“Rides are for kids.”
“We are kids. What’s up your butt?”
I ignored him, watching a guy with an American flag and the words, My Country ~ Love It or Leave It, tattooed on his arm. He held a beer bottle, circling the Whack-a-Mole game.
“Easy,” the guy said to his girlfriend. “They gotta give a prize each game.”
“But there’s no one playing,” she said.
“That’s what makes it so easy.”
His girlfriend gave the tattoo a squeeze, and the guy handed a dollar to the girl running the game. She stuck it into her money belt and pulled out an orange balloon. I watched as she fitted it over the nipple of the game and handed the guy a mallet.
“What do you want to do?” Karpe’s voice, always on the verge of it, reached full whine.
“So, start,” the guy commanded the Whack-a-Mole girl.
“I need four players.” The girl held up four fingers. She wore leather bracelets on each wrist. She yelled to the nearly empty midway, “Three more players. Put the mole in the hole! Prize every time.”
“Want to play?” Karpe asked.
“To win a stuffed Clifford the Dog? Not likely.” I started to walk away.
“Well, I’m playing.” Karpe went over to the Whack-a-Mole, waving a dollar, so I had to stay.
The girl took the money, barely glancing up. “Two more players! We’re looking for terminators,” she purred. “Whack-a-Mole exterminators!”
“Ain’t no one here.” The tattooed guy took a swig of beer.
“Sorry, sir. I’m not allowed to start with less than four players.” She pointed to a sign that said that.
Something about her voice—or maybe the sir—caught my attention. I looked at her.
Because, you know, I hadn’t before. Not really. I thought I knew what to expect. I’d been to enough fairs to know what a Whack-a-Mole girl looked like.
I was wrong.
First, she had no visible tattoos, scars, or body piercings. No scabs either. Nothing, in short, to ID her body if it was found in a canal. And she was young, nineteen or twenty. And pretty. Not the carnival kind of pretty that gets in your eyes like too much sun—just regular pretty. I felt like I’d seen her before. She repeated the balloon process. This time it was a green balloon. As she concentrated, a half inch of pink tongue slid out between her teeth. Her dark hair fell over her eyes so I couldn’t see them. What I could see, at least if I walked closer, was the view down her green T-shirt.
I walked closer.
She finished the green balloon and stepped back. She pushed the hair from her eyes. They met mine. They were brown. She held my gaze a moment, then looked away.
“Two more players!” she called. “Two more!”
“Start the game!” the tattooed man snarled. “There’s no one else going to play.”
“Maybe the lady wants to play?”
“I ain’t paying twice for a shot at one prize.”
“Pretty good shot, I’d say.” The girl glanced at Karpe, who held his mallet like it might bend over and take a bite of his arm.
The guy grumbled but tossed her another dollar. He yanked his girlfriend toward him. “Now, start!”
The Whack-a-Mole girl turned and yelled into her microphone, “One more player for a chance at the prize. Second win gets you a big prize.”
This time the balloon was yellow. But her eyes were still brown, the T-shirt still green. Unbelievable how everything in the world, everything in your head, can evaporate in a second over a hot girl in a green T-shirt.
I stepped closer.
The guy slammed the bottle on the counter. Beer splashed up onto his girlfriend.
“She needs another player, Les,” his girlfriend said.
“Who asked you?” The guy raised his hand. The girlfriend flinched. Then, fast as it had happened, he turned back to the Whack-a-Mole girl. “Start the game now.”
I was in this now. My fist was clenched, my heart racing. I hated bullies. Neither the guy’s girlfriend nor the Whack-a-Mole girl seemed to mind, but I did. Beating the guy senseless—my first instinct—wasn’t really an option, considering he was twice my size and twice my mean. If there was one thing I’d learned in sixteen years, it was that mean people always won.
“One more player! One more!”
“I’ll play,” I said.
I expected her to look grateful or something, but she didn’t. I nudged Karpe to give her a dollar. She took it.
