Raze (Riven 3)

He reached for my hand as if he was confident that I’d be there, that I’d go with him. It felt like a responsibility and a reward all in one.

“They spell carousel wrong,” I muttered as we chose our horses.

He picked one that was rearing, mouth open and mane streaming. I took the one next to him that sat sedately on its pole. I had a momentary fear that I’d be too heavy for the horse to move, and then the music began and the carousel cranked into motion. It was beautiful and reminded me of something out of an old movie, like the kind my mother used to watch, with its muted pinks and blues, and its gilt.

I probably looked ridiculous, perched on a fake horse, going around in circles but getting nowhere as people took pictures of their children, but Felix looked so happy that it didn’t matter. I fished my phone out and took a picture of him, hair as wild as the horse’s streaming mane, mouth open in a grin, the painted scrollwork of the carousel’s center the perfect backdrop for his beauty.

“C’mere,” he said after he saw me taking it. He took my phone, leaned toward me, and took a selfie of us, horses rearing in the background. He looked bright and happy, eyes half closed, jaunty green shirt buttoned up to his throat. I looked huge and hulking in comparison, but my eyes were clear and my brow was smooth where usually, pictures informed me, it was furrowed.

After the carousel, Felix became determined to win me a stuffed animal in one of the games. It was a fluffy purple monster creature with glued-on black felt eyes, and he took one look at it and decided it had to be mine. Within three minutes, though, he was outraged at the game, ranting to the teenage girl who ran the booth that it was rigged.

“Duh,” she said. “That’s kind of the point.”

Felix pouted at her and said, “But how can I impress my boyfriend by winning him that monster if the game’s rigged?”

The girl raised one meticulously painted-on eyebrow in a jaded teenage expression, looked at me, and said, “Does your boyfriend like cheap stuffed monsters? ’Cuz I don’t know it’s that impressive.”

Felix turned to me, clearly enjoying the interplay.

“I will win you this monster if it’s the last thing I do!” he pledged, hand to heart. Then, shoving his hand into his pocket, he added, “And if I can do it in six dollars.”

The girl laughed.

He could not do it in six dollars.

The girl watched him fail and pout with amusement. When he sighed dramatically, she cast a glance around, then yanked the monster down and thrust it at Felix.

“Tell no one,” she hissed. Then she looked away as if we weren’t there.

“Omigod, thank you, you’re an angel,” he said to her profile. The corner of her mouth curled up and she snorted and waved him away.

Giddy with victory, Felix pressed the purple monster to my chest and kissed it. “For you.”

He was giggly about it, but it made a strange warmth bloom in my chest.

“Thanks.”

“You don’t actually have to keep it if you don’t want,” he said. “It just…I dunno, seemed like you needed to have it.”

I’d had a stuffed dog, as a child. I remembered sleeping with it, dragging it around with me in the yard. One night I’d pretended it was a wolf that wanted to rejoin its pack, so I’d put it under a bush. It rained that night and I found it the next day, bedraggled and dirty. My mom put it in the wash and it came out clean, but with all the stuffing in its belly and none in its legs.

I carried the monster around for the rest of the day as we poked in shops, rode a few more rides, and sampled more boardwalk food.

As the sun began to set, I steered Felix to the Wonder Wheel, which rose 150 feet into the sky. Its lights twinkled in the growing dark.

“Will you go on this with me?” I asked. “I’ve always wanted to.”

One year, I saw a couple get engaged at the top of the Wonder Wheel at sunset. The woman had asked the person running it to stop it when she was at the top. Then she sang a song to her girlfriend and proposed. The whole wheel burst into applause as they came down. The two of them clung to each other, silhouetted against the glowing sunset.

We chose a stationary car and had it to ourselves. Felix sat right next to me and pulled my arm around his shoulders as our cage rose into the darkening sky. Coney Island was alive with lights, flashing in arrows and sunbursts. The ugly apartment buildings of Trump Village were a sinister block in the background to one side of the wheel, and the setting sun gleamed off the Atlantic to the other.