“Like you and Brenda promised me you’d practice smiling this weekend?”
I rolled my eyes, exasperated. “Junie.”
“Fine,” she said. “I promise.”
I nodded, satisfied. We chewed and watched TV for a while. Gonzo came on, Junie’s favorite. She giggled.
“Dad and I hung out at the fair after you guys left, you know,” she said. “He bought me funnel cake.”
“Nice.” I’d finished my chicken, whipped potatoes, and corn, which meant I could dig into the brownie, still warm from the oven.
“I saw Maureen when I was eating the cake,” she said. I could hear her looking at me. “I thought she’d go to that party with you, but she didn’t. She stayed at the fair.”
The brownie tasted like dust in my mouth. “What’d you see her doing?”
“She went to the ring toss booth, too. She disappeared in the back, just like Brenda did.”
I tried swallowing the chalky brownie, but I didn’t have enough spit. “Junie, what did the ring toss guy look like?”
“Like Abe Lincoln, but not as old.”
Brenda was “lovingly grounded” (feels likegroundedgrounded,she’d grumbled over the party line) until Maureen turned up. Claude didn’t answer his phone. That meant once I’d made sure Junie was set for the evening, I needed to go to the fair alone. I didn’t have a clear plan. I just knew that that carnival worker—who shouldn’t have been in our neighborhood—might have been the last person to see Maureen.
I wished for a moment that I was brave enough to hitchhike. It would be quicker and maybe even safer given how tight the fair traffic was, but there was a good chance that me thumbing it would get back to Dad. Brenda and Maureen had hitchhiked to the Cities last June to visit the observation deck of the IDS Center, the tallest building in all of Minnesota. I’d been too scared to sneak away with them.
I’d avoided asking them about their experience that day as well bringing up the topic of hitchhiking in general because I didn’t want to let on to Brenda that I suspected she and Maureen did that a bunch without me, too, that it was part of their new secret language, the onethat included makeup and clothes and parties and hot-pink splashes of that thing I’d felt when Ant had looked at me with naked hunger.
I hopped on my Schwinn because if I hadn’t been brave enough to even ask them about hitchhiking, I definitely was too afraid to do it. It was a long, sticky bike ride, the fair on the other side of the Mississippi River from Pantown. The Ferris wheel rising over the flats of eastside Saint Cloud was the first thing I spotted. Shortly after came the swarming hum of a crowd, tinny rock-and-roll music, and the calls of midway barkers. Last was the heavy smell of fried food. Normally, it’d feel electric to be around so many people. We loved our summer gatherings in Minnesota. We spent all winter cooped up, then the snow melted, the leaves budded, and out popped the sun. Abruptly, desperately, weneededto be among people. It’s why we had a fair or a festival every other weekend, it seemed.
But I felt only dread as I chained my bike near the gate. Maureen could have run away, but she hadn’t. She wouldn’t have, not without telling me and Brenda. I wanted to believe that, to hang on to that thought, and so I fought back the doubts whispering that there was so much Maureen and Brenda had been hiding from me, and if I pushed too hard, if I dug too deep, I’d discover that what was really happening was that they’d grown up without me.
That was a secret I didn’t want to learn.
I fumbled in my cutoff shorts for the fifty-cent entrance fee, but the lady working the gate recognized me from last night’s show and waved me through. I had to walk straight past the stage to reach the midway. It was set up for the Johnny Holm Band, no sign that we’d ever even been there.
I hadn’t known I’d like it so much, playing in front of people.
The fair wouldn’t really start humming for another hour, but there were already lots of people, many of whom seemed to have skipped a home-cooked meal in favor of fries and pizza. I supposed it wasn’t any worse than the TV dinners Junie and I had eaten. I waited in line for an icy Coke and then walked over to the midway, trying hard to lookcasual. There were a handful of people playing the games but no line in front of the ring toss. No one working it, either.
I slurped my drink and wandered one row over, pretending to be curious about the rubber-duck game that won you a live goldfish floating in a bag of water if you chose the correct duck. I kept glancing back at the ring toss, trying not to be obvious. When I got nudged by some kids pushing for a better look at the droopy-looking bagged fish, I moved on, making like I was interested in Skee-Ball and then the milk-bottle knockdown and then Bust a Balloon. I reached the end of the row and started walking up the other, still spotting no movement at the ring toss game.
“You looking for me, little girl?”
My skin lifted off my body as I turned toward the Hoop Shoot booth. It was the same man I’d nearly biked over earlier, the ring toss man, the scruffy Abe Lincoln who Junie had seen with Brenda and then Maureen. He was lurking in the shadow of the Hoop Shoot machine, smoking. His eyes were so cold, so hard, that they stopped me in my tracks.
Are you Theodore Godo?I wanted to ask.Did you take Maureen?
The man patted his front pocket, like he had something in there for me, and then slipped through a curtain in the back.
“Heather! Are you out here alone?”
I jumped away from the booth, guilty as a bandit.
Jerome Nillson was striding across the field toward me, his face unreadable, his body wide with power. I could hear his steps talking:This fair is mine, this town is mine, this fair is mine, this town is mine.I pictured him in that basement with Maureen and my breath locked up.
I ran away from him, out of the fair, tossed the rest of my Coke in the nearest trash, unlocked my bike with trembling hands, and raced home.
CHAPTER 20
