Fun Fest

Fun Fest. The annual high school carnival thrown for the Juniors. The annual,”sorry you can’t have prom” peace offering from the school. Stupid to say the least. All of us will be seniors in one year, but our PTO, sponsored by all of the rich Wall Street dads, threw a fit. The carnival is held an hour away outside of the city in a huge field. It’s chaperoned, but barely so alcohol in gross water bottles always finds its way into the fest. What do you expect from a New York private school?

My best friend Winnie and I opted to stay home. We didn’t get tickets because neither of us felt like paying 100$ a piece. I was at the school on scholarship and would have to pay for the ticket out of my Skinny’s Chicken work paycheck. Winnie offered to pay for me, as her dad is a heart surgeon at the New York-Presbyterian Hospital and money was not an issue, but I didn’t really want to go anyway. 

When I got home from school the night before the carnival my parents presented me with a ticket to the fest. 

“Winnie’s family was nice enough to get you a ticket.” My parents never had too much pride to accept expensive gifts/ or money from people. They worked their butts off but my mom always said, “What’s wrong with a little help?”

I reluctantly accepted and immediately went to my room to already see a text from Winnie,

i didn’t know i swear

we don’t have to go.

                                              its ok

                                              let’s go. we have to or my parents will get pissed

          ok cool

The next day was a Saturday. Fun Fest started at 4pm and ended at midnight. Then there were afterparties, etc. I went over to Winnie’s at 1pm. We wanted to leave around 6pm because being there for the full eight hour fest did not sound fun. At 5pm we got ready and by 5:50 we were taking the elevator down to the parking garage under her building. When I say Winnie was rich, she was really really rich. In the big garage there were littler garages for each tenant. Each person/ family got 6 spots. If you wanted more spots you could pay for a bigger garage. Winnie had two cars of her own as a present from when she got her license and a separate garage from her parents. She entered the code of the garage and walked into a room almost the size of my apartment. 

“Do you want to take the Jeep or the Rolls Royce?” Winnie asked.

“Mmm, Jeep.” I said, grabbing the keys off of the wall. “Can I drive?”

“Fine.” She said. It took us a while to get out of the city, and by the time we were ten minutes away from the Fest it was almost 8 o’clock.  We pulled into a surprisingly good spot near the front of the lot. 

“Why did we get such a good spot?” I asked.

“Most people are Ubering because they’re drinking. Plus the after parties are in the city. So bad parking.”

I nodded and we got out of the car. We showed our tickets and walked into the fest. There were tents everywhere. The smell of funnel cake and beer wafted through the air. A couple adults, I assumed who were chaperones, stood by tents but most were on their phone. A ferris wheel stood in the distance.

“C’mon!!” Winnie shrieked. “Jenny and Toby said they would be by the wheel.” Jenny and Toby are our other friends and they were thrilled when we told them we were coming tonight. We trudged over, passing hundreds of people. How are there this many people in the Junior class, I thought. Like Winnie read my mind she said,

“It's weird how they let all the grades come. Plus there are at least 4 other schools here.”

“Yup, they must be making bank.” I chuckled. We got to the ferris wheel a couple minutes later. Jenny and Toby were already standing in a long winding line. We cut through to get to them.

“Finally!! We’ve been standing here for forever” Jenny squealed. 

“It's so long.” I added “Actually I have to pee, where is the bathroom?”

“There's one behind the fortune teller tent. It's by the teacups.” Toby pointed to the teacups in the far distance.

“Ok, I’ll be right back” I started jogging off until Jenny called my name. 

“Tara!! Give me our phone. The bathrooms are disgusting and there's nowhere to put it.”

“But what if I get lost?”

“You won’t, it’s super easy to navigate.” Toby shoved me out of line and grabbed my phone.

I walk-jogged towards the teacups. When I got there I couldn’t see any fortune teller tent. I asked a random girl walking by, but she just laughed.

“Omg you're going the wrong way. It’s at the edge of the field.” She giggled. 

“There isn’t one near here? Or any bathrooms?” 

“Nooo silly they’re both by the edge by the woods.” Before I could ask more, she recognised someone and ran off, yelling their name. I was reluctant to believe her but Jenny and this girl both said the bathrooms were by the Fortune Teller tent. Jenny must have just gotten the location wrong. Really wishing I had my phone I blundered towards the edge of the woods.

Twenty minutes later I had walked up the whole edge of the woods with no luck. There was a Fortune Teller tent, but no bathroom. I asked three people, all of which were drunk and didn’t know the way. At this point I really had to pee. I went into the woods. Peed really quick, and ran back into the carnival. My new goal was finding the ferris wheel. A seemingly easy task took me 2 and a half hours. Every time I walked towards the ferris wheel it somehow got farther away. At quarter to midnight I decided my third and final goal was to get to the parking lot. I slumped towards the neon sign lighting up the entrance. I bought up some funnel cake asa peace offering for ruining Winnies Fun Fest by looking for me the whole time. At least I hope she was looking for me. The fest was almost over so at this point I was praying Winnie was back at the Jeep. On my way to the lot passed the ferris wheel. 

“So when I'm not looking I find it easily.” I said out loud. A little too loud. Heads turned. I heard a voice over the chuckles.

“TARA!” Toby ran towards me, and relief flooded through me. 

“Oh em gee. Where were you silly!” Toby was obviously drunk. “Also you're the designated driver. Right? Right?” He shook my shoulders. Suddenly it was very obvious they had not been looking for me at all. I didn’t have the energy to care. 

  “Yup, c’mon Toby where’s everyone else?”