Colorblind (8 page)

I let out a small laugh purely out of surprise. “Uh, yeah.”

“So doesn’t he spend his spare time smoking weed and contemplating the meaning of life while staring up at the stars? And then the next day he’ll spend the whole work shift mumbling about how we’re all ants or cogs in the machine and in the long run we’re not going to make any difference in the world?”

I chuckled and nodded, raising a hand to cover my mouth. “Oh my God. That is almost eerily spot-on.”

“Yeah, that’s not the best guy to be taking life advice from. I mean, I’m sure he’s a smart guy, but I’ve known guys like that and they’ll make you depressed as hell. Especially if they’re jaded.”

My smile faded and I turned away from her. “Well, I don’t know if I’d call him ‘jaded’ because he lost his sister…”

She winced beside me. “Shit. I didn’t mean it like that. I’m sorry; please forget I said it.” She hesitated before she continued, and I could feel her gaze on my cheek. “If I lost someone I cared about, I’d probably spend a lot of time wondering why things are the way they are, too. I understand. I just… wanted to make you feel better, I guess. I thought making a joke about it-”

“It’s okay,” I cut her off before she could start rambling. I looked back at her to see her relax a little. “I know. Sometimes he pisses me off. But sometimes he’s the only person who makes sense. Or the only person who says the right things.” I elbowed her lightly and cracked a smile. “But he also has his fair share of foot-in-mouth moments, too. And he’s not as attractive as you.”

She shook her head disapprovingly, and there was a small, almost sad smile on her lips as she prodded my shoulder with her index finger. “Thanks, but don’t hit on me, okay? The one slip-up was enough.”

“But you’re so pretty,” I joked, and quickly stopped grinning when I realized she wasn’t playing along. Instead, she nudged me again, her voice quiet.

“Harper, c’mon.”

Now I was the one who felt awful. I didn’t know what to say, so instead I just nodded and started to move off of her bed.

“Wait, you don’t have to go,” Chloe said. She looked surprised now. “I wasn’t saying you had to go.”

“No, it’s okay,” I replied, trying to keep my voice even. I couldn’t make eye contact with her. “I should go talk to my Dad. He’ll be happy to hear I want to go do the camping thing with him.”

“Harper-”

“I’ll see you later, okay?” I interrupted, and left quickly before she could follow.

* * *

At some point, I knew I had to face the way I felt about Chloe, and the fact that it was mutual. This wasn’t a fairytale. This was a real person with real feelings, and even though I wasn’t guaranteed a happy ending, a decision needed to be made.

I trembled as I helped Dad pack for our camping trip. When I was done, I’d go to Chloe’s house and join her family for a late breakfast. Then we’d go to the theme park for the day, get home around six, and Chloe and I would go with my dad and Deborah to a campground Deborah had experience with. I wasn’t sure which terrified me more: roller coasters, sleeping in a tent in an unfamiliar area, or the fact that I was doing both in one day with Chloe.

I packed painstakingly slowly. Robbie texted me through it. I wondered if he was nervous for me. Even if he didn’t like to admit it, I knew I was his best friend. And I also knew that watching him go through what I was going through now wouldn’t exactly be a cakewalk. Robbie and I’d had countless conversations about staying detached from people outside of our families, and yet here we were, attached to each other. But at least I knew Robbie was going to be around for a while.

I got my first moment of peace in a while on the way to the park. I’d grown afraid of car trips with Chloe, but with her mother and father in the car with us and both of them sporting high numbers on their foreheads, I had somewhat of a guarantee for the first time that there would be no car-related incidents today.

Chloe and I sat in the backseat, she behind her driving father and I behind her mother. I rested my head against the window and watched the trees on the side of the road blow past us. My hand, almost unconsciously, stretched out toward the center of the seat, occasionally making contact with Chloe’s fingertips. Her doing. She’d made it clear the other night that as long as I was the one doing the rejecting, I wasn’t allowed to also do the flirting. I supposed that was fair. I couldn’t have it both ways.

I took my forehead off of the window and looked over at her. Her gaze was on the view of the body of water just a football field’s distance from us, and when she used the hand that wasn’t playing with mine to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, I could see her smiling.

“This is beautiful,” she murmured, awestruck. “Isn’t it?”

Still staring at her, I had to work hard to avoid agreeing with her in the cheesiest, most cliché manner ever recorded by modern humanity. But 2000-era romance movies suddenly seemed less contrived and annoying.

Instead, I sighed and turned away, pressing my forehead to the glass window again. Then I pulled away and drove my head forward until my forehead met the glass again with a small “thunk”.

It didn’t help.

* * *

Despite spending all seventeen years of my life in San Francisco, just an hour away from Six Flags Discovery Kingdom, I’d never been there before.

An hour in, it was very clear to me why that was.

Chloe pulled me through the park, blowing past stands for funnel cakes and booths sporting games that offered stuffed animal prizes. She eyed the rides around us like a kid in a candy store. She’d tried to get me warmed up with a few meant for small children, which was pretty embarrassing, but it hadn’t really worked. Next had been Bumper Cars, which was the highlight so far. The spinning tea cups afterward had made me nauseous, but getting that one over with early on was probably for the best given that I’d been getting hungry.

“Why don’t we do one to cool you down, and then we’ll ease into the coasters?” she eventually suggested.

“I can’t do coasters,” I insisted. “I really can’t.”

“Just one,” she pressed. “For me? Please?”

She reached out and squeezed my hand, and I gave in when I realized she was about to go for an over-exaggerated pout. “One.”

“Yes! I’ll take it! And since you’ve never been on any before, who knows? You might actually like it.”

“I won’t,” I insisted, but she was already dragging me off again.

