CHAPTER TWELVE
When I was a kid, the Midway Beach carnival seemed like it stretched for miles. Everything was magnified. The loud music. The crowds. The wooden posts with the height limit for the rides set at what seemed like impossibly tall levels.
In reality, a full-sized person can walk from one end of the carnival to the other in about five minutes, less when it’s not as crowded as it is tonight.
So how come I still can’t find Max Harper? Since he drove away from my house this afternoon after his cryptic comment, one question’s been flashing in my brain like a neon light.
Why does he believe I’m not crazy?
It couldn’t have been anything my mom told him. She’s leaning toward sending me to a psychiatrist. Pretty wild considering she’s the one with a suicide attempt in her past, although I haven’t had a chance to ask her about that yet.
I’m spending my second break of the night the same way I did my first, going from ride to ride searching for Max. Still no luck. It’s not like I can ask one of my gossipy co-workers where he is, either. The Black Widow talk is dying down but will get a new injection tomorrow when Stuart Bigelow publishes his newspaper story about the body being moved. In the meantime, I don’t want to get anybody wondering whether Max and I have the hots for each other.
“Jade!” Roxy Cooper’s voice booms above the carnival noise. She’s beside the balloon dart game, gesturing for me to join her. She could tell me where Max is, but I can’t risk her figuring out I’m suspicious of him. Not when I’m still trying to work out what role she had in my disappearance.
The closer I get to her, the more she towers over me. Roxy is one large woman. If she’d snuck up behind me and hit me over the head the night I disappeared, she could have picked me up and carted me off like a really big bag of potatoes.
Comforting thought.
“I’m on break,” I tell her. “I’m not slacking off.”
“I know that!” She beams the smile that’s never seemed genuine. “You’re one of my best employees.”
Yeah, right. Roxy’s emphasis this year is putting on a happy face for the customers. She’s ripped into just about everybody for not smiling enough except melancholy me. The grin on the girl running the balloon toss game looks pained. Not surprising. The darts are dull, the balloons are underinflated and the customers get angry when they don’t win a cheap stuffed animal.
“That must have been tough last night, coming across that body like you did.” She waits as though she expects me to confide in her, seeing as we’re such good friends and all.
“Yeah, it was. Can I go now?”
“That’s not why I called you over here.” Her smile doesn’t waver. “Did you lose a copy of I Am Legend?”
It’s my favorite book in the world with an ending way cooler than in the Will Smith movie. For Christmas last year, Aunt Carol gave me a paperback copy autographed by Richard Matheson. The cover’s torn and the pages are dogeared, cutting down on the book’s value, but I treasured it.
Until I lost it.
“Is it a paperback? Kind of beat-up?” I almost trip over my words in my eagerness to get my questions answered.
“That’s the book.”
Joy bubbles in my chest. I’d spent untold hours looking for the book, trying to remember where I left it. “Where did you find it?”
“Under the passenger seat of my car. You must have had it with you when we took the ski trip.”
Impossible. Not only have I never been skiing with Roxy, I’ve never been inside her car. But if the book had been in my backpack the night I’d vanished, that would explain how Roxy had come up with it. Wouldn’t it?
“Still don’t remember the ski trip?” Roxy’s eyebrows pull downward. “I hoped things were getting clearer.”
“Oh, they are.” It’s time to make her squirm. “Every day I get closer to putting the pieces together.”
Roxy doesn’t even blink. “Good to hear. Your book’s on my desk in the trailer. Stop by for it any time.”
“Why won’t these balloons pop?” A sunburned tourist in Bermuda shorts bellows at the still-smiling girl operating the balloon dart game. “Is the game fixed?”
“I better handle this.” Roxy turns away from me and takes one giant stride in the direction of the tourist. He backs up two steps. “Of course the game’s not fixed,” she tells him.
All the games are fixed. Carnival games are designed to separate the gullible from their money.
One of these days, the lies will catch up with Roxy and I plan to be there when they do.
The scent of hot dogs and French fries carries on the ocean breeze, and my stomach noisily lets me know it’s past dinner. So much for looking for Max. My break’s almost over. If I don’t get something to eat now, I’ll go hungry for the rest of the night.
The nearest concession stand is in the shadow of the Hurricane, the roller coaster undergoing renovations. Painted a bright yellow, the concession stand is a junk food addict’s dream. Besides dogs and fries, unhealthy eaters can buy pizza, ice cream, popcorn, snow cones, cotton candy and a bunch of other empty calories. The food booth is also the only one large enough to be staffed by two employees. One is Adair. The other is Max.
Max, who was hired to be on rides. What’s up with that?
Three people are in front of me in line. Adair and Max alternate waiting on customers, rushing about filling cups with soda, stuffing hot dogs into buns and taking pizza slices out of the oven. When I’m second in line, Max’s gaze zeroes in on me. His grin is instantaneous.
