If This Were a Story

by Beth Turley

  “I’m not looking to be judged at a carnival by a clown.”

  “Then you shouldn’t have given her something to judge.”

  The Grants finish up at the booth and rejoin us. Mom sticks a smile onto her face. Her bun is pulled back tight tonight, but it took a lot of mousse to make it that way. Dad smiles too, with his hands shoved deep into his pockets. I feel the urge to follow along.

  I can’t help but think we look like a bunch of clowns with painted-on grins.

  When we all have our tickets, Ryan’s mom reaches into her purse and hands new glow sticks to Ryan and Courtney and me.

  “Last ones. Make them count,” she says. Mrs. Grant has long dark hair tied into braids with beads at the ends. The beads tap against each other when she walks. She reminds me of a wind chime, soft and pretty and full of happy sounds.

  We hold our blue glow sticks. I don’t think you’re technically supposed to make wishes on glow sticks, but I take an extra second before I light mine to think about what I would ask for if I could.

  If this were a story, genies would live in glow sticks. They would be called Glow Genies and match the color of the tube they came from. When you cracked their home in half, the genies would emerge and tell you to make one wish. Not three, one. I would ask the blue genie for all my family’s smiles to be real for the rest of time.

  Ryan and Courtney bend their sticks, and color explodes into the tubes. I do the same and watch the blue liquid ignite, but no genie is released. Because this isn’t a story.

  “The parent-student three-legged race is starting in five minutes.” The announcement comes from Principal Jenkins through a megaphone. He wears a scuba diving outfit. It’s partly a costume and partly practical, since he spends most of the fall festival as a target in the dunk tank.

  Mrs. Grant pulls Ryan into her chest.

  “We’re doing this, baby. Who’s with us?”

  I look at Dad, and he takes a hand out of his pocket to give me a thumbs-up. Mr. Gilmore doesn’t look so excited but nods at Courtney anyway. Based on what I know about Mr. Gilmore, he probably doesn’t want to get his pants dirty. We walk toward the starting line, and I feel lit up like a glow stick, or a full moon. The night is overflowing with the feeling of fall. And fall feels like starting over.

  Dad and I tie our legs together with rope and wait for the race to start. Five minutes pass, but no one shouts for us to go. I spot the holdup a few yards away. Mrs. Bloom is there, dressed as a fairy godmother. She holds a piece of rope out to Kimmy Dobson.

  “No, it’s okay. I don’t want to,” Kimmy says.

  “Are you sure? You were lined up at the starting point. I’d love to race with you.”

  “I didn’t know it was for parents.”

  “Is your grandma with you?”

  “I told you, she’s coming. I’m going to meet her right now.” Kimmy leaves Mrs. Bloom and the rope behind.

  The memory of Kimmy’s sympathy card, torn apart and buried in the dirt, fills my mind. I squish a little closer to Dad. I think no matter how loud the sad sounds get, they could never hurt as much as a card full of “I’m sorry you lost your three-legged race partner.”

  Mrs. Bloom looks at Principal Jenkins, and he lifts his megaphone.

  “Ready . . . set . . . go!” he announces. Dad and I take off.

  “One, two, one, two,” Dad directs. A few other teams get tangled up and trip over themselves. One of those teams is Courtney and Mr. Gilmore.

  “Grass stains,” they moan together. I almost laugh but am too focused on the finish line. Dad and I keep pace together. One, two, one, two.

  Ryan and Mrs. Grant are ahead of us. Mrs. Grant’s braids fly out behind her like wings, and Ryan is just plain fast. They cross the finish line a full five seconds before we do.

  “Good work, team,” Dad says to me, a little out of breath.

  We untie ourselves, and Principal Jenkins announces Ryan and his mom as the winners. Their prize is three extra tickets to use on anything at the festival. I get one ticket for coming in second, but I’m just glad that Dad and I finished the race together. Maybe we could get through whole years just taking things step-by-step. One, two, one, two.

  I take the ticket from Principal Jenkins and spot Kimmy in the distance by the exit, alone. I see something else out there with her. A big yellow sign for something that’s never been at the fall festival before. A funhouse.

