The Light Circus

3. Raised by bears.

{Will}

At the Hometown fair, Bear buys a fistful of ride tickets while I'm rolling ahead down the midway, scanning for the tallest, scariest ride this year. Drop of Doom towers over all the rest, a skyscraper against the hot blue summer sky. When Bear lumbers up, I point at it wordlessly.

Bear's eyes go a little wide. "Are you sure, Will?"

I cackle gleefully. "Oh I'm sure." Bear left his jacket in the truck; both his arms are sleeved with tattoos that disappear up his shirtsleeves and peek out around his neck. No way a dude brave enough to get tattoos all over his body is scared of this fair ride, right? "We'll just have to sweet-talk the kid running it."

As I suspected, there's a line indicating how tall you have to be to get on this ride, painted on a wooden cut-out of a leering clown. When we roll up to the front of the line, this teenaged girl looks from me to Bear, hesitating before taking our tickets.

I check her nametag and swing into action, shoving over the dirt to park next to the clown. "Look, Samantha, I know I don't look like it but I'm tall enough to ride." I unbuckle quick, adrenaline going. Everyone behind us in line is watching us now, like I'm a side-show. (Legs, no goofing around)

"Will," Bear says, sounding uncertain.

I push myself to stand using my chair arms, and then tip forward to lean against the clown. It's not weighted at the bottom to take the full weight of a kid, and I should have expected that. Bear lunges, stomping on the base of the clown to hold it upright, and catching a hand around my arm before I fall on my face. I grin up at him. "See?" I draw my hand along the painted line, which is, like, shoulder level on me, standing.

Bear shoots the teenager a look and for a second he looks dangerous, like Samantha's in a world of trouble if she doesn't let us on this ride. She flashes a smile that doesn't reach her frightened eyes and holds out her hand to take out tickets.

I shuffle back to my chair, leaning on Bear's thick arm, and pop my butt back where it belongs without bothering to buckle up. We're about to be a thousand feet in the air in a ride car and that worked perfectly.

Samantha is all concern and helpfulness now, but I don't need her to do anything except put my wheels in a safe place. Bear threads his arm around my shoulders and hefts me into the ride car. I can't stop grinning as I shift over to make room for him. He looks up at the peak of the ride once more, and then down at the foot of space left on the bench of the ride car.

"I'm not gonna fit in there," he grumbles. "Is there a line for too big for this ride?"

"It's fine, look at that dude behind us. He's twice as wide as you. If you were too big, the Samantha would have said something."

Reluctantly, Bear steps into the car and wedges himself in the seat next to me.

As we click up to the top of the ride, Bear's fists are white-knuckled on his restraint bar, which does look tiny against his massive chest and shoulders. My heart is galloping in my ribcage and I take big deep breaths to savor everything about this moment: the glitter of the lights of the fair below us, the haze on the horizon from the city—and then we drop and my arms are waving wildly in the air and I'm whooping the loudest, most gleeful yell this body can make.

There is complete silence and stillness beside me and as the ride slows, curving gently to a stop at the bottom, I turn my head to look at Bear. His hands are still clenched and so is his whole face, his eyebrows drawn down and his mouth hard and flat, like someone just punched him in the nose and he's trying hard not to punch back. We stop with a jerk and the crash bar lifts off our shoulders. Bear takes a huge, shuddery breath without opening his eyes.