“Hey, gorgeous,” he calls over the head of the chubby kid in front of me.
“Hey, bullshitter.”
He throws back his head and laughs, showing off perfect white teeth that call attention to the black of his hair.
“Why aren’t you on rides?” I ask.
“J-Rod quit.” He’s referring to Jorge Rodriguez, who has been telling anyone within earshot how much he hates working at the food booth. “Concessions was short-handed so I volunteered to change jobs.”
Nobody does that. Rides are the way better gig.
“Can I order?” The chubby kid proceeds to do exactly that: Two hot dogs, one piece of pizza, a large soda, fries and a plate of churros.
The kid pays Max, then steps aside while Max goes to fill his order. Adair appears at the window. Lucky me.
“A hot dog and fries, please.”
Adair leans forward until her head’s halfway out of the booth and bares her teeth—not in a smile. She looks maniacal, like the clown who was holding the syringe in the forest. “Sure thing, skank.”
“Really? You can’t think up a better insult than skank?”
“You better be careful,” she hisses. “Didn’t you think I’d find out you were out to lunch with Hunter today?”
She doesn’t seem to know Max was also present at lunch. I’m not about to tell her.
“I’m not afraid of you.” My voice is as low as hers, although not as menacing. That would be hard to pull off.
She clenches her jaw, and a vein throbs in her temple. “If you don’t stay away from my boyfriend,” she whispers, “I’ll give you reason to be afraid.”
“If he’s your boyfriend, why was he having lunch with me?”
“Excuse me, Adair.” Max appears at the window with a cardboard tray filled to overflowing with the chubby kid’s order. Before Adair leaves to get my food, she gives me the death glare.
“Are you gonna eat all that, bud?” Max asks the kid.
“I like food,” the kid mumbles before he takes the tray and shuffles away.
Nobody is behind me. The time’s not right to quiz Max about what he said in my driveway, though, not with Adair in hearing range. “Can we get together tonight after closing?”
I’m expecting Max to make a quip like depends on what you have in mind. Instead Adair appears at the window with my order and stands close enough to Max that their shoulders touch. “He can’t. Max already asked me to hang out.”<
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Adair slaps the plate with the hot dog and fries on the counter, a smirk on her face. It’s obvious she’s trying to make me jealous, silently threatening to steal my boyfriend because she thinks I have designs on Hunter. Never mind for a minute that Max isn’t my boyfriend.
There has to be more to the reason they’re spending time together than that. It’s too much of a stretch that Max just happened to make Adair’s acquaintance mere days after trespassing on her dad’s private property.
“Okay, then. I guess I’ll see what Hunter’s up to tonight.” I’m not sure who I’m trying to rattle more, Adair or Max. Neither of them look happy when I take my leave.
I’m not really planning to seek out Hunter, but then suddenly there he is about ten yards away heading for the concession stand. The yellow arcade T-shirt highlights the blond in his brown hair and shows off the muscle tone in his chest and arms. He looks about as far from bad news as you can get.
He’s almost past me before I unstick the heart that’s in my throat and find my voice. “Hey, Hunter.”
He stops walking, his head swiveling as though he doesn’t know where the voice is coming from. Finally, he focuses on me. “Jade. I didn’t see you.”
Story of my life.
“What’s up?” he asks.
My tongue’s in danger of knotting. But now that I got him to stop, I realize I do have something to ask him. “I got the impression at lunch that you and Max knew each other.”
His eyes narrow and glisten. “Nope. That guy’s an asshole.”
“I wouldn’t go that far.” My defense of Max is automatic. When did that happen? “Besides, you gotta admit the thing with your last name is strange.”
Too strange, maybe. I’ve been so preoccupied with what Max might be up to that I haven’t given much thought to Hunter’s claim that both his father and uncle are Prescotts. It’s either that or Hunter Prescott isn’t his real name.
“Not as strange as the rumor that you and me are seeing each other,” Hunter says. “Did you know about that?”
He could be changing the subject because he doesn’t want to answer any more questions about his name. Or he could be trying to figure out how I feel about the rumor. This could be my chance to hint at how I feel about him.
“It’s one of the nicer rumors I’ve heard all summer.” Groan. Did I really say that?
“So you’ve heard it, too?”
“Just now from Adair.” And now I’ve gone and brought up my arch rival. Double groan.
“Is that right?” Hunter doesn’t seem at all upset that Adair has gotten the wrong idea. “Maybe one of these days we’ll have to make good on that gossip.”
The hope inside me rises like a helium balloon.
“Catch you later, Jade.” Hunter points a finger at me and heads for the concession stand.
