Gotta Lose 'Til You Win

When it jerked me out of the past, the Ferris wheel had reached the top and was overlooking the sunset.

I smiled and opened my eyes. I grinned as I saw the sunset.

Suddenly, the familiar feeling of his hand engulfing mine came over me, but when I looked next to me, he wasn't there. I don't know why I expected him to be.

We had been texting since the summer ended and we both went back to school. We talked about the summer and how we were doing in school.

Bradley promised to come to my graduation and told me that he had a surprise for me. “It’s something you’ll remember forever, Adri,” he told me when he called me on my eighteenth birthday.

We had planned to meet before I was needed at the ceremony.

I sat on the edge of the bookstore’s porch until the very last second.

No calls. No texts. No contact whatsoever.

I went to graduation with a frown on my face. I smiled for the cameras, but my parents knew better. They could see the disappointment written across it and sketched across my body.

Even my little brother’s antics couldn’t cheer me up that night.

I went to bed early and got up before the sunrise to get to the shop so Mom and Dad couldn’t stop me.

Everything was ready for the crowds and I had gone onto the back porch again.

I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I knew, my phone was waking me up.

I answered it thinking, hoping, that it was Bradley.

It was only my mom warning me that there was a storm on the way and to go somewhere safe.

I had then registered the extreme winds. I ran into the shop and locked the back door. I had run forward to the front door and locked it next. Running back towards the office, I heard glass breaking. I ran in between two bookcases and ducked down.

I have no memory of what happened after that.

The cab had descended slowly to the bottom by the time I was pulled from the past for the second time.

After going over everything, I resolved to ask the attendant out as my way of showing I was alright.

However as he walked over to unlock the gate, I saw a flash of the deep-brown hair that I missed so much.

I looked over and found those forest greens.

Everything seemed to disappear as I focused in on him.

I stepped out of the cab and ran over to him.

“Hey, there, beautiful,” Bradley chuckled as he pulled me into his arms.

I was so relieved that I couldn’t even cry, just grin and hug him back. “Bradley,” I repeated over and over.

He chuckled again and kissed the top of my head. “I missed you, Adriana.”

I grinned and pulled back in his arms. “I missed you so much,” I said, kissing him.

Bradley kissed me back. “How have you been, honey?”

“What happened to you? You left me waiting for a long time,” I asked, frowning.

He smiled sadly. “C’mon, I’ll buy you a pretzel like last time and tell you everything,” he replied, taking my hand and pulling me towards the food stands.

After about two hours, we told each other what had happened since that last phone call.

Bradley looked up at the sky and smiled. “Let’s go on the Ferris wheel one last time,” he whispered in my ear.

“One last time?” I asked, confused.

Bradley mirrored my confusion. “I said one more time, not one last time,” he explained, chuckling.

I smiled. “Okay,” I replied, kissing his cheek.

We got up and threw our trash away before walking to the surpisingly short line.

The young attendant allowed us to wait for the little blue cab again.

It was like déjà-vu as we stepped into it and the attendant began to tell us the rules.

When we started to ascend the wheel, Bradley moved closer to me and pulled me into his side.

“Do you trust me?”

I nodded, focusing on his eyes not my fear. “Of course, I do.”

“Look over the edge, Adriana,” he told me.

I gave him a scared look. “Why? You know I’m scared of heights.”

His forest green eyes stared into my sea blue ones. “Look at the people, Adri, not the ground.”

I turned slowly, gripping his hands in mine. I looked until I saw what he saw.

There were several men in navy colored coats spread out through the crowds. They were all headed towards us.

I turned back to Bradley. “What do they want?”

He sighed and turned away from me.

I took his face in my hands, forcing him to look at me. “What did you do, Bradley?” I asked, searching his eyes.

He sighed again. “I’ve done some really bad things while you were gone. Horrible things. Things that you could never understand,” he explained.

I took his hands in mine. “Oh, Bradley,” I whispered.

“Do you trust me still?” he asked.

I hesitated as the fireworks began to fly.

“Adriana, I love you. I’ve loved you this whole time. I’ve waited for you these past few years. I need to know if you trust me.”

I sighed. “Yes, Bradley, I trust you completely,” I replied, looking into his eyes.

He grinned. “That’s my girl.”

He stood up, pulling me with him. He moved over to the door of the cab and wrapped one of his arms around me.

“Bradley, no!” I almost screamed in fear, clutching at his shirt.

“Do you want to be with me forever, Adriana? Do you love me enough to want that?” he asked as we reached the top of the wheel.

I looked at him. “Y-yes, I do, Bradley.”

He kissed me as he unlocked the door. “I love you, Adriana.”

“I love you, too,” I said with a grin, fear forgotten.

In the glow of the fireworks, we jumped.

____

The Maine Tribune

Yesterday afternoon, young Adriana Kingston was discovered to be missing from her room at the state institution.

The twenty-one year old had been suffering from reoccurring amnesia and daily hallucinations of her deceased boyfriend, Bradley Shepherd. Even though she was regularly reminded of the past and what happened to her, Kingston would often have relapses and disregard all of the information given to her.

After the hurricane had destroyed her hometown of Old Orchard three years ago, Kingston had been found in her parents’ bookstore barely alive under a bookcase. She was rushed to the hospital where it was learned that both her parents and her younger brother had perished in the storm. She woke and started crying about how her boyfriend had ditched her. She didn’t remember anything before the day after her graduation.

Shepherd had been found to be caught in the hurricane before it hit the little town. He had died instantly when his motorcycle was caught in the wind and smashed into a large oak on the side of the road. His own parents had been out of town at the time of the storm.

The Shepherds had grown attached to their son’s girlfriend over the course of the year they had been dating. When they learned of her family’s condition, the couple decided to take charge of the then-seventeen year old orphan. They said that she reminded them of their deceased daughter and thought that their son would be happy knowing she was in good hands.

Early this morning, Kingston’s body was found under the pier of the old harbor.

The officials who had located her said that she had managed to get the broken down Ferris wheel to work. They witnessed her jumping out of the thirteenth cab into the rocks below the pier. They stated that she had been talking to herself before she jumped and hadn’t heard a single thing they yelled up to her.

Her doctors stated that most of Kingston’s relapses involved an event or memory concerning Shepherd. The other morning, they had shown her the obituary for the first time, believing that it would convince her of his death. They believe that she ran away to her still-destroyed hometown, thinking the town’s beloved Ferris wheel to be repaired. She often spoke of a date on the Ferris wheel and might have relived it with an imagined Shepherd.
The hallucination of the late Shepherd might have convinced Kingston to jump to her death.