Distinctly Montana Magazine
Issue link: https://digital.distinctlymontana.com/i/113206
Post like grease and sugar, more like just-baled hay and the muddy waters of the Yellowstone as it lazed its way around the fairgrounds. Up on top it was quiet, everything squashed down below us, the loudest noise the squeak of the bolts as the wind shifted our car just so. Then we had to float back down into all of it, the whole midway pressed up against us, and I held my breath until we were back on top again. Our third time up there Irene grabbed my hand. We stayed like that for one full rotation, saying nothing, fingers wound together, and for that forty seconds or so I pretended like things were just as they always were: me and Irene at the fair. When we got back to the top again, Irene was crying, and she said, "I'm really sorry, Cam. I'm sorry. I don't know what else to say." Irene's face was bright against the dark of the sky, her eyes all shimmery wet, pieces of her hair blown free from her ponytail. She was beautiful. Everything in me wanted to kiss her, and at the same time it felt like everything in me was sick. I pulled my hand away from hers and looked out over my side of the car, dizzy with nausea. "We can't be friends like we were before Irene," I told her, keeping my eyes fixed on a couple all twined up in the parking lot. "Why?" she asked. The ride started up again. Our car jerked and we were lowered a few clicks. We stopped. Now we hovered half in the sky and half in the midway—level with the bright canvas tops of the game booths. I didn't say anything. I let the music plink. I remembered the feel of her mouth that day in the hayloft, the taste of her gum and the root beer we'd been drinking. The day she dared me to kiss her. And the Author Emily Danforth has told a funny, heartbreaking, and beautifully rendered story; it has received exceptional praise. very next day my parents' car had veered through the guardrail. I didn't say anything. If Irene hadn't connected those dots herself, then it wasn't my place to do it for her, to explain that everybody knows how things happen for a reason, and that we had made a reason and bad, bad, unthinkable things had happened. Emily Danforth was born and raised in Miles City. She has an MFA in fiction from the University of Montana and a PhD in creative writing from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She teaches creative writing and literature courses at Rhode Island College. See more at www.emdanforth.com. D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A Gal 13 S P R I N G | 2 013