Ivy sat on the floor in front of the computer, her legs numb from sitting cross-legged so long. Her mom sat on the couch behind her, watching The Price Is Right. The show’s theme song blared.
Ivy fiddled with the fade-in on the shots she’d downloaded, making the transitions slower, then faster, then slower again. The computer Aunt Connie had bought on sale years ago sat on the coffee table between the couch and TV and it was a noisy spot when her mom was home. The movie was more of a movie-ette, really, only a hundred and fifty seconds long, but it was a start. She was getting better with the camera, anyway.
Today’s shots were of doors, which Ivy’d always liked. She loved the door to the Everses’ house the first time she saw it. It had faded, friendly paint that was the same red as the barn, and a shiny black porcelain knob. It seemed to promise something nice lay within, and it did. Of course, sometimes doors promised one thing and delivered another, but they all seemed to hint at something. That’s what she liked about them—the story on the other side.
Ivy pushed a key and the movie began to play. It included a blue door at a bakery across town, Quail Middle School’s big glass doors, the small sage-green doors of the old Senate House, and the gate of the wrought-iron fence at the house she liked so much. That one wasn’t technically a door, but it was an entrance. Right now the movie ended with their own door and Ivy couldn’t decide about that, whether to leave it in or take it out. She tapped a few keys and the their door was gone. She tapped again and it was back.
“You want to watch Jeopardy!?” her mom asked.
Ivy shook her head. An ad for the summer carnival down on the river came on and Ivy blocked the sound out. When her mom left the room, Ivy ignored that too. She turned off the computer and opened up her sketchbook. Lately she’d been thinking she could turn the story she’d been working on, about a girl named Heather Lake, into a movie script. It had started out as a story in her sketchbook before she ever left the Everses, and now it was the best idea she had for a movie. In the story, Heather had been kidnapped as a toddler by a woman she thought was her mother.
SCENE ONE she wrote in big block letters at the top of a new page. SETTING: A small bedroom with one window, a single bed, and a desk. A cat is curled up on the bed. A girl sits at the desk, reading.
Ivy gazed at the word reading, then erased it. Writing in a notebook, she put down instead.
Her mom came back in, dressed in her favorite jeans and her sandals with the high-stacked heels. She held her T-R-A-C-Y key chain in one hand. “Come on. Let’s go out.”
Ivy looked up. “What?”
“You’ve been working long enough, you’re going to ruin your eyes, to say nothing about your back. How can you sit slouched over like that so long? It can’t be good for you.”
Ivy sat up straight. Her back did ache.
“We’ll go to the carnival. Get something to eat, a corn dog or whatever. Can’t sit around the house moping forever.”
Ivy scrambled to her feet and yanked her T-shirt straight. The shirt was red with a picture of a laughing atom on it, and it had reminded her of Jacob when she saw it at a garage sale down the street last week. The caption under the picture said Never trust an atom, they make up everything, and it had instantly become her official I’m-working-on-my-movie shirt, her lucky charm. She always felt good wearing it. Hopeful, and full of possibilities.
• • •
In the parking lot at the carnival, Ivy and her mom slammed their doors at the same time. Her mom rapped the roof of the Mustang. “Jinx.” Ivy grinned. Her mom threw her arm over Ivy’s shoulders as they headed for the park.
The Ferris wheel curved against the sky and tinny oompah music floated toward them.
Her mother paid the entry fee and they put their hands out to be stamped with a purple-ink clown face, and then they were swallowed by the crowd. Ivy smelled candy apples, French fries, caramel corn, and hamburgers. The rides blared music, the games buzzed and honked, the barkers cried out insistently. Her mom walked to the booth where you bought tickets for the rides, then handed Ivy twenty tickets and took twenty for herself.
“Wow, are you sure? I don’t need so many—”
“Don’t worry about it, it’s a splurge. You only live once, right?”
“Yeah, but, Mom—” Ivy didn’t want to finish the sentence—you haven’t been working.
“No worries.” Her mom smiled crookedly. “It’s twenty bucks, it won’t make or break us. I never did take you out for your birthday, so consider it a belated present.”
