The View from the Top (18 page)

Steve yelled something unintelligible at Tobin and he backed off, surrendering with his hands in the air. Then he looked around as if he were lost at a fork in the road and couldn't figure out which direction to go. There was no line for the Ferris wheel, and he made his getaway through the entrance, dashing into the empty basket. The one right in front of Anabelle.

The ride operator ran up to the basket and Tobin handed him something—probably a ticket. Tobin's basket was the last one to be filled, and once he was set, the ride started inching backward.

“Wild Wild Life” was blasting on the WhirrrlyWorld speakers. They'd been playing the Talking Heads for three songs in a row, and Anabelle was glad: the Talking Heads always made her feel like dancing no matter what mood she was in. Even so, it was hard to trick herself into feeling happy. She was still stuck on trying to figure out who this older woman was.

Her mind was an ice-skater, racing ‘round and 'round, just like Anabelle did out on Saco Pond every winter. She whizzed by different women's names—
no, too young . . .
too
old . . . not pretty enough
—until she stumbled upon one that seemed to fit all the criteria. This name was like that inevitable bump in the ice that would always trip Anabelle up; once she knew it was there, she'd avoid skating over it at all costs. But the quicker her head worked, the more frequently that name came up and she couldn't help slamming into it and careening out across the pond's black, slippery surface.

There was no getting around it: this was a person who had dated Steve. A person whose house Jonah went to all the time.

And this was a person who had discouraged Anabelle from pursuing Jonah. Maybe for more reasons than she had let on?

The basket rose and Anabelle focused on the top of

Tobin's head, forcing all Jonah-related thoughts from her mind. It was sort of thrilling to be able to see Tobin from this perspective—to watch him without him seeing her.

“That poor kid,” her dad said loudly, because that was the only volume he spoke at. “To have a father like that. Such a shame.”

“Dad,” Anabelle scolded. “He'll hear you!” She wondered if Tobin had heard, but he didn't look up. Part of her wished he'd notice she was there, that he'd see she was wearing his red hoodie. The one he'd thrown at her that night of the
Cabaret
cast party. That night out on the trampoline, when he'd played her the slow movement of Schubert's Piano Trio in B-flat. She'd taken the recording out of the library and taught herself the piano part imagining that someday, if Tobin ever talked to her again, they could play the piece together.

The Ferris wheel had just passed the three-o'clock position—the point at which they switched from going backward to forward. Which meant there was now less than a quarter of the circle between them and the top. Anabelle gripped the side of the basket and told herself not to look down.

“That Wood kid,” her dad whispered, pointing down at Tobin. “He's leaving, too, right?” Even his whispers were loud.

Anabelle nodded.

“I cant believe a father would act like that at such an important time.” He covered his extended index finger with his hand so only she could see that he was pointing down at Steve, who was still cursing like crazy despite the fact that Jonah had gotten away.

Anabelle put her finger to her lips. “Not everybody's father cares as much as you do,” she said. The basket got higher and she lost sight of Tobin. He was starting to drift behind them.

“I know, I know. I just can't believe you're actually starting college,” he said, his hand quickly tapping his chest, water pooling in the corners of his eyes—just how it always started.

“Promise me, no sobbing,” Anabelle said, shrinking in her seat.

“Oh, Annie,” her dad said, mid-sniffle, “I can't promise any such thing.”

“Come on, you've had
eighteen years
to prepare for this,” Anabelle said as they rose past the mast of the pirate ship. Its lights twinkled and swung under the star-studded sky.

“Eighteen years! Eighteen years?! Just
yesterday
I was taking you for a ride on the Teacups.” He pulled off his glasses and wiped the tears away with the backs of his wrists. “The carousel!”

“Kiddie rides,” she said. “And I'm not a kid.”

He sighed and petted the back of her head. “Hey, how're you doing with this?” he asked, pointing toward the ground.

“Totally fine,” Anabelle said overconfidently, as if trying to convince herself.
Right
? she thought.
It
is
totally fine.
To prove it, she looked down over the side of the basket. They were right about at two o'clock. Maybe two-thirty. Steve had finally wandered off, and a new line was forming for the Ferris wheel.
This really isn't so bad,
she thought, and stuck her neck farther out over the side.

