Bittersweet (4 page)

“Where do you go to school?” I asked.

“I went to the University of Minnesota. I just graduated.”

Julia tugged on Dallas’s arm. “Come on, we need to get out of here. Bye Savannah, we’ll chat some other time. Maybe we can go to McDonalds after work. Grant can come too.” She pulled Dallas out of the room.

Grant shook his head. I wondered if he noticed that Julia had it bad for him. Funny, the room felt so empty without them. And cold.

“I thought you’d be out in the park,” said Grant.

I shook my head.

“I don’t like roller coasters.”

“That’s funny. Your Dad always told me how much you loved them. I’d transferred here the year he died. He was going to bring you. I said I’d let you in early and test ride. He seemed to think that would thrill you. That’s actually why I offered to have you come up here. I thought you’d enjoy it.”

“Well, you thought wrong. Maybe I used to like them. I haven’t been on a roller coaster since he died and I don’t plan on riding them ever again.”

He nodded.

“I get it. Here are my car keys. You’ll need to come back and pick me up at eight.”

H
OLE
ACTUALLY STOOD FOR
The Headless Horseman (a carousel), The Omen (a spinning ride), The Lurking Dead (a scrambler ride) and The Executioner’s Plunge (water, yikes).

Becca, the HOLE team lead, trained me first on how to check for heights at the Executioner. Oh, and I had to make sure people were wearing shoes. All I had to do was stand there and tell them to go jump off the bridge if they were too short (okay, not really but I wanted to a couple of times). And tell them that even though they were about to get soaked they had to make sure they ruined their two-hundred-dollar Nikes in the process. Sorry. It’s the rules.

The Executioner’s Plunge is one of those super tall water rides. People sit four to a row and everyone gets drenched. Then you go under the bridge and more water comes down like a guillotine’s blade. If you don’t want to ride, you can just go stand on the bridge and get wet when the boat comes down.

The weather was about sixty degrees and cloudy. No one in his right mind would ride this ride today. My dad and I had a rule when we went to parks. No water rides unless it was over ninety. And then only if we’d already hit all the coasters. Both he and I weren’t so crazy about wet clothes. Plus it was a pain in the ass to find a place for my hearing aids. We brought zip lock baggies, but I always worried that something would happen to them.

I was in for a long, boring day. After three hours, about a hundred crazy people, and several empty cars, Becca came back. She wanted to train me on other positions at the Executioner but freaked when I told her I couldn’t get wet.

“This is the Plunge, you
will
get wet. Even us. Even the controls.” She waved her hand back at the ride. “Look at all that water.”

I shrugged.

“Fine.” She rolled her eyes. “You can just stay and be the entrance person all day, see if I care. Go to lunch.”

The employee lunchroom was freezing. But they had a slew of foods that were offered in the park for a fraction of the cost. That twelve-dollar hamburger suddenly cost only one. Cheese fries, a dollar fifty. At least I wouldn’t go broke on the food.

I took my lunch outside because I didn’t want to freeze to death. The tables were full of smokers. Something else I wasn’t crazy about. Food tainted with cigarette smoke was nasty.

I almost took my lunch to Grant’s office in the hope that I’d run into hottie Dallas again, but decided against having him see me stuffing my face and wearing the ugliest clothes known to man.

The uniforms were straight out of the 1970s. A black button down shirt that hung loose everywhere and knee length khaki shorts that fit at the waist. Not flattering for any figure. I doubted even leggy Julia would look good in them. Though the advantage was that no one looked good so it leveled the playing field. I wondered how, in all my years of visiting parks, I’d never noticed uniforms before. My mother always told me I was extremely unobservant. Just like Dad.

I walked around the main office building and found a large rock that I could sit on. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe I could handle working here for the summer. Eurochocolate would be worth it. I shoved the last bite of my hamburger in my mouth when Dallas appeared in front of me.

“You weren’t kidding about not liking people, were you? Why aren’t you eating lunch with your coworkers?”

I swallowed and gave him a closed mouth grin. What if I had crap in my teeth?

“It’s too cold in the lunchroom and I don’t like the smell of smoke.”

He cocked his head.

“Well said. But you’ll be grateful for the AC in about three weeks when it’s over a hundred.”

I decided to deflect the attention off of me.

“Shouldn’t you be out in the park with Julia, exploiting your good looks and coercing people into giving you awesome reviews?”

He blushed and grinned.

“Yeah, I was heading that way when I saw you sitting here and wondered what was up. See ya ’round.”

I watched him walk back to the park and sighed. Way out of my league.

The rest of the day dragged by. Becca trained me on the Headless Horseman and left me there. It was worse than telling people to go put on shoes. Dead boring. At first it seems cool. A carousel ride with a mirror that makes it look like you’re headless and riding horses that are foaming at the mouth. But after about the third time around, the novelty wears off.

