Miranda
I could feel the Cloud Chaser slow down and start to drop. But I was surprised when it suddenly stopped moving altogether. I wiggled my feet and stretched my toes downward, but they still didn’t touch the ground. I opened my eyes, then sat up. We were still high in the air, just dangling.
I turned to Flor. “What’s going on?”
She craned her neck over the edge of her seat. “I don’t know. Something must have happened to the ride. Sometimes… it… stalls.” Her eyes darted across the ground below.
“It stalls?”
“Dave!” she shouted at the ground. “Dave!”
The guy who had let us on peeked out from inside the operating booth. He held one hand up to shield his eyes and waved to Flor with the other one.
“Everything’s okay!” he yelled. “Don’t worry! We’ll have you back down here before you know it.”
Flor covered her face with her hands. “Nooooo,” she moaned.
“It stalls?”
Flor lifted her hands. “Sometimes?”
The little girl sitting in front of us whimpered. I wanted to cry too.
While we were still soaring over the midway, I had closed my eyes to try to imagine that night’s performance—like I always did when I was nervous before a show. I pictured us onstage in our matching cowboy hats, the audience cheering, the silver studs on our vests glinting under the spotlight. I thought about Ronnie tapping out the beat before she and Junior started playing, how I could feel it even though I couldn’t always hear it. And I thought about the beat that fell right before it was time for me to sing, the one that felt like the last, no-turning-back breath you take before diving into a swimming pool, the one that fills your lungs with daring.
I imagined dancing across the stage and holding my microphone out for the audience to sing along to all those old songs they knew by heart.
I imagined Junior, head bent to his guitar strings, trying to stay on pace, but also wanting to break free and race faster and faster. I knew how that felt too, holding yourself back when you wished you could leap ahead.
I was ready. Still, I couldn’t ignore the nagging worry that Dad’s plan was wrong this time and I needed to show the audience who I really was, and not just who he thought I should be.
The girl in front of us was crying even harder. Her mom was saying, “Shhh, shhh, it’s all right. Shhh,” trying to calm her down.
Flor swung herself forward and caught the back of the little girl’s seat. “Hey,” she said. “What’s your name?”
The girl sniffled but didn’t speak. “Go ahead,” her mom said. “Tell her your name.”
The girl shook her head furiously.
“That’s okay,” Flor said. “I only wanted to tell you that I have been on this ride hundreds of times, and I promise, Dave will bring us right back down.”
“Are you sure?” I asked, even though I knew she wasn’t talking to me.
“I promise,” she said again to both of us. “Right back down.”
“See?” the girl’s mom said. “I bet it will only be a minute.”
The girl gulped and stopped crying. She didn’t seem convinced, though, and neither did anyone else. Below, most of the people who had been waiting to ride the Cloud Chaser had abandoned the line. The ones who stayed looked like they were only sticking around to see what would happen to us.
At the main stage, floodlights shone over the grandstand seats. The marquee flashed the name of that night’s headliner. It flashed again: WITH OPENING ACT MIRANDA Y LOS REYES.
The audience would’ve begun lining up by now. Dad would have to tell Mr. Barsetti I was missing. He would ask him to wait just a little while longer. “She’ll be here.”
Dave popped out of the booth again, this time with a megaphone. “We apologize for the delay. Please remain seated.”
Permanezcan sentados, I thought.
“What else are we going to do?” someone shouted. Riders muttered and twisted in their swings.
“Get us down from here!”
“What’s going on?”
The little girl sobbed.
“Don’t worry,” Flor said. “I know that guy, and he’s going to fix the ride, okay?” She tapped her finger against her lips. “Ummm… Hey, do you have a favorite animal?”
“You like cats,” the girl’s mom prompted.
“You like cats? I like cats!” I wasn’t there to critique her performance, but Flor sounded just a teensy bit too excited for a conversation about cats. On the other hand, the girl had switched from crying to chewing on the inside of her cheek.
“When I was little like you, I used to live on a farm. And at the farm, we had a cat. It was an outside cat, though. A mouser. Not really a pet.”
I started humming. Then singing. Couldn’t stop myself.
“And on that farm they had a cat.”
The girl turned around. The very edges of her lips curled upward. “E-I-E-I-O,” she sang back.
“What?” Flor scrunched up her nose. She was still talking about all the rats that old farm cat used to eat.
“Oh, you’re going to have to be louder than that,” I told the girl. “Try again. One, two…Maldonado had a farm.”
The girl and her mother sang together. “E-I-E-I-O!”
Flor stared at me, blinking.
Come on, I mouthed at her. “And on that farm, they had a…”
I pointed to the girl.
“Umm… a rabbit!”
“A rabbit!” I sang. “Do you know what? I have a rabbit. His name is Rabbit.”
“What do rabbits even say?” Flor protested. We ignored her.
“E-I-E-I-O!”
“Randy, people are starting to look at you.”
They weren’t just looking, they were also starting to sing. “With a hip hop here and a hip hop there.”
Flor pulled on the ends of her hair. “It doesn’t even make sense. That’s not what rabbits say. That’s what rabbits do.”
“E-I-E-I-O!” I sang even louder.
The little girl was laughing now. “Again!”
I swung over to Flor to give her my hat so I could clap along. “Hold this!”
“And on that farm she had…”
“A dog!” someone on the other side of the ride called out.
“Did you know that in Spanish, dogs say guau guau instead of ruff ruff?” I asked the girl.
She giggled. “E-I-E-I-O!”
We did chicken next, then pig, and by the time we got to donkey, everyone was singing. Even Flor. I stopped to listen and they kept going without me. At the end of every verse, someone would shout out another animal name. And when there weren’t any more animals left on the farm, they moved on to the jungle: monkey, elephant, snake.
I closed my eyes and leaned way back in my chair. I stretched out my arms. It was silly and strange, but I felt like I was floating again. Like a kite chasing clouds in clear-blue sky, but also like the breeze that was lifting it up.
Just as someone called out, “Sea lion!” the ride rattled and wheezed back to life. It lowered us gently to the ground, and when our feet finally touched concrete, everyone cheered.
I unlatched my safety belt and jumped from the swing to take a bow. The cheers were even louder.
I knew why I couldn’t ignore my doubts about Dad’s plan. I didn’t need him to tell me exactly what to sing and exactly how to sing it anymore, and unless I started doing things my way, it wouldn’t really be me up there. I’d never really connect. It’d just be Dad’s voice, Dad’s dream.
But he wasn’t going to listen unless I made him. He wouldn’t take me seriously unless I didn’t play. It would mean betraying Junior and Ronnie. The thought made my chest feel like rubber bands were squeezing my heart. Still, there wasn’t any other way.
The little girl’s mom squeezed my hand and thanked me for distracting her daughter until the ride got fixed. A few other people clapped my back and told me, “Nice job.”
“Can I talk you into riding this contraption full-time?” Dave joked. “It breaks down at least once a weekend. This is the first time no one’s demanded a refund.”
“Once a weekend? You could have warned me!”
Flor grimaced.
“Well, I don’t know about full-time,” I said. “But I’d take another turn if that’s okay?”
“You’re not afraid of getting stuck again?” he asked.
“Nope.”
“Well, then, be my guest.” He held out his arm, but Flor stood in my way.
“We can’t,” she said.
“We can—he just said we could.”
“No. You have to get back. You said your dad has been expecting you.”
“Not anymore,” I said. “I changed my mind. Let’s go!” I tried to push past her.
She stepped in front of me again. “No, you have to go. You’re going to be late. Hurry up.”