“Normal right?” he teased.
“Exactly.”
“Any major?”
“Ugh, I wish. I’m ‘undecided’.”
“‘Undecided’ is legit. It’s certainly honest. I think most people are in that major whether they want to admit it or not.”
“I guess . . . How about you?”
“Physics.”
I raised my brows. “Physics? Wow, that’s quite a brainy major. Physicist by day, brawler by night?”
He chuckled. “The matches help pay for the tuition. But physics isn’t all that bad. Most of it is just memorizing a lot of formulas. Once you realize that, it’s a lot less intimidating.”
“Do you have a particular interest in being a physicist?”
“Eh, not really. I was just kinda interested in planes and stuff when I was growing up and thought learning physics would be cool. I’m kinda less interested in it now.”
Hunter’s expression seemed to turn unusually despondent and I decided not to pursue the topic. “I see.”
We came to a clearing and found ourselves in front of what looked like an abandoned amusement park. There was a beat up sign over the entranceway that said “Neverland”.
“Are we walking in there?” I asked.
“Sure, why not?”
“It looks sketchy. What if it’s dangerous?”
He smiled. “You’re walking with me. If anybody tries something on us, they’ll be sorry. Trust me. I saved you once already, remember?”
“Okay,” I said tentatively. I was intrigued by the idea of exploring an abandoned amusement park. What would a place for fun and laughs be like when it died?
We carried our sticks with us as we hopped over a broken turnstile and entered the park. There were yellow and red flags, tents, game booths, a ferris wheel, a merry-go-round, and a bunch of other fascinating things. Everything was covered in dirt and rust. Small crevices were filled with iced water. I’d have thought some of this stuff would’ve been salvaged but it was as if one day people decided to abandon everything.
“This is pretty crazy. They just left all this stuff here,” I said admiring the surroundings. “Do you walk around here often?”
He prodded a broken styrofoam cup on the ground. “I like to walk around this place whenever I’ve got a match here. Kind of always had a thing for amusement parks since I was a kid. There was a fire at this place a few decades back. You can see some burn marks on the carousel over there.” He pointed with his stick.
I looked at the carousel and saw half the horses blackened by ash. The other half were shades of gray and white. It seemed like all of them were supposed to be white.
“That’s terrible. What happened?”
He shrugged. “Nobody knows how it started. But it happened at night when almost no one was around. I think it took one or two people’s lives. Not enough to be a huge tragedy but I’m sure it affected the family members of those that died—if they had any. I think the owners got a bunch of insurance money and started another park somewhere else. It must’ve been a big a deal when it happened but people kind of forgot about this place over time.”
The story sounded horrible and hit a little too close to my own personal tragedy. I wanted to change the topic. “Did you go to a lot of places like this when you were young?” I asked.
“That’s the thing. I didn’t go to any amusement parks when I was a kid. I wanted to but my parents never took me. All the other kids in grade school would talk about how awesome Disneyland was. Or Six Flags, or Sea World.”
“What kind of parents don’t take their kid to an amusement park?” I said jokingly. “That’s like the stuff childhoods are made of.”
“Deadbeat ones.” He paused, his mouth a thin line. “They were druggies. Real ass**les. Cared more about their drugs than taking care of me. That’s why I got away from California and came here.”
“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that.” I suddenly felt bad for asking him about his parents.
We were both silent for a moment. I contemplated what Hunter had told me about his parents. Was fighting a way for him to cope with his troubled past like I used drawing to cope with mine? I didn’t know, but it sounded like he and I might not have been as different as I initially thought.
Hunter ended up throwing his branch into a pile of debris near one of the game booths. It fit right in with the other junk.
“How about your parents?” he asked.
I was surprised he didn’t know about me after learning my name. I would’ve thought he heard about me from rumors around campus. Or seen my picture in the paper. It was certainly big news across Illinois.
I could feel the numbness settling in once again. “They’re not together.”
“Divorced?”
Without skipping a beat, I answered. “And dead.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah.”
I could feel the past creeping up on me again like it always did. Images would flash. Scenarios would be relived. The stone would appear again, bigger than the last time, intimidating me like it always did. It would dare me to roll it up the hill. I’d consider it for a while, maybe even try to push it a few times, but every time, I’d end up quitting.
“Hey, check out that booth!” Hunter pointed in the distance, breaking me from the spell. He tugged my hand and we rushed over. “Look there’s an old milk bottle still standing up. Did you ever play these kinds of games before?”
I thought about the time I went to the carnival with Mom and Dad. I must’ve been eight at the time. Dad handed the operator a few bucks and I was given a ball to throw at a stack of milk bottles. It was silly for an eight-year-old to think she had the strength to knock those bottles down. But for some reason I thought I could do it. I thought I could win. I wound my arm back and threw the ball with as much strength as I could muster. It ended up hitting the poor operator right in the nose—a fountain of blood sprayed my overalls. That was the last time I played.
“Yeah,” I said wryly.
“Let’s play.” He touched my hand holding the small branch, sending a tingling through my arm.
“You can play. I’ll watch.”
He smiled. “Nah. I threw my stick away. This one’s yours.”
“Um . . . I don’t really feel like playing.”
He laughed. “C’mon, let’s knock the hell outta that bottle. You could win a prize.”