blurry | ✔️

chapter one

       

So far today had been a disaster, and it was only noon. I had managed to get sunburnt only on my left arm even though there was a canopy above me, albeit poorly-positioned. Some teenage kids had decided to shoot their half-full drinks into the trash can next to our booth, missing it completely, coating my once white tennis shoes in blue frozen slushy. And the one person who was supposed to be my side had abandoned me when a tall brunette in too-short shorts sauntered past.

Luckily, the only face I wanted to see was headed my way right now. I breathed a sigh of relief as Joshua saw me, smiling when I waved him down like he was relieved to see me too.

"I can't tell which is worse," he said as he stepped up to the table, "that they've put a pretty girl like you to work on a day like this, or the fact that this is the album someone chose to put on display." He reached down and pulled the record off the easel and showed it to me with contempt and disgust, Beyoncé's latest album.

"You have to give the kids something to go on," I said. "And for the people who actually like good music, we have this." I gestured to the opposite side of the table where Fleetwood Mac's Rumours was propped up.

"Where did Kaleb go?" he asked, putting Beyoncé back where he had found her.

"I don't know, some dime piece walked by, and off he went. So I'm manning the fort."

I spread my arms out wide at my side, displaying the fort, which was Vinyl Destination's booth at Northridge's carnival. All of the local businesses participated on the last day of summer before school started up again, and for the past three years, Kaleb had dragged me along with him. There were boxes of records, alphabetized, behind me through which not a single person had flipped, and a guitar and drum set laid out on my right that only kids had come by to strum on, out of key, and bang on, way too loudly.

"Sorry about that," Kaleb said, suddenly pulling himself into the chair next to me.

"Why?" I said to him. "Every time."

He ignored me. "Hey, man," he said, turning to Joshua. "What's going on?"

"Actually, I was hoping you'd be here," Joshua said. "I wanted to steal Hillary away for a couple of hours."

"Yeah, that's fine," Kaleb responded. "There doesn't need to be two of us here, anyway, and I've already had my fun." He winked at me and I made a fake-vomiting sound.

"First of all, gross," I said. "And second of all, you don't have to agree to anything he says."

"Yeah, but it's your senior year," Kaleb continued, "and I don't want to keep you from any of the . . . tantalizing activities today has to offer."

"What are you talking about?" I said. "What exactly is so tantalizing about all the kids running around, squirting water guns at each other with no regard for the personal space of others, or the scorching heat, or oh, is it the college kids who think it's so cool to get publicly drunk?"

"Don't be such a pessimist," Kaleb said, and Joshua laughed.

"Do you know Hillary at all?" he said, and I turned my head to glare at him. "Come on, Hill, it's our last one. Go dance with me. Ride the Ferris wheel. Let's go out on the lake."

I groaned, but if there was one thing I didn't want to do, it was stay here underneath this tent while people strolled by, uninterested, scrolling through my phone and reading the same garbage with each flick of my thumb from my classmates who somehow couldn't refrain from posting pictures of themselves eating funnel cakes, or riding in bumper cars, or for some reason standing right in front of the main entrance.