MAUREEN
The boy with the slicked-back dark hair returns for a third time to try his hand at the Stop ’n’ Throw. He grins at me, slaps down his ten cents. “This one’s for my future girlfriend. Which prize do you want?” He said that the other two times, and it wasn’t funny or charming then either. I take his money, though, and smile back. Wide, broad. Really feeling it actually. You see, I already decided that this place is mine. Ever since our bus pulled into the empty field a few days ago, settling crookedly into a ditch, I’ve known that Opal Beach is it. My destiny. Where magic will happen.
I hand the boy a Wiffle ball. He is a boy for sure, the immaturity fluttering around him like the velvety fins of the beta fish in Jacqueline’s booth. It doesn’t matter if he is trying to win me over or just making fun of me for the sake of his friends, who all hang out just outside the perimeter of my booth sharing a burned funnel cake balanced on a flimsy paper plate. The guys are wearing their Easter-egg-colored polo shirts with turned up collars and trying to hide their acne with skin-colored Clearasil. The bunnies are all Madonna wannabes—ripped mesh gloves, belly shirts, chunky crucifixes around their necks. It’s all bad bleach highlights and twenty-dollar bangs around here, lighters struck too close to their hair.
No one in this town understands. They can’t feel the pinpricks of possibility in the air, the tides of fate tugging us around, tossing us in one direction or another. They’re like all the others in all the other beach towns, so concerned about who’s looking at their legs that they can’t take even one minute to think about who they are and what they want from this great, wide, insane world. They have it easy, and they don’t even know it.
I lean forward to set up the pins for the boy, lining them up on the target areas, taking my time to give him a glance at the tops of my breasts when my shirt gives in to gravity. He may not know or care what he wants beyond a taste of candy apples, but I do. And one thing I’ve learned from working these towns is that rich boys love the carnival girls. We are the elusive, exotic prize on the top shelf, the one that it seems urgent to win in the moment, even if it will be forgotten and tossed away later. Sometimes during that moment, when you’re still shiny and new, you can benefit. Shift up the social ladder a few notches, get a glimpse of the other side of things.
“I guess you already know the drill,” I say.
“I do, but I love to hear you say it,” he says. Up close his teeth look green, but that could just be the lights from the Ferris wheel reflecting off them. Clyde’s pumping old disco through the speakers. Everything’s about doin’ it right, doin’ it right, doo doo don’t ya know, and the air still smells of suntan lotion and grease. There’s the circus music and the screeches from the Tilt-a-Whirl, and it’s so summer I can almost bite into it.
I step away to the side of my booth and watch the boy squint, concentrating hard. One of his friends calls out, “Let’s go, Nolan Ryan,” and all the Material Girls tittle. Another says, “Don’t blow it again, man.” My boy ignores them, winds up and throws the Wiffle ball. He doesn’t even get close. He misses all three pins, his worst performance yet.
“Guess third time’s not the charm,” I say cheerfully. Clyde’s got it fixed so that the last pin is heavier than the others, making it nearly impossible to knock over with something as light as a Wiffle ball. Wouldn’t want everyone winning the cheap stuffed frogs and bears, of course.
From across the way I catch Jacqueline’s eye, and she raises her brows in a question, but I don’t take the bait. She’s got all softness inside her, that Jacqueline—too nice for her own good. She’s a dove. Always in bed right after the carnival shuts down for the night, reading love stories and stretching her hamstrings. She has no interest in playing the rich boys’ games. Says she’s seen it all and none of it is pretty.
“I’ve spent enough money here to get your name, though, haven’t I?” the boy asks.
“Maureen,” I say, before I can think to lie about it. This boy’s not my destiny, but I don’t care. The path to destiny can take some detours.
We end up in the Hall of Mirrors. The carnival has closed down, the rest of the people slowly shuffle to the gates for the night, but I know it’s not final call until Clyde cuts off the music.
The boy tells me his name is Barron. His friends are waiting for him outside the gates, but he lingers. He likes the Hall of Mirrors. I tell him he’s got to count to five and then come and find me. If he catches me, he’ll get a surprise. I can see by his face what kind of surprise he thinks I mean.
I leave him at the entrance, eyes closed, hands shoved tensely in his shorts’ pockets, counting to five too quickly. He likes games. That’s one thing we have in common. Too bad for Barron that I know the Hall of Mirrors as well as he knows his fancy childhood mansion. I know about the secret passages that allow the workers to slip quickly from one part of the hall—which is really not any larger than a garage—to another. I’ve got the upper hand in this game, which is how I like it. The world is one giant game after all. You just have to know how to play. What doors to unlock. What moves to make.
I lift a mirror in the front room and hop up the three steps to the top floor, peek through the tiny black hole in the wall to watch Barron stumble in, his eyes adjusting to the bright lights of the entrance hall. He’s got no choice here but to look at himself. I wonder what he’s thinking. Endless reflections of Barron staring at Barron staring at Barron. But he doesn’t pause for long. He’s a man on a mission.
In the grand hallway I let him catch a glimpse of me. There’s a two-way mirror, and I stand in front of it, pretending I don’t know he can see me. I turn around slowly, like I’m listening for him. I can feel him on the other side of the wall, watching me. He’s grown quiet, but I can almost hear his breath. He thinks he’s got me now. He thinks he knows something I don’t, and I let him. I bite my nail, brush back some hair. I shove my hands in the back pockets of my shorts.
