Read Online Beautiful Boys by Francesca Lia Block - Free Book Online
Authors: Francesca Lia Block
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Band-Aids on them. We were changing out of our bathing suits behind the truck and saw each other naked under our towels and climbed into the back of the pickup truck and didn’t leave ’til morning. Angel Juan pretended the salt water he dripped onto my cheeks when he kissed me was from the ocean but I knew it was his tears.
Finally Charlie settles on the trunk, stops humming and says, “Tomorrow I want to take you to the place I was born. I never got to take Weetzie there. I think about it all the time.”
“Charlie, I have to find Angel Juan. I’m not here on vacation.”
“Well, where are you going to go look?”
“I wanted to go to Coney Island but I think it’s closed in winter.”
“I can get you in. And I grew up right near there. We can stop on the way back.”
This is the train to Coney Island. This is the darkness roaring around me that seems like it will never end. This is what it might be like to be dead.
And then the train comes up into the light. And everywhere for as far as I can see are hunched gnome tombstones. I think about what my tombstone will look like. Wonder if I’ll be buried next to Angel Juan.
This is the darkness again.
This is the light.
This is Coney Island.
“I used to work here when I was a kid,” Charlie says. “I learned how to run the Ferris wheel.” He shows me a hole in a fence and we sneak through—well I sneak, Charlie’s light just kind of glides.
An amusement park in winter is like when you go to the places where you went with the person you love but they’re not with you anymore. Everything rickety and cold and empty. If you had cotton candy it would burn your lips and cut your throat like spun pink glass. If you rode the roller coaster you’d have to hold on tight to the bar to keep your whole body from being lifted right off the seat with nobody there to hang on to you except maybe a ghost. You used to always want to go fast—speed monster—faster than anybody but now if you rode the roller coaster you’d just keep wishing for it to be over. The bathroom is filthy, stinky so you don’t go, and you have to walk around holding it in. The booths are empty. No fur beasties for sale. Why are you here? You remember the card in your pocket. Your friend the ghost wants to cheer you up and runs the Ferris wheel while you ride it all by yourself thinking about the one on the West Coast where you and your pounceable boyfriend made the cart you were in swing and swing while you kissed and kissed above the ocean and the pier and the carousel, drenched in sunset, lips salty with popcorn and sticky sweet with ice cream, not sick at all. ThisFerris wheel is different. Here you are on the most coupley kind of ride in the world all by yourself. You never knew you were scared of heights before. You just grip the bar and wish you were down. If you thought you were empty inside from being alone you know that you for sure have a stomach anyway but it doesn’t want to stay in there. You also for sure have a heart which is beating hard and doesn’t want to stay where it is either. You look down trying to think about something else and you can see popcorn bags, scarves, mittens and some rotting stuffed beasties in the weeds below where they must have fallen when the wheel turned last summer. You hold on tight to the card in your pocket and the angel around your neck and the camera in your lap. You remember how the card said that thing about riding the Ferris wheel to get outside of yourself. You try to look out over the park and up into the sky. You try to get outside of yourself to someplace where you don’t feel so alone. The carnival booths are not tombstones, you tell yourself. But you think about the tombstones you saw from the train and how Charlie Bat is really dead and Angel Juan is gone. Then the plastic skeletonbracelet slips off your wrist. You watch it fall down into the thing-graveyard under the Ferris wheel.
When the ride is over you and the ghost go
Finally Charlie settles on the trunk, stops humming and says, “Tomorrow I want to take you to the place I was born. I never got to take Weetzie there. I think about it all the time.”
“Charlie, I have to find Angel Juan. I’m not here on vacation.”
“Well, where are you going to go look?”
“I wanted to go to Coney Island but I think it’s closed in winter.”
“I can get you in. And I grew up right near there. We can stop on the way back.”
This is the train to Coney Island. This is the darkness roaring around me that seems like it will never end. This is what it might be like to be dead.
And then the train comes up into the light. And everywhere for as far as I can see are hunched gnome tombstones. I think about what my tombstone will look like. Wonder if I’ll be buried next to Angel Juan.
This is the darkness again.
This is the light.
This is Coney Island.
“I used to work here when I was a kid,” Charlie says. “I learned how to run the Ferris wheel.” He shows me a hole in a fence and we sneak through—well I sneak, Charlie’s light just kind of glides.
An amusement park in winter is like when you go to the places where you went with the person you love but they’re not with you anymore. Everything rickety and cold and empty. If you had cotton candy it would burn your lips and cut your throat like spun pink glass. If you rode the roller coaster you’d have to hold on tight to the bar to keep your whole body from being lifted right off the seat with nobody there to hang on to you except maybe a ghost. You used to always want to go fast—speed monster—faster than anybody but now if you rode the roller coaster you’d just keep wishing for it to be over. The bathroom is filthy, stinky so you don’t go, and you have to walk around holding it in. The booths are empty. No fur beasties for sale. Why are you here? You remember the card in your pocket. Your friend the ghost wants to cheer you up and runs the Ferris wheel while you ride it all by yourself thinking about the one on the West Coast where you and your pounceable boyfriend made the cart you were in swing and swing while you kissed and kissed above the ocean and the pier and the carousel, drenched in sunset, lips salty with popcorn and sticky sweet with ice cream, not sick at all. ThisFerris wheel is different. Here you are on the most coupley kind of ride in the world all by yourself. You never knew you were scared of heights before. You just grip the bar and wish you were down. If you thought you were empty inside from being alone you know that you for sure have a stomach anyway but it doesn’t want to stay in there. You also for sure have a heart which is beating hard and doesn’t want to stay where it is either. You look down trying to think about something else and you can see popcorn bags, scarves, mittens and some rotting stuffed beasties in the weeds below where they must have fallen when the wheel turned last summer. You hold on tight to the card in your pocket and the angel around your neck and the camera in your lap. You remember how the card said that thing about riding the Ferris wheel to get outside of yourself. You try to look out over the park and up into the sky. You try to get outside of yourself to someplace where you don’t feel so alone. The carnival booths are not tombstones, you tell yourself. But you think about the tombstones you saw from the train and how Charlie Bat is really dead and Angel Juan is gone. Then the plastic skeletonbracelet slips off your wrist. You watch it fall down into the thing-graveyard under the Ferris wheel.
When the ride is over you and the ghost go
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