I looked down at my hands. But they weren’t my hands. The skin was smooth, just like a baby’s. No calluses from milking cows or pulling weeds, no sunspots from helping your Grossdaadi grow corn. They weren’t a worker’s hands. And when I turned and saw my reflection in the glass of the windows, I didn’t have a worker’s face, either.
It was my face, but it wasn’t. They’d fixed it up somehow. My freckles were gone. My nose looked better. My ears didn’t stick out so much. My hair was blonde, the platinum kind, not the dirty blonde I used to have out here when I was younger. I’d never seen myself like that. I was beautiful.
I was still wearing my clothes. They know we’re particular about that. They know we can’t change everything about ourselves all at once. They know sometimes we don’t want to change anything about ourselves at all.
I heard a voice from behind me.
“Ruby?”
I turned. There was a woman there. Tall, her hair hanging down over her shoulders, her eyes twinkling green. She had makeup on. That’s what I remember most. I’d never seen makeup before, and she was wearing it. And that dress. A flashy red, and cut so high I could see her knees. She even had cleavage showing.
I thought she was a whore. I really did.
The Elders would have called her one if she’d dressed like that outside. But there’s no makeup out here anymore. There’s nothing like that, not in the real world. No skimpy dresses, no fancy shoes, and no English.
She held out her hand. “I’m Emily.” I just stared at her. I was afraid to touch her. I’d heard so many stories. Children’s tales, the kind we told you before bedtime. Where do you think I heard them from? Your Grossdaadi used to tell them to us after he’d tucked us in. The ones about the Gobblesnatch. That he lives in the wires, and if you stay in there for too long, he slithers into your brain and eats up little pieces of it one by one. That he grabs the bad children if they aren’t careful, and that if you’re bad enough, he’ll never ever let you go.
I wanted you to be afraid. But I think by the time you were older you knew it was all just silly legends. You were too old to be afraid of him anymore. But you’ll tell your children about the Gobblesnatch one day, if you ever decide to come out and have them. You’ll want them to be afraid. You’ll want them so afraid of him that they’ll stay with you forever. And you’ll learn what I did.
That it’s not just a silly story.
That the Gobblesnatch taking your children away is the scariest thing in the world.
Emily kept holding out her hand, and I kept standing there. I was paralyzed. She was so strange. And she was looking me right in the eyes. Smiling at me. No Amish girl would be that forward. I must have looked horrified, but she took it all in stride.
“It’s okay,” said Emily. “I was born Amish, too. That’s why I got assigned to meet you. I’m kind of like your tour guide. I went through the same thing you did, and I decided to stay. So now I’m here to show you around.”
“My brother said they have circuses,” I said. I’d seen pictures of them in some children’s books, and I’d been praying to see one for years. I knew this would be my only chance. It’s a harder life for us in some ways since the English left the world to us and us alone. They took a lot of things with them when they went.
“A circus,” said Emily. She wrinkled her nose. She probably thought I was a dope. I could do anything I could imagine, and all I wanted to do was see some clowns and a Ferris wheel. But she knew what it was like, coming in there for the first time. And so she smiled and played along. “I guess let’s start with a circus.”
She took my hand and she whistled. And from right around the corner a horse trotted out, a pure white stallion hauling a black buggy behind him.
The cars zoomed around him, but the horse didn’t care. Emily could have just teleported me there, or we could have taken a car. But she knew. She knew I needed time to adjust. She knew we had to go slowly.
We got inside, and the horse clopped us through the streets. My head was poked out the window the entire time. I saw things. Strange things. People in their funny clothes. An ant-person. Or some kind of bug. He had these arms, these nasty hairy arms, and these mandibles on his face going click-clack as he talked. There was a man in a business suit next to him. Just acting like it was nothing. Like you’d stand there and talk to a giant ant about the weather and then go on about your day.
