Keeping Up With the Wind: A 'Burban Tale by Suleyma Moon

4.

With nine people in one Grand Cherokee, a trip to the grocery store can seem like days. When we finally got to the ferry, Whisper's mother decided that she'd had enough of us for one day and was going home. It never occurred to us that this was our ride back until she gave us money for taxis home. Not just the bus, but taxicabs, plural. Needless to say, Whisper had a very happy birthday.

            Whisper's mother didn't mind leaving us at the port alone. Whisper could have gone to California and back and it would have been fine...as long as Blaze went with her. I don't need to tell you why she trusted him so much to look out for her daughter. It would have only been natural for Ace to be jealous, since he was the oldest, but instead he thought it was funny. What he found especially entertaining was the reason why Mrs. Santiago trusted Blaze so much.

Another thing that kept the jealousy down to a minimum was the fact that her favoritism, luckily, wasn't as obvious as I make it sound. She always put a serious effort into making us each feel like we were her favorite.  

            At that point in our lives, the only thing that Ace was mad about was the fact that Blaze and Faith could drive and he couldn't. It was his own fault that he couldn't, though. One night Ace got stupid drunk and all of a sudden decided that he really, really, really needed to go for a drive. Luckily, it was four in the morning and he was in an empty parking lot when he lost control of the wheel. I never did find out what he was doing in that parking lot in the first place...and back then I probably wouldn't have wanted to know...but somehow he managed to wrap the whole car around a streetlight. It's amazing that he even got out of the accident alive. Since he was still a month away from even being old enough to get his license in the first place, Ace had to wait an extra year before taking his driving test.

None of them had a car anyway, so it really shouldn't have mattered.

            After saying good-bye to Whisper's mother, we all raced to the ticket booth. I was the first one off the ferry, shoved past Li'l Jay and made it to the gates long before anyone else. When the tickets were bought, Blaze and Faith ran off, calling that they'd meet us at the picnic tables later. Ace and Whisper headed toward the Ferris wheel, with Spider following along behind. At the last minute, though, Spider quickly switched directions and headed towards the sound of terrified screams and metal on metal roller coaster screeches.

This final departure left me with Li'l Jay, Shadow and nothing to do. We walked around a while and tried a few of the little rides, but they were corny, so we finally decided to ride some of the big ones. After a while, Shadow and I were getting bored, and Li'l Jay's nerves were shot. He decided that to calm himself, he needed to go into the funhouse. Shadow and I should have known better than to take him in there, both of us having experienced a flashback or two ourselves, but we didn't really stop to think about it until after the fact.     

            This funhouse was actually one of the better ones that I'd seen in my fifteen years. When you first go in, instead of the usual hall with a strobe light, it's pitch black and the floor begins to tilt steeper and steeper downhill. After a while the floor turns into a parachute-like thing and is so steep that your feet slide out from under you and you find yourself sliding down toward the ground on your butt. It felt like I was going straight into a bottomless pit. 

            I couldn't see Li'l Jay, who had been walking right in front of me, but I could hear him mumbling something about psychedelic lights. I couldn't see Shadow either, who had been right behind me, but I could hear him laughing. Finally, a red light began to glow underneath us, showing us that the incline was not as steep as it seemed. Our fall ended abruptly and we were dumped into a room full of plastic balls like the ones at a McDonald's playground. At first, it looked like there was no way out, but then I spotted a small black tunnel all the way on the other side of the room.