We were running like it was our job. There were six of us, maybe eight: me, gretchen, rob, kyle, molly and frank and jesse and someone else. I wish I could remember who it was—they left early, a blur of brown hair and the corner of an ear disappearing. But we were fully alive that night, inhabiting an amusement park and racing through the dark to each new destination and screaming on the roller coasters until our voices were too hoarse to produce sound.

In the dark, the headlights of the miniature train that ran through the park looked menacing. We put pennies on the tracks and hid in the bushes until the conductor rounded the bend, then we ran out to grab them and marveled at their hot strange flatness. Frank muttered around his cigarette, and we waited a second time for the train to go by, then leapt on the back car for a free ride. The girl up front with the megaphone, barely our age she was, was irritated. Our car was empty but old ladies two cars up turned around to glare at us. Frank took out his cigarette and blew them kisses. We cracked up and hopped off before the conductor could get out of his arthritis chair to chase us down.

We bought huge piles of funnel cake and fried dough and ate until we felt sick. The moon was out and we screamed at it, rounding the peak of the coaster. But when it started to rain, I felt too small and sheepish, like a wet golden retriever. Frank put his arm around me and Molly started singing a song by the Arcade Fire. Whenever I hear the Arcade Fire, I want to put on extra layers of clothes. Finally we found some little shop, some little paint-your-own-ceramic-mug stall that had pumped-in heating and we kind of fragmented. Molly was whispering in Frank's ear and I felt like pieces of a shattered mug, staring at the display of samples.

Gretchen tapped me on the head with her fingernail.

"It stopped raining!" she said all jubilant and we started running again, kyle clutching his side and laughing and we roared through the theme park and tripped up families of four with their sweatshirts and ran through the fake zoo with its two sad bears. The clouds covered the moon and we caught the last two rides on Killer-Thrill before it shut down for the night.

We absorbed the smell of night-theme-park and broadcast it all the way home, me and gretch and kyle in frank's car and molly driving jessie and rob. We slowed on the highway to flip each other off and at the rest-stop McDonald's to buy greasy containers of fries. We played our music too loud and I fell asleep on kyle.

Frank woke me up in front of my house. I had no magic words to say; I blinked at him and then remembered and said thank-you and wondered if I would ever see him again. College is far away, and it takes time and makes you grow.

I took the newspapers into my dark and empty house and I thought about his arm on my shoulders and how cold the rain was. I thought about screaming next to him and how our dangling feet collided in air. I made some decaf coffee and went to bed.