Sidney gestures to the crowd, coffee spilling from his cup in a pale arc. Some of it spatters on the bare legs of one of the bright redheads who work the cotton candy booths, but Sidney ignores her glare. “Do you really think there’d be this much fuss otherwise?”
There were a lot of people gathered here. “Okay, fine. Let’s say I believe you, and this never happens. Why did it happen now? And to that poor dog? Everyone keeps going on about the charm and how it protects everyone, but this doesn’t seem very protected.”
“That is an excellent question, Emma,” Sidney says as he stares at me. I don’t like it. It’s not predatory, like the night he tricked me, but there is more to it than I can parse out at the moment. But like the showman he is, his expression switches, going from lost in thought to jovial carnival performer in a heartbeat. “But I thought I told you to hold all hard questions until I had more coffee.”
We’re silent as Mrs. Potter passes us, her gentle sobbing the only sound. I reach out and grab her hand as she goes by, giving her fingers a quick squeeze. Her smile is watery, barely more than her hot-pink lips pressing together, but at least I offered some comfort for the poor woman.
“So,” Sidney says as he pushes off the trailer. “I hear you and Benjamin had a run-in with the Fabulous Moretti Brothers.”
Sidney walks deeper into the yard, and, since I don’t have anything better to do, I follow. I wish it was warmer, and that my shudder didn’t look like I did it out of fear from hearing their name. “Yeah. Assholes.”
Sidney runs his hands over his face and through his hair. “I’m going about this all wrong. You need to take a few nights off from the box.” I start to protest, but he holds up a hand to stop me. “Look, I know, okay? I know that all you want is to get out of there. But taking a couple of days to acclimate to the carnival isn’t going to hurt you. If anything, it’ll make you better, smarter. Seeming like you fit in is part of the illusion that makes it easier to trick someone. Trust me.”
“‘Trust me,’ says the guy who pushed me from a Ferris wheel.”
A half scowl twists up his mouth while he tries to find the right thing to say, though I don’t know that there is a right thing to say in an instance like this. But ultimately, he just shrugs. “I’m only staying on to help. If you don’t want me to help you, tell me, and I’ll leave.”
I stop walking and look at him. He jams his hands into his pockets and stops beside me. I can’t tell if he means it or not. If he really stayed on because of me. Do real human feelings lurk beneath the shallow surface that only seems to be concerned with eating every meal he missed out on in the time he was trapped by the curse? But then his gaze is caught by something past my shoulder. It’s Benjamin and a blond woman who looks incredibly like him, walking away from Mrs. Potter’s trailer.
Oh.
Oh.
“Are you really staying for me, or does it have something to do with her?”
That snaps him out of it. “Huh? Wait, what? Ben’s mom? Audrey? No. No, I’m staying to help. It’s part of the deal. Even if you did pass on the curse tonight, you wouldn’t get to leave. You have to help your successor. It’s not a real rule, but it’s more of an honor code kind of thing, so stop looking for a double meaning behind this”—he waves his arms emphatically around himself—“and just let me help you.”
But there’s something in his tone, in the way his eyes won’t meet mine. He’s lying. Again.
We leave the yard and near the carnival grounds. Mrs. Potter won’t perform tonight, but the show must go on. As the performers and workers drift away from the little funeral, the carnival slowly comes back to life. Two women running games next to each other hose the grass and mud off the fronts of their booths. Leslie and Lars pass us on the path, the big man bent over nearly double in order to better hear the tiny ringmaster. We stop where Gin and Whiskey are stretching, getting ready to run through their paces. A man who must be their father leads a white horse with speckled-gray haunches around a circle.
“Listen,” Sidney says, eyes firmly locked on the horse making its way around the ring. “Some people think that the curse is just transferred with a kiss. Don’t correct them.”
I nearly stumble I stop so fast. “Why wouldn’t I—”
“Because,” Sidney says, his words sharper than I’ve ever heard them. “You can use it. To protect yourself.” He drapes his arms over the metal tubing of the makeshift fence and watches the girls run through their act.
“Why would I need to protect myself by threatening people with the curse?”
“You never know, Em. Never know.”
Sidney doesn’t seem to have anything to add, and I don’t feel like pressing him. The next time the girls’ dad leads the horse around the circle, the girls run up a brightly painted ramp and jump onto the moving horse’s back. They wobble for a second and I’m sure that one of them is going to fall. But then, with a smooth bend of her arm, Gin has Whiskey balanced while making it look like it was part of the act in the first place.
As the girls ride off to the far side of the ring, Audrey and Ben walk into view, and I take a better look at them. So Audrey is Benjamin’s mother? The more I study them, the more apparent it seems. Ben has a narrower nose, a different line to his mouth. Their hair is the same, and so are their eyes, but then Ben has those charming glasses where Audrey seems fine without.
Sidney can’t stop staring at Audrey, even though Whiskey is now balancing on one leg on the back of the trotting horse. Her balance never wavers, and neither does Sidney’s gaze.
Chapter Thirteen
Emma
The carnival creeps across Texas, and I’ve spent the last month doing the only thing that makes the carnival bearable—watching Benjamin build and paint. The painting in particular is fascinating. On one gray November morning, I watch him from my perch on a nearby sawhorse.
“Do you want to paint?” he asks.
I shrug, and he looks from me to the spindly brush in his hand.
“You seem like you want to. Don’t you?”
Neat dots of color sit on his plywood palette. They’re fresh, barely muddled. His strokes are sure and steady. A smudge of bright sky blue mars the back of his hand, and now that it’s dry, it cracks and peels as his skin moves beneath it. “I used to paint a little. Before. But these aren’t exactly the hands of a painter.”
I hold out one pale hand. My fingers flex and jerk, and there’s a fine tremor that runs down the length of my arm. Sometimes it scares me when I realize I’m almost used to it. If I tried to paint a straight line, I’d fail. If I tried to mix the colors, I’d drag the brush through three colors accidentally and mar the pristine circles.
These are the hands of a disaster.