Page 4

W ant to know the cure for a total mind warp?

Costumes, corn dogs, and carnival rides.

Coming from a major low, I needed a major high.

I pulled out my phone and feverishly pecked with my thumbs, letting Javi know I was out: Feed me some cotton candy take me to the top of the Giant Dipper and let my screams purge my thoughts from the last hour.

Please.

Even if it meant sharing that moment with hundreds of my “closest peers.”

After an embarrassing amount of sniffling and blotting my eyes, I finally got it together, and didn’t need to be told twice that our session was over.

I practically jumped out of my seat.

I busted out the front door of the office building, the blast of humidity not enough to stifle my goosebumps.

My navy-blue cruiser waited at the bike rack, sparkling in the setting sun, the rubber grips hot on my fingers from baking in the heat.

Playlist at the ready, I pressed my feet into the pedals, but slowed my roll, listening to the sounds of the world a little closer.

A cackle from the first voice carried on the breeze—no, wait, that was someone cracking up over a video they were watching on their phone.

Spirited whispers from the second voice rose from the street—actually, those were from a group of kids walking by.

Lively commentary from the third voice wafted through an open window—again, wrong, that was genuine excitement from the receptionists getting ready to go.

I was doing it again.

Expecting the worst. Trying to distort the sounds.

Unbelieving or undeserving of moments like this: Pure.

Unambiguous. Quiet.

The Voices were bound to make a comeback, so maybe I should’ve been enjoying their absence instead?

My headphones stayed put, looped around my neck as I listened—and actually enjoyed—the uninterrupted melody of summer as I biked to the Boardwalk for Grad Night.

The wind was easy on my ears as I barreled down a hill, zigzagging through the endless line of cars stopped in beach traffic, a pair of feet hanging out almost every passenger window.

As I careened around surfers balancing their boards on their heads and whizzed next to classmates shouting dibs for the best seat on the log ride, an unusual reflex tugged at the corners of my mouth.

On an average day, I tried to drown it all out.

But right now…I was one of them, simply enjoying every part of the moment, and I was smiling harder than a kid with priority in the surf lineup.

Javi waited at our usual meeting point, his silky black waves tucked beneath a wreath of flowers.

With his frayed shorts, glossy black studs, and mismatched vest, he looked more Lost Boy than Shakespeare character.

He bowed deeply as I slowed to a stop.

“I bid you good morrow.”

I slid off the seat and returned a curtsey, my olive-green peasant dress catching dried oak leaves in its floor-length hem.

“Your flower crown turned out fab.” Slipping on my own band of faux florals, I eyed his empty chest while locking up my bike.

“No camera?”

“Nah, some things are better left undocumented.” He winked.

“Plus, I don’t think it’s the easiest thing to secure on a roller coaster, and I plan on riding both of them at least ten times.”

We hopped onto a pair of rotting wood train tracks that served as the unofficial border to the Santa Cruz Boardwalk—arms wide, one sneaker in front of the other, cheeks squinched from suppressing our laughter.

The tiniest slip of a chuckle and one of us would suffer the devastating two-inch drop into a mix of sand, gravel, and bird poop.

Javi made it to safety first, holding out his arm until I was close enough to loop mine through.

“Where to first, my lady?” He directed us around a group of dudes in minotaur masks, board shorts, and unbuttoned shirts, who had all stopped to gape at something in the middle of the walkway.

“I hate to pull us away from this grand performance”—I jerked my chin at the crop top-wearing pixies taking selfies around a maypole who seemed to be stopping traffic—“but I need to stuff my face with a Boardwalk dog. Stat.”

Javi steered us in the opposite direction, nodding sagely.

“Good idea. Therapy can be a fun sucker. You need to replenish your energy with something fried.”

“You have no idea. I’d rather eat my feelings than another word of that therapist bullshit.” It was high five worthy, but my stomach plummeted alongside the rooftop roller coaster riders the instant I said it.

Javi tugged on my hand, drawing me to the check-in table, where my worries dissolved to nothing but a speck of powdered sugar on a mountain of funnel cake.

After collecting our wristbands and almost making it past the photographer—who forced us to pose under the deflating balloon arch—we lost ourselves amongst the merrymakers, the PA system’s Top 40 drowned out by clapping hands, melodic flutes, and clanging tambourines.

The crowd pressed in, all the buzz in activity luring us farther down the esplanade.

Even without counting the hired courtiers, there seemed to be a lot of people for a closed event.

Then I remembered: we shared this evening with the graduating class of the other local high school.

