The Ride

I woke up in the dark hotel room. The hum from the street creeped in under the door. White streaks of light sliced through the blinds, exposing a pile of clothes. I raised my hands to my face. I could just make out the outline of my fingers. I moved them away from my eyes, and they sunk into the blackness stuffing the room.

“Mom…Mom?” I whispered.

I slid out of bed and tip toed. A hairy leg grazed my arm.

“Uncle Paul?”

A shadow ran in the hallway. I almost tripped on a shoe, then I stepped on a hand.

“Oh shit,” my oldest cousin, Michael, said. “Dan, what you doin’?”

“I think my seeing is going down guys,” I muttered.

“Baby, what’s wrong?” my mom sighed.

“Mom, it’s hard to see.”

“Baby, it’s just dark. It’s the middle of the night. Go to sleep.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m here baby. Just lay down and close your eyes. You’ll see in the morning.”

“Can I turn on a light?”

“Hell no!” my older brother, Joshua, yelled.

“You shut up Joshy! Go to sleep!” Mom’s words cut through the dark.

Headlights swept the room, revealing my family (except my dad who stayed home to work and didn’t like vacations) bunked together. Mom’s dark red curls. Uncle Paul’s hairline running away. Michael’s fresh line-up. Joshua’s long and bouncy hair. My younger cousin Chrissy’s long legs poking out of a blanket. My little brother Samuel’s pea head resting on a pillow. We saved money this way. Mom said if we paid for two rooms then Dad would be pissed, so every vacation we got just one. The light left, and darkness covered everyone.

“I can see a little, but not a lot.”

Michael and Chrissy muffled laughs into their pillows.

“You’re hella stupid, Dan,” Joshua said.

“I’m getting my belt if everyone doesn’t shut the hell up right now!”

My mom’s voice changed. It was time to stop playing. The room was frozen until someone outside hollered “FAGGOT”, returned with a “FUCK YOU” from someone else. The room erupted.

“Can I go outside, just for a sec?” I asked.

“Hell no!” my mom shouted.

A hand wrapped around my ankle and pulled.

“I'm gounna eat ya!!!” Joshua said like Freddie Krueger.

“MOM!!!” I cried, running toward the door. I escaped and the hot Nevada air hit me. The strip filled the space between my bare toes. Hotel lights danced and blinked. A tall woman in heavy heels clomped by. Fabolous’s “This My Type of Party” vibrated a car’s trunk and the ends of my fingers tingled, wanting to grasp it all but Mom yanked me back in.

-

After breakfast Mom and Uncle Paul hit the casino, where none of us were allowed, so we went to the Adventuredome. The glass sky was patterned by blue beams, caging everyone in. Sun rays excused themselves around the beams and dressed us in a creamy light. We stood in line for the roller coaster. The screams of riders, which sounded like dying ghosts, echoed all around. Michael told me it was called The Canyon Blaster. A monstrous caterpillar who never got to be a butterfly. "There’s no escaping the fun" said a sign hanging above a row of multi-colored targets held down by a young black carnie. The line was moving faster than I wanted. I wanted to go to the arcade, but I didn’t want to be left alone while they flew around the park. I wanted to be with them. I wasn’t scared.

“Alright, so who’s gunna stay with Samuel?” Michael said, looking at Joshua, then me.

“I’m not,” Joshua said.

“I don’t want to,” I said.

“Well one of ya’ll gotta do it. Sam can’t go on.”

“Man, ain’t he old enough? He like eight, right?” Chrissy said.

“Fool, it don’t matter that he eight, it’s how tall he is. This fool really retarded boy…” Michael said looking at Joshua. Tony Montana’s mug was outlined by fake studded diamonds on his shirt.

“Man, fuck you, Mike.” Chrissy hung his head and crossed his arms.

“I can go on. I’m almost as tall as Dan and only three years younga than him,” Sam piped in, putting up three fingers.

“Doesn’t matter that Dan’s almost eleven. Your still too short Sam. Dan can barely go on anyways,” Joshua snickered.

“Shut up Joshy,” I said under my breath.

“Man, you better let him know!” Michael said and socked my shoulder lightly. I glared at Joshua, but he didn’t break my stare. He was rocking a new jersey Dad bought him just before we left home. He hadn’t taken it off since. I saw some kid wearing the same one earlier, but I didn’t say anything. Joshua would’ve yelled at me. I bit my pinkie finger and turned away.

“Look, ya’ll gotta play ro sham bo or something,” Michael waved a finger between Joshua and I, “we almost at the front.”

