By a Charm and a Curse(3)
“But the charm would have protected me.” The new guy points a wavering finger toward Lorenzo. “He said so.”
Anger threatens to sharpen the edges of all my words, so when I speak, I try my damnedest to be calm. “That is not how it works. The charm keeps you safe as you work, makes sure you don’t trip when you perform, and keeps us healthy, keeps us young. It does not miraculously keep your skin from burning to a crisp when you purposefully shove your hand into a fire.”
“Maybe,” Lorenzo says, the word drawn out all long and lazy, “the charm worked by having you come along.” The grin he gives me makes it perfectly clear he doesn’t believe a word he’s saying.
My teeth grind. Did this really just happen? Did I just stop a guy from putting his hand into a fire? I have no idea why Leslie welcomed some stupid kid naive enough to be fooled into almost burning off his own hand into the fold, but she must have seen something special in him. “That isn’t how it works. Don’t purposefully try to hurt yourself.” The trash can lid lays on the ground at our feet, and I slam it down, smothering the flames. “And don’t listen to anyone with the last name Moretti. Now go.”
The new guy shoots a nervous glance at both of us but walks away quickly. Smartest decision he’s made all day. “Leave the new people alone,” I say.
“What do you care? You’re not really one of us.”
Anger flares, hot and bright in my gut. Just because I haven’t been with the carnival all my life and just because my family doesn’t have a mile-long list of carnivals or circuses we’ve worked for, I don’t belong. “Been here a lot longer than you have.”
Lorenzo smiles, and he has to know he’s hit a nerve. “Still doesn’t mean you belong here. You or your bitch of a mother.”
My fingers twitch into fists, but before I do anything stupid, he’s gone. As he makes his way down the aisle, chatting easily with passersby, the anger inside me continues to simmer. It’s not my fault the Morettis couldn’t get their father a job with the carnival because my mom already holds the master carpenter position. And it’s not my fault they’re arrogant pricks who think the world should be handed to them on a platter because they bring in tons of paying customers. But soon, very soon, I won’t have to put up with shit like this.
A shriek of laughter pierces through my anger. I peer between two trailers and catch a glimpse of a pair of girls—a blonde doubled over in laughter and her dark-haired friend, who looks on with some mix of pride at having made someone else laugh so hard and disbelief that anyone actually could laugh that hard. As she tugs on the other girl’s arm, trying to get her to move along, I realize this is the girl I’d seen earlier, the one whose blush lit up her pale skin like sunlight through a flower petal. The blond girl straightens, and as she does, she gives her friend a swift smack on the ass, which sets the both of them giggling. The anger I’d held in my chest doesn’t completely dissolve, but it does loosen its hold as I watch the girls walk away.
Well. I guess the carnival isn’t all bad.
Gin Connelly perches delicately on a crate next to the rusting Gran Torino Marcel and I bought, already in the glittering costume she’ll wear for her shows this evening. Beside her is an origami configuration of jutting elbows and long torso as my best friend, Marcel, strains to reach a hidden part of the engine block of our piece-of-junk clunker.
I kick at a raggedy length of rubber on the ground, and as it tumbles to a stop at her bare feet, Gin snaps to attention. “Oh hell,” she says, grabbing Marcel’s wrist to look at his watch. At her touch, he startles, nearly knocking his head into the propped-open hood of the car. “I’m late for my first show. I’ll get up with you early in the morning to practice our new routine, okay?”
She’s up and off in a flurry of sparkles, jogging down the pathway between trailers, the crowd parting to let her through. Marcel absently rubs at the smears of grease marring his dark skin with an equally greasy rag, oblivious to the fact that all he’s doing is spreading the gunk around.
“Hey, man,” he says, only managing to draw his gaze to me once she’s out of sight. He’s got it so bad for Gin that I can’t even be mad at him for ignoring me till now. “Hop in and turn her on. Let’s see if I got rid of that squealing sound.”
The ever-present smell of gasoline hits me as I slide into the driver’s seat. At first, starting the car was a gentle and precise dance of pumping the gas, turning the key, listening, knowing when to back off and when to push harder to get the damned thing to turn over without flooding, but now all it takes is a simple turn of my wrist.
Our parents had questioned the need to buy the thing in the first place. What traveling did we do, outside of the carnival? The car was a gas-guzzler, couldn’t we see that? But neither Marcel’s parents nor my mother thought to ask the real reason behind our purchase—are you planning to leave us?
The car roars to life, the rumbling of the engine vibrating the chassis so much it’s like I’m sitting inside the belly of a bellowing dragon. The thick, cloying scent of gasoline gathers in my throat, and I throw the car door open so I don’t wind up vomiting all over the restored leather. But happily, the high-pitched whine that used to accompany the car’s start-up is gone.
Marcel slams the hood down and takes a bow—the same theatrical bend of the waist and flourish of the arm that punctuates the end of every knife-throwing show. He empties his pockets of tools, tossing them into the toolbox on the ground with his usual precision. “And that,” he says, a socket wrench crashing into the box, “is how”—his pocket flashlight lands with another clatter—“shit gets done.”