What Happens Now(45)

James and Kendall together took about five hundred pictures as we walked. Heads turned, but it was the fair, after all. Everyone seemed to accept us as part of the absurdity they were there for in the first place. When we reached the dairy pavilion, Eliza handed me the plaid shirt and gave Camden Azor’s stolen 1950s leather bomber jacket—another thrift store find that Eliza had tweaked.

Max slipped on Bram’s silver wig, which really was the attention-getter. I could tell he was trying hard not to feel uncomfortable, and I thought of his comment at the Barn about how he was only doing this for Eliza.

“The cows?” asked Camden.

“Yes, the cows,” replied Eliza.

The second scene we re-created was where Satina—who had never tasted real cheese before, what with cows being extinct in the Silver Arrow universe—was loading up on free samples while Azor begged them to move on to the Ferris wheel so they could investigate the anomaly. In another part of the sprawling pavilion, Atticus Marr and Bram were trying to find them.

The third series of photos were over by the Ferris wheel itself, and included all four of us—a scene after everyone had been reunited. Eliza wanted the ride in the background as we pretended to be running from angry fifties-era locals.

When we were done, we crowded around James and Kendall as they scrolled through the shots they’d taken. They looked better than I thought they would. I was not convinced that Satina was me.

“I cannot wait to post these,” said Eliza. “I’m not sure I can even stay at the fair.”

“You’re staying,” said Max. “We’re having some fair fun whether you like it or not.”

She smiled at him mischievously. “Only if you keep your costume on.”

Max’s expression flickered with doubt. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Not kidding. I’ll stay in mine.” Eliza stepped up to Max and put one arm around his waist, the other on his chest, her fingers spread. “It’ll be memorable.”

Max laughed, grabbed the hand that was on his chest, and kissed it. “Fine. But you’re buying me a bag of deep-fried Oreos.”

They took off. I raised my eyebrows at Kendall.

“I like to see the animals,” she said to James. “Some interesting photo ops there. Wanna come?”

“Sure,” he said with a smile that could have meant anything. Sure, let’s do that and then finally go hook up somewhere. Or, Sure, that sounds safely unromantic, I’m in.

Kendall led James away toward the rabbit pavilion.

Camden turned to me. “What about me? Should I change or not?”

Our costumes were barely costumes, out of context. My oversized plaid shirt and Camden’s leather jacket with our leggings and boots just looked sort of arty. You couldn’t even tell we were wearing wigs.

“I’d like to stay at the fair with Azor,” I said.

I took his hand and held my breath, until he tugged me closer to him and rewrapped our hands so our whole arms were intertwined. The leather jacket, heavy and unfamiliar against me, something I knew instinctively that Camden would never wear. We walked away from the pavilion and back toward the midway. The sun had halfway set behind the mountains and the changing colors in the sky made the electric lights of the fair glow even more brilliantly.

Now I could take it all in. The predatory leer of game runners as we walked by and tried not to make eye contact. The little shacks that sold deep-fried everything or food on sticks that really shouldn’t be on sticks. The energy between Camden and me felt thick and awkward with questions. I didn’t expect it to be so suddenly weird, to be on our own but still in costume. Were we done being Satina and Azor? Were we just Ari and Camden now, but with accessories?

I thought back to last summer. When I came here with Dani and we went on all the kiddie rides together. When I was looking for Camden, because I was always looking for Camden. Thinking once that I saw him walk onto a ride, and waiting until it was over, and then realizing it was not him at all. How stupid I felt.

We stopped when we got to the Scrambler.

“I’ve only been on this kind of ride once, when I was a kid,” said Camden. “Some girl threw up and the barf went flying and hit me in the face.”

“That’s everyone’s worst fair fear! We should go on it and replace that memory with a better one.”

“I don’t know. It was pretty traumatic.”

“Come on,” I said. “Otherwise the ride will always taunt you.”

He shook his head, but let me drag him toward the entrance.

Once we were on the ride with the bar clicked into place, he pulled me across the red vinyl seat toward him and put his arm around my shoulder. I took a little mental picture of us. This is what it looks like when you have the thing you’ve dreamed about. I wondered if anyone watching had any idea of the path we took to get here. How amazing it was. Or if we were simply another anonymous couple in a sea of anonymous couples, which to me was its own kind of amazing.

As the ride started moving, I turned to Camden and kissed him. I was worried about losing our wigs, and that felt strangely thrilling along with the rush of spins and twirls. He slipped his hand between the plaid shirt and Satina’s uniform top. Nobody would be able to see that—we were moving too fast. After a while, it seemed like we were the ones staying still.

I was a little uneven when my feet hit the ground after the ride was over. Camden steadied me and I steadied him back. The crowd was getting thicker now, jostling us as we tried to have a moment of stillness.