Do you remember the day everything went wrong? I do. You passed out at 300 feet, but I was wide awake. In fifth grade they made us pin bugs to styrofoam, the perfect specimens stretched out to the point of pain. If they were still alive, that is. Sitting up there with the wind tearing my face open, I felt a lot like one of those bugs. And I was still alive. 

Sandra works at the space coaster. She is fifty-six years old and recently retired from a thirty four year long career in real estate that necessitated her blue owl frame glasses and prescription migraine meds. At her retirement party she blew out thirty four orange candles and ignored seventeen tired pleas for her to give it one more year. She advertised the boardwalk in all her listings. “Walking distance to family fun!” she’d say. “A safe place for the kids, with wine for the adults.” She’d laugh and wink and have an offer within the week. Sandra is very good at her job. She presses the green button and squints from beneath her visor as forty eight hands slowly lift into the sky, fingers splayed like they could really touch the planets. Idealistic fools, she thinks, snapping her gaze away and opening her phone. 

Brandon works at Randy’s Chicken Hut. He is a thirty-two year old high school dropout and sixteen year alum of the park. Everyone says your first job will be a shitshow. “I know it sucks to fry chicken for eight hours making minimum wage, but it won’t last forever! You’ll go to college and find a nice cushy job that doesn’t involve chicken guts or tips in pennies.” Brandon has heard it all. But when you have undiagnosed dyslexia, fail every standardized test known to man, and drop out of school because what’s even the point anymore, life has a way of ending up in the gutter. Brandon is not very good at his job. He likes to leave the fryer on autopilot and give Sandra head in the prize supply closet. Neither of them like each other very much, but Sandra is hungry to live out youthful fantasies and Brandon is hungry to feel like an adult. At least the troupe of sparkly, plastic-eyed pandas will know he has a purpose. Brandon slides a tray of chicken onto the counter and feels his phone ding in his apron pocket. There is only one person who texts him anymore. 

  Dmitri works at the whack-a-mole, and he is in love with Martha. He is the son of two Russian immigrants and proud owner of a studio apartment over the garbage dump. He walks around with a single empty slot in his wallet for the green card he convinces himself he will one day own. He never has to take out the trash. He tells himself this every day as he walks past the rotting flesh and dog excrement. Martha is a big, beautiful, blonde blob in the distance and he likes to pretend she will come over and say, “you poor thing, come along with me now.” He is not beneath playing the damsel in distress. Dmitri does fine at his job. He has to; it’s the only one he can get. His boss always tells him to be more enthralling, oblivious to the fact that he spends all day enthralling, just not the customers. “Dmitri!” Speak of the devil. “How do you expect to make bank with your booth looking like that?” He is a large white man from Texas, and he speaks like a large white man from Texas. “Go restock.” He points at the supply closet and Dmitri sighs, glancing longingly at Martha as he goes. It appears she will not save him today either. 

Martha works at the human slingshot, and she is a profound lesbian. She chews bright pink bubble gum ritualistically and pores over lingerie magazines on the control stand. Sandra likes to come over and yell at her for her ride ruining the view, as though she can control what two people attached to a glorified rubber band do. She knows Sandra just enjoys watching the terror in people’s eyes before the drop. It gives her the chills. Martha takes great pride in having eyes over the entire park; being the undercover spy in all the books she used to read as a kid. Nancy Drew was her first crush. She pretends to be engrossed in pretty women with skimpy clothing when really she knows that Brandon and Sandra are fucking, living out some age fetish she doesn’t pretend to understand. And she knows about the whack-a-mole guy too, the way he stares and she smiles through her gum because she likes having all eyes on her. In middle school she eavesdropped on two girls in the bathroom stall taking a pregnancy test, and she told the whole school just so she might finally make a friend. Martha is terrible at her job. She is hungry for gossip and barely pays any attention to the dial she is turning if drama is going on elsewhere. She goes home early every Wednesday to masturbate to Too Hot to Handle and swipe left on every Tinder profile. Her mother once told her she had a superiority complex. Martha staunchly disagrees. 

Sandra grabs a fistful of Brandon’s greasy hair and replaces memories of her midterm with a frat party. Brandon knocks a teddy bear off the shelf behind him and feels powerful. Dmitri pulls open the supply closet’s door and is immediately thrown back to the confessional at church. Forgive me father, for I have sinned. He yelps and covers his eyes, feeling his parents’ pastoral ghosts shift in their graves. Martha hears the cry, sees the side of Sandra’s breast and the closet door swung wide open on the three of them. A slow smile spreads over her face. She has not had such good fortune since the bathroom stall in middle school. She lets her magazine slide off the control stand, pages of beautiful women catching on the switch as they fall. 

We knew right away that something went wrong. You looked at me as we lurched and the fear in your eyes was palpable. It was always me who convinced you to eat the school green beans, to go up against the jocks in horse. It was me who convinced you to go on this ride. Forgive me father, for I have sinned. 

Brandon stands aghast, Sandra stands absolutely mortified as the fantasy snaps, Dmitri stands making a cross over his chest, Martha stands slowly clapping and giggling mirthlessly, and no one notices the ride slowly losing control.