“Wow. Okay.”
“What do you want to ride first? What about the Gravitron? You up for it?”
“Yeah.” Ivy buttoned her tickets into the pocket of her shorts and hurried after her mother.
• • •
An hour later they sat side by side in the Ferris wheel. The wheel had stopped when they were almost to the top, and their seat swung slightly. Ivy gripped the safety bar and gazed out over the river. It was almost dark. Below them the festival galloped on. A fierce, sailing joy filled her chest. Her mom touched her knee. “Your dad and I used to always go to all the fairs around. Play the games, ride the rides.” She grimaced. “Back in the day. It was a good time.”
Ivy’s mom never talked about her dad. She probably wished she hadn’t said anything now, because her leg started jiggling, which made their seat swing. Ivy studied the lights of the town across the river, pretending that nothing strange had just happened, but she snuck a look at her mom when the wheel started slowly moving again. Her mom tapped her unlit cigarette on the safety bar. “I’m doing pretty good with this quitting thing, hey? Almost two weeks without falling off the wagon. Who’d of thought I’d quit before Walt Evers?”
Ivy frowned. Dad Evers’s name was Walton, not Walt, but her mom never would remember that. The wheel began clanking around again. When their car reached the bottom, the man running the ride reached to unhook their bar and Ivy leaned forward to leave, but her mom put her hand out with more tickets.
“What do you say we go around again?” she asked the carnival worker.
“You gotta get out, get back in line.” His voice was bored.
Ivy’s mom tapped his wrist with the tickets and gave him a playful smile. “C’mon. Give a girl a break.”
He shrugged and took the tickets and pulled the lever to make their car move on. “Step right up,” he yelled to the next people in line. “Ride the Ferris wheel, see the city from on high.”
“So I’m going to give George another shot after all,” her mom said as the wheel began to turn. “We’re going to try dating again, see how it goes.”
Ivy frowned. “You are? Why?”
Her mom shrugged. “I don’t know—I guess I just don’t like being single.”
Ivy stared at the crowd below.
• • •
When the wheel stopped again with them at the top, her mom spread her hands flat on the bar and studied them like she was looking for chips in her nail polish.
“Listen, Ives. There’s something else I want to say to you.”
“Oh?” Ivy’s foot began to jiggle nervously. She made it go still. “What?”
“You work so hard, Ives. At school and all. It’s kind of amazing. I never was any good at school, I wouldn’t have thought you’d be either.”
“Well, but I like school. I want to, maybe, go to college.”
“College?” Her mom laughed.
Ivy wove her fingers together and tried to feel each one individually: these were her fingers, each one was distinct.
“I mean, it’s good I guess. It’s not bad. But you work too hard, Ives. You try too hard. I don’t think that part of it’s a good thing. Not for you.”
The last of the happiness Ivy had felt since they pulled up at the carnival leaked away. The hole she so often felt inside herself was really there.
“I see how much you want to win this contest thing. And I admire your grit, Ives, I do. But you’re putting too much into it. You know you can’t win. Right? Don’t you?”
Ivy opened her mouth. Nothing came out.
Her mother tapped the bar. “Hon. You’ve got to remember who you are.”
The blood drained from Ivy’s head; her feet felt cast in concrete. It was amazing she didn’t tip the Ferris wheel over, she was so heavy. She said, slowly, “Who is that, Mom? Who am I?”
Her mom leaned close and looked into her eyes. “You’re a Blake. And people like us don’t get happy endings. That’s why I’m giving George another go.”
“Oh? What do you mean?” Ivy’s voice sounded flatter than one of Mom Evers’s pancakes. She felt the weight of an entire ocean pressing down on her.
“Yeah. Because, you know, he’s better than nothing. Better than being alone.”
Ivy’s heart swam in her chest, a sad fish in a lonely fishbowl. She gazed out at the carnival without seeing anything. You’re not alone, she wanted to say. I’m right here. I’m not nothing. She didn’t say anything at all for the whole rest of the evening. Her mom didn’t seem to notice.