Chrissy fumbled with something in his pocket, gazing at the exit. He rubbed his hands together, tapped my shoulder and grabbed Sam’s hand. “Ya’ll could go on right now, I’ll wait with them outside. It’s too hot in here.”

“Man, where your dumbass going? Don’t get us kicked out like at California Adventure,” Mike said.

“I’m gunna go outside hella quick, then I’ll go ride with Dan.”

“Don’t fuckin do all of it I put twenty on that sack!” Joshua said.

“Shut the hell up, stupid,” Michael growled.

“Dan might snitch you out, Chrissy,” Joshua said, crossing his arms.

“He aite.”

Chrissy hurried us out of line. I wanted to hold his hand and thank him but didn’t. I snaked around bodies like LaDainian Tomlinson toward the exit.

“You don’t have to go on the ride if you don’t want to Dan,” Sam said behind me.

“Shut up, Sam.” I turned around and pushed him. He didn’t budge.

-

The sun glistened off the purple glass shell of The Adventuredome. We sat on a cinder block in an empty parking spot across the street. A wall blocked us from the strip. Chrissy placed a crunched-up sandwich bag in Sam’s lap. He handed me a small box. It smelled like a grape eraser.

“Hold that Dan.”

“Okay.”

“Swisher Sweets” was written in white. Through the square window on the front, five cigars stood. They were twice the size of my index finger, each one wrapped in purple plastic. Chrissy tore the purple wrapper with his teeth and threw it over the wall, then slowly worked his thumb down the outside of the cigar, creating a long, tight crease. Samuel and I surrounded him, our skinny bodies hunched over, watching his hands slowly tear the crease. The brown flakes, the color as our skin, fell to the hot concrete and partly covered the sun-yellowed business card of a pepperoni-nippled, red-head with sad eyes named Crystal.

“Those are the guts,” Chrissy said.

I felt bad for the curled, empty cigar. Chrissy reached in Samuel’s lap and dug into the worn Ziploc bag. Samuel giggled.

“Yur tickling me, Chwissy.”

“Sam, you stupid.”

He palmed four dark green clusters. They smelled good. They smelled like Mom’s art room. I snuck in there one night. She had passed out early.

“Yo, imma put ya’ll to work. Watch.”

He put the empty cigar in his lap, then using his index finger and thumb broke down one cluster into green sand. Someone blasted a horn then skidded on the strip. I was the only one who jumped.

“It’s like breaking them into baby lego pieces,” Sam said.

“Nah, smaller than that. But you good.”

We each worked on a cluster until Chrissy said they were done. He cupped our hands, then we funneled the sand into the empty cigar. He evened it out, folded one side of the cigar into itself, then the sand was hidden. He licked the other side like an envelope, folded it over, then licked the fold. My cousin, a surgeon, a magician, made a new life. Made a caterpillar into a butterfly. Or just a caterpillar into another type of caterpillar.

“This is so the blunt stays together.” Chrissy ran a lighter over the lumpy blunt. Mac Dre rapped about blunts.

“You call this a Louisville slugger,” Chrissy said. Joshua hit a homerun with a dirty Louisville one summer. He knocked the cover off the ball. Sam said he turned it naked. Joshua said I was too small to hit a homerun. Chrissy pinched one end of the blunt and smelled it with closed eyes.

“You ain’t never hit a blunt before, huh Dan?”

Sam and I traded looks.

“No.”

“You’ll wanna hop on that ride right after this. It’ll be hella fun.”

He lit the pinched end, sucked on the other, and his cheeks disappeared. He looked around and nudged my arm. The blunt waited. It was a little wet on my lip as I tried to copy Chrissy, but I burst with coughing. I imagined my lungs burnt black like Barnacle Boy was by the invisible boatmobile.

“Coughing is good, but you gotta breath in first. Swallow that shit, then blow it out.”

It hurt my chest less the second time. I swallowed then let the smoke leave my tiny heart and I stared at Chrissy with big eyes.

“Oh shit you finna be high Dan!”

I didn’t feel anything at first. I did a baseball stretch. The sky was light blue and empty. I wanted to ride The Canyon Blaster with Michael or Chrissy, not Joshua. He wouldn’t even have fun with me.

“Feelin it yet?” Chrissy asked.

“I don’t think so. Let me try again.”

“I want shaved ice,” Sam said and pulled on Chrissy’s shirt.

“In a little. Damn, Sam.”

