Meant to Be

by Julie Halpern

  “Sorry. Really sorry.” I offer a smile through terrified teeth. “I wanted to ask about the walls. If you knew when they were going to be painted.”

  I believe Brian stares me down through his large, reflective shades, but I only see a disfigured me in the lenses. “Didn’t happen this year. Maybe next year.” He offers me a leather-gloved hand, and I’m confused until I realize he’s helping me up. Reluctantly I take it, and with surprising ease he rights me to my feet.

  “Thank you. Well, do you know if we have the paint?” I ask tentatively.

  “We got it in the storage shed. But he don’t have time to paint this summer.” Brian reaches into the nearest edge of the tunnel and unhooks a large net attached to a pole, one of our most useful tools for fishing out dropped paraphernalia.

  “I could do it. I mean, when there’s downtime. If there’s downtime,” I blather.

  Brian works while he talks. “Don’t see why not. I’ll run it by Sam. Let you know.”

  Wow. He calls Sam Hain Sam. Respect.

  “Cool. Thanks. And sorry about the hose.”

  * * *

  Carolyn is a lifer and a full-timer, meaning she has worked at Haunted Hollow since its inception, and she works at the park year-round. She also happens to be Sam Hain’s aunt, but I’m not supposed to know that. She likes me because “You’re not some one-season floozy,” as she put it. Loyalty means a lot to these people. Carolyn and her husband, Steve, had been celebrating their twentieth wedding anniversary when the Naming took place. Carolyn and Steve had made a commitment to each other, and since they both have a penchant for tattoos (my favorite of Carolyn’s appears whenever she bends down to take a lookie-loo at a broken switch: the tramp stamp of CARNY FOR LIFE. Depending on my ultimate career choice, I may be sporting one of those in the future), they became some of the early adopters of the Concealment movement. Concealment is when one either (a) covers up the Empty with a tattoo of sorts, mostly hiding the Name (since it is three-dimensional, you can always still see it in certain light) or (b) the far more disgustingly extreme involves either grafting skin on top of the Empty or essentially carving it off. I throw up every time I get a splinter, so I won’t be partaking in any form of Concealment. Maybe with a Sharpie.

  It drives me batshit that there have to be terms for everything surrounding MTBs; it makes people feel that as long as someone out there is naming things, it means they’re trying to figure it out. I think that they’re spending so much time thinking up clever labels for body parts and theories and movements, no one’s addressing the fact that we still don’t really know what any of this means.

  Carolyn and Steve have successfully lived their lives as if the Naming never happened, and she is quick to snap whenever she overhears us youngins talking about seeking out our MTBs. I admire her greatly. Except maybe her choice of forgoing dental care for the last thirty years or so.

  A strapping woman with sun-weathered skin and blond hair highlighted with gray streaks, Carolyn tugs me in for a quick hug and proceeds to test me on the Devil’s Dinghies standard operating procedures. I pass the test with flying colors (even when she quizzes me on all the lyrics to the tune, definitely not in the manual). She slaps me on the back a little too hard, and I stumble forward with pride. Why I choose that moment to look over at the Ghoster, I have no idea. Maybe it’s because I look over there six billion times a day anyway. Or maybe it’s because they say when someone is looking at you, something within you can sense that so, in turn, you look at them. Like yawning when someone yawns. Whatever the case, when I do look at the Ghoster, I immediately lock eyes with Luke. He smiles and slow claps at my trip, and I subtly scratch my cheek with my middle finger. We’re rudely interrupted when his trainee asks him a question, so I turn my attention to the new seasonal Carolyn delivers to me.

  “This is Keely. She is going to be one of the game girls,” Carolyn explains.

  “Toss your cookies!” Keely enthuses.

  “And she’s going to be your backup for breaks. If you can train her on the Devil’s Dinghies, I’ll be back later to test her.” Carolyn walks away, leaving me with the new kid.

  And, damn, does she look like a kid. Not like I’m some sophisticated, mature woman, but even with a good six inches on me Keely has one of those tiny baby faces that will make her look perpetually like a Disney Channel ingenue.

