Summer Days and Summer Nights: Twelve Love Stories

  “No.” His smile is sheepish. “They’re lines from Hamlet. I’m … kind of a Shakespeare nerd. I’m going to DePaul in the fall, and sometimes I think I need to go the practical route and study biology, but I really want to get into the playwriting program.”

  “What does the quote say?”

  “It’s…” He pauses, deciding how to respond. “It’s that quote that says, ‘This above all: to thine own self be true.’ It saved me after Braden died. I wanted to find out who shot him, do whatever I had to do to get revenge. But I’m not … I couldn’t have lived with myself if anything happened. And it could have. I knew people who would’ve…” He shrugs. Trying to shake off the memory. “But that’s not who I am. So I looked at that quote every day to remind myself that revenge wouldn’t get me anywhere except in jail, or maybe even dead, too.”

  I know nothing about Shakespeare besides Romeo and Juliet, but I could listen to Pierre talk about Hamlet and what Shakespeare means to him all night.

  We stare at each other. Our eyes drop away—his back down to his Converse, mine to the grease-stained pizza box—but when I glance at him again he’s already looking at me. I think … no, I’m sure I want to kiss him. And the way he considers every part of my face with his gentle brown eyes, from my cheekbones to my eyelashes to my lips—especially my lips—I think he might feel the same way.

  I swallow hard, but not hard enough to drown out the rapid beating of my heart. It must be loud enough that he can hear it, too; animated enough that he can see my actual heart protruding, back and forth, back and forth, through my heather-gray shirt.

  We should have heard the footsteps pounding up the stairs outside the apartment, or the commotion on the landing, or the jiggling of the key in the door. But Pierre moved closer to me. Close enough that I could make out the individual coils of his hair, pick up the clean scent of soap on his skin.

  So when Audrey explodes into the apartment with a wall-shaking “Oh my God, you’re still here?” We’re startled, to say the least. When I see my father standing behind her, my surprise turns into supreme mortification. We weren’t doing anything, but it’s obvious we were about to start doing something.

  “Well, at least now I know why you weren’t answering my texts,” Audrey says, a smile breaking out on her face once she realizes everyone is accounted for.

  “We, um…” But I don’t know how to finish. I almost kissed Pierre, and everyone in this room can tell. My face is flaming.

  Pierre stands, holding out a hand to help me up from the floor. “Gillian got sick,” he explains, and I don’t know how his voice is so controlled. “We didn’t want to leave her, and I guess we forgot to call.”

  Audrey goes back to check on Gillian. I could kill her for leaving us alone with my father. I smile weakly in his direction. “Sorry for making you worry, Dad.”

  “You can’t just disappear like that and not let anyone know your plans, Rashida.” He shakes his head. “What if you weren’t here? What then?”

  His voice rises as he keeps talking, but I don’t want him to calm down. I’ve upset my father, but he’s thinking about me. He was worried about me, and I didn’t know I’d ever see such concern from him again. Even if this isn’t how I wanted it to manifest.

  “I’ll be more thoughtful next time,” I promise. “I forgot to check my phone and … well, I didn’t think anyone would miss me.”

  “How could you possibly think that?” He walks closer to me. Near enough that I can see the genuine worry in his eyes and how quickly it would have turned into despair if I hadn’t been here. “Rashida, you … I always miss you when you’re gone, honey. Always.”

  And the earnest tone in his voice makes me think about the way he still peeks into my room each night before he goes to bed, even if we’ve already said good night. Or how he seemed more upset than me when I let knee-high weeds take over the garden, how each year he asks if I want to get seed packets from the nursery and start over. And I remember how, the day I met Bev, she told me that one of her first sets of instructions after she started at the school was to always put my calls through to him, no matter what.

  My father’s love isn’t effusive; that was Mom’s area. She loved big and full and in color, and that translated to her art and our garden and, most of all, to my father and me. But he’s always been here. In his own way, but he’s been here.

  Dad smiles behind his beard before he turns toward Pierre and says, “Who’s this?”