Not everyone embraced Shakespeare, hence the group of half-tied togas and farm animal onesies that strode by, but everyone sure embraced their chance to be different.

To welcome this next chapter as a whole new person, with a chance to actually live and fulfill their wildest hopes and dreams. Even the Boardwalk’s Paleolithic mascots—creepy cave man statues the size of full-grown humans that were sprinkled throughout the Boardwalk even though they had nothing to do with the amusement park’s theme—received a Congrats, Grad!

garland or wig.

Walking along the sidewalk games, I was careful to avoid the eye of the persistent jester and the call of Hippolyta’s storefront sales pitch.

Javi, on the other hand, found himself trapped between a neon counter and two Amazonian’s bosoms, and almost gave in.

“Let’s at least get my corn dog before we lose all our money.” I pulled him deeper into the midsummer night sea of seniors.

Javi slapped his hand over his heart.

“Lose? You think I won’t win?”

I chuckled at that, having played and yes, lost , enough games of dime toss with him to know we’d go broke.

We reached the far end of the park, and I finally felt the air, not sweaty bodies up against me.

Short of thrills, out here, the majority of attractions closed because they served young kids, the crowd started to let up and darkness found its place between the unlit rides.

Sporadic red flares dotted the black with the quick drags of those that flocked to its sooty pockets.

My vision strayed from the smokers and glued on to a shack beneath the scaffolding of the Big Dipper.

Its infamous words glowed angelic against the twilight sky: Hot Dog on a Stick .

Javi gave my shoulders a victory tug.

“Well, I’ll be. It seems you have led me to a feast fit for a king.”

We darted for an open window, warm and inviting and beckoning our hungry souls, when one of the adjacent shadow huddles stirred and broke into five towering, beefed-up individuals.

“River,” the head of the pack crooned before us, his wide upper body dimming the snack shack’s neon bulbs.

My body became stiffer than a board.

Ugh, that baritone drawl lined with a sexual vitriol.

I had the misfortune of being able to recognize it anywhere: Chet Jennings.

Star of our rival water polo team.

Prick of the century.

Zero attempt was made to hide the loathing in my voice.

“I should’ve known you’d be here.”

“Nice of them to combine our Grad Nights, right? It’s like we’re one big happy family.” His cronies snickered into bottles they no longer bothered to conceal with paper bags.

Each of them, utter clones of the six-foot, steel-eyed, bastard in my direct path.

Javi scoffed. Couldn’t blame him.

I bit my tongue, hoping the nip of pain would stop the anger from rising and bursting out of me.

Even with half of Chet’s face shaded by dusk, I could make out the ire flickering in his glazed-over stare.

He turned to Javi, letting forth an inebriated snarl, before his wavering stance fixed on me again.

“So how are you, River?” His smile was wicked, uneven.

I didn’t return it.

He reached for my waist, maybe my wrist, but didn’t get, either.

I recoiled from his touch, from his intentions, from his nasty acetone breath, and as I tried to squirm away, his hand brushed my chest. Ugh.

He’d never even have considered talking to me if it hadn’t been for our unfortunate fling at a house party following the homecoming game.

I knew I was nothing special, but I guess by his standards Javi and I were decent enough to get singled out for a night as playthings for the varsity rulers.

I should have been suspicious of the hearty welcome, the drinks thrust in our hands, the games of flip cup that resulted in the chugging.

Lucky for Javi, he’d spent the rest of that evening vomiting under the stars.

Unlucky for me, I’d spent it half-aware, twisting in the sheets under the Chet Jennings.

An honor, he’d told me while he wiped away my tears, readying for another round.

Until the Voices found me, and then I was no longer Baby.

But Crazy, Psycho, and Slut.

You’ve got issues, he’d said.

Thank you, I’d whispered as the stifling air retreated, as my senses left me for a welcome blackout.

It took one look for Javi to know what had been done.

And he still didn’t forgive himself, would never forgive himself, for not being there to protect me.

For being stripped of his will, and I of my clothes.

I’d cried into his barf-stained shirt, in the backyard of whoever’s house we were at, until the sun wrapped us in its hug.

But this time, Javi was here, and he stepped forward, answering for me.

“We were great, until you came along.”

This time Chet moved to my friend, his bone structure even more cutting with his wrath, like it had been carved with indifference, as he sized Javi up.

“That last time I saw you, you were puking into my jacuzzi. That cost my parents a lot of money to clean.”

Oh.

So that’s whose house we’d been at.

Chet inched a step closer.

Javi stood his ground.

“Fucking lightweight,” Chet growled into his face and slammed a palm into his chest.