  Keely is eager and not too much of an idiot, and she seems to have a handle on the Dinghies by the time I feel a virile tap on my shoulder. Okay, so it’s a regular tap, one that could not be distinguished from any other tap, but when Luke is attached to that tapping finger, it’s hard not to add a manly adjective.

  “I tried to throw the lunch sign up at you, but I couldn’t get you to look at me.”

  Oh, if he only knew how badly I wanted to.

  “Yeah. I was busy training Keely here.”

  “Hi,” Keely sighs breathily. I swear bubbly pink hearts flutter out of her mouth.

  “Um, yeah. Luke, this is Keely. Keely, Luke.” My voice barely hides my irritation at this moment. Luke subtly gives Keely a once-over, and I swear I’m not jealous of her legs (twice as long as mine) or her shiny blond hair.

  Before I get in my first-ever brawl, Luke introduces his youngster. “Hey. This is Chaitu. He’s first season, too. You guys should have a lot to talk about. You ready for lunch?” Luke directs this question at me, but he is answered by an overzealous “Yes!” from Keely.

  I envy Keely and her pre-Empty possibilities. It seems like just last week I could choose who I liked based on their actual qualities, not on their Name.

  Oh yeah. It was just last week.

  CHAPTER 10

  On most workdays, I pack a lunch. Eating carny food on a regular basis turns into a tragic tale of acne, tight jeans, and acid reflux. However, there’s nothing like a Beastly Burger, Freaky Fries, and a funnel cake bigger than your head to start out a summer at Haunted Hollow.

  Luke and I spot Adam lording over a round table, and I hear him proclaim, “There are two piranhas. You want to jump in and find out?” to a new guy. Chaitu sees some friends from high school at a different table, offers a “Catch you later,” and joins them. Keely also sees a group of people she knows, possibly from school or maybe from the Games area, but she forgoes sitting with them in order to not eat her lunch while staring shamelessly at Luke from our table. At one point during our meal, her mouth is in full gape, and I have no choice but to jab her with my elbow and hiss, “Pull yourself together, woman. Have you spent the last fifteen years in a convent?”

  “Home schooled,” she sighs.

  Oh. “Did they at least let you leave the house?” I joke, but she can’t hear me over the cartoon birds flying around her head.

  Adam attempts to snap her out of it. “So, Keely, how are you liking your first season at Haunted Hollow?” He chomps on a fry with his mouth open, and I mime at him with a hand to close it. He doesn’t get the hint, probably because I look like I’m doing a hand-puppet show without the puppet.

  “It’s my first day,” she says.

  “Well, it’s all our first day. You like it so far?” Adam continues.

  “S’okay, I guesssss.…” She snakes her s at the end of her word, and we all wait for her to finish. When she doesn’t say anything more, Adam turns to me.

  “Aggy, you got a Name?” He joggles his eyebrows at me. I’m about to tell him that of course I’ve got a name, he just said it, when I realize he’s asking about the Name. My MTB.

  Here we go.

  “Yep,” I answer. The table remains expectantly quiet, but I’m busy ripping apart my funnel cake with a spork. “This is so not the right utensil for a funnel cake,” I say in true avoidance fashion.

  “So spill,” Adam prods.

  “The funnel cake?” I know I’m being an asshole, but if being an asshole is what it takes to avoid the Empty chat, then consider this ass-holed.

  “Funny, Aggy. Isn’t our girl funny?” He looks to Luke. Our girl? W
hen was I ever Adam’s girl? Or Luke’s, for that matter. “Really. What’s the guy’s name? Or girl’s name?” The eyebrows are back in full effect.

  “You don’t know?” I choke dramatically. “It says Adam Callas! Doesn’t yours say Agatha Abrams?”

  For a moment, Adam’s eyes bulge underneath his skeezy hat, until he figures out I’m kidding.

  “Ha-ha. Come on. What does it say? I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.” If he doesn’t stop it with the eyebrows, I might have to spork them off.

  “Leave her alone. If she doesn’t want to tell us, she doesn’t have to,” Luke defends me.

