Charm & Strange (9 page)

I ignored it.

“Get over here, kid. You too good to answer me when I talk to you?”

I finally turned around. It was a game operator doing the talking, and he was just as scary as I thought he’d be. Fat. Greasy. Bearded. His hands hidden beneath a striped apron. I drew myself up as tall as I could. Made a mean face.

He roared. A phlegmy sound. “Damn, kid. Who shit on your parade?”

I cracked a smile.

“That’s better. Now get over here,” he repeated. “Easy win.”

“N-no, thanks.”

He hawked, then spit. “I’ll make you a deal. How ’bout that? Five balls, five dollars. Best price of the night. Guaranteed winner.” He gave a tip of his head to the row of hanging SpongeBob dolls. It looked like some reenactment of a mass lynching.

I swallowed. I didn’t want to play. At all. But it’d be rude to ignore his offer, wouldn’t it? I walked over and pulled a twenty out of my pocket. My legs weakened when his callused fingers touched mine. The twenty disappeared beneath the apron. A ten came back in its place. I stared. Took the bill without comment.

The guy stepped back and gestured to the row of basketballs. “It’s all yours, kid. Show me what you got.”

The first ball nearly slipped from my grasp, my hands were so slick with sweat. The shot bounced off the rim and rolled toward a hay bale. The carny yawned and pulled out a cigarette. Lit up and turned his attention to his phone.

Pull it together, Drew
.
You don’t lose. Ever.

I shuddered back in time. Not to the moment when Soren Nichols raised his arms in victory, but to the exact moment when I hit him. I hadn’t forgotten the feel of bone breaking beneath skin. The thrill. I took a deep breath and held the second ball between both hands. Went through the same routine I used before I made my serve in tennis. I squared my feet and visualized the ball leaving my hands and swishing straight through the net. Then I let my mind whisper one word:

Perfect.

I bent my legs and took the shot without a doubt in my mind. Pure beauty. The ball went right in. I tossed my head and looked at the carny.

“Hey,” I said. “I won.”

Twin streams of smoke puffed from his nostrils like dragon’s breath. He didn’t take his eyes off the phone. “Didn’t see it,” he said. “I gotta see the shot for it to count.”

“No way. That … that went in!”

He gave a disinterested shrug. “Try again.”

My voice lowered. “I want my money back.”

“And I want your mom to keep me warm at night. Fuck off, kid. Your whining’s starting to piss me off.”

I whirled back around, snatched up the third ball, wheeled, and pitched it as hard as I could. Another perfect shot. It slammed off the back of his head. The phone clattered to the ground.

He moved with superhuman speed, sidewinding toward me with his ugly face twisted in rage. Even with my knees knocking, I stayed right where I was. I wouldn’t run. I just wouldn’t. Not even when I saw his right hand come out from beneath the apron with something bright and glinting.
A knife,
my mind whispered.
He’s got a knife.

I still didn’t run.

Get over here, kid.

I clenched my fists.

I want your mom to keep me warm at night.

I took a step toward him.

“Drew! Dreeeeeeeeeew!” Phoebe’s annoying squawk cut the standoff. She swooped down on me, grabbing my hand and tugging. A crowd of kids swarmed behind her. She glanced at the carny, who’d frozen in his tracks, then she looked away. She didn’t give him a moment’s thought. I stared at his hands. There was no knife. I blinked and shook my head, confused.

I let Phoebe pull me along. I didn’t look back.

“I’ve been searching all over for you!” she cried. “The pig races start in like five minutes!”

“I couldn’t find you, either,” I said.

She flipped her braids over her shoulder. “That’s because you’re over here playing
games
. God, you’re so clueless. It’s like you’re blond or something. Come on, we have to push if we want to get right up front.”

Push? That’s when I saw the thick mass of people clumping to get into the arena, cattle-drive crazy. Painted pictures of the racers stampeded above their heads.
Pork ’n’ Rec. Hogwarts X-press. Jessica Squeal. Snoop Hoggy Hog.

I stopped short. Nerves caught up with me. My stomach tossed and rolled like a bottle in the surf.

Phoebe spun around. Gave me a
what now?
look.

“I don’t want to go in,” I said.

She groaned. “Are. You. Kidding. Me. I’ve been waiting all night to see this.”

