“I still can’t believe your parents were fine with paying for all of us,” I said as we walked through the amusement park.

“I told you my folks were pretty well off,” Tristan replied, yawning right after.

All five of us looked around to see if there was anything we found interesting.

It was a pretty nice place. The ground had a nice and polished brick texture while the rides and food stands seemed to be well maintained.

But while we were walking, I realized something.

“Hey Aurora, how come you came so early today? You’re usually always la…”

“Shush!” Aurora said in an attempt to silence me.

‘Huh? What’s her pro…Oh, I get it.’

A sinister smile appeared across my face.

“What? Is something wrong? Or did you not want me to mention you’re late every time we go out?” I asked innocently.

Aurora’s eyebrow twitched.

“Damn it! I tried to make a good impression for once and you ruined it,” Aurora snarled before crossing her arms and turning her head in the other direction.

Soriel chuckled quietly, causing me to follow suit.

“Hey guys, since Soriel is kind of new to us, why don’t we let her pick the first ride?”

My suggestion seemed to be well received since everyone nodded in agreement.

“Oh um, I guess we can go on…”

Soriel looked around intently for a moment, hesitating slightly before picking a certain attraction.

“This one!” She exclaimed, pointing her finger at a ride.

When she did, my face immediately contorted into one of pure dread.

You see, there’s something I forgot to mention earlier.

That being…that I’m a complete coward.

Whether it be from a horror game to a risky ride, I was scared of all of it.

You might ask, why did you even agree with coming to an amusement park then?

Well as we already established, I’m an idiot.

Now that you have that context, consider this…

Soriel had picked a massive ride that had seats connected to a big tower which lifted you up in the air and back down. 

It was a fairly common ride I’ve seen plenty of times, however, for whatever reason, it was twice as big as it usually was and moved you three times as fast.

And I, who knew this from hearing about it online, was terrified.

But alas, I couldn’t keep Soriel waiting.

“Alright…let’s go.”

And so, we began walking towards my nightmare.

**

“That was awesome!” Soriel exclaimed as she unbuckled her seat and got off of the ride.

Tristan, Aurora, Nishimoya, and I did the same.

“That one wasn’t bad,” Tristan said as we walked away.

“Not bad? How?! I think I’m about to get a headache from all that dropping,” Aurora spat.

“Woah…that was cool,” Nishimoya said while stumbling.

Then, Tristan looked at me, and spoke.

“You good, Elliot? You look like you’re about to puke.”

“Shut it you demented toothpick.”

At that moment, I was a husk of a person.

Everything was shaking and I truly believed it was it for me.

‘I think I can see the light…’

Soriel glanced at me, her amethyst eyes shining.

“I’m sure it’s just because he enjoyed it so much,” She said with a grin.

‘She couldn’t be farther off from the truth. Is she being sarcastic?’

Regardless of whether Soriel meant her words or not, my suffering wasn’t over yet.

After all, we usually decide who picks the rides based on oldest to youngest which means it was now Nishimoya’s turn to pick.

“Let’s go on that one!” Nishimoya said, pointing to a ride that spins us in a circle while in the air.

“But you aren’t even able to walk properly from the last ride!” I objected.

“I bet I’ll still have fun though!” Nishimoya replied as she ran in the ride’s direction.

‘Ah, here we go again…’

From that point on, we all went on numerous different rides.

And each of them scared the life out of me.

It didn’t help that Tristan was in the mood to, as he puts it “scare some meaning into his life.”

You may be wondering what that means, and honestly I was too, but I still knew he’d be trying the scariest rides imaginable.

But after a while we got a little hungry.

“Hey Elliot, what time is it?” Aurora asked.

I weakly pulled out my phone and checked the time.

“5 minutes till 4,” I responded.

“Shouldn’t we go get something to eat?” Aurora suggested.

I turned to the others who were walking behind us.

“Yo! You guys wanna get something to eat?” I asked.

They all nodded and jogged to catch up to us.

Once we were all together we found a table to sit down at and we all got our respective meals from the stands nearby.

Strangely enough, Nishimoya offered to watch our table until we got our food.

Eventually, we all got our food and sat down.

“So how are you feeling about our friend group, Soriel?” I asked as I took a bite of a chicken wing.

“I’m having a lot of fun with you guys. Thank you guys for having me,” she replied before she ate the fry that was in her hand.

“No problem. We needed a new addition or else Tristan would start making us do weird things out of boredom,” I mentioned.

“Eh? I don’t make you guys do anything that weird,” Tristan replied.

“Last time you made Aurora and I captured some insects for some three way beetle fighting contest,” I said.

“But that wasn’t that bad.”

“Aurora passed out after seeing the first bug!” I exclaimed.

Aurora then coughed loudly and chimed in the conversation.

“Anyway, Elliot, do you want to hear about the game yesterday?” She asked.

“Sure,” I responded.

Once I said that, Aurora began to talk to me about a basketball game that she watched yesterday.

This is something that happened quite often, in fact, I’d say it’s a pretty big topic between us.

I never got into watching sports so over time I began to rely on Aurora to keep me updated.

And for some reason, Aurora was happy to tell me all about it.

‘I wonder if she just wants someone to listen to her ramble about sports. Ah whatever, I don’t mind listening to her talk about it anyway.’

That’s what happened for the next couple of minutes. The others quietly ate their food while Aurora and I conversed about basketball.

At least that was until I realized something.

‘She didn’t get anything to eat at all. Is she okay? She definitely should be hungry by now. Should I do something?’

I noticed that Nishimoya hadn’t bought herself lunch or brought anything with her.

Seeing her just sitting there, without eating or talking, with a solemn expression on her face, rubbed me the wrong way.

Fortunately, I still had some food left.

“Huh?” Nishimoya said as she looked at the item in front of her.

“Eat it,” I said while I brought my corn dog in front of her face.

“I’m not hun…”

“Eat. The. Corn dog.”

I’m not sure whether it was because I cut her off or my tone, but Nishimoya ended up caving in.

She took the corn dog from my hand and bit into it.

“Yum,” Nishimoya whispered.

When I heard her whisper, a small smile spread across my face.