Nothing to Lose

by Alex Flinn

  Danger! Danger was strobing like an ambulance light across the green-painted classroom walls. I remembered Walker’s words, You think anyone would believe you over me?, his cool handling of the social worker who’d shown up that time. Then, his anger.

  I said, “Then there’s nothing to worry about. I’m fine.”

  “Is that true, Michael? Because falling grades can sometimes indicate…”

  She was young, a first-year teacher, probably only a year or two older than Kirstie. She didn’t know the old Michael Daye, didn’t know me from any stoner who used the school as a base of operations. I could use that.

  I made sure to meet her eyes. That was one thing I’d learned from Walker: Meet their eyes, especially when you’re lying.

  “Old Lady Gorman…” I finger-combed my hair and lowered my eyes, sort of sleepy, sort of stoned. “She was hot for me. That’s why she gave me that B.” I licked my upper lip real slow. “Do you want to give me a B?”

  She broke eye contact with a disgusted expression. “Look,” she said, gathering the papers on her desk and banging them into a neat pile. “You need to quit sleeping in class and hand in some better papers quick, or you’re going to flunk.”

  “I’ll remember that,” I said, amazed, sort of, that I could take the idea of failing English so calmly. Last year I’d been upset by that B.

  I headed for the cafeteria, where I handed Karpe both my sandwiches. I spent the rest of the hour with my head on the table, pretending to sleep.

  But really, the noise around me invaded my ears, the vibrations from the feet on the floor and the conversations making the table sound like the inside of a seashell.

  I skipped sixth and seventh periods to get to the fair early. There’d been a time when I’d never have skipped, when I’d have been too scared of being caught. Now it was easy.

  “Can you get the night off?” I asked Kirstie when I got there. I’d decided to go to Alex’s party, like Tristan wanted, but I wanted Kirstie there too. She wore a leather top with buttons down the front. The bottom button was open, and I could see the swell of the bottom of her breasts.

  “Thursday night? Not likely.”

  I looked around. It was barely three, and already the place was beginning to fill up. Teenagers from nearby high schools and little kids, dragging parents in business clothes.

  “Please,” I said to Kirstie. “Please go with me.”

  “Sucks being you, doesn’t it?”

  “You’re beautiful,” I said.

  “Flattery will get you nowhere.” But she was smiling a little.

  “You were meant for me.” I sang it to her. “And I was meant for yon.”

  “You’re such a screw-up,” she said, laughing. “I guess it wouldn’t be hard to find someone to fill in for me.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Give me a couple hours, okay?”

  My next-biggest problem was Karpe. We’d made plans to go to the fair together, Karpe in hopes of hooking up with Ni-Jin.

  I called from a pay phone. I considered lying, but I’d lied so much lately to so many people that I decided to tell the truth for a change.

  “I’m not going to the fair tonight,” I said when he answered.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. I’m just … there’s this party…”

  I figured he’d make some comment about my friends, or maybe ask if he could come along. I’d almost have taken him. But he just said, “Okay, maybe some other night.”

  “Yeah. Tomorrow. I promise.”

  After getting the address from Tris, I called Mom (they were going out; it was their anniversary). Then I looked for Cricket to see if anyone needed me to work a few hours.

  He found some friends who wanted help with their hot dog stand.

  “You know, I could talk Mr. Corbett into giving you a real job,” Cricket said on his way to the trailer. “That’s who gave me my start—Mr. Corbett himself.”

  I knew the carnival was run by the Corbett Amusements company. The name was on all the programs and garbage cans, even the doors of the johns.

  “How did that happen?” I knew I was getting dangerously close to asking the questions you didn’t ask, the stuff Kirstie said was on a need-to-know basis.

  “I ran away from the group home I was in. Some of the bigger boys was messing with me. So I go to Route 66 and start hitching. I was fourteen and looked younger, and no one wanted to pick up a runaway. Then a truck stopped. The side said Corbett’s Amusements.”