She gestured that I should stand by a station that already had a balloon attached. A purple one. She started the game.
I raised my mallet and began pounding, pounding, pounding. In front of me, it was this little mole, trying to pop out of its mole hole to safety. But in my head it was everything else. Mom, sitting with her hand on the telephone, afraid to pick it up. Boom! People at school, who used to be my friends, but now they crapped on me. Bam! Dutton, holding his fingers up in the shape of an L. Boom, bam! Karpe, pathetically begging me to come here, and my coming. Boom! Boom! Boom! Walker, hitting my mother. Bam! Me, never doing anything about it.
Pop!
And I was still pounding, pounding, pounding. And someone touched my wrist.
“Hey.”
A few more bashes.
“Hey!”
I stopped. I stopped and looked into the eyes of the Whack-a-Mole girl.
“Hey. You won.”
Below, the mole had gone into his hole forever.
“You won,” the girl whispered again.
And the warmth of her hand, the intensity of her gaze, it startled me.
Karpe clapped me on the shoulder.
“Michael-Michael Row the Boat Ashore.” Clap, clap, clap. “You won.”
But I just saw the girl. “It’s my birthday,” I said.
Why’d I say that?
But she seemed to know. One hand, the hand not on my wrist, came up and grazed my cheek. Then she pulled me toward her, my mouth toward her mouth. And, around us, there was nothing. No shards of purple balloon, no spilled beer. No Karpe. No moles. Only her, her face, her lips, the feel and smell, the taste of her.
“Happy birthday, Michael.” I watched her lips form the words. “Sweet sixteen?”
I nodded.
“And been kissed?”
“Yeah … thank you.”
And, stupidly, I added, “My name’s Michael.”
“Kirstie.” Then, “My break’s at six. You could come back then if you wanted.”
Not really a question. I nodded.
I let Karpe have the stuffed dog.
THIS YEAR
“Can I speak to Kirstie?”
“Who?”
“Kirstie Anderson?” But I already know the answer.
“Sorry. No one here’s named Kirstie.”
“Thanks.” I hang up and cross the eighteenth K. Anderson off my list.
LAST YEAR
After Kirstie’s kiss, Karpe and I left the game area. I promised to return at six, Kirstie’s break.
Six. Two hours still. But I let Karpe lead me to the Tilt-a-Whirl, Das Funhouse, Doppel Looping. We even went into the tent with the one-ring circus. It was trained dogs, like I’d said, French poodles in ball gowns and bullfighter outfits. When they finally finished, the ringmaster announced the next act: “And now … from the jungles at the outer reaches of Mongolia, performing astounding feats of strength and flexibility, please welcome ten-year-old Ni-Jin.”
She was a tiny thing in a spangled leotard, bending her legs back over her head, standing on one hand, then on a stick held between her teeth. Was she really from Outer Mongolia? Was Outer Mongolia even real anymore? And did it have jungles? Was she a captive, brought to perform for American carnival goers? Or was she just a regular schoolgirl with a really weird hobby? Had she been kidnapped, or did she escape?
When we left, I looked at my watch. Five fifty-five.
Karpe saw me look. “Got plans?” he asked.
“Wouldn’t you?” I la
ughed. “Do you mind?”
“I’d do the same thing.” He laughed too. I was starting to like him a little better, maybe even remembered why we’d been friends before.
“Hey,” I said, “thanks for taking me here.”
“No biggie.”
When we reached the Whack-a-Mole, a game was in progress. I watched a guy in an exterminator’s uniform win a stuffed bear for a kid. Kirstie didn’t look at me, just handed the boy the bear.
She glanced up, smiling, like she’d known I was there all along. “Ready?” She unclipped her money belt and tossed it to an older red-haired woman who’d joined her.
“Yeah,” I said.
Kirstie looked at Karpe. “You coming too?”
Karpe shook his head. “Think I’ll try and upgrade to the big prize.” He waved Clifford at her.
Kirstie smiled. “We’ll be back in an hour.” Then she leaned over and whispered something in his ear.