I sat down and hit it. Tears streaked down my cheeks. I didn’t cough. I didn’t move until hundreds of bees swarmed my thighs. I stomped my foot. Then it began. My tongue grew heavy as a dog’s, my mouth a desert. Everything was brighter. My skin glistened. The bits of trash on the ground breathed. My bent knees were golden wrinkly potatoes. I sprang up and took in the strip while standing on my toes. Tan legs in shorts. Cigarettes and water bottles in hand. Everyone was the same and not the same. A postcard. Hat-covered heads slunk in the sun. I wanted to see where their feet carried their bodies like I did with the hookers and drug dealers I followed in GTA. After a while I would just beat these characters to death and take their money and steal a car. But I couldn’t beat anyone up in real life. I just wanted to see if anyone was different from me, my brothers, my cousins, my uncle, my mom and dad. I wanted to spit on these people’s heads, but my mouth couldn’t.

“I need some water,” I said.

“We’ll get some inside. Just let me hit this again.”

“Can I twy?”

“Hell nah! You’re too little, Sam!”

Chrissy hit it two more times, then killed it on Crystal’s dead eyes. He got up. We followed.

“Does Uncle Paul know you do this?” I asked.

Chrissy squeezed in eyedrops.

“Hell yea he does. He doesn’t care.”

Chrissy and Michael were lucky. He handed me the tiny bottle.

“Put that shit in and let’s go on this ride.”

I tilted my head back and pulled my eyelids open as he dropped them in. I blinked and the world was wet and alive.

“It makes you higher, huh?” Chrissy said cheesing hard.

-

We hung out near the bathrooms. I slowly sipped water. Everything was dumb and beautiful, the world a big spinning dreidel. I was standing and not floating away which was scary. A clown passed, and I wanted to know how he felt about being a clown, but I didn’t ask.

It was all bad for Joshua. He and Michael had gone on the Canyon Blaster while we smoked. Joshua was in one of the stalls on all fours, heaving out the morning’s buffet into a toilet. I checked on him earlier, and he shouted go away when I poked my head under the stall. He threw his hat at my nose. I ran out giggling, leaving the hat on the cold floor.

“Man, this fool ain’t going on anymore rides. He needs to stop drinking that orangina shit or whatever the fuck he drink,” Chrissy said shaking his head.

“Dad doesn’t like when Joshy drinks that stuff,” Sam said.

“Damn right he doesn’t! Look at your brother!” Michael said.

“Should we call Nini?,” Chrissy asked. Nini was my cousin’s nickname for my mom.

“No, he’ll be okay,” I said while staring at the passing screamers, “it happens to him all the time.” The picture of Joshua squirming in the seat, rubbing his stomach like a little kid, crying to a god he’s cursed hundreds of times, made me laugh more which made everyone else laugh too. People trickled in and out of the park. I needed to pee but not moving felt better.

“Man let’s go get this fool,” Michael said and tapped my arm, crumbling my stance. I picked the hat off the blue bathroom tile and sent it over the stall. Michael pounded on the door.

“Yo! You good?”

Joshua’s crisp white Nike air forces pointed toward the toilet. His knees kissed the ground. He wasn’t moving.

“That fuckin food fucked me up!”

Michael and I couldn’t hold back from cracking up.

“It wasn’t the food. It was the orangina shit your drinking man,” Michael said.

“Yea, Joshy!”

“Dan, shut the fuck up, you dumbass. You didn’t even go on the ride.”

I kept laughing, feeling free, and I didn’t think when I said it.

“Fuck you, Joshua!”

The stall busted open. His hair flew across his face and his fist hammered my eye. I fell back, hit the floor ass-first. It didn’t hurt as much as it surprised me. A wetness in my boxers creeped down my leg and tickled my sock.

“I thought you were my brother!”

I didn’t see Joshua say that. He slammed the stall closed and locked it. Michael was standing over me, staring at my pants, a wild look in his eyes. He punched the door.

“Man, you don’t gotta hit Dan. You know he small!”

“Fuck ya’ll!”

“Ah shit,” Michael said. He helped me up. I caught myself in the mirror. An orange-sized dark spot marked my dick, followed by a thin wet line trailing down my Southpole’s. My red eye was the cherry on top. I cried. How long would Joshua use this against me? Michael handed me some paper towels. I stuck them down my pants and pressed them on the wet area. No noise came from the stall. A middle-aged white man with a trucker hat walked in and found a urinal. He scanned us and chuckled.

“First time ya’ll here?” he asked Michael.

“Yeaup.”

“These rides get scarier every year.”

He left without washing his hands.

“Look, this is what we finna do. Dry yourself more, then you gunna sit on my shoulders. No one gotta know, aite?”

“But I’m all wet.”

“It’s okay. Let’s just do it fast.”

He crouched and I sat on his bony shoulders. I don’t know if I was high anymore, but I felt better being bigger. I was tall enough to play with Kevin Garnett.