Her “cool-down ride” idea was literal. We stepped into line for a ride down a river in an eight-man circular raft behind three guys that looked about our age, and thirty minutes later we were still only three-quarters of the way to the front of the line. Right around then was when one the guys noticed us.

We were sitting side by side on the top of the wooden fence meant to keep us neatly organized in our immobile line. Chloe was swinging her feet back and forth beneath herself and accidentally lost control of her momentum, sending herself backwards with a loud squeal. With my help, she caught herself before she actually fell, but that didn’t stop my heart from going haywire in the milliseconds between her fall and our joint save.

“Whoa, you okay?” one of the boys in front of us asked her. He gave his head a sharp shake to get his shaggy brown hair out of his eyes, and I hid a grin. Two seconds had passed and he already couldn’t take his eyes off of Chloe.

Chloe, to her credit, played it off like a champ. “Yeah, totally fine. I meant to do that.”

He laughed at her joke like it was much funnier than it was, and she smiled back. “Cool. So are you guys from around here?”

“San Francisco,” Chloe confirmed. “I’m Chloe. This is my friend Harper.”

“I’m Josh. These are my best friends Pete and Hunter. We’re here with Pete’s parents on vacation.”

“How do you like it here so far?”

Josh grinned widely. “It’s awesome.” He leaned in closer, like he didn’t want anyone to overhear, and added, “The girls here in Cali are, like, really hot. It’s like you guys are all models or something.”

“I know, right?” Chloe agreed. That made Josh and his friends laugh. I turned away and tuned them out, frustrated that she was even humoring them when they were so obviously flirting with her, and Chloe’s amused look told me she’d noticed. The line started to move again.

“We’re having a barbecue at the condo we rented out tomorrow night,” Pete spoke up at some point. “We’re pretty much inviting anyone cool we meet. You should come. And your friend.”

“What’s your name again?” Hunter asked me before Chloe could reply.

“Harper.” I tugged at Chloe’s arm and leaned in close to hiss in her ear, “Fine. You win. Let’s go to the coaster.”

“Guys, it was really nice to meet you, but we actually have to go,” Chloe told them abruptly, her hand finding mine as she spoke. “This line’s a killer. We’re gonna go find some coasters. Have a good vacation!”

She pulled me out of the line and I followed obediently, hurrying after her down the winding path that led back to the entrance. I heard one of the guys shout something to us as we left, but I couldn’t make it out. He sounded hopeful.

Chloe was laughing as we reached the bottom, and she only laughed harder when she turned around and saw me scowling at her. “The look on your face!”

“We were
not
going to that barbecue.”

“Of course not. But it was to worth it to see you squirm. Relax; they’re just boys. C’mon!” She pulled me onward without warning, and I wrinkled my nose with disgust.

“The Bieber one was looking at you like a piece of meat!”

* * *

“Breathe.”

The attendant secured the straps meant to keep me from death with a not-very-satisfying series of clicks. Then he moved ahead to the next car. I squeezed Chloe’s hand so tightly I was surprised she wasn’t in pain.

“You’re amazing,” she insisted, lips so close to my ear I could feel them brushing against it. I wasn’t sure if my lightheadedness could be attributed to that or to my impending doom. “I’ll buy you an ice cream cone when we get back to the bottom, alright? Can you at least do chocolate sprinkles?”

“Negative.”

“My god.”

“I know.”

She exhaled slowly, and I swallowed hard as the bar in front of us lowered over our laps. It clicked into place and I tried not to hyperventilate. Beside me, Chloe muttered, “At least I never showed you
Final Destination 3
.”

“Wha-?” I started to ask, but the coaster rolled forward and I clamped my mouth shut. Chloe let go of my hand and I looked over at her, wide-eyed.

“You’re gonna want to be hands-free,” she explained. “It’s not a good ride if it doesn’t wanna make you throw your hands up and scream. That’s what Dad says, anyway.”

“That’s not comforting at all,” I half-whimpered.

“It’s just a left turn right now,” she told me. “Just take it a little at a time.”

The left turn she spoke of took us around a bend, and for the first time, I saw just exactly what I was dealing with. Chloe’d told me there were no loops or inversions. That was true. She’d failed, however, to mention the ascension into the
clouds
and the drop that’d follow.

“I’m gonna die.”

“I’m with you,” she reminded me. “You’re not going anywhere.” As we began our ascension, it occurred to me that it was actually my presence guaranteeing Chloe’s safety rather than the other way around.

“What’s
Final Destination 3
?” I asked her at last, mostly to take my mind off of our impending drop.

“Trust me, you definitely do
not
wanna know that right now.”

“Yes I do.”

“Nope.”

“Just tell me. If we talk I’ll stay distracted.”

“It’s a horror movie. I’ll tell you at the bottom. While you’re eating your vanilla cone tragically lacking chocolate sprinkles.”

“But I wanna know now.”

“Harper-”

“But-”

“Put your hands up,” she told me abruptly, and I took my eyes off of her and faced forward as momentum and gravity did their jobs.

I think I blacked out for the first drop. There was a vague memory of my stomach dropping and Chloe screaming happily – because that’s apparently a
thing
insane people who like roller coasters can do – next to me, and then we were at the bottom and zooming up and down and around the wooden track and
everyone
was screaming and cheering except for me. I kept my jaw locked, my teeth gritted, and my hands firmly attached to the bar over my lap for the first half of the ride, and then I felt Chloe’s lips far too close to my ear again and there was a giggly tone to her voice as she shouted, “Just let go!”

I shook my head silently, and she put one hand over mine and pulled gently. “Just one!” she insisted, and I relented, sure I looked ridiculous with one arm in the air and my fingers interlocked with Chloe’s as she screamed wildly over the next drop. I attempted a small squeal that sounded more like a dying seal than anything else, and then kept my mouth firmly shut for the rest of the ride.