Nothing to Lose (19 page)

“Do you think she’s guilty?” I ask.

“I think she’s afraid. I think she thought he’d kill her.”

“You think that because of what I said?”

Angela nods. We sit in silence.

Finally I say, “Tell me the truth—do you think she’ll be convicted if I don’t speak up?”

Angela turns on her signal and changes lanes before saying, “I think she may be convicted either way, Michael. Seeing her today, it seemed like she wants to be convicted.”

In my ears, I hear the impact again and again.

The fair would be there another week, no more. It was in town nineteen days total—started on a Wednesday and ended on a Sunday. Next Sunday. The following day they’d take down the games and the circus tent, dismantle the Tilt-a-Whirl and the double Ferris wheel, pack up the petting zoo, and head for their next stop, leaving the fairgrounds a wasteland of trodden-down grass and broken pavement.

“You can make good money helping with teardown,” Cricket told me.

I shook my head. “It’s a school day.”

But it wasn’t school. I’d become barely a shadow at school anyway. It was that I was wondering whether I could do it. To see this place without the lights, the music, and more important, without the people. And to know that they were someplace else, without me.

And the thought nagged at me that Kirstie was right. I didn’t need to stay. There was nothing I could do—Walker had proven that.

Since that day at the football field, Kirstie and I hadn’t discussed her leaving. But I felt the truth between us like a force field. We spent hours just walking around the fairgrounds talking or doing stuff with her friends after hours (Karpe sometimes tagged along, and he said he was becoming more limber). But she never took me behind the scenes, where she called home. I didn’t ask her to either. It wasn’t that I was scared of sleeping with her. I wasn’t. But maybe I was scared that if I became too much a part of her world, I wouldn’t be able to go back to my own.

The night that Cricket asked me about teardown, I tried to talk to her. “Kirstie, about what we were discussing. About staying. . . .”

She put her finger to my lips.

“Shh. Let’s just enjoy it while we can.”

At school, Miss Hamasaki called me up to her desk.

“Michael Daye, I need to speak to you.”

It was Thursday, the day of Alex Ramos’s party, and more people were talking about it than thinking about English. Still, Miss Hamasaki noticed when I fell asleep during a pop quiz and she’d had to peel my blank paper out from under me.

“I’m sorry about the quiz,” I said. “It won’t happen again.”

“It’s not that—although Mrs. Gorman said you were a solid B student in her class last year, which surprised me quite a bit. But your grades aren’t specifically what I’m concerned about.”

Danger!
Danger was strobing like an ambulance light across the green-painted classroom walls. I remembered Walker’s words,
You think anyone would believe you over me?
, his cool handling of the social worker who’d shown up that time. Then, his anger.

I said, “Then there’s nothing to worry about. I’m fine.”

“Is that true, Michael? Because falling grades can sometimes indicate…”

She was young, a first-year teacher, probably only a year or two older than Kirstie. She didn’t know the old Michael Daye, didn’t know me from any stoner who used the school as a base of operations. I could use that.

I made sure to meet her eyes. That was one thing I’d learned from Walker: Meet their eyes, especially when you’re lying.

“Old Lady Gorman…” I finger-combed my hair and lowered my eyes, sort of sleepy, sort of stoned. “She was hot for me. That’s why she gave me that
B.”
I licked my upper lip real slow. “Do you want to give me a
B?”

She broke eye contact with a disgusted expression. “Look,” she said, gathering the papers on her desk and banging them into a neat pile. “You need to quit sleeping in class and hand in some better papers quick, or you’re going to flunk.”

“I’ll remember that,” I said, amazed, sort of, that I could take the idea of failing English so calmly. Last year I’d been upset by that
B.

I headed for the cafeteria, where I handed Karpe both my sandwiches. I spent the rest of the hour with my head on the table, pretending to sleep.

But really, the noise around me invaded my ears, the vibrations from the feet on the floor and the conversations making the table sound like the inside of a seashell.

I skipped sixth and seventh periods to get to the fair early. There’d been a time when I’d never have skipped, when I’d have been too scared of being caught. Now it was easy.

“Can you get the night off?” I asked Kirstie when I got there. I’d decided to go to Alex’s party, like Tristan wanted, but I wanted Kirstie there too. She wore a leather top with buttons down the front. The bottom button was open, and I could see the swell of the bottom of her breasts.

“Thursday night? Not likely.”

I looked around. It was barely three, and already the place was beginning to fill up. Teenagers from nearby high schools and little kids, dragging parents in business clothes.

“Please,” I said to Kirstie. “Please go with me.”

“Sucks being you, doesn’t it?”

“You’re beautiful,” I said.

“Flattery will get you nowhere.” But she was smiling a little.

“You were meant for me.”
I sang it to her.
“And I was meant for yon.”

“You’re such a screw-up,” she said, laughing. “I guess it wouldn’t be hard to find someone to fill in for me.”

“Thank you.”

“Give me a couple hours, okay?”

My next-biggest problem was Karpe. We’d made plans to go to the fair together, Karpe in hopes of hooking up with Ni-Jin.

