The Summer I Rode It Out

The mechanical bull at Miller's Fair looked like it had seen better days. Fake leather peeling at the seams, dust coating its once-shiny horns. Kind of like my friendship with Maya, honestly.

"You're not actually going to ride that thing, right?" Maya called from her spot by the fence, where she'd been scrolling through Instagram for the past hour. "It's so... extra."

Extra. That was her word for everything I did this summer. Extra for running track when I could've been hanging out. Extra for taking this job at the fair. Extra for caring that she'd been ditching me for the popular crowd since June.

The operator, some guy named AJ with a backwards hat and wire running up his neck to his earbuds, raised his eyebrows at me. "You good? You don't have to—"

"I got it." I climbed onto the bull, gripping the handle so tight my knuckles turned white. My heart was already running a marathon against my ribs. This wasn't even about the bull anymore. It was about everything I'd been too scared to say all summer.

The bull jerked to life beneath me, bucking and spinning. I lasted maybe three seconds before flying off, landing in a heap of embarrassed laughter. AJ killed the machine and offered me a hand up.

"Not bad for a first timer," he said. "Most people don't even last that long."

Maya was shaking her head, already turning away. "This is why I didn't want to come. You always make everything so weird."

Something in me finally snapped. All the fake smiles, all the times I'd let her make me feel small, all the bull she'd been feeding me about how we were still friends.

"You know what's weird?" I said, my voice shaking but steady. "Hanging out with someone who treats me like I'm embarrassing just for being myself. That's weird."

Maya froze. "What?"

"I'm done apologizing for being 'extra.' I like running. I like this job. And I like people who don't make me feel small for caring about stuff." I grabbed my bag from the ground. "Catch you later, Maya."

As I walked away, AJ called out, "Hey, you want another round? On the house."

I turned back and grinned. Maybe some things were worth holding onto. And maybe I'd just made room for the real ones.

"Yeah," I said. "Yeah, I do."