Javi stumbled backwards, but I caught his arm, planting his feet alongside mine.

I glowered at the over-toned, sandy-haired “specimen” peacocking in the night before us.

Positioning himself so the shadows lengthened his square chin, and the setting sun sharpened his cheeks, and the testosterone curled his fingers and lip.

All a front for some scared, small, little boy inside who couldn’t get validation outside his unwilling conquests.

It was sick.

“How’d that last game go for you again?” I tilted my head.

“Your parents disappointed you didn’t score enough points? Or do you just count the ones you score in the bedroom?”

The idiots in Chet’s wing let out various yelps of surprise, their stilted laughter stoking his fragile ego.

I could practically see the rage simmering in his reddened face.

“Get out of our way.” I wielded my words like a knife.

“Or what?” he breathed.

Then I struck. My hand screamed at the impact, bright pink in its wake.

I was about as shocked as he seemed to be.

But these feelings, this fury…

they had been brewing for months now, roiling beneath my skin.

Channeled into bitten cuticles and screams the ocean swallowed up while surfing.

I’d never slapped someone before—but it felt damn good to release that rage.

In the aftermath, I swore the stars flickered in my honor, the wind caressed my hot palm, and the silence, it actually gasped.

Words hung in the air, and wouldn’t this have been a moment, if the Voices decided to show—for a second, it felt like I could command them to with the sudden flare of power that thrummed through my veins.

Seconds that felt like hours passed before someone decided to speak.

Chet.

“Enjoy your dinner, bitch.” He motioned to the building behind him.

“You do love those sausages in your mouth.”

“Well, they’re bigger than yours.” I grabbed Javi’s hand and dragged him towards our destination.

Unable to resist, I added over my shoulder, “By a long shot!”

“You. Are. My. Hero!” Javi exclaimed as we got in line to order, the bro horde howling—one sulking—away.

I didn’t listen to what he was saying, didn’t so much as flinch when the person in front of us stumbled into me, their sparkly nylon wings leaving a trail of glitter on my arm.

A hollow feeling growled inside me, one separate from my hunger.

Two corn dogs and a basket of fries later, we took our next course to go and moved west with the sun, the funnel cake so fresh and crispy that the dough still burned our tongues.

Wrapped in my world of fried food luxury, I almost walked right next to the water ride with my piping hot dessert—a rookie move.

Javi yanked me away to dodge an overhead wave from Logger’s Revenge just in time, the group next to us not quite as lucky.

“There are two types of people,” he commented as we settled along the outskirts of the chlorinated puddles to watch.

“People who enjoy the splash zone and people who avoid it all costs.”

I frowned.

“And people who slap others?—”

“Who stand up for themselves and don’t let the bad guys win,” he corrected.

“Are you okay?”

I sighed, ignoring his question.

“I think we know where we fit in.” I looked over at him, sticky battle wounds from our epic meal speckling his face.

“Ah, you’ve grown out your sugar-stache, I see.”

“My facial hair regenerates faster than Wolverine.” He licked his thumb, using it to try—and ultimately fail—to get the powdered sugar off his upper lip.

“Dang it, I forgot a napkin.”

“Here.” I removed one from the stack I had pressed into the bottom of my plate.

His stare burned into me as I wiped the side of his mouth.

“You get it?” Had he even taken a breath?

“Yeah.” I shoved the crumpled napkin into my dress pocket, fidgeting with it longer than needed—it seemed like the best place to avert my eyes because his gaze hadn’t left me yet.

And then he blurted out, “Want to get our fortunes read?”

“What?” My brain stumbled for a connection.

He pointed behind me.

“That lady over there in the corner—there’s no line at her booth.”

I followed his finger and sure enough, nestled beneath the dripping log ride, near the creepy Cave Train, sat an eccentric older woman in a knotted headband and matching robe with an intricate celestial pattern.

Her hand-written advertisement looked as pathetic as the discolored, collapsible furniture she sat in.

The whole booth—and Javi was being generous when he called it that—appeared to morph out of the attraction’s faded underbelly.

My stomach plunged with the riders free-falling on the Double Shot in the distance.

A psychic. That’s what he’d been staring at.

Not me. My emotions must still be running high.

I hadn’t seen his attention flicker anywhere else, but the abrupt change in subject was all the proof I needed.

“Fortunes by Madame Myrian.” I managed to read the peeling vinyl words on the banner loosely draped across the front of the table, its corners pinned down by rugged, sky-blue crystals.

My nostrils flared. I think I caught a hint of sewage.

“Looks like a bad omen.”

Javi pretended to think hard on it.

“Obviously let’s do it.”