I called from a pay phone. I considered lying, but I’d lied so much lately to so many people that I decided to tell the truth for a change.

“I’m not going to the fair tonight,” I said when he answered.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I’m just … there’s this party…”

I figured he’d make some comment about my friends, or maybe ask if he could come along. I’d almost have taken him. But he just said, “Okay, maybe some other night.”

“Yeah. Tomorrow. I promise.”

After getting the address from Tris, I called Mom (they were going out; it was their anniversary). Then I looked for Cricket to see if anyone needed me to work a few hours.

He found some friends who wanted help with their hot dog stand.

“You know, I could talk Mr. Corbett into giving you a real job,” Cricket said on his way to the trailer. “That’s who gave me my start—Mr. Corbett himself.”

I knew the carnival was run by the Corbett Amusements company. The name was on all the programs and garbage cans, even the doors of the johns.

“How did that happen?” I knew I was getting dangerously close to asking the questions you didn’t ask, the stuff Kirstie said was on a need-to-know basis.

“I ran away from the group home I was in. Some of the bigger boys was messing with me. So I go to Route 66 and start hitching. I was fourteen and looked younger, and no one wanted to pick up a runaway. Then a truck stopped. The side said
Corbett’s Amusements.”

We reached the hot dog trailer. There was a sign on the back that said,
Jesus is the Head of this Operation
, and all these little kids were running around, trying to help a couple who were passing a screaming infant back and forth.

“Shouldn’t those kids be in school somewhere?” I asked Cricket.

“They go to school. It’s, like, a special carnival school. They never need nothing more.”

He caught the guy’s eye and gestured like,
Here he is.

“So,” Cricket said, “Mr. Dale Corbett’s driving. He asks where I’m going, and I say I don’t care. But by the time we reach the state line, I knew where I was going.”

“What state was that?”

Cricket’s face darkened. “I don’t want to tell you that.”

“Sorry.” It was weird how here, where everyone had secrets, I felt more comfortable than at school, where it was only me. I could tell anyone here about the problems at home, but I didn’t
need
to. Somehow just having the option was enough. Maybe that was what it was all about—options. Home with Walker, I didn’t have any. Here, I did. I looked up at the hot dog stand, then back to see Cricket watching me.

“Anyway,” Cricket said, “Mr. C. hired me, and I bet he’d hire you. He could pay you under the table, like.”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “Thanks, though. It’s just … my family.”

“Oh, you got one of those. I just thought maybe you were looking to bail. And you have a knack for the carny business.”

The hot dog guy finished with his customer and waved us in. “Thanks God you here.” He gestured toward the woman. “Now Anna, she can go take care of little Roberto.” He put out his hand to Cricket. “Thank you, my friend.”

“No biggie,” Cricket said. “We all help each other, right?”

“Right.”

The woman—the hot dog guy’s wife—was still standing there, sort of bouncing the baby. She walked up close to me and held the baby level with my eyes. He stopped crying and stared at me.

“He likes you,” she said, smiling.

I put a hand out, touched the baby’s soft little feet. “You got some family here, kid.”

“We all family here,” the hot dog guy said. “All family.”

“Is it you? The truth.”

Cricket’s waiting for me when I return to my trailer.

“What are you talking about?” I say. “Look, it’s two o’clock. I need to set up. I don’t have time for—”

“Don’t shit me, man. It’s important. You know what I’m talking about.” He shoves a paper, the
Herald
photograph in my face again. “Is this you… Michael?”

“Where did you get that? What are they, giving them out at the gate now?”

“Some guy out there’s showing it to everyone. I think he’s a reporter. There were some cops here too.”

“The cops aren’t looking for me.”

“Maybe not. But you can’t stay here. You’re underage, and now everyone knows it. You could get us in hot water.”

“That’s just great. Just turn me in the second things get tough. That’s just—”

I stop. I look at Cricket. He’s holding out my duffel bag. I haven’t seen it since I unpacked last year, and I know I’m being unfair. This is what I signed up for—no obligations on either side. Besides, maybe this is just pushing me to do what I know I have to.

“I’m sorry, Robert.”

I take the duffel from him. “The name’s Michael. Michael Daye.”

He nods and reaches a hand into his pocket and takes out a wad of money. He starts to hand it to me.

“You don’t have to.”

He shoves the bills into my jacket pocket.

“We were friends, Mike. You’ll come back, maybe next year when you’re really eighteen, when all this is over.”

I nod. But I know I won’t be back. “I better get out of here.”

I head out to the exit, to the bus stop. The whole way, I can feel Cricket’s wad of bills in my pocket. It’s big enough that even if it’s mostly ones, added to what I already have, I’d have enough to take me far, far away, someplace else I can escape.

But I know I only need a dollar and change to go where I need to go.

“Your friend lives here?” Kirstie asked when the bus dropped us off way down Sunset Drive, almost a mile from the address Tristan had given me.

“No. He lives in Coral Gables, near where I live. Just, sometimes people like to have parties where there’s no neighbors to complain.”

“Playing at being grown-ups.”