Carniepunk Read online

  “What the hell, Kiley?” he said, and shook off the hands of some of the rest of his crew who were trying to help him up. There were six or seven of them, all kind of the same, the way cliques tend to be; his gang were all tall, good-looking guys. Not jocks, because none of them really cared enough about working at anything to be jocks; not nerds, because they weren’t really smart. Just the good-looking upper average of the high school set. They did what Jamie said.

  Always.

  “ ’Sup with your bitch, man?” Alan asked. “Where’d the attitude come from?”

  Jamie had a kind of cold, black gravity to him when he was angry, and I could feel it now, tilting the world in his direction. His posse drew tighter around him as he stood.

  “What the hell?” he repeated, and came right up on me, shoving me against the hard wooden block of the table. It hurt, and a splinter dug into my butt, but I didn’t move. I didn’t fight back. I never did. I froze, staring into that pretty, cold face, and tried to think what to say. The world had ended—my world—and words just seemed useless now. But I couldn’t accuse him. I couldn’t.

  “You scared me,” I whispered instead.

  That made him smile, like it pleased him to hear it.

  “Scared you,” he said. “Wow. I didn’t know you scared that easy, Kiles. Jeez, it’s the middle of the carnival. Nothing’s going to happen to you here.”

  No, it would happen somewhere private. Somewhere dark. Somewhere isolated. Like that girl. He’d left her somewhere, naked and dead, face swollen, eyes bugged out and staring in terror at the dark.

  I glanced up as the banner flapped again, with a sound like snapping bones, and for a second I was confused. It should have had the Cold Girl on it, but this time it instead had a fortune-teller on it, with the words MADAME LAIDA KNOWS ALL.

  “Hey!” Jamie snapped his fingers in front of my face. “What’s wrong with you? If you’ve got good drugs, you’re supposed to share.”

  His boys laughed. I said nothing, just stared at him. He looked so normal. Just like the old Jamie, the one that had existed before I’d seen what was on his cell phone . . . only it wasn’t him, it wasn’t the one I’d loved so much it hurt.

  That Jamie had never really existed at all. I didn’t know who this one was, and he terrified me.

  “Awww, come on, don’t look at me like that. You know I’d never hurt you, baby,” he said, and kissed me. I wanted to gag. And scream. And cry. Something chilly had settled over me and soaked into my bones, turned them into fragile ice. I knew I’d never really feel warm again.

  “Hey, hey, Kiley? You okay?”

  “Okay,” I said. I didn’t mean it. It was an empty set of sounds that stood in for screaming. He stared at me, frowning, and I knew he didn’t believe me. He turned and glanced around, and Alan locked eyes with him.

  I knew that I’d shown him too much, and my heart started running faster, faster, faster.

  “Hey,” Jamie said, in a very different kind of tone. “Let me use your phone a second, okay?”

  “My—my phone?” I stared at him stupidly. The lump of it in my pocket seemed hot, as if it might sear right through my skin. “Um—I left it in your car.”

  “You did?” He smiled, wide and easy, but when he looked back at me, his eyes were flat and dark. “Well, that was stupid. What if it gets stolen?”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “Stupid. Sorry. I—I can go get it—”

  “No.” He nodded at Alan, reached in his pocket, and fished out the keys, which he tossed to his best friend. “Alan’ll get it. How about you and me go on a ride while he’s gone?”

  “A ride?” My brain felt numbed, and with his posse standing around him, I felt like a rabbit cornered by a pack of wild dogs. No way out.

  “Yeah, Kiley, a ride. What, you don’t speak Carnival?” He brandished a long tail of tickets in one hand and grabbed me by the arm with the other. “Just you and me, in the dark. Won’t that be fun? Maybe you’ll have time to give me a little something before it’s over.”

  “Let go of her,” a voice said from behind me. An old man’s voice this time.

  Jamie looked past me and did an exaggerated double take so fake, nobody could mistake it for anything else.

  “Hey, look, guys, it’s Coach Lame-ass. Oh, shit, sorry, I meant Coach Lamar. Sorry, sir.”

