“If he’s so unapproachable, then why did you tell me to ask him about those massacres that happened in the park?”
“Because Nicole and I are curious but have never wanted to ask.” His lips tilt upward. “We thought maybe you would.”
My eyes roll. Not happening when he clearly told me to mind my own business when I asked him what he was doing in the closet. “Forget it—”
“Hey!” a feminine voice screeches.
The two teenage girls hop off the ride at rapid speed, the brunette with a crop top and cut-off shorts damn near tripping over the open gap where the cart meets the landing. It happens far more often than it should.
“You need to stop the ride,” she huffs out frantically, bracing her hands on the counter of the control panel. “I was taking a video, and I dropped my phone, and it went under the tracks!” she rushes out in one breath.
Jeremy briefly flashes me an annoyed expression as a few more people weave their way through the ropes. He gestures them onto the ride.
I shrug, meeting her uptight stare. “It's protocol that I can’t stop the ride unless someone is in immediate danger or there are mechanical issues. Emergencies,” I clarify.
She thins her eyes into tiny slits. “This is an emergency.”
Is it though?
I purse my lips, trying to refrain from laughing. “Sorry, I don’t know what to tell you.” If I had a dollar for every time someone has dropped their phone out of the cart, the pay for this job might actually make it worth it. It's a pain in the ass.
Her unrelenting eyes stay steady on mine.
“What part of the ride did you lose it?” I sigh.
“Right after we went under the curtain waterfall that turns into rivers on both sides.”
Of course it was. Why did it have to be the part of the ride that is the hardest to access?
I force the sweetest tone I can muster. “I won't be able to get it until after we close later tonight. If you want, you can pick it up tomorrow at the main gate.”
She processes that for a moment and grips the edge of the counter in a frustrated manner that has me gritting my teeth. “Fine, I’ll come back tomorrow.” She turns to her friend, and they start to walk off, but not before I hear something that sounds like “bitch,” muttered under her breath.
It's not the bitch part that aggravates me; I’ve worked with my fair share of personalities when I was a nurse at the hospital. It's the fact that some people expect us to drop everything when there is an issue, when we aren’t the ones calling the shots. I have to follow protocol. I also prefer to keep my limbs and don’t want to be reaching around to find a phone among the rotatingtrack and belts that are constantly moving from the time we start in the morning till we close at ten.
My wave is obnoxiously over-the-top, my sarcasm palpable. “Thanks for riding with us. Please do come again.”
When those two teenage girls left, a chain reaction of unfortunate events ensued. The rest of my shift was hell. A kid dropped his slushy on the platform before getting on the ride, splattering the concrete with red. It looked like a sweet, sticky massacre. I mopped it up, but the sugar is clinging to the bottom of my shoes, leaving a cracking sound whenever I walk.
Then a poor little boy was scared shitless when the headless miner popped out and peed all over the seat and the floor of the cart. In that case, I had to momentarily pause the ride to quickly deal with the mess, which meant that a few boys were paused long enough that they started splashing each other with water along the small river that flows through. Jeremy scolded them, threatening to get them kicked out of the park if they didn’t keep their hands inside the ride.
I’m not a stranger to human bodily fluids or cleaning up other people’s messes, but it's like that teenage girl put a curse on me and screwed with the entire rest of my day.
Little witch.
The dank scent of water and dust clings to the particles in the air as I walk down the dark, empty hallway to the closest door that leads to the part of the ride where the girl’s phone should be. I open and step through the door, relishing in the sweet sound of silence in the cave-like atmosphere. Well, it's not entirely silent. The rushing water is still flowing in gentle rapids along the sides of the ride, adding to the underground effect, but the repetitive music has stopped.
I cross the small rock bridge over the water with stalagmites standing in towers on either side, leading from the door toward the tracks. Shuffling along the ledge, elevated above the floorwhere the track is built, I peer down, trying not to miss the device hidden among the trash that litters the floor. No wonder Vincent is always silently grouchy. I would hate it too if I had to make my living cleaning this up every night.
Just because we have a trash can on the platform before people get on the ride doesn’t mean that they use it.
Assholes.
The waterfall is up ahead, creating a curtain-like effect around another cave opening that mists the riders below. It quickly became my favorite part of the ride since they made me do it several times when I was first hired.
The whirr of water intensifies the closer I get; the kind of rush that makes you pick up your voice to talk to someone standing right next to you. I crouch and hop down from the rocky ledge, lowering myself beside the elevated track with a narrow walkway on each side for maintenance. My eyes flit over the ground, but I still don’t see it.
“Dammit. Where are you?” I whine. “I want to go home.”
