My Best Friend's Brother

Carnival

Aria was finishing homework when the phone rang and when she answered Malcolm was talking in a low tone, she almost didn’t hear him.

“What are you saying?” She asked. She could hear him sigh on the other end of the phone.

“We’re sneaking out to the carnival and you have to come with us.” 

“Why do we have to sneak out? I could just see if my dad will take us.” Aria didn’t like lying to her dad or Lois and Hal, it always made her nervous.

“We already came up with a plan and it’s too late to do any of that now.” 

“Okay, fine. What time are we meeting up and where?”

A half an hour later, Aria stood at a bus stop with Malcolm, Reese, Dewey and Stevie. Aria knew it was a bad idea but she knew that if she didn’t go with them there was a good chance that they would do something incredibly stupid. 

She spent the entire bus ride keeping Dewey entertained seeing as the others were ignoring him.

“How’d you convince them to bring you along?” Aria asked the younger boy.

“I threatened to snitch.” Dewey said, casually.

“Makes sense.”

When the five finally arrived at the carnival people were leaving. They were confused and irritated, they sat on a bus for hours only to arrive when the carnival was getting ready to close down.

“Where is everybody. . . going?” Stevie questioned.

“They’re leaving! This place is closing in 15 minutes!” Reese exclaimed.

“We would’ve been here two hours ago if we didn’t take the express bus.” Malcolm sent Dewey a look.

“I had to pee!”

“You cost us two hours!” Reese snarled, “Just for that, you don’t get to see the Siamese pigs.”

“No!” Dewey whined.

“Can we. . . stop fighting. . .and start. . . living?” Stevie interrupted.

“Yeah, we spent two hours on the bus listening to you complain. 15 minutes without a fight would be nice.” Aria sighed, she wrapped her arms around herself trying to keep her hands warm.

“Okay, we only have time for one ride so we have to make it count. How about the Chamber of Terrors?” Malcolm suggested.

“It’s on the other side of the midway.”

The five rushed to get to the ride before everything was completely shut down. As soon as they reached the ride a worker stopped them saying that the ride was closed.

“What?! We’ve still got five minutes!” Malcolm checked his watch.

“Not according to my watch.”

“Hey, you have to let us ride. This is a county fair. It belongs to the people. I mean, what are our tax dollars paying for, anyway?” Reese rambled.

“The cops, who I’m going to call if you don’t get the hell out of here.” The man warned, “The ride’s closed!”

Reluctantly, the five slowly made their way down the ramp. They traveled all that way just to have to turn around and go back. It wasn’t fair.

“That sucks. He’s just picking on us because we’re kids and we can’t do anything about it.”

“I know. This is unfair.”

“He could’ve let us through. He just has an attitude problem.”

“What happened. . . to customer service?”