Adam,” says Leila, “my dad will fix the Ferris wheel.” She speaks very slowly and very clearly.

Adam throws his head back and howls. “Do it now!”

“It takes time,” Leila tells him.

“Somebody shut up that werewolf,” yells the man who has already called Adam a jerk.

“You shut up, you —” I start to say, but Leila reaches across the car and puts her hand on my wrist.

“Don’t say anything to him,” she whispers loudly.

I’m not even sure what I was going to call the man, but I don’t finish the sentence.

“Fix the damn car! Fix the damn car! Oh, ho, ho, HO!”

I turn in my seat so that I am sitting sideways. “Adam,” I say, facing him now. He won’t look at me. “Adam.” He is banging on the bar. “Adam.” Bang, bang, bang.

I reach out; I don’t know how else to get his attention. And he knocks my arm away with such force that I am thrown backward against the side of the car. My shoulder burns. “Adam!” I shout.

“Don’t touch me, you little …” Adam’s last words are lost in a hail of activity. He is rocking back and forth, back and forth, and our car is pitching with him. At the same time he’s trying to wrench the bar over our heads, and he is so strong — I can see his arm muscles straining — that he might be able to do it.

Leila leans out of the car and peers over the edge. “Dad! Dad!” she shouts.

“We’re working as fast as we can!” Mr. Cahn shouts back to her.

“But Dad, he’s —”

And at this moment, with a grinding shriek of metal, Adam succeeds in forcing the bar up over our heads. Then he is on his feet.

Leila and I lunge forward. “Adam, sit down!” Leila commands.

“Shut up, shut up, shut up!” Adam shrieks, but he sits down.

I look at the cars above and below us. The man who called Adam names is shouting instructions to someone on the ground. And the staring woman is still staring, but now she’s staring at Leila and me, not at Adam, and she looks concerned. “Stay calm, girls,” she says. “You’re doing a good job. Just stay calm.”

I barely hear her. Adam has stood up again and has swung his leg over the side of our car.

I begin to scream.

At the same time the woman yells, “Get back in the car!”

And the man yells, “Call the police! Somebody call the police!”

“They’re on their way,” I hear Mr. Cahn say from below.

The police, oh Lord, the police.

I don’t care what Adam might do to me, but he cannot, simply cannot, climb out of our car. We are … how high up? Two stories? Three? More?

“Leila, help me,” I say. “Grab his arms.”

Leila and I grab Adam’s arms and yank him backward. The three of us fall to the floor of the car.

“Get off! Get off!” Adam flails at us, with his hands, his feet. He hits, he kicks, then he scrambles to his knees and finally stands on one of the seats.

The look on his face, I think, is of pure terror. And I remember the time, a year or so ago, when I scared my father with an old Halloween mask. I had just meant to startle him, to make him laugh. Instead, I truly frightened him, and I will never, ever forget the look on his face. It was the kind of terrified look that reminds you that no matter how rational or grown up a person might seem, some part of him is absolutely sure — knows — that an evil other-world exists just outside of our regular, everyday world. And that although we don’t expect that world to collide with our calm, predictable one … well, really, at any moment that is exactly what might happen.

I look at Adam now and see that he is terrified, terrified, terrified. How often has he felt like this?

“The police are on their way,” I hear Mr. Cahn call.

And then someone screams, two people, three.

“Hattie!” Leila shouts. “Get up.”

I scramble to my feet. Adam, only one foot left in our car now, is edging his way along the lighted bars of metal that make up the Ferris wheel.

“Grab him!” shouts the woman.

And just as Leila and I reach for him, the Ferris wheel jerks forward.

“Adam, it’s fixed!” says Leila.

“Come back!” I say.

I hear the wail of a distant siren.

Adam won’t come back into the car, though, and as the Ferris wheel begins its descent, Leila and I can do nothing but grab his ankle and hold on tight. We hold on all the way down, and I think that Mr. Cahn is making the Ferris wheel move faster than usual.