  “I’m Pierre, sir.” He steps forward to give my father a strong handshake. “Gillian’s brother. I’m sorry we didn’t check in, but I want you to know Rashida is safe with me.”

  Dad doesn’t look so reassured, but he lifts his hand to meet Pierre’s. Audrey comes back from the bedroom and announces Gillian is still “out like a light.”

  “Do you all want a ride back to the party?” My father rubs a hand over the back of his head as he inches toward the door. He is clearly over this whole situation.

  And that’s when I finally notice Bev isn’t standing nervously by his side. I can’t believe he’d leave her at the party where she knew no one and seemed so anxious about it. Maybe my father told her this was a family thing, that it was better if she stayed behind. Or maybe she suggested that herself. But either way, it isn’t lost on me that my well-being was considered more important than her comfort.

  Audrey yawns and scratches the side of her nose. “I should go back to say good-bye to some people, but I can’t leave Gillian here…”

  “We could stay,” I say, not looking at my father or Pierre. But really, really wanting Dad to agree, because despite everything that’s happened in the last five minutes, I haven’t forgotten what almost happened between Pierre and me. And I want to get back to that moment. I want it to not have been ruined forever.

  Audrey shrugs. “Why not? I’ll be home soon, Uncle, and I’ll make sure Rashida gets home okay.”

  My father doesn’t like this. I can tell by the way he strokes his beard. But he agrees to it.

  Maybe it’s because I’m seventeen now. Or maybe it’s because he realizes that, in the last year or so, he no longer has the ability to make decisions for me. Or maybe he sees that Pierre might be someone who can make me happy.

  I hug Dad and Audrey before they leave, with much less fanfare than when they arrived. Audrey looks over her shoulder before she exits and mouths, “You’d better tell me everything” in such an exaggerated fashion that she might as well have shouted it.

  I blush, the door closes, and Pierre looks at me.

  I smile, though I feel just as timid now that we’re alone again. “Well, that was…”

  “Awkward?” he finishes.

  “For starters.”

  The cacophony of snores starts up again from the bedroom, which makes us both laugh. Pierre points to the sliding glass door off the kitchen. “Does that open?”

  “Yeah, there’s a balcony,” I say, and when I walk over, I’m surprised to see the small plastic table and two chairs are still sitting on the wooden planks.

  “And we’ve been cooped up in here the whole night? Come on.” He slips his hand around mine to lead me out outside, and that feeling from earlier, when I briefly touched his arm—this is one thousand times better. His hand is warm and soft and dry, and he doesn’t let go, even after we’re standing on the balcony.

  The string of twinkle lights that was intertwined around the railing is gone, sacrificed to my aunt and uncle’s deck, but the moonlight shines softly through the slats, creating a similar effect. The balcony looks out over the alley, so the view of overstuffed Dumpsters and pitted asphalt isn’t impressive, but it is private. And it’s peaceful out here, made even more so by the piano music playing in a building across the way. It’s not nearly as polished as what we listened to in Gillian’s car, but the tune is classical and pretty and perfect for this evening.

  Pierre takes the seat farthest from the door, brushing it off before sinking down. I start to take the other
chair, but he tugs lightly on my arm and pulls me down so I’m sitting in his lap.

  “Is this okay?” he says, as I turn to face him.

  “Yes.” Then I gently press my pinkie into his chin dimple. “Is this okay?”

  “Not really.” But he says it with a smile, and he is still smiling as he outlines my bottom lip with the pad of his thumb.

  I shiver, torn between wanting that particular tingle to last forever and wanting so much more. Our heads move toward each other at the same time. Slowly, but with purpose. And when we finally kiss, it is everything. Pierre’s hands slipping around my waist and then dipping a little lower, his fingers grazing the small of my back. His mouth, tender and sweet on mine, but full of an energy that convinces me he wants this as much as I do. We pull back for a moment, but only so he can remove his glasses.

  “Wait,” I say, because I want to see what he looks like without them.

  He blinks at me, and I’m relieved to see he’s still the same Pierre. The same Pierre who loves Shakespeare and hates deep-dish pizza and who understands what it means to lose the person you always expected to be there—and how to love the ones who do their best to make that absence less painful.

  As my lips meet his for a second kiss, I think maybe saying good-bye isn’t all bad.

  Maybe it means I’m making room for someone new.

  It was a dark carnival. You know the drill. Evil clowns lurching out of the shadows, blood on their puffy white gloves. Tattered Big Top, blowing in a hot summer breeze. Insane giggling children running in and out of the shadows. The hall of mirrors that throws back terrifying, distorted reflections. The tattooed man whose tattoos move and crawl on his skin, the merry-go-round that turns back time, the bearded lady who comes at you with a carving knife, and the fortune-teller who gives you only bad news.

  You know, your basic dark carnival. You’ve seen a thousand of them in movies or on television, read about them in books, heard about them in song lyrics. But you probably don’t know as much about them as I do, given that I grew up in one.

  Yep, that’s me. Lulu Darke, only daughter of Ted Darke, the owner of Ted Darke’s Dark Carnival of Mystery, Magic, and That Which Is Better Left Unseen. My mom died when I was little, and my father raised me, traveling the country with the carnival. Mostly small towns where the inhabitants like a good scare. Summer’s our best time, when the nights are hot and restless and couples want an excuse to cling to each other in either of the tunnels—the Tunnel of Love or the Tunnel of Terror, depending on their mood. The rest of the year is when we hole up somewhere, do our hiring, and I take my high school courses online.

  Some people might think it’s weird I don’t have friends my age. My closest pals growing up were the bearded lady and Otto, the strongman. Most people stereotype strongmen as being dumb, but Otto’s a borderline genius who reads Proust in the original French and taught me geometry when I was ten. All I’ve ever needed is the carnival and my dad.

  That was before this May, when my dad packed up and disappeared.

  Not that I wanted to think about that right now. We’d just arrived in a new town. It was Saturday night, our first night open, and the place was packed. We’d spread out in an open field, close enough to town that you could walk to us but not so close that anyone would call in a noise complaint.

  Horrible screams were coming from the Big Top, which meant the show was going swimmingly. Melvin the Moaner was taking tickets. He didn’t really have any talents besides moaning in a ghostly way, but we kept him on anyway, out of kindness.

  Despite the satisfied crowd, ticket sales were slow. They had been for a while now, since before Dad vanished. He’d left behind a note on a Hallmark card covered with balloons. The note said he owed money all over the country and he had to run. Don’t blame yourself, he’d said. Don’t expect to hear from me. And I hadn’t.

  The only thing keeping the carnival afloat was an infusion of cash from my uncle Walter, my dad’s older brother. He’d been the one running the fair until he’d married a rich woman with a teenage kid and settled down into a life of stable mediocrity. The one time I’d met Walter’s stepson, he’d eaten too much cotton candy and thrown up on me. That was ten years ago.

  Now we were running on borrowed cash and Walter’s promise that he’d show up soon and help bail us out. His wife had died, and apparently he was eager to get back into the carnival business. Maybe he would, maybe he wouldn’t. All I knew was that my family business, my dark carnival, was on the verge of going under. No wonder my nails were bitten to the raggedy quick.

  “Lulu.” It was Ariadne, the sexy mermaid. She was out of her tank for the night, wheeling around the fair in her motorized chair. “Reggie’s got the flu. He needs you to take over in the Tunnel.”

  “Terror?” I asked.

  “As if Reggie has ever stepped foot inside the Tunnel of Love.”

  I groaned. I was engaged in my preferred job, manning the Snack Shack. You might think evil clowns would put people off their food, but it’s the opposite. Being scared makes people hungry, just like it makes them want to make out with each other’s faces. We sold a ton of snacks, including funnel cakes, sugar-skull lollipops, neon-colored cotton candy, and bright red slushies MADE WITH REAL HUMAN BLOOD!

  The blood was just corn syrup, but whatever. People ate it up, metaphorically and literally.

  “Can’t you do it?” I asked.

  Ariadne flapped her tail and gave me a meaningful look.

  Reggie’s job was to lurk in the shadows and jump out at people with an earsplitting shriek. It was exhausting. I sighed. “Fine. But I’m taking a slushie with me.”

  * * *

  Even though I knew I was on my way to a sucky job, my spirits lifted as I crossed the midway. Summer was in the air. Summer, my favorite time of year. I loved the hot nights, the smell of popcorn and bug spray, the occasional breeze that would lift my hair and cool my neck. I loved jumping in Ariadne’s tank during the daytime, when the carnival was closed, and sunbathing out on the grass with a book.

  I saw people giving me odd looks as I ducked into the Tunnel entrance. They probably thought I was breaking in to vandalize it. We didn’t have uniforms at the carnival, but even so, my black eyelet sundress, spider-pattern tights, and Doc Martens didn’t exactly scream “I work here!” Also, I’d recently dyed my hair in rainbow stripes, mostly because my dad had always forbidden me to dye my hair, so it was a way of flipping him the bird now that he was gone.

  I navigated through the Tunnel, keeping to the employee area, where the machinery whirred and the floor was greasy with oil. Through the wall I could hear marks—sorry, customers—screaming as they enjoyed their jolting ride through darkness, where luminous piles of bones glowed on either side and vampires, ghouls, and demons leaped out to grab at their moving carriages.

  The carnival had always been Dad’s life. I remembered him talking about it to me when I was little, his eyes shining. “People come to shows like ours to be scared, yeah. But they also come to live. To feel magic. No regular hick circus will give you that. They come to feel brave, like they’ve faced the dark forces.” He tugged on my hair. “There are some shows out there that don’t know when to stop,” he’d said in a more subdued voice. “They say if people want darkness, even if they think it’s make-believe, give it to them. But the price you pay for that kind of evil, Lulubee … that’s a high one. I say, if people want darkness, give them shadows cut with sunlight.”

  “Scary and funny,” I said. “Like clowns.”

  He’d laughed and ruffled my hair, and I’d thought that we were the most important things to him, the carnival and me. But he’d taken off on us without a second thought, and we were both showing the effects. I hadn’t been sleeping or eating, really. I kept waking up with nightmares of the carnival being repossessed, the pieces carted away, and me left in an empty field with a couple of unemployed evil clowns.

  Unemployment is no joke for carnival people. It’s not easy to get anot
her job—there just aren’t enough fairs like ours anymore. Everyone who worked here was like family to me, even Mephit, the scaly demon who lived under the Big Top. And my whole carnival family was depressed: Ariadne wouldn’t stay in her tank, the acrobats were always drunk and couldn’t walk the tightrope, Otto was too bummed to lift weights, and Etta, the bearded lady, had alopecia, which was making her hair fall out. Only the clowns were happy, and that was because they had fallen in love with each other and were cheerful all the time, which is the last thing you want from clowns who are supposed to represent everyone’s worst nightmares.

  My mood had plunged back down into the basement.

  I’d just reached the place where Reggie hung out—a dark alcove between a stack of cursed pirate gold and a pile of open caskets—and flipped in my plastic vampire fangs, when I heard voices.

  “This place is a wreck.” It was a male voice, snotty and superior. “Did you see that bearded lady? She looked like she had mange.”

  “You couldn’t be more right.” Another male voice, deeper and even more superior. It instantly put me on edge. “The carousel is broken, the hall of mirrors needs a good Windexing, and where’s the gentleman who bites the heads off chickens?”

  Hmph. No one did that anymore, the chicken-biting thing. Too many upset vegetarian customers. This guy was a jerk.

  “The whole place is coming apart,” said the first voice, growing louder. Great. Their carriage was coming toward me, which meant I was supposed to jump out and scare them. Maybe I could skip it. They probably wouldn’t be impressed with me, either. “They must have a seriously pathetic demon familiar.”

  You’ve probably been wondering how much of the dark carnival was real and how much was fake. Marks always do. The answer is some, and some. The answer is that it’s as real as you want, and as fake as you hope. And the answer is that everything at the carnival that couldn’t be explained, everything that sparked of real magic, was because of Mephit. Mephit was like a battery, and he made us light up.