Missing Pieces

by Carly Anne West

  I can’t even convince myself that this is a good idea, but who’s to say my parents will even know I left the house? They’re so busy trying to suck up to the important people in town—people like Miguel, and the Park family who do all that fund-raising for the children’s hospital, and the city comptroller, whatever that is—they won’t notice if I leave for a few hours while they’re out schmoozing.

  They’re out schmoozing to make people forget you trashed Mrs. Tillman’s audio system.

  “I know, okay?” I say loud enough to startle some birds from the trees ahead. I’m already at the factory, though, and it would be stupid to turn around and go back home before I’ve even had a look inside. If Aaron is there, we’ve got some things to talk about. And by talk, I mean punch. I’ve been at the window with my flashlight every night, but he hasn’t so much as opened his blinds since the prank debacle.

  But the place is empty. Even the rats appear to have taken off.

  “I know what you mean,” I say to the memory of the rats. It feels like a betrayal being here. This is Aaron’s place, not mine. He shared it with me, and now he’s not even here to enjoy it. He’s sitting at home, thinking about what he’s done the way I’m supposed to be sitting at home thinking about what I’ve done. I’m still mad at him, but I wouldn’t feel this bad if I didn’t feel guilty, too.

  I take a quick ride on the conveyor belt before I grow tired of that and fiddle with a few of the remaining locks we haven’t breached yet. When that gets old, I decide to catch a movie in the Office. It takes me a little longer to pick the locks than it takes Aaron, but I get them eventually, and using the flashlight to guide me, I dig around in the filing cabinet and locate an unopened bag of sour-cream-and-onion chips and one last can of soda. I feel a pang of remorse popping the tab on the can, but I tell myself I’ll replace it before Aaron has a chance to notice it’s missing. Then, at the very back of the filing cabinet, I find an unexpected treasure—a VHS tape with writing on the spine I recognize as Aaron’s.

  “No way. Tooth 3!”

  By far the best installment of the Tooth franchise, it’s a miracle Aaron managed to capture it on tape. The utter genius of the movie—a psycho mutant with a single long tooth terrorizes a group of “innocent” popular kids—was clearly lost on audiences and never made it past the third installment.

  Aaron must have had a blank tape ready right when it came on TV. I park myself in front of the screen and munch my way through one and a half gory hours of dental carnage, pausing only to fast-forward through commercials I recognize from at least five years ago.

  As my thumb slips from the fast-forward button on the remote, I catch myself watching a clip from a news highlight toward the end of the recording. A woman in a robin-egg-blue blazer smiles wide against a graphic of an enormous gold-and-red tent. “Don’t miss your first look at Raven Brooks’s very own all-season amusement park and entertainment venue—Golden Apple Amusement Park! Your exclusive sneak peek from Globe Five at ten o’clock.”

  Suddenly, I’ve lost any joy for watching Smiley chomp his murderous tooth through unsuspecting teenagers. I don’t just feel bad about what I’ve done to Mrs. Tillman’s store. I feel sick. Maybe it’s the sour cream and onion, or the smell of the Golden Apple factory that I’ve never really noticed before. Maybe it’s the fumes or the mold. I bet this place is filled with lead paint.

  But I’m pretty sure it’s the guilt.

  I set the remote down and stand to shut off the VCR, but all at once, the movie cuts out as the credits begin to scroll. Static fills the screen, and in a single blink, I’m looking at Diane Peterson. She’s in a flowing dress and her hair is longer than it is now. It’s scooped into a loose bun, and her feet are wrapped in what look like leather straps. Her legs are long and straight, and she bends to the side with an ease that travels to her face. She smiles lightly, bends the other way, then kicks her leg high, turning and drifting from one side of the room to the other. There’s no music. The only sound is the padding of leather as it hits the floor she’s dancing on—a floor I realize is her living room floor. When I look a little harder, I see the worn green sofa in the background, and on it sits a figure I know is Aaron only because of his posture. He’s hunched forward, shoulders raised like he’s waiting for something to creep up from behind. That’s all I can make out, though. His face is blurred by distance.

