Rough Waters (13 page)

Topher looks over at A.J. “Thanks dude,” he
says. “Are you actually going with us?”

A.J. shrugs. “Yeah, I mean, I’m off tomorrow.
I don’t have anything else to do. And I might learn something…or
something.”

A.J. shuffles around for a minute and then
looks at me. “I need a ride home. Reed brought me here this
morning. My car’s fucked again,” he says. “Can you give me five
minutes to balance the register?”

I tell him I’ll wait in the parking lot and
walk outside with Topher. He says he’ll call me in the morning –
after sunrise this time – and leaves so he can get home and be
locked in his bedroom before Vin gets home. If I knew it wouldn’t
piss Vin off too much, I’d tell Topher to crash in the other room
in the guest house.

I lock myself in my car and wait longer than
the five minutes I promised A.J. He’s all smiles when he gets into
my car.

“What are you so damn happy about?” I ask.
“Did they resurrect your carnival?”

He laughs but shakes his head. “Vin offered
me the manager position at Drenaline Surf. He made Emily head
cashier too. He said once they open a second store, he couldn’t run
everything for both of them, so he asked if I wanted the spot. He
said I could give him an answer next week. I have a few days off to
think on it.”

Wow. A.J. managing Drenaline Surf? I bet
Shark never saw that coming. I wonder if he would trust Vin’s
judgment on that call. I wonder if the surf world will take A.J.
seriously on the business end of things. I need to stop wondering
so much and speak.

“Are you going to take the position?” I ask,
more to the steering wheel than A.J.

He sighs. “I think so. I’m scared about it,
and I don’t think I’m smart enough to learn it, but Vin says I am.
He said I deserve better, and he doesn’t know what’s going to
happen now that Colby’s parents know about him, so I need an
income.”

I crank up the car but wait a minute before
leaving Drenaline Surf’s parking lot. A.J. definitely needs an
income, as do I. Hopefully Vin will actually let me do some public
relations work this summer. At this rate, the most PR work I’ll do
is keeping Topher out of jail.

“And Vin doesn’t know about the lawsuit,”
A.J. reminds me. “So I’m sort of a step ahead of him on that. This
may be the only chance I have to do something with my life.”

“You’re smart enough to learn it,” I say.
“Don’t sell yourself short. This is your chance to do something for
yourself and prove the world wrong at the same time. You should
take it.”

“You’re right,” he says. “I’m going to take
it.”

“I promise you, Theo said it was straight
down I-10, and then you take the Golden View exit,” Topher says,
reaching for his cell phone. “Call him and make sure that’s
right.”

Miles volunteers to call Theo from the
backseat. Emily gripes that Topher has no sense of direction, and
A.J. says that he’s sort of glad because he didn’t want to go to
some board shaping seminar anyway. I’m just thankful I’m riding
shotgun, but you pretty much get dibs when the entire group decides
to ride in your car.

“You idiot!” Miles shouts from behind me. “It
was the Fairmont exit
past
Golden View. You’re not even in
the right town, Topher.”

Topher sighs and mumbles something about
telling Theo to take notes for him. Part of me doubted that Topher
really wanted to go to this convention, but then again, he was so
excited over the possibility of someday surfing on a Rob Hodges
surfboard. Maybe wanting to go was legit and not just a ploy to get
away from Vin.

“We’ll just follow this road until we find a
place to turn around,” Topher says, defeat in his voice. “I’m sorry
I screwed up the directions.”

He pulls into a mall’s parking lot to get
turned around and back on track toward Crescent Cove, but Emily
gasps about the same time A.J. shouts for Topher to stop the car.
There’s a carnival in town.

My heart sinks to the floorboard when I see
the ferris wheel over the mall’s roof. I never had a chance to see
A.J.’s carnival in its prime, or to see his love for it, but the
thought of him facing a carnival in the midst of his sacred
ground’s destruction hurts my soul. Until A.J. speaks.

“We have to fucking go,” he says, leaning
over the side of the driver’s seat. “Dude, we can’t make it to the
convention, and you know you don’t want to go home. Let’s do
this.”

Emily slides forward on the backseat, poking
her head in between Topher and me. “Plot twist!” she shouts. “I
haven’t been to a carnival pretty much ever. My mom never let me go
when I was a kid, and I was like the only kid at school who never
got to go. I had to lie and pretend like I was there or say I was
out of town so I wouldn’t look uncool.”

