Ditched

The word went out: they were ditching Kyle at the next opportunity. That opportunity presented itself almost immediately, when everyone decided to get some pizza and Kyle happened to be the next-to-last in line and while he was waiting for his slice, they all took off. And there was nothing he could do about it, because he was standing there waiting for the piece of pizza he had paid for.

David was last in line, and he didn’t see everyone else running off, and Kyle didn’t want to tell him what was going on (leaving himself all alone as a result), so David was left behind with Kyle. A lot of people didn’t like that, but Jacob (whose idea it was to ditch Kyle in the first place) said it was necessary, to rid the group of Kyle, who was bringing everybody down.

Mike, to his credit, wanted to shout out to Kyle and especially David, to warn them. But he knew that if he did succeed in warning them, and they caught up, Jacob would only find a way to ditch them later, and probably only after ditching Mike first, since obstruction of ditching is the best way to put yourself at the top of the Must-Ditch List real fast. Such is the awful, immoral, circular logic of ditching. Not matter how unjust it is, and no matter how much you prefer the ditchee to the ditcher, one has no choice but to go along, or else it’s basically suicide (if being ditched is understood as a kind of death).

The truth was, if anyone was bringing everybody down, it was Jacob, who was sulking because he had just broken up with his girlfriend in a pretty nasty way, which had him in a pretty nasty mood. It was his idea to ditch Kyle because he was angry and aggressive and Kyle was a pretty easy target, being towards the bottom of the social ladder, so to speak. It was for this reason (the social ladder) that ditching Jacob was completely out of the question—wasn’t spoken of—even though he was the main person bringing down the group, not poor Kyle, who was just hanging around, mostly, without even saying a whole lot (this, Jacob claimed, was the problem—he complained of Kyle “standing around,” contributing nothing and simply taking up space), and certainly not poor David, who had done nothing to deserve being ditched at all.

Mike suggested they head for the roller coaster next. They hadn’t been on the roller coaster yet. They had only been on the Pirate Ship and this upside-down ride called the Time Zone or something, with a picture of a crazy clock on it. He hadn’t ridden on the crazy clock ride because it spun its riders in a complete arc so that they were, at several points, upside-down, even hanging upside-down for several seconds, and Mike did not like going upside down. The roller coaster did not go upside-down and so that’s why Mike wanted to ride it. Jacob frowned and said they would go on the Hammer, which is exactly like the Time Zone, except it doesn’t have a picture of a crazy clock on it. Mike frowned and waited by the exit. He sat on the bench for a while before he realized that the ride had started and stopped a couple of times; after everyone had ridden it, Jacob had encouraged them to hop the gate and run out through the entrance, so as to finally lose Mike, who, Jacob maintained, was bringing everybody down with his stupid comments, and his refusal to go on any rides (even though he had been on the Pirate Ship).

Ben was ditched in the bathroom. Jacob planned this all ahead of time, instructing Chad to join him at the urinal, but neither was to unzip their pants, so that they could ditch Ben the moment he was too deep in his own urinary business to do anything about it. Jacob and Chad ran off and Ben kind of whimpered and turned as much as he could and watched them run off, and by the time he quickly finished and zipped up and ran outside the bathroom, they were gone.

Jacob saw his ex-girlfriend, whose name was Erica, across the park. He said he had to catch his breath and sat down for a second. Everyone else (now Rob, Tim and Chad) waited for him, frowning.

Rob was the next to be ditched, which annoyed Tim and Chad, because both of them felt they would rather hang around with Rob at this point than Jacob, but because of the power dynamics of ditching someone vs. being ditched yourself (touched upon above), they felt compelled to go along. Rob was fat and slow; the other three simply outran him, and lost him around a corner in Kiddieland. No one could explain why they were in Kiddieland; Jacob just thought it be easy to ditch someone there.

Jacob was not like this normally, which might explain how he was getting away with this, when, if you polled the group, he probably would have been voted the first person to be ditched that day, just based on his mood of the past week or so (or maybe he would have been voted second, after Kyle). Normally, Jacob was the most gregarious guy of the bunch, or one of the most gregarious, and people liked being around him. But his breakup with Erica had left him feeling nasty and worthless and powerless and used. He found he could not stand the company of his friends, who were just going on, joking around and being the same fucking idiots they always had been, like nothing had happened. And his friends were slow to adapt to this change in temperament, slow to hold it against him, which is necessary in friendships, so we can move past our best friends’ worst days without holding grudges, but which also makes days like this possible.

Chad never would have gone along with ditching Tim had he known what was going on. There was a small fire being put out at the log flume right and the three of them were watching it. (Kyle was watching them from around the corner, eating a hot dog forlornly; he had been ditched by David, who had spotted Mike and figured that was a better match for him than Kyle.) Jacob tugged on Chad’s sleeve and said “c’mon, c’mon,” and Chad thought Jacob just wanted to leave and only realized Jacob was ditching Tim when they ducked into the candy shop(pe) and Chad realized there were only two of them left.

Whenever Jacob was asked why they had ditched the person they had just ditched, he responded with a terse “they were annoying,” and then paused, and then launched into an unprompted, surprisingly long and strangely persuasive monologue detailing all the reasons that person was annoying.

Jacob finally ditched Chad getting off the roller coaster. The two of them had ridden it alone. Chad found he didn’t have all that much to say to Jacob, and wished he was with literally anyone else. Jacob’s final escape was a sloppy one. Chad saw Jacob hurdle the exit gate and run off towards the water park and Chad could have caught up if he wanted to, but he didn’t. Jacob turned around and saw Chad staring at him, so Jacob slowed to a trot and then to a walk and just glared back at Chad, like Chad was the asshole doing the ditching.

Jacob was alone now, finally. He walked up the lazy grade of the park’s long, slow hill to the ferris wheel. The ferris wheel was tucked into a little corner in the back of the park; it wasn’t very popular. It was in a terrible piece of real estate, and though the wheel itself was pretty large, it didn’t offer much of a view. On one side were dense woods and on the other was the back of the panini stand. There was no line but Jacob had to wait anyway, because there were other people on the ride. He thought he saw Erica, ordering a panini, but it wasn’t her.

The attendant finally waved Jacob onto the ride. He got into a white car with a purple seat. The ride jerked to life. Jacob was the only one on the wheel, so far as he could tell. He crossed his arms and frowned. He kept his eyes open until he got to the top and then he closed them, and then he kept them closed until he got to the bottom, when he opened them again, so that as far as his eyes could tell, he was only going up and up and up, even if his inner ear knew better.