17. Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Seventeen
Jackie
I stand there, frozen, blocking the door and not caring one bit.
Centered beneath a high, pyramid glass ceiling sits an ornate carousel lit up with hundreds of warm white lights.
“Oh my gosh… Silas, this is…”
“Not that big a deal,” he finishes, trying to diminish the gesture but failing miserably, because This. Means. The world to me. He just offered me a sliver of the boy who knew me better than anyone else — who could read me like a book; and who was sweet and playful and caring and open and loved surprising me with grandiose adventures. And as much as I am slowly learning to appreciate the darker, sullen version of my former best friend, I love him even more now that I know he hasn’t changed himself completely. He’s suited up in armour, but still — underneath it all, he’s there .
I finally step fully through the entrance and make my way closer to the carousel. Silas follows silently just a few steps behind.
“It’s beautiful,” I say, once I’m standing right in front of it.
“It’s not really old… It’s just made to look old. So, maybe it’s not, you know…” He trails off, shrugging and doing it again: diminishing his thoughtful gesture and reminding me that this isn’t easy for him. He is vulnerable and uncomfortable, disarmed like this in front of me.
“Who cares? It’s still beautiful.”
“It was hand-painted in Italy.”
I turn to face him. “Really? ”
“Yeah. So I was thinking that, uh… That you’d maybe like it.” He shoves his hands in his pockets and averts his gaze. His tongue glides along his lower lip and he takes a breath. Then his eyes meet mine again; stormy but uncertain and more silver now than grey.
“Because of how I messed things up in Hull,” he says. “With the stolen chocolate bars and stuff.”
And to think he almost had me fooled into thinking he didn’t care anymore.
“I do like it.” I smile at him. “I mean, I love it. I can’t believe you thought to look this up.“
“It’s not a big deal.”
But most of the uncertainty has burned off. There’s even the hint of a grin.
I walk slowly around the carousel, leaning in to admire the intricate pink and teal detailing.
“I can’t believe there’s this stunning, hand painted Italian carousel in a mall .” I practically whisper.
“Yeah. Weird, right?”
“And you know how much I love weird attractions…”
He gives me a full grin this time.
“You don’t say.”
We’ve done a full three-sixty now, and I approach the attendant standing by the low entry gate.
“Two, please,” I tell her.
The elderly woman smiles and holds out an iPad for me to tap my extended debit card.
“Just one,” Silas cuts in, shoving a bill at her. “I’m just a bystander.”
The woman turns her gaze on him and her lips thin into a straight line.
“You’re coming on,” I insist. I don’t try to pay though, because I know his five dollars will cover the two tickets. And more importantly, this was his surprise. It would be hurtful if I insisted on paying.
The lady is still eyeing Silas through her wide glasses.
“I don’t want any funny business,” she tells him, like he’s some bad news kid she’s had to deal with a dozen times in the past. And I want to lay into her for making assumptions about him based solely on his looks. Even though I get it: he does look like trouble.
He is trouble.
But also… So much more than that.
Silas fixes her with a challenging stare, grazing his teeth along his lower lip. He doesn’t say a word, but I’m pretty sure the woman gets the gist of what he’s holding back from saying.
I tug lightly at the sleeve of his T-shirt and he follows me onto the round platform. I take my time choosing, but finally settle on a beautiful white horse with a wide saddle and a pink and golden bridle. I raise my converse-clad foot onto the wooden peg to hoist myself up. But then Silas’ hands are suddenly at my waist and he lifts me easily as I swing one leg over the horse. And I can’t deny it now: the undeniable flutter of butterflies in my stomach, that feels wrong because it’s Silas who let them loose. But also, I think that might just make it so much better.
I sit back in the saddle and he lowers one hand to his pocket, gripping the horse’s pole lightly with the other. His bicep is at eye level now so I can’t not notice how sculpted it is.
I try to convince him to choose a horse for himself, but he digs his heels in firmly on this one.
“I’m on this thing, aren’t I?” he says. “I’m not straddling a pastel pony, too.”
“They’re horses—not ponies.”
“Whatever.”
I roll my eyes. “You’re such a guy.”
“Last I checked,” he smirks.
And I blush.
The carousel slowly begins moving, and the music starts up: happy and child-like. As it speeds up more, I lift my hands to grip the pole just below Silas’ knuckle-grazed fist. I’m surprised how much faster this thing goes than I imagined.
Apparently Silas is, too.
“Shit,” he mutters. “This thing really moves. ”
I arch an eyebrow at him. “Scared, Carmichael?”
He glances over at the ground just beyond the rotating platform and swallows.
“Hungover,” he says. And I laugh. He does look a little green.
We’re at full speed now. If you can call the pace of a carousel “full speed”. A little dizzying, though; enough that strands of my hair blow around my face, tickling my cheeks. I tilt my head back and breathe in, savoring the moment. I’m glad I looked up, because the carousel ceiling is beautiful: split into pie-shaped panels, all painted with different scenes of Venice. The panels are separated by spokes of white lights that emphasize the ornate details and cast a warm glow beneath the entire canopy.
I look back at Silas, whose eyes are on me now.
“You’re not gonna puke, are you?” I tease.
“Undecided,” he says. But he grins. And he’s looking a little less peakish.
He keeps watching me with this expression that is intense but also kind of… pensive.
“Your eyelashes are amazing,” I say.
Out loud.
Geez, can I not find it anywhere within myself to be even remotely cool?
He gives me a confused look. “My eyelashes? ”
“Ohmygosh I’m sorry,” I stutter. “I wasn’t… I mean, I didn’t mean to say that out loud.”
He grins. “Well, I’m glad you enjoy my eyelashes.”
