Free Bittersweet by Kimberly Loth Page B

Drop crew operated. Cyclops Revenge was a horrible, horrible ride. There were three restraint systems on the ride and they were all designed to crush the living daylights out of you. First you put on a seatbelt, then you pulled down an overhead bar that smushed your chest, and finally a massive lap bar came down and, as one six year old boy stated, “crushed your balls.”
    As a ride operator, it was easy to forget a step when checking the restraints. Forget I did. A lot . But nobody died that morning so I wasn’t fired again. However, my coworkers constantly seemed annoyed with me. I didn’t think any of them liked me. Except Paris. But I only got to work with him for fifteen minutes before being sent to lunch.
    On my break I ran into Julia.
    “Hey girl, how do you like your new position?” she asked.
    “It’s good. Better than HOLE for sure. Where’s your survey partner?”
    Yeah. I wanted to know where he was. No shame there.
    “He has the day off. Should I tell him you were asking about him?”
    I blushed. “No, I was just curious.” And disappointed that he wasn’t here today. I’d been a fool to think that he actually meant he wanted to go out with me every night. If he meant it, he would’ve told me he wouldn’t be here today.
    She rolled her eyes. “Sure. Hey you wanna go shopping tomorrow? I saw that you get off at four and I’m having a shoe crisis. My aunt stole my son for the week, so I’m totally free.”
    Since Dallas and I didn’t have a standing date, I was totally free too. I needed new sneakers that didn’t have blue spit and nacho cheese stains.
    “Sure. I’ll meet you here tomorrow after my shift.”
    She left with a smile and a wave. At least she liked me.
    That evening I worked entrance and loader at the Demon Drop. I looked covetously at the control booth. Angelica had trained me on Cyclops controls, which was cool, but that was nothing compared to a big coaster.
    I did get moved to Fast Lane for closing. Which rocked. Fast Lane was for people who paid a boatload of money to jump the line and all I had to do was make sure they wore the purple Fast Lane wristbands. Yesterday I watched Paris stand there for two hours and only have eight people come through his line. It was the slacker position. Perfect for closing.
    “Angelica, how come I haven’t been trained on controls yet?”
    She didn’t even glance up from her paperwork. “Because, sweetheart, we’ve been running two trains most of the day. You can’t learn controls until we only have one train running. You can go do locks with Deanna tonight. You might as well learn that part.”
    Deanna was one of the girls that always sat with Angelica and Becca in the morning. She hadn’t said much to me in two days, but then she hadn’t said anything mean either.
    We closed right on time and I waited for Deanna outside the control booth. Angelica and Becca were at the bottom of the stairs teasing Deanna about something, but I didn’t pay attention until I heard my name.
    “Hurry up and finish locks with Savannah. We’ll meet you at Perkin’s. Want us to order you a drink?” Angelica asked.
    Deanna looked up from the control paperwork. “Yeah, get me an iced tea. We’ll hurry.” She handed me a flashlight. “Let’s go.”
    She wore a ridiculous orange vest and swung a set of keys from a lanyard.
    “Locks aren’t hard. You just gotta remember to do them all. If you forget one you’ll be in deep doo-doo. It’s hard at closing because it’s dark.”
Like I didn’t have a problem remembering things. I could already tell that locks and I were not going to get along.
    “They are an extra safety measure for the maintenance crew. They work on the rides during the off hours. We unlock gates around the ride so they can get in underneath it. In the morning we lock them all up again. There are eleven gates. If we do it right, no one gets hurt.”
    We walked the perimeter of the coaster and unlocked all the gates. It wasn’t so