Twenty-Eight. The Snowball Effect Hurts
Twenty-Eight
THE SNOWBALL EFFECT HURTS
“This is Sweetville! We don’t pelt strangers with snowballs in Sweetville!” I yell.
The side of my face throbs. Come to think of it, my whole head throbs. I feel like I did after Zav and I binge-watched two seasons of Gossip Girl while he mixed his own variations of Long Island iced teas.
I blink my eyes open and see that I’m sprawled inside Santa’s sleigh… but the music is gone, and so is the ice rink. Through my sun-splotched vision, I see that the Danielson Ford sign is askew, like someone knocked it partway out of the ground.
But Danielson Ford is in Powell Park. I shake my head as if I’m trying to sift out the confusion.
“What happened to Sweetville?” My neck aches, probably from the way my head is lolling off one end of the hard metal sleigh. I lift it and rotate my head a few times.
“What’s Sweetville?” a little voice behind me asks.
I turn toward the source of the sound, and there’s a chubby face peering at me from underneath a Minecraft knit hat. When we make eye contact, the kid screams. A half dozen more kids run toward me from all sections of the town green.
They follow the first kid’s lead and all begin screaming.
So I scream, too.
We’re all screaming for a solid ten seconds, but it goes unnoticed, given the equally loud shrieks coming from the playground not far off. The town green is packed, and it makes sense. It has to be at least thirty degrees warmer than it was last night when I went to Grant’s.
And the screaming feels good. Great, even. Like, what was that? As I scream, I slap both sides of my face to see if I’m still real. And, fuck, I slap too hard and it hurts.
“Goddammit,” I say, trying to get back into a full sitting position.
As soon as I stop screaming, the kids do, too. Several of them seem already bored by the eccentric lady in the sleigh and disperse. A few keep eyeballing me curiously.
“Who are you and why do you sleep in Santa’s sleigh?” asks a reedy boy with thick glasses. A shorter boy in a yellow puffer stands at his shoulder, silently judging me.
“And what’s that smell?” a little girl in a hoodie that’s half hanging off her shoulder asks. She’s right—there’s a nasty, sour odor pulsing in the air around us.
She points at the sleigh. “Ew, she barfed!” When did that happen? I do not remember doing that, but I’m the only one in the sleigh to blame it on.
“Ew!” the reedy boy says. “Let’s get out of here,” he tells his quiet friend, who’s begun to aggressively pick his nose while maintaining somewhat threatening eye contact with me.
“You should clean that up,” Hoodie Girl instructs me, while pointing accusingly at my admittedly unsightly puke.
“You shouldn’t make strangers feel bad about their vomit,” I shoot back.
She makes a face. “You’re mean, and you smell terrible.” She holds her nose and runs off, bringing the reedy boy and the noiseless nose picker along with her. The quiet one turns back and takes his finger out of his nose long enough to flip me off with both hands.
Alone again, more or less, I slowly take more stock of my surroundings.
The rich Technicolor of Sweetville is gone.
The sun is sinking, but it’s a melty day, and—I cock my head to the right—yes, Ninety-Fifth Street is a wide six-lane highway, and through the traffic I catch a glimpse of Gary’s Plumbing Supplies and Massage Outlet.
I’m in Powell Park.
It worked.
I kissed Corey, and I came back here.
To good old unphotogenic Powell Park. Where the snow is melting in dirty piles and where the kids mock you when you’re at your lowest.
I guess I’m lucky I didn’t freeze to death, though.
As I stand up, every part of my body creaks, and my brain feels like it’s being volleyed against the inside of my skull. Also…
I barf once more into the Santa’s sleigh I’ve already defiled. Better. Physically, anyway. Emotionally and spiritually, I’m pretty sure I’ve reached a new low. I make for the sidewalk to head home—there’s no way I’m calling my mom right now.
As I trudge along the sidewalk, trying to avoid the sloppy chunks of slush that have blended with frozen chunks of dog poop and smashed Wendy’s cups and God knows how many of those little toothpick flossers—who are these pedestrians flossing out in the open and then littering?
—I don’t feel any more enlightened or joyful than I did BS (Before Sweetville).
I imagined this coming-back-to-Powell-Park moment would feel like Scrooge’s awakening on Christmas morning. That I would run through the streets and wish everyone a merry Christmas.
But also, is Christmas over? How long was I out? Or did I disappear and then reappear? I couldn’t have been asleep in a novelty sleigh for more than a week, right? Powell Park isn’t charming, but it’s not skid row, either.
“Excuse me, what day is it?” I ask a woman wearing a shirt that says, Kiss My ChristmASS as she emerges from Starbucks.
She recoils at the question, holding her coffee closer to her chest as if I’m going to steal it.
“Ugh. Friday,” she says.
“I mean the date,” I say.
“The fifteenth. Get help.” She lifts her coffee above her head, still apparently keen to keep it away from me, and stomps off in a hurry.
So not even a day has passed. Which means I’ll be following up my week and a half in Sweetville with another week and a half in Powell Park. Why couldn’t the first day of the rest of my life at least be a little closer to my departing flight?
Everyone is out when I get home, but at least they’re not searching for my dead body. There’s a note from Mom on the counter: Hope you had a fun evening out with your friends! We’re running to Kohl’s but be back soon!
I shower and change into fresh clothes. I can’t believe I spent all that time in Sweetville and nothing’s changed.
As I throw my dirty clothes in the washing machine, a matchbook from Grant’s Place for Drinks falls out of my back jeans pocket.
Inside is a phone number for Jack, the creepy guy from the bar.
How did he get so close to my ass without me noticing?
Okay, so one thing has definitely changed: I feel more like a fuckup than ever.
“Jill.” I talk to myself as I press the button to start the machine. “You’re not a fuckup. You figured out how to get out of Sweetville. You got Corey Hartwell to kiss you. To fall for you. You should be patting yourself on the back.”
But as I replay the kiss with Corey, almost seeing it like a movie unspooling in my head, there’s a catch in my heart.
It looks right in my mind, but it doesn’t feel right—not at all.
I squeeze my eyes shut tight and say, “Roll it again,” and there are Corey and me in an embrace as all of Sweetville celebrates and rejoices around us but—just like when I write a crappy scene in one of my scripts—it nags at me.
I try again, recalling Corey asking, “Can I kiss you?” but this time, before I can even say yes, I see Grant and me clawing at one another’s clothes in the alcove at the inn.
What does that even mean? What am I supposed to take away from all this? If I’m not meant to end up with Corey, what was the point of this experience?
Am I destined to not find love in any existence?