Anyone But You Read Free Page A

me more conflicted. I hated being the damper on his devil-may-care zest for life. He never held it against me, but I knew I was dead weight around his ankle rather than a proper sidekick. Why couldn’t I have been more like him? Why did I have to be so
me
?
    “I’m really sorry, Ben.”
    “Nah, cut it out.” He gave my ear a flick—his way of being conciliatory. “I thought it might be good for you, that’s all.”
    “Good for me how?” I wondered, rubbing absentmindedly at the sting he’d inflicted.
    “I just thought being up there, getting to see how big the world really looks, you might … oh, never mind.”
    “I might what?”
    “You might wake up, I guess.”
    I furrowed my brow, not wanting to admit that I knew exactly what he was talking about. “Aw, hell, Nicky,” Benny continued. “You need to open your eyes. Live a little. Are you going to spend the rest of your life assuming the worst? Because the worst doesn’t always happen. It usually doesn’t, in fact. We’re kids, we should be having fun.”
    “I’m
fine
with fun,” I said. “I’m just not fine with
this
fun.” Benny glanced off down the Midway and shoved his hands in his pockets.
    “When you’re ninety-years old, you’ll regret what you didn’t do more than what you did do. But never mind, what do I know?” he said, shrugging off our tension with a smile. “This is the World’s Fair! We came and we saw, now let’s conquer! We’ve still got to check out the trained fleas!”
    At that moment, shrill feminine giggles erupted from the line of people waiting to ascend the Sky Ride elevators, and we both homed in on a group of young girls, indistinguishable in their straw cloche hats and pretty summer dresses. Naked ladies terrified me, admittedly. But fully clothed girls? Sure, I was interested. This group was worthy of a whistle (though I prayed Benny would refrain).
    “Or,” Benny murmured, nudging me in the ribs, “we could take Cupid’s wings and fly?” My pal had a way of sweeping people up in his vortex, and though I was more resistant than most, his powers of suggestion were hard to resist. After all, Benny provided one thing I wasn’t usually able to drum up on my own: the sense that something exhilarating could (and just might) happen. With his little lecture still gnawing at me, I reached into my front pocket and rustled for change.
    “I’ll go,” I relented. “But you owe me.”
    We stepped into the elevator a scant few minutes later, and then I felt my stomach lurch as we ascended. Had I just made a decision I’d live to regret?
    • • •
    From my seat on the lower level of the gondola, I contemplated a screw in the ceiling, refusing to shift my gaze to the windows that surrounded me on all sides. I could hear Benny about six feet away, his face pasted to the glass as he prattled on excitedly. By my count, he had uttered the phrase “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” fourteen times since we’d been up here. The theme of the World’s Fair was “A Century of Progress,” which seemed a misnomer if ever there was one. Just because you couldn’t see the bread lines and shantytowns from way up here didn’t mean they’d ceased to exist. I gripped my thighs nervously with my hands, trying to tell myself this was just like the ‘L’ train—only
a lot more
elevated.
    “Aren’t you going to check out the view?” The voice coming from my right-hand side was high pitched yet delicate—encouragement enough for me to dart my eyes in her direction. I quickly glanced back at the ceiling, hoping my cheeks weren’t as red as they felt. I remembered her from the gaggle of girls we’d seen standing in line. “Kittens,” Benny had called them, as if he was some society gigolo. She’d been decidedly shorter than the rest of the group. From the glimpse I’d just gotten, she appeared to be around my age, and she was cute, in a Norman Rockwell kind of way. Cascading from under her summer hat were two ponytails the