Shade hissed. "I didn't think of that. Would you rather we go somewhere else?"
"Where exactly are we?" I asked, wanting to know before I decided anything.
"An amusement park," Shade said after a moment, and I sucked in a breath.
"Really?" I demanded, my nerves instantly replaced by excitement. I'd always wanted to go to one, ever since my class went on a field trip when I was ten and I couldn't attend because my mom couldn't afford the extra fee. Afterward, when things got better financially, my mom wouldn't let me go because of my blindness, because she was afraid the teachers wouldn't be careful and I'd get lost.
By the time I became an adult, I'd stopped thinking about it, and I never even tried to go on my own, or with a friend. Now that I thought about it, Liam would've been excited to come with me if I'd asked.
"Yes," Shade answered, and I shook my head in wonder.
"I've always wanted to go to one."
"I know," Shade said, and that gave me a pause. How did he... oh, right.
The memory came back to me, then, of me lying in a dark room, the covers tucked under my chin as I gazed into the darkness. As soon as Mom had tucked me in and left, I'd gotten up, closed the blinds, and turned off my night light so Shade could come out and talk to me. Some nights, he stayed under the bed. Others he sat beside the bed, though it was always too dark for me to see what he looked like.
Mom had just told me I couldn't go to the amusement park, and Shade and I had spent hours planning a trip. What we'd do, everything we'd eat, how much fun we'd have. I'd almost felt like we were already there.
Shade had promised we'd go sometime, that he would find a way.
More than fifteen years later, he finally had.
Shade
"Would you like to go in?" I asked when Diego seemed to be lost in thought. A few people had walked by giving him strange looks, and since I couldn't smack them for it, I had to get Diego moving before I did something petty like making them trip over their own shadows.
"Yes!" Diego exclaimed after a moment, making a woman jump as she walked past.
"This way," I said, as my shadows tugged his feet in the right direction. I'd thought about doing it myself, but I hadn't wanted to get distracted talking to him and accidentally lead him wrong, so I was letting the shadows that'd been doing it so far handle it. They were like a severed limb that still had power—my powers—and while I couldn't control them, it was clear all they wanted to do was keep Diego safe, and I was fully on board with that.
We made our way inside after Diego scanned his ticket—which Liam had emailed to him after purchasing it for me—and his head turned from side to side as he took everything in.
"What do you see?" I asked curiously. He'd told me he had some sight when he was in brightly lit places, and I didn't think I'd ever been in a place brighter than this. If I wasn't safely hidden away in his shadow, I might've simply combusted or turned to ash.
"Mostly just a lot of dark blobs against the light," he said with a snort. "That has to be a roller coaster, right?" I followed his pointed finger to a roller coaster track way in the distance, and hummed. "Can we go there?"
"You want to start with the scariest ride?" I asked, and he chuckled.
"You think it's scary?"
"Do you have any idea how high that is? What if you fell?"
"The seats have belts and stuff, Shade. I won't fall," Diego said with a chuckle as he started walking, and I huffed. "And even if I do, I know you'll find some way to catch me before I go splat."
Well, he wasn't wrong about that.
"But let's start with some tamer stuff first," he decided, much to my relief.
We spent the next few hours trying out a variety of rides, from things that turned round and round until Diego was dizzy and I'd barely just managed to hold onto his shadow—it was a mix of terrifying and exhilarating I'd never experienced before, and it explained to me why humans liked rides like the roller coaster—to tamer stuff like a live show where the natural elements—air, water, fire, earth—came to life, so to speak. Diego especially liked that one, even though it left his hair looking like a bird's nest.
"Ah, you may want to run your fingers through your hair a bit," I said when he stepped out. While I thought he looked adorable, I had a feeling he'd be mad if I didn't tell him.
"What?" he asked, then did as I'd asked, his eyes going wide. "Oh shit." He messed around with his hair for a while, until it looked less wind-blown and more gently mussed. "How is it now?"
"It looks great."
"Thanks for telling me. It's embarrassing when you come home and find something off with your looks and realize you walked around like that all day and no one told you," he said, and I got the feeling he was speaking from experience. Provingme right, he went on. "One time, I went to school wearing two different-colored shoes, and no one told me, not even my kids. They're usually the first ones to point that crap out, but for some reason, they didn't. It wasn't until I went to Liam's shop and he informed me that I found out."
