Bones & All by Camille DeAngelis

Author:Camille DeAngelis
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781466846777
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press

7

The next afternoon we passed a sign for Friendship, Wisconsin. “That’s where I was born,” I said. “Irony of ironies.”

“We’ll be in Sandhorn this time tomorrow. Do you have a plan?”

I didn’t want to think about Sandhorn. I wanted to find my dad, but not yet—not if it meant saying goodbye to Lee. “I guess I’ll start with the phone book,” I said.

Two miles after the turnoff for Friendship we passed a billboard that said MOTHER OF PEACE CARNIVAL FUNDRAISER. RIDES, GAMES, GOOD FOOD & PRIZES. JUNE 7TH–13TH, OPEN EVERY NIGHT, 5 TO 11 PM. TAKE EXIT 47 FOR GILDER, TEN MILES AHEAD.

We looked at each other and grinned, and I forgot about everything, the bad dreams and all the carnival nights I’d taken away from other people. For that one perfect second I even forgot their names.

We took exit forty-seven through more farm country before we came into Gilder, a one-street town of antiques shops and doctor’s offices perched on the crest of a narrow hill. Down again and a mile farther, a makeshift fairground came into view: a Ferris wheel turning and a Galleon going to and fro in a field beside a brick church with a bright white steeple. Lee found a parking space on the edge of a soccer field across the road and left his Stetson on the seat.

As we crossed the road and slipped into the crowd I began to feel like a little kid again. There was a woman in a glass booth turning pink and blue whirls of cotton candy on long wooden sticks, and she handed each stick down to a child as if it were some token of magic. “Like a Prayer” played on the stereo system, and a circle of twelve-year-old girls danced to it as they waited in line for the Galleon. The scents of fried dough and powdered sugar mingled with cigarette smoke and the oily mechanical smell of crunching gears. A clown skipped up to us and asked if we’d like to buy a raffle ticket. “Grand prize is a big-screen TV!” she cried as an accordion of green tickets spilled from the palm of her frilly white glove.

Lee smiled. “No, thanks.” He took my hand and pulled me onward through the crowd, and everything around me blurred a little. All I saw was the sunlight twinkling through the trees on the fringes of the fairground, splotches of color and white tennis shoes as the wave swinger whipped its riders toward the sky, and all I could think of was the warmth of his hand in mine.

I heard him say something, and it brought me to. He was pointing out the haunted house and glancing over his shoulder at me with an impish look. It was pretty clear I was going on that one whether I wanted to or not.

Mothers shepherded their children from ride to ride, doling out tickets and fending off demands for more ice cream. Past the bumper cars there was a big blue tent where fathers in their ball caps and jeans gulped from plastic cups of watery beer.

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