Without any time for consideration, he grabbed my hand, the soles of my feet skidding on the sidewalk as he power walked us over.

The fortune teller remained unmoved as we barreled towards her, resembling more of a wax figure than a real person.

Her skin could have been crafted out of leather—aged and etched with the most symmetrical frown lines.

Her fishbowl glasses magnified her pupils so they were all that filled the lenses.

Her brows indented in concentration and if I didn’t know any better, I’d say she was using her mental strength to reel us in.

There wasn’t so much as a blink from her until we reached her display.

Her fingers, adorned in thin silver chains that cascaded from the bangles on her wrist, were the first to move, reaching for the deck of tarot cards in the center of the table.

The rest of her slowly came to motion, as if the energy flowed from her hands: pointy elbows reset against the astral tablecloth, narrow shoulders rolled and arched.

Her jaw protruded forward, the gears revving each muscle until her entire body became animated with life.

“Hello.” Javi crept closer, as if the psychic were a stray cat he didn’t want to frighten away.

“How much for a reading?”

The woman held up her palm, flashing a grin that was one rotten stump away from being toothless.

“Five tokens,” he translated, with a light elbow to my ribs like we were in on some big secret.

He murmured something along the lines of “deal of the century,” but I was too entranced by the shadows behind her to catch it.

Seeming to stem from her spine, they fluttered and furled, casting wraithlike shapes that didn’t match any of our surroundings.

A violent tickle erupted on my back, as if buried under my scars, deep beneath my skin.

“Come on Riv, indulge me.” Javi broke my trance, and as I batted a hand at my back, the sensation ceased.

I turned to him. “Seriously, Jav, its Grad Night, and this is what you want to do?”

He knew what he was doing batting those unfairly long lashes, and it worked like a charm on me.

Pretending to consider his plea, I shot another glance at the open-aired booth.

The shadows fell still and nondescript.

Huh. Must have been a trick of the light.

“Alright, fine.” I let him think I was giving in, but to be honest, I was now a little curious myself.

Madame Myrian nodded and pointed to an empty chair.

Javi obeyed, making a dramatic show of stepping forward as he entered her circle of fate.

Tarot cards twisted and bridged atop a sheer black tablecloth with a gilded zodiac wheel, their silvery white edges glistening like tiny mirrors in the setting sun.

Suits dropped one by one into a cross-like sequence, a mosaic of swords and wands and every color of the rainbow.

Myrian translated their secrets, or I supposed she meant to, but her words were unintelligible against the latest dispatch of screams from Logger’s Revenge.

Javi leaned in closer until his body stretched halfway across the table.

Not feeling the same urge to close the gap, I inspected the spread from the side, pausing on a pair of cards with images reminiscent of Adam and Eve and the Grim Reaper.

These were just symbolic representations, of course, but my pulse quickened about what kind of conclusions would be drawn from their meanings.

Not wanting, or qualified, to read too far into it, I swiveled around to people-watch instead.

Or…I would have if anyone was there.

Tucked between the industrial-strength power cords and desolate employee breakroom, we’d separated from the herd.

It hadn’t fazed me at sunset, but the string lights over the midway didn’t shine where we were, and darkness started to seep into every crevice.

Already around us the lines were thinning, and the remaining few stragglers boarded the Cave Train or spent the last of their tokens at the mini arcade or sprinted towards the primary entrance of the park—a sign the beach concert was beginning soon, if it hadn’t already.

The fleeing footsteps reverberated over my body like I was being trampled beneath them.

Each resounding thud had me clutching my hair a little harder as the noises around me grew sharper and the scents and stains and shades of color of the Boardwalk started melding together.

I meandered away from the reading, with a weight in my stomach that threatened to take the rest of me down.

Even though there was no one else around, it didn’t feel like I was alone.

The second voice sizzled with the cornbread’s oily batter wafting from the row of carnival-themed cafes.

“Watcher, go back to the cards,” she urged.

“Tell us what you see.”

I clutched my stomach.

Breathe breathe breathe —for a second, the air got caught in my windpipe, when a game stall’s overhead door slammed shut.

The first voice rang out in the clang of the metal, her shrill tones mocking me.

“Or just keep standing there. We’ve obviously got all the time in the world…”

“Is this you helping? Because it’s definitely not working.” The second voice tried to reason against the Down the Clown’s insufferable laugh track, but the screechy combo just brought goosebumps to my flesh.

My breathing came in short bursts.

I wanted, no needed , them to stop.

I clamped down on my tongue—if I opened my mouth, words might not be the only thing that’d come spewing out.

