Through the years I've grown accustomed to people not wanting to be seen with me, around me, near me, or just in proximity of me. Sometimes this attitude appears in people that I know well and like, which is far more unfortunate than when it presents itself in strange women that I care nothing for. But this story is about a day spent at Playland among a group of girls that I didn't know very well, and one that I did. Considering our past, I probably should have had a better idea of what I was getting into.
Isabelle and I had only recently become friends again after our falling out a few years earlier. Our reasons for becoming friends again were varied, but they mostly involved our mutual friend Paige. Well, they entirely involved our friend Paige.
When I became friends with Paige, I actually wasn't aware that she and Isabelle were as close as they were. I knew that they had interacted from time to time, but they had been so far in the peripheral of my life that I just never took notice of who Isabelle was hanging around because I knew that she didn't really want anything to do with me. Had Paige not brought me back into Isabelle's life, she would have continued to ignore me as she had been doing for the last few years of our lives.
Our interactions together at this point were still very awkward and unsure of where we stood with one another. We both were well aware of the black cloud that hung in our past, but neither of us ever spoke of it, instead just trying to edge around it and pretend that it had never happened.
There was a field-trip coming up to Playland, and we were all separated into groups and given the task of...learning...something...it didn't matter then, it doesn't matter now, and it won't matter tomorrow. The group that I was in ended up ditching me literally at the gate, and I didn't see them again until we got back on the ferry home twelve hours later. I turned to see Isabelle's group wandering by and asked if I could tag along with them, since I couldn't find my group. A teacher happened to be standing behind me, overheard me, and said that, since Isabelle's group was a body short (it was to have included Paige, but she was out sick that day) that I could just replace her.
Isabelle's group included three or four other girls that I couldn't name if I tried. Two or three of them looked at me as though I were scum (while the other girl, Ella, seemed there due to having no other group and avoided eye contact with everyone the entire day); they then looked to Isabelle, silently questioning why she would hang around with someone like me. But she powered through her embarrassment at having known me and spoke directly to the other girls in her group for the majority of the day while trying to balance the illusion that she didn't know me with the urge to keep me from knowing that she didn't want to know me.
We went through the day just going on the rides that the three or four girls were deciding on, only stopping to eat lunch when they all agreed upon it, all the while me and the one lonely girl of the group just trailed silently behind them going with the flow. I probably should have tried to befriend Ella earlier so that we could have actually enjoyed our time together in the amusement park, but...you know how that sort of thing works out for me, so maybe it's best that I didn't.
Eventually we came to a ride called the Hellevator or the Tower of Terror or the Sky-Drop or something equally stupid, but it was basically just a seat that shot hella far into the air at crazy fast speeds, and then dropped down just as fast. We stood in the queue for the ride for well over an hour, and as we got closer and closer to the goal, I noticed that there were only four seats on each side of the ride.
I waited until a moment that the other two or three girls were en rapt in each other's attention, having likely forgotten that I and the other girl were following them around the park for the day, and I leaned forward to Isabelle. "Hey, would you mind sitting with me on the ride? I just don't want to sit alone." I will never forget the look she gave me, it was a mixture of disappointment, sadness, guilt, anger, and she clearly didn't want to say yes, but, to my surprise, she did, likely because it was the most pathetic thing she had been asked in her entire life.
And for the next two minutes, life was alright, and I knew that Isabelle and I would eventually get over this hurdle in our relationship, because, when things really came down to it, she was willing to be seen with me. And then, as we were actually coming up to sit in our seats, she turned, saw Ella behind me, remembered she was in our group, and exclaimed "oh! You two can sit together! Problem solved!"
And that's how Isabelle ended up sitting on one side with her two or three friends, and I was sitting next to this stranger girl that was also unwanted in the group.
Something that I had noticed while we were standing in line is that the Ella had been counting down from fifteen a few times, so, since I was now sitting next to her, we were both nervous about the ride, and neither of us seemed to know anyone, I turned to her and asked "so...what were you counting?" She jumped a little, apparently startled at human interaction, and took a second before responding, "I noticed it takes fifteen seconds before it takes off...at least then I'll know it's coming."
So she and I waited until the ride's operator was back at the button, nodded to each other, and then counted down from fifteen. We got down to one and braced ourselves...and nothing happened. So we counted down from three again, and nothing happened. So we counted down from fifteen again, and...nothing happened.
Just as I turned to her and ask "fifteen right?" and she started to nod, we shot up into the air, unprepared and so shocked we were unable to scream. As we got to the top and shot back down, both my legs and hers shot out into the air in front of us, like we were four-year-olds sitting as far back on the couch as we could. This shared oddity was apparently a really good bonding experience, because she and I wouldn't shut up for the rest of the day, and the rest of our group was made all too aware that we were following them for the rest of the day.
We next came to a traditional roller coaster, and Ella and I were now at the front of the group leading the way into the lines, rambling on and on about how much fun we'd had on our last ride. As we finally got onto the ride, Ella and I were now just immediately sitting together because, not only were we the only two willing to talk to each other, but we were finally having some fun. As the ride's about to take off, Isabelle leaned forward from her seat and whispered "hey...would you mind not being...embarrassing? Like...just, don't scream, okay?"
Ella and I looked at each other and, in unison, started emitting a high-pitched whining that we maintained through the entirety of the roller-coaster ride. This was probably an excellent effort in alienating the friends that don't really like you enough to not ditch you a second time, but...what's done is done.
The rest of the day continued something like this, and then we got onto the ferry home, and I found my original group, and they handed me a wad of papers relating to rides that I didn't go on (and neither did they) saying that those were the ones I needed to write about for "our project." Unfortunately for them, they'd ditched me far more recently than Isabelle had, so I did nothing for them.
As a side-note, my friend Leah would, years later, really remind me of Isabelle's behaviour in times like this.
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