Joshua Chen
tonight, and I reached for her hand. Her fingers were cold, or maybe mine were warm.
It was dark now, sunlight barely visible on the clouds, and they had turned on the lights. This was one of my favorite parts, the flashing colors on the rides reminding me of childhood. We passed by a bench and I remember wishing to myself how we could stay on those benches forever, my arm wrapped around her to keep warm against the ocean breeze, and us just talking and talking. But Lily loved the rides.“ What’ s your favorite part?” I asked her.“ The drops, of course.” She had a matter-of-fact expression on her face, then she nudged me playfully and ran ahead. We approached the one that just looks like a massive pole, where it’ d take you slowly up to the top and, like a string being cut, drop you all the way down.
The rides were mostly empty at this point, and it was just the two of us. We climbed into the seats and pulled the cushioned metal bars over ourselves, locking them into place. Lily turned to me and smiled excitedly, then held out her hand and I took it, and the machine started moving up.
I looked down to the ground, saw the employees closing up their stations and shutting down the rides, everything getting smaller and smaller. I thought of my mother and her dishes, and imagined dropping a dish from this height, and about leaves falling gently down, and I found myself missing her embrace. I thought of the night after I broke her plate, sneaking out of bed to find her, seeing her sitting alone at the dinner table in our tiny apartment under a single yellow light with the apartment bills spread all about. I remember going back to my room and crying about the shattered plate, thinking I had somehow broken more than just her porcelain.
Lily said something and I realized we were at the top. Blinking, I felt the familiar surge of anxious excitement. A mechanical snap and we were falling, and I felt her hand slip from mine as we both screamed and plummeted down.
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