Uncontrollable | ✎

chapter two

Saturday, August 19

For the past hour, Lydia's grabbed my hand and dragged my all around the fair to the point where I find myself breathing heavily and stopping every five minutes for a break.

            "Jenna, hurry up!" Lydia whines while I stand under a parasol at her mercy.  I'm bending over, rubbing a cramp in my side, and making sounds like I just finished drowning in the deep end of a pool.

            "Can we just take a little break?" I mutter under my breath, just low enough that she doesn't hear me.

            "Hey, do you want to go on the Merry-Go-Round?  It might make for nice pictures," Lydia suggests.  She does a small stretch with her arms and then grins widely at me.  "You see that brown horse over there?  The one that little kid's sitting on?"

            "Yeah?"

            "I think that horse is your spirit animal."

            "How so?" I ask, sighing discreetly.

            "Stays in one place for hours on end, lets everyone sit on her and walk all over her," Lydia teases, and I force out a laugh.

            Ouch.

            "Shut up," I murmur half-heartedly.

            "I'm joking," Lydia reassures, still smiling, even though my smile has reduced significantly.

            "Yeah..." I say quietly.  It's not that I think she's believes what she says—obviously she's not being serious comparing me to a fucking horse on the merry-go-round.  But the problem is that I kind of believe what she says.  Not the sitting in one place for hours on end—though that carries some amount of truth to it, but I've accepted that—but the pushover part.

            "Okay if you really don't want to go on the merry-go-round, or anywhere else, I'll go by myself—Maria!  Elena!  Wait Jenna, I'll go over there with them?  I'll come back, just after looking at a few more things?" Lydia asks, but she's already inching towards them so it doesn't matter what I'll say anyways.

            And it's not like you'll say no.

            "Yeah sure, I'll just stay here," I reply, and Lydia grins, and nods before running off to where Maria and Elena are waiting.  When they're out of my line of sight, I collapse onto the chair, and unroll the parasol.  It's the last open table by the food stands, and even though it's covered in bird droppings I suppose it could be worse and I'd have to fend for myself under the burning sun.

            For a while I just sit there, worriedly looking around at some of the people glaring at me with their melting ice cream while I sit under the safety of the parasol without doing anything except scrolling through my phone with crappy data, until I realize that it wouldn't hurt to actually get up and do something.

            Do what?

            I'll figure that out once I actually get up.

            As if you'll get up.

            After going through a mental predicament for five minutes I decide to just stay sitting down and avoid everybody else's eyes and pretend that they—or I—don't exist.

            "Hey, Jenna, do you mind if I sit here?"

            I don't look up.

            Yes, I do mind if you sit here.