Lucy watched in relief as the bright yellow-orange of the sun finally dipped below the horizon. The temperature had hit 96 degrees at one point and walking solely on steaming blacktop all day through the huge amusement park had really taken its toll. Her shirt clung to her back and she could faintly see the salty residue resting on her skin.
After hours of waiting next to scads of strangers in queue after queue for rides that only lasted 90 seconds, Lucy was elated to finally be heading toward the shuttles that would carry her to the massive parking lot that was ridiculously far away from the park’s entrance. Air conditioning and a shower sounded sweet as honey about now. As much as she loved the thrill of twisting and corkscrewing through steel tracks at 80 miles per hour, she was beginning to think that battling crowds on the midway and dealing with their close proximity wasn’t really worth it anymore. What happened to the days when she would be the first one in and the last one out and still be wanting just one more ride? Nowadays she was exhausted and ready to bolt for the gate a few hours after arriving.
Maybe it was just her imagination, but the closer she was getting to the exit, the denser the crowd seemed to become. She turned her head left, then right, and deducted that her mind was not playing tricks on her. It seemed that the majority of the park-goers had hijacked her idea of leaving a little early to get a jump start on traffic. Pondering this, Lucy didn’t realize that everyone walking in front of her had stopped and she almost found herself with a face full of a woman’s hair that was overly frizzy from the humidity. She stumbled to a halt just before having an embarassing collision, but the two distracted children behind her couldn’t avoid slamming into the back of her legs. She turned to make sure they were okay and it was then that she noticed the mob that was forming around her. Hundreds of people were filling in on both sides and she soon found that only mere inches of space seperated her from so many unfamiliar bodies.
Lucy quickly looked for the friends she was with and she spotted them in a clump about 10 feet away in the same boat she was in. They waved to her and put their arms up as if to say, “what can you do?” It was then that she began to feel it. That all too familiar uneasiness that would soon turn to sheer panic. These people were close. Way too close. And it was loud with the white noise of a crowd all talking at once. She felt sandwiched in and didn’t know how the air could get any thicker, but it did. It was heavy and suffocating.
No one was moving. The shuttles must have filled up. How long will they have to wait for them to come back empty? Lucy could feel sweat trickling down the back of her neck. Unable to keep still anymore, she shifted her weight from foot to foot. Someone bumped into her and knocked her off balance and she could feel her skin prickle with annoyance. How long had they been standing still? 5 minutes? An hour? In these close quarters it felt nauseatingly longer than that.
She cracked her knuckles; her unconcious habit when her nerves were working overtime, and they were about shot. The squeezing crowd, the static sound of a thousand voices, the atmosphere that had become soup. It was getting harder to breathe. Where. Is. That. Bus?! Her heartbeat pounded in her chest and her legs were weakening. The leftover dizziness from multiple rollercoaster rides had her spinning, forcing her to put her hands on either side of her head to try to make it stop. She wanted to cry or scream but each time the urge came, she swallowed it down, again and again, until she could no longer fight it. Lucy closed her eyes and her mouth opened slightly to let whatever was churning in her gut come out, but before she could, there was a whooping hurrah from the crowd.
Everyone shuffled forward a few inches, then a few feet, and suddenly Lucy was caught in a surge that pushed her straight into her friends and toward the closest shuttle bus. “Oh, thank God”, she muttered. The tightness in her chest released and she could breathe again. She was still flustered, but grateful to be out of the horde. She silently approached the bus with her friends laughing around her, and climbed aboard. She inched along the aisle and wiped the sweat from her forehead. The bus lurched into motion while several people were still standing, causing them to bounce off each other like a pinball machine. As she regained her balance, reality dawned on her. There were no more seats available and here she was again, cemented in between strangers.
The alarm swelled inside her as the vicious circle of anxiety powered on.