14

I think about the boy who, like in a movie, I stared at across the aisle at my cashier job. Selling and packing groceries. He on my luckiest of days, working the till across from me. We did not speak. But he smiled at me. He was the reason I went to work- besides the fact that I needed the money to go back to school. We did not often get the same breaks, but sometimes at the end of a shift we'd push buggies in the parking lot together. In those grey hot thunderstormy nights. I was embarrassed to tell him I wasn't yet old enough to drink when he finally said a bunch if them were going to the bar after work. Then as luck would have it I was at the fair one night, late in the summer with some friends. I ran into him. We used our tickets to all go on a ride together. Pressed up against the wall of the ride it started to spin. As the momentum grew the pressure forced us back. The spinning made us laugh. I remember him smiling at me. We were both laughing. He reached out and grabbed my hand. Fingers interlocked we spun in the dark. Lights and music blared. We were clung to the wall. Our hands clung to each other. When the ride was over we went separate ways. When the summer was over we went separate ways. I remember the song that played that moment when we crossed paths and something spun out of our control.