  We reached the hot dog trailer. There was a sign on the back that said, Jesus is the Head of this Operation, and all these little kids were running around, trying to help a couple who were passing a screaming infant back and forth.

  “Shouldn’t those kids be in school somewhere?” I asked Cricket.

  “They go to school. It’s, like, a special carnival school. They never need nothing more.”

  He caught the guy’s eye and gestured like, Here he is.

  “So,” Cricket said, “Mr. Dale Corbett’s driving. He asks where I’m going, and I say I don’t care. But by the time we reach the state line, I knew where I was going.”

  “What state was that?”

  Cricket’s face darkened. “I don’t want to tell you that.”

  “Sorry.” It was weird how here, where everyone had secrets, I felt more comfortable than at school, where it was only me. I could tell anyone here about the problems at home, but I didn’t need to. Somehow just having the option was enough. Maybe that was what it was all about—options. Home with Walker, I didn’t have any. Here, I did. I looked up at the hot dog stand, then back to see Cricket watching me.

  “Anyway,” Cricket said, “Mr. C. hired me, and I bet he’d hire you. He could pay you under the table, like.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “Thanks, though. It’s just … my family.”

  “Oh, you got one of those. I just thought maybe you were looking to bail. And you have a knack for the carny business.”

  The hot dog guy finished with his customer and waved us in. “Thanks God you here.” He gestured toward the woman. “Now Anna, she can go take care of little Roberto.” He put out his hand to Cricket. “Thank you, my friend.”

  “No biggie,” Cricket said. “We all help each other, right?”

  “Right.”

  The woman—the hot dog guy’s wife—was still standing there, sort of bouncing the baby. She walked up close to me and held the baby level with my eyes. He stopped crying and stared at me.

  “He likes you,” she said, smiling.

  I put a hand out, touched the baby’s soft little feet. “You got some family here, kid.”

  “We all family here,” the hot dog guy said. “All family.”

  THIS YEAR

  “Is it you? The truth.”

  Cricket’s waiting for me when I return to my trailer.

  “What are you talking about?” I say. “Look, it’s two o’clock. I need to set up. I don’t have time for—”

  “Don’t shit me, man. It’s important. You know what I’m talking about.” He shoves a paper, the Herald photograph in my face again. “Is this you… Michael?”

  “Where did you get that? What are they, giving them out at the gate now?”

  “Some guy out there’s showing it to everyone. I think he’s a reporter. There were some cops here too.”

  “The cops aren’t looking for me.”

  “Maybe not. But you can’t stay here. You’re underage, and now everyone knows it. You could get us in hot water.”

  “That’s just great. Just turn me in the second things get tough. That’s just—”

  I stop. I look at Cricket. He’s holding out my duffel bag. I haven’t seen it since I unpacked last year, and I know I’m being unfair. This is what I signed up for—no obligations on either side. Besides, maybe this is just pushing me to do what I know I have to.

  “I’m sorry, Robert.”

  I take the duffel from him. “The name’s
Michael. Michael Daye.”

  He nods and reaches a hand into his pocket and takes out a wad of money. He starts to hand it to me.

  “You don’t have to.”

  He shoves the bills into my jacket pocket.

  “We were friends, Mike. You’ll come back, maybe next year when you’re really eighteen, when all this is over.”

  I nod. But I know I won’t be back. “I better get out of here.”

  I head out to the exit, to the bus stop. The whole way, I can feel Cricket’s wad of bills in my pocket. It’s big enough that even if it’s mostly ones, added to what I already have, I’d have enough to take me far, far away, someplace else I can escape.

  But I know I only need a dollar and change to go where I need to go.

  LAST YEAR

  “Your friend lives here?” Kirstie asked when the bus dropped us off way down Sunset Drive, almost a mile from the address Tristan had given me.

  “No. He lives in Coral Gables, near where I live. Just, sometimes people like to have parties where there’s no neighbors to complain.”

  “Playing at being grown-ups.”

