“I don’t know why I did it, honestly,” he continues. The ground has become less interesting, and he’s moved his gaze to the scurrying laborers who have begun to open up the cook shack for the night. “We’d had a fight. Thinking back, I’m sure it was that the two of us were nervous. We’d just run away from home. When we got here, we told Nick—Leslie’s dad—that we were a couple, so that’s how they treated us. They found a trailer we could share, and it’s hard living in close quarters, especially when you’re still learning each other.”
He sighs at the memory. “A fight was inevitable, and when it came, it was a big one. I hadn’t met everyone in the carnival yet, and so when the girl came over to console me, I just thought she was being nice, maybe wanted to fool around. Maybe I wanted to fool around. It wasn’t that she was prettier than Audrey, just that she wasn’t angry at me like Audrey. I hadn’t been trusted with the knowledge of the charm and the curse yet, so I had no idea she was the Girl in the Box.” His hazel eyes are dotted with the small golden lights of the cook shack. Benjamin's and Audrey’s yelling still filters over to us. “It was a moment of weakness. She was pretty and I was young and stupid. It didn’t take long. And when Audrey found out…
“Look. I know that you’re not after Benjamin like that. And I would talk to her, but she doesn’t want me talking to her at all anymore. I just”—he gazes out across the field where the sun has begun its slow descent—“I only hope that even if she doesn’t want me anymore, that I can do something to get her to forgive me, at some point.”
We both watch in silence as preparations are being made for the carnival to spend the night. Gin walks by, leading her horse in some exercise, followed shortly by a heavily bandaged Whiskey with her horse. Lars barks out instructions, making sure all trailers are parked safely and giving directions to the nearest town to those who want to explore. People stroll around chatting, hopefully about happier topics than ours.
His voice wavers when he speaks again, and I catch a glimpse of unshed tears glittering in his eyes before he turns away. “I just wish I could fix things.”
“I think,” I say as I try to repress more twitching, “that she has to want things to be fixed first.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Benjamin
I didn’t even wait until the door was closed before I began yelling.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I ask.
“What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with you, Benjamin?” My mother’s voice fills the trailer until it feels like I’m standing in the eye of Hurricane Audrey.
“It’s not like that,” I say. “I know you’re afraid that she’ll try to trick me into taking the curse, but Emma isn’t going to do that, okay? She needs a friend.”
“She’s only after one thing, and it is getting out of that box any way possible. And all she has to do is kiss you.”
The angry pounding of my heart reaches into my temples and the tips of my fingers. “It takes more than a kiss! And even so, Emma wouldn’t do that to me.”
She slams her hand down on the small counter, knocking the tiny vase on the windowsill into the sink, where it shatters. “It is that easy, Benjamin! In seconds you can lose your life, lose your freedom. Stay away from that girl, Benjamin Singer.”
I take a deep breath in through my nose and force the yell building inside me to a more reasonable tone. “I am an adult, and I can decide for myself who I will or won’t spend my time with.”
“You are not an adult for another three weeks, and so long as you live with me, you will do as I say.”
I stare at the shards of pottery in the sink before turning back to her. “I don’t know why you insist on treating Emma like she’s any other Girl in the Box!”
“Of course she’s like the other Girls in the Box!” My mother’s teeth are bared like fangs. “Don’t be such a rube, Sidney.”
There it is.
I give her a minute to see if she realizes what she’s said, but she doesn’t. Her breathing is heavy and her gaze doesn’t waver. When I do talk, I am slow, quiet, and careful. “I am not Sidney.”
We let that heavy statement sit between the two of us, growing silently. Part of me is insulted that this is what it comes down to. That all her talk of wanting to keep me safe is less about me and more about her not wanting a repeat of what he did to her years ago. I keep waiting, hoping she’ll change course, hoping she’ll prove me wrong.
She doesn’t.
So I push past her and have my hand on the door when she says, “I forbid you to leave.”
I open the door and step into the cooling night air.
Emma and Sidney watch as I approach. It looks as though my mother has gone after every person she’s been in contact with today, considering Sidney’s tearstained face. I’d feel bad for him, if it wasn’t his assholery that got me into this situation to begin with.
“I need to crash with you more permanently, if that’s okay,” I tell Emma.
She extends one pale hand toward me, and as soon as our fingers twine together I know I made the right choice. “Of course,” she says.
I don’t know who grips whose hand tighter.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Benjamin
“Hey, man, I’m driving with Gin.”
Damn.
I thwack my head on the doorframe as I stand and turn to face Marcel. “You’ve driven with Gin the last three times. Besides, I can’t ride with Mom.”
“You bloody well can!” He crosses his arms as though making a barricade against any sense I might talk into him.
“No, Marcel, I can’t!” Farther down the field, Gin and Emma wind through the parked cars and trucks, obviously headed this way. I lean in close to keep the girls from overhearing. “Mom thinks Emma’s going to trick me into taking on the curse, and I got mad and left.”
Marcel’s face drops like I’ve taken all his Christmas presents and thrown them in a fire. “Shit, man, I had no idea. Sure. Of course you should ride with us.”
I punch Marcel in the shoulder. “Thanks, man.”
Gin laughs at something Emma says, the happy, boisterous noise temporarily covering the sounds of the other carnies shouting orders and directions. A small smile cracks Marcel’s face, and if I had to hazard a guess, I’d say I’m wearing a matching one.
…
Marcel, Emma, and I watch the slow, steady crawl across Texas from the windows of the Gran Torino. At the last minute, Whiskey begged Gin to ride in the family’s SUV, because Whiskey was trying to convince their parents to let her keep a cat in the trailer and she thought Gin could help her case. I have a feeling that conversation will not go the way Whiskey thinks it will.
An axle on the truck that carries Lars’s Ferris wheel breaks in two and the alternator gives out on Mom’s truck. Those kinds of things, we have come to expect over the last few days. But not what happens to the Gran Torino.
We’re flying down the highway after a stop for gas when something heavy thumps from underneath the hood of the car. Marcel and I look at each other. I’m willing to write it off as a rock or clump of dirt that must have been kicked up from the road. Marcel and Emma continue to play some sort of game they’ve made up involving movie quotes, and I grip onto the wheel a little bit tighter, more mindful of the road in front of me.