He wanted to show his father. But Bill Harper was talking to himself. His son had learned it was better not to interrupt. He’d wait. His turn to talk would come eventually.
It always did.
After four more pauses, every carriage on the wheel was full, and the ride began its first full circle, the speed faster than Owen had expected. It was a little scary, and he wanted to hold his father’s hand, but Bill Harper was still talking, his hands flying in front of him in various directions while he argued with someone—the person Owen could never see.
The air was cold when the wheel hit its top speed, so the young boy pulled the zipper up on his jacket with one hand, his other hand gripping the bar in front of him tightly. As he leaned forward, he noticed the woman with the two blond girls standing below, and he thought about spitting. He didn’t, but he chuckled to himself when he pictured it.
His dad would think that was funny. He liked things like that. Bill Harper was very much a boy—he liked dirt, and messes, and swear words and beer. Owen wanted to grow up to be just like him.
By the third pass of the wheel, Owen was no longer nervous, and he loosened his grip on the bar in front of him. He wasn’t brave enough yet to stretch his arms out, but he could close his eyes. With his head tilted toward the sky, he smiled big and shut his eyes tightly, letting the crisp air sting his face. With each pass along the ground, he heard the laughing and yelling of more people entering the festival, and the closer his cart climbed to the sky, the fainter those sounds became, until they started up again.
This was going to be the best memory of his life. He knew it.
His car paused at the very top while the riders on the other end of the wheel exited their carts. His ride was over. It was perfect.
When his father reached around and unclipped the latch, Owen didn’t flinch. His dad worked with machines all day. He had worked with them for years. He knew what he was doing. He didn’t make a sound when his father stood up, reaching for the long support beam above them. He held on tight when the cart swung forward. His father didn’t tell him to, he just knew he was supposed to. He wouldn’t want Owen to fall out.
It wasn’t until his father took his first step out onto the beam below that Owen knew something was wrong. And then he saw the face of the woman below. He heard one of the little girls scream. Owen’s world shifted, and everything began happening in slow motion. He slid his body to the place where his father had just been sitting, he reached his tiny hand—the one scuffed with dirt and scratched from trees—out to grip his father’s leg, hoping he could just reach the denim of his jeans…reach anything. He reached, and reached, and reached. But no matter what, Owen was too small, his arm not yet long enough.
He tried to scream, but no sound would escape his mouth. His lungs felt flat. His stomach felt sick. This was no longer going to be his favorite day.
His father’s boots gripped the beam, and his large hands held on to the large steel bar above him. He was moving slowly down, closer to the center of the Ferris wheel. He was moving down, and that was the only thing that made Owen feel okay.
The words of the carnival worker were a blur. He heard the man who ran the ride speaking over a loudspeaker, but he couldn’t quite make out what he was saying.
Owen turned behind him to see if someone was coming to help, but that cart was empty. The one below him was full, and he could see a man with two kids sitting still, watching Owen’s father climb out into the center of the wheel, his hands letting go every so often to point while he yelled.
Bill Harper was yelling. He was yelling at someone who was invisible, someone who couldn’t be heard yelling back. He was pointing at him, shoving him, laughing wildly, and then crying.
Then he took a step, and Bill Harper fell to the earth.
In the end, all anyone could seem to talk about was how sad it was that Carolyn Potter’s apple pie went to waste that year.
Owen never went to the festival again.
And he’d make damn sure his baby brother never went either.
13 Years Later
Chapter 1
“Kensington! Come downstairs! Your sandwich is ready!”
We’ve been in the suburbs—no, the country!—for less than six hours, and already my mom has morphed into some form of June Cleaver. I half expect to walk down the steps and see her in one of those poufy A-line dresses with a pretty bow cinched about her waist.
She’s been walking on eggshells with me ever since we handed over the keys to our old home. I didn’t want to move here. Nothing about this move is about me though. And that’s why my mom is playing up the nice. Not that she isn’t normally nice. Normally, she isn’t really there at all. Mom’s the head nurse practitioner at a major hospital in Chicago. Dad’s a conductor and a music professor in Milwaukee. He was just promoted to the head of the department. So we moved here…to the middle. Woodstock—exactly halfway between the two. “An ideal and convenient location,” everyone said.