The Driest Season by Meghan Kenny

Author:Meghan Kenny [Kenny, Meghan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2018-02-15T05:00:00+00:00

At the fair, bright lights spun against the night sky. Smells of barbecued meat, fried dough, and beer wafted through the air, and tinny horn music wailed around every corner. Cielle passed a mirror and her body looked stretched lengthwise, like a piece of taffy pulled long and thin. The Ferris wheel turned and turned, with its chairs rocking back and forth.

Helen moved toward the baseball stand. “Let’s throw things,” she said. “That will make me feel better.” She paid a man three cents for three baseballs, aimed at the bottles on the platform, and missed all three.

“Your turn,” Helen said, and paid three more cents and handed Cielle three baseballs. Cielle focused on the bottle, wound her arm back, and threw hard. She knocked a bottle off the stand.

“Down she goes!” the man yelled.

She felt powerful. A force snaked through her arm and she knocked over two more bottles.

“Pick your prize! Pick your prize!” the man bellowed.

Cielle didn’t want to carry around a bulky stuffed animal, so she pointed to a silver key chain dangling from a hook that had a metal pendant on it that read Wisconsin in curving red letters. The man handed it to her. She twirled the key ring around her finger and she and Helen walked among the stalls and the noise and the food smells.

“You want some cotton candy?” Cielle walked toward the food area, but then saw Darren, and made a sharp left behind the cotton candy stand.

“Oh, no,” Helen said, and grabbed her elbow and turned her around. “You’re not going to hide.”

“He’s with Janice Beams!” Cielle felt like the air was pushed out of her lungs.

“You go up to him right now and ask why he didn’t show at our house.”

“Let’s go home.”

“If you don’t, I will.”

Helen pushed Cielle out from the side of the stand, and Darren and Janice were right there.

“What a surprise,” Helen said. “We just came from your house, Darren.”

“My house?” he asked.

Janice wore a kelly-green dress and kelly-green ribbon tied in a bow around the top of her ponytail. She was a year ahead of Cielle and was the kind of girl who wore a pearl necklace, sat so straight she had to have had a board tied to her back, and clicked her fingernails on the tabletop while people spoke.

“You were supposed to pick up Cielle at five p.m.”

Janice tilted her head to the side and looked at Darren with a tight, fake smile.

“I’m sorry,” Darren said, but Cielle wasn’t sure to whom he was apologizing.

“We drank whiskey at your parents’ house,” Cielle said.

“You shouldn’t have gone to my house,” he said.

“Well, we did,” Helen said.

“You two are strange,” Janice said, shaking her head and strumming her fingers on her arm.

“You don’t know us from Adam,” Helen said.

“I know your father’s dead. I know you date Bodie Mitchell. I know you’re strange,” Janice said.

“You’re not invited into this conversation,” Cielle said.

The cotton candy lady handed the swirled pink nest of spun sugar to Janice, who plucked off a piece and stuck it in her mouth.

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