The police officer pushed away from Jacob, resisting the urge to rub his eye. He did not want to give the impression of fatigue or frustration. He loved his job. He placed his hand on his badge in an exaggerated pantomime of discipline and continued.
Police Officer (with a dry mouth): We got a call the night the trampoline park opened. Lyssa was crying frantically— she said her daughter was missing. Can you talk about what happened that day?
Me: The original plan was to open the doors right at noon and let the flooding crowd of people in. But when Lyssa got there to find a leaky ceiling and an old cash register that wouldn't open its drawers, she had a panic attack with soft knees and heavy breathing. Matters got worse when Sunny stopped answering her texts.
Police Officer: Where was Sunny?
Me: Nobody knew. I don't know much except that Josh was involved.
Police Officer: Lyssa had paid him as the photographer of the event?
Me: You could say that.
***
Lyssa: Hey honey. Remember to be here at 12.
Lyssa: Tell Josh to be on time. The ribbon-cutting has to be perfect.
Lyssa: Can't believe this big day is here!
Lyssa: Where are you?
Lyssa: Hello?
Lyssa: Call me. Now.
Josh: Sunny, where are you?
Josh: Your mom is freaking out.
Josh: She's going to call the police if you don't answer your phone soon.
Josh: ???
Three hours ago…
Sunny slid on her U-G-Gs and wrapped herself in a warm fluffy green coat. She checked the time. Maybe it was too early. She stayed inside and waited a bit until a minute went by and there was already a boiling flame inside her jacket. She choked a bit and stepped out only to be greeted with a big honk. A yell. A monstrous Ford capable of playing really loud music. The shotgun window rolled down slowly, and a blurry image of a hyper-high version of Selena appeared. She had chosen the hour with delicacy.
"HEY, BITCH GET YO ASS OVER HERE!" Selena was bent over at an angle, like an ostrich ready to run. Her cheeks were slightly flushed and her eyes had the shine of afternoon drinks. Sunny knew well enough that she had either been drinking or smoking or both all morning.Selena's brother, the pot-smoking, porn-watching Rogan was by the wheel. He was a young man with furtive eyes and a sullen look, wearing shirt-sleeves and ripped jeans. He uttered not a word and evidently did not know Sunny.
"Dude. What are you doing here?"
"Just shut up and hop on. We're going to the fair." The once-a-year carnival was called D-Rays, but to my surprise, Sunny had never heard of it. She shrugged her shoulders.
"The what?"
"Just get on the car, fuck head."
"I can't. I really can't. I told Lyssa that I'd be there for her today."
"SCREW LYSSA. Now get in the fucking car or you are not going to be too happy." Sunny was so surprised at her determination that for a moment she did not answer.
"No, you don't understand how important this is to her," she said.
"Let's be real, everything is important to Lyssa." Selena was prepared to be persuasive, touching, and admonitory, and expostulating. The situation was not fashionable. Sunny shook her head.
"I promised her months ago, Selena."
"The world needs more rebels. Don't make me raise my hands."
Sunny should have made a show of the indignation she felt and report her stout refusal to abandon her family. But she was a girl of such character in which the fear of not being able to carry the bags of those around her made her shy of assuming the moral attitude. It made it particularly embarrassed to utter the simple fact: she wanted, for once, to be there for Lyssa and Hiram.
But before she could express herself, Rogan had hopped off the car and very simply grabbed Sunny over and above his head. Sunny squirmed unwillingly like a fish out of the sea, but there was no use. His strength overtook her and not before long, the doors were locked and Sunny was trapped from all four sides. Rogan hit the gas and the car dashed out of the community, the snow huricaning as they left. There was no getting out.
The leather was cold against her Lulus. The music was too loud. Rogan took off his shades and I could see Sunny peek at his green eyes from the viewfinder. He noticed and made flirtatious eyes back. Even licked his lips. I seemed to feel in him some vehement power that was struggling; it gave me the sensation of something very strong, overeating, that held her, as it were, against her will. She did not want any of this.
There was a foul and musty smell bleeding out of the car as Sunny realized that Selena didn't want her there. She needed her there. Sunny was vexed, for she felt like she had been made a fool of, and looked away without enquiring. This was no invitation. It was kidnapping.
"Sit tight. You'll be thanking me when you get there. D-Rays carnival is filled with hot dudes. It's the best fucking thing in this fucked up place if you ask me," said Selena, with a masculine temperament.
The car pulled up into a filled parking lot. Everything was dirty and happy. There was no sign of the luxury Selena had so confidently described. There were families everywhere, and everyone, even the children carried colorful cotton candy bags. There were clerks and shopgirls; old retired fellows; young members, male and female, of the professions of extensive party life and sex.
