Everyone’s smiling and chirping, talking with their hands, and feeling with their mouths. You can feel the music’s bass pound your sternum in tune with your heart beat, sandwiching your ribcage with every thumping, bumping measure. You’re engaged in a conversation with four or five people dressed in flannels, pencil skirts, chucks, and t-shirts, but nobody knows what anyone’s talking about. You all just laugh loudly and listen in vain. People you know mingle with people you don’t know, and the people you don’t know are sure to become people you do know within the next hour or so. 

I know what will make it better. I’ve seen the commercials with that pro wrestler. What’s his name? The Masher? Tongue wagging through a weird leather mask that looks like a catcher’s mitt, he jams his behemoth hands forward and his palms are filled with brightly colored mini musclemen. “Berzerkoids are here!” He screams so loud the TV rattles even when the volume is down. The toys are cheap and Jamie has been begging for them. 

Adam took a long second look into the ravine, and shook his head. “I don’t want to go over any side,” then put a limp hand up on the handlebar, which wouldn’t have been able to push the Hitachi in a million years. So they pushed it off together. They had designed a sub-par go-kart, but apparently the Hitachi was perfectly made for flight. It came off the top and twisted, then stalled and twisted the other way, like a knuckleball, finally landing on its side, corner down.