Page 28 of When The Noise Stops

I was supposed to be having fun.

Instead, I was watching Knox move through the crowd like he'd been forced there.

He'd been like this all day. Quiet. Distant. I knew he'd only shown up because I made him. Every time I looked at him, he was staring at nothing.

I'd called Tiny last night and asked what was wrong with him.

"He gets like that sometimes," Tiny had said.

"Don't poke him. Just... he gets like that."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the one you're getting."

I had enough sense to know we weren't close enough to ask Knox why. Not yet. But we would be one day.

We'd been walking around for about an hour. Hawk won a crooked stuffed flamingo, and I forced Knox to carry it. Tiny got us those sour frozen lemonades that should have been illegal. I dragged all four of us into a photo booth.

But no matter what we did, nothing was cheering him up.

We ended up in front of a dance mat at a speaker booth. Lights on the ground. Some early-2000s rap song was playing. I grabbed Grizz's wrist and pulled. His big self didn't even budge.

"Lila."

"One song."

"You're too old for this."

I paused.

"What you mean too old? Who the fuck are you to tell me that? My parents had me taking care of my three sisters and a brother from six until I was eighteen," my voice came out louder than the music.

"I married a man who beat my ass for breathing too loud. He wouldn't let me leave the house without him. No friends. Ten years. Then he shot me. So tell me again why I should be too old to stand on a stupid light-up floor and act like a person."

The song kept going.

Hawk had gone still with a funnel cake in his hand. Tiny looked at the ground. Sully stared at Knox, waiting. Strangers had turned. A kid on the mat froze with one foot in the air.

I heard myself on repeat. All of it.

Knox was looking at me with too much understanding in his eyes. It made me feel like shit.

"I meant you're literally too old," he pointed at the sign that said 13 and under only.

My heart dropped into my stomach. I closed my eyes. Ground, please swallow me whole right now.

Nobody said anything.

Then Tiny made a noise between a cough and a laugh.

I opened one eye.

His whole face was twisted up. He was fighting for his life not to laugh.

"Don't laugh at me," I warned.

"You're not allowed to. I got issues."