Everything felt different that day.
On the ferry, the sun had glared a denser gold on the sound. The smells of salt and sun lotion drifted in the air. The hint of sea sickness low in her stomach settled when her best friend grabbed her wrist and pulled her to the railing at the edge of the ferry to point at the waves below. Wind lashed at hair, and she realized that dark hair is cute when it's messy.
"You know," her friend whispered, leaning in, "You're gonna be in so much trouble Monday when Mrs. Briggs finds out you Photoshopped her head onto a rhino's body."
"I'll worry about that Monday," Sam said. "Let's just enjoy our weekend now."
She looked out on the sound. Something about the sun seemed sharper, the wind clearer, the smells more immediate.
The feeling was still there an hour later as Spencer drove them down highway 3. Rachel, Spencer's new lady friend who really liked his socks, sat up in the passenger seat. Sam could smell Rachel's perfume, could almost sense the perfume particles swirling in the air of the van. Through the open windows Sam could smell the sharp fragrance of pine needles dying. The occasional deciduous tree along the highway spun, on their branches, gold and brown leaves that burned in the heat of the Indian summer.
Sam glanced to her left. Where the wind lifted Carly's hair she could see sweet little beads of perspiration nestling along the temple. Beyond Carly, through the window, Sam was aware of the variations in tone - the many shades of green at work in the grass and the trees, and the stains in the white paint on the old churches along the highway. She felt like she could see every blade of grass, and every fissure in the wood of the churches and houses and fenceposts they passed.
She could feel stray threads of cotton tickling her where she'd roughly cut her cargo pants off at the shin.
Carly leaned close. "I'm sorry we couldn't get you tickets for Cuttle Fish next weekend."
"It's cool."
"We can still listen to them," Carly said as she unraveled the ear buds to her PearPod. She handed Sam the right one, put the left on in her own ear.
"Meet back here at 8!" Spencer yelled across the gravel parking lot as the girls flew headlong into the bustle of the fair.
Cotton candy. Chili dogs. Fried Fat Cakes. More sun lotion, slathered on the speckled skin of middle aged tourists who wandered the fairgrounds taking pictures. Demented accordion music drifted out of circus tents. Wistful calliope melodies, scratchy and warbled, blared out of cheap loudspeakers rigged on poles throughout the fair.
The girls rode the teacups together, and the Zipper. They poked each others' ribs and laughed at their distorted reflections in the funhouse mirrors. They sat at a wooden picnic table and shared corn dogs and big, salty pretzels for lunch, while slapping ants from their ankles.
Carly threw a chunk of pretzel into the grass for the birds to munch on. "What do you -" she began. "Sam? Sam?"
"Huh? What?"
"What are you staring at?"
"Oh. That tree over there." Sam's fingertips skimmed across the doodles inked into the surface of the table. "The way the sunlight is breaking up through it's leaves."
Carly turned, looked. "What about it?"
"The way it filters the light... It looks like an old movie."
"Okay, did you steal some of your mom's pills again?"
Sam rolled her eyes. "No! It's just pretty, that's all."
"Aw, Sam!"
Sam looked up to the sky. "Maybe it's just because it's getting cloudy, or something. Maybe it's just messing with the way everything looks." She brushed crumbs from her lap. "Let's go."
But as they walked on through the fair, throwing darts at balloons and rings at bottles, Sam would - when Carly wasn't paying attention - squint her eyes to blur out the details around her. If she could ignore how all the people were dressed, she could almost believe she was at a carnival in the 1930s. Then she thought maybe she just felt like she was in some movie she'd seen that depicted what a carnival in the 30s would have been like. The twinkly music from the carousel ride was the same delicate melody that had played on a music box she'd had when she was little. She tried to remember how or where she had lost it.
"Remind me to thank Spencer later, for bringing me here," she whispered to Carly.
Carly looked at her strangely. "Okay." Something caught her attention, and she tugged Sam's sleeve, pointed to a kiosk near the elephant rides: Henna Tattoos
"Oh, Sam, we have to!"
"Eh, you do it. It wouldn't look right on me, but they'd look good on you."
She followed Carly over to a table, sat in a plastic chair while a young Indian woman showed Carly a binder full of tattoo designs. Sam hunched, tucked her hands under her arms as the young woman dipped a brush in the dark ink and began to precisely layer the patterns to Carly's forearms and the backs of her hands. The young woman moved her ink tray behind the binder, to keep the wind from blowing it off the table.
