“Stress,” I said.

Duncan shook his head. “What the hell are you doing on this thing?”

“Not my best-ever decision.”

Duncan nodded, like he was really getting it all now. “Because if you were to rate the stress-inducing level of the Iron Shark on a scale of say, one to ten—”

“Twenty.”

“Gotcha.”

“So. If it happens, don’t freak out.”

“I’ll try not to.”

“I’m not going to swallow my tongue or anything—that’s not a real thing. After it’s over, there’s a phase where I go limp. Please just make sure I’m okay to breathe. And when all that’s over, I get really tired—just sleepy and exhausted beyond belief. If you could just help me home, that would be awesome.”

“Shouldn’t I take you to the hospital?”

“Nope.”

“But you had a seizure.”

“If you had a seizure, we’d go to the hospital. But it’s normal for me. Same-old-same-old. No big deal.”

Duncan frowned at me. “Okay. I’m going to help you not stress. I’m going to distract you.”

“How?”

“Did you know I invented a dance?”

I tilted my head back and looked up at the sky. Deep breaths. I could work with this. “You invented a dance?”

“Yep. A dance called the Scissors. Look.” He put his elbows together. Then he moved his hands up and down, like his forearms were scissor blades.

I watched him for a second, then turned my eyes back up to the stars. “I’m not sure that’s a dance.”

“It’s totally a dance.”

“Is it a dance other people know?” I asked. “Or just you?”

He gave me a look. “It’s a dance other people know. It’s all over YouTube.”

I looked over at him, then back up to the stars, still breathing. “How did you invent a dance?”

“I used to have a job as a party motivator. I worked the bar mitzvah circuit.”

“I can’t imagine you in that job,” I said. “I can imagine you as a drill sergeant, maybe. Or maybe, like, a museum guard. Or one of those guys at Kensington Palace in one of those crazy hats.”

“A Beefeater,” Duncan supplied.

“Something stoic. Something solemn. I absolutely cannot in any lifetime see you as a dance instructor.”

“Well, that’s your loss,” Duncan said. “Because I am a legendary dancer.”

This actually made me laugh out loud.

“I’ll take you dancing one night, and you’ll see.”

“Oh,” I said. “I’m not a big dancing-in-public person.”

“You don’t dance?”

“In public,” I specified. “I dance, but only alone in my house with nobody around.”

“That sounds really sad.”

I shrugged. “I just have a mortal fear of humiliation.”

“The trick to dancing is that it’s voluntary humiliation. You have to lean into it.”

“No, thank you,” I said.

But now I was smiling. The idea of Duncan as a dance instructor was too funny not to.

“You don’t believe me,” he said, shaking his head.

“I believe that you once had that job. I don’t believe you were good at it.”

“I was a legend. In the Chicago-area bar mitzvah community, I was a god. A dance god. That’s what I’m saying. It’s been almost ten years, and kids still do this dance. It’s everywhere. It’s popping up in California and Florida and New York. Kids are doing it at clubs.”

“Why would you make up a dance called ‘the Scissors’?”

“I made up hundreds of dances. It was just to keep the room going. Seriously—anything that popped into my head. The Palm Tree. The Blender. The Seesaw. The Get Over Here. The Don’t Look at Me. The Gummy Bear. The Stub Your Toe. The ThighMaster.”

Now I was smiling. “Those can’t be real.”

“I’m telling you, they are.”

“Why didn’t you just do regular dances?”

“I didn’t know any regular dances. I fell into that job by accident.”

“And now you’ll forever be known as the inventor of the Scissors.”

Suddenly: a voice came through the loudspeaker. “Great news, folks. The tracks are clear, and your ride will recommence as soon as we reboot the system. Please be patient a few more minutes.”

“Oh, shit,” I said, the panic revving back up in my voice. “I don’t want the ride to recommence.”

I started feeling cold and hot at the same time, and a rushing sound welled up in my ears, and then for a second I thought the ride was shaking, but then I realized it was just me, breathing in and out in staccato bursts—way, way too fast.

Duncan was peering at me. “You look really green.”

