red creek still stuck to him. it didn’t matter how far he went it always found its way back, digging under his skin. he used to say he hated the place, but hate was just another way of staying close. every time he thought he’d shaken it, it reached back with long, long arms, through states, through time, pulling him into the old again. he found out that no one ever leaves what they never finished, that ghosts don't just haunt, they follow too. the carnival felt like walking through memories, like someone had spliced him into old film. he saw himself everywhere: in front of the shooting gallery, by the corndog cart, behind the stands where he first met god the night he learned that too much cheap beer and marijuana made the world tilt and your guts turn inside out. he’d puke behind a ride, wipe his mouth, and laugh because ruin didn’t mean much when you thought the body was endless, when pain just felt like the world's own special and personal way of saying yes, you’re here, you’re real. back then, the whole place smelled like oil and sugar and youth. it felt like nothing could touch him, like he could defy whatever laws wanted to hold him down and wake up feeling like some kind of god of the halfway broken. that was the thing about being young, you believe in the night, in the blur and the sweet ache that comes after because consequence have yet to be invented. you think you can keep going forever, and for a little while, you do, keep chasing the same high. thought it never feels the same. except for that one time you try molly in your first big city, your first big club, where the blinking lights meet dancing sweaty bodies turning the night into an endless swirl that folds over you like a bedsheet tucking you in.
anyway, nicasio was in most of his memories. and if he wasn't in them, then he was in a passing thought, back in new york too, perhaps when he waited for the subway, or sat on a bus, or walked home late at night and the old roads blended with the new. nicasio had taught him how to bend the world, how to spark it alive -- that shoulder brush between them, half accident, half invitation, always electric. now soren couldn’t even look him in the eye. he'd gotten too good at avoidance, at rewriting routes. so of course it was irony when after standing in line for the ferris wheel, wishing for air, for height, for a way to float above all the ghosts, he felt someone’s shoulder brush his. just a shoulder like any other, until he turned and found nicasio already sitting inside the cabin. for a second he forgot how to speak. then something dumb, something he'd curse himself for later, "uh -- yeah. guess i’d fall if i stayed standing up." he got in and sat down, trying to fold his nerves into something casual, spreading out, one leg over the other, eyes fixed on the floor, finger tapping his calf like a metronome. the wheel groaned to life and soren followed his cue, cleared his throat and pulled a joint from his pack. "you still smoke?"
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