* * *
Alex did as she was told. She left the hospital while the sun was at its brightest. And when she went into Aunt Melanie’s Wiscott Avenue apartment room, she called the doctor as per requested. And being the polite, obedient girl that she was, Alex remained in Aunt Melanie’s apartment for the rest of the day. It was the last time she’d ever listen to her Aunt Melanie’s instruction. Come dusk, she would leave to meet Lord Combermere as planned. And after that, Alexandra Frost would be on the verge of an altogether different life.
But that was later. In the mean time, while at Aunt Melanie’s, she occupied herself in the company of her school books, and later in the day she prepared herself a bowl of cornflakes for lunch. While taking in spoonfuls of cereal, Alex continued silently reading from her school texts.
Then she came to realize the futility of it all.
After today, Alex Frost wasn’t going to be in Elsinore Academy. She wouldn’t even be in the same country. Given that today was the last chance she had to be with those she had left, Alex thought it best to at least say goodbye. And so it was with this in mind, that Alex gave Amy a call.
For one final get together.
They met at a fascinating place rife with translucent lighting and noise. Carnival Cazador. It was a show of bright lights, color, and strange people dressed in even stranger disguises. A shirtless man with hair growing on his chest consumed and spat fire. Men and women in stilts towered like giants above the carnival’s guests. Clowns impressed little children by juggling balls and turning balloons into poodles, flowers, and balloons.
As nightfall hit, the carnival’s effervescence shone like a burning star, giving the impression of a magical place full of happiness and warmth. Alex followed behind Amy, gandering over at the many booths that surrounded them. One of them involved tossing rings on a bottle, another throwing darts on balloons, and one where the main objective was to pitch a baseball towards a bull’s-eye, wherein doing so would send a man sitting in a chair to fall into a tank of water.
A tiny man with a pot belly and a purple vest stood outside a giant tent. He balanced himself on a wooden chair, adding an extra lift to his 5’2 height. He blared his voice into a plastic red cone.
“Come one, come all,” he announced to the people of the carnival. “Step inside this here tent if you want to witness great magical wonders beyond your wildest imagination. Admission is free. I repeat, free admission. If you have eyes and you can walk, then step right in. We have gymnasts, we have lion tamers, we have contortionists, dare devils, snake handlers, monkey performers, and a man that looks like David Crosby. Enter soon while seats are still available. It’s first come first serve, and the show is about to start.”
He pointed a wand towards the large open tent beside him, indicating that that was where one would expect to see all the wonderful things he’d mentioned. Crowds of people flocked in two file lines. And at the rate, it was hard to believe that the tent wasn’t already overcrowded.
The roof of the circus tent formed a triangle of red and white stripes. It had a support pole on the topmost tip with an orange flag that had the carnival’s logo. A crow wearing dark shades, manipulating the shape of his feathers to form a thumbs up.
“Come on now, come on. I say again, all you need are your legs and your eyes, your legs and your eyes. Come on now. If you don’t have legs, crawl yourself in. If you don’t have eyes, put two hands in front of you and follow my voice. If you can’t hear my voice, then read the sign I’m pointing at. If you’re blind and you don’t have legs or ears and you can’t even crawl, then boy do I have a job for you. Everyone else, get in get in get in get in!”
“You want to go?” Alex pointed her eyes at the tent, then at Amy.
“Of course she wants to go,” the tiny man answered for Alex. “She’s a smart girl is she not?”
“I’m really not,” said Amy with a humbling smile.
“What’s being smart have anything to do with it?” asked Alex.
“That’s a very good question,” the tiny man replied. “Go inside and you’ll find out.”
“Sounds like fun,” Amy boasted.
The girls lined themselves amongst the crowd going in. As they ventured inside the tent, they both saw just as equally that there were plenty of people inside. There were seats formed in a large circle for people to sit on, and it was almost half-full. Barely ten minutes after Alex and Amy took to the bottom row closest to the center, the lights in the tent dimmed, and the show began.
The lighting fixture above focused on the center where all the acts were performed. At first came a group of men and women in tight garbs. They performed various acrobatic feats, jumping on top of one another, throwing each other in the sky, and finishing their act with some coordinated flips. Then came a snake handler who danced with a python for ten minutes. Afterwards, there were men eating fire, jumping through hoops of fire, and singing Ring of Fire. A monkey dressed in a ballerina outfit performed tricks, and the man who looked like David Crosby insisted to the audience that he really was David Crosby.
Once the show was over, everyone stepped out the tent and onto the outside world, where the air was cooler, and the night brighter.
“That was great,” Amy cheerily said.
“It was,” Alex replied, though she honestly had no way of thinking so.
Amy was about to say something else. Her lips were spread apart, and she’d already uttered the letter T, but something immediately pulled away her attention.
“Alex, come check this out.” Amy insisted.
She brought herself forth, excitedly led the girl towards what was a giant Ferris wheel. Before Alex could make any decision as to whether or not she had any interest in going, Amy was already asking the operator a seat for two.
“Yes ma’am,” the operator said in a polite, cheerfully obedient tone.
“C’mon Alex.”
Amy climbed onto one of the cars.
“Come on Alex,” she waved her over.
Alex did.
“Keep safe,” advised the conductor.
“Thank you.”
Alex was next to climb aboard. She took her seat directly opposite to Amy. As the metal gate on the car came to a close, she peered outside, witnessed as the ground began to climb steadily and steadily towards the dark sky. The car lifted sixty meters above the earth. The city lights cast an auroral yellow glimmer in the night. Combined with the carnival lights itself, Pleasant Grove was a rainbow of colors. From their distance, the unending racket of traffic, of people, faded into a distant murmur. There was peace everywhere.
“It’s beautiful,” came Amy.
“Isn’t it?” replied Alex, forcing herself once again to agree.
“Everything looks better in the distance. As long as you can’t get close enough to notice the ugly sides, all you see are the bright spots. And it’s absolutely gorgeous.”
Alex gestured a sign of agreement.
Amy turned noticed Alex peering inquisitively out the car’s opening. The minds of Amy and her inhuman friend drifted as they stared out into the peaceful setting that lay below. Amy looked as though a part of her had spaced out, and Alex wondered what she could have been thinking about. The soulless girl, on the other hand, knew full well what was going on in her own internal world.
To leave Surburnia, or not to leave Suburnia? That was the question of Alexandra Frost. And a magnanimous question it was. So much so that she didn’t know which answer was more in right, more in wrong, than the other.
In cases such as this, when the best option out of two available ones weren’t clear, Alex often resorted to what her father referred to as weighing the pros and cons.
The pro to leaving would have been that she would have been with someone who knew her more than she knew herself. In this instance, that someone was Lord Henry Combermere. Having been a man without a soul for well over fifty decades, there was undoubtedly lots that he could tell her about t
he experience.
The con, was that objectively speaking, she had no way of knowing if leaving for Vienna would have been all she had hoped it would be. A second con was that in leaving behind the people she knew, she would have had no one of the normal world to interact with. But at the same time, this also could have been a pro. If people weren’t around to see her for who she really was, she was at no risk for exposure. As it was now, she had the sense that Amy, for one, was becoming more adept at detecting her inner aberration. If she kept it up, a good chance existed that she would find out the hidden truth behind the girl she believed to be her friend.
The Ferris wheel reached the apex of its height. By now, the tall city buildings were no bigger than gerbils, and every other detail below were as minor and as insignificant as insects. Alex had never been on a Ferris wheel before. And as she experienced it now for the first time, she could honestly say that whatever she felt about it, she had no regrets.