She saw me looking and said, “Excuse me.”
“Sorry.”
“That’s okay.” She gestured for me to follow her toward the midway.
“Where are we going?” I said. “Eat?”
“You hungry?”
“No.” Remembering my suddenly empty pockets.
“Me neither.” She was still walking fast, but she swung her hand, brushing mine. The second time she did it, I grabbed her fingers. She smiled, and I wondered why I was being so shy. We’d already kissed, for God’s sake. But I couldn’t decide whether to pull her toward me or pull back.
I pulled back. “So, where are we going?”
“Double Ferris wheel. I love it up there.”
I nodded and followed her. I was hungry. But, more than that, I wanted to be with her.
The fair has a music of its own. Not just the music on the loudspeakers, heavy metal from the Himalaya, Garth Brooks from the fried-onion booth. There was other music, the call of the carnies, the whir of the roller coaster, the cries of kids begging parents for more tickets. I heard it. I heard it and felt Kirstie’s nearness as we walked toward the ride.
We passed a booth, one of those spinning wheels where you pay a dollar for a chance to win something. A crowd of kids stood around, and the guy was about to spin it. Kirstie stopped to watch.
“You want to play?” I asked her.
She shook her head. “No. I don’t believe in luck.”
The guy spun the wheel, and it landed on Lose. Kirstie shrugged, and squeezed close to my arm. We headed across to the double Ferris wheel.
She strode to the front of the line and nodded to the skinny blond kid operating it. He let us in with the next group, Kirstie merging in so expertly that no one noticed we’d cut. We reached our car, and she waited while I pulled the metal bar down over us.
“That’s Cricket.” She gestured toward the blond boy.
“How old is he?” He looked twelve.
“That’s not something you ask around here. People’s real names, where they’re from. Stuff like that’s on a need-to-know basis. There’s a lot of secrets around here.”
“What’s yours?”
“Maybe I’ll tell you someday.”
Someday. The word held a promise. And an irony, too, that she would kiss me but she wouldn’t tell me her secret. It was okay. I wouldn’t tell her mine either.
“Tell me something else then,” I said when the ride lurched to a start.
“What?” She leaned toward me. Could have been the momentum of the ride, but I didn’t think so. “What do you think you need to know?”
“What did you say to Karpe … to my friend?”
She smiled, and for a second I thought she wouldn’t answer.
But she said, “I told him to pick the spot with the oldest-looking balloon.”
“Why?” I remembered her putting on a new balloon for each customer, everyone but me.
“When you first put on a balloon, a new one, it’s fresh, strong. But once it’s been played a few times, it gets stretched out. There’s only so much it can take. It’s at the breaking point.”
The breaking point. I thought about that. Then I thought about Mom in her beautiful, spotless house.
I said, “So you let me win.”
“You could say that.”
“Why?”
I thought she’d say she was grateful to me for playing, for rescuing her from that asshole. I hoped she’d say I was too hot for her to resist.
Instead, she moved closer. “You looked like you needed to win something.”
“Yeah?” I edged away, but not too far. “So it was a mercy win? How about the kiss?”
“What about it?”
“Was it a mercy kiss?”
“You looked like you needed someone to kiss you, too.”
That made me laugh, but sort of pissed me off, too. “You always walk up to guys you don’t know and kiss them?”
“It’s none of your business who I kiss,” she said, drawing away.
I stopped laughing. As soon as the words left my mouth, I’d known I sounded like Walker, calling Mom a slut or something. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.”
She relaxed. “I know you didn’t. It’s just … so many guys are like that, like the guy tonight with that girl. I didn’t think you would be.”
“You really didn’t know, though.”
“I thought I did. I saw how pissed off you were, watching him. I just wanted to … I’ve never done that before, kissed someone like that. I mean, don’t get me wrong—I’m no angel. I’ve done stuff I’m not thrilled about, but I’ve never…” She fidgeted her hands in her lap. “Michael, do you believe in destiny?”
