“Can I kiss you at the top?”

“What would your mother think if she knew you were seeing a lapsed Catholic?”
“Ask me to bring you home,” Johnny said promptly, “so she could slip you a few tracts.”
She stopped, still holding his hand. “Would you like to bring me to your house?” she asked, looking at him closely.
Johnny’s long, pleasant face became serious. “Yeah,” he said. “I’d like you to meet them … and vice versa.”
“Why?”
“Don’t you know why?” he asked her gently, and suddenly her throat closed and her head throbbed as if she might cry’ and she squeezed his hand tightly.
“Oh Johnny, I do like you.”
“I like you even more than that,” he said seriously.
“Take me on the Ferris wheel,” she demanded suddenly, smiling. No more talk like this until she had a chance to consider it, to think where it might be leading. “I want to go up high where we can see everything.”
“Can I kiss you at the top?”
“Twice, if you’re quick.”
He allowed her to lead him to the ticket booth, where he surrendered another dollar bill. As he paid he told her, “When I was in high school, I know this kid who worked at the fair, and he said most of the guys who put these rides together are dead drunk and they leave off all sorts of…”
“Go to hell,’ she said merrily, “nobody lives forever.”
“But everybody tries, you ever notice that?” he said, following her into one of the swaying gondolas.
As a matter of fact he got to kiss her several times at the top, with the October wind ruffling their hair and the midway spread out below them like a glowing clockface in the dark.

— The Dead Zone, Stephen King