So Ben gathers up the trash, and it seems like he doesn’t know what to do with it as he tries to climb down the steps of the wagon. I laugh a little before taking it from him, crouching to be closer to eye level before handing the torn streamers and empty bottles to him once he’s on the ground. His fingers linger over mine as he takes the crumpled paper back.
If it weren’t for the curse and this stranger’s body, I’d kiss him. I’d close the last few inches that separate us and shut my eyes and press my mouth to his. I’d run my fingers through his hair, to see if it was fine or coarse, relish in the way it shifts through many shades of gold in the light. Let his breath mingle with mine in a dizzy swirl between us. Find out what he tastes like. If it weren’t for the curse and Sidney, it would be my first kiss, and it would be a wonderful one.
But I don’t, because why kiss him, if I can’t feel it? If he’d just be pressing his soft mouth against my unyielding one? And somehow, my kiss feels more dangerous now, like it’s a trigger. Ben should be safe, if I kiss him, but even so, I don’t trust myself, trust my traitor lips. Slowly, reluctantly, we pull apart. I sit down on the edge of the wagon so I can watch him go, and, even more reluctantly than when we pulled apart, Ben turns to leave.
It’s then we notice his mother has been watching us from across the alley.
Chapter Fourteen
Benjamin
Fury is a terrible, red-winged thing in the shape of my mother.
She caught me with Emma. And not only did she catch me with the girl she wanted me to stay away from, she caught me making moon eyes at said girl as I thought about kissing her. God. To make matters worse, I had to ditch Emma with no explanation. Though I bet Mom’s glare spoke volumes.
Mom’s silent as we walk through the rows of trailers. It’s like everyone could sense the coming rage and bunkered down in their homes. Not a word is said as she holds open the door of the Airstream for me. Then there is an abundance of noise. Cabinets bang shut. Doors open only to be immediately slammed. She’s a whirlwind of futile activity.
I sit down on the booth of the dinette. She’s pacing across the five short steps from where I sit to the door of her bedroom when I make the mistake of speaking. “I don’t get why you’re so upset.”
“Oh, oh no. Don’t you— That’s not…” Her words dissolve into an angry sort of growl.
“Mom, if you want to be pissed, fine, be pissed. But you have to tell me why.”
She sits on the opposite side of the booth, and I turn to face her. Her knees knock into mine.
“You want to know why this is a big deal?” she asks. She cradles her head in her hands and it’s a long time before she speaks again. When she does, she talks to the table and not me. “Tell me the story of why I joined the carnival.”
Is she trying to distract me? “I know why you joined the carnival, Mom.”
She raises her head to look at me. “You only know part of it. Do it. Tell me.”
I push my glasses up my nose and stare at her, but she’s not backing down. It’s in the hard, straight line her eyebrows make, in the way her mouth is pressed together.
“Seriously?” I flatten my palms on the tabletop. “You were eighteen and your uptight parents didn’t like that you wanted to work outside instead of in the secretarial pool. So you ran away. Leslie’s dad let you join the carnival and eventually you became master carpenter.”
Mom mirrors my stance; her palms press against the table until her fingernails seem bloodless. It’s like this is the Singer fighting stance.
“That’s mostly true. I was a girl, in a time when women were supposed to be housewives and happy about it, who left home because my parents disagreed with my career choice. It wasn’t unheard of for a woman to work in a field that required manual labor, though. And I’m sorry if I’ve vilified your grandparents all this time, Benjamin, but that’s not the whole story.”
The curtains shift in the breeze, and they catch her gaze. She stares at the milky moonlight as she continues. “Like most stories where a girl runs away from home, there was a boy involved.”
At first I almost don’t believe her. It’s too weird to acknowledge there was anyone besides Dad in her life. But I’m not naive enough to think that there wasn’t.
“He was so handsome. Curly hair like you wouldn’t believe and a smile that would make an angel think about sinning. But his family had upset my family, and they didn’t want us talking to each other. We thought we were our generation’s Romeo and Juliet.”
Her expression darkens, her eyebrows furrowing together. “He convinced me to run away. He suggested the carnival. He got us jobs here. Or rather, I became the carpenter’s apprentice while he bounced around trying to find a job he actually could do. One month. We were here one month when the stress of being on our own together got to him, and instead of trying to work things out…” Her voice breaks and wobbles. “He got drunk and kissed the Girl in the Box.
“It was Sidney, Ben. I ran away for Sidney.”
Sidney? Imagining Mom being with smart-ass Sidney instead of Dad is like trying to jam a square peg into a round hole. And if she’d stayed with him? I wouldn’t even exist.
“The curse took the thing that I valued so much that I was willing to leave everything behind. I stuck around for thirty years. Thirty years of watching him half-heartedly trying to get a replacement, of him coming up with crackpot schemes to get out of the box instead of just passing the damned curse along like everyone had before him. I left my parents, my friends, my everything only to have the life I was building ruined a month later. And then, when I couldn’t take seeing him trapped in that box any longer, I left again. I abandoned the carnival and found your father, who made me so happy that I forgot about this place. I had you. And then, because the real world is harsh and painful and isn’t protected by a charm like this stupid carnival, your father died in that car crash and you almost died, too. So that is why this is a big deal. That is why I want you to stay away from her.”
She takes in a big, gulping breath of air. Tears line her eyes and make her blue irises glow. “The curse doesn’t get to take you, too.”
I stand so quickly that the tabletop rattles, making my mother press against the back of the booth. “Are you telling me that the whole reason you can’t trust me around Emma is because Sidney couldn’t keep it in his pants?”
The flinch shifts her expression from shocked to angry, but I can’t stop. Not when she’s just dropped this bombshell on me.
“You mean to tell me that you don’t trust me because Sidney’s a jackass? Because you made a mistake by falling for the wrong person and think I will, too? That is not how things work in the real world, Mom. You have to let me be my own person. And you should trust Emma. She’s not going to do to me what Sidney did to you.”
At least, I don’t think she would.
Anger roils in my belly the moment the idea forms in my head. Emma would never betray me like that. And I hate the fact that I thought it for even a second.