After a large amount of dodging and weaving and a medium amount of six-year-olds smashing into each other and into other people, we make it to the kiddie midway. Penny, Andrew, and Lou-Ann line up at the entrance to the Mini-Swings. Lots of their friends from school are in line, too. Lewis and I are the only eleven-and-a-half-year-olds anywhere near this ride. We lean against the metal barrier with the rest of the ride-watchers—all grown-ups.
When Penny gets to the front, she shoves her bracelet wrist right up in the ticket-taker’s face. The guy looks right past her as if almost getting punched in the nose is just another of the many boring parts of his job.
The swings are bucket seats on long chains, with a safety bar to keep the kids in. Andrew starts to clamber onto one, falls out, and tries again. My sister tosses her ribbon hat at me, then runs around the circle inspecting each empty swing. I hold the hat low at my side and hope no one thinks it’s mine.
Seated in a swing, Lou-Ann pushes her safety bar up and down and looks at me.
“I’ll hook it for you,” Penny yells from her swing on the other side. “I’m six, and Miller isn’t much more than—”
“Stay in your swing,” the ride guy says. “I’m coming around to clip all of you in.”
I turn my back to the Mini-Swings so the handful of people on the fairgrounds who missed the announcement might think Penny was talking about someone else. I watch the regular rides on the other side of the midway swoop, turn, and spin. I close my eyes, listen to the screams, and pretend I’m on the SuperDrop.
“Hi, Miller! Hi, Lewis!”
Three kids from our school run past us in a blur. One of them is holding a gigantic bag of kettle corn. I don’t have kettle corn on my list, but seeing it reminds me that the only item I’ve had from my Fair food plan so far today is a whiff of Firefighter fries. My stomach grumbles.
“The swings slowing down makes a great close-up shot,” Lewis says.
I turn around and see the swings wind down from their maximum speed—turtle—to their medium speed—slug. They barely moved fast enough to get any centrifugal force going. After a few minutes the Mini-Swings slow down so much that they’re almost not moving at all. Andrew struggles with his safety bar.
“Hey, Andrew!” I call. “Wait until it stops.”
He looks up. He doesn’t seem to be able to undo the clip.
Good, I think.
Then I see him try to slip out without unclipping, which he might be able to do because he’s so bony. He gets partway out, then gets his foot stuck.
Bad, I think.
“Don’t move!” The ticket guy sprints around the circle of swings.
I vault over the barrier and race toward Andrew, gripping my belt to hold up the quarters. With one leg free and one caught in the swing, he tips over so he’s hanging upside down. He’s holding on to the safety bar with his hands, and his hair is brushing the ground. When we get to him, the ticket guy unclips the bar and I grab Andrew under his arms.
“I’m okay,” he squeaks as I haul him upright back into the seat. “Perfectly okay.”
“Geez, kid,” the ticket guy says, breathing hard. “Stay put on the rides until the operator lets you out!”
I set Andrew on his feet and straighten the straps of his duck backpack. His hair is decorated with wisps of dry grass and some dirt.
“Does your head hurt anywhere?” I ask.
“Nope,” he says. “I didn’t hit my head at all.”
I check anyway. No blood. No bruises. I bend his right arm, then his left.
“Let’s see you shake your legs,” I say.
All of his parts seem to be working as well as they usually do, so I walk him away from the swings.
“Okay?” Lewis asks.
I nod.
He holds up his camera and his thumb. “Classic!”
Penny and Lou-Ann stumble to the gate as if they’ve spent the last five minutes traveling to the moon at warp speed. The ticket-taker goes back to the boring parts of his job. My heart rate slows from quadruple-time to double-time.
“Where’s my hat?” Penny demands.
I spot the pile of bright ribbons on the ground next to the barrier.
“I’m not trusting you with it anymore.” She stomps over to pick it up.
There’s a bonus, I think.
“Hey, Penny!” a little girl yells from the line in front of the Mini-Swings. “We got a blue ribbon for our class pear butter!”
“Yay!” my sister shouts. Then she turns to me. “I want to see my new ribbons. Let’s go to the youth exhibit!”
I glance at my watch. “Not now,” I tell her. “It’s already time to head up to the candy apple booth to meet Dad.”
“Goody!” she says, ditching the ribbon idea. “You didn’t treat us to fries, so you can buy us candy apples instead.”
“What are you talking about?” I say. “You got fries.”
“We didn’t get fries from you. We got fries from Dad.”
“Fries are fries,” I say, knowing that’s probably not true on planet Pain-elope.
Here on planet Earth, I’m hoping that my dad will do the buying of the candy apples. I’m also counting on him to give me back my ten dollars for Lou-Ann’s ride bracelet. And I still have one large molecule of hope that some grown-up will take charge of the Pest Pack so I can be on my own. But that will never happen if we miss our next check-in.
I survey the jam-packed midway. “We’re on time, and we’re still going to be late!”
“Follow me.” Lewis leads us around the back of the Mini-Swings and we squeeze, one by one, through a gap between two sections of metal gate. We head uphill, scrambling over wires and hoses, and duck between two trailers.
“These’re the midway workers’ places,” Lewis tells me.
“I never even knew they spent the night here,” I say.
We keep going uphill. Lewis waves us around a wooden storm fence and we come out next to a bunch of hot tubs.
“Where are we?” I ask Lewis. “Did we leave the fairgrounds?”
“Nah,” he says. “This is the Home and Garden part of the Fair.”
He might as well have said that this is the Andromeda Galaxy part of the Fair, since I’ve never seen any of this. I stretch my mind around this new information as we tromp through a display of wooden yard sheds.
Penny, Andrew, and Lou-Ann start playing tag around the sheds. Every time one of them disappears behind a little building I get a jolt of panic.
“I really need a break from worrying about the location of these three moving objects,” I tell Lewis.
“Here’s an idea.” He opens a shed door.
Penny materializes. “You can’t go in there,” she tells him.
“I’ve been in these sheds a hundred times,” Lewis says.
My sister hops into the shed and the other two scramble after her. Lewis shuts the door. We lean our backs against it. Giggles and thumps come from inside.
“Excellent,” I say to Lewis. “Thanks.”
Outside the shed the sun is shining and the midway music floats up from down the hill. I feel the Fair’s force field tugging at me. I close my eyes and take a long, deep breath—the smell of new wood flavored with a whiff of fried dough. I imagine myself in a parallel universe where the first-graders play in this shed long enough for me to go on the Gravity Whirl with Lewis, or see the weird chickens, or do something—anything—on my own at the Holmsbury Fair.
“LET US OUT!” Penny yells.