Page 66 of Shifting Gears

Before she can get more than a few inches down the slide, the skin of her exposed thighs catches on the searing hot metal. The friction makes a horrible screech, and Nora shouts, catching herself before she slides any further and rolling off the edge of the chute onto the sand.

Dani is at her side in an instant, looking sympathetic but unable to keep the laugh out of her voice as Nora sits on the ground, nursing her sore skin.

“Are you okay?”

Nora lightly smacks Dani’s shin with the hand that isn’t checking for skin damage. “No!” she whines. Dani’s smile looking down at her is so, so warm. “Why the hell didn’t you warn me that would happen?”

Dani throws her hands up helplessly. “I figured you’d know! It’s a metal slide; everyone knows they run at the temperature of the sun.”

Nora sighs. After a cursory examination, she determines that she hasn’t actually injured herself, but she’s going to be sore for at least a few minutes.

“I didn’t exactly get to spend time at places like this when I was a child,” Nora mumbles, standing up with Dani’s help and starting on the seemingly impossible task of getting the sand out of her shorts.

“You mean playgrounds?” Dani says, helping to brush sand from Nora’s butt in a way that isn’t entirely helpful. Her hands trace down to the areas that Nora just dragged over hot coals, and it’s entirely distracting. “What did you do instead?”

“I did extra tutoring. Read books. Played chess.”

Nora spent most of her childhood years watching other kids her age have fun from a distance, and after a while, it had justseemed normal. She’s hardly thought about it in years. Now she’s starting to realize exactly what she missed.

“That sounds really lonely.” Dani pulls Nora toward her and rests her chin on Nora’s shoulder, nuzzling gently into Nora’s neck. Despite the gloom of the subject matter, the contact makes her happy.

“It was,” Nora admits. A lump is forming in her throat. Her chest is tight, a strange sort of grief for the child in her that never got to flourish.

Dani doesn’t push for more, maybe understanding that Nora needs to figure it out by herself, but she leaves her place at Nora’s shoulder and instead grabs her hand, leading her over to a contraption Nora has never seen before. It’s a round platform bisected with two long bars, meeting in the middle like anX. Dani motions for Nora to stand on it and then takes a firm grasp of one of the bars. “You should probably sit down.”

“Why?” Nora asks. Dani just grins and starts to push. Her feet dig into the sand as she gets the platform rotating faster and faster until the whole thing is spinning like a top with Dani running alongside.

Nora clutches at the railing and takes Dani’s advice, anchoring herself near the middle of the cross-section. Once it’s going sufficiently fast, Dani jumps on, clutching the bar with white knuckles as she pulls herself up to sit near Nora.

“I’m getting dizzy!” Nora yells. The world is rushing by in a blur. The only solid thing in in her entire field of vision is Dani.

“That’s the point!” Dani yells back, joy in every inch of her face. Riding something the point of which is to get you dizzy seems like an exercise in futility, but Nora can’t deny the adrenaline that courses through her as they zoom in a circle. Even if it’s futile, it’s fun. It’sfun.

By the time they stumble off the platform together, dizzy and giggling, Nora has found a part of herself that she locked uptwenty years ago, some kind of childlike happiness pulled out of her by Dani, who’s stumbling over her own feet and cackling.

Her happiness feels a lot less childlike when dusk falls, when she and Dani are making out in the truck cab halfway through the newest superhero movie.

If she were more cognizant of anything much beyond Dani’s mouth and hands, Nora would probably be a little embarrassed at how obvious they’re being—the windows are fogged, and the truck rocks a little every time Dani shifts her weight to press into Nora’s hips. But right now, with her leg hooked around Dani’s body and warm lips making their way down Nora’s neck toward her heaving chest, she couldn’t care less.

The wait until the end of the movie is excruciating. Nora outright refuses to stay for the second film, and thankfully by that point, Dani seems just as eager. By the time Dani is pulling out onto the road to drive them to a better location, Nora is about ready to take care of the problem herself on the spot, distracted driving be damned.

Dani eases the truck onto a dirt path just off a side road, stopping when a metal barrier with a sign readingNOTRESPASSINGappears in the headlights.

“I thought you said you’d been here before?” Nora says.

Dani opens the door and jumps out of the cab. Flagrantly disregarding the warning sign, she makes her way up to the barrier, fiddling with the chain that keeps it closed and then swinging the gate open.

When Dani jumps back in, shifting the truck back into gear, Nora stares at her for a few seconds.

“What?” Dani says.

Nora shakes her head. “Do you always ignore trespassing signage, or just when you’re trying to get laid?”

Dani snorts as the truck lumbers over the grass. “I only ignore them when they’re stupid. This is another way to get out tothe tree house. The land was sold to some big contractor who wanted to build a hotel up here years ago, but it stalled out. Whoever owns it now, they’re not using it.”

That catches Nora’s attention. She sits up straighter, glancing out the window as they roll past the gate over a bumpy path. “A contractor? Is the tree house part of that land?”

“Yep. Good thing it didn’t work out, right?”

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