  “Here she is, ladies and gentlemen, the legendary Diane Peterson, Grace of Raven Brooks, Spirit of the Pines, Fairy of the Dance,” whispers the cameraperson I immediately recognize as Mya.

  “Oh, Mouse, you’ll make my head swell,” Mrs. Peterson says, but she doesn’t stop dancing. In fact, she careens from one corner of the room to the other, lighter on her feet than before, buoyant on the cloud of praise Mya conjures from her tiny stature and tiny voice. Even at five, she had a better vocabulary than most people twice her age. She’s like a tiny adult.

  “Do the stag leap!” Mya prompts from behind the camera, and Mrs. Peterson obliges, catching some air before falling to the ground maybe a little ungracefully, but she’s a true performer, never letting her audience—her adoring audience of two—see her flinch. And under the faint and enamored giggle of Mya at the camera’s microphone, I can hear the breathless hum of Mrs. Peterson as she sings her own soundtrack.

  I recognize the song—it’s the same melody she was humming that day in Aaron’s room as she spread the sheets out for me on the bottom bunk of the bed and brought her mind to a happier time.

  I hear a rustling off camera, and a man’s voice booms with merriment as he hums the song, too.

  Then Mr. Peterson walks into the frame. He’s broad-shouldered and mustached like now, but he’s younger, lighter. The burdens of his world haven’t quite weighed him down yet.

  “Mademoiselle, may I have this dance?” He bows formally to Mrs. Peterson and extends his hand. She takes it gingerly, maybe even tentatively, but when he twirls her once around, she smiles, and I can hear Mya giggle from behind the camera.

  Mrs. Peterson continues to hum the melody breathlessly as Mr. Peterson whirls her across the room, his feet unsure but his face glowing.

  In the background, I see Aaron stand and search the bookshelf for something, then squat in front of a credenza, fiddling with something before returning to the couch.

  A song fills the room, its melody restarting from where Mrs. Peterson paused in her humming. The instrumentals of the song lilt through the air, and Mrs. Peterson seems not to notice at first that she’s suddenly dancing alone.

  Mr. Peterson stands in the middle of the room, staring at the woman he had once held so adoringly. Now he looks somehow disappointed by what he sees. Then he turns to Aaron, seated once again on the couch.

  “Why would you do that?”

  “I—I didn’t know.”

  Mr. Peterson takes a step closer to Aaron.

  “You did know,” he says, and though I can’t see his face, I know his teeth are gritted. And though I can’t see Aaron’s face, I know it’s frozen in fear.

  “You did know, because you always know. You’re always watching,” Mr. Peterson says, and the camera begins to shake as Mya trembles under its weight.

  Mr. Peterson takes a step back, turns to the credenza, and whips the cassette from the stereo before hurling it across the room. It breaks against the far wall, falling to the floor in pieces.

  “Maybe you should go lie down for a bit, dear,” Diane says, edging toward him the way someone might approach a rabid dog.

  He stares at her, betrayed. His great shoulders fall, and he turns his head slowly back and forth.

  “You don’t understand at all.”

  “I do, darling. I do. It’s just … I think maybe you need some rest—”

  “You always say I need rest! Why do you always say I need rest? All I do is rest! I can’t rest while my brain is—”

  He moves his arms in wide circles around his head, making Mrs. Peterson flinch. I can hear Mya’s breath quicken behi
nd the camera.

  Mrs. Peterson struggles to find something to say. I can tell by the way her mouth moves up and down. But she comes up short, and instead, she clasps her hands in front of her chest and lets out a little laugh that sounds anything but amused.

  “I understand,” she says, and reaches a tentative hand to her husband’s shoulder, but he swats it away and takes a step closer to her as she stiffens but stands otherwise still.

  “You don’t understand. You have never understood.”

  Mrs. Peterson doesn’t say a word. Instead, she presses her lips together, and the tall, proud dancer who was there before wilts to a fraction of her height. Mr. Peterson turns and skulks off camera, a door slamming outside the frame.