Adam kicks at us, trying to shake us off. He kicks so hard, my teeth rattle, but I will not let go.

At the bottom, the Ferris wheel jerks to another stop. Leila and I are still struggling to our feet when two police officers grab Adam, pry him off the metal bars, and pull him to the ground, where they try to put a pair of handcuffs on him.

“Stop!” I say. “Don’t hurt him!” Leila and I fly after them. “Leave him alone. He’s not going to hurt you.”

But I am not sure about that. Adam is shouting, “Oh, ho, ho, ho!” and fighting the officers, twisting and kicking and biting. They struggle to fasten the handcuffs around his wrists.

“Are you okay?” Mr. Cahn has appeared, and he puts one arm around Leila and the other around me.

“We’re okay,” Leila says, even though we are scraped and bruised and some of our clothing is torn.

A huge crowd has gathered. It started to gather while we were stuck on the Ferris wheel, and now it is even larger, everyone staring at Adam, staring at the policemen. No one says much, but I can read in their eyes what they think of Adam. They are all glad he’s not related to them, that somebody else has to deal with him.

Mrs. Cahn manages to push through the crowd and she joins us, giving me a hug. “It’s going to be all right, Hattie,” she says.

I want to turn my face to her shoulder and melt into her, forget about Adam. But I can’t stop watching him.

“Hattie! Hattie!” Two more figures push through the crowd. Dad and Papa.

“What’s going on?” Dad cries, and he looks scared.

Papa approaches the policemen. “Hey!” he says.

He puts a hand out to Adam, but one of the officers blocks his way. “I’m sorry, Mr. Mercer.”

“What’s going on?” Dad says to me.

“We were on the Ferris wheel and it got stuck and Adam just … he kind of went crazy.”

“But what is Adam doing here at the carnival?”

“He came with me —” I start to say.

I stop talking because one of the policemen finally manages to close the handcuffs around Adam’s wrists. They clasp his arms and start to walk him through the crowd.

“Stand back!” they say, and the people slowly part, their eyes never leaving Adam.

“Where are you taking him?” calls Papa. He’s running after them, running after them wearing his tuxedo and his black dress shoes, which are now all dusty.

“To the hospital,” one replies.

“Is that really necessary?”

Dad has grabbed me by the elbow and is dragging me after Adam and Papa and the officers. I look over my shoulder, look for Leila, but I can’t find her in the crowd.

“Hattie,” says Dad harshly, “come on.”

The officers have not answered Papa’s question. Obviously it is necessary to take Adam to the hospital, because he has still not stopped struggling. Even when the policemen lift him off the ground and try to carry him along by his arms, he kicks and flails.

I am not very surprised when I see an ambulance drive through the entrance to Fred Carmel’s. The police officers drag Adam to it, and in about one second a straitjacket has been fastened around him and he has been loaded inside. Papa climbs in beside him. “We’re going to St. Mary’s,” he calls to us before the doors bang shut and the ambulance turns around and heads off. It drives silently, but in a big hurry.

I look at Dad. He begins to talk a mile a minute. “Okay. We’ll take the car and go back to the party. I’ll drive Nana to St. Mary’s, and you stay with your mother and help Ermaline and Sherman send the guests home and clean up.… St. Mary’s … where is St. Mary’s?”

Dad is running me through the carnival. Just outside the entrance I see our Ford. It’s parked all crooked, and one door is even open.

“Get in,” says Dad.

I climb in beside him.

“Now tell me how Adam wound up at the carnival tonight.”

I stare down at my hands and mumble the truth.

“What?” says Dad.

“I asked him to come with me so he wouldn’t have to spend the evening alone in his room,” I say loudly. “It seemed mean.”

“Did you ask Nana and Papa’s permission to do that?” Dad glances at me, and I shake my head.

“Why?”

“Because I thought they’d say no.”

Dad looks straight ahead as he sends our car careening out of the parking lot and heads it toward Nana and Papa’s house. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to. I know what he is thinking. And I know I am in big trouble.