His eyes softened. “Nothing. You didn’t do anything.” He paused. “Is this your place?”
We’d reached my trailer. It wasn’t hard to spot. Otto had spelled out Lulu in gold glitter paint along the sides. I had a brief urge to invite Lucas in, maybe sit and talk, but he was already turning away.
“Night, Lulu.” He touched my arm lightly and disappeared into the shadows.
* * *
The carnival changed a lot over the next few weeks.
Carnivorous mermaids were installed in a massive tank, with a sign that read “Brand-New Attraction.” Our happy evil clowns were replaced by clowns who carried carving knives and had a murderous gleam in their eyes. Walter hired a hag with bleeding cheeks and a howling screech to roam the carnival warning people about death. Couples emerged from the Tunnel of Terror looking groggy, bite marks on their necks. Ticket prices were jacked up one hundred percent. We were making money—lots of money—but it didn’t feel good.
I stuck to my job at the Snack Shack, but I started to see something different about the customers buying hot dogs and Cokes. Their hands shook. There was a genuinely haunted look in their eyes. Some of them were crying, especially the ones who’d staggered out of the Museum of Mirrors.
As they exited the carnival, trembling and shocked, they’d pass Walter, who would grin and hold out a hand to shake. “You had a good time,” he’d say. “Tell your friends.” And they’d nod, looking convinced, their eyes as blank and dark as Azatoth’s.
These days I was keeping a stack of college brochures under the counter. I’d always planned to enroll in business classes online and then take over the carnival from my dad. I wanted to update it, brighten the place up, maybe bring in some fireworks and dancing and technology—nothing too weird, just a little modernization. But now I was wondering if I’d have anything to come back to. The smiling young people on the brochure covers seemed to mock me—would they get where I’d come from? Would they think I was weird? How would I fit in with them? And, even more importantly, who would pay for me to go?
There was only one bright spot in the summer. Every night, Lucas came with me to feed Mephit. Walter hadn’t tried to move Mephit, but now that Azatoth was powering the carnival, there wasn’t much for our old demon to do. Lucas and I would scramble into the merry-go-round and climb down to Mephit’s pit with his cup of icy blood. He would open his glowing blue eyes and stare at us sadly, like he missed being the heart of the fair. Like he missed Dad and how things used to be.
I would pet him on the nose. “You’re not the only one.”
After that, Lucas and I would go and talk. It wasn’t a planned thing, but something about having him around made me realize how much I didn’t know what normal teenage girls were like. Sometimes, when they watched their boyfriends lose games on the midway and stamp and swear, they’d look over at me, and our eyes would catch for a rueful second. Then I liked them, and I’d think about what it would mean to go to high school in a real building and not online.
But I didn’t long for it. I’d grown up in the dust and smell and music of the carnival, and that was home to me. It was why those college brochures scared me so damn much, but it was also why I looked forward to the nights, when I could talk to Lucas.
We’d sit on the dry grass under the big summer moon, eating shaved ice from the Snack Shack, or sticky-sweet cotton candy. We had an unspoken pact not to talk about anything related to our parents or the carnival. We talked about music—I knew some, because it blared from the speakers of the rides—and about the places we’d been. I’d been all over America, seen every state, from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Tappan Zee.
Lucas had been all over the world. He told me about the Eiffel Tower and I told him about the Paris casino in Las Vegas. He told me about Stonehenge and I told him about Carhenge. He told me about eating lemon gelato on the Amalfi Coast and I told him about the oil spill I’d seen on the Gulf Coast. I found out that he laughed a lot, actually, and he was good at making me laugh, too. Enough that I didn’t mind that sometimes we were up so late I’d see the sunrise.
I was fighting off a yawn while dishing up snow cones on a Wednesday night when I heard a yell. It sounded like a yell of pain. A familiar yell.
I dropped the paper cone full of ice and dashed past my puzzled customer toward the midway, where the yell had come from.
It was Lucas.
Walter had been giving him all the crappiest jobs—cleaning up after shows in the Big Top, washing down the merry-go-round, Windexing the Museum of Mirrors.
Tonight he’d been the “victim” in the dunk tank, and a lot of town girls had lined up to drop the hot guy into the water. I didn’t blame them. I did, however, blame the carnivorous mermaid who’d been hiding in the tank. She’d bided her time and then taken a bite out of Lucas’s ankle.
By the time I arrived, people were shouting and Lucas was climbing over the side of the tank. He’d yanked off the collapsible seat and used it to fend off the mermaid. She was drifting around, holding her elbow and glaring.
“Everything’s okay, folks! Nothing to see here!” I called as I helped Lucas to his feet. His ankle was bleeding, though it was hard to tell how much, since the blood had mixed with the water. He looked dazed. “Come with me,” I hissed, and steered him away as fast as I could toward my trailer.
* * *
Lucas sat on a pile of towels on the end of my bed as I put the finishing touches on his bandage. He’d used up the rest of my towels drying himself off, and his black hair stuck up like duck fluff around his head.
“Walter’s going to be pissed,” he said, as I stood up, dusting off my hands. It was an unwieldy contraption of Band-Aids and gauze, but I figured it would hold.
“He’ll be glad you’re okay,” I said, surprised. Lucas glanced around my trailer. It was strange for me to realize that he’d never been inside it before. It was my sanctum, my private space, where no one could bother me. A velvet bedspread covered the bed, and everywhere else there was cloth and tape and sewing supplies. When you’re always on the move, it’s hard to buy clothes, so I had learned to make my own. That night, I was wearing a fifties circle skirt with pink poodles and a short red sweater.
I wondered if Lucas thought it was weird, not like a normal teenage girl’s room. After all, it was a caravan, meant to be hitched to a truck and dragged along the highway. Then again, if Lucas didn’t realize by now that I wasn’t a normal teenage girl, he never would.
He shook his dark head. “My stepdad doesn’t care. Not really.”
I sat down on the bed, not too close to him. “I’m sorry he’s been giving you the crap jobs. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t care about you.”
He turned toward me. His eyes reminded me of lime snow cone syrup. “Can I tell you something no one else knows?”
I nodded.
“My mom didn’t die. She ran off and left. Abandoned me and Walter.” He studied the bandage on his ankle. “It was years ago, but she’s never tried to call or see how I’m doing or anything.”
I was shocked silent.
“I’ve been a burden to Walter since then. All he wanted was to get back into the carnival business. But he had to wait for me to be done with high school. I graduated in May.”
“So … you’re going to college in the fall?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t decided.” His eyes had darkened. Now they were more the color of pine needles.
I reached out and took his hand. “You couldn’t be a burden to anyone. I’ve seen how hard you’ve been trying to help out—taking those jobs and all. No one who was a burden would do that.”
Our eyes locked. He leaned forward, and I leaned forward. Our lips were a millimeter apart. I could feel him breathing. I couldn’t move. It felt like my whole body had locked up in anticipation.