The day before my eighteenth birthday, at our local mall. She and I were high on sugar. The two of us wolfed down hot Cinnabons and shook with a sugar rush. It was mid-day on a Friday, and the mall was damn-near empty. We’d spent no less than an hour goofing around at different stores--places like Claire’s and Hot Topic, where Twilight merch and cheap jewelry kept us entertained.

We decided to ditch the stores and check out the indoor merry-go-round. It sat at the back of the mall, near the abandoned JCPenney. From its place far off, the ride flickered and twinkled like a distant match. As we approached, the familiar sound of carnival tunes splashed against our ears.

I bought us both a ride on the merry-go-round, and as luck would have it, we had the whole thing to ourselves. We hurried over to the ride’s only fun part--the “teacup” seat, with a metal wheel in the center and tiny, cramped seats all around it. She and I were ecstatic to centrifuge our brains into paste.

She boarded first. I followed. We sat facing each other over the metal disk, which we would turn to spin the teacup. Warm, yellow lights glittered above our heads like stars. She turned to me, and I tried to ignore the way she looked just then, but I couldn’t. She was as dazzling as the ride’s facade of circus music and sparkling bulbs. I was awestruck.

“Am I spinning this or you?” she asked before the ride started up. 

I shrugged. “I can, if you want.”

She stopped and considered this.

“Alright. But if you’re not fast enough I’m taking over.”

“Fine by me.”

She smiled. “I know.”

The buzzer rang, and the merry-go-round hummed to life. It moved at a snail’s pace, but gradually crept forward into an uneasy spin. Dozens of lone horses surrounded us, bobbing up and down on copper poles. Their faces were twisted into perpetual shrieks, with bugged-out eyes and outstretched tongues. Their backs were adorned in gold bells and saddles. Were they meant to look scared or assured? Meanwhile, I worked my hands against the metal plate, gaining momentum until the teacup reluctantly twirled. She looked at me with a challenge in her eyes.

“That the best you got?”

“Look, this thing is super old, okay? Give me a break here.”

She looked amused. “Just give me the wheel, Ted.”

So I did. I let go, watching helplessly as my force and efforts unraveled right in front of me. Then she grabbed the wheel and yanked us hard in the opposite direction. She whipped us into a frenzy--faster and faster, until all the world smeared, replaced with lights and lines and blurry, oblong shapes. 

Suddenly, without warning, my entire stomach turned. My old enemy, motion sickness, had come back with a vengeance. A weird, strangled sound escaped me, and I told her what was going on. 

“Yeah, no, this is awful,” I said through laughs. I don’t know if it was the sugar, or the lights, or the way she looked at me, but the entire thing felt funny--like some elaborate joke on behalf of the universe. All the world was an overheated fever dream.

“Aww, is someone too weak to handle this?” she said, mocking. We were both laughing, lost, in a daze. She never stopped spinning. “You just need something to focus on. Here,” she said, grabbing my chin and facing me toward her. “Just look at me.” 

The entire world fell away--the horses’ shrieks, the music, the walls of the mall itself. All I saw was her. Those freckles. Her lips. Each red hair atop her head. My motion sickness hadn’t left, but was amplified, paired alongside a brand new feeling. It was the one I had tried so hard to ignore. But her eyes were a rich, horrible blue, and I couldn’t stand how they stared back at mine. I could feel my face growing hot. She had to have noticed.

“Hey,” I said quietly.

“Hey, Ted.”

“What…does this mean?”

She let go of the wheel, continued to stare. Our faces were inches apart. 

“Oh, Ted,” she said. “You know what it means.” She grabbed my chin and whispered: “You’re my little bitch.”

Years later, in the passenger seat of her Buick, she calls me delusional, ugly, unforgivable.