The Accidental Siren (33 page)

“Watch it, bum.” Whit pulled out his wallet
and gave him three dollars. “Hey Jamsie-boy,” he said. “Let’s see
how you throw.”

I looked to Mara for approval. She was
beaming.

“Think I can do it?” I asked.

“Cutie, I
know
you can do it!”

“What prize do you want if I win?”

She scanned her options. “I want the
ginormous mallard duck.”

I looked at the hanging bird, then sauntered
backwards to the counter and said, “One ginormous duck, coming
up.”

“Three balls,” said the boy in the red and
white stripes. “Three tries to knock ‘em down!”

I sized up the pyramid of ten milk bottles,
aimed, and threw the first ball as hard as possible.

“Miss!” said the boy in the red and white
stripes.

I grunted. Whit laughed.

“Come on, James!” Mara said and clapped.

I threw the second ball with better precision
but less force... and pelted the bottom right jug and toppling
three more.

“Woohoo!” Mara said. “Seven left!”

I lowered my shoulders, aimed my last round,
and pitched. The ball nicked the highest tier, but nothing
fell.

“Too bad, so sad!” said the boy with the red
and white stripes. “But so close!”

Mara pretended to pout. “I guess I’ll never
get the duck that I always wanted!”

“How about you, pretty girl?” said the boy
with the red and white stripes. “How ‘bout showin’ these children
what a woman can do?”

She leapt from the picnic table and skipped
to the booth. “I only have five dollars and I’d rather try an
elephant ear.”

“I bet one of your friends can spot you the
cash!”

Whit rolled his eyes as if he wasn’t thrilled
to lend Mara cash.

We cheered her on as she spun her arm in wild
circles, then released the ball. It missed the bottles and twacked
the rear wall.

“Too bad, so sad!” said the boy in the red
and white stripes. “Two shots left, pretty girl!”

Mara rolled the second ball in her hand as
she scrutinized her target. She pulled back, threw it, and
thwak!
Missed again.

Whit and I booed.

“If anybody can clear ten bottles with one
ball, it’s you, pretty girl!”

Mara gripped her final shot like a bowling
ball. She blew a strand of hair from her eyes.

“
Hey there, strangers.”

And just like that, the magic was gone.

Mara dropped the ball on the counter.

Whit said, “Son of a bitch,” and rolled to my
side.

We all recognized the raspy voice. It was
A.J.

“What a coincidence, runnin’ into my best
friends at the carnival!” The bully was dressed in the same hunting
gear as the day he watched Danny kill the cat. Camo shirt, camo
pants, bright orange cap... he practically lived in that ensemble.
A hole in his sleeve revealed black hair that I had never noticed
until now.

“Leave us alone,” I said. “Or we’ll call the
police.”

He ignored me and stepped once toward Mara.
“Here’s the little hooch I’ve been dreamin’ about. Little-miss
forgiveness
.”

Mara held her ground.

“Sir,” said the boy in the red and white
stripes, “you’ll have to wait your turn.”

“You stupid traitor,” I said.

Whit raised his arm. “I’ve got this,
James.”

A.J. took another step. Five feet away and I
could smell the musk on his shirt.

“Is there somethin’ yer missin’, Mara?”

“Knock it off Age!” I said.

“
Meowww!”

I was about to shove the traitor to the
ground, but Whit snagged my shirt and jerked me back. “James! Back
off!” He wheeled forward. “Age, if you need to pick on somebody,
pick on me.”

“Look at the cripply little gimp tryin’ to
save the day!”

I touched Mara’s shoulder to coax her back,
but she wouldn’t budge.

“We tried to be friends, Age,” said Whit.
“But you ruined that when you killed Mara’s cat.”

A.J. was a unstoppable force of moronic rage.
“Look at the whiny little gimp!”

“You remember the can you put on my head,
Age? Do you know how many dreams I had of balancing a can on that
dim-witted, white-trash, crewcut dome of yours? How many times I
aimed a BB gun and missed?”

A.J. began to pace. His eyes were fixed on
Mara. “Y’all said you were my friends.”

“We
were
your friends, A.J. But it
turns out you were pretending to be our friends to get close to
Mara. You’re not the first to use that technique.”

