The man in the pink fedora had no face. He looked like an unfinished wax mannequin dressed in a crisp black tuxedo. He cocked his head and turned slowly toward Kallie.
Even with no eyes, it was as though he were staring right at her. Right into her. He touched the brim of his hat, nodded once, and then vanished into the crowd.
“Did you see that?” Kallie’s voice was sharp, her expression dauntless.
Many twelve-year-olds would have been frightened. At the very least, unnerved. Kallie was neither. She had read Darwin. She knew facial expression was an important feature of ancestral social communication, and the very idea that someone dared walk around faceless served only to annoy her.
“See what?” Grandpa Jess tried to follow the jagged path of her gaze, but it lost itself in the labyrinth of people, performers, and sidewalk cafés.
The man was gone. Kallie sighed. “Nothing important. Never mind.”
Raven-feather clouds had flocked the sky over Lake Champlain, turning daylight to dusk. The air was thick and unstable. It was sure to storm, but this didn’t seem to worry the masses that had come to the marketplace in droves for the annual Festival of Fools.
Kallie wore sturdy rubber boots and a water-resistant jacket over a sensible denim skirt. She carried an umbrella almost as large as those hovering over the outdoor tables like enormous black and green mushroom caps. She subscribed to the Scouts’ motto: Be prepared.
“Relax, Kaliope,” said Grandpa Jess. “Try to have fun.”
“People who relax rarely achieve a thing.” She checked her watch and then pressed her thick black frames higher on the bridge of her nose.
Grandpa Jess’s mustache twitched. He patted her head. “You can’t plan your whole life. And even if you could, you’d miss out on a lot of interesting things.”
Though her brown hair was pulled back in a painfully tight ponytail, she smoothed it nonetheless and frowned.
She turned her attention to a woman wearing a shimmering blue leotard standing on her elbows. The woman’s legs contorted over her body, steadying a bow and arrow. Her toes released their grip, and the arrow flew, striking a target about twenty feet away. The crowd cheered.
Kallie clutched the handle of her umbrella with one hand and took her grandfather’s plaid shirtsleeve with the other. She dragged him farther along the bricked street, walking with purposeful steps. The quicker they moved, the quicker she could leave.
They passed beneath a canopy of lights stretching outward from a giant post that hung suspended, almost like magic, in the intersection of Church and College. It was late afternoon, but darkness had swept the landscape. The delicate bulbs twinkled like tiny jars filled with fireflies.
All around her the air was steeped in powerful aromas: piping hot coffee from Speeder & Earl’s; Ken’s gooey cheese pizza; caramel apples from Lake Champlain Chocolates; sweet and salty kettle corn; and paper-thin crêpes filled with strawberries and cream from the Skinny Pancake cart.
Kallie’s olfactory system clicked to overload. She wrinkled her nose as she wove through the throng, past a man on a ten-foot unicycle, a belly dancer, and a juggler in a plum patchy vest tossing flaming sticks high into the air.
Over the din, a haunting melody crackled from a loudspeaker. Outside Vermont Violins, a sad-faced clown in a red velvet suit eased a bow across delicate strings.
“How about a treat?” asked Grandpa Jess, stopping at the end of a lineup winding toward an ice-cream shop. In the narrow space between his beard and brows, his eyes crinkled with delight.
“Ice cream is fourteen percent cholesterol. Not to mention thirty-five percent fat.”
“Haven’t you heard?” said Grandpa Jess. “Fat is now the sixth food group.” He pinched her upper arm with a meaty hand. “Or is it the seventh?”
“Good fat, Grandpa. Like nuts. And beans.”
“Perfect. We’ll have Rocky Road. It has almonds. And chocolate is made from a bean.”
She rolled her eyes, then smiled and joined the line.
As they waited, Kallie couldn’t help but wonder why so many people were drawn to the festival. Even the mayor himself had kicked off the annual event filled with what he called awe-inspiring hijinks and rollicking tomfoolery.
Kallie was no fan of jinks—high or low—or any sort of foolery, be it Tom, Tim, or Harry, but her grandfather had insisted they go. She didn’t envy him having to answer to her father for it.
They stood for some time, only inching forward. All the while, the dark clouds grew thicker and tighter. The wind picked up, and Kallie was certain she heard a low murmur of distant thunder.
Nearby, a man in an emerald suit shifted shells around on a small table. When he stopped, a woman guessed which of the three concealed a pea. She smiled self-assuredly at the crowd. Then the man held up her watch for all to see. While she was busy eyeing the shells, he had stolen it right off her wrist.
“Like magic!” the woman gasped.
“Magic,” scoffed Kallie. More like distraction and deception. Mind tricks. Didn’t these people know there was no such thing as real magic?
Grandpa Jess had moved farther up the line. Kallie was about to catch up when she caught sight of the faceless man. He was smaller and thinner than she’d first imagined. Except for the tuxedo, she wasn’t entirely certain it was a man.
He clapped his hands, plucked a fistful of roses from thin air, and began handing them to those gathered nearby. When he arrived in front of Kallie, the roses were gone.
Up close she could see flesh-colored material covered his head, masking his features. Even his hands were concealed. He took off his fedora, flipped it over, and tapped it lightly. Out tumbled a tiny box, which he placed in the palm of her hand.
It was cube-shaped with a variety of ivory-colored circular inlays on each face. There were circles inside circles with elaborate dark designs. The box had no hinges and no clasp. No apparent way of opening it.
Kallie’s father had taught her never to accept gifts from strangers. She’d taken the box on reflex, without thinking. She extended her arm to return it, but when she looked up, he was gone again.
A blue flash split the sky above the lake, followed instantly by a loud clap of thunder. Kallie shoved the box into her jacket pocket and snapped open her umbrella just in time. The rain came fast and furious. Enormous drops of water beat so hard against the ground they appeared to bounce back up.
The streets were a blur of motion as everyone scurried for shelter—everyone except a thin girl wearing a bright yellow shirt and matching shorts. She stood with her chin tilted upward; her arms stretched wide to catch the downpour. The rain-soaked shorts clung to her thighs, and her T-shirt was quickly becoming embarrassingly transparent, but she didn’t seem to mind. For a moment, her eyes met Kallie’s, and the girl’s gaunt face lit up with a smile.
A tiny door in Kallie’s cobwebbed memory clicked open and something soft and gentle fluttered out. She chased it back inside, sealed the door, and hunkered deep beneath her umbrella. Her father would be upset if she got soaked and caught a cold.
Grandpa Jess waved at Kallie from beneath the awning of the ice-cream shop. When she approached, he disentangled himself from the bodies, bunched like asparagus, and joined her beneath the umbrella.
“Can we please leave, Grandpa?”
He glanced at the sky and nodded sadly. Placing his arm around her shoulder, he took the umbrella handle. They clung together as they made their way along Church Street toward Main. Just before they turned the corner, Kallie took one last look back.
The unicyclist was gone. So was the belly dancer. The juggler’s fire sticks had been extinguished, and the pounding rain drowned out the haunting melody of the sad clown’s violin.
Everything was gray, as though the rain had washed all color from the world. The girl in yellow twirled and sloshed through the deep puddles, as if dancing to music only she could hear.
Kallie formed a final, fleeting picture in her mind’s eye, but there was no sign of the faceless man.