  My friends and I and our parents huddle together again. Courtney and Mr. Gilmore brush the dirt off their clothes. Ryan and Mrs. Grant bounce in place like the race has filled them with energy. Dad and I stand quietly and take it all in. It’s kind of funny how much we’re like our parents.

  “Let’s go use these tickets,” Ryan says. He separates his three prize tickets and gives one each to Courtney and me.

  “Where should we go?” Courtney asks.

  “This way,” I answer, and point toward the funhouse in the back corner.

  We tell our parents that we’ll meet them in an hour. They go sit at a picnic table with other parents who have probably made the same arrangement with their kids.

  “There’s no rides back here,” Ryan says as we cross through the fried-food section. The air smells like powdered sugar, but I don’t stop to breathe it in. My eyes are fixed on the glowing yellow sign.

  “It’s not a ride, really. At least I don’t think so,” I explain.

  “Then what is it?”

  I stop in front of the funhouse. The front is a long black wall, shaped like a castle. Towers shoot up into the sky, and at the doorway a dragon breathes fire made of ribbons.

  “It’s a funhouse,” I say, although it looks more like a haunted house. I start wondering if I want to go in at all. What if I get lost like Ambrose?

  “Uh-oh. Joanie Lawson’s in line. Hope she doesn’t get too scared, or there will be a mess to clean,” Courtney says, loudly enough for some of the other kids around us to giggle into their hands.

  Joanie doesn’t turn around or say anything back, but I know she heard. She shoves her ticket into the operator’s hand (our gym teacher, Mr. West, in a werewolf costume) and runs into the funhouse.

  “What’s wrong with you, Court? That was mean as heck,” Ryan says.

  “Oh, please. That’s how it works. If it’s not someone else being teased, it could be you. Look what happened with Hannah and that note.”

  “That’s a messed-up way to think. You don’t get to put someone down to make yourself feel better.” Ryan shakes his head.

  I’ve been friends with Courtney long enough to know that she wasn’t always like this. Ryan knows it too. I think if she hadn’t been made fun of so much after the Romeo and Juliet incident, she wouldn’t have the bully bones she does now. I think they grew in right above her rib cage, where they could protect her heart after what happened.

  But I swore I’d never talk about Romeo and Juliet again, so I won’t.

  We wait our turn and then give our tickets to Mr. West.

  “Welcome to the funhoooouuuse.” He howls like a werewolf on the “house” part. It doesn’t help me get over the whole haunted house idea. “Have a good time.”

  My friends and I walk past the fire-breathing dragon and into the funhouse. The first hallway is lit by dim lamps with fake candles inside. Knights in armor line the walls. The wooden door closes behind us, and the room gets darker.

  “I don’t think I like this,” Courtney says.

  “Let’s keep moving,” Ryan suggests.

  “We just have to find the right path,” I offer.

  The deeper we get into the funhouse, the less light there is. There are some small bulbs on the floor, just bright enough for you to see that your legs are still moving, but not enough to show where you are. The glow sticks we’re wearing transform from accessories to compasses, guiding us in the dark.

  “What’s that room? Up ahead?” Ryan asks. I lead us toward an opening at the end of the hallway. We step through the doorway to find a room f
ull of mirrors. There’s a foggy, gray lamp on the ceiling casting shadows all over the glass.

  Courtney starts laughing.

  “Guys, check out the mirrors. We look crazy.”

  I stand in front of the glass. In one I look like a squished stack of pancakes. In another I’m as tall as a giraffe. In the last one there are a thousand of me staring back, all distorted.

  Ryan starts cracking up too. Soon he and Courtney are bent over from laughing so hard, but all I can do is stare at the mirrors and wonder which Hannah is the real one.

  I remember a line from “Lost in the Funhouse.”

  For whom is the funhouse fun?

  Not for Ambrose.

  The next group behind us comes into the mirror room, and it gets too crowded, so Ryan and Courtney and I leave, their laughs still bouncing off the walls.

  The sun is fully set when we exit the funhouse.

  “Good idea, Hannah. That was fun,” Ryan says. Courtney nods in agreement.