“Well, you go on, then. I said I don’t want to!”

“Fine! You’re beyond stupid. I hope you know that.” She jabbed me in the chest with her finger. “Find me later. I’m not waiting for you.”

I turned and walked off.

My mind crackled. My skin felt electric.

Sssnap!

Get over here, Drew.

I left the fairgrounds and headed out toward the dirt parking lot, veering neatly around an endless line of Porta-Potties. My breath came in short, choppy bursts. The bad images were back. The really bad ones. They colonized my head and multiplied. I wanted them to go, to leave me alone, but more than anything I longed to douse that carny with gasoline, light him on fire, and watch him burn.

I entered the parking lot and kept walking. I reached down and picked a large jagged rock off the ground. It was hot, scorching, like it had just fallen to Earth, and I turned it over in my hand again and again, a hypnotic motion. I glanced to my left and right. When no one was looking, I dragged the sharpest edge of the rock along a row of cars. I felt the paint give way beneath my weight. I pushed harder. Forced my hand to scrawl the letters to the worst words I could think of. Ones I would never ever say out loud.

My heart soared. Forget summer’s heat, I was on fire.

“Hey!” someone called.

I dropped the rock and bolted. I ran so fast my whole chest stung. I didn’t stop until I made it back to the carnival. I skirted around the Orbitron but sprinted past all the other big rides, those huge vibrating machines of flashing lights and horror. The noises they made deafened me, all that high-decibel rumbling and clattering-whooshing-grinding intermingled with a piped-in sound track of throbbing rock music. I thought I heard people yelling like they were coming after me, but when I turned to look, no one was there. I breathed a sigh of relief. Escape felt good.

Coming into a crowded food area, I eased to a walk. My fingers went to my pocket, reassuring me I hadn’t lost all my money to that jerk of a carny. I found a drink stand and shoved some cash at the girl working there. I walked away with a frozen lemonade and headed toward an empty picnic table.

I sat and soaked up the night. My pulse slowed and the memory of the parking lot swirled through my mind, hazy and irretrievable like a lost balloon. Had I really done that? Written those awful things? Or had I just thought about doing it?

I didn’t know. I didn’t care.

A weak breeze rustled in, mussing my hair and offering a flickering moment of relief from the night’s swelter. I fished a scoop of crushed ice out of my cup and rubbed it against the back of my neck. A girl’s laugh floated over. I glanced up. Two tables away from me sat Keith and Charlie.

Their backs rested against the table. It looked like they were sharing fries. Charlie laughed again, turning to Keith and tucking loose hair behind her ear. My brother had a moony expression on his face, one I’d never seen before. I half stood to go over to them, but then Keith leaned in. Brushed his lips against Charlie’s cheek.

I choked. Didn’t move. Couldn’t. Charlie pulled back and said something. She was smiling. Then she reached out and curled her fingers with his before they ran back into the crowd together.

Way later, when Phoebe found me skulking around the midway, I had murder in mind.

“What’s up?” she asked.

I shrugged.

“You look upset.”

“Do I?”

“Yeah, you do.” She stared with those big bug eyes of hers until I relented.

“Keith and Charlie were holding hands.”

She thought about this. “So?”

“They’re
cousins
. They…” I swallowed hard. “They kissed.”

Phoebe picked at a scab on her elbow. “Okay.”

“It’s gross.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“You know,” she began as a wicked smile crept across her pale lips, “your parents are cousins. How gross is that?”

A jolt went through me. “That’s not true!”

“Oh, yes, it is. My dad told me.” She shrugged. “I don’t think it’s a big deal. You shouldn’t either.”

This upset me terribly. And it couldn’t be true. My parents had met when my mom took one of my father’s courses at the university. I knew that. It explained the big age gap between them and why my dad was always right and my mom was always wrong. But I hated the fact that Phoebe would even say such a thing.

“I’ll pay you twenty bucks.”

I had no clue what she was talking about. “What?”

“Twenty bucks if you go on the carousel.”

“Why?”

“I want to see if you’ll hurl.”

“No way!”

She kept at it, which irritated me. The offer eventually rose to forty bucks, but I was nothing if not stubborn. I felt a sudden slap on my back. I looked up and saw Keith grinning at me. Charlie stood right behind him. She arched an eyebrow at me in a smug way that said,
I know what you did.