  I glanced back and saw the boys’ baseball coach standing there, holding a hot dog dripping with relish in one hand and a soda in the other. Beside him was a woman about his age, who I guessed was Mrs. Lame-ass. The coach was fireplug-wide and short and totally ugly, with his balding head and pug nose and muddy-brown eyes, and I’d called him “Coach Lame-ass,” too, lots of times, but just now I was so grateful to him that I wanted to sob.

  He was staring straight at Jamie, and it came to me with a shock that the tight expression on his face was genuine disgust. He didn’t like my boyfriend. Not at all. Not ever.

  “I said, let her go,” the coach said. His wife murmured something to him, looking worried, but he shook her off and put his hot dog and Coke down on the table. I noticed, finally, that he had kids with him, too—a girl about ten, and a boy about twelve. They looked worried too. “Now, Pierson.”

  “No offense, Coach, but this ain’t school,” Jamie said. He sounded pleasant enough, but his grip tightened around my arm, and it hurt enough to leave bruises. “Tell him you’re fine, Kiley.”

  I’m not, I thought. God, please, just let me go. . . .

  But I knew he would never do that. Jamie knew, somehow, that I had seen what was on his phone. I couldn’t hide it. I couldn’t disguise the terror and horror.

  If he let me go, it would only be to let me run into the dark, where there’d be no one to hear, and no one to see except the camera lens when he caught up to me.

  So I licked my lips and I said, “I’m fine, sir.” If I could stay here, in the lights, I had a chance of finding someone who could help me. Not Coach Lame-ass; they’d beat him to a pulp, and his wife and kids too. “Don’t worry about me.”

  “Yeah, what she said,” Jamie said. “C’mon, Kiley, let’s go get on a ride while Alan comes back with your phone.”

  The other boys looked at me like I was a piece of dead meat as Jamie tugged me away, heading for the haunted-house ride. It was a cheap tin thing, creaking as the cars moved through it; a giant, peeling illustration of the grim reaper loomed down over the lines queuing up for it. I looked over my shoulder as we left Coach Lamar and his family behind. Jamie’s posse hadn’t drifted off, like I’d hoped; they had taken over one side of the long table.

  Coach was watching us go, still frowning, and his wife was whispering to him. He finally, reluctantly, sat down with his kids.

  There were other people from school around the carnival, but nobody paid attention to me, only to Jamie, who got smiles and nods. I wasn’t popular, I wasn’t unpopular. I was wallpaper—which was a good thing, since it normally meant people left me alone, but a bad thing, because I was invisible, and right now I desperately needed people to see. I felt hollowed out inside, and not only did no one notice, most likely no one would have cared even if they had.

  I saw Vanessa Seers, with her glossy perfect hair and makeup and shoes, and her coterie of giggling BFFs. Vanessa made eyes at Jamie and he made them back, watching her as she headed off for some other part of the carnival. The Geek Squad came past us in a tight knot, jabbering to each other about books and DVDs and some lame-ass anime festival they were going to. I even saw Ruth Sheldon and Lyle Garrett, the local brains, who held down the top end of the bell curve. They were holding hands. Nerd love.

  I saw Matt, who’d talked to me before, but he was deep in conversation with some other girl I couldn’t remember, and he never glanced over to see how much trouble I was in.

  My brain felt like it was melting, and I was so cold I shivered constantly. I needed to do something, and I knew that; but part of me, the survival part, just wouldn’t let me. It was convinced that if I stayed qui
et, passive, this would all go away. It was stupid, but I couldn’t seem to summon up anything but a bone-deep conviction that somehow, if I didn’t fight him, it would all be okay.

  You need to scream and fight him, some very tiny part of me, the brave part, said. People are here. They can help you. They can call the police!

  But my brain shied away from the whole idea of the police—God, no, I couldn’t even think about it. I didn’t know who the girl was, and maybe—maybe—somebody had just sent him the video, right? Maybe it wasn’t Jamie on there at all and I’d gotten it all wrong. Maybe it was some other guy. Maybe it was faked. What would happen if it really was some kind of movie, and I was making a big deal out of nothing?

  Then why did he keep it? Why would he want to see that again, and show it to his friends?