  “It was,” I say. Maybe it counts as the truth if it’s the way I wish I felt.

  We spend the rest of our tickets on salty pretzels and the Ferris wheel and a game where you find the needle in a haystack, but everywhere I look, I see giant dragons and murky mirrors.

  Sometimes in stories the ending is left to the reader’s interpretation. “Lost in the Funhouse” leaves you wondering if Ambrose ever found his way out. After being in the funhouse myself, I’m wondering if anyone ever really does.

  Freak

  When I’m back in my room after the fall festival, I pull “Lost in the Funhouse” from the folder it lives in. I don’t organize my bookshelf by the author’s last name or by color. I group them by theme. I keep Ambrose’s story in my Growing Up section with all the Judy Blume books. Those books are old, and they don’t use big words, but they teach me about boys and my body. I’m not sure “Lost in the Funhouse” belongs in that section, but I don’t have a section for Stories That Know They Are Stories.

  “Lost in the Funhouse” isn’t a book. It’s a collection of photocopied paragraphs that Ms. Meghan picked out for me and then stapled together. I sit on top of my comforter. Ambrose waits on my pillow. I take a breath and blow out magic, releasing the worry that Ambrose won’t talk to me again, that it was just in my head the whole time.

  Ambrose makes a sound like an elephant yawn.

  “Good night, Ambrose,” I say with a heart full of relief.

  “Good night?” he answers.

  “I wasn’t sure what to say. It’s nighttime now. The moon is out.”

  “The moon is always out.”

  Ambrose talks like “Lost in the Funhouse,” in sentences that sound like bits of a poem. By this point you probably think this is a story, because my stuffed elephant is still talking to me and that seems impossible. But I promise, he really is.

  “Tell me again, Ambrose. Why have you never woken up before?” I ask.

  “You haven’t needed me.”

  I stick out my lip and cross my arms.

  “That’s not true. I’ve always needed you.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m here now.”

  I put Ambrose in between my legs and hold the pages out in front of us. I start to read aloud to him. By the time I get to the middle of the pages, I’m crying into Ambrose’s gray skin.

  If this were a story, a musician would be sitting on a stool in the corner of my room, playing an acoustic guitar. He would bring his face close to the microphone and say, “This one’s for you, Hannah.” When the lyrics started, my heart would feel like breaking because they were written too perfectly, written just for me.

  This is how “Lost in the Funhouse” makes me feel.

  As Told by Ambrose

  That no one chose what he was was unbearable,” Hannah reads from the story in front of her.

  Hannah’s tears feel like raindrops. I know what raindrops feel like, because she left me outside in a summer storm once.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask, but I already know. I know everything about Hannah.

  “Either everyone has felt what Ambrose feels, in which case it goes without saying, or no normal person feels such things, in which case Ambrose is a freak.”

  She is not talking about me. She means Ambrose from the story, the one who got himself lost in his own thoughts. I can see that Hannah is doing the same thing now.

  “Hannah?”

  “I’m a freak, Ambrose. I’m not normal. I don’t want to be this way.” The words tumble out of her mouth.

  The solution is simple, but I can tell she is not ready to hear it. I try anyway.

  “So stop keeping all your feelings inside you,” I reply.

  “I don’t know what else to do with them.”

  She tosses the pages to the ground and lies on her side, knees tucked up to her chest. I want to smooth out her dark hair and wipe the wetness from her powder-blue eyes, but that is not how this works.

  “You’ll figure it out.”

  “Don’t leave me,” she says.

  “I couldn’t if I wanted to.”

  She holds my stuffed arm and closes her eyes. I watch her fall asleep. I live only because of Hannah. I live only because of all the wonder she has inside her. She does not even know what she’s capable of.

  Penny

  On Sunday, I go grocery shopping with Mom, and Courtney comes with us. She lives in a big house on top of a hill. The grass looks fresh and green even though it’s October and wet leaves should have turned the yard to mud. It’s like Courtney still lives in summertime.

