell of metal and vomit and bleach. I was swept up in Diego Vega. In the way he sounded like he honestly believed he’d never die despite my telling him the whole world was on borrowed time; in the way he looked at me like I was someone other than Space Boy, a way that was impossible and endless. Diego looked at me and saw me. No one had seen me since Jesse.

The ride spun faster, so fast that gravity squatted on my chest and pushed the air from my lungs, and then faster still. Jesse fought the centrifugal force and flipped onto my panel, straddling me, his curly blond hair hanging in my face, his body pressed against mine. Audrey glared at us, disgusted, and the conductor yelled for Jesse to return to his slab. Jesse ignored him. Rules didn’t apply to Jesse Franklin, and I loved him for it.

We were whirling around so fast that Jesse couldn’t hold his head up any longer and buried his face in my neck, his chapped lips grazing my skin. He was insane, and I told him so as I wrapped my arms around him so tightly that nothing would ever tear us apart.

I nipped at Jesse’s ear and ran my hands up the back of his shirt. His skin was sticky with sweat. He smelled like the ocean.

“Never stop,” whispered Jesse.

“I don’t plan to,” I promised, and meant it.