The Year of the Beasts (2 page)

Charlie and his friends looked up at the exact same moment and all smiled their young man smiles, the ones that made the three girls fluttery. The girls collapsed toward each other, linking hands made uncomfortable with the wearing of new chunky rings purchased just for tonight.

Charlie waved them over and the girls moved toward him and his friends, clutching each other as though they had scored a victory. And in a way they had. They had won attention. And for the moment that was just as good as any of Celina’s swim-meet medals or Tessa’s certificates of merit in science. Maybe even
better.
They sashayed over to the boys, swinging their hips in a way that they had never done before.

When they got to the ticket booth, Jasper Kleine bumped into Tessa hard. He wasn’t with Charlie and his boys. In fact, he wasn’t with anyone because he was a loner. If he did hang out, he hung out with other lost boys. The ones who cut class and got high. The ones who rode their speedboats too fast on the river. The ones who had guitars and mountain bikes. The ones who wore pieces of leather tied around their wrists as if they had made a secret promise to themselves. These boys were the ones that everyone steered clear of because secretly everyone worried that strangeness was catching.

Jasper had bumped into Tessa because he wasn’t looking where he was going. He didn’t stop. He didn’t apologize. He just kept walking. He was too busy counting his tickets. It seemed like he had enough tickets to do every single thing at the carnival—
twice.

To Tessa he smelled like a mixture of a latte, pot, pond scum, and sweat. But it was pleasant, the way that a skunk was pleasant, or garlic, or patchouli, even though her mother said that patchouli smelled like feet. Tessa liked the smell of feet. Tessa’s eyes followed him as he walked down the midway. He was so sure of himself. She noticed how happy he was to be on the outside of everything. She was a little jealous that he was glad to be alone.

Tessa wondered what Jasper would do first. Would he go on a ride? Would he enter one of the tents? Would he play a game and try to win a prize? If he did win, who would he give the prize to? Tessa had never seen him with anyone specifically.

Tessa always had someone to hang around with, like her sister or Celina. She never would go anywhere alone. She always ran in a pack. Everyone did that. But not Jasper. She wondered what that would be like, to go somewhere alone. But then she stopped wondering because Charlie was standing in front of her, looking at her from under his impossibly long brown eyelashes. And then Tessa was too busy blushing, and trying to look as pretty as she could despite her imagined genetic deficiencies. She couldn’t spare the energy to think about Jasper anymore.

“Let’s go,” Charlie said.

The whole group of them lurched into motion.

The promise of the carnival washed away all of Tessa’s musings about Jasper. Her insecurities faded, and she was overwhelmed by the big and the bright and the fantastic possibilities of the night that stretched in front of them. In that light surely she was pretty. Everyone was.

Tessa thought they were a happy bunch. They looked like they all belonged together. She felt they’d all be best friends forever. Tessa tried to ignore the booths that looked like teeth, and made the carnival feel like a mouth. She concentrated on the other things the fair had to offer: the games with stuffed animals and t-shirts as prizes, the Ferris wheel, the teacup ride, the fun house, the haunted house and the curiosity sideshow tent.

They started with the games. Gathering and jostling each other by the beanbag throw. When no one won anything, they blamed their loss on the games being rigged, which they most likely were.

“This blows, we’ll never win.”

“It’s not fair.”

“Life’s not fair.”

“Well what should we do?”

“We should ride every single ride till we get sick.”

“They look so rickety.”

“I don’t do rides.”

“Statistics say that the rides are safe.”

“If you say so.”

“How about the curiosity sideshow tent?” Tessa said.

Everyone stopped talking, and Tessa felt as though she had a stain on her shirt. Or something was stuck in her teeth. Or she had blood on her pants. Whatever it was, one thing was for sure—she had said something wrong.

“I don’t want to go in there, it’s just going to be things in formaldehyde,” Celina said, putting a hand on her hip. Sometimes Celina could be stubborn because she always wanted to be the girl with the plan.

Everyone looked at Celina waiting for her to come up with an alternative. Tessa looked toward the curiosity sideshow tent. Lulu looked, too.

“But it will be dark,” Lulu said.

“What?” Celina’s eyes widened.

Lulu looked at the boys.

“Dark,” Tessa repeated what her sister had said.

Tessa loved her sister something fierce at that moment. Maybe it was worth having her around because she was handy as backup.

“Oooh,” everyone said.

They were all on the same side again. Darkness meant the possibility of hand holding or kissing. Darkness was good when it was mixed with boys.

“Good idea,” Charlie said, staring right down into Tessa—right down to the parts of her that were secret.