“She was the one pretendin’! I’d never seen
no girl look at me like that before... like she saw through my ugly
shirts and hand-me-down jeans. Like she thought I was smart or
somethin’.” A.J. itched his neck. His voice quivered. “When you
sang fer me I felt like I was right where I belonged; like you and
me were meant to be together!”

I tried to gauge Mara’s state of mind, but
she was a pillar of salt.

A.J. jabbed his finger at Mara’s chest. “I
gave yer necklace back! If I’da known you were gonna ignore me
anyways, I woulda kept it fer myself!”

“What about the pajamas you cut up?” I asked.
“You never told us about those. What else did you steal, A.J.?”

“I got the pajamas later. Stole ‘em from the
blue-bandana boys. They’ve got all kinds of her stuff. They’re the
crazy ones!” A.J. suddenly became aware that he was creating a
scene.

The boy in the red and white stripes returned
to his microphone and began his automated chatter.

I wondered if my Dad had found a parking spot
yet. If I screamed, would he hear?

“Enough of this crap,” Whit said. “We’re at a
carnival... why don’t we settle it with a game?”

“I ain’t got money for games.”

“I’ll buy.” Whit pulled a ten from his pocket
and slammed it on the counter.

The boy in the stripes returned, took the
money, and spared us his obnoxious routine.

“Two games,” said Whit. “Keep the change.”
Six balls were placed in front of the boys. “If I knock over the
most bottles, you never look at that girl again. You never show up
outside her window. We call your parents and tell them you helped
kill a little girl’s cat. Understand?”

“And what if I win?”

“If you win, I’ll personally make Mara sing
for you.”

“Whit!” I said.

Again, he silenced me with his hand.

Mara didn’t move.

“Not only will you get your song, but she’ll
hate me forever. We have a deal?”

A.J. nodded, snatched the first ball, and
clocked four bottles in one clean swoop.

He didn’t stop to brag or bitch or aim, but
grabbed the second ball and toppled two more on the left side.

I could no longer stomach Mara’s paralysis. I
stood behind her and rubbed my hands along her frigid arms.

The last ball whacked the centermost jug,
bringing A.J.’s total to seven.

Without a word, the boy in the stripes
rebuilt the pyramid as Whit rolled into position. He grabbed the
first ball and shook it as if testing its weight.

“Tear ‘em down, Whit,” I said.

And he did... nine at once with a single
pitch.

I cheered. The boy in the stripes clapped and
made another obnoxious comment about how everyone was a winner.
Mara’s shoulders relaxed.

Whit waited until the bottles stopped
bouncing on the ground. “It’s over Age. Go home and leave us
alone.”

The bully sneered. His upper lip thinned as
he sucked a loogie from his throat and spit it on the ground by
Whit’s wheel. “I’ll go home when Mara does one thing for me.”

I watched Whit’s expression as bravado gave
way to panic. Did he really think A.J. would honor their bet?

“That wasn’t part of the deal,” he said.

A.J. circled us. His muscles contracted
beneath his shirt. “All I wanted was fer you to like me,” he told
Mara. “I thought maybe you could. Then Danny comes over one day and
tells me the truth, tells me how it really is. Tells me I ain’t
ever
gonna fit with an angel like you. That we ain’t cut
from the same dirty rag. That I better get used to cats screamin’
cause that’s the only sort of singin’ I’ll ever hear.” A.J.’s voice
fell to a deep growl as if–in that exact moment–his balls dropped.
“I told Danny he might be right, but I ain’t
ever
gonna give
up ‘till I hear that voice again.” He stopped in front of Mara,
snapped a buck knife from his back pocket, and held it to her face.
“I apologized once so I could hear you sing. I ain’t about to do it
again.”

The wheelchair crashed as Whit launched
himself at A.J. His crackerjack aim threw his head into the bully’s
side, knocking the knife from his hand and sending him sideways
away from Mara. Whit snatched the knife from the curb and used his
other hand to propel his body at Age. The bully scrambled backwards
like a frightened crab and thumped his head on the booth. Whit
scaled A.J.’s torso with his legs dragging behind him, then sat on
his chest and clutched the blade against his throat.

The boy in stripes plucked a phone from
behind the counter, rolled his eyes and said dryly, “I’m calling
security.”

Whit’s arm quivered as he tightened his grip
on the knife.

Tears formed in the wells of A.J.’s eyes.
“This ain’t right, Whit. You–”

“I what? I stick up for my friends when
they’re in trouble? I don’t watch my buddy blow the asshole off a
cat?”

