It was late June; the flowers were at their best, standing tall in the grass. The air was humid and smelled like hot dogs and cotton candy. Lily my six year old sister was at the fair with me, her older brother Phil. Our dad used to always take us to the fair before he got sick. He was champion of the pie eating contest, six years running. He was in the hospital again so my mom gave me money and made me take Lily to the fair. At first I wasn’t too excited. See I am seventeen; I am fairly tall maybe 6’2. I used to have a mop if hair but I cad to cut it off for baseball. Anyways I had a date with the hottest girl in our junior class Peyton Smith. She was tall; she had smooth, long, brown hair and was caption of the cheerleading squad. Enough said. So of course I couldn’t cancel so I invited her to come along with us.
The fair was not what I remembered, it was so crazy! There were kids sprinting and screaming everywhere. Lily was so excited; she was too hypnotized by the pink cotton candy and merry go round to really see what existed. Peyton on the other hand didn’t look too thrilled.
First we went to the merry go round, we all went on that. It was actually kind of fun. Next Lily wanted to go onto the egg scrambler. Peyton didn’t like that ride because it gave her a headache. I’ve never heard of the egg scrambler giving some one a headache but I didn’t question her, I quite honestly didn’t care. Lily was too short to ride so I had to go on it with her. We waited and waited and waited until finally they let us onto the ride. It was just like I remember. Fun for the small people but the big person who has to sit on the inside gets smushed. I have never had to go on the inside before because my dad always did; now I feel sort of bad for wanting to go it over and over again.
When we were done there, there was a magic show. I personally could care less about an old creepy man dressing up and pulling a bird out of his hat and finding quarters from behind people’s ears but Lily wanted to go so we went. Peyton looked like she was having a god awful time. He face was not happy in the slightest but I just pretended not to notice. The man asked for a volunteer and he pulled Peyton up there. For the first time all night she actually smiled. He did the same tricks we’ve seen for years. When I thought about that and with Peyton on stage knew something bad was about to happen. It went fine. I was so happy. At the end of Peyton helping he gave her a flower and told her to smell it, and what do you think it did? It sprayed water right in her face, and then she slipped and fell off the stage. She was so mad that we had to leave right away so I snatched Lily and we took off.
Lily was wrecking my night with Peyton. Later on Peyton said she was going to have her mom pick her up. There was no way I was going to let Peyton leave so I told her no I would figure something out. What could I do? I have to watch Lily but I can’t keep having her around. So I came up with my best idea yet. I pulled her aside and gave her seven dollars. “Why are you giving this to me?” she asked. “I need you to stay away from us for a little while, Peyton isn’t having a good time and I think it’s because of you.” As soon as those words slipped my lips I knew that I had said that all wrong. Lily was very upset and ran away with the money. I don’t really blame her though, it would of hurt my feelings too but I didn’t mean it like that.
I went over to Peyton and told her what happened. She seamed almost kind of happy. “Well at least now we can actually do what we want to do.” She said. She had a point but my sister was out there in this huge carnival all by herself. “We have to find her”. Then she got really mad. She started yelling at me saying things like “Why did you even invite me on this date then!” and some worse things. She stormed off and honestly I was happy because she was a real pain in the ass. Now I had to find Lily, and finding her would be as easy as finding a needle in a hay stack.
After about thirty minutes of sprinting around I sat down on a burning hot bench. I thought about where she could have gone, her favorite rides, favorite places. I thought back to when our dad would take us but we had already gone on all of the rides we used to love to go on, eaten our pink fluffy cotton candy, went to the magic show then it hit me like a ton of bricks! Our dad would win the pie eating contest every year, so always wanted to be just like dad! I ran as fast as I could, you probably couldn’t even see me because I was running so fast, to the tent where they held the pie eating contest. As soon as I walked in, up on the big stage I saw her, but it wasn’t the cute sweet little Lily I was used to. This Lily looked like an animal. She was going at those pies like a loin going at a warthog, a sight that will never be unseen. She had pie from her face all the way down to her toes. Her face was flue and red from all the berries in the pies. When I finally realized what was going on it was over. They stood Lily on the top of the table and handed her a trophy. Four foot, skinny boned, blond haired, little Lily had just won the pie eating contest! The 300 pounded men at the end of the table were more surprised then I was. I ran up to her and gave her the biggest hug a brother could give a sister and apologized. She accepted the apology giving me another hug. They told us to watch as they hung her picture and her name on the wall, the same wall where our father’s pictures have hung for years, keeping the tradition alive.