Then she saw the floor of WhirrrlyWorld directly beneath them, and she suddenly felt like she did when she was seven years old. She whipped her head back to face forward, then pulled her legs into the basket and brought her hands up to either side of her face as blinders.

Waves of screams echoed from the roller coaster, the swings, the pirate ship. It sounded like everyone was having so much fun. She wished she could be feeling that way, too. Instead, her head was back out in the middle of the ice, spinning:
What kind of person hooks up with his best friend's mom? What kind of person am I to pine for someone like that
? Was there anyone out there who was right for her? Anyone at all? Or did everyone who seemed great at first turn out to have some fatal flaw?

“Earth to Annie!” her dad said, waving his hand in front of her face. “You there?”

“Yeah,” she said, removing her blinders and looking straight at his long, jowly face. “I'm here.” She didn't want to make him think she couldn't handle the ride—then he'd just start to panic.

“Well, we were having a conversation, remember?”

“Sorry,” Anabelle said. “I zoned. What was the last thing you said?” Everything was okay, she told herself. All she had to do was fix her eyes on the dots of light reflecting in his glasses.

“I was talking about how it's not possible that you're going to college yet. How you're still our little baby!” His voice sounded all whiny.

Anabelle shook her head and rolled her eyes. “I told you,” she said. “I'm
grown up
now.”

And then it came. The first sob. Not quite a camel but getting there.

A lot of the noises Anabelle's dad made sounded like animals: his laugh was an excited ape; his nose-blowing a trumpeting elephant; and his sobs—well, she'd only recently figured out what his sobs were when they'd gone on a family trip to the zoo. She and her parents and her little sisters had followed a low-pitched groaning sound, and it had led them to the camels. The guy camel was behind the lady camel, and she was moaning and foaming at the mouth. All the girls in the family were grossed out, but Anabelle's dad got all teary and went on about how beautiful it was that they were witnessing such a raw act of nature. Those “raw nature” noises sounded familiar to Anabelle somehow. And after listening for a while, she realized that her dad's sobbing—when he really got into it, with the deep inhaling—sounded just like the humping camels.

Anything could set him off: an unexpected gift, a sappy film, a finely cooked stew. Or, as in this case, the realization that one of his daughters was maturing.

They hit the Ferris wheel's peak, and there it was: full-on camel.

Anabelle tried to block out his voice and focused on the bloated yellow moon kissing the tops of the trees. Slowly, they passed the pinnacle and started descending along the other side of the circle. She relaxed her leg muscles.

Anabelle looked up to see if Tobin had noticed her dad's noises. But there was no way she could see him from below. Great, she thought.
Now, on top of everything else, someone who used to like me is getting to see the spectacle that is my dad.

Her dad took out his red handkerchief and blew his nose: wild elephant. Could Tobin hear
that
?

“Remember when you were a little kid?” her dad asked, sniffling. “And you wouldn't go on all those crazy rides?” He pointed at the roller coaster.

Anabelle nodded. She didn't get why he always had to bring this up when they came to WhirrrlyWorld. As if there was any chance she could forget.

“I had so much respect for you,” he said, with a little more elephant. “Even though all your friends would go, you just stood and waited patiently until they were ready for the lower rides. So much inner strength, so much resolve.” There he went again, blabbing about her shyness.

Anabelle didn't say anything. She knew by now that if she showed her dad how annoying it was when he got all sentimental, it would just make things worse. And all she wanted was for him to quiet down. But he was still going, reminiscing about her childhood.

Anabelle looked up at Tobin's looming basket. She watched it follow her as they swung around the bottom. “Once in a Lifetime” kicked on, and she started swinging her feet in rhythm with the song, trying to calm her nerves. When she was finally back up above Tobin, she peered down at the empty half of his basket. It looked so calm and quiet in there. She wished she could press an eject button and magically land right beside him.