  Courtney bounces down her front steps, and Mrs. Gilmore watches through the screen door. She waves to Mom, and Mom waves back. Mom is just as beautiful as Mrs. Gilmore, but Mom looks much more tired. Sometimes I wonder how many hours of sleep she would need to not be so tired anymore, but something tells me there’s no answer.

  “Hi, Mrs. Geller,” Courtney says politely when she gets into the car. Mom smiles into the rearview mirror and backs out of the Gilmores’ twisty driveway.

  “How much money do you have?” I whisper to Courtney.

  “Ten dollars,” she whispers back, and pulls the bill from her big pink purse.

  Courtney is supposed to spend the money on fruit cups or veggie sticks or yogurt with granola packaged in the lid, but we have our own plans.

  “What are you two whispering about back there?” Mom asks.

  “Nothing,” I say. Courtney seals her mouth with an invisible key.

  Sometimes I wish it weren’t so easy to lie.

  • • •

  Mom lets us go off on our own when we get to ShopRite. We wait for her to disappear down an aisle before we take off across the store. I hear Courtney laughing behind me and see the bank next to the bakery, which smells like fresh doughnuts. All of my senses are occupied by happy feelings. There’s no room for bad things to touch me.

  We stop in front of the bank, and Courtney takes out her ten-dollar bill. We face each other and hold hands. Our arms make a loop that never ends.

  “Ready?” Courtney asks.

  “Ready,” I say.

  The lady at the bank counter watches us approach. Her face tells us that whatever our question is, the answer is no. But we are on a mission. Courtney puts her money on the counter, and we stand elbow to elbow.

  “I would like twenty rolls of pennies for this, please,” Courtney says with her high-pitched-honey-sweet adult voice.

  “Where are your parents?” the lady asks.

  “We are old enough to make this transaction without them, ma’am, but thank you for your concern,” I say. Bank Lady is not amused. If this were a story, Bank Lady would reveal herself to be a robot and shoot laser beams out of her eyes. She would chase us through the aisles, and we’d do backflips to avoid her until her robot batteries died.

  “What could you need all those pennies for?”

  “We’re coin collectors,” Courtney says. Finally the cold look on Robot Bank Lady’s face transforms to sunshine.


  “I collect stamps,” she says, and takes our ten-dollar bill to the back room. She returns with our rolls of pennies in a plastic bag.

  “Thank you,” we both say, and gather up the rolls. She smiles at us. I hope that one day she finds the rarest stamp in her robot galaxy and her collection is complete.

  • • •

  The truth is, we’re not coin collectors. We’re secret coin droppers. Courtney reaches into the plastic bag and hands me a roll. I tear the paper and catch a glimpse of the shiny copper, like a golden ticket in a Wonka Bar. My brain spins like a pinwheel, and before I can stop it, I am thinking about Violet Beauregarde and how scared she must have been when she thought she was going to explode. I think about Mike Teevee being shrunk so small that he almost didn’t exist anymore. I think about how their day at the chocolate factory was ruined because they were who they were. It’s just a story, it’s just a story. That’s what characters do. They teach us a lesson.

  “Anyone in there?” Courtney’s voice stops the turning pages in my head. She taps on my temple with her knuckles.

  “I’m here. Let’s do this,” I say, and pull a penny from the roll.

  The rules of coin dropping are simple. Always leave the penny faceup. And don’t let anyone see you do it, or else the penny loses its luck. Courtney and I creep down the aisles, looking for good spots. The cereal aisle is empty. We nod to each other and leave our faceup pennies on the tile floor. Two down. We won’t make it through all the rolls, but it feels nice to have one thousand chances to make someone happy.

  “You take frozen foods. I’m going to the fruit,” Courtney says, and we part ways. I don’t like when Courtney and I separate, because it feels like I’m bothering her. Losing her. Like she’s been drowning in our friendship and needs to come up for air.

  I wonder if she liked me more when we were five and I didn’t know so many words yet and my skin didn’t have mountain ranges made of red pimples. I squeeze the roll of pennies and walk down the frosty frozen food aisle, remembering that it’s just me and Courtney on this secret mission. That means even when we separate, we’re still in this together. I pull out a new penny and inspect it, running my finger over its ridges.