I’m not sure what sort of overture I expected Hunter to make, but it wasn’t to leave me and seek out Adair. Although maybe Hunter’s just hungry. In case there’s more to it than that, I consider calling him back to tell him my theory that Adair is undergoing a personality change.
“Yeah, right,” I mutter to myself. “Like that would win points with the nephew of a psychiatrist.”
I take a bite of hot dog and discover it’s cold. Not a little cold. Freezing cold. So are the fries, courtesy of my not-so-friendly neighborhood concession worker. I pitch everything into a nearby waste basket and tell myself Adair considers me to be the competition. That makes me feel a little better.
The rest of the never-ending night, I try to figure out how to convince Hunter I’d make a way better girlfriend than the bitchy Adair. By closing time, I’ve got nothing. The only way to end the evening on a high note is to retrieve my autographed copy of I Am Legend.
After texting Becky I’ll meet her in fifteen minutes, I head to the steel-framed trailer that houses the administrative office. It’s on the far side of the carnival nearest the arcade, and it’s locked because everybody stores their stuff there. All the employees have the combination for the lock on the door. Once the trailer is open, I step inside onto the commercial tile floor. The lights are on, but the small office is empty aside from the calico cat rushing toward me and panting. She jumps, her paws on my leg, like she wants to be petted.
“Hey, girl.” I reach down to stroke the unfamiliar animal, which has to weigh at least twenty pounds. “You know you’re not a dog, right?”
The monstrous cat wags its tail. Weird, but our cat Beelzebub went through an identity crisis, too. And he got over it.
The cat follows me to the desk where I find the book exactly where Roxy said it would be. The rip on the upper right side of the cover verifies it’s my copy. I clutch the book to my chest. Any employee could have come in here and walked off with it. Well, maybe they wouldn’t have recognized the book’s value. But it doesn’t seem smart for Roxy to give absolutely everybody access to the trailer.
Why, if she had anything to hide, somebody might find it.
The desktop computer is off, but the desk has drawers. With the gigantic cat panting at my heels, I yank open the top drawer. It’s filled with paper. I’m about to start rummaging through them when I notice a burnt orange backpack against the far wall with the rest of the employee belongings. It looks exactly like the backpack I’d seen in Max’s pickup at Wilder Woods.
I’d bet my copy of I Am Legend that Max also has something to hide.
The office is deathly quiet but from somewhere I hear the wail of an ambulance siren. Quickly I cross the trailer to the backpacks and kneel down. The cat makes a noise that sounds more like a bark than a meow and licks me on the arm with its scratchy tongue.
“Down, girl,” I command. The cat obeys and sits at my side.
I unzip the backpack and pull out some papers. The first one is a copy of the form Roxy insists all the employees fill out. Max’s home address is listed as Midway Beach instead of upstate North Carolina. Disappointing. In the section about who to notify in case of emergency, a telephone number is listed but no accompanying name. A bookmark juts out from my prized possession. I snag a pen from the bottom of the backpack and jot down the number.
I flip to the second piece of paper and suck in a breath. Staring back at me is a black and white image of Max Harper with one word emblazoned above his face: MISSING. Spots swim before my eyes, and I blink to clear my vision.
The cat makes its strange woofing noise and bounds over to the door as I hear the heavy fall of footsteps on the steel-framed steps. I fold the flyer and stuff it in the back pocket of my shorts before I jam the other papers in the backpack and rezip it. I stand up and whirl to face forward as the door opens and the cat greets Roxy.
Roxy laughs and bends down to pet the animal before lifting her gaze to me. “I see you found your book.”
From the corner of my eye, I notice the desk drawer standing open. Damn. Roxy follows the flick of my gaze. Double damn.
In three strides she’s across the office and looming over me. “Were you looking through my desk drawer?”
An ambulance siren drifts through the open door, sounding like it’s getting closer by the second. I hold up my copy of I Am Legend and pray my voice won’t shake. “Of course not. I was getting my book.”
“I think you—”
The siren blares, drowning out the rest of her sentence. It sounds as though the ambulance is directly outside the trailer. A revolving red light flashes through the window.
“Something’s happening.” Grateful for any excuse to escape, I rush by Roxy into the night, intending to find a quiet spot to sort out what my discovery means.
Outside there’s commotion. The ambulance, its lights still whirling, is parked on the narrow side street between the edge of the carnival and the arcade. The cop who took my statement is at the entrance, keeping the gathering crowd from entering. A guy who works at the arcade emerges, his mouth hanging open and his eyes glazed. It’s the same guy with the tattoos who was gossiping about me to Porter
McRoy a few days ago.
I reach out and grab his arm before he can pass me. “What’s going on?”
“Bad stuff, man.” He shakes his head as though he’s in a daze. “Convulsions, vomiting, groaning. It’s like he’s dying.”
“Like who’s dying?”
“Hunter Prescott. I think the dude’s toast.”