Gilly pulled into her driveway two hours past curfew. She knew she was in trouble and hardened herself to face it. Pushing open the door, she saw her dad sitting on the couch. Gilly didn’t look at him. Keeping her eyes forward, she walked through the living room and down the hall.
Her dad followed her into her bedroom without a word. As Gilly flipped on the light, he held out his hand.
“Give me your keys.”
Gilly handed him her key chain. It vanished into his pocket.
“When you learn to mind the rules, you can drive again,” he said. “Until then, I’m keeping these.”
“Fine.” Gilly stared at her bed, the blanket twisted and kicked to the floor. Her dad stood behind her for several seconds. Gilly tried not to say anything else. She wanted him to think she didn’t care. But as he started to leave, it snuck out. Gilly couldn’t stop it.
“We weren’t doing anything.”
Andy Stahl turned on his heel. “I don’t want to know what you were doing, Gilly. It doesn’t matter. You’re supposed to be home by eleven o’clock. Why can’t you manage that?”
Because Sam was upset and needed someone to talk to. Because there were things she could tell Sam that her dad never heard. Because she was hanging out at a gas station, not in the projects buying crack.
“Okay, Dad.”
“No, it’s not okay,” he said. Gilly hated when he did that. “I can’t figure out how come you’re the only person on Earth who doesn’t have to follow the rules. I can’t figure out how you got so lucky.”
“I’m not.” If she had kept her mouth shut, he’d be gone by now.
“That’s right, you’re not.” He jingled the keys in his pocket. “And when you think you can be home when you’re supposed to be, you can ask for these back.”
Gilly still refused to look at him. “Fine. Whatever.”
Her dad left, shutting the door behind him.
Afterward, Gilly couldn’t lie down. She paced her room for an hour, yelling at her dad in a voice barely above a whisper. She jabbed a finger at her reflection in the mirror and said all the things she wished she’d said while he was there.
She told her dad that she’d been helping a friend. She didn’t care if he punished her; she’d do it again tomorrow if she had to. She told him she was gay, and if he was going to freak out about it, fine, but at least he could admit he was freaked out. Gilly told him that she loved him, and how much she wished that could still be as simple as it had been when she’d been little. Gilly found herself standing by her window, looking at the road running in front of her house. It connected to the parkway. Take Interstate 20, and Atlanta was three hours away. If Gilly left now, she could get there by sunrise.
The Witches’ Carnival was the name and shape given to every fantasy of running away and leaving it all behind. It was the fantasy of the open road, the fantasy of motion and speed until all your problems became a blur. But most importantly, it was a fantasy.
Gilly let the Venetian blinds drop over the window. Undressing, she flipped off the lights and went to bed. The Witches’ Carnival wasn’t real. That couldn’t stop dreams, glittering like sunlight across water, from closing around her as she drifted down to sleep.
The red-faced bluster of morning talk shows spilled out of the car’s stereo. Gilly sat in the front seat beside her dad. As they neared the school, Gilly turned toward the student parking lot, searching for Sam.
Sam sat on the hood of her Civic. Colby was beside her, his arm around Sam’s waist and one foot on the car’s bumper. Alex and Dawn stood hugging belly-to-back. Everyone watched Sam. Forming her hands into a circle, she yanked them apart. Alex laughed. Dawn clapped a hand over her mouth and started walking away.
Sam wore her long-sleeved black shirt. She had on the jeans with the frayed cuffs. Through the car window, Gilly watched Sam brush strands of dark hair out of her eyes, tucking them behind her ear. She turned toward something Colby said and smiled.
Gilly felt her dad glaring at her. She dropped her gaze to her sneakers. “She’s just a friend, Dad.”
Andy Stahl pulled to the curb and didn’t answer. “Me or your mom’ll pick you up at three.”
“I’ll get a ride.”
“Yeah. With me or your mom.”
Curling her lip into a practiced sneer, Gilly climbed out and slammed the door. Pulling the hood of her sweatshirt up, adjusting the straps of her backpack, Gilly dragged her feet along the sidewalk until her dad was out of sight. Once his car had rounded the corner, she loped across the parking lot toward her friends.
“… and Josh is just—hey, G.”
“What’s up?”
“Where’s your car?” Dawn asked.
“Dad took it away for staying out too late.”
“That sucks. How long?”
“I don’t know. Until he stops being an asshole.”
Sam grabbed Gilly’s arm hard enough to hurt. “What the hell was that last night?”
Gilly shook her head and laughed. “Some fucked-up shit. That’s all I know.”
Hugging herself against the steel-gray weather, Gilly listened to Sam tell the story. Sam told stories with a dry intensity. She never edited her own embarrassing moments. If anything, she exaggerated them for comic effect. She even did decent impersonations of Josh and Meek.
Once she’d finished, Dawn said she’d seen a magician do a trick like that on TV. She figured Meek had killed one crow and had another hidden somewhere. Colby asked where a homeless guy bought crows in bulk. His guess was that Meek had trained the crow to lie limp, then splattered chicken guts around to make it look like he’d killed it.
“He didn’t just kill it,” Sam said. “He ripped the thing in fucking half.”
“That’s just what you think you saw. It’s power-of-suggestion stuff.”
The seven forty-five bell rang. Alex and Dawn said goodbye and hustled off for class. Sam looked at Colby, her fingers twining with his. “Hey, I need to talk to Gilly for a second, okay?”
“What about?”
“Nothing big.” She kissed him. “I’ll see you in Mrs. Badford’s class, okay?”