But Tobin probably hated her. And he should. The way she'd pulled away when he'd tried to kiss her on the trampoline. It's not that she didn't want to kiss him; it's just that she'd never thought of him that way before. And he'd never given her any signs that he was interested either. But she wondered now, after this summer of disasters, how things would've turned out if she'd given in to him that night. Could it be that he was one of those third or fourth options that Mary-Tyler had been talking about?

Anabelle felt a smack on her shoulder. She jumped, startled out of her daydream. Her dad was so into the story he was telling that he hadn't even noticed he'd hit her. He was gesticulating madly as he carried on: “... and that time I rescued you from the big slide, remember that? You climbed all the way up there with those little twiggy legs and we couldn't get you to slide down. Remember?” He shook her arm. “Remember I went up the ladder—not easy on the knees, I'll tell you that!—and brought you down on my lap? On that potato sack?” He let out a long tearful sob, sending himself back into camel mode.

Down below a bell dinged furiously. Someone was a water-gun-shooting winner. Anabelle peeked over the side to see what they'd choose as a prize. But before she could tell, she turned back around. They were at the very top of the wheel, not moving. And she had this awful feeling that they'd been stuck there for a long time.

She put her hands up like before, blocking her peripheral vision. The moon was higher and smaller than the last time they'd passed it. The yellowness was fading, too.

Her dad was on to some story about how they'd hiked to the top of the bluffs.

“Dad?” she asked, cutting him off before he could get to the part when she ran and hid behind a big rock. “How long have we been up here?”

“Oh.” He wiped his eyes and looked at his watch. “About a minute. Maybe two?”

“That's not normal, is it?” she asked, her voice timid.

“We should still be moving, right? We've only been around once. They shouldn't be letting people off yet or anything.”

A smile broke through his weepy face. “Did you only just notice?” he asked, and blew his nose. Major elephant.

She turned her head toward him, her blinders still up.

“Yes.”

“Wow, you must have something
big
on your mind,” he said, his crying tapering off. “I thought maybe you were actually doing okay with being up here!”

“Not really,” Anabelle said faintly.

“Too bad.” He removed his glasses and cleaned them with a corner of his handkerchief. “Imagine how symbolic
that
would be! Conquering your problem with heights just before you
plunge
into your life away from home!” He shot his hand downward like a crashing airplane.

Why did he have to be so dramatic about everything?

Anabelle really
wanted
to get over it. She was about to become an adult, right? And what kind of adult couldn't bear to be at the top of a Ferris wheel? Not all those people down there in lines, who'd driven miles to go on daredevil rides. Not kids who'd lived in Normal all their lives. Not anyone she knew.

This is so lame
, she thought, turning her head back toward the moon.
How can I be the only teenager in the world who can't deal with a freakin'Ferris wheel?
What would she do in college if all of her new friends went to a carnival and wanted to go on the Ferris wheel, but she couldn't? So much for becoming a new person; she'd go right back to being the old Anabelle. High school Anabelle, who was too shy to do anything with bravery or conviction, except when it came to the piano. Or if it was in secret, like the Polar Bear Club.

She
had
to get over her heights thing. And she had to do it now. It was her last chance before leaving home.

She put her hands in her lap and leaned over, looking down. For a second she was fine. She watched the clusters of people milling around, eating cotton candy, holding hands, gripping stuffed dogs, lions, seals.
There they are
, she thought.
And here I am
.
They're down there and I'm up here. Big deal.

But then it kicked in. The thing that always happened when she was up high, on a building, a mountain, a bridge. Worse than the sense that she was bound to drop was that unshakable feeling that she was going to jump—as if she were a magnet and the earth was a giant refrigerator. She clung to the metal bar over her thighs.
This is holding you in,
she thought.
It's locked.
But she knew how easy it would be to undo her seat belt, wriggle her legs out from under the gate, stand up, leap, and fall. And fall and fall until—
splat
—she'd be splayed out on the ground. There was a teenage tourist last year who'd killed himself that way. She wondered if his dad had been sitting next to him, sobbing like a humping camel.