My fingers twitch into fists, but before I do anything stupid, he’s gone. As he makes his way down the aisle, chatting easily with passersby, the anger inside me continues to simmer. It’s not my fault the Morettis couldn’t get their father a job with the carnival because my mom already holds the master carpenter position. And it’s not my fault they’re arrogant pricks who think the world should be handed to them on a platter because they bring in tons of paying customers. But soon, very soon, I won’t have to put up with shit like this.
A shriek of laughter pierces through my anger. I peer between two trailers and catch a glimpse of a pair of girls—a blonde doubled over in laughter and her dark-haired friend, who looks on with some mix of pride at having made someone else laugh so hard and disbelief that anyone actually could laugh that hard. As she tugs on the other girl’s arm, trying to get her to move along, I realize this is the girl I’d seen earlier, the one whose blush lit up her pale skin like sunlight through a flower petal. The blond girl straightens, and as she does, she gives her friend a swift smack on the ass, which sets the both of them giggling. The anger I’d held in my chest doesn’t completely dissolve, but it does loosen its hold as I watch the girls walk away.
Well. I guess the carnival isn’t all bad.
Gin Connelly perches delicately on a crate next to the rusting Gran Torino Marcel and I bought, already in the glittering costume she’ll wear for her shows this evening. Beside her is an origami configuration of jutting elbows and long torso as my best friend, Marcel, strains to reach a hidden part of the engine block of our piece-of-junk clunker.
I kick at a raggedy length of rubber on the ground, and as it tumbles to a stop at her bare feet, Gin snaps to attention. “Oh hell,” she says, grabbing Marcel’s wrist to look at his watch. At her touch, he startles, nearly knocking his head into the propped-open hood of the car. “I’m late for my first show. I’ll get up with you early in the morning to practice our new routine, okay?”
She’s up and off in a flurry of sparkles, jogging down the pathway between trailers, the crowd parting to let her through. Marcel absently rubs at the smears of grease marring his dark skin with an equally greasy rag, oblivious to the fact that all he’s doing is spreading the gunk around.
“Hey, man,” he says, only managing to draw his gaze to me once she’s out of sight. He’s got it so bad for Gin that I can’t even be mad at him for ignoring me till now. “Hop in and turn her on. Let’s see if I got rid of that squealing sound.”
The ever-present smell of gasoline hits me as I slide into the driver’s seat. At first, starting the car was a gentle and precise dance of pumping the gas, turning the key, listening, knowing when to back off and when to push harder to get the damned thing to turn over without flooding, but now all it takes is a simple turn of my wrist.
Our parents had questioned the need to buy the thing in the first place. What traveling did we do, outside of the carnival? The car was a gas-guzzler, couldn’t we see that? But neither Marcel’s parents nor my mother thought to ask the real reason behind our purchase—are you planning to leave us?
The car roars to life, the rumbling of the engine vibrating the chassis so much it’s like I’m sitting inside the belly of a bellowing dragon. The thick, cloying scent of gasoline gathers in my throat, and I throw the car door open so I don’t wind up vomiting all over the restored leather. But happily, the high-pitched whine that used to accompany the car’s start-up is gone.
Marcel slams the hood down and takes a bow—the same theatrical bend of the waist and flourish of the arm that punctuates the end of every knife-throwing show. He empties his pockets of tools, tossing them into the toolbox on the ground with his usual precision. “And that,” he says, a socket wrench crashing into the box, “is how”—his pocket flashlight lands with another clatter—“shit gets done.”
While Marcel checks out the RPMs, I walk around the car to see what I need to work on next. The ancient weather stripping around the passenger window crumbles beneath my fingertips; I’ll need to see about replacing it when I go into town. And I’ll need to finish patching up the gaping wound of rust over the left rear tire.
I run my fingers along the body filler covering the spots where rust had eaten through the metal, searching for any imperfections in my patchwork. I have a scrap of sandpaper in my pocket, and as I reach in, my fingers bump against the other reason why I’d stopped by this evening.
“Hey.” I toss a roll of cash Marcel’s way. “Half of this month’s wages.” I kneel and begin to buff away the small ridge that had caught under my fingertips, hopefully hiding the giddy tremble in my fingers. “That should do it, right? If I didn’t screw up my math, that gives us plenty to live off of for three months.”
Marcel riffles the corners of the bills with his thumb, staring at them like he’s trying to memorize the serial numbers, before tucking the roll of cash alongside its brothers in a hidden compartment of his toolbox. Rows and rows of money, most of our wages and tips from the last several months, line the tray. I’ve never seen that much cash before. It’s our future. Our ticket out. And the sight of it makes me feel lighter than I have in months.
“So when do you want to leave?” I glance at Marcel over my glasses, sure I’m going to see a roil of excitement playing over his features, but he’s busying himself with tightening the clamps on some tubing coming off the engine. And that’s when I know that after months of meticulous planning, Marcel and I are no longer on the same page.
Putting the only thing I have that resembles a home in my rearview mirror will be hard, but we both have our GEDs, a good store of cash, and, though the car isn’t much to look at, she’ll get us where we need to go. We won’t have the charm’s protection, but I don’t want to depend on it forever.
I stop sanding and rock back on my heels. “What’s up, man?”
Marcel stands, shaking out his long arms and cracking his knuckles. “I need more time.” A nervous sort of energy that’s not like him at all limns his edges, makes him jumpy. Like he expects me to lash out in anger.
Instead, I drop to the ground with a little flurry of dirt and lean against the car. “It’s Gin, isn’t it?”
Marcel plops down beside me, yanks the scrap of sandpaper from my hands, and begins to shred it into tiny pieces. “I gotta try, right? I mean, if we ditch this place and I never tried to see if there’s something between us, I’d always wonder. And that’s no way to live. Or so Mom’s self-help books tell me.”
Marcel has never understood why I don’t want to be dependent on the carnival. Maybe it’s because his family has been circus performers for generations, or maybe it’s because what I want seems contradictory. And I get that. But to me, there’s no contradiction at all. I want to choose a place and for once in my life put down roots. Let them sprawl and grow until I know where I belong.