She spoke to them without a trace of accent. "This isn't real henna," she confessed, deftly following the arch of Carly's wrist with the fine paintbrush. "Just black body ink. It'll wash right off in a day or two. Real henna is made from ground up leaves, and you have to wrap it so your body heat will bind it to your skin."
The young woman moved surely, quickly, cleanly, and when she was done Carly held up both arms to show off the intricate geometries painted to her fingers and hands, the long, vine-like designs entwining up to her elbows.
"How do they look?" Carly asked, laughing, fascinated by the decorations on her skin. The black designs seemed clean and stark against Carly's paleness.
Sam smiled. "You look awesome, kid," she said, and knew at that moment that the strange empty feeling she sometimes felt, the yearning for something she couldn't quite explain, was the need to touch and be touched, to hold and be held.
She followed Carly's footsteps uphill in the dim light. The sun was long down, taking the faint haze of pink on the horizon with it. Someone brushed past her, hurrying back down the hill in the dark. Thin branches shuddered along the edge of the trail. Moonlight broke through the clouds overhead in patches, throwing white ice against the shadows. She kept her eyes locked on Carly's sneakers as they scuffed up pebbles and dirt.
Carly would never know what it was to live in a prison, Sam thought; not that Sam couldn't come and go from her own home as she pleased, but there was nothing soft or beautiful for her there. Carly hadn't had to live 14 years with only one person to go to for affection; with only one person in her life to love; with occasional hugs from her best friend as her only source of tenderness.
At the top of the hill, in the sudden gust of wind, Sam threw her arms around her friend's skinny shoulders and kept walking, matching Carly's steps.
"Uh, hey Sam. What's up?"
"I'm freezing. I need your body heat."
Carly laughed. "I know. I wish I hadn't left my jacket in the van."
"I didn't know there was supposed to be a cold front rolling in tonight."
Carly sighed under Sam's arms. "I guess Spencer forgot to check the weather before we left."
The salty smell of the sea surrounded them in the dark. Carly clasped Sam's wrists and led her to the safety barrier at the edge of the hill, where the overlook was set. They stood shoulder to shoulder, looking out over the sea through the chain length fence.
Far away, across the water, the city glowed like a lush, swirling galaxy of neon stars.
Sam shivered. Words of confession danced on her tongue, but when she turned to face Carly the words fell away. The look on Carly's face was of pure happiness.
Carly brushed a stray hair out of her mouth and glanced over at Sam. "I love the city."
It began to rain on the drive home.
The girls huddled together in the backseat with Carly's jacket spread open over them like a blanket.
"Listen to this," Carly said, handing Sam an ear bud.
"More Cuttle Fish?"
"Mm hmm."
The back seat glowed blue from the light of the Pear Pod. Rain ran in streaks along the windows on both sides of them. Eventually the girls stopped shivering and relaxed as the heater warmed up the interior of the van.
"They're so good," Carly said as the song faded out. She thumbed through her playlist.
"They make me feel like something is in the air," Sam said.
"What do you mean?"
Sam yawned. "I don't know for sure. Just... like things are about to change. Like, somehow, life is going to be different from now on."
Carly swept a loose hair behind Sam's ear. "You can lay down if you want."
Sam left her sneakers in the floorboard and swung her legs up. She laid her head in Carly's lap and her feet against the window. The cold of the window seeped through the thin cotton of her socks, but she was happy.
"Check out this next song," Carly urged.
Sam laid, and listened, until the rain and the warmth and the motion of the vehicle lured her into sleep.
Spencer pulled into a parking space in front of the truck stop and cut the engine. Rachel glanced in the back seat where Carly, sitting up, was leaned into a pillow that was wedged between the seat and the window, with her free arm holding Sam close to her body. Sam laid on her side, legs drawn up in a curl, her head still in Carly's lap. Both girls breathed softly.
"She would we wake them up?" Rachel asked.
"Nah," Spencer said. "Let them sleep."
Spencer and Rachel closed the doors gently behind them as they climbed out of the van, but the noise was enough to make Sam's eyelids raise open. She could feel that the van had stopped moving, and she shifted her body to a more comfortable fit against Carly's.
"Mmm," Carly moaned, settling deeper into the seat, not bothering to even open her eyes. "Don't leave," she mumbled.
"I won't," Sam promised. Her eyelids shut as she slid back into sleep.
"Stay here with me," Carly whispered.
"Always."