Then I run.
In the next room, before Barron has a chance to follow, I slip behind the giant floor mirror and through a short passage that leads me to a central room—not even a room, smaller than a closet—where I stop. I can hear Barron getting frustrated. “I’m coming for you, Maureen,” he says.
In the echo of the hallway his voice sounds menacing, and I suddenly regret all of it. I feel tired. I don’t want to play anymore. I don’t want Barron’s sloppy hands pawing. I don’t want to hear about all the people he can buy weed from. I just want to go back to my trailer with Jacqueline and have her read aloud her stupid quizzes and fall asleep to the sound of the waves.
“Alright, you’ve had your fun. Let’s go,” our hero calls.
I slide out, peer through another hole and see him yanking on some of the mirrors, trying to find another path. I wonder, if I did leave, how long he’d stay there, tearing up the secrets of the Hall of Mirrors.
But I know I won’t leave. There’s still a chance he has something to offer.
I wait for him in the last room. It’s the room of distortions. In one mirror I look tall and thin, my neck giraffe-like, my face like it was pressed through the salt water taffy machine. In the next I am Humpty Dumpty, feet like pegs, my tummy and ass like a large ripe pear.
In another it looks like I have two faces. In the last, no face at all, my head decapitated. It’s here where Barron finds me, grabs me from behind in a violent bear hug, like he’s afraid I’m going to slip away again. “There you are,” he says, but I can’t see his face or mine. We are just bodies, a tangle of arms and legs. He’s finally won the elusive prize. I let him win. This time.
I learned long ago to trust my intuition, to let the universe in when it comes knocking. That’s how I got the gig for C&D Amusements in the first place. I’d been crashing at a friend’s pad for a few days and could tell she was getting all get-out-tired of me, when I decided to wander down to the bus station, hop on one and see where it took me. Instead, I saw the large trailers and trucks with C&D printed all over them, framed by a silhouette of a tall roller coaster and tangled messes of bumper cars. And Jacqueline getting off a bus. I’m not much for starting conversations with strangers, but I let her bum a cigarette, and she introduced me to Clyde, and that was it. It’s not a bad gig. Clyde hires some locals to fill the spots, but we are the core crew that travels. The season picked up in late spring, and we did a few quick two-week carnivals, and then in early June we settled in Opal Beach for the summer to feed people terrible food and make them queasy on shitty rides. After Opal Beach, Jacqueline tells me, we move on to state fairs and harvest festivals, but this is only a temporary gig for me, something I need until I can figure things out, start fresh.
“Sure,” Jacqueline says in her sweet sarcastic way. “Melvin’s temporary, too. He’s been here seven years now.”
“This could be the place,” I say, ignoring her, refusing to think about Melvin and his sad eyes. I open our trailer window and let the salty air inside. “There’s a magic here. I can feel it.”
“What’s so special about it?” Jacqueline asks me from her bed, where she’s painting her toenails a pale pink color that reminds me of a tongue. She waves her fingers, and the scent of varnish overtakes the ocean air. “It looks and smells the same as all the others.”
“I don’t know,” I admit. I flop down on my bed and pull out my notebook, start doodling. “But I think I’ll figure it out.”
Jacqueline rolls her eyes. “That’s what everyone says. We’re going to figure it out. Get our shit together. Right? But yet, we’re all still here.”
She wants a story. Everyone wants a story. The folks here at C&D trade stories like they’re baseball cards. One night in the last town we were in, Jacqueline told me about her daddy. She said the night he broke her finger was the night she left. Who are you running from? she asked, because everyone at C&D was running from something. I could’ve told her then—about my mom, or Gwen, or the dirty needles I’d have to be careful not to step on barefoot in the middle of the night, the red and blue lights twinkling through my bedroom curtains. I could’ve told her my Sad Story—we all have them, we all carry them around like precious little pets—but I know it’s never good to let anyone see you vulnerable.
So I don’t talk about it. Which is why everyone thinks I’m a hard one (read: bitch) around here, and why Clyde’s brother, Desmond, hates me like I’m a parasite. He never pays anyone properly, but he especially likes to dick me over. It’s like he knows how important the money is—what measly pay they give us, anyway—and purposefully taunts me. Jacqueline’s said more than once I should never let myself be alone with him. He’s older and dumber than Clyde, and I suspect Clyde only keeps him along because he’s family. He’s just there. A heavy presence that makes your skin crawl whenever his eyes flick over you like a lazy lizard with poison in his teeth.
“Don’t let the sunshine fool you into thinking you belong here, girl. You’ll just be disappointed, like the rest of us,” Jacqueline says.
But Jacqueline is wrong. We’ve been in Opal Beach for almost a week, and I can already tell it’s got a something. It’s not the people or the smell or the sound. It’s more like a vibration, a sense, like the electricity in the air just before a violent thunderstorm. I can feel its pulse, calling to me, soothing and delightfully exciting and terrifying, something new and life changing and yet as old and familiar as a battered, lonely seashell. Whatever it is, I’ve been waiting for it. And I’m ready.