  She was right. My friends at school were little kids compared to people I’d met at the fair. And I was hovering somewhere in between. I thought about all that while we stumbled over the cracked pavement of the old road. Should have brought a flashlight. Every few minutes a car went by, probably one of my friends for the party. But none stopped.

  “What are you thinking about?” Kirstie asked, after we jumped out of the way of the third SUV in a row.

  “I’m thinking about next week, when you leave.”

  “What are you thinking about it?”

  “I’m thinking I don’t want you to.”

  “Maybe don’t think about it then.”

  She stopped walking and pulled me close to her, kissed me. But she didn’t ask me again to stay.

  “Is that what you do when something bothers you? You don’t think about it?”

  “It’s better than checking your beeper when it’s too late anyway.”

  We kept walking, Kirstie’s words hanging from the bottoms of the ficus and poinciana trees that made a canopy over the road. And soon we were in the driveway.

  I saw Tristan, sitting on the doorstep, drinking a beer from a red plastic cup, and I thought that next week that would be me, too.

  Earlier, when I’d called Tris for the address, he’d said, “You’re really coming?”

  “It’s just a party,” I had answered. “I’m bringing someone, okay?”

  “Not that loser, Julian Karpe.”

  “No.” Though I’d had a flash—Karpe and his father eating ravioli out of the can for dinner. “No, it’s a girl.”

  “Ah, so there’s a girl involved. You sure you want to do that? Tedder and Vanessa broke up. Or rather, Tedder told all his friends he did it with Vanessa, and she told him to screw off. But she’ll probably still be at the party. Everyone will be there.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m bringing this girl.” It seemed like forever ago that girls at school had meant anything to me.

  “Bring the girl, Mike. Just show, okay?” And he’d sounded so happy I’d felt bad all over. Maybe I’d misjudged him. Maybe he’d have been fine if I’d told him everything, but it was the uncertainty. That’s why I couldn’t talk to him. That’s what Walker had done—made me uncertain.

  But now I hung outside the group, not sure what to do, still not ready.

  Kirstie took the first step for me.

  “Hey,” she said, releasing my hand. “You must be one of Michael’s friends.”

  Tris’s beer sloshed out of its cup. “Best friend up to a couple weeks ago. Um … you must be Mike’s girl.”

  “I’m Kirstie.”

  She said this while I was still fumbling for their names, then turned to me. “Where’s Julian?”

  “He, er, doesn’t usually go to these things.”

  Kirstie raised an eyebrow at that. By then Tris had recovered his voice enough to introduce himself, sort of checking Kirstie out, and not in a good way.

  And then Tedder Dutton was filling the doorway.

  “Hey, Daye, you made it.” He looked both of us up and down. Behind him Tris was mouthing Hottie at me. “And you brought someone.” He was roasted, leaning against the doorway, trying to look cool, but obviously holding on for balance.

  Kirstie introduced herself, then said, “So what’s there to do around here?”

  Tedder laughed. “Why don’t you show your girlfriend where the beer is.”

  “Oh, beer I can get. I was hoping there’d be something to do.”

  “Maybe we can think of something,” Tedder said, eyeing her up and down.

  “There’s a band out back,” I told Kirstie.

  Kirstie returned Tedder’s look, then followed me through the house.

  Inside was pretty much a Xerox copy of every party I’d ever been to. I probably could have navigated it blindfolded, using only my sense of smell and sound.

  “To the left,” I told Kirstie, “we have geeks playing Quarters. And to the right, we have burnouts smoking weed.”

  I stopped. I knew a lot of the carnival people did drugs, and not just pot. I knew she’d done them in school. As we traveled through the room, I noticed people stopping whatever they were doing to turn and stare at us.

  I said, “And in the center, we have a bunch of guys, looking like they’ve never seen a woman before.”

