Page 105 of What You Wish For

“Yeah?”

“I’m freaking out.”

Duncan angled his head so he could stare at me. “You look fine. Great, even.”

“I am not fine. Or great.”

Then, forcing a chuckle, he said, “Why? Because there’s a pelican on the tracks?”

But that’s when I started hyperventilating.

“Hey,” he said, leaning closer. “What’s going on?”

“I want to get down,” I told him—and saying the words made it worse.

“Hey. This is a modern roller coaster—it’s not like there’s some old geezer in a choo-choo hat pulling a rickety old lever.”

“That’s not helping.”

“I’m right here,” he said, his voice now all business. “I’m right here with you, and we are safe. We are safely strapped into a ride that hundreds of people ride every day for, you know—for fun. I’m sure this pelican thing happens all the time. No big deal. We’ll just wait for them to shoo it away, and then we’ll get this done.”

“That’s just it, though,” I said, panting now. “I don’t want to get it done. I want to get off.”

“We can’t get off,” he said. “But the good news is, this scary roller coaster seems about average for scary roller coasters.”

“That’s not comforting.”

“I’m just saying, once we get going, it won’t be so bad.”

“I don’t ride scary roller coasters, okay?”

“What? Ever?”

“Pretty much never.”

“So why are you here?”

“It just kind of happened, okay? I was having fun. I wasn’t paying attention.”

Silence from next to me. Then: “You’re only here because of me?”

“Yes,” I said, in a voice that was half frustrated sigh, half eye roll. And then my explanation came out fast: “Babette told us to do it, and you seemed excited about it, I got caught up in the moment, and I wasn’t really thinking.”

“That might be the nicest thing anybody’s ever said to me.”

“Okay. But I think I’m having a panic attack.”

“What makes you think that?”

This came out sarcastic: “Um. Might be all the panic I’m feeling.”

“Fair enough.”

“Hey,” I said then. “I need to warn you about something.”

“Okay.”

I sucked in a tight breath, and said, “It’s possible that at some point I might wind up having… a seizure.”

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