Tessa and her heart sighed. She would do anything to be alone inside a dark tent with Charlie. She could just picture how the whole thing was going to go down. It would be perfect. She would pretend to be scared and maybe grab his hand for support. She would clutch him tightly and not let go. And he would keep holding her hand because everyone knew that holding hands felt so good.

The sign on the tent said ODD CURIOSITIES INSIDE!!! It also said that people should proceed into the tent in twos. As her group stood in line, patiently waiting for their turn, Tessa tried to calculate her odds of going in with Charlie. It was like a math word problem from school: If two people in a jostling line wanted to be paired off together, and there were an odd number of kids, what are the odds that person
x
and person
y
will go into the tent together?

She had never been good at math, always staring out the window instead. So she hung back a little bit so that she would be next to him.

If they were in the tent together, then he would notice her and her alone, and they would emerge from the exhibit as a
couple.

She just had to go in with him. This was her chance.

Tessa tried to look as though she was thinking of other things. She tried to look casual. She laughed a little too loudly when Charlie spoke about his riverboat. She studied the dirt mixed with sawdust and how it kicked up on her shoe and stuck there. All the while she made sure she always kept herself next to Charlie. Lulu stood next to her sister as though she wanted to go into the tent with Tessa. It was as if she was too scared to go in with a boy by herself.

Lulu is such a baby
, Tessa thought. Tessa was glad that she was 15. Glad that their parents called her a
young lady
and not a
girl.
Glad that she didn’t still have her dollhouse in her bedroom. She knew that Lulu still sometimes rearranged the furniture in hers and pretended she was dusting. The truth was that Lulu was still more girl than young lady.

Celina went first with Tony. Dylan went in with a girl they knew from school whom he’d grabbed into the line. Tessa hung back, and so Lulu hung back, and so Charlie hung back, and pretty soon the three of them were at the front of the line.

“Next,” said the girl in the carnival costume of red pinstripes and black vest.

Tessa stepped forward only to find the girl’s striped arm blocking her way.

“Only two at a time,” the girl said, snapping her gum.

And suddenly, Tessa was outside, looking at the closing flap, and her Charlie was heading into the curiosity sideshow tent with Lulu.

“Next,” the girl said and opened the tent flap again. Tessa didn’t want to go into the freak tent anymore. She began to step aside to let the people behind her go, but then a hand appeared gently on her shoulder and guided her toward the total blackness. There was nothing to do but go in.

“Freaky,” the voice belonging to the arm said.

Tessa turned around and stood face-to-face with Jasper Kleine. She thought she could see that Jasper was smiling. Her eyes adjusted to the dimness in time to see her sister and Charlie disappear into the next section of the tent. She didn’t want to stop and see the thing in the jar sitting illuminated on the table that Jasper was steering her toward. She wanted to follow Charlie and Lulu into the next room and say something clever. But suddenly a fear choked her and that fear made her feet unwilling to step forward and pursue them.

She didn’t want to look at Jasper.

So she looked at the jar.

Inside was a twisted creature that looked like a shaved rat with wings. It was pink and veiny. The wings had wet feathers that limply clung together, but they didn’t look natural. They looked pressed on.

“You can tell they just stitched together two animals,” Jasper said. He was moving toward the next room. “Rat and bat. Come on.”

Jasper held open the curtain for her. She stepped through. They moved from room to room as though in a dream. The curiosities were laughable. It was the darkness that was frightening. And the music; it was like a timpani or like wind pushed through drowning lungs. It was a ghostly soundtrack.

Jasper kept talking, commenting on the various beasts on display. Tessa said nothing. She strained her ears through the silent moments in an attempt to hear what Charlie and Lulu were laughing about up ahead. But she never caught anything. She would have to hear all about it later.

“Where are we going next?” Jasper asked when they reached the last room.

He was so close to her. She could feel his breath on her face, and she could smell him. If she moved the tiniest bit, her lips would be on his.

She felt strange. Strangled. Joyous. Angry. Tingly.

“We’re not,” she said.

She said it to hurt him.

His eyes went from soft to wounded. Then Tessa felt bad, but didn’t say so. She just looked at him harder, wishing that he would get the hint and go away.

“OK, I don’t like groups anyway,” he said, and he stepped out of the tent and went on his way, leaving her alone.

She was sure that her disappointment had made her hair curl more. There was only one way to face Lulu and Charlie—with smooth hair. It was easier to look like she didn’t care if her hair was straighter. She didn’t want her wild corkscrew curls to betray her hurt.

She tried to coax it down with a little spit, hoping to tame it before she emerged. She ran her hand through her hair. No good. It was still a mass of tangles.

chapter

two