From a nearby shack, a plague of once-cheerful rubber ducks hangs in nets from a half-caved-in ceiling. Maddie. A memory hits like a bullet, almost making Mack stagger backward with the force of it.
Maddie (at three? maybe four? Mack can’t remember and doesn’t dwell on the spike of pain and guilt that not being able to remember causes) had a bundle of yellow yarn that she tied into an impossible knot as big as her own fist, declared was a duck named Poopsie, and dragged everywhere—including the bath, where it disintegrated and clogged the drain. While Mack silently watched and Maddie wailed, their mom had quietly, furiously fished it out string by string, sweating the closer it got to when their father would get home.
Poopsie. Mack hasn’t thought of Poopsie since she had to give Maddie her own stuffed rabbit to keep her from crying herself to sleep over the loss of the imaginary duck. But here she is, playing hide-and-go-fucking-seek, and there is a shack filled with rubber ducks.
Mack doesn’t believe in signs, and even if she did, Maddie has no reason to send her a helpful one. The opposite, really. But she’s nearly out of time, so Mack climbs onto the counter, then grabs the edge of the roof. She scrambles up. Just as she suspected, the roof is concave, slowly pushed down by the elements. The wood is spongy. It creaks, but it’s only mildly alarming, not dangerous. If it caves in, she might be impaled, but she wouldn’t break any bones. Mack puts her pack down and then lies flat in the depression in the center of the sinking roof. From her vantage point she can see only the raised borders of the roof around her and the clear pale light of the dawn sky. Which means no one from the ground can see her.
Maddie taught her to hide in unexpected sight lines. And look where that got them.
Shaking it off—but not literally, as the roof creaks in protest with every movement—Mack pulls out a single protein bar and preemptively unwraps it. No water. If she has to, she’ll pee her pants. She has extra clothes she can change into before returning to the camp. If she can even find camp again. Her path here was all trees and twists, no landmarks. She should have paid better attention.
The sky blooms blue. The game has started.
Mack closes her eyes, and waits.
* * *
—
The sun creeps along, as the sun is wont to do. The occasional insect wanders across Mack’s legs, as insects are wont to do. Mack does nothing, as Mack is wont to do.
The waiting is dull and hot. With agonizingly slow movements, she pulls out a spare shirt and puts it over her face to block the sun. Her mouth is dry, her back uncomfortable against the uneven surface.
It’s fine.
She’s careful not to fall asleep, but exists in a heavy sort of limbo, almost like meditating. One of her foster families had a daughter who was into meditation. She taught Mack. They’d find Mack at all hours, sitting, eyes closed, perfectly still. “I’m pretending I’m dead,” she’d say. “I like it.” They didn’t. They passed her along soon after.
The oppressive heat builds. She’s glad she wore long sleeves and long pants to protect her skin, even though the shirt over her face is stifling. She almost doesn’t hear it over her own soft breaths. But—
A padding of feet. Not quite the right rhythm for a person. And then—even harder to hear over the new pounding in her chest—a sort of sniffling, snuffling noise. Are there animals in the park?
The sigh that follows sounds less animal, though. Soft, plodding steps continue on.
If it was an animal, it sounded like it walked on two feet. And if it was a seeker, Mack is disturbed. She expected ATVs. Boisterous shouts. Not near-silent searching. It makes her feel…hunted.
She’s not. She can leave at any time. Get up and walk out the gate. No one cares. She’s not hiding because she has to. She’s hiding because it’s the one skill that’s ever done anything for her.
“Fuck you, Dad,” she whispers. And she waits.
* * *
—
The carousel looks like something out of a horror movie. Not a high-budget one, either. One of the cheap, off-brand films doomed to languish in the depths of Netflix and the $2 bargain DVD bin at Walmart. The chipped and decaying horses are less gruesome and more pathetic. A once-jaunty sign is hanging loosely from one corner, slowly shifting in the wind. OFF TO THE RACES! it says, all the paint gone so it’s wood on wood, the letters raised. No one is racing here anymore. If anything, Rosiee wants to race away.
But she’s running low on time. Should she look for the book? No way could she find a single object in this nightmare landscape. She twists her silver rings nervously, aware of how close to dawn it is. Maybe she shouldn’t hide in such an obvious landmark, but nothing in the damn park feels obvious. No wonder it shut down. Imagine coming here with kids! The whole day would be spent trying to find something, anything, in the mess of greenery. Maybe it used to be more organized.
She climbs onto the carousel. The platform is rusted and falling apart. One of the poles holding a horse has snapped, and as she twists to avoid a fallen chunk of wood, the metal scrapes her arm, drawing blood. “Shit,” she hisses, covering it with her hand.
Food, bathroom, first-aid runs—all will get her out. She’ll be fine. A few drops of blood fall, squeezed out between her fingers. Is a single day enough time for infection to set in? Probably. She keeps going. Her steps are a careful dance around further injury as she makes her way to the center. Two panels around the closed interior of the ride have come loose. She slides between them, careful of her arm. She used to have curves—god, she loved her curves, the weight of her boobs, the soft comfort of her belly—but she’s lost too many pounds from stress and poverty. She squeezes in between the big metal gears that once ran the carousel. There’s just enough space to sit, and she can’t see outside. Tiny knife cuts of light pierce the space from above. Good enough.
She pours some water on her arm. It’s bleeding, but it’s not terrible. Won’t need stitches or anything. She wishes she had a strip of cloth to wrap around it. Thinking of wrapping herself up in things sends her mind away, though.
Sometimes when things got bad—worse, really, since they were always bad—with Mitch, she’d sit in the back of the closet and imagine herself small. Not skinnier, but actually small, like a child. And then she’d curl up, wrapped in her grandmother’s shawl, and stop being herself for a few precious moments.
After she left, he sent her photos of that shawl. Then, when she didn’t respond, he sent her a video of it burning along with all her photos.
She clutches the pendant around her neck, accidentally getting blood on it. She makes her own memories now, out of silver, out of metal. Strong and beautiful and only her own.
* * *
—