“You won’t even tell me what it’s about?”
“Shit.” Sam jumped off the hood of the car. Taking Gilly’s wrist, she pulled her into the bright, chattering stream of people pouring through the school’s main entrance.
Inside, students and gossip flowed down every hall. Lockers clanged. Sneakers squeaked across the green-specked tile. A cluster of boys near the Coke machines burst into thick laughter.
Sam leaned close, her warm breath brushing Gilly’s cheek. “I’m going to go look for them.”
“Who? The Witches’ Carnival?”
“Wanna come?”
“Sam, he’s just some sick fuck homeless guy. He pulled the whole thing out of his ass.” They stopped at Gilly’s locker. She started dialing the combination.
“Did that look like chicken guts to you?” Sam asked.
“No, but …” Gilly pulled her algebra book out and shut her locker. They started down the hall again. “The Witches’ Carnival is a fairy tale.”
“Maybe.”
“C’mon. If they’re real and Meek knows where they are, why’s he hanging around Birmingham doing magic tricks for cigarettes?”
“I don’t know. He’s a sick fuck homeless guy. They march to a different drummer.”
Gilly looked at Sam. “You’re thinking about going. Seriously?”
“I’m not thinking, I’m going.”
“When?”
“Today. Now. I only came to school to see if you wanted to come with me.”
The second bell rang. The hallway clamor rose, footsteps scattering off to class. Gilly and Sam stood motionless.
“What about school?”
“Fuck school.”
“What about Colby?”
“Fuck him. There’s no way he’d go. Probably whine. I’m not even telling him.”
“Sam, it’s not real.”<
br />
“I don’t give a fuck.” She plucked at the strand of Mardi Gras beads wrapped around her wrist. “One way or another, I’m leaving. I’m sick of living in the same house as Greg. I’m sick of spending every night at Josh’s place.”
Gilly chewed her lip. “Yeah.” It was a sound to fill the quiet, meaning nothing.
“So come with me.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“Because …” Gilly didn’t have an answer.
“Miss Grace, Miss Stahl, the bell’s already rung.”
They glanced up. The hall was nearly empty. Mrs. Schiff, Gilly’s homeroom teacher, stood beside her door smiling a tight, unfriendly smile.
Sam and Gilly looked back at each other.
“You got until the end of first period,” Sam said. “Then I’m outta here whether you’re with me or not.” With that, she started down the hall.
“Sam, c’mon.”
Sam turned, walking backward and grinning a wicked, sharp-cornered smile. “Remember, G, if you ain’t pretty, start trouble.” Turning back around, she hurried to class.
“Miss Stahl, do you plan on coming to class today?” Mrs. Schiff asked.
Simplify the following exponential expression. Remember to write it so each base is written one time with one positive exponent.
(24 × 3)(x − 5) (6x − 20)
Gilly stared at her textbook, the page covered with numbers and symbols. She only had hazy ideas what any of them meant. Mrs. Schiff stood by the overhead projector and went on about integer exponents. The classroom’s stuffy heat made Gilly’s scalp itch. She ran her fingers through her hair, dyed a violent shade of red, and wiped a damp palm on her pant leg. She glanced at the clock, then her watch, then outside at the rows of cars filling the parking lot.
Gilly knew Sam didn’t believe in the Witches’ Carnival. Nobody did anymore, not really. But it was too wonderful a story to let go of completely. Sam wanted to believe in somewhere she could escape to, some real home far away from the peeling-paint split-level she shared with her mom and stepdad. She wanted to believe in it so bad, she’d fooled herself into trusting a rambling, half-mad crackhead.
The bell rang. There was a clatter of voices and chairs scraping across the floor. Gilly joined the rest of the class streaming into the corridor’s din. Lockers were jerked open and banged shut. Kevin Carney bolted past her with two of his friends after him.
Gilly walked with her head down, trying to figure out what to do. She had photography next period in Mr. Byrne’s room on the second floor. Instead of heading up the stairs, though, she found herself walking past them. The hallway ended in a steel door with wire mesh over the window. She stood and watched the student parking lot. Sam appeared a few seconds later, cutting between the cars toward her Civic.
She was really going.
Gilly thought about her dad taking her keys away for nothing. She thought about how miserable school was going to be without Sam around. She couldn’t make herself believe in the Witches’ Carnival, but Gilly imagined climbing out of days like a labyrinth and breathing fresh air for a while. The door swung open. Gilly heard the soles of her sneakers beat against the asphalt. A mean October wind scoured her face.
Sam had already ducked into her car. She saw Gilly and unlocked the passenger side door.
“All right. I’m going,” Gilly panted, collapsing into the seat. “What the hell, I’m going with you.”
“Fucking bitch.” Sam punched her in the shoulder, then cranked the engine. “Why’d you act like that in the hall? I almost thought you really weren’t coming.”
“Sorry. You sprung it on me so all of a sudden, I was kind of stunned.”
Steering around the wooden barrier guarding the parking lot’s entrance, Sam slung out onto the street. Two wheels popped the curb, and the car’s chassis jolted against the pavement.
Winter-bare trees lined the curving road leading away from school. Gilly watched them pass for a few seconds before speaking up. “Hey. Let’s stop by my house on the way.”
“What for?”
“Money.”
“Cool. How much you got?”
“I’m broke, but you know my dad’s a cop, right?” “Yeah.”
Gilly took a deep breath. She was already in trouble, she might as well enjoy it. “Did you know he’s crooked?”
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