  “Well, they’ve never seen me before.” We stepped out onto the patio. It felt cooler than it had on the road, and I moved closer to Kirstie. The band was playing too loudly for us to talk without shouting, and some more guys were playing Quarters. They, too, stopped to stare at us.

  “Why the big tour back there?” she said—shouted—at me.

  “I dunno.” I took her hand and moved her across the patio, behind the speakers where it wasn’t as loud. “Guess they just seemed different than the people you hang with.”

  “Not a freak show?”

  I winced, remembering my comment. Things had changed so much since then. “A different kind of freak show.” When she kept looking at me, I said, “Do you think, back when there were freak shows, the freaks would look out into the audience and think, ‘How strange’?”

  “I bet. Some states made laws against displaying human oddities. They said it was to keep these ‘unfortunates’ from being taken advantage of.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “Sort of. But every time they made a law, freaks came out to protest.”

  “Why?”

  “They said they needed to make a living. But I don’t think that was the whole reason.”

  I watched as, to the right, someone sunk a quarter and made the already-trashed guy to his left take a drink.

  “Why then?” I said.

  “People who made those laws, they wanted to act like nothing was wrong with those freaks, like they were the same as everyone else. But if you’ve got an eye in the middle of your forehead, you know you’re not just folks. At least in the carnival you can be with other people like you.”

  I nodded, thinking about how much easier it was being with people in the carnival who didn’t all expect me to be a certain way, to follow their rules. I said, “And show that they were proud too.”

  “Exactly. But you didn’t have to explain your friends to me. Back home I had the exact same kind of friends.”

  That’s when I felt a hard hand on my shoulder I turned. Tedder.

  “Mind if I dance with your date?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. It was crazy. No one was dancing. People didn’t dance at parties like this, at least not until they were really trashed.

  But Tedder kept going. “Aw, c’mon, Daye. Your girlfriend here wanted some entertainment. I feel obligated to give it to her. She ought to be more polite.”

  “I don’t think so,” I repeated.

  A few people had gathered, including Vanessa, who said, “Don’t be such an a
ss, Tedder.”

  “I didn’t ask you,” Tedder said. He offered Kirstie his hand.

  “I don’t think so either,” she said. She turned to me. “Maybe we should go, Michael.”

  I nodded and held out my hand. Kirstie started to take it, then Tedder yanked her away.

  “I asked you to dance,” he growled.

  I turned to see him lunge toward Kirstie, his fat hands grabbing at her, and I felt the same way I always felt when Walker beat on Mom. Except I had to take shit from Walker. I didn’t have to take it from Tedder Dutton.

  “Hey,” I said. “Leave her—”

  But before I could get the words all the way out, Dutton was headed for the floor. Kirstie had flipped him somehow, his legs flying out from under him, and his ass hit the ground with a thud.

  “I have a knife in my pocket,” Kirstie said, over him. “You want to make me use it?”

  “N-no,” Tedder stammered.

  “Maybe you didn’t hear me before,” she said, “but I said I didn’t want to dance.”

  “Okay. Sorry.”

  She backed off, and he lay there. Monica Correa, who had the hots for Dutton, ran to him. No one else did. They just stood there, staring at Kirstie. I stared too. And the band kept playing and playing, and I knew I could never come back to one of their parties again, and I didn’t care.

  “Bitch!” Tedder sputtered. “Get your freak girlfriend out of here, Daye.”

  And Kirstie threw back her head and began to laugh.

  “Do you really have a knife in your pocket?” I asked Kirstie on the way back to the bus stop. I realized I’d almost let myself forget about the problems at home. Almost.

  “Sure.” She stopped and pulled out a penknife. She flicked open the blade and held it up so it gleamed silver in the moonlight. My arms shivered, feeling like a hundred bees had landed there.

  “Why do you have it?”

  “The game. Sometimes the balloons get stuck, and I need to cut them off.”

  “Oh.” I relaxed a little.

  “That, and for protection.”

  “You wouldn’t… I mean, would you really use a knife on someone?” I turned this new fact about her around in my head.