It was just an illusion, just an avatar, but I almost screamed when I saw him. And stranger things than that showed up more and more as we left the city center. Superheroes just like in the old comic books. A woman in a jet pack. People walking straight up the sides of the buildings like they were strolling down the street. Race cars, blimps, spaceships, monkey parades. More things than I could handle. It was enough to make me pull my head back inside the buggy for the rest of the ride.
Finally we came to a tunnel. A big concrete thing, the entrance pitch black. Like there wasn’t anything at all on the other side. I could see it looming up ahead. A black pool of nothing waiting there to eat us up.
“Is the circus down there?” I said. I was terrified.
Emily held my hand. “It’s anywhere we want it to be. We’ll be there before you know it. Just hush, and close your eyes if you’re scared.”
I did. I listened to the clip-clop of the horse’s hooves. The light went away. And after a minute, everything was bright again.
I opened my eyes up and there we were. No tunnel, no city, no anything. Just our horse and buggy in the middle of a field. And up ahead of us was the circus, Ferris wheel and all. We got out and walked the rest of the way. The music was everywhere, trumpets chirping and tubas booming. Games and prizes and clowns and tent after tent filled with who knew what.
I was so excited. I ran towards it, so fast that Emily couldn’t keep up. And then I was in the middle of it all.
A man on stilts in a top hat who must have been twenty feet high. He strode through the crowd shouting at us, waving a cane at anyone who’d listen. “Step right up, see the wonders of the ages, the Siamese Twins, the Vampire Baby, and the Feejee Mermaid! Amazing and astounding, sights so strange you won’t believe your eyes!”
A clown passing out cotton candy. He handed me some, and I took a big bite. Emily laughed at me. I’d smeared the stuff all over my face. It was too sweet for me anyway, and it felt like wool in my mouth.
A sword swallower gulping down one blade after another. It must have been easier to do something like that in there than in the real world, because he never pulled any of them out.
“Let’s ride the teacups,” said Emily, and she took my hand. We weaved through the crowd. More strange people. Most of them had changed their avatars to fit the occasion, but some hadn’t. Some were downright scary. I closed my eyes again and let Emily lead me. And then we were in front of the ride.
Giant teacups whirling around in circles. People sitting in them, laughing and clapping. It was the tamest ride in the entire place and I was still afraid to get on it. But we did. We sat down in one of the teacups and we spun and spun and spun.
I kept closing my eyes, working my courage up, then opening them back up.
And then I saw him, and I couldn’t bring myself to shut them again.
He was a boy. My first love. Your Daed doesn’t know about him. I guess you don’t, either. Not really. But I have to tell you anyway, even if you can’t hear me. I wish I’d told you before. And maybe we’ll really talk about all of this someday.
His name was Payton. His hair was black, as dark as the night sky. He had these sly eyebrows, always arching up like he knew some joke you didn’t. And his smile. Curved at the edges, hiding something, and you just had to find out what it was.
He was riding the teacups with a bunch of his friends, a gang of them all wearing the same outfit. I don’t even know how to describe it. Blue plastic, shiny, skull symbols all over it, and these dark military-style boots. They looked like spacemen. And he was the handsome one. The others, the
y were uglier. They didn’t have to be. Not in there. I supposed he made them look that way. He was the leader, and he had to be the best at everything.
The Elders would have called him a hoodlum. They would have told me to stay away from him. That he was bad, that he was dangerous, that he was sin. That he wouldn’t be any different from any other temptation. Fun for a time, but he’d destroy me in the end.
We flirted with our eyes. I’d look, and he’d be staring at me. I’d look away, embarrassed. I’d look again, and he’d still be staring. The teacups could spin wherever they liked, but his eyes still followed me.
The ride ended. Emily and I got off. She was saying something about the clowns, but I wasn’t really listening. Payton was still by the ride, still watching me while his friends egged him on. He tossed away a cigarette with a practiced flick and headed over.
“You girls look lonely.”
He smirked as he said it. His friends were cheering and hooting in the distance, and they didn’t really care if we heard.
