Chapter Sixteen

Benjamin

Racing toward Happy the Clown’s trailer is a blur of yelling and too many bodies clustered too close together. Happy takes one look at the bunch of us and pushes Duncan, who still holds Whiskey in his arms, inside. He slams the door shut behind him. Moments later Duncan is back outside with us, wild-eyed and sputtering for words.

There isn’t enough air in the world to fill my lungs. I take in a big breath, and then another, until my heart begins to slow.

“Pia,” Emma says, startling the both of us. “Go find Mr. and Mrs. Connelly.” Pia nods, her eyes saucer-wide. “Duncan, go find Gin. Ben and I will wait for news.”

The twins take off, and it’s not until their backs are turned that I feel like I can slump down against the trailer. Never in my life have I seen so much blood. You never know how you feel about something until its existence is threatened. You hold something in your hands, never realizing that the glass sphere is actually a soap bubble, fragile and precious.

“Are you okay?”

“Whiskey doesn’t fall,” I say. I know it doesn’t answer her question, but it’s the only thought left in my head.

Emma’s perfectly shaped brows arch prettily. “I know she’s good, Ben, but everyone falls.”

I shake my head. “In the entire time I’ve been at the carnival,” I say, “I’ve never been hurt.” Even as I say it, I feel the lie. I got the cut on my hand just a few weeks ago and I saw the freakish way that red lantern had fallen to the ground on Emma’s first night here. But a cut and some broken glass aren’t the same things as a dog breaking its neck or Whiskey hitting her head. Are they? “When I started working as my mom’s apprentice, I never once cut myself on a blade or hit my own fingers with a hammer. None of the stupid but inevitable stuff that happens when you’re working as a laborer ever happened to me. The Morettis should have broken their necks a hundred times over by now. And Gin and Whiskey…

“The girls are—always—flawless. I’ve seen Whiskey pull that same stunt a hundred times on the back of a living, breathing, unpredictable horse. To do the same on a carousel horse that’s slowly bobbing up and down was something she could have done in her sleep.”

I’ve heard it said a thousand times—we’re held together by a charm and a curse. The curse appears to be firmly in place. Emma’s skin is still petrified, her movements still jerky. So what is going on with the charm?

“I think the charm is wearing off and—” I pause, having a hard time even forming the words, wanting to hope but knowing it’s too much of a dream come true. “And do you think, maybe, the curse might be wearing off, too?”

I hold my breath, the way you do while contemplating the wish to be made as you blow out birthday candles. The air burns in my chest, still and stagnant, while I wait for Emma to answer. Her eyes are wide with horror and pity and anger all mixed together, and when she ducks her head away, shifting her gaze to the weeds at our feet, my breath explodes out of me as if she punched me.

“No, Benjamin,” she finally says, a fine tremor in her voice. “I am still just as screwed today as I was yesterday. You might have gotten a splinter, but me?” She slams her arm into the corner of Happy’s trailer, a move that would have shattered the bone inside if she weren’t cursed. But there isn’t even a smudge of dirt marking the impact on her arm.

“You’re right,” I say, reaching for her hands. They’re cold, and when I twine my fingers through hers, they dig into my flesh and bump against my bones. But I hold on. “I’m sorry. It was wishful thinking on my part.”

Emma doesn’t say anything after that, but she does squeeze her stiff fingers around mine, gently. I busy myself by tracing my thumb over the flat plane of her palm, hoping that Happy remembers some of his old medical training. Despite having a medical degree, Happy came here to be a clown after having seen too much blood and horror out in the field. A clown is all I’ve ever known him to be, and I hope he knows what the hell he’s doing.

I stare at the backs of my fingers, at Whiskey’s blood caked into the grooves. My fingerprints show through the rusty grime in pale relief. My mind refuses to process what just happened. Seeing Whiskey’s blood pulse out from the gash on her head. Seeing her limp and helpless, like a puppet with the strings cut.

Gin, followed closely by Marcel and Duncan, storms up the steps into the trailer. There’s a commotion inside—Gin’s muffled squeak, many footsteps, Happy’s soothing voice—and then they’re all outside again. They couldn’t have been in there for more than thirty seconds.

She’s a silvery flurry of motion when she’s back outside again, pacing so fast that her blond hair can’t keep up. It floats in streamers behind her. When she sees us, really sees us, she stops. There’s an intensity in her gray eyes like I’ve never seen before. They match the storm clouds gathering above us.