We park at the mall and walk around to where
the carnival has set up. A live band plays some country-rock song
about porch swings and sweet tea. A pharaoh ship swings in the
distance, much like A.J.’s pirate ship with the giant dragon that’s
painted onto his skin. His eyes light up when he sees the ride.

“Oh my God,” Emily says. Her eyes widen with
amazement, like a little kid who just walked into a candy store for
the first time. “This is amazing. I want to do everything. Except
those rides. I’m so not a thrill seeker.”

“And you’re dating Miles Garrett?” A.J. says,
his eyes still fixated on the pharaoh ship. “You’re in the wrong
place.”

Miles laughs and wraps an arm around Emily.
“There’s one reason and one reason only to go to a carnival – the
food,” he says.

Emily squeals that this will be her first
carnival meal. She says something about cotton candy, and Miles
mentions pickles before they’re out of earshot. The band cranks up
the volume while we walk throughout the carnival grounds. It’s
crazy to know that in a few days, all of these rides, booths, and
people will pack up and move on to the next town, leaving nothing
but a trail of glitter in the wind.

Topher, A.J., and I stroll with the movement
of the crowd through the game booths. Stuffed dolphins and
neon-colored inflatable aliens sway in the breeze, waiting for some
eager kid with money to blow to waste his day trying to win one of
them. The air smells of hot dogs and grilled burgers. Reed should
set up at a place like this. He’s a better cook than anyone here,
hands down. I’m sure of it.

“Holy fuck of all fucks,” A.J. shouts in my
ear. “I know him!”

He says something else, but the electric
guitar drowns his words. He points toward a game booth where you
can win a gold fish. A short man – an actual dwarf – stands on a
stepstool pointing to the balloons on the back wall. A young kid
throws darts toward them.

“That’s Big G!” A.J. says, bouncing like
Topher does when he’s excited. “His name is really Gordon, but we
called him Big G. He worked the funnel cake stand at
my
carnival.”

“Go!” I yell, waving him off with my
hand.

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen the whites of
A.J.’s eyes as clearly as I just did. Even when he’s sober, he has
this completely stoned stare. Sometimes that expression could pass
for sleep deprivation, but all in all, A.J. looks stoned every day
of his life, even at his best.

I watch the exchange of hugs and high fives
at the dart booth. Both A.J. and ‘Big G’ speak simultaneously,
probably in shock to run into each other here. A.J. never talks
about his friends from the carnival. From the little he told me
last summer, I gathered that many of them were homeless, living
with the carnival for a means of security and family. I think they
were the only family A.J. really had.

“Want to walk with me?” Topher leans into my
ear and asks. “You know, I figured we could let them have their
family reunion, and we could look around.”

“Sounds good,” I say.

We push through the crowd until we get to the
vendor booths. I laugh the moment I see the shell jewelry. I don’t
wear A.J.’s shell necklace a lot, but I do save it for special
occasions. Topher is instantly drawn to the shark tooth jewelry,
even though I’ve never seen him wear anything other than a surf
leash.

He picks up a braided bracelet, made out of a
hemp-like material. A white shark’s tooth is sewn into the black
material. He puts it on his wrist and tightens it to fit.

“Too girly?” he asks, holding it up for me to
see.

I shake my head. “I actually like it. It’s
very Topher-ish,” I say.

“Well, in that case, you need one too so you
can be as awesome as me,” he says. He grabs another one and hands
the vendor cash for the two. Then he turns to me. “You have to
promise to wear it.”

“Promise,” I say as he tightens it onto my
wrist.

We browse the other booths for a bit until we
run into Emily and Miles. A wooden sea turtle pendant hangs from
the necklace Emily wears. Miles doesn’t see us at first because
he’s too engulfed in his nachos. He wasn’t kidding about coming to
carnivals to eat.

“Where’s A.J.?” Emily asks, tugging the
turtle back and forth on its cord.

I explain the family reunion with Big G as
Miles tells Topher in depth about the fried pickles he ate earlier.
We stop for Emily to buy cotton candy. A.J. finds us a moment
later, funnel cake in hand. Topher and I join him at a picnic
table. A.J. fills us in on the history of Big G.