I have no idea what to say to redeem my pride at this point: I’m acting like a crushing thirteen-year-old. And Silas is so chill and so clearly unaffected.
Oh yeah, and also fresh out of juvie. With a criminal record and anger issues and an abnormally strong affinity toward hard liquor.
But he’s leaning against the side of the horse now, and his upper body is brushing right up against mine. And it feels warm and solid and somehow familiar, even though it shouldn’t. Because there is nothing familiar about this older version of Silas, or in the way my body reacts to him when he’s close. Like he is right now .
I know those eyes, though. And so much of what he hides behind them. I know he’s seen pain and that he’s angry and strong… but not strong enough to resist the demons that claw at him, tearing from the inside out. I also know that I want to help him face those demons. And to find a way to let them go.
For now though, I just enjoy the slight dizziness and the round and round of the carousel and the look on Silas’ face that I can’t quite read, but that I know isn’t anger or resentment.
“I’m sorry about last night,” he says, so softly I barely hear him above the music box jingle of the carousel.
I don’t tell him it’s okay, because it isn’t. But I do give him a smile because he deserves at least that.
He smiles back. And for right now, that’s enough.
The rest of the day is perfect. We stop in Freeport to take a photo in front of the world’s largest rotating globe, visit an automaton museum in Wiscasset, a shell museum in Boothbay and the Moxie Bottlehouse in Union, Maine. We even do a brief stop in Rockport when Silas discovers during his research en route that the town is the birthplace of the donut hole. So obviously, I need a picture of the gravestone of Captain Hanson Gregory, who one day in 1847 supposedly impaled blobs of fried dough on the handles of his ship’s steering wheel for easy snack access, thus inventing the donut hole. Which is seriously awesome and so obscure that I have no idea how I did not come across this tidbit of history myself during my trip research.
About an hour past Rockport, along Route 1, we pass a massive cedar shingled building that looks like a cross between a barracks and an old barn, with a sign that says Big Chicken Barn Books . It is so huge that I am fascinated, because what is a gigantic bookstore doing in the middle of nowhere? In an old barn? I pull into a driveway and turn around to go back. I’m going to regret it if I don’t at least take a peek .
Silas is not even remotely interested. Possibly less interested than he was before entering the Toilet Museum. But he follows me through the door that seems way too small and way too rickety for such a massive structure. And we step into a dusty-dim maze of antiques and clothes, old signs and furniture and, well,… junk. But junk that oozes charm. Mostly.
This place is the definition of eclectic. It’s stuffy but seemingly endless. And honestly, pretty overwhelming. I’m a little disappointed though, because there’s not a book in sight. For the same reason, Silas looks pleasantly surprised. He wanders down an aisle crammed with old Star Wars figurines and about five thousand… spinning wheels? I think?
“The books are all upstairs,” a perm-haired woman who I hadn’t noticed amidst the clutter, tells me from behind a counter by the door. She must have seen the look of confusion on my face when I walked in.
So I head upstairs and peruse the rows and rows of old books while Silas gets lost in the jumble of antiques on the main level. When I meet up with him twenty minutes later, he’s at the cash where he’s paying for a huge, weird-looking contraption.
“What the heck is—”
“A cotton candy machine,” he informs me, like it’s the most normal purchase in the world.
“You bought an old cotton candy machine? ”
“Vintage,” he grins back. Because apparently he likes hoarding my admonishments, so he can dish them back to me days later when it suits his purpose.
“Isn’t that kind of… gross?”
He gives me a funny look. “You don’t like cotton candy?”
Yes . But that’s not the point.
And yet… this is exactly the kind of thing that ten-year-old me would have imagined future seventeen-year-old Silas buying, if he ever had the chance.
“Yeah,” I say. “I love cotton candy.”
And he looks even more pleased with himself. He lugs it out to Trudy, who’s stretched out in the gravel parking lot, basking in the evening sun. We re-arrange a bunch of stuff in her storage compartment until we manage to make space for Silas’ new (used) purchase.
We’re still half an hour from Bar Harbor, where tomorrow’s festival is, but after this last stop, we’re both hungry and pretty beat. So when we pass a small but secluded picnic area a little ways past the Chicken Barn, I decide to stop there for the night. We have enough water to last until tomorrow and anyway, it’ll be kind of nice to spend the night somewhere a little quieter. We’re the only ones here, and it feels good to have privacy after four nights of mayhem.
But Silas gets quieter and broodier as the evening wears on, and the easy-going guy who walked out of The Chicken Barn just a couple hours ago with a huge cotton candy machine in his arms and an even bigger grin on his face, seems to have dissipated into the evening shadows.
He’s been outside since we finished our supper of Kraft Dinner and crackers, sitting at a picnic table sucking on a cigarette like it’s some sort of miracle elixir. I figure it’s best to give him his space, so I leave him be and get lost in Photoshop for almost two hours. It’s almost nine-thirty when I finally finish my first commission. The sun is just setting, and I can hear the crickets chirping through the screen door. But other than that, I’m surrounded by blissful silence.
I get up and peer outside to see if I can spot Silas. He’s a ways off, crossing the grass toward the camper. He must have gone for a walk on one of the trails. His head is lowered, hands shoved deep in his pockets. He still looks on edge, and I wish I knew why. I’m worried about him—about his sleeping. Or more accurately, what appears to be his difficulty sleeping. I’ve thought about mentioning it to Richard, but it’s really not my place to do that. If I want him to trust me, then I have to earn it.
I sigh, stepping away from the window to close my laptop and stash it in the upper cupboard.
I felt so close to him today. And now, he suddenly feels a million miles away again.