By a Charm and a Curse(38)

I watch Whiskey balance on one foot on top of a prancing scarlet horse with a gilded mane. Her limbs are graceful and steady as she balances out and strikes her pose, triumphant.

I have to look at her, because I can’t look at Benjamin. If I look at Benjamin I’m going to do that weird shaky shuddery thing that is what crying is in this new alien body.

The twins shout a chorus of incomprehensible gibberish at Whiskey, and the only word that jumps out is “handstand.”

“I want you to know, I would never trap you in the curse, I’d never kiss you, I mean—” If my cheeks could still turn red, they’d be visible from fifty feet away. “Not that I wouldn’t ever want to—it’s just that…damn it.” I prop my arms against the metal fencing surrounding the carousel and try to ignore the dull thud it makes when I do.

“I get it,” Ben says.

Dry, golden tufts of dead grass sway around my feet, and I concentrate on them instead of looking at Benjamin. “Sidney was my first kiss.”

Benjamin stills beside me, and I turn in time to witness the play of emotions running across his face. The way his eyes widen in shock then his mouth goes firm and thin in anger. Before he can get too worked up, I say, “It sucks, but I’m over it. Well, I’ll be over it. Although now I’m wishing I’d just gone ahead and kissed Jack Macklin at the homecoming dance last year. But…” But what? But I’d really like to kiss you, Ben, if you’d let me? I can’t say that, even if the words are practically hanging off the tip of my tongue.

That moment where my heart and intentions sit between us stretches longer and longer. God. I don’t think it’s humanly possible to feel more awkward than I do right now.

Benjamin seems nearer when he speaks, but that could be me hoping, wishing. “Will you do it? Kiss someone and trick him into taking your place?” A frown furrows in between his eyebrows. “Maybe even break someone’s heart, like my mom?”

His blue eyes are darker, the color shifting from cloudless sky to angry ocean. He’s seeing me as a weapon for the first time, and oh God, but I hate it. “That’s all I can do, isn’t it?”

I want so desperately for him to understand. But he shifts his gaze away from mine, and I do the same, unable to watch the play of emotions on his face.

Whiskey is standing on both hands the next time the carousel loops around, and the twins are whooping excitedly. Her legs arc backward until her pointed toes almost touch the back of her head. She slowly lifts one hand from the horse until five fingers and one palm are all that’s keeping her upright.

“No,” he says, staring intently at me. “I don’t think that’s all you can do. Everyone assumes that you have to pass on the curse, but what if you didn’t? What if, instead, you broke it?”

I open my mouth to respond, but the words aren’t there. Even in my short time with the carnival, the curse seems as immutable as the color of the sky. Surely if the curse could be broken, someone else would have tried by now. And even if it were possible, what about the consequences?

“I don’t know. No one told me how to break it, just how to pass it on. And Leslie said it isn’t just that the carnival has a charm and a curse upon it, but that the two things are dependent. If I break the curse, it’ll probably ruin the charm. I just don’t know what to do.”

“Screw the charm,” he says deliberately. “If the people who benefit from the curse want it so badly, they’d bear the burden of it themselves. So don’t worry about them. And as for the rest, whatever it is that has to be done, you wouldn’t have to do it alone.”

The grin stretches out my cheeks until I’m surprised my face hasn’t cracked. “You’d help me?”

In answer, he folds me up in his arms. I fit neatly against his chest, and he rests his chin on the top of my head. It’s strange and weird and I have no precedent for this kind of thing, and I’m just so damned happy I swear I’d almost forgotten what happiness felt like.

But all of that is lost in his warmth and the steady beating of his heart under my ear. For a brief moment I pretend I have a heartbeat, too, one that can thump in time with his.

Whiskey’s shriek snaps me out of it.

I turn in time to see her hit the wooden boards of the carousel floor. Ben and I run for the gate as Pia jumps off and stumbles to the control booth.

Ben jumps on the carousel before it stills, dodging around the horses and lions and tigers. When the machine’s revolutions slow a little more, I clumsily follow.

The wooden animals are still rising and falling slowly, creepily. A blue tiger with malicious jeweled eyes knocks into me with its massive paw. A giant parrot, its feathers painted a myriad of colors, each one cut with deep grooves that mark the center line and the barbs, dips in my way. As I twist around a giant bear, I find Duncan and Ben huddled around Whiskey.

A hand grips onto mine, and it’s Pia, her cheeks streaked with tears. Benjamin barks directions at Duncan. The latter has taken off his T-shirt and he’s cutting off strips with a pocketknife. I can’t see Whiskey around their bodies. A trickle of blood fills the grooves between planks of wood, reaching for my shoes.

Duncan lifts Whiskey in his arms. I never thought of her as small, but seeing her cradled there, her arms less than half as big around as his, her whole body neatly tucked in his arms, “fragile” is the only word that comes to mind. Ben is moving with them, winding the fabric Duncan provided him around to her head.