“I was forced to par-tici-pate in the killin’
of that cat.”

“Whit,” I said as spectators began to clot
around the commotion. “You’re gonna get in serious trouble.”

“Shut it, James!” He repositioned his weight
on A.J.’s chest and the bully winced.

“You’re scaring Mara!” I said.

Whit sucked his bottom lip... then slowly
lowered the blade. A.J.’s throat was unscathed.

The boy in the stripes rolled his eyes and
holstered the phone.

I ran to Whit’s side, flipped his chair
upright, and helped him to his seat. “You okay?”

“What the heck did we miss?” It was Kimmy.
Livy and Haley were at her wings, powdered sugar smudging their
fingers and cheeks.

A.J. pulled himself together, stood, brushed
bloody pebbles from his palms, and found himself cornered against
the booth by a semi-circle of curious bystanders. His mouth curled
down to keep from crying. “Do ya’ll know why I came here tonight?”
He wiped his nose with his hairy arm. “Well? Do ya?”

“Go home, Age,” said Whit.

“Do ya’ll even care?”

My heart sank.
I was such a jerk
. I
knew exactly why A.J. was there, I just hadn’t considered it until
he asked. “You came to see our movie,” I said. “You came to show
your support.”

He scoffed. His front teeth scraped his
bottom lip to fully accentuate his curse, “
Fuck
yer movie,”
he said, then again for the insult,
“Fatty.”

“Stop it!” Mara exclaimed, her first words
since the bully arrived.

A.J. obeyed; the fact that Mara was
addressing him–even after his cruelty–probably thrilled him. “I
know where you live,” he said. “If you think you’ve seen the last
of me–”

Mara approached him with all the tenderness
and grace of a bride. She touched her fingertip to his lips. Her
hand carried his cheek toward her lips, so close I thought she
might kiss him. Instead, she whispered, and as she whispered, her
eye searched me out. It was the damaged eye that found me, and when
she finished breathing her secret in A.J’s ear, the blood flared
like the burst of a striking match.

Mara released A.J. Without another thought,
the bully darted to the wall of spectators, wiggled through, and
ran away.

Livy and the girls scrambled over each other
to get to Whit. They dabbled and preened his hurts, though he
assured them he was fine. Another kid–early twenties–broke from his
pack of friends and slapped Whit on the back. “I haven’t seen a
fight like that since Hogan versus Andre. You whooped his ass!”

Mara hugged her mighty defender. It was a
stiff hug, and I wasn’t jealous.

“What did you tell him?” Whit asked.

Mara shrugged. “I told him to go to
hell.”

“Hey kid!” called the boy in the red and
white stripes. “You’ve got two balls left!”

Whit cruised to the booth, fired off his last
two rounds, and nailed the final jug in the dead center.

Overhead, a siren twirled and screamed and
declared him the winner.

The crowd went wild.

* * *

Whit and I both offered to carry the
ginormous mallard, but Mara assured us she could handle it alone.
The girls offered her scraps of funnel cake, but she politely
turned them down.

Livy kept pace beside her. “Was that the
little twerp who killed Dorothy?”

“One of them.”

“They’re never gonna leave you alone... are
they?”

Mara adjusted the duck on her back.

A visible revelation transformed Livy’s
expression as her friend remained silent. “Hang in there, hon,” she
said.

For the first time in three months, my sister
sounded like a human.

* * *

It was only after the incident with A.J. that
I realized the carnival had been evolving. An hour after we first
arrived, the mechanical beast had taken its first flopping step
from the primordial soup, evident in the new layer of afterbirth
smeared beneath the gleeful façade. I noticed flypaper–black with
dead insects–lining the inside awning of every game booth. Upon
closer inspection, most of the insects weren’t dead, but flapping
and struggling, unsticking one leg only to discover their wings
were also glued to the paper snare. I accidentally touched the
bottom of a portable bench when I stopped to tie my shoe; the
underbelly seethed with discarded bubble gum like rubber scales.
And as we waited in line for the Tilt-a-Whirl, I spotted a loose
panel at the base of the ride. Every time the carts completed a
rotation, a rusty seam appeared between the red and blue panels,
exposing the black innards, sputtering gears, and churning elbows
that tilted and whirled the kids atop the machine.