By a Charm and a Curse(24)

Lars takes the controller from me. His giant hands make it look like it should control a toy car, not a carnival ride. “Nicely done, Ben,” he says. I try not to preen. Praise from Lars is a rare thing.

“Afternoon, boys.” Leslie stomps up the steps to stand beside us on the platform. “I hate to run you off, Ben, but I need to talk to Lars for a second.”

“Sure,” I say, tossing a few odds and ends back into my tool kit. But as I stand, my tools in hand, I can’t make myself leave. “Actually, Leslie, I have something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about.”

Her pale brows lift. “Oh? Do we need to speak in private?” She gestures toward the stairs, but I shake my head.

“No. I don’t mind if Lars is here.”

“Okay then,” Leslie says, leaning her hip against the guardrail. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t think the Morettis should be here.” Once that first statement is out, everything else follows in a rush. “I mean, I understand that they’re talented and that they bring in crowds, but they’re kind of jerks, you know? And the other day, I caught Lorenzo trying to convince one of the new kids that if he stuck his hand in a trash can fire, the charm would save him.”

Leslie’s eyes go wide, but she doesn’t say anything, as though she knows I’m not quite done. And I’m not. I want to tell her that they’re not the kind of people who belong here, that they don’t appreciate what the charm does for them, but it’s too hard to find the words to explain that don’t also make me seem petty. So I shrug and say, “That’s all. Thought you should know.”

Leslie blows out a breath as she steps away from the guardrail, gaze trained on the well-worn wood we’re standing on. When she looks at me, she’s as serious as I’ve ever seen her. “Thank you for telling me, Benjamin, and thank you for stopping Lorenzo from hurting that employee. You see or hear anything else, let me know, and I’m going to keep an eye on them, okay?”

I nod, even though I want more than that. I want them gone, even if I myself don’t plan to stay very much longer, because the brothers feel like a splotch, a tarnish on this place. “Thanks, Leslie,” I say as I collect my tool kit and leave.

Suddenly I feel tired, as though confessing to Leslie has physically drained me. The cut on my hand throbs, but I still have work to do, especially if I don’t want to catch heat from Mom. And in particular, I need to power through if I don’t want her to keep me from working on the box.

The fortune-teller’s box is the one task that has always fallen to me, ever since I was old enough to use the power saw unsupervised. When I was thirteen, I rebuilt the thing from scratch. I know it’s silly, but I’d almost be offended if Mom decided to take that away from me, and given how weird she’s been about the new girl, she just might. So I know that if she catches me slacking off even a little, she’ll have a reason. I wrap the bandage on my hand a little more tightly and get back to work.

After lunch, I find the box set up along the outer perimeter of attractions, near Lars’s Ferris wheel. I don’t know why the crew decides to change the setup every now and then—maybe just for the hell of it—but they do. I also know that some old superstition keeps most of the vendors from setting up close to the Ferris wheel, and in this spot, the little red booth sticks out like a blemish at the edge of the carnival.

They just dropped the box down, not caring about how it might look to passersby, so I wipe some dust from the base and pull the weeds poking from underneath. I check her out. She needs a good cleaning; fingerprints dot the glass, and dirt clings to the molding at the base. There are a couple of chips, and the gold paint has flaked off the glass in a few spots, but nothing too bad. I’ve just climbed in through the door at the back to test the bulbs when someone yells at me.

“Hey! What are you doing to my booth?”

My head crashes into the drawer under the shelf. As I rub the throbbing away, I take a look at the girl yelling at me.

It’s the new girl. Her eyes widen in recognition when she sees me but narrow again in righteous suspicion. Full lips tug downward to an almost frown, and I wonder what they look like when she’s smiling. She’s been raiding Gin’s closet; I’d always thought Gin was thin, but now that I see one of her sweaters swallowing this girl whole, I can tell Gin has muscles and strength to her. A twitch rattles her whole body to the left, and she hugs herself tightly.

“Just checking it,” I say. “For maintenance.”

“Oh,” she says, her shoulders easing back to a more relaxed position. She looks around, taking in the Ferris wheel and the other booths standing a short distance away. “Do, um… Do you think you could move it? I need to be by the midway, where there’s more people.”

“Yeah.” My mind is already in motion, trying to figure out the best place for the booth and where I last saw the dolly. Which is halfway across the yard. “I just have to get the dolly. But I swear I’ll have it in place before we open tonight. Want to show me where you’d like it?”

She smiles so quickly that I barely catch it, like a star blazing across the night sky. But then she says, “That’d be great.” Her gaze darts toward the ground, lingering on the random paintbrushes jutting out from my tool kit. “You aren’t the one who painted those big murals out front, are you?”