  Mya sniffles from behind the camera, and Mrs. Peterson puts her hand to her mouth and turns to the camera, shushing her daughter and crouching, her hair now obscuring half of the picture as she holds Mya. In its new position, the camera finally steadies its focus on the couch in the background, and the figure sitting in it. I’d almost forgotten Aaron was even in the room. He was so quiet.

  He’s still quiet, sitting there staring at his mom and his sister, the weight of the entire scene pushing down on his shoulders. But his face is slack, motionless.

  Emotionless.

  I’m not sure what I’m expecting to see from him in that moment. Maybe something similar to what I suspect I’m showing on my face right now—the realization that Mr. Peterson is completely off his nut.

  But there’s more. The fact that Mr. Peterson is out of his mind isn’t exactly news. What is news is that he was nuts while he was building the Golden Apple Amusement Park.

  And his whole family knew it.

  It’s hot outside even after the sun goes down, but I don’t feel an ounce of warmth on the walk home. I feel each prick of pine needles that I brush against and each drop of moisture that forms in the humid air. Most of all, I feel an icy, bitter cold at the base of my spine, and it keeps me trembling for the rest of the night.

  Anyone who says they’re not afraid of the dark is probably lying. Anyone who says they’re not afraid of standing in an abandoned amusement park in the middle of the woods—in the dark—is definitely lying.

  It’s hard to tell where Golden Apple Amusement Park stops and the forest starts. The whole scene is a kind of mangled-theme-park-versus-tree showdown, with branches protruding from carousel animals and vines curling around the ruins of concession stands and prize booths. Enough moonlight splashes down on the clearing to keep me from tripping over structures, but my shirt keeps snagging on spokes and gears, the exposed insides of the machinery that ran this place.

  No one’s supposed to see that part, I think to myself.

  People get uncomfortable when they realize all that’s holding together their cars and appliances are gears and wires. One missing bolt, and the whole thing collapses, and that’s assuming the engineering was sound in the first place.

  That’s assuming the engineer wasn’t crazy.

  I check my watch and see that I’m ten minutes early.

  “What am I doing here?”

  I say it aloud, so I’m forced to hear what a stupid idea this was. Am I seriously so desperate for a friend that I’m willing to sneak out in the middle of the night to meet Aaron just one day after the last time I snuck out of the house to go to the factory?

  I pull the crumpled scrap of paper from my pocket and read it for the hundredth time.

  “Who am I gonna tell?” I ask the note.

  Each time I read the note, the pit in my stomach widens. There’s so much I need to know, especially now that I’ve seen that video. I can only guess Aaron’s ready to tell me everything, which is why he left the note in the trellis, but now that I’m here, waiting in the dark and the nighttime chill that’s begun to creep in with the approach of fall, I’m suddenly less eager for answers.

  I hold my flashlight to see where I’m going. My sweater keeps snagging on the leafless branches, and the more I think about it, the more annoyed I am with myself for showing up here. The guy goes dark on me for three weeks, and all of a sudden, I need to meet him in the one place he hates more than anything—the place I practically had to beg him to tell me about, and even then, I barely got anything out of him.

  I’m not really mad, though. I’m scared. Scared like a little baby.

  “Get a grip, Nicky,” I tell myself.

  The peeling paint of the prize booths and the skeleton of the Ferris wheel hanging overhead clash with the gleaming pictures those early newspaper features printed. Smiling parents and wide-eyed kids crowded the park on opening day. It’s hard to believe this place was so alive three short years ago.

  It’s hard to believe how much can die in that amount of time.

  My flashlight clicks and blinks, and I practically drop it, fumbling to recover it before it lands on a warped picnic table.

  The batteries must be low.

  “Oh, that’s just fantastic.” I’ve used it to read Aaron’s stupid note so many times, I must have drained what little battery it had left.