“You better not piss again while you up there,” Michael said.

“I won’t.”

Michael turned. I had never towered over Joshy before. He was curled next to the toilet, hat hiding his face, and hands sunk into his armpits.

“Yo Joshy, I gotta take Dan to the room. We’ll be back.”

Joshua said nothing. Brown and orange spots splattered the “Giants” on his jersey.

“I’m sorry Joshy,” I said.

He adjusted his cap. It was enough.

“Let’s go,” I said.

-

Back in the room I hopped off Michael and took a shower. The hot water pruned my nail-bitten fingers. I almost fell asleep in the steam. Michael scared me when he banged on the door, asking if I was okay. I shut the water off and stood in front of the mirror. The red spot around my eye grew. It stung when I blinked. Michael flipped through a Dub Car magazine and set it down once I walked in. He had changed into new clothes. He checked my eye.

“Fuckin Joshy,” he said to himself.

“I’m just going to stay here Mike.”

He tilted his head and raised an eyebrow.

“You sure? We got all these tickets man. We can play in the arcade.”

He flashed a string of red paper tickets.

“I just want to watch TV.”

“I got you. But I gotta take the room key. That mean you can’t leave, aite?”

“That’s okay.”

“Aite g. Love you little cuz.”

We fist bumped then he left. The room was quiet except for the mini fridge. The TV watched me. The red eye stared back. Who would say what? Was Joshua okay? Would he talk to me later? What would I say when mom asked about it? I put away the worries and slid into bed. The batteries in my CD player were dead. I closed my eyes and let my head play something. I was smoking in the parking lot with Chrissy. “I Just Don’t Give A Fuck” by Slim Shady floated around as I animorphed into a rapping butterfly and soared into the air, flicked off everybody on the strip, zoomed over to school and beat everybody in knockout then flew back to the parking lot and hit the blunt again. We wouldn’t talk but things would be said. We would cut out a little world from a bigger one.

-

It wasn’t so dark when I woke up. I sat up in bed, squinted around the room. Chrissy was in his sleeping bag, Michael was in the other bed, and Sam was sleeping next to me. I got out and stepped on a cold belt buckle. I clutched my foot and hobbled to the bathroom and peed. When I came out Michael had turned on a lamp.

“How you feelin, Dan man?”

“I’m okay. Tired.”

“How’d you like that tree earlier?” He pinched his index finger and thumb together and brought them to his lips.

“It was cool. I did it once before.”

“Shut yo ass up Dan, haha.”

I tried.

“Where is everybody else?”

“They eatin’.”

“I’m pretty hungry,”

“Of course you are haha. They in the buffet downstairs, next to the park. You know where that at, right?”

I nodded and threw on my Iverson’s. I hid the went pants under the bed.

“You nasty for that Dan.”

“Does anybody know?”

“Yea. Hahaha. Joshua told them. But don’t worry, Joshua’s story is funnier. This fool still hella hot bout his jersey.”

“Thanks, Mike. Are you coming?”

“Nah, I already ate. And I gotta stay with Sam. Bring me back a cookie though. Just tuck it in your pocket.”

“Okay.”

The hallway was dim. The inside of my skull was wrapped in a blanket. A gang of clouds was jumping the sun and the strip didn’t care. I walked past the front-counter lady who gave me a big smile. A man wearing a cowboy hat pushed the Adventuredome doors open. The park was dying down, but the same songs played and the whole place was lit up. The roller coaster flung people around. The buffet line was long and wouldn’t go anywhere. The park sung. Would I ever join this song? My feet moved toward the twisted caterpillar. I would ride this shit, sit down at the buffet, and show Joshua up. The black sky spied through beams and listened.

The line for the Canyon Blaster was mostly older kids holding onto prizes or colored drinks in see-through cups. I was the only person riding alone. I hopped right in front. The only other riders in my row were two Asian kids. I nodded at them, and they threw up peace signs.

“Ya’ll ever go on a roller coaster before?” I asked.

The taller one smiled.

“Yes, many time."

“Same.”

A crackling intercom voice went over the rules then thanked us for staying at the hotel. A maniacal echoey laugh followed then we shot forward, my eyes watered, and the Asian kids screamed. I gripped the handles as the air passed through my stick legs. There wasn’t time to think. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. My voice had melted into the park’s symphony. We flipped and dove, my stomach dribbled and rebounded, and I felt the restraint budge but stay strong. The blanket lining my skull tore off, leaving my brain naked. It was a blurred dream that ended quick and hard and before I knew it we slowed down. My hands were clammy. I looked at the roof. There was only blackness beyond the glass. It wasn’t so big. I knew what was out there. I tasted it.