On March 8, the City Center Mall parking lot disappeared.
There were no cars, no dirty mounds of snow, no empty parking spaces. Instead, every square foot was occupied. There were lights, trailers, balloons and huge machines with giant arms. The air smelled of popcorn and donuts.
I stood on the lower step of the bus and stared.
“Get off already!” somebody yelled behind me.
A kid pushed by me. He jumped onto the wet pavement. Splashes of water hit my jeans. Other people pressed against my back. I could feel their bodies. I could smell their breath.
“Move already.”
“Retard!”
“What a freak show—what’s wrong with you?”
My fear grew. I was trapped between the parking lot that was not a parking lot and these angry, shouting, pushing people. My mouth felt dry.
“More like what’s wrong with you?” Megan’s voice bellowed from somewhere behind me in the interior of the bus. “Are you blind? The bus has two doors, you know.”
“Whatever.”
But I felt them move. I heard them shuffle back. I felt the space opening behind me.
“You okay?” Megan asked.
I didn’t know.
“This is the fair. It comes twice a year and sets up in the parking lot,” Megan said. “It doesn’t look like all the rides are going yet.”
“You getting off?” the bus driver shouted from his seat at the steering wheel.
“Yeah, yeah, keep your hair on,” Megan said, which was strange because the bus driver was bald and did not have a lot of hair to keep on.
“You can walk home just like usual,” Megan said—to me, I think.
Still I did not say anything. I did not move. The bus driver cleared his throat. “I have a schedule, you know.”
“Shut up about your schedule,” Megan said loudly, adding quietly to me, “Don’t listen to him. Just count.”
I kept the necklace she’d given me in the right pocket of my green North Face jacket. I touched it, shifting my fingers along the round, hard balls.
One…two…three…
I focused on the rubber matting that lined the step of the bus and on the dark concrete outside. At least they looked the same as usual. I shifted, moving forward, stepping out of the bus.
The door closed behind me. The bus changed gears. I heard the engine note change as it moved away.
I exhaled as I stood there, staring at the concrete, feeling the smooth beads strung along the length of the necklace.
Then I heard it. Above the bus engine’s rumble, above the shouts and yells and laughter from the space that used to be the parking lot but was now filled with lights, trailers, balloons and huge machines with giant arms, I heard music.
“My music box,” I said.
I took a step forward, toward the noise and the lights and the machines.
“Want to check it out?”
“Check—a sudden stoppage of a forward course or progress,” I said. “Or a form of payment.”
“No, I mean, do you want to go there and hear the music?”
“Um—”
“I’ll go too.”
“I—”
I paused, thoughts flashing through my mind. I remembered how I had taken the City Center bus with Megan, even when it was not the After-School Special.
But I remembered also that I didn’t like noise and people and strange smells.
I looked up from the pavement and watched the many people walking toward the small hut with the word Tickets flashing in yellow neon.
“A lot of people go to the fair,” I said.
“Yeah, it’s, like, the thing to do in Kitimat.”
“People who are average in type, appearance, achievement, function and development go to the fair?”
“What the—? Did you swallow a dictionary?”
“I like dictionaries.”
“Yeah, I guess you do,” Megan said.
“People who are average in type, appearance, achievement, function and development go to the fair?” I asked again.
“I guess. So, you wanna go?”
I nodded. We stepped forward. I felt a little like I did the time I’d jumped off the diving board, in that fraction of a second before I splashed into the water.
We walked past the trucks and trailers, over huge snakelike power cords and under a ride’s metallic arms.
My music—“Für Elise”—came from a circular structure with flashing lights and colorful horses on silver poles. The horses were blue and pink and green, with manes of gold.
I watched as they went around and around and around, moving rhythmically up and down and up and down on their silver poles.
“My ballerinas,” I said.
“It’s a carousel.”
“I like the carousel.”
A man standing next to the carousel flipped a switch, and the horses slowed. He tightened something with a screwdriver and then started it again.
“I like the carousel,” I repeated.
“You could ride, you know, when the fair opens,” Megan said.
I shook my head.
“Why not?”
“Because—because—you know…”
“What?”
“Asperger’s,” I said.
“So? My left foot’s bigger than my right. Doesn’t mean I can’t do stuff.”
I looked at her feet. They did not look different. “They do not look different,” I said.
“Jeez.” Megan looked at the sky. “Wait here.”
She went over to the guy. He was perched on a stool and wore a backward baseball cap. Strings of sandy hair fell into his face.
He smiled at Megan. He had bad teeth, yellow and uneven. Megan leaned into him, smiling and tossing back her long dark hair.
He looked at me, then nodded toward the carousel. “I’m giving it a final run-through anyway. I can stop it if you want to hop on.”
He flipped another switch. The music stopped. The horses stopped. “Don’t worry about a ticket.”
“I—I—” The words had gone, disappeared.
“You can,” Megan said.
“I—I—I—” My body swayed.
“You took the City Center bus,” Megan said. “It was hard at first, and then you did it.”
“You—”
“I’m here now. Plus, you came here to check it out.”
“But—”
Megan turned to the guy. “Turn on the music again,” she said.
The music started. “Für Elise.” From my music box. I stepped forward, my palms slick with sweat. I took one step. And another. I lifted my leg, placing my foot on the corrugated metal of the ride’s circular base. I stood on it, reaching for the gold plastic of the horse’s mane.
“You okay?” the man asked.
I put my foot into the stirrup and swung my leg over so that I sat astride.
“You okay?” he asked again.
“She’s good,” Megan said.
And the structure started forward. The body of the horse lifted and dropped, up and down, up and down. Everything blurred as the ride gained momentum, moving forward, around and around and around.
And I was the ballerina. I was in my music box. I was…I was…
I couldn’t find the words. Even in my mind, I couldn’t find them.
But it didn’t matter.