The Customer glances at the stall owner.
She eyes me. “Don’t recognise him.”
The Customer shakes his head. “Good try, mate.”
Grandpa’s voice again. Closer. No time.
Enough talk. I snatch the hat and slam it onto my head.
“Nobody takes this from me.”
I slap two crumpled twenty-dollar notes onto the table and run.
“Quick, quick!” I come at Trent and Grandpa, and careen right past them.
They catch up just as Pax Polo stirs the crowd into a scream. We press in close. The only way to hear. Grandpa claps a hand on Trent’s shoulder. “Find us some cold drinks, lad.”
Trent hesitates, but then he’s gone, swallowed by the festival tide.
Grandpa turns to me.
“I’d have been sad to lose the hat,” he says.
I start to take it off, but his hand lifts, stopping me.
The music pulses around us. A throb beneath our feet.
“But one thing I know as an old, learned man...” He taps his cane to the beat.
Then he starts dancing.
I blink. Stare.
He boogies some more, curling a finger for me to join.
“Sometimes you gotta accept and move on.”
I reach for the hat again.
“Wear it for now,” Grandpa says, pointing at the blaring sun. “Until it stops burning.”
Then, with a sly grin, he pulls off a slick turn—one that looks dangerously close to sending him to Emergency.
I reach out. “You good?”
He just laughs. “When you’re ready... step into it.”
ballast
The weight you carry to stay steady.
I overate on good festival food, and now I’m being punished. I toss and turn, jiggling the whole bunk frame.
“You okay?” Trent murmurs in the dark.
“You should’ve stopped me at the third food truck.”
“Would you have listened?”