(FUCKCOCKSUCKASSHOLEBITCHCUNT)

My cheeks went hot.

Keith pointed at the spinning carousel.

“Don’t do it!” he shouted.

chapter

nineteen

matter

Lex sees me preparing to leave Eden. He leaps up to block my path.

“Where’re you going?”

I duck around him. He hasn’t earned my response.

The way he grabs for my arm feels desperate. “You can’t leave, man. I mean it.”

“I thought you didn’t want to be anywhere near me tonight!”

His voice lowers. “Look, earlier, what I said, when you were with that girl—it came out all wrong.”

“I guess it did.”

“Come on. I really don’t think you should be alone. Not now.”

I can’t help but pause. This is so unfair. Out of everyone in the entire world, how can it be that Lex Emil is the only one who knows? It’s a cruel joke, and I hate irony more than anything. I really do.

Through gritted teeth, I manage, “Why do you say that?”

His eyes are so pale that as the moonlight catches them, they appear near white. Like the center of the hottest flame. “Just stay with me, Win. It’s a long time until morning.”

That doesn’t answer my question. But in the same way I couldn’t voluntarily break away from Jordan earlier, I can’t walk away from Lex. Neither of us looks at the other. We’re both looking at the moon. It’s the celestial twin to the large stone sitting right inside my gut. Only my inner moon refuses to wax and wane. It’s taken on an orbit of its own, rotating in toward my core, slowly anchoring me to the ground.

“Come on,” Lex says finally. “You need a drink.”

It’s a command, not a request.

“You know I don’t do that.”

“I know you don’t do a lot of things,” he says. “Don’t be an asshole. Tonight of all nights is when you should be letting your guard down. Releasing those inhibitions. Being
free
for once.”

“I see.”

“You should try hooking up, too, you know. There are some girls over there”—he jabs his thumb back toward the party—“that would love to get a shot at you. They think you’re cute but aloof or some bullshit. Apparently being a douche passes for sex appeal these days. Fucking girls, how do they work, am I right?” His thundering guffaw rolls across Eden. Lex is always one to laugh at his own jokes, but this time I can tell he’s forcing it.

“How about that drink?” I say.

“Oh, absolutely,” he replies. “Let’s do it.”

“Just one.”

He begins to walk back toward the music. The laughter. The voices. I’m glad we don’t head for the bonfire because Jordan is still there. I’m watching her. She’s gotten another beer and moved beside a group of other juniors headed up by Penn Riggsdale. Poor girl. They won’t straight-up ignore her or anything, but really, she’s barking up the wrong tree. Riggsdale and his crowd are Manhattan trust fund kids. The elite. The entitled. The annoying-as-hell.

I think of the way they’ll laugh at Jordan when she’s out of earshot. The jokes they’ll make about her family. Her lack of money. Her lack of status. Her lack of beauty. She’s low value to the kind of people who care about stuff like that. Good only for cracks about paper bags or affirmative action and turning dykes straight.

I’m ashamed of the way I spoke to her earlier. I should have been nicer.

“Can’t you stop thinking how you’re better than everyone else for like one goddamn second?” Lex asks.

I tighten my jaw. “Not likely.”

“See, this is why I hate you sometimes.”

Well, I thought he hated me all of the time, so I definitely take note of the qualifier. I also change the subject. I point at the bottle of liquor he’s holding. Brown liquid. Economy-sized. The script on the label is supposed to be old-fashioned and classy, but how classy can a drink be when it’s got a name like Early Times? I feel ill looking at it, and the stress of how it will affect my training is so not worth it, but I snatch a red plastic cup from the stack on the card table and hold it out.

Lex tips the whiskey in.

“Enough,” I bark, but he keeps pouring until I yank the cup away. Early Times splashes off our shoes. Lex gives a whoop of laughter.

“Sloppy already, Winters. I’m liking your style tonight. C’mon. Cheers.” He bumps the bottle to my cup, leading to more splashing and, well, I know the drill. I tip the cup back and swallow.

Terrible. It’s absolutely terrible. I hold my composure and manage not to gag or cough or curse even though I want to do all three. A lit fuse runs from my sinuses to the bottom of my stomach. I should have held out for a shot of Pucker. Or strychnine.