Unhappenings (26 page)

She stopped and gave me a scolding look.

“Really?” she said. “Really. Where are we going.” She tapped my chin with her finger. “Where… is your sense of adventure?”

At that simple touch, I could feel myself blushing. I hoped it was dark enough not to be obvious. I also hoped it was just a tiny bit obvious.

“I honestly have no idea.”

“See, this is your problem. Trust me, okay?”

“Absolutely,” I said.

She walked me to her car. It took us about twenty minutes to get to our destination, a high school campus across town. As she hunted for a parking space on the lawn, I took in the lights, and the music, and the Ferris wheel and tried to remember the last time I had gone to a carnival. Then I tried to remember the last time I really let go and just had fun, and came up blank.

“I had no idea this was here,” I said.

“Well, I’ve known about it for a few days, but a certain Mister Busy Pants never came by to hear about it.”

I winced. “Mister Busy Pants?”

She frowned. “Yeah, that’s no good. I meant to say something super witty about you being too busy for me. It sounded funnier in my head. Come on.” She got out of the car and ran for the entrance. I caught up to her just in time to see her scan her card at the gate and watch it spit out a string of dozens of paper tickets. “The rides are on me. You can buy the food. And you better win me something!”

I silently vowed to do just that.

y first order of business was apparently to buy Helen a wad of cotton candy several times the size of her head, which she subsequently explained she had no intent to share. I made multiple attempts to win her a stuffed animal, all but one of which ended in failure. I was tempted to submit myself to the carnie who was offering prizes to any mark whose weight, birth month, or age he was unable to guess within three relevant units. For simple irony, I wanted to ask him to guess my age (correct answer: seventy-eight), but that internal joke would have fallen flat as soon as I produced my extremely genuine-looking fake ID.

We partook of the haunted house, which made Helen laugh so hard her face was covered in tears before we were halfway through. We rode side by side on alternately oscillating horses on the carousel, on which I dated myself somewhat by asking about the brass ring (memo to self: those no longer existed, even as legend, by 2145). I was reluctant to try any of the more thrilling rides, but Helen refused to go on the Ferris wheel with me until I had gone with her on the Zipper, which turned out to be every bit as bad as it looked on the outside.

Her need for imaginary danger satisfied, Helen agreed to go up on the wheel. It was quite a bit taller than what I would have expected to be portable. As much as the apparatus aesthetic of carnivals had remained constant for many, many years, evidently the technology had covertly improved. We waited ten minutes to get to the front of the line, and another ten as we experienced the start and stop of other riders boarding. At one point in this process we were held in place at the very top for several minutes. From there, we had an excellent view of not only the carnival itself, but also the entire surrounding town. Looking over my shoulder, I was able to make out the lab complex, several kilometers away, just barely. It was after dark at that point, and the lights from countless edifices and vehicles decorated the landscape in a way that was both mesmerizing and exhilarating.

I turned back to tell Helen something about some aspect of the view, and with her in sight, everything else disappeared. She wasn’t looking at me; something in the distance had captured her eye, and in her appreciation of it, she smiled unselfconsciously. Nothing of note from that vista could compete with the visage of that tiny expression of joy in her face. For all its simplicity, it may have been the most perfect moment I had ever experienced. Her eyes turned to mine. That smile expanded, just enough to communicate that the moment was a shared one, and then she went back to whatever she had been watching, ever so slightly but significantly happier about it.

I would carry on with my polite and timid denial that we had nothing beyond a friendship, but from this point on it would only be for show. Like it, love it, or fear it, this was a date.

And the danger that presented to her was anything but imaginary.

y immunity to unhappenings in my own future turned out to be an illusion. It took more than a year before I started seeing things change in ways I could actually detect, but those changes were real. Most likely, trivial things had been unhappening all around me that whole time, and I simply hadn’t caught on yet.

The weekend after Helen took me to the carnival, several observations put me on my guard. Saturday morning, I found four leftover slices of pizza in my fridge, and was unable to recall when I might have put them there. Hardly damning evidence, to be sure, but noteworthy. I threw them out. On Sunday I noticed that a coffee shop I used to frequent had moved. Again, I could not recall how long it had been since I last went there, but it didn’t seem like it had been that long ago.

Monday clinched it. First thing in the morning, I saw an unfamiliar face behind the security desk. Wendy usually worked Monday mornings, but not always. As I passed the youth, I asked him, “Wendy off today?”

“Who’s Wendy?” he asked in response.

I had become adept enough at wrangling out of awkward situations like that. One smooth expression of confusion, and I went straight upstairs.

It took me two hours to establish that Wendy was still alive. In fact, she had at one point worked in this building, but quit about three months prior. That would mean she was working here during the stretch of time that we almost dated. Most likely, every significant interaction we had was still part of our history. I would have to ask her to be sure, but I couldn’t see myself doing that.

Regardless of the details, it was clear that whatever force governed the retroactive revisions of my life operated in this time frame just as it had in my own. The fact that I had coasted for so long in the apparent absence of this phenomenon only meant I had been blessed with a very fortunate year. Now, all bets were off.

I had allowed myself to believe Helen and I were on our way to some sort of relationship, which would have been the first for me in my adult life. That belief had now been shattered. Whatever stirred there for now would have to be ignored or extinguished. Worse than that, the timing of this new spate of unhappenings—even as mild as they were—made it impossible to outright reject the notion of my curse.

I had considered the possibility of happiness, and the universe had punished me for it.