  A twig snaps somewhere behind me, and I whip around with my dying light, but all I can make out is a small square of forest. Some clouds have begun moving over the moon, and now even the bigger structures in the park are hard to see. Everything looks like dark blobs against a darker backdrop.

  Another snap, and this time I think it’s coming from one of the shapes in front of me, though I’m having a hard time determining distance.

  “Aaron?” I try to call out, but my voice is hoarse.

  Get it together. It’s just a bunch of trees and metal.

  But as I open my mouth to try and call out again, the squeal of rusted machinery tears through the air. Gears grind and crunch as they break away from their vines, and with a roar, the forest comes to life with the unmistakable sound of carousel music. The blob closest to me begins to take shape, and I see the rise and fall of glittering poles.

  I grab my knees to keep them from buckling as the shock finally wears off.

  “Seriously, Aaron?” I want so much to laugh it off, but I can’t get my heart to stop racing.

  “If you’re trying to get me to pee my pants, it’s not gonna happen, dude. I’m like a camel. One time I went almost two days before—”

  There’s someone sitting on one of the horses. At first I thought it was my imagination, but then the carousel revolved, and revolved again, and the outline is definitely a person. A person smaller than Aaron.

  Just as I’m trying to decide whether to walk forward or run in the opposite direction, the music that seemed to propel the carousel around begins to slow. The high-pitched organ notes lower to a groaning echo until the spinning animals find their stop, the metal crunching to a halt as the music gives out.

  I take a step forward, then another, telling myself there’s nothing to be afraid of because even the remotest possibility—that some kid is playing out here in the middle of the night—is not exactly a threat. Who’s afraid of a little kid?

  I am. Because there’s no way there’s actually a little kid out here playing by himself in the middle of an abandoned amusement park. I don’t care how much you like carousels.

  “Um, shouldn’t you be, like, at home asleep? I mean, you could get hurt out here,” I say, reasoning with the dark, and why can’t I get my heart to stop thudding like that?

  “I’m, uh, I’m not gonna rat you out or anything, but you could get in a ton of trouble,” I say, and now I’m standing right in front of the carousel.

  Nothing but silence answers me. I take a deep breath and step onto the carousel, slowly convincing myself it was Aaron after all. Besides, it’s way too dark to be sure of anything I saw, and the trees and the shadows distort everything.

  I take one step, then another, and with the third I run straight into a metal bunny, its haunches planted on the floor of the carousel as it rears up. Its eyes glint red under the dim moonlight.

  From the corner of my e
ye, something moves, but I realize it’s just the mirror at the center of the carousel.

  The shadow I saw was myself. I didn’t see a kid on the horse.

  “You saw your own reflection.”

  I shake my head, grateful no one was there to see me talking to nothing. This town really has me losing it. Maybe there’s nothing weird about Aaron or his family. They’re just people who have stumbled into some really crummy luck. If any family should understand that, it’s mine. And maybe all that bad made Mr. Peterson go a little nuts. And maybe Aaron doesn’t feel like hanging out right now. Maybe he actually feels bad about the whole fart-synthesizer incident.

  I’ve just about convinced myself that I’ve fabricated the entire bizarre story of Aaron, when I remember that the carousel didn’t just turn itself on.

  A metal grate shakes behind me, and I hear a small thud hit the ground, twigs and leaves crunching underneath pounding feet.

  I’m chasing after the sound before I know what I’m doing. If this is Aaron, he’s not going to get the satisfaction of seeing me run away like a scared toddler.

  After my lungs start to burn, though, I slow to a stop and realize I don’t even know if I’ve been running in the right direction. I put my hands on my knees again, this time to quell the fire in my chest, and when I look up, I see the twisted tracks of a melted roller coaster reaching higher than the highest tree that surrounds it. Branches protrude through the rails and jut skyward, defiant against the fire that burned half the trees that once stood nearby. At the top of the track sits a single car, perched precariously on the rail but refusing to let go. I can barely make out the string of peeling golden apples painted across the car, grotesquely cheerful beside the mangled track.