Emily rolled her eyes. “Piss off. Don’t give us that crap. I know better, and she’s with me.”
“You from outside?” said Payton. He looked me up and down. The clothes were a dead giveaway. It’s probably what drew him towards me in the first place.
The innocence. The purity.
The novelty.
“She is,” said Emily. “And she doesn’t have any interest in you. Try again in a few years if she’s still here. And if you haven’t found somebody else to play with.”
She grabbed my hand and dragged me away. I kept my eyes on Payton as we went. He was still smirking. Just watching me leave as he lit up another cigarette and blew a puff of smoke after us.
Emily took me to the clowns. They were doing acrobatics, and they had about a hundred of them stuffed into this toy car the size of a mouse. They’d bonk each other with hammers and foot-long bumps would grow out of their heads. Blowing each other up with bombs, dropping anvils on themselves until they were flat as a pancake, handing each other exploding cigars.
It was cartoon stuff, but they could really do it in there. And it was funny, or it should have been. I laughed a little, but I couldn’t get into it. I couldn’t quit thinking about him.
She took me to see the elephants next, and then the dinosaurs. We played games, we rode some more rides. We were standing around a ring watching a boxing match between a man and a bear when I saw Payton again.
He was on the other side of the ring. He and his friends. Emily hadn’t seen him, or she’d probably have stopped me. But she was too busy watching that bear. He was staring at me again. And then he waved me over, and I knew exactly what I was going to do.
The whole point of your Rumspringa is to be bad. To run around, to get it all out of your system. To spend a few years with the English, no questions asked, no consequences. By then you’re an adult, and you can make your own choices about how you want to live your life. You can follow God, or you can live in sin. But the Elders think everybody needs to know what it’s like. They need to know the choice they’re making. You can’t force someone into the Church. You give up something no matter which choice you make. You have to let kids be kids, and let them be bad for just a little while before it’s time to grow up.
This was my Rumspringa. My choice. My time to have a little fun.
And I was going to be bad.
“I need to pee,” I said.
“Right over there,” said Emily, pointing to one of the tents. She took my hand to come with me, but I pulled away.
“I can’t,” I said. I tried to look as embarrassed as I could. “Not with you there.”
She rolled her eyes. She couldn’t help it. But she believed me. “The tent on the right. That’s for girls. The one on the left’s for boys.”
I headed to the tent. I went through the door. There were toilets inside, but I didn’t need them. I stayed just inside the tent flaps, just long enough to make sure Emily was watching the fight again.
And then I ran.
I stuck close to the people, mixing in with the crowd. I went towards where I’d seen him. He was gone. They were all gone.
And then he was right behind me. He put his hands on my shoulders and I jumped. I almost screamed. He laughed at me. I felt like a silly, immature girl, and I was. But he was interested in me. The boy of my dreams, and he didn’t care. He wanted me. Out of everyone in that place, every fantasy he could possibly have, he wanted me.
“What’s your name?” said Payton.
“Ruby.”
“Payton.”
He took my hand, and he pulled me away into the night.
He knew exactly where he was going. The Tunnel of Love. There was a boat at the entrance, bobbing in the water. It was the cutest thing I’d ever seen, shaped like a big white swan. A man dressed like a gondolier helped us in. He gave the boat a kick and off we went, just the two of us.
There was music playing, a slow, romantic violin in the background. There were hearts everywhere, and these glowing red lanterns hanging above us on strings. There were statues all along the sides: people kissing, hugging, and doing more than that. I was nervous at first, but pretty soon I relaxed. Payton put his arm around me, and I leaned my head on his shoulder.
“Your friend’s not very nice,” said Payton.
“I just met her,” I said. “She’s supposed to be my guide.”
“Guess you got a new one,” he said.
He put his hand on my thigh. I didn’t move it away. We went past a few more sets of statues. More hearts, more lovers, more violins.
