By a Charm and a Curse(46)

“And Benjamin,” I say.

“And Benjamin.” Her gaze is hard and steady, and the urge to look away from her unwavering stare is beaten into submission by wanting to know what she’s thinking. She begins to fold up the maps in silence, the soft shushing of paper on paper the only noise.

“Are you okay with this?” I say.

“With changing course?” she asks. “We follow the warmth largely for the person in the box, since the cold is so much worse for you than for us. There’s benefit for us, too. People are more likely to come out to the carnival in warm weather. We owe everything to you, and to the people who came before you. It’s the least we can do to make you a little more comfortable.”

I let that sink in and think about the hundred or so people attached to this carnival who follow the bidding of someone who wants to make me comfortable. It’s a weird thought.

“No,” I say, “not that. It’s more…how do you feel about us breaking the curse? About what that might mean for the carnival?”

She stares up at me and slots her slim fingers together on top of her neatly stacked maps. She’s so tiny and petite that it’s easy to dismiss her. But Leslie is not someone to dismiss. “Sidney might have spent nearly fifty years in the box, but he was the only one to take that long. Before him, we had a new person in the box every year or two.”

As she speaks, her blue eyes grow colder, not with contempt but with something like a hard, unyielding despair. “I watched them, shy loners and teenagers younger than you, as they were duped into the curse. I helped carry their broken, rag-doll bodies back to my trailer so I could tell them that they were stuck. I stood idly by as their hearts hardened every night they went out and worked the booth. And I did nothing as they became the thing they hated, a person willing to trick someone into taking their place at the center of this carnival.

“It took something from me, every single time. I let it keep happening, over and over, never trying to stop the cycle, enjoying the perks. And you’d think that there’d be nothing left of my soul to crush after all these years, but then Pia came barreling up to the big tent where I was about to introduce the Morettis for their final show of the night and told me Sidney had taken a bottle of wine and had a girl on his arm.”

A rush of cold shudders down my spine despite the heat in the trailer. Me. The girl was me. Leslie’s gaze doesn’t waver. No tears sit in her lashes, there’s no tremble in her voice. Leslie will tell me how she was a cog in the curse’s mechanics without theatrics or drama.

“I gave the Morettis the worst intro imaginable and ran out of that tent. Pia and I saw the Ferris wheel as it stopped. Saw you and Sidney struggle. Saw you fall. And as I walked up to where you lay on the ground, I knew the cycle was starting again. The reprieve was over. And I don’t think I can do this again.”

It’s only here, at the end of her story, that she breaks my gaze. The two maps with our new path stay on the table, but she tucks away the papers and dog-eared key maps. She falters as she lifts the old journals to put them back in their cupboard, and, almost as if on impulse, she hands them to me. “Maybe there’s something in there that’ll help.”

As we step outside, Leslie surveys all that she can see from the top step of her trailer. While it seems people are gossiping with more ferocity than usual, life is going on as it would ordinarily. Down the lane, Marcel and his father are practicing, the taller man standing behind my friend in order to correct his form. Two of the women who run the confectionary booth, both of them with bottle-red hair teased into beehives, walk by, waving cheerfully at their boss. Lars gives us a small nod as he passes in the opposite direction. Leslie continues to watch him, and I wonder if she’s thinking about his cancer miraculously disappearing.

“This carnival is my life,” Leslie says absently. “My father ran it, and his mother before him. They had a few good years after they retired, but they’re both gone now. All the illnesses the charm held at bay caught up to them.

“The carnival is all I’ve ever known. I’d do anything to keep it alive. But everything ends, Emma.” She turns her bright-blue eyes to me, and tears sparkle at the edges. “Everything.”





Chapter Twenty-One


Benjamin

I’m standing in the open door of the Airstream, watching the other trucks and trailers idle on the field, waiting to pull out. The ground is trampled, used and sad. Where there had been a field of green, green grass, we’re leaving behind mud and holes where stakes had been planted and, even though we’re vigilant to pick up all litter, random bits of trash that escaped our cleanup crew. At Leslie’s signal, the first vehicle trundles toward the road, trucks hitched to trailers following. It’s like hundreds of boats launching, like a carnival armada.

Sidney told Mom he wanted to talk, and I’ve snuck Emma on board the Airstream. Right now, she’s tucked in the bathroom, in case my mom pops back to make one last check. Never have I been so ready to get on the road.

Finally the Chevy gives a deep rumble and we’re off. I stay in the doorframe awhile longer, letting the wind ruffle my hair. I catch the scent of crushed grass under so many wheels, of gasoline and exhaust. Finally, I close and lock the door and give Emma the all clear.

She flashes me a sheepish grin as she steps out of the bathroom, like she, too, feels like a stereotypical teenager sneaking around. “Do you have them?” she asks.