The carnival had a different effect on each person, but it was created with the single object for everyone to hang loose, forget inhibitions, wear a wild costume, play a character, and get high. The raging sexy men, with due solemnity, dropped water over the melting sugary abs. And the drinks the girls held between their boobs— the frozen, neon-colored, twisty-strayed drinks—they were everywhere.
The sun was just below the horizon, shadowing halfway between the monstrous rides and dipping onto their skins. Groupies, selfies, and other Polaroid's were taken. Fort McMurray was experiencing one of the rare days of life.
Sunny's cordial agreement with all Selena's requests made her position complicated. Sunny paid for the tickets, what Selena and the rest of the Kitties had drunk, their VIP fast-passes. It must be remembered that she was very young, and looked upon Selena as an older sister. She treated her with sincerity, and because she truly did love her, almost anything Selena did could be forgiven.
The next hour was a blur of screams the wind whizzing through the hair, laughter, and tightly closed eyes. Occasionally though, when Sunny was strapped in and turned upside down, her mind would find its way back to Lyssa and Hiram. She could imagine their sullen faces full of disappointment at her. It left on her a feeling of shame or profligacy, an amount equivalent to the amount she felt when she took her first whiff of vape juice.
When she descended from the air, Sunny had shaky knees and a dizzy head, her body overloaded with adrenaline. Intellectually she recognized that this free-spirited win represented a greater loss, that she had missed out at the ribbon-cutting, speech-delivering grand opening, but she could not deny the explosion of food feeling she felt at the top of her skull, which she figured was the experience of being a rebel.
Her gaze rested on a passing throng, but I do not think she saw it. Her eyes had something strange in them, tiredness of being the blasted fool, fake best friend of the devil. It was the tiredness of betraying her parents, fighting the cultural difference, and keeping secrets.
The sky turned a dark blue and the wind began waving their hands crying for attention. The carnival had suddenly become a couple terrain, with boyfriends and girlfriends playing with their tongues.
The Kitties, lured in by the large teddy bears and cotton candy, arrived at the shooting games. They played a couple of rounds. Sunny landed the biggest teddy bear of all of Fort McMurray, as well as a few small pandas. The Kitties, however, couldn't win a single soft toy. With a fervent desire to be The Best, they turned into sly foxes with shallow hearts.
Selena twirled her bratty ass ponytail and snatched the bear away. She acted not in a laid-back, I'm-just-fucking-with-you way. Rather, her movements carried violence, actions that defined Sunny's trauma. Selena called her a variety of names, and I cannot describe the extraordinary callousness with which she made these replies. It disconcerted Sunny, but I could tell she tried not to show it. She began to feel like her life was just a big fuck-you fortune cookie, always cracking open and saying the same thing: you are a nobody, you suck, you were born to fail. Sunny, swept under by her own PTSD dysfunction, did what any shocked, scared, desperate, little Chinese girl would do. She ran away.
***
Lyssa: Where are you?
Lyssa: Is everything alright? Why aren't you showing up?
Lyssa: Why isn't anyone showing up?
Lyssa: I'm worried. Give me a call, please.
At this point, there had been so many texts that her iPhone turned unresponsive. The touchscreen was frozen, causing her to jab her finger harder against the insensitive— was it plastic? Or some sort of microbead? The machine sensitivity was such that it might lag or suddenly catch up to repeated touches.
Sunny lit a cigarette to give herself a moment to think. The eloquent phrases she had arranged in her head, pathetic or indignant, seemed out of place. There were no excuses. Sunny touched the 'send' button but instead of teleporting a blue iMessage bubble, the phone shuttered into a black screen very quickly. It was dead.
The circumstances of Sunny's dual life obscured as a tumbling, paining cancer formed in her stomach, till at last it took possession of her whole being and forced her irresistibly to action. The left side of her body burned into the right. Sunny had never shown any impatience with the aches of her life, but when the feeling of revolt had gradually come into play, she felt as if she could regurgitate all her problems out onto the cement.
How strange it was that the creative instinct was seizing upon her, forcing her to address her misfortune through the confrontation of vomit. She felt disgusted by the puddle of oranges and greens before her. Looking at it made her want to puke more.
When she looked up from the mess, she saw liquid droplets hanging in the air, a gaseous cloud with condensed water molecules floating. She had trouble seeing through the fog, but when she did, in the distance was a tall brunette girl leaning on the pole by the rollercoaster lineup. The figure of which Sunny had recognized, looked menacingly lean. Sunny blinked thrice, not believing that the girl who had come back from the dead, the girl was Callie.