By a Charm and a Curse(9)

“I had to do it,” Sidney says, following after them in the trailers’ slanting shadows. “Had to. You’ll see. Not now, but you’ll see.” As he steps into a square of light from an open trailer door, I see a flush to his cheeks that’s not artificial, a fluidity to his movements suggesting something close to grace, something the girl is severely lacking.

Her head whips up, eyes glassy and feverish as she stares at those of us who came to help but are stunned into immobility. Her gaze darts from face to face, and something like worry or embarrassment arches her eyebrows high. Then she sees me. I can’t quite get a read on the frustrated twist of her lips or the furrow grooved deep between her eyes as we stare at each other.

And then her leg jerks from beneath her. The girl collides into Leslie, her arm slipping from Lars’s grip, and the two women crash into the side of Mrs. Potter’s trailer, setting off a chorus of muffled barking. The red glass lantern hanging from a hook beside the door sways wildly. The crash is as sharp as the ruby shards sparkling among the weeds and grass. It’s been years since I’ve heard the sound, and it reverberates in my ears.

With a jolt that buzzes up my spine, I realize this is the girl I saw earlier this evening. Without thinking, I dart across the alleyway, ready to help Lars lift her up. I wrap my hands around her upper arm, and at first, it doesn’t register. Then I feel it. She’s cold. It’s not the kind of surface chill that comes from being outside too long on a cool night. No, even though I’m only holding her arm, I can tell she’s cold down to the bone, so much so that my fingers are beginning to ache with it.

My hand lingers a little too long, and suddenly I feel the girl’s gaze boring into me. Her full lips are twisted into a frown, and her glare could probably incinerate me if I let it. If she were a painting, she’d be an avenging angel, the kind whose fury could level cities.

“Thanks, Ben,” Leslie says, tapping me on the shoulder. “I’ll take it from here.” Before I can offer to help them to, well, wherever it is they’re going, Leslie slips the girl’s arm around her shoulders and they shamble on down the alley.

I watch them as they walk away, and when I finally tear my gaze from them my mother is giving me a stare that could wither lesser men. Luckily, I’ve been on the receiving end too often for it to have much of an impact. Her words, on the other hand, can always sting. “She’s none of our concern,” Mom says.

My brows furrow up. Why did we rush out here, if not to help? “I kind of think she is.”

Everyone working the carnival knows the story. The person in the box is at the center of the charm and the curse that holds us together. This person is the reason all of us living and working for the carnival are charmed with an unnaturally lucky existence and long lives. We don’t fall. We don’t get hurt. Sometime after twenty, we stop aging—at least outwardly. And our performers can pull off stunts and tricks other carnies only wish they could do.

But now there’s someone new.

What will happen to Sidney? Sidney has been in the box so long that some of us thought it would always be that way. The fact that there will be a new face in the box is as unsettling as someone telling me that the carnival is disbanding tomorrow.

And to know the girl bearing the curse is the same one I saw earlier, the one who didn’t just glance at my paintings in passing but had really seen them…

“I am telling you, she is not our concern.”

I can feel a fight brewing between us, and I take this moment and file it away. This, this is part of why I need to leave. Even though I’m a few months shy of eighteen, my mom isn’t just my mom, she’s my boss, giving her jurisdiction over my every waking moment. But before I can respond, we’re interrupted by a soft sigh.

“Poor thing.” Gin, Whiskey’s older sister, had ghosted up beside us as we watched the sad little parade go by. Strands of silvery hair float around her face, and the night has leeched the blue from her eyes to make them gray. I sometimes feel like a giant cosmic joke was played on their parents. First they got Gin—quiet and graceful and thoughtful—and, perhaps expecting their next offspring to be similar, three years later they got Whiskey—loud and brash and impulsive.

“I know,” Whiskey says. She tears her eyes off the girl long enough to glance backward at us. “Did you see her haircut? First thing tomorrow, you’re going to help her.”

“Me?” I ask, surprised.

“Yes, Benjamin,” Whiskey says. “Take your tool kit and your power sander and give her a makeover.” I get an eye roll and a snort of laughter. “I was talking to Gin.”

“Whitney,” my mother says sharply, upset enough to call Whiskey by her real name, “now is not the time. I’m sure you need to groom the horses before you stable them for the night.”

“Audrey!” Whiskey whines.

“I’ll help Gin make sure Whiskey doesn’t try to go spy on the new girl,” I say, jabbing Whiskey’s side with my elbow.

My mother nods, one half curl slipping from her braid. “And straight back.”

The second we’re out of earshot, Whiskey mutters, “We’re going to go spy on the new girl, aren’t we?” Moonlight glints off the sequins of her costume and the wry, knowing look in her eyes.

“Of course we are.”