The longer I stay with the carnival, the more the charm feels less like an oddity and more like a necessity. Less like a safety net and more like a net to pull me along, forever in the wake of something bigger than myself.
“Okay,” I say, plotting my words out carefully. “My birthday is in three months. That’s plenty of time for you to get off your ass and ask her out.” Marcel opens his mouth as though to argue, but I cut him off before he can get started. “It’s plenty of time. We’ll stick a pin in this until then, but…we will make a decision about leaving on my birthday and we will stick to it. Deal?”
I hold out my hand, and I need him to take it. Even though we move around the country every few weeks, even though there are dozens upon dozens of people who would love to take my place, I’m done. Each day that has the potential to run into a Moretti is one too many. And Marcel might have Gin, and that’s great, but there’s no one here for me. Briefly my thoughts flicker to the dark-haired girl, to the wry quirk of her lips as her friend laughed her head off, to the pretty flush in her cheeks as the blond girl gave her a friendly smack. But by the end of the night, she’ll be gone, too, and in a week, so many other faces will have passed before me that I won’t even be able to remember hers.
Slowly, with none of the surety that typically flows through his movements during one of his shows, Marcel reaches out and takes my hand. “Deal,” he says. His grip is loose, and even though we’ve come to an agreement, it doesn’t seem like we have, and I feel no closer to leaving this place than I did yesterday.
Chapter Three
Emma
Jules can’t sing for shit. Unsurprisingly, it hasn’t stopped her from scream-singing her lungs out for God, Jesus, and the rest of Oklahoma to hear.
“Jules!” I have to yell to be heard over screaming children and the rush of the nearby roller coaster running on decades-old tracks. I tighten my coat, a small measure in a losing battle against the cold. “Leave the guy alone, he’s just doing his job.”
After I’d found Jules cradling a bacon-wrapped turkey leg like it was the world’s most precious cargo, we’d made our way through the carnival, working in ever-tightening spirals until we wound up here. The carnival has set up a booth to look like one of those old automated fortune-tellers. The bottom half is ornately carved wood painted a red so fiery it almost glows, and the panels of glass making up the top half are covered in swirling gold paint proclaiming Futures seen! Fortunes told! Small bulbous lights line the ceiling of the booth, filling it with a warm light, but it doesn’t hide the fact that the paint is chipping and the glass is covered in sticky, child-size fingerprints.
Inside, the poor schmuck in question stands at attention, arms held out in awkward angles like he’s going to start doing the robot at any minute. A bowler hat tilts a rakish angle over his brow, and when I take a closer look I see it’s him—the boy from earlier, the one who gave me the rose.
Jules insisted we find the booth after Tracy from our politics class told us there was a contest to see who could get the guy to break character. But five minutes and one butchered song later, the only things Jules has to show for her efforts are cheeks pinked from exertion and some angry glares from passersby.
“Em,” she pleads, giving my nickname more syllables than it deserves, “I’m just having fun.”
The wind, heavy with the sugary scent of kettle corn and some kind of meat most likely served on a stick, ruffles my short black hair until I’m sure it’s a mess. “Right,” I say, “at the expense of his poor ears. At least give him a quarter so we didn’t completely waste his time.”
The Boy in the Box’s lips twitch up, but, unable to see his eyes from beneath the brim of his hat, the effect is more sinister than he probably intends.
“Fine,” she says, again displaying her unrivaled talent at lengthening one-syllable words. She digs around her gigantic bag, and I don’t know which is more miraculous—the fact that she has a quarter or that she managed to find it in there. It’s a Broadway production as she puts the coin into the slot and throws her arms to the night sky. “Soothsayer! What does my future hold?”
The Boy in the Box springs to life as the quarter rolls down a chute and into an almost empty bowl beside him. A long finger taps the corner of his rouged mouth as though contemplating, while his other hand twitches over the small cards lining the shelf in front of him.
Finally, he pulls a card and holds it up to his temple. His dark hazel eyes close, he gives a crisp nod, and then drops it into the tray that we can access on our side of the booth. Jules squeals as she pushes her hand past the brass flap to retrieve the card. As she reads, her eyebrows furrow. She scans her fortune again. All I can see is the back of the card, printed with the delicate red swirls and loops framing a stamp of a marionette boy. At this angle, it’s impossible to tell if the puppet is dancing or falling, but the expression is gruesome, which is impressive given how few lines make up his little face.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
Jules slaps the offending fortune against the booth. “This”—her finger taps the card, her breath condensing in an angry puff on the glass—“is bullshit.” She rips it in two and the scraps flutter to the ground. The pieces read Pretty feathers do not a songbird make and I have to cover up my snort of laughter with a cough. Jules glares at me. “Come on, Emma, let’s get out of here.”
I swear the boy behind the glass is grinning, but his face is turned down and all I can see are his rounded cheekbones.
Jules whirls on her heel, her gaze landing on some boys we know from school playing a game at a nearby booth, the kind where you have to fill up a balloon with a water gun to win a prize.
“Come with,” she says. “Let’s see if we can get you a date with Chris.”
“I don’t want a date with Chris,” I say. “He smells like onions and he thinks Shanghai is a country, not a city.”
“Yeah, sorry, he’s kind of a doofus,” she says, gnawing at her lip. “Do you know he once tried to convince me that sneezing with your eyes open will make them blast out of your skull? But what about Jeremy? Or Sam? I…I want you to like it here.”
I nod and gather a deep breath, rallying. I know this is her way of trying to help me fit in, to transfer me into the carefully tended group of friends she’s spent her life cultivating. And part of me wants it, but part of me wishes it wasn’t even necessary. “I get it, I do. This is all weird and new and it’s a lot, you know? Just…give me five minutes, okay? Let me get my fortune, and I’ll catch up.”