Page 77 of Fractured Ice

"I'm choosing the pen." Ethan takes it from the operator and holds it out to me without any ceremony, like this is the obvious conclusion to a sequence of events that was never about the bear.

I take it.

It's a good pen. Heavier than it looks, with a satisfying click, and the crystals are actually pretty in a way that doesn't announce itself. It's the kind of pen I'd find in a shop and consider for too long before putting it back because it's impractical.

"How—" I start.

"You like things that are useful and a little bit beautiful," Ethan says. "The bear was neither."

Dylan looks at me holding the pen. Something crosses his face, brief and controlled, and he turns back to the booth. "Another round?"

I put the pen in my pocket and start walking to the next booth.

I don't say anything.

The Jacob's Ladder is the next game and also, in retrospect, the one I should have steered us away from.

It's a suspended rope ladder, horizontal, that flips when you try to climb it. The goal is to reach the top without going over. The actual achievement rate appears to be roughly zero percent based on the queue of people I've been watching face-plant into the straw for the last five minutes.

Both of them volunteer immediately.

They start climbing on adjacent ladders, immediately flipping into the straw before both of them climb back up and start again. That part is fine, that part is actually funny, and for a few minutes it's just the two of them being competitive and ridiculous while the crowd builds up and I eat the last of my cotton candy.

Dylan makes it six rungs on his third attempt. Ethan makes it seven and falls. Dylan makes it seven and a half.

"You're favoring your left side," Ethan says from the straw.

"I'm winning," Dylan says.

"You're almost winning. It's different."

"You're in the straw,” Dylan argues.

"And you haven’t been?”

Dylan makes it eight rungs and flips. Comes down hard, gets up, and on his way to the start brushes Ethan's shoulder.

Not hard. Not obviously intentional.

Ethan's eyes track to him immediately.

"Sorry," Dylan says, pleasantly.

"Sure," Ethan says, equally pleasantly.

I throw out my mostly empty cotton candy.

Dylan goes again. Does well. Gets to nine rungs while Ethan gets to seven. Dylan comes down on the right side and turns to say something to Ethan, whose response is quiet enough that I don't catch it, but Dylan's jaw shifts. Then they're both climbing again and neither of them is talking anymore. The energy has changed in the way that energy changes when two people are no longer having a friendly game.

Dylan nearly reaches the top rung and goes over the far side.

Ethan, three rungs behind him, falls into the straw near him and says something.

Dylan rolls out of the straw and comes back up and shoves him.

Not a push. A shove. A real one.

Ethan shoves back.