The hours were brutal. The next three days I worked open to close. Which was from nine in the morning until eight at night. I was told that after Memorial Day we’d be open every night until ten, except on Saturdays when we were open until eleven. People work open to close on those days, too. This was truly hell on earth.

May 20

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Hey Hon,

Have I told you lately how much I miss you? How much I miss life? I miss having fun. I miss roller coasters and movies. I miss parties and beer. I miss driving and baseball games. I miss my wife and quiet nights. I miss football and food. I miss coffee and birds. I miss the stars and the fireworks.

I miss you.

Dad

O
N
M
ONDAY
, Becca sent me to the Headless Horseman. The ride sucked. Especially during the last two weeks of May. School days. The ride stayed mostly empty except for teenage boys who thought it was the one ride in the park where they didn’t have to follow the rules. They laughed when I stopped the ride and kicked them off.

I approached one guy who’d been goofing off. He had a Twins cap on backwards and would probably be cute if he wasn’t my current source of annoyance.

“You can’t stand on the saddle. I thought I made that clear when I said no standing during the ride.” He grinned at his friends, climbed off the horse, and stood about six inches from me.

“Yeah, what are you going to do about it? Kick me out?”

“Not from the park, but you’ll have to leave the ride.”

He looked at me for a second and shook his head. Then he spat on my shoe. Bright cotton candy blue spit on my almost-new white shoes. So gross.

I knew the right thing to do. I should walk away, call security, and let them deal with him. I knew that. But for some reason I couldn’t help myself.

I spat right back at him. But I got his face instead of his feet. Unfortunately, Becca chose that moment to walk up to the ride. She witnessed the whole thing.

“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry,” she gushed.

The boy wiped the spit out of his eye and snarled at me.

“Bitch. What’d you do that for?”

“You spit on my shoe, I simply returned the favor.”

I dropped the key to the ride into Becca’s hand.

“I need to go to the bathroom. Good timing.”

I turned on my heel and stalked off to the bathroom. I sat in the stall for a minute and tried to process what I’d just done. I ran my hand over my head. There was stubble now. A few more weeks and I’d be able to style it.

I knew I was in trouble. Anger wasn’t an issue. The move was instinctual. He spit on me and I spit back. But I should’ve controlled myself.

I took a couple of deep breaths and went back.

A slew of people stood near the Headless Horseman. Becca, the area manager, and Karl. The queue line was empty.

Here it comes.

I played the stupid card.

“Thanks for watching the ride for me. Drank too much water.” I held out my hand for the key and all three of them stared at me like I’d grown horns. Which I suppose I could have, since when I looked past them into the mirror on the ride my head was missing.

Karl was the first one to speak.

“Did you really spit on a guest?” He spoke slowly like I wouldn’t quite understand if he didn’t fully annunciate his words.

“Yeah, got him right in the eye. He deserved it.” I bobbed up and down a bit to see if my head would appear. Nope. The technology was incredible.

“Spitting is neither courteous nor good customer service. We’ve pulled someone from the Demon Drop to take your place for the rest of the day. You need to think about what you’ve done. This stunt earned you four points. Don’t let it happen again.”

I focused on him. “How many points until I’m fired?”

He narrowed his eyes at me. I hated the fact that I couldn’t feel a darn thing. I knew I should feel shame. That’s what any normal person would feel, but since I had no feelings I knew I came across as flippant. I didn’t want to be fired. Not really.

“Twenty-four.”

I nodded to show that I understood. Eurochocolate, I reminded myself. This job is for Eurochocolate.

“Okay, I guess I’ll see y’all tomorrow,” I said with a little wave.

Karl wagged his finger in my face.

“Oh no missy, you aren’t going home. You are Park Services for the rest of the day.”

Park Services kept the park clean. A broom and a dustpan wouldn’t have been that bad. Maybe a little boring, but otherwise it would’ve been okay. But I wasn’t so lucky.

Karl marched me back to the dumpsters and handed me over to Leonard, a Park Services team lead. Leonard was about ninety years old and deafer than I was. It was his job to train me.

He pointed to a trashcan.

“This here is the refuse bin we use at Haunted Valley. The lid comes off like this.”

He removed the lid and then replaced it.

“Now you try.”

I rolled my eyes. Really, I had to be trained on how to remove a lid from a trashcan? Oh well, at least this would kill some time.

An hour later I was officially trained on how to empty a trashcan and replace the bag. Part of that hour was walking around the park and looking inside various bins to decide if they were worth emptying or not. Leonard wouldn’t call me completely trained until he was convinced I knew the difference between a full trashcan and an empty one.