  I couldn’t think about it; it made me want to throw up. I licked my lips and said, “I need to go to the bathroom, Jamie.”

  “Can’t,” he said. “We’ll lose our place in line.”

  That was crap, and we both knew it; the lines were maybe ten people at most, and moved fast. I tried to pull free, but he yanked me closer still.

  “Listen,” he said softly, in a deadly cool voice. “Alan’s coming back with your phone. Don’t go running off, okay?”

  I stared hard at the blinking, flashing, gyrating carnival lights until everything just melted into a meaningless sea of sparkles, trying not to think about anything, wishing I was dead, wishing I’d never picked up Jamie’s phone at all.

  But I had, and that would never, ever change.

  My boyfriend’s a monster. Did that make me a monster too? I knew girls who covered up for their guys, lied for them to the cops, all that kind of stuff; but it was for dumb stunts or minor crimes, not . . . not this. If I told somebody, would it make me a snitch? Would everybody hate me? His friends would, all his handsome tall buds. Their girlfriends would hate me on principle for ratting him out. Half the rest of the girls in school thought Jamie was totally cute, and they’d loathe me for telling lies about him, even if the proof came out. They’d never believe it anyway.

  If I could just get away somehow, I could go home. Talk to Mom. No—I could just imagine how that would work. She’d go to Jamie’s mom, and then Jamie would find out, and . . . My imagination just stopped there, because I couldn’t honestly think what would happen next. And maybe I just didn’t want to think about it.

  I stared at the man running the dark ride as we drew closer and closer. Jamie’s grip on my arm never loosened, and I knew by now it would be flowering black bruises under the skin.

  And I knew, with a sick feeling of anger, that Jamie probably liked it that he was hurting me. So I studied the carnie running the ride. He was a big guy, muscular, shaved head, tattoos running up his neck and down his flexing arms. He didn’t smile; customer service was not in his job description. He looked bored, and distant, and he just went through the mechanical process of loading people in the seats, strapping them down, and operating the ride controls. The machinery looked ancient, and in a weird way, so did he. Maybe it was how he moved, because his face seemed young.

  It was his eyes that aged him, I decided. Old, angry eyes. And when they met mine, they flashed red. Blood red.

  A new chill washed over me, like being hit by an unexpected bucket of water. It was as if something had slapped me with an ice-cold hand and said, Wake up.

  And then we were at the front of the line.

  Jamie climbed into the seat that was open, and to do it, he let go of me . . . and I stepped back when he reached again for me.

  He froze. “Kiles, come on. Don’t be this way.” They were coaxing words, but I knew, from the tight, angry set of his lips, that what waited for me in the dark was—at the very least—a fist, and maybe worse. “Baby, come on.”

  I felt the sudden heat of the ride operator at my back, and his hand fell on my shoulder. It was heavy, and real, and it should have scared the shit out of me, but instead I breathed in a sudden spasm of relief.

  “Get in or leave,” he said. “You’re holding up the line.”

  “I’m leaving,” I said.

  “Good choice.”

  The words were only a faint whisper, and almost too soft to hear, but I knew he’d meant them for me. Jamie grabbed for me, but the carnie got between us and slammed down the locking bar.

  “Your boyfriend’s going to be taking a little ride. Madame Laida wants to see you.”

  I backed up another couple of steps. Jamie shouted my name and tried to yank himself out from under the bar, but the carnie was quick to hit the button on the panel next to him.

  Jamie’s cart lurched off into the darkness of the ride, and me . . .

  I turned and ran.

  Jamie’s posse was nearby, and some of them got up, not sure whether they ought to stop me. But just then I saw Alan standing in the shadows of the concession stand, his own phone in his hand. He was watching me.

  And I heard the phone in my pocket start to ring, and its glow was clearly visible through the pocket of my pants.

  Alan held up something that glittered in the light—the broken dangle from my phone, which he must have found in the car. Then he pointed at me with a finger gun, and pulled the trigger.

  I gasped, turned, and ran blindly in the opposite direction, deeper into the midway. People swirled around me talking, laughing, having actual futures and lives. But they felt like ghosts to me. I looked around wildly for a familiar face, or for a cop, or anyone who could help.

