For the finale, Mrs. Potter brings out a hoop perched atop a six-foot pole. After it’s placed in the gaps between ramps, Mrs. Potter flicks open her heavy silver Zippo and sets the hoop alight. Emma’s hand finds mine. She’s worried. But Mrs. Potter and her dogs have done this act nearly every night without so much as a singed whisker. So I grip her hard fingers tight, hoping she feels the comfort there.
Each of the dogs, from the poodle to the lethargic bulldog to the three dachshunds, leaps through the flaming hoop as Toffrey runs circles around the ring. When the last whippet gracefully lands on the other side, Mrs. Potter says, “Toffrey, baby, show the people how it’s done!”
Toffrey runs up the ramp and sails through the hoop. But he doesn’t stop there. The dog pivots at the end of the ramp and immediately does it again. His pink tongue lolls out of the side of his mouth, and I know it’s impossible, but I swear the little dog is eating up the applause.
He turns again for what I know is his last jump. But just as he hits the crest of the ramp, he lets out a yelp, paws skittering out from beneath him.
And then he falls.
The tent goes silent, and I’m on my feet before the thought to go help fully forms. But Emma is quicker.
She’s in the dirt kneeling beside Toffrey before even Mrs. Potter. Her pale hands flit about the small furry dog, and when she stands, something cold and solid lodges in my throat.
“That’s all, folks!” Emma says with hollow enthusiasm. “We thank you for coming out and hope you get home safe.”
She begins to usher those closest to the ring toward the exits, and one of the stagehands starts up some music. I carefully step around the other dogs, who sit at attention, small whines leaking from their strained mouths. Mrs. Potter hovers over the still dog on the ground.
Get up, I think. You always get up.
But he doesn’t.
It’s not until Mrs. Potter scoops the small body off the ground and I see his furry little head flop sickeningly to the side that I accept it.
Toffrey is dead.
Chapter Twelve
Emma
The following morning, the yard is quiet and still. All the hustle and bustle has completely disappeared. The workers aren’t working. The cooks in the cook shack shuffle about with as few movements as necessary. Even the wind has died, leaving the tall grasses surrounding the backyard motionless.
Only one sound permeates the yard—the high, mournful keening of Mrs. Potter’s surviving dogs.
I ache to join them. To stand by Benjamin, to tell Mrs. Potter I’m sorry, to do something. But a rock sits in the pit of my stomach, anchoring me in place. So I hang back, sticking to the edges of the crowd drifting toward Mrs. Potter’s trailer.
I find Sidney lounging against one of the nearby trailers, watching the scene from beneath his dark hair. I want to tell him what I saw. Or maybe let these hiccup-y sobs trying to rattle their way out of me do just that. But what right do I have to these emotions when I’ve barely been with the carnival a week? So I pull my spine up straight and act as though it’s a regular day and my heart isn’t breaking for Ben, Mrs. Potter, and the little white dog who comforted me when I needed it the most.
Sidney gives me a grunt by way of greeting. It’s before eight, so I nod toward the paper cup full of milky coffee and ask, “What cup are you on? Two? Three?”
“Two,” he says, never taking his eyes from the trailer before us. “And please keep all questions that are harder than that one until after I get another cup in me. I’m useless until I’m on cup number three.”
“So you must have been useless the whole time you were in the box, huh?”
That bit of smart-assery earns a mildly amused glare in return but that’s it. When he doesn’t say anything, I add, “You’re up early for someone who doesn’t have to be.”
“Can’t seem to sleep longer than four hours,” Sidney says. “And I don’t dream.” He frowns, a sharp line settling in between his brows. “At least, I don’t remember them if I do.”
I don’t know what to say to that, so I say nothing and turn back to the funeral and the churn of feelings in my belly.
After Leslie calms Mrs. Potter down, Lars picks up the small, cloth-wrapped body, and they bury the dog several feet away from the edge of the yard.
The reedy grasses brush up against my legs, the touch so soft I only register it’s happening because I can hear the dry rasp it makes. Mrs. Potter, who had seemed as immutable as her blazing-purple hair, is shaking, her shoulders heaving with ragged breaths. I want to do something but I don’t know what. It feels like anything I might say would be insincere. I knew her terrier better than I knew her. But the dogs’ howling has plucked at some cord deep inside me, and it reverberates with the ache of loss.
Ben had been shocked. Everyone had, but Ben had seemed particularly fond of the dog. The fuzzy white terrier had slipped off a ramp and didn’t get up. The moment after the fall hung in the air like a bead of water about to drop from a leaf, fat and heavy with promise. Then everyone sprang into action.
The customers were quickly ushered into another tent by one of the clowns. Everyone else—Benjamin, Mrs. Potter, a grizzled-looking clown who had stayed back—all hovered over the dog, waiting. I don’t think they were expecting a zombie dog resurrection, but it was more like they couldn’t believe a dog could die in the first place.
Even now, a sense of disbelief pervades the carnival. It’s in the way people slowly shake their heads and let their sentences trail off before completion. It’s in the blank stares into nothingness, the startled faces when someone tries to catch another’s attention. A few nervous glances are thrown my way, but I can’t tell if it’s because they think the accident was my fault or if they still hadn’t gotten a good look at me. Common sense tells me it isn’t the former. Self-doubt tried to convince me it is.
“I feel like I’m still missing something,” I say, watching Sidney as he sips from his cup. Sometimes I think I miss food so much that I’ll go crazy if I can’t eat. But this body doesn’t get hungry. And when I tried to sneak a bit of cotton candy, it stuck to my desert-dry tongue like cobwebs. Other times I feel so detached that it almost scares me that I’ve changed so much in such a short period of time.
Sidney looks in my direction but not at me, like he’s occupied with something else. “You know those signs some places have that say something like ‘Ten days since our last accident’?”
I nod.
“Okay. Well, imagine the carnival has one of those. Except instead of a number of days, try the word ‘never.’ All right, ‘never’ may be an exaggeration, but we’ve gone years and years and years without something like this happening.” He stares off at Leslie leading Mrs. Potter away, with Lars and Ben herding the pack of howling dogs. “Years.”
“Bullshit,” I say, already sick of Sidney’s hyperbole for the day.