My theory is flimsy, and her expression confirms it. Before she can argue, though, I tell her, “I’ll go check it out. It’s nails, I’m sure.” Anything to keep her from doubting the carnival’s charm.
I kneel by the wheel of the truck behind us and look at the tire. The black rubber looks like the skin of some rotten fruit that’s burst. Wires and tread flay out to expose the inner covering that hugs the metal wheel. I don’t like the look of it. What’s left of each tire wraps around the wheel in tattered strips of rubber. I check out the car in front of us and its tires are identical. It’s not nails. It’s way too coincidental that the flats are all the front driver’s side wheels and all went at the same time. Four vehicles, all at different points in the procession, and each with a blown front tire. It’s too weird.
But that’s not what I tell Mom.
“Nails,” I say. I’m not sure if she buys it, but I know for a fact that Sidney doesn’t. Not even when I pull several mangled nails out to show them. I’m just hoping the brand is generic enough that Mom believes I found them on the side of the road and not in my pocket, where they’d been for ages. She twirls one bent shape between her fingers.
“Nails,” she says. In that moment, I know she doesn’t believe but wants to, same as I know I’m right that this was more than an accident, but I don’t want it to be.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Emma
When Ben climbs back into the Airstream almost an hour later, I can tell he’s upset. He rumples the hair that hangs in his face back and then smooths it out, again and again. It isn’t until his mom’s truck rumbles to life ahead of us that he sits down.
“What was it?” I ask.
“A few blown tires.” He stares at the other end of the trailer, as though he could see through the flimsy walls and metal right into the back of his mother’s head. In fact, I realize that he must have been talking to her the whole time, keeping her busy to prevent her from finding me in here.
I’m not entirely sure how that makes me feel.
But thinking like that means I have to think about things like What Ben and I Are, and Will His Mom Still Hate Me Once I’m Human Again or Does She Just Hate Me Because My Kiss is Evil. But I don’t have to think on that for long, because he begins to flip through the pages of Leslie’s journal.
“Okay,” Ben says, “I figure that if we can go back far enough, there might be a record of the first person to have been cursed.” But he doesn’t move, just stares at the cramped handwriting on the pages.
“Well,” I say, hoping to jog him out of whatever funk he’s in, “this one is some sort of, I don’t know, retelling of the carnival’s history? The person who wrote it seems to really love a tangent. The handwriting is small, and the pages are thin, a little too thin for me to really be able to handle well, so I think I need you to go through this one. That okay?”
Benjamin nods, and then folds his arms on the table and rests his head on them. His hair curls a little where it’s short at the back of his neck. I give him a minute to see if he’ll tell me what’s wrong, and, sure enough, he does. “I think…” He pauses as if to corral his thoughts again. “From what I’ve read, neither the charm nor the curse will break on its own, but the charm isn’t working like it should. There’s never been record of this happening before, so it must be some new factor. And whatever’s weakening the charm, it’s getting worse. We’re running out of time.”
I run my too-smooth fingertips over the tabletop. When they catch on the bigger flaws and cracks that mar the surface, they make a scraping sound, the rasp of one slightly textured surface running over a smooth one. If my fingers were skin and bone, they wouldn’t be making a sound at all, and at that thought, I stop. I just want to be able to touch something again, to touch it and feel it.
I’m not sure what to say. My instinct is to assure him we’re going to fix it, but we’re not, not really. What Ben and I have in store will do the opposite of fixing the charm. So all that I manage is an ineffectual, “It’ll be okay.”
“I don’t think it will be. People are going to be confused, and I know for a fact that if we succeed…” He turns to fix me with those water-blue eyes of his. “If we succeed then there are going to be a shit-ton of people mad at us, and that doesn’t count the people who might wind up sick or worse. But before that, if there’s no charm protecting the carnival, my mom is going to leave. Hell, she wants to leave now. And I’m still a minor. She’ll get the cops involved if it means keeping me with her. I told her some stupid lie about the tires being blown because of nails scattered on the road, but what if next time I can’t come up with a convenient lie? What if she takes me away before we can set you free?”
He plays with the pages of the journal, picking them up with his fingertips and letting them flutter back down, over and over. “We have to break this thing.” His mouth opens as though he wants to say something more, but the words never come. Instead, he nudges closer to me and drapes one arm on the back of the booth, his hand dangling beside my arm. Idly, almost as though he doesn’t even realize he’s doing it, his thumb traces long, looping ovals on my shoulder.
He flips to the front of the journal and starts reading. And as I watch him set to work, even though the Airstream is cold and I’m too close to the drafty window, I feel warm inside.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Benjamin
The pages of the journal are dry and brittle, like the tissue-thin leaves of a long-dead plant. In many places, the once-black ink has faded to a muddy brown, blending in with the yellowed paper. At first it seems as though the page is covered in a made-up language only the author was meant to understand. But once I start to see the patterns in the handwriting—the quirky way the author draws out the lines that slash across the letter T, the flourish in her Ms that make it look like there’s an extra hump—it becomes easier to read.
After about an hour, I find the entry we’ve been looking for.
…
Tonight Rebecca cursed her one true love, and there was nothing we could do to stop her. Mother believes in giving someone every possible chance to make the right choice. Even if it sometimes means waiting too long. To that end, Mother insisted I watch over Rebecca, but from the scrying bowl, too far away to interfere. I love Mother dearly, but I hope she knows that her belief that Rebecca would do the right thing is what brought this calamity on all of us.