  “What does yours say?” Keely asks Luke glumly. He looks at me with his crumpled forehead of confusion. I get it, if he’s feeling anything like I’m feeling. The more people you tell the Name to, the more tied you feel to the notion that this Name has weight to it. When you say the Name in front of other people it becomes public knowledge. Does it make you and this enigmatic person a couple in most people’s eyes?

  When Luke doesn’t immediately respond to Keely’s request, Adam outs him. “Scarlett Dresden! That’s Luke’s MTB. Hot, right? I can just picture her.” Luke leans back and crosses his arms over his chest. He looks down at the table. Adam continues to bulldoze. “Mine is—ready?—Anita Lopez! Latina. My mom shit a brick when she saw it. She was hoping for a nice Greek girl.” Adam blathers on a bit about his mom and how he’ll have enough money at the end of the summer to scan his signature.

  Luke looks up from his pensive place and gives me a knowing eye roll. I smile and mouth Scarlett Dresden with a seductive lift of my shoulder. He shrugs.

  “I can’t wait to get my MTB. Only two and a half years.” Keely begins picking at her food. It’s amazing how a crush can be instantly derailed when you learn you’re not a person’s Empty. It makes me almost wistful for third grade, when I blew kisses in every direction at bedtime to ensure one would hit Scottie Del Ray.

  “It really does change everything,” Adam muses, sprays of whipped cream flying from his mouth. “I feel like I have a goal now. You know, something to do with the rest of my life?”

  I groan, a lot more audibly than I mean to.

  “What?” Adam spits.

  “A person is not something to do with the rest of your life. Traveling and writing and working and meeting lots of different people—not just one—is how you spend a life.”

  Adam scoffs. “Yeah, but now I have a person to do all of that with.”

  “But shouldn’t it be part of the excitement of life? Trying to find that person?” I argue.

  “Meh. This is easier. Ask Luke. Jenny dumped his ass like a hot tamale when she got her MTB. And they were together for years. Right, Luke?” Nudge nudge.

  I hope Anita Lopez isn’t a fan of tact.

  “Sorry,” I offer to Luke for the loss of Jenny, although admittedly it’s undoubtedly a sorry-not-sorry kind of offering.

  “It’s not a big deal. I mean, it was, but it was also kind of a relief. With going off to college and everything. Who knows if we were really meant to be together anyway?”

  “You weren’t. And you know that because of the Naming! It’s brilliant!” Adam claps.

  After lunch, Luke and I walk back to our rides together. “She really dumped you when she got her Name?” I ask.

  “Yeah. We talked about it before her birthday. I already had mine, but we said we could try to make it work. But it was like a switch flipped in Jenny’s brain. She was able to stop loving me instantly and was so excited to find this guy she didn’t even know.”

  “That really sucks. I had a boyfriend who did the same thing to me. Right after we had sex, too. Or kind of during it, actually.”

  Ugh, Agatha. Way to make yourself sound both slutty and losery.

  “His loss.” Luke bumps me with his shoulder.

  “Her loss.” I bump him back, jabbing him in the ribs. “Scarlett Dresden will hopefully be more committed,” I offer.

  “I don’t know yet if I want to find Scarlett Dresden,” he admits. “Going away to college and everything. So many possibilities.”

  “I get that.” I nod.

  “I never did get your guy’s name,” Luke presses.

  “Oh yeah. Hendrix Cutter,” I divulge.

  “Hendrix Cutter,” Luke speaks the name aloud. “Sounds like a douche.”

  “Maybe he should meet Scarlett Dresden,” I chide. “They’d make a perfect couple.”

  “We could introduce them.”

  “It’s a plan,” I say.

  “It feels like we’re still so young not to have a choice.” The big bad wolf grins down at me.

  “Yeah,” I dumbly agree. “We’re still so young.” I guess that makes me Little Red Riding Hood.

  CHAPTER 11

  The first night of work is usually the last night of summer I’ll be home for dinner. Mom has been in graduate school for social work the past two nights, so we’re finally able to celebrate my eighteenth birthday the right way. With cake.

