Theoretically Speaking

Chapter Two

My name wasn’t long.

It wasn’t hard to pronounce.

It wasn’t one of those names that were simply asking to be made fun of with their hidden meanings (such as Crystal Chandelier. Or Dick Boner. I mean, it was punishment enough to have your last name be Boner – naming your kid Dick was only adding insult to injury. The worst part? It was Dick Boner III). Yet regardless, I had still managed to end up with a nickname like Tampon Taylor. Tampon. Taylor.

“You have a quarter?” Brooke asked over the carnival’s loud music. After three years of avoiding the place, I’d convinced her to come on their last night of this summer.

I fished in my pocket and unearthed six quarters and a handful of pennies. “Tampon Taylor.” I shook my head, still unable to let it go. “Tampon Taylor, Brooke. People in another state are calling me Tampon Taylor. People in another state know about me! People I don’t even know!”

“You’re famous. What a terrible tragedy.” She exchanged her quarters for five arrows and positioned herself to aim for the balloons tied to the back wall of the carnival booth. Her face tightened with concentration, her brows meeting in the middle and her mouth jutting out as she bit the corner of her upper lip.

“This is so not funny, Brooke. You should have seen the smile they gave me when you left.” Just at the thought of it, I cringed, and Aidan’s irritating grin still ingrained in my mind made me groan. I leaned against the wooden block holding part of the tent up. This was a disaster. Not only was Aidan back in Philly, but he was going to Penn. Out of all the schools he could have gone to, he’d accepted Penn’s offer.

As I contemplated the many reasons why the universe hated me, Brooke continued with her game. The Midnight Annual Summer Carnival was a traveling carnival and a big event in Philly. It was held at Penn’s Landing near the Delaware River every year for an entire month, and made an awful lot of money from us. Booths filled the entire place and the lines at each of them were often long. At every corner there was a hot dog or hamburger stand, a candy stand, or a cotton candy stand. Music blasted from the speakers and on their last night in town, the carnival always brought in a new band for the night’s entertainment. To celebrate the end of summer, a show of fireworks started at a midnight and sometimes lasted a whole hour. The band played through it all at The Great Plaza, the large stage on the pier, where the speakers carried the sound of the music through the entire place. A few sat on the benches behind the stage for the view of the river, and many often fell asleep there.

Closer to the pier always smelled of weed and cigarettes, but the heart of the carnival was enveloped by the smells of candy, junk food and humidity.

“You know, I’m sure it’s not as bad as you’re making it.” Brooke pulled me out of my thoughts. The man was up on a stool with a stick, trying to unhook Brooke’s stuffed animal from his display. Brooke had never been the girly type even as we grew up, yet she had a thing for stuffed animals. By a ‘thing’ I was referring to her collection of thirty or so stuffed animals arranged on a stand, which took up most of the space in her room and sometimes made me wonder how she slept at night with thirty pairs of eyes staring.

We left the booth with a giant panda bear and five small other stuffed animals from the last hour. “You know Aidan,” I said. “He’ll never let me forget this. Ever. I’ll be in my grave and he’ll visit with a new story about the tampon thing.”

“Think of this as a sign.”

A group of kids dashed past us, coming to an abrupt stop in of a kettle corn machine. I threw her a doubtful look. “A sign?” Brooke didn’t exactly believe in signs. Or in anything that couldn’t be explained by science.