Somewhere behind me, a kid shrieks. Then the sound fades. I realise I haven’t heard footsteps in a while. No water pistols. No small bodies cutting past my knees. Just the creak of the carousel turning in the wind, its empty saddles rocking gently, and me standing in front of it with my hands at my sides.
I look left. Look right. Turn…
Then, out of nowhere, a kid appears in front of me. An abrupt chuckle escapes him as he lifts his water pistol and squirts me in the face.
“What the—” Suddenly, water hits me from every direction as kids fill the centre of the maze, pistols raised and aimed at me, and Liz—fuck, I mean Blesk—is nowhere to be seen until she emerges from behind the carousel doubling over in laughter.
“You recruited them,” I say, wringing out my shirt.
She shrugs. “Kids are very agreeable.”
She catches a pole and pulls herself up in one motion, swings a leg over a unicorn like she’s done it a hundred times. Maybe she has. Maybe she’s been on one of these before—but not with me. She hasn’t been on one of these with Deakon.
The children climb up around her. I find the centaur at her side and pull myself up as the platform moves. She turns to look at me. My ribs feel too small for my heart.
I mouth, “You’re beautiful.”
She is…
She blushes. “So are you.”
Promise #2: Hotdogs and dancing.
Afterward, we grab hotdogs from a vendor down by Storm River. I wanted to take Blesk somewhere with a view, where a server would pull out her seat and treat her like a duchess, but we promised each other we would eat hotdogs, so here we are…
And thank fuck for that.
Because I would have never guessed that Liz eats hotdogs with two hands, not one, and that she tries to get a bit of everything in her mouth all at once, having to cover her lips while she chews because her bite was a tad bigger than there is room for.
“Good?”
She just nods, hand shielding her chewing mouth.
With our stomachs satiated, and a tiny bit of tomato sauce on her nose that I don’t tell her about because I fucking love it there, we stroll down the boardwalk.
She starts to half-skip ahead of me, her long blonde hair catching the last of the afternoon sun. I let her pull me along by the hand.
I never want this to end.
At the sound of a guitar, I know we are getting close. The busker should be just up here… This takes me back to a time when I was first adopted by the Slaters. Flick and Cassidy, my new sisters, shook me awake in the dark so we could sneak out through my bedroom window.
Just like that.
We were in the wild.
I was the middle child, but I moved like the youngest. Four lost years will do that. It blew my mind that we could just leave, like that. Climb from a window—there was a window to escape from, and to me, it was a portal. A way into the world that no one could take from me. I used it often after that night. As often as I could. Not running, chasing, nor escaping anything, but just because... I could.
I could leave and come back.
That night, Flick’s friend was busking down at the docks. My sisters had always come here together—but this time it was about me. To bring me in. Part of the Slaters siblings.
Flick led the way with a straight back and steady gait, showing the confidence of a fourteen-year-old who knew she had already figured everything out. That she was responsible and wise and could be counted on. Cassidy couldn’t stop moving, laughing, ricocheting off park benches and into me and back again. She is like a loose wire with a smile that could cut through any dark. I fucking love my sisters.
I had never seen anything so free in my life as them that night, and I had never felt anything so wonderful as that fresh air on my face and that wide vast world. It wasn’t just freedom, or rebellion, but family.
And so today, I brought Blesk here. To show her the exact spot I first remember feeling true freedom and hopefulness.
When I spot the busker, some Bohemian dude playing a guitar, I sit on the edge of a concrete planter and pull Liz—Blesk—down with me. I explain my memory to her and she smiles.
