The Devil You Know by Trish Doller

Author:Trish Doller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2015-06-27T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

We’re aimlessly meandering the back roads around Cassadaga, wasting gas and killing time until midnight, when we come across the Our Lady of the Lakes Summer Festival. Carnival music and the shrieks of those brave enough to try the carny rides stretch out to the highway. The colored lights of the skeletal-looking rides are muted in the daylight, but they’re still a siren’s song for three people in need of something to do.

“We should go.” Matt, reading my mind, pokes his face between the front seats. “Elephant ears. Tilt-a-Whirl. Corn dogs. Dude, look”—he taps Noah’s shoulder and points in the direction of a giant steel wheel—“Ring of Fire.”

Noah does a vigorous head-bob, a smile breaking across his face. “We should go.”

Parked cars spill out of the regular church lot into an adjoining dirt field. Clearly a popular festival. Noah finds a space at the back in the shade of some trees. Perfect for Molly, dozing on the backseat floor after an hour of nonstop fetch back at our campsite in the park. How Noah’s not suffering a sore arm after all that throwing is beyond me. We leave the dog a bowl of bottled water—he says she’ll be okay—and buy our admissions to the carnival.

“You guys are really planning to go on the rides?” I ask, as a man stamps the back of my hand with glow-in-the-dark ink. “I mean, why would you trust anything that collapses to fit in a truck? They’re like portable death traps.”

“Exactly what makes them so much fun,” Matt says. “And you haven’t really lived until you’ve experienced Ring of Fire.”

“On the other hand, I haven’t really died, either.”

Noah laughs. “We’ve both ridden it and lived to tell the tale.”

“Now it’s your turn,” Matt says.

The rides midway is at the opposite end of a gauntlet of food stands that taunt us with the scent of Italian sausage, deep-fried foods, and a sweet note of powdered sugar that reminds me of my mom.

Every spring, usually in April, High Springs holds Pioneer Days. There’s a midway of homemade food and crafts tents, pony rides, a Wild West-style shootout between cowboy reenactors, an old-timey tractor show, and historical Native American displays. It’s not fancy and might be considered slightly cheesy, but most everyone in High Springs turns out and it’s just small-town nice.

When I was about six—right around the time I developed an obsession for the Little House on the Prairie books—Mom sewed me a blue calico dress and matching sunbonnet that I wore to Pioneer Days. Jason Kendrick was chasing me through the park on Saturday afternoon when I fell and tore a hole in the dress. After she wiped my tears and convinced me a calico patch would be even more Laura Ingalls than the original, Mom introduced me to funnel cakes. Eventually I outgrew the dress and moved past the Little House books, but every year my mom and I would share a funnel cake at Pioneer Days.

“Would you do it for some cotton candy? Fried pickles?” Noah asks.

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