“I might be about to faint.”

He grabbed my hands and enclosed them in his. They felt big, and warm, and strong, and dry—not clammy and moist and pathetic like mine. “Hey,” he said, “look at me.”

I turned and looked at him, at those eyes fixed on mine in an intense way I’d never seen from anybody before.

“I’m going to help you breathe.”

“I know how to breathe,” I said, panting.

“Not at the moment.”

Next, he put a hand against my face to hold my gaze right on him. “We’re going to breathe together, and you’re going to start to feel better.”

He made me look straight at him—into his eyes—and breathe in for five counts and then back out for four. Then again, and then again. We breathed in together and out together, in sync, while he counted in a quiet voice. I watched his mouth moving. I heard his breath rustling the air. I let my hands stay wrapped up inside his.

What was it about eye contact that was so intense? Or was it just that face of his? Something about the shape of his nose, maybe, or the line of his jaw, or the plumpness of his bottom lip. I didn’t know. I might never figure it out.

“Just keep your eyes on me,” Duncan said.

No problem.

I liked being that close to him. I liked having his full attention. I liked the curve of his neck and the way that long, vertical tendon pressed out and curved down and around as he kept his head turned to me, face to face, focused in a way that people never, ever are—unless they have a reason to be.

I was a tiny bit glad I had a reason to be.

Everything had its upside.

And that’s when the Iron Shark revved back up, and we started to move.

Then we tipped up, and then forward, and then went stomach-lurchingly, heart-twistingly, death-facingly over the top … and then, in impossible, helpless slow-mo, we plummeted face-first back down toward the earth.

twenty

Back on the boardwalk, I had to sit down and put my head between my knees.

Duncan, clearly at a loss, rubbed my back like a boxing coach, which was not nearly as soothing as I think he intended. He kept saying, “Can I get you anything?” and “You’re all right, right? Do you need a funnel cake?”

When I could finally sit up, Duncan’s first suggestion was chocolate, but I was too nauseated for that. Next, he suggested we “dance it out” down by the music stage where a country band was playing, but that was also a no. His final idea was a kind of hair-of-the-dog approach, suggesting we ride the Iron Shark again.

Which left me no choice but to charge toward the exit, leaving him behind on the bench.

I wasn’t leaving him behind on purpose. I just had to get out of there.

Duncan followed me. “Hey!” he said. “Hey—wait!”

“I think I just need to walk,” I called back, not slowing.

He caught up pretty fast, and we made our way out. The music and the lights and the people and the cyclical rush of the rides going by, which had all seemed so delightful and objectively fun at first, suddenly now seemed crazy-making.

At the exit, without ever agreeing to, we started walking along the seawall, leaving the chaos behind.

The seawall is seventeen feet high—built after the Great Storm of 1900 to protect the city from storm surges. A boulevard runs alongside it that—and this has always struck me as a bold choice—does not have a guardrail. So, as we walked, on our right cars were zooming by—folks in top-down Jeeps blasting music, and Harley hogs, and the occasional cute red trolley—but on our left was a seventeen-foot drop-off down to the beach.

I noticed Duncan repositioning himself between me and the edge of the sidewalk, as if I might just kind of veer off and over the edge.

Gentlemanlike of him.

Almost in response, I took hold of his arm as we walked. And then the ballast of his weight there just felt so steadying and comforting, I didn’t let go.

“Thank you,” I said as I held on.

Duncan nodded. “My arm is your arm.”

“I’m not sure that works,” I said, “even metaphorically.” But I let myself hold on to him for a few more minutes before I made myself let go.

It was much quieter after we left the pier, and it wasn’t until we’d made it some distance, when it was just kite stores and pizza shops and tattoo parlors on the right, and the quiet, steady, eternal ocean on the left, that I started to recover.

The moon was out, too.

Duncan kept watching me—closely. “Are you sorry you told me?”

“Of course. It’s embarrassing.”

Duncan nodded. “What if I tell you something embarrassing about me? Then we’ll be even.”

“That works.”

After a pause, he said, “So many to choose from.”