  My mom is not a cook. Or a chef. Or a person who likes to make food that requires turning something on. She considers button-pushing the final frontier in the kitchen, so microwave, toaster oven, and coffeemaker were the go-to appliances of my childhood. Not that I drank coffee as a kid. Or even now. I do love the smell of coffee beans, but somewhere between the process of grinding the beans and pouring hot water through them, coffee pretty much tastes like tomorrow’s garbage smells. Maybe because it was my job to take out the garbage, and I was usually remiss in doing so in a timely fashion. My dad was such a cliché stereotype of a man; I don’t know how my mom found him attractive in the first place. He actually sat around on Sundays and watched football. Who does that? (I mean, besides the millions of other people who do.) It is mind-numbing. They stop every five seconds, the game lasts for twelve thousand hours, and the cheerleaders are such a throwback to an era that should be obsolete but disturbingly isn’t. It felt like the whole reason he watched football was for an excuse to eat nachos and cheese (“like the good Lord intended,” he would say) and sit on his ass all day. My dad was very good about things being dropped in his lap, as opposed to actually putting a little effort into making things happen. Example number one: my mom. The two of them were set up by a friend in high school their sophomore year and that was it. He never bothered looking further than high school. Example number two: He went to college to become an accountant and had a job waiting for him the second he graduated. Example number three: Florence Hildebrand, Dad’s hoochie MTB who rang our goddamn doorbell six years ago with a bouquet of red roses (trite much?), and that was enough for him to drop everything for her shiny new ass and leave our family.

  To recap: I hate coffee, Mom can’t cook, and Dad’s a dickwad.

  Thank God for my uncle Jim.

  Uncle Jim, like me, believes in choice, in having control of one’s life. Granted, he’s a shut-in who people believe to be a bouffanted madam named Savannah Merlot, but at least he’s a bouffanted madam on his own terms. He is completely shunning what the new world has set up for him, and he’s making a living doing it. Plus, he’s a fabulous cook. For my birthday, Uncle Jim prepares a filet mignon dinner (my request because, for some reason I will never be able to explain, filet mignon cracks my shit up), complete with garlic mashed potatoes, creamed corn, and creamed spinach (living it up with creamed vegetables). For dessert is a magnificent birthday cake, the likes of which I’ve never been able to decode. Somehow he intersperses chocolate cake with white cake, turning the inside into a checkerboard pattern. He claims it is merely a special pan, but I hate to ruin the mystery. This year’s cake is frosted in regal blue with gold accent balls around the top and bottom. Delicately swirled in frosting is HAPPY 18TH BIRTHDAY, AGGY.

  Seeing the number eighteen, the neatly curled handwriting, and my name in one round and delicious place, I am instantly reminded of Hendrix Cutter.

  Mom sits down, harried, as has been her permanent state for the last six
years, her hair frizzling out of a low ponytail. She spends five days a week as a receptionist for a construction site, a job she found through a temp agency, while she earns her social work degree.

  “How was work?” I ask and help myself to an ample serving of creamed goods.

  “Not too bad. Busy, but not overly so. Boring, but not mind numbing. I keep telling myself it’s only temporary, and soon I’ll have an actual career to stress over. I still have time to work on my homework most days and fit in a couple squares of sudoku.”

  “People still do that?” Uncle Jim asks.

  “Sudoku is not a fad, Jim, it’s a lifestyle,” Mom responds.

  “Holy balls, this creamed corn is good.”

  “I milked the cream directly from an imported French cow,” Uncle Jim teases.

  “Gross?” I comment. “Don’t you have to churn milk or something to get cream?”

  “That’s butter. Fat French cows secrete cream.”

  I look to my mother to confirm Uncle Jim’s factoid. She shakes her head no.

  “You know, someday you’re going to tell me something like that, and then I’m going to share the information with someone as though it’s true, and they’re going to think I’m a total dipwad.”

  “I thought I would have to stop when you became a teenager, but you stayed so damn gullible. How could I?”

  “I’m not gullible,” I pout.

  “You are, and it’s adorable.”

  “Gotta agree with Jim there,” Mom concurs. “You are infinitely adorable.”

  “You have to say that because you’re my mom,” I accuse her with a forkful of creamed spinach, the limp, coated concoction dripping onto the table.