“What the hell happened?” Her hair swirls around her in the breeze, giving her a wild look, like the elements are just as angry as she is. “Duncan said she fell, but we don’t fall, we don’t.”

“She fell, Gin,” I said. “She just…fell.”

It’s clear she doesn’t believe me, but I wouldn’t believe me, either, if I were her. The heavy wrongness of the situation smothers us all.

After a while, Happy opens the door to the trailer and beckons Gin inside, and, as Pia has just shown up with the girls’ worried parents, them, too. Once the door closes behind them, Happy turns his attention to us.

“Nasty cut. Did what I could, but it’ll probably scar. Definite concussion.” He still holds the rag he’d been drying his hands on. Traces of Whiskey’s blood speckle it. “She should be fine, though.”

Happy gives permission for short visits, and by then more people have arrived. I can’t bring myself to see her just yet, and I let the others go in ahead of me. They filter in and out of the avocado-colored trailer in pairs—Leslie and Lars, Pia and Duncan, Mrs. Potter and one of her terriers—and I watch them go. The only constant is Emma.

She stands by my side as the parade of well-wishers continues. The back of her hand brushes against the back of mine. I find myself slumping against her, though I hadn’t intended to, and she holds me up.

I get ready to go in and see Whiskey, but as Mrs. Potter is leaving, Happy decides Whiskey is done with visitors for the day. I want to protest, but I can’t seem to find my voice.

“Sir?” Emma says, firm but polite. But no one here has ever been called “sir,” so she has to try again. “Happy? Ben needs to see her.”

Happy looks at me like I haven’t been standing there the whole time, but he doesn’t waver. Yesterday’s greasepaint is still caked into the fine lines of his face. “Girl needs to rest.”

I’m prepared to let that go, though tension balls up even tighter inside me. I didn’t realize how much I needed to see that she’s okay. It’s like I won’t know it’s the truth until I can see her with my own eyes. The blood may as well still be gushing from her head.

“That’s her blood on his hands, Happy,” Emma says. “Let him have a second; let him see that she’s all right.”

I can practically hear his teeth grind, but he holds the door open for me. “Wash your hands first, kid.”

Emma holds back. But she deserves to make sure that Whiskey is all right just as much as I do. That, and we need answers about what happened, about the charm. Answers I’m hoping Whiskey can give me. So I grip tightly onto Emma’s hand and lead her into the trailer.

The interior is dark with all the little curtains closed. A light is on at one end of the trailer, but not over the couch where Whiskey rests. Everything is drab, the complete antithesis of the way Happy presents himself out in the carnival. The air is stale, like no one besides him is ever in here.

Whiskey is propped up on the narrow couch that runs along the back end of the trailer. A crochet blanket that’s more hole than blanket drapes over her knees, and a huge swath of gauze is wrapped around her head. Her father, a tall man who gave Gin his lean muscles and pale hair, and mother, like Whiskey in looks and temperament, are crammed into the area around her.

“Okay, now pay attention,” Whiskey tells me as I wash up in the tiny sink. “I’ve got this down to a science. Yes, I fell. No, I don’t know why. Yes, feel free to fawn all over me and possibly even consider bringing me fudge because I love fudge. Fawning may commence whenever you’re ready.”

“But—”

She cuts me off. “I fell, Benjamin. The end.” She turns to her parents. “You know what I would love right about now? My own pillow. One that doesn’t smell of cigarettes and sardines. Could you please, please, please ask Haps when I can go home?”

Mr. and Mrs. Connolly exchange a quick glance, but it’s clear to see that Mrs. Connolly wants to get Whiskey home, too. So they edge past Emma and me to go talk to Happy. The second the door slams shut, Whiskey is off and running.

“What the hell, you guys?” A slim thread of panic runs through her voice. Her pupils are inky-black spots floating in the whites of her eyes. “I don’t fall. I have never fallen. Never. So something must have happened. Did either of you see?”

“Whiskey,” Emma starts, “I don’t think—”

“No,” Whiskey says fiercely. Her eyes are so wide that the whites ring all around the brown irises. “No. I don’t fall.”

“She’s right,” I say, and they both turn to face me. Whiskey looks at me like I’m the only voice of reason for miles around. “Something’s wrong with the charm, and we’re going to figure out what.”