“What?” But I’d heard her fine.
“Destiny. Ever meet someone, someone new, and know there was something going to happen between you—something good, or even something bad. But something that has to happen?”
I nodded.
“I saw you there,” she whispered. “And you had to win so we could meet. I knew it. I don’t let people win. My game isn’t gaffed. But you had to win. I had to meet you.”
If some other girl had said that, I’d have laughed. Destiny. How dumb. How overly romantic, like when girls see you at school and build this whole fantasy life around you and write notes to their friends without knowing one real thing about you.
I didn’t laugh when Kirstie said it. I took her hands in mine. She let me.
But who knew what it meant to her, someone like her? Some things I’m not thrilled about. Maybe she met some guy who was her destiny every night, or in every town.
And part of me wanted not to care. But the rest of me smiled when she said, “I never felt that way before.”
We sat there a moment, saying nothing, and when the ride reached its crest, she pointed out into the night and said, “Look.”
“Look at what?”
“At everything.” She spread her arm to indicate it. “Isn’t it beautiful? Flat places like Florida the double Ferris wheel’s the highest thing for miles. So you get up here, you can see forever.”
“Flat places?” I said. “What about other places?”
“I worked a carnival in Seattle once. In Washington there’s a mountain. Mount Rainier, that you can see a hundred miles away, even from the ground.” She looked at me. “You’ve never been anyplace else?”
“Kennedy Space Center with my class at school once.”
She laughed. “Last time I looked, that was still in Florida.”
“Right.” I looked away.
“Hey,” she said. “I didn’t mean… I mean, before I started traveling with the fair, I’d never been anywhere either.”
“And now?”
“I used to keep a map with me, X out all the states I’d been to. A few times—like with Kansas City, Kansas and Missouri—I cheated and walked across state lines just to say I’d been there. But after a couple of years, I’d been in just about every state, except Alaska and Hawaii. I’d like to go to Alaska someday.”
“And where’s home?” I asked.
The wheel had made most of a rotation, and we were near the top again. She pointed at something. When I looked, I realized it was clusters of trailers, lined up like molars, hidden behind the rides. I’d never noticed them all the times I’d been to the fair before, even though they were in plain view. “That’s home now. That’s where I live.”
“But, I mean, before that?”
“Another town, a little north of here.”
“But I meant…” I stopped, remembering what she’d said about need to know, about secrets. Who knew what she’d run away from to come here. “Tell me about Mount Rainier,” I said instead. “I’ve never seen a mountain. Is there really snow at the top all year long?”
She smiled. “Yup. And little waterfalls all over that you can find just by hearing them. And animals hiding, but you can see them if you walk quietly. It’s really pretty.”
I leaned and kissed her. It was different than her kissing me. Different than kissing other girls, too. I’d kissed plenty of girls at parties after football games, had some girlfriends, even done some stuff before Mom married Walker and it all fell apart. But somehow I felt like Kirstie knew what it was like to stand in the middle of a crowd and still be all alone.
I kissed her again now, on that double Ferris wheel that turned and dipped, turned and dipped, until I couldn’t tell if the feeling in my stomach was motion sickness or maybe longing.
Below, Cricket was letting people off the wheel. I reached for the grab bar, still dazed.
“Are we getting off?” Kirstie said.
“Ride’s over. I thought…”
“Do you want to get off?” she said, then smiled at the double meaning. “Do you want to get off the ride?”
The sun slipped behind the funhouse. It left a gray-streaked outline of itself. The fair lights were up, pink and green and blue. The lights were loud and the fair music was louder, and Kirstie’s hands, her hair, her word, destiny, all stayed in my ears, shutting out everything else, all the bad stuff.
“No,” I said. “No, I do not want to get off this ride.”
That night Kirstie told me about Mount Rainier and the Mississippi River and all sorts of places she’d seen and I hadn’t. And then my mouth was on hers again, not caring about, not knowing who was watching or what they thought, and all the fair music, the sounds, and lights, and smells gave way to one song: