“Oh, no!” I took after the demon at a run, but he was really moving. He burst out of the carousel, knocking the door off its hinges, and sailed between the painted horses.
Lucas and I careered after him as the ticket takers screamed. The carnival was oddly empty. Walter must have shut things down while we were underneath the carousel. The midway was deserted as we tore after Mephit, who was flying straight for the hall of mirrors.
“Stop!” Lucas yelled. Maybe he thought Mephit was going to eat someone. Maybe Mephit was going to eat someone.
People were gathering … other carnival workers, drawn by our shouting and the sight of a demon sailing through the air. Mephit dived inside the museum.
I hesitated at the entrance. I heard Mephit inside, growling, and another noise, too—a hissing that chilled my bones. Seconds later, Lucas appeared at my side; he’d paused to grab up the strongman’s mallet and was carrying it in his right hand.
“I’ll go in.” He looked grimly determined. “You stay out here.”
“I thought the potion was wearing off?”
Before Lucas could reply, there was the sound of shattering glass. He bolted into the hall, and I went after him.
Funhouse versions of ourselves loomed on both sides as we dashed for the heart of the mirrors. When we burst in, we found Mephit and Azatoth facing off in the dead center of the central square. Neither of them cast reflections in the huge mirrors that lined all four walls, but Lucas and I did. For a moment I thought I caught a glimpse of my dad in one of the mirrors, but then again, I thought I saw my dad all the time. Mirrors don’t always tell the truth. That was why I hated it in here.
“I see,” said a voice from the doorway. A third reflection stepped between ours as Walter appeared in the doorway. Everyone turned to look, even the demons. Surprise and displeasure flashed across Walter’s face when he saw his stepson, but he wiped the expression away quickly. “You disobeyed me, Lucas. You’ve betrayed our family. And you helped this girl save that nasty, scabby demon of hers.”
Mephit snarled.
Walter’s eyes were mean and ugly. “This carnival is mine. It always was mine. I was the older son, but our parents were too stupid to understand what that meant. They left the whole thing to Ted. I had to marry a rich woman just to make ends meet. And put up with her brat.”
He glared at Lucas. Lucas gripped his mallet. I felt for him, in that moment, suffering the contempt of the only father he’d ever really known. If I were him, I would have pounded Walter with the mallet. But Lucas is a good person.
“It’s over, Walter,” he said. “We know you poisoned Mephit. We know you faked the notes from our parents.”
If I’d still had a shred of doubt, the look of hate and surprise on Walter’s bony face confirmed everything.
“Did you kill them?” Lucas demanded. “Is that what happened? Are they dead?”
It was the question I hadn’t wanted to ask.
Walter’s face contorted into a grin. “Brace yourself. Because you’re about to go where they went, boy—”
Lucas threw the mallet.
Walter ducked; it sailed past his head and smashed the mirror behind him.
Out of the gaping hole stepped … my dad.
He looked just how my dad always looked. Slouchy cargo pants, sweater with leather patches on the elbows. Peacoat. It had been cold the night he’d run off. He stared daggers at Walter. “You weasel,” he said. “Thinking you could get the carnival from me—locking me up like this, trapping me with black magic—”
“Thaddeus.” Walter paled, backing up. “I can explain—” His head whipped around. “Azatoth! Get him! Get my brother!”
Azatoth hissed and shot forward—only to be seized in Mephit’s jaws. Mephit’s eyes glowed like gaslights as he tossed back his head and swallowed the other demon in two gulps.
Mephit began to swell. It was like consuming the other demon had plugged him into some kind of demonic power source. He grew and grew, and his eyes turned the color of the night sky, and his teeth shot out in jagged rows like a shark’s. He lunged toward Walter, a low rumble emanating from his throat.
Walter yowled in terror and leaped backward—into the gaping hole of the broken mirror. There was a distant, echoing scream, and then the mirror sealed itself back up. Only a plain, silvery surface was visible now.
“Dad!” I threw myself at my father, who wrapped me in his wool-covered arms and hugged me tight. Mephit sat down on the ground and licked his spatulate foot thoughtfully.
“Lulu.” My dad rubbed the top of my head. “Lulu, baby.”
I turned around in his embrace to look at Lucas. His expression was tight and sad. “So, your dad’s back, huh? I’m happy for you, Lulu.”
He meant it, too.
My dad smiled. “Come on, kid. There are other mirrors.”
Lucas stared at him uncomprehendingly—then his eyes lit up. A moment later, the mallet was back in his hand and he was smashing all the glass. Every single mirror but Walter’s. Otto spilled out, and Strombo, and the clowns who loved each other, and finally, a brown-haired woman with Lucas’s green eyes.
“Mom,” he said, and threw the mallet aside so they could hug like two people who thought they’d never see each other again. And I guess they were.
* * *
The next night was the Fourth of July, and we had a party out on the midway. Otto found some fireworks and set them off, and I watched the sky turn red, white, and blue while my carnival family raced around, reuniting. Those who had worked for Walter mostly slunk away. A few stayed, promising my dad they’d be good—or, at least, they would only be bad according to his rules.
The carousel—with the help of Mephit—played “The Star-Spangled Banner” and “The Yellow Rose of Texas.”
My dad told me that he’d been in his trailer one day, when Walter showed up out of the blue. Walter claimed he’d spent his wife’s money to buy Azatoth, a demon so nasty he could power anything. He told my dad he could give up the carnival and walk away, or Walter would make him sorry. My dad said he’d never give up the carnival and that he found the disappearance of Walter’s wife suspicious, to boot. That was it. Using Azatoth, Walter tossed my dad into the mirror. It was where he sent everyone who displeased him, including his wife.
My dad had become good friends with Lucas’s mom while they were in there. “She’s a nice woman,” he said. Walter had manipulated her, too. He wasn’t much of a carny, but he was a good con man.
“There were two things Walter didn’t count on,” my dad said, resting a hand affectionately on my head. We were sitting on a rise of grass, eating caramel popcorn. “He underestimated Mephit. Just because our carnival doesn’t go around hurting people, doesn’t mean Mephit’s not powerful. He’s one of the oldest, most powerful demons in the world. No surprise he ate Azatoth up as soon as his power returned.”
“And the second thing?” I asked.
“You.” My dad dropped his hand. “Clever Lulu, figuring Walter out, and his schemes besides. I’m so proud of you.”
I hugged him. “Thanks, Dad.”
He let go. “I saw those college brochures in the Snack Shack. I wasn’t sure what to do with the money the carnival made while Walter was running it—I might give it to charity—but I’m sure there’s enough for me to set aside some for you to go to school.”
I nodded. “I want to study business. Learn how to run this place so I can take over from you someday.”
He smiled proudly, but before he could reply, a nervous voice interrupted us. “Could I … could I talk to Lulu for a second?”
It was Lucas. He’d changed out of his usual T-shirt and jeans into khakis and a button-down white shirt. He was tan, and he looked like summertime.
My dad glanced at me. I nodded. He stood up, giving Lucas an exaggerated look of warning before wandering off to talk to the others. Otto was explaining the Saxons and the Normans to Strombo, Lucas’s mom, and Ariadne. Strombo was petting Throckmorton.
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Lucas sat down beside me. The fireworks were still exploding overhead, and in their light I could see his face—green eyes and solemn mouth and brushed-back hair. He looked nice, but I remembered kissing him and I knew he wasn’t too nice.
“Those things I said before,” he said, “when I took the love potion. I—”
“You didn’t mean them,” I said, quickly. “I know. I get it.”
“No, I wasn’t going to say that.” He looked hard into the distance, biting his lip. “I remember what you said about taking the love potion and how it made your head feel like it was full of bad poetry. And I understood what you meant, because the thing is, real love wouldn’t have made Mephit throw up.”
I laughed shakily.
“Okay, that didn’t come out right,” he said. “But I’ve watched everything you’ve been doing to fight so hard for this carnival. To fight to keep it going, for your friends here, for your dad, even for Mephit. I love … how much you love this place. And it made me think that real love, not the Hallmark kind or the love potion kind, is scary and fierce and amazing. And I think … I think I’m falling in love with you.”
My heart rang like the bell on the High Striker. “For real?”
He looked at me. Smiled softly. “For real.”
I put my hand against his cheek. “Me, too.” And I kissed him. I think I messed up his nice-guy look a little, running my hands through his hair until it stuck up, and rumpling his shirt. And I think he probably did the same to me.
When we finally broke apart, we were both smiling.
“But you’re going to leave,” I said, suddenly panicked. “You’re going to go home with your mom. I won’t see you again.”
Lucas shook his head. “My mom wants to invest in the carnival. I told her I was really happy while I was here. That this was the only place I was ever happy while I was with Walter.” He smiled, and it lit up the night. “She said I could stay, and your dad would teach me how to run a fair. If you don’t mind.”
I pulled him toward me for a kiss. “As long as I don’t have to save you from the dunk tank again.”
Lucas laughed.
I snuggled into his arms as the last of the fireworks faded, and high above, Mephit flapped across the sky, his wings silhouetted against the moon.
When I spot him at the other end of the grocery aisle, I freeze.
It’s not that I don’t want to see him. In fact, all summer I’ve been hoping to run into him. Looking at him now—in his same old khakis and a pale-blue button-down, his flips-flops worn thin at the heels, and his hair a bit longer than it was when I’d last spent an entire period of Spanish class staring at it—it’s hard to believe it’s been only six weeks.
It feels like it’s been forever.
Lately, I’ve been daydreaming about running into him, imagining elaborate scenarios where he walks by while I’m at the beach with friends, and we decide to go for a stroll by the lake to catch up, or where he’ll wander into the sandwich shop in town just as I’m telling a particularly great joke, and everyone at the table will be laughing at my dazzling wit as he casually drops by the table to say hello.
But now I’ve just finished work, which means I’m a total mess. There’s a big purple splotch near the bottom of my white camp T-shirt, from someone’s Popsicle, and a grass stain on my shoulder from where Andrew Mitchell knocked me over during an unusually aggressive game of red rover this afternoon. I have dirt on my knees, and duct tape on my sandals where the strap broke while I was chasing Henry Ascher during duck, duck, goose. I’m sweaty and sunburned and exhausted, not to mention that I’m still wearing the name tag I made in arts and crafts, which says “Annie” in such uneven, blocky lettering that it looks like it belongs to one of the kids.
But still, when I see Griffin Reilly at the end of the aisle, I can’t quite bring myself to walk away.
He’s examining a bag of candy, and while I watch, he turns it over in his hands, gripping it like a basketball, then pivots and sends it arcing toward his cart, which is a good six feet away. It clangs off the side, rattling the metal caging before falling to the floor with a thwack.
“Nice shot,” I say, walking over, and he grins a little as he leans to grab it. I hold out my hands. “Let me try.”
Without saying anything, he scoops up the bag and then, in one fluid motion, tosses it in my direction. I manage to catch it, but just barely. Without hesitating, I lift my arms, poised to shoot, but he shakes his head.
“Too close.”
I take a few steps back, feeling nervous beneath his steady, gray-eyed gaze. This time, the bag goes sailing through the air, landing square in the center of the cart, and I turn back to him with a triumphant look.
He nods. “Not bad.”
“I’m better with an actual basketball.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Actually, no,” I admit. “I’m kind of terrible. But I’m great with those mini ones.”
“Pop-A-Shot?”
“Exactly,” I say. “I’m insanely good at Pop-A-Shot.”
“And not very modest,” he points out, entirely straight-faced.
“Well,” I say with a shrug, “it’s hard to be modest when you’re as good as I am.”
He stretches out an arm, leaning against a shelf full of brightly packaged cookies. “Sounds like something to see,” he says, not quite looking at me. He has this way of ducking his head when he’s talking to you so that it’s hard to tell what he’s thinking. It’s maddening and intriguing and confusing all at once. In Spanish, I used to ask him questions just to watch him turn around, his pale eyes skipping from my forehead to my desk, never exactly meeting my gaze, and I would try to guess whether he liked me or was afraid of me or something else entirely.
For months and months, that’s all there was between us: questions about verb conjugations and past perfect tenses, holas and muchas graciases and adioses. We didn’t have any friends in common; it was hard to know if we had anything in common at all. It was a big school, and this was the first time I’d come across him, sitting there in Señor Mandelbaum’s third-period Spanish class. But right away I wanted more of him.
He didn’t make it easy. There was something oddly cagey and way too direct about him all at the same time. He was mostly quiet and overly polite, but then he could also be honest to a startling degree. I’d once asked him if there was something in my eye, and he turned around, looked at me carefully, and then shrugged.
“Yeah,” he said. “Eye goop.”
But the thing about Griffin was that he was also sort of jaw-droppingly beautiful. He had messy brown hair and a square jaw and those gorgeous gray-blue eyes, and with his ridiculous height—he was a good foot taller than me, his legs always jammed against the bottom of his desk in class—he could’ve passed for a surfer or a skier, some kind of impossibly rugged and dashing figure from a movie.
Except, for some reason, he managed to ruin it by wearing the same outfit pretty much every single day: khaki pants and a light-blue button-down shirt, a strange uniform of sorts that made him look like a Boy Scout or a Bible salesman or someone who worked in the world’s most boring office.
Still, it wasn’t enough to keep the girls from staring at him during lunch, which was the only other time I ever saw him. He generally kept to himself, eating with his headphones in, his eyes focused on his phone, which made it hard to tell whether he was just really good at ignoring the attention or he simply never noticed it.
There was something magnetic about him. Whenever I saw him, I had the completely unfamiliar urge to take him by the shoulders, plunk him down in a chair, and make him open up to me. He was a mystery that—for reasons I didn’t quite understand—I felt desperate to solve. But there was only so much you could learn about someone in stilted Spanish. I was anxious for more time with him. And I wanted it to be in English.
Now, Griffin’s eyes drift past me to the checkout lines, and I can’t tell if he’s running late or getting bored. But somethin
g about seeing him here, out of context—away from the familiar backdrop of the high school—makes me momentarily brave.
“Have you ever been to Hal’s?” I ask, before I can think better of it.
“That bar on McKinley?”
“It’s an arcade too. Maybe we should…” I pause for a second, hoping he’ll pick up the thread, but he doesn’t. He only scuffs his flip-flop against the shiny linoleum floor, and the thought hangs there between us, awkward and unfinished.
I’ve never done this before, whatever it is I’m trying to do here. I’ve never attempted to make the first move. And now I can’t help feeling a pang of regret about all the times I’ve been the one to hesitate in this situation: staring too long at a text about hanging out, clearing my throat after the suggestion of a movie, pausing at the more formal invitation to a school dance. I wish now that I could take them back, all those extra seconds. Because this—this horrifying pause, this awful silence—is brutal.
I point to the bag of candy, which is lying flat in the bottom of the cart, and then I try one last time. “Maybe we should see who would win a real game…”
For a second, it seems certain he’s going to say no. His face slips into a kind of blankness, and he looks unaccountably tense, and I steel myself, preparing to get rejected right here in aisle 8. But then something seems to settle in him, and he blinks a few times, his features softening.
“Okay,” he says finally. “How about tomorrow?”
* * *
That night as I brush my teeth, my little sister, Meg—eleven years old and my constant shadow—leans against the door of the bathroom we share.
“So,” she says, batting her eyelashes in an overly dreamy sort of way. “Is it a date?”
I consider this for a moment, then spit into the sink.
“I don’t think so,” I tell her.
* * *
I’m a million miles away the next morning, thinking about the moment when Griffin will pull into the camp parking lot later, thinking about the dress I stashed in the staff bathroom so that I won’t have to wear my grubby uniform again, thinking about the way my heart lifted when I spotted him yesterday—thinking about pretty much anything except for the game of freeze tag happening around me, where a couple dozen six- and seven-year-olds are running around the soccer field, stumbling and wobbling and tripping over themselves like miniature drunks—when someone lets out a sharp cry.