“I’ve never been out there,” said Payton. “I was a tube baby.”
“A tube baby?” I said.
“Born out there, raised in here,” said Payton. “What’s it like? Living outside?”
“Boring,” I said. “Not like in here. We work, we read the Bible, we eat dinner and talk. We read a lot, and sometimes we play games. There’s no circus. There’s no anything like what’s in here.”
“Sounds awful,” said Payton.
“I guess it is,” I said.
“So,” he said. He was staring at me again. His eyes looked red under the light. There was something in them. A fire. An intensity. A passion for something, and I thought it was for me. “That means you’ve never done anything?”
I was confused. I mean really confused. I was such a baby. I had no idea what he was even talking about. I thought maybe he meant the bug people, or flying around or whatever. I just sat there and stammered.
And then he leaned in and gave me my first kiss.
I pulled away at first. I was shocked. It’s not like that kind of thing never happens on Rumspringa. But I’d been telling myself for months that I wasn’t that kind of girl. I was going to drink, and I was going to play. I’d listen to rock and roll and rap and whatever other awful things they had. Maybe I’d even do drugs.
But nothing else. Nothing with boys. I was saving that for my husband. I didn’t know who he’d be. I hadn’t even met your Daed back then. Our family farms were almost a hundred miles away from one another. But I wanted to be pure. At least in that way.
At least I thought I did.
Payton looked at me. Sizing me up, I guess. And then he tried again. And this time I didn’t pull away. This time I kissed right back. It felt so good. So warm, so close. The music, the hearts, the statues. They all set the mood. And we made out for the entire rest of the ride.
We came out of the tunnel holding hands. I wasn’t thinking about purity anymore. I wasn’t thinking about anything but him.
We snuck out of the circus. I saw Emily running through the crowd, this way and that. We hid behind some trash cans. When she wasn’t looking, we made a break for the open fields. We were off in the darkness before anybody could see us.
There was nothing out there, just me and him. He rolled me over onto the grass and we lay there on our backs, chatting. I told him about my parents, my family, what it was like out there. He t
old me he really was a spaceman. A fighter pilot. He told me stories about his battles, his friends, the war he was fighting against these aliens. He told me how pretty I was, how he’d fallen for me the second he’d seen me, how he wanted someone to think about when he was off in his ship in the cold. I was flattered. I was enthralled. I was in love.
And then he pointed up at the sky. It was so perfect. Stars and the moon and even a meteor shower.
“Wait for it,” said Payton. “Just a few minutes.”
We waited. And then I saw the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen in my life.
Fireworks. They lit up everything. They shot up above the circus. Bursts of red and yellow. Then explosions that formed pictures. A clown’s face, a monkey, a strongman. And it only got crazier from there. I’d never seen fireworks in the real world, so I didn’t even know how much they’d modified them. Soon there were ballerinas, dancing and jumping before fizzling away. Birds exploding into being, soaring over the circus and then fading into nothing. Then the stars joined in, and even the moon. It had a face. Like a man’s face, and it was winking down at us.
I laughed. I clapped. But Payton wasn’t even watching it. He was looking over at me.
He leaned in for another kiss, and this time I didn’t try to stop him at all. I didn’t stop him when he moved his hands to my chest, or even when he moved them lower. I let him do it all this time. I let him do everything.
I liked it. I liked him. It was love at first sight, at least for me. Young love, puppy love, but I didn’t know it back then. He was my first everything. I thought I’d found my perfect match. The whispers I’d heard about this place were true. Everything was wonderful. Everything was perfect. Everything was fantasy.
I fell asleep under the stars, nestled in his arms.
And when I woke up, he was gone.
The circus was over. The tents were still there, but the rides had stopped. I walked back towards the grounds. The guests were gone, but the carnival people were all still there. All frozen. Clowns standing in silence, their heads bowed down. Lions fast asleep next to their tamers. The acrobats perched up on their wires like birds. Like everyone had just been turned right off.
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