  Another ride operator—the teacup ride—looked up as I passed, and I thought I saw his eyes flash red too. One of the midway booth trolls shilling games watched me with eyes that seemed to shift colors from blue to crimson. I was hallucinating now, I thought, because it seemed as if they were all looking at me, as if I was drawing their attention the way a gazelle draws lions.

  I ran and ran, shoving blindly through the crowd, and finally I found myself standing in front of a billowing, dirty tent the color of cheap mustard, with a sign in front that said MADAME LAIDA KNOWS ALL. Some kind of fortune-teller—the tattered banner showed the standard gypsy woman in a turban, staring mysteriously over a glowing crystal ball.

  I realized, with a horrified jolt, that I’d managed to run out of the crowd, and I knew that Jamie’s friends, especially Alan, would be right behind me.

  I didn’t have a choice. I ran into Madame Laida’s tent.

  Entering felt as if I had run through some kind of barrier—not a real one, but like an electrical field that tingled cold on my skin. And then I was inside a dim, small space that smelled of mold and incense. There was a velvet-draped table, two chairs, and a crystal ball sitting in the center of the cloth—and no one else in the room.

  I spun, short of breath now, sure that Alan and his buds were seconds behind me, but I heard nothing—no shouting, no footsteps. Even the noise and music of the carnival was muted, as if it had moved a long ways off.

  “Sit,” a voice said, and when I spun around again, I saw an old woman sitting on the other side of the table. She hadn’t been there before, and I hadn’t heard her come in, but I supposed she must have approached from the rear of the tent when I was concentrating on the other side. She looked like the stereotypical fortune-teller—cheap, shiny robes, scarves, layers of jewelry that chimed together when she shifted positions. Her turban had a fake red stone on it, and a peacock feather that had seen better days. She looked pinched and tired.

  When she smiled, I saw her crooked teeth were yellow from coffee or smoking or both. “Sit down, child.”

  I didn’t. I went to the flap of the tent and tried to see outside without moving the canvas.

  “If you’re worried about his friends, they won’t find you here,” Madame Laida said, which drew me back around to stare at her. Her thin gray eyebrows raised. “Sit down, Kiley.”

  I went very still inside. “How do you know my name?”

  “Madame Laida knows all,” she said. “It says so r
ight on my sign. Don’t be afraid. They won’t come in here.”

  I sank down in the chair across from her, blinking now. The room really did stink of mold, and the incense tasted a little rancid in my mouth.

  “How do you know me? Really?”

  “We have our ways, Kiley Reynolds. Hell, maybe I just used Facebook. If you’re worried about Jamie finding his way here, he won’t. He and his friends are tearing up the midway looking for you. We’re letting him do that to keep him occupied.” She seemed to find it cute somehow. “I wanted to speak to you, before she does.”

  It wasn’t possible she knew my name, or Jamie’s. I felt dizzy and a little sick from the smell in there, and the heat, and the bitter black intensity of her eyes on me. She pulled out a cigarette from a pack beneath her robes, lit up with a cheap lighter, and took a long pull of smoke, which she then breathed out over the crystal ball.

  It was as if the cigarette smoke had gotten trapped inside the glass, because suddenly the crystal clouded up, swirling, and shapes began to form.

  I froze, staring. It happened in shades of gray, but I watched the girl struggling in Jamie’s clenched hands, watched her choke and die, watched him rape her all over again. When it was over, and the smoke went back to random swirls, I realized that I was hunched over, both arms protecting my stomach as if she’d punched me hard.

  “How . . . how did you do that?” My voice sounded shaky and thin.

  Madame Laida hadn’t watched the show in her crystal ball; she’d kept staring at me, though I couldn’t really say how I knew that, since my attention had been riveted on what she’d shown me. Now she took another drag on her cigarette, blew it up toward the tent’s roof, and said, “So, Kiley, let’s get the bad news out of the way: you’re going to die. I can’t usually see in this much detail, but she’s close by tonight, and she’s giving it to me in full color and sound. That blows, by the way.”

  “I—I’m going to—” I couldn’t handle that, not at all, so I lunged for the other thing. “What do you mean, ‘she’? Who are you talking about?”