“He thinks he lived past lives,” A.J.
explains as he nibbles on the funnel cake. “He actually tells the
same stories, though. It’s not like a crazy person who tells
something different every time. All of his details are exactly the
same, from the fire breathers and elephant’s water curse to the
six-foot-ten clown named Cricket.”

My heart breaks as A.J. tells his tale. I’m
not sure if it hurts for Big G and his delusions or the fact that
A.J. takes him seriously. I know A.J.’s dad was never in his life,
and his mom lives in and out of rehab clinics. A.J. basically
raised himself. Sometimes I think the carnies raised him. These
people mean something to him, even now that they aren’t in his
life. So I listen just as intently as I do when Topher tells me
stories about Shark.

“I think he was happy to see me, though,”
A.J. says in between bites. “He said he’s thinking about getting
out of the carnival life. He said some boxer in Chicago is looking
for a hype team, some dude called The Dragon or something. He
thinks he’s the right fit for it.”

Emily rushes over to the table, squealing
about face painting and butterflies. Miles just shrugs behind her,
hardly paying attention as he finishes off her cotton candy. If he
had actually heard the word ‘butterflies,’ he may not be so willing
to follow her.

“We should get our faces painted,” she says,
clinging to my arm and pulling me to my feet. She drags me toward a
tent with a green roof. “It’ll be so cute. I already know what I
want.”

“Aww fuck,” A.J. says. “How old are you?”

Emily puts a hand on her hip and stares him
down under her sparkly eyeshadow and thick eyelashes. “Excuse me,
Mr. Gonzalez, but you have permanent paintings inked into your
arms. So if I want a butterfly temporarily painted on my face,
there shouldn’t be a problem,” she says.

Well, that settles that. A.J. says something
under his breath about dragons versus butterflies, but I ignore him
because it’s as useless as the Billabong and Hurley argument.

The face-painting lady spends a few minutes
transforming Emily’s face into a lime green and white butterfly,
its antennas sprouting between her perfectly-crafted eyebrows. She
bribes Miles with promises of chili cheese fries and pink lemonade,
and he quickly surrenders to the full-face lizard design she picked
out for him. The green scales that line his cheek bones actually
look fitting yet creepy with his dreadlocks.

“Ohmygosh, we’re so cute,” she says into a
mirror. “We’re like our own little garden.”

I wish I had a video camera because no one
will ever believe that badass Miles Garrett would cave in so easily
to a cute little girl who looks like a pixie. But here he stands,
lizard-faced, letting his girlfriend compare them to butterflies
and lizards in a summer flower bed. God help him.

“This one,” A.J. says, pointing to something
in a photo album under the tent. “I want the full face thing, like
Miles got. But this one.”

I lean over his shoulder to see the image.
It’s a guy with his face painted like a skeleton. I secretly wonder
if Emily has voodoo dolls – um, Enchanters – in her purse in the
forms of A.J. and Miles. No Hooligan and self-proclaimed jailbird
should ever give in to face paintings under the persuasion of a
girl. Not even Enchanted Emily, who is clearly magical in every
aspect of the word.

As the sunset drops over the carnival,
lighting up the sky in hues of cotton candy and pink lemonade, I
swear, her magic flows even in my blood because I don’t argue when
she begs me and Topher to live a little. I don’t go with a
full-face design like the three of them, but the little blue
seahorse fits perfectly on my cheek, as the gray shark fits on the
side of Topher’s face. We’re officially five years old all over
again.

“There’s only one thing left to do,” A.J.
says after we pay for our temporary ink jobs. “We have to ride the
pharaoh ship.”

Emily protests and stomps her pink flip flops
on the pavement, but A.J. refuses to listen to her excuses that the
ship may break or the machinery could malfunction and cause her to
fall out. I even crack up when she says the ship may not stop
swinging and just make a full circle in the air. She was right –
she isn’t into thrill rides. But I wouldn’t consider the pharaoh
ship to be much of a thrill in comparison.

Amongst her protests, she still climbs aboard
and settles onto the plastic seat next to Miles. I wedge myself
between Topher and A.J. directly behind the Drenaline Surf power
couple. Miles looks over his shoulder, holds out his cell phone,
and announces that this will be the ultimate five-person selfie. We
squeeze in as Miles stretches his arm out to make sure all five of
us fit into the frame.