“What? It’s not like she’s in a rush to figure anything out.” The first feigned offense, her voice softening as the metal door stilled.

“But we are,” the third belted out in sync with the riders braving the Fireball’s pendulum swing.

“She doesn’t understand our world. Maybe she can find meaning through her own.” The second voice refuted the others, still paired with the creepy clown game’s recorded instructions.

For the love of God, could she pick another sound!

?

“How long must we wait for her to come around? It’s been ten years and she has shown no interest in the truth.” The third voice chipped at my brain, using the sharp clicks from an air hockey puck.

“We need to accept that no matter how hard we try to steer her, she will never be her mother.”

Her words stung me like a thousand angry bees.

Not just because they were lined with venom, but because in my core I knew they were every part true.

“You think I don’t know that? You’re preaching to the choir,” I finally whispered back.

The second voice cut back in.

“Watcher ? —”

Watcher .

Their little pet name they’d never cared to explain.

Hm, was it because when my mom saved me from the rip current all I could do was watch , helpless, while she got caught in it?

My nails dug into my palms. “Don’t fucking call me that!” I didn’t bother to conceal my voice.

Now that she’d moved on from the clown, the second voice brushed against my senses with the nearby janitor’s rhythmic sweeping.

“Please, we’re down to the wire. The time has come to accept your fate—it isn’t what it seems. Listen to us before the transfer of power completes.”

“The time has come to move on ,” the third voice corrected with the hard clank of the puck slamming into the goal.

Saliva bubbled over my teeth.

“GET OUT OF MY LIFE!”

“That’s not the worst idea you’ve had,” one of the Voices bit back.

“We are better off without you.”

Better off without you.

Better off without you.

At that point, I didn’t know who spoke it.

I didn’t even know where it came from.

It honestly didn’t matter.

Maybe they’d never said it outright before, but they’d been thinking it for a long, long time.

All of them.

My stomach twisted painfully, but I assembled what little bit of mental strength I had and fired back, “Good, then leave .”

Violent flapping rustled the air, like a group of spooked pigeons scattering, as an invisible bind released me.

It felt like a hand had been clenching my throat.

My legs folded and my knees struck pavement as I took a ragged inhale.

Any bit of will, any wall of resistance, crumbled.

I planted my palms and heaved.

Nothing cut the night except my weakened gasps, not even the hum of the generator.

Or the sloshing of the salty waves meeting the lazy flow of the river, or the screamers on the distant rides…

I raised my head, half expecting to see a circle of implicating fingers or the flash of a phone or the reflectors of a security guard.

Or, if lucky, Javi’s outstretched hand.

But none of those things greeted me when I rose to my feet.

Instead, I met a stillness I couldn’t explain.

The world around me mimicked a wax museum and the people, its mannequins.

I slowly spun in place.

Park employees’ mouths gaped open while taking food orders, and their bodies hovered over control panels.

Their shiny, unblinking eyes reflected the carnival lights.

The few attendees who hadn’t changed course for the concert were frozen in place, some caught in stride, others gripping arcade game joysticks.

Rides hung mid-fall, gears stuck on the tracks, their multicolored bulbs stuck in the middle of a sequence.

I hurried back over to Javi but he too had been struck—in eyebrow-lifting, forehead-crinkling bemusement.

His fingers lay in an identical pattern to Madame Myrian’s, gripping the lip of the table.

My heart thundering in shock, I dared a glance over to her.

Her oversized violet tunic draped her wrists, swallowing her whole except for her neck, head, and hands, but it was her unchanged indigo stare that made me catch my breath.

It bored into me, like it saw me, all the way to my soul.

Her presence felt more real in this alternate state than it had when I had spoken to her.

“Myrian?” I waved a hand in front of her face.

She didn’t flinch, didn’t bat an eyelash.

Then the tarot spread stole my attention.

The entire deck had been spread across the table into a position that resembled…

wings.

Most cards were facedown, and the back of the deck featured an angelic figure drawn with metallic wispy lines that made it look like they were built of light and power.

The faceup cards were all of one suit, golden cups: one overflowing, two intertwined, three being clinked together.

Four, five, six—seven of them—centered on this symbol.

Any uncontained liquid depicted in the images seemed to ripple, like it was actual water.

I bent closer and heard the faintest whoosh when something splashed the back of my head.

I craned my neck to see where it had come from, and another droplet hit my nose—trickles of condensation falling from the winding tube of the log ride above me.

Before I had time to realize what was happening, the waterway started flowing full force, piercing the absolute stillness around me.

And in the blink of an eye, everything else roared back to life.