“Why did you poke me?”
“Why did you jump through my window?”
His lips slid over his teeth and he seemed uncomfortable.
“I wanted to see you,” he said at last. “And you didn’t come around yesterday. I like your room.”
I squinted, trying to see my room through his eyes. It wasn’t large and I didn’t have my own TV like a lot of kids at school. It was decorated with posters of boy bands from magazines that Jennifer read, and I didn’t think it was anything special, but Kes’s eyes had found the one thing in my room that I was proud of—he was staring transfixed at my bookshelf.
“Have you read all those books?”
His voice sounded awed.
“Sure! These are my favorites.”
I pulled out ‘The Hobbit’ and handed it to him. He took it as reluctantly as if I’d handed him a snake. He slid a grubby finger between two pages and peeked inside.
“It doesn’t have any pictures,” he said, his voice disappointed.
“It doesn’t need any. It paints pictures with words.”
Kes frowned at me and shook his head. “I don’t like books,” he said stubbornly.
“You’ll like this one,” I insisted.
I made myself comfortable on the bed and Kes sat down next to me, his eyes wary as I began to read.
Lost in the story, it was several minutes before I realized that Kes was still staring at me.
“What?” I said, annoyed and uncomfortable.
“You read really good,” he mumbled.
I frowned at him, waiting for the slur hidden in the compliment, but his eyes had dropped to his fraying jeans.
“Thank you,” I said after a long pause.
“I can’t,” he said. “I can’t read.”
He glanced up at me quickly as his cheeks stained red.
I didn’t know what to say. I’d never met anyone who couldn’t read; even the kindergarteners at my school seemed to know some words.
“Not at all?”
He shook his head.
“I tried to learn once, but I couldn’t. I guess I’m too dumb.”
“I don’t think you’re dumb,” I said with certainty. “You can do loads of stuff that I can’t. You’re amazing.”
Kes gave me his shy smile again and my heart was captured from that moment. I didn’t know it then; I didn’t understand what it meant, but whenever I looked at him, my skin felt warm, like my own personal sun was shining just for me.
“Do you want to go see Mr. Albert?” he asked, changing the subject, his eyes now bright and happy.
Disappointment was bitter when I replied, “I can’t.”
He frowned, staring at me as he tested my answer. “Did you get in trouble?”
Had he already forgotten that we were both in trouble and his own grandpa knocked seven bells out of him?
I nodded.
“Are you grounded?”
“Yes,” I sighed. “For the rest of my life, I think.”
Kes laughed quietly, his eyes glittering with devilry.
“Let’s go anyway. I’ll help you.”
I looked at him doubtfully. I’d been allowed to go to church the day before, but I was supposed to stay in my room for the next few days as a punishment for disappearing at the carnival.
Kes could sense my resistance was weak—as it always would be when it came to anything he wanted to do—and over the years, it was a weakness that he plundered ruthlessly.
“I shouldn’t,” I whispered.
He waited, smiling at me the whole time, his eyebrows raised in challenge.
“Okay, I’ll go.”
He grinned widely, then sprang onto the windowsill and held out his hand toward me.
I shook my head rapidly.
“I can’t do that!”
“I’ll help you,” he encouraged eagerly. “I won’t drop you. Well, I will, but you’ll be really close to the ground by then, so you can just roll.”
I’d never ‘just rolled’ anywhere in my life, not even during gym class, which was easily my worst subject in school. But Kes’s challenging expression took me prisoner and wouldn’t let go.
Taking a deep breath, I stuffed my copy of ‘The Hobbit’ in one back pocket, and ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’ in the other, on the grounds that if I landed on my butt, the additional padding would help. Even though the pockets were large, I still had to squish the thick books to make them fit, and I was thankful that I was wearing a pair of Jennifer’s old cargo shorts that were a little baggy on me. I must have looked a very odd shape.
Of course, if I’d have been thinking clearly, I’d have chosen ‘Lord of the Rings’ instead. All those extra words ought to be useful for something.
I crawled across the bed and edged out so I was sitting on the windowsill, my heels drumming nervously on the wooden cladding outside. Kes’s arm was warm against my side, and when he gripped my hands, his palms were rough and dry.
“You’re shaking!” he said, his voice curling up at the end in surprise.
“Of course I am, jackass!” I snapped.
He laughed lightly. “Hold on tight, Aimee.”
His skinny arms, sticking out of his shoulders like two twigs, were a lot stronger than they looked, and soon I was dangling 12 feet above the ground. Kes leaned out so far, I was afraid he’d come tumbling after me.
He was holding me tightly, and my fingers had gone white.
“Ready?” he whispered.
I stared at the ground, certain that I was going to die and be smeared all over Mom’s petunias like a particularly messy PB&J sandwich.
“Don’t forget to bend your knees,” Kes said cheerfully. “Three, two, one…”
And then he dropped me.
I squealed, thudding down onto the hard-packed earth, the breath whistling out of my lungs as I lay on my back, gulping for air like a fish.
I barely heard the soft thump as Kes landed next to me, standing with his hands on his hips, grinning down. Then he pulled me up, still coughing and gasping, and we ran zigzag toward the shelter of the hickory tree.
“Not bad, Aimee,” he laughed, planting a friendly noogie on my head.
I batted his hands away.
“If I’m going to learn to jump out of windows, you have to learn to read,” I said breathlessly.
His expression darkened.
“Chicken?” I asked, resting my hands on my hips and jutting my chin out.
He didn’t answer, instead gripping my hand and heading for the road at a fast jog.
Once we were in the safety of the street, he let go, shoving his hands into his pockets again and whistling a tune I didn’t recognize.
My heart began to beat faster as we neared the carnival entrance, an arch decorated with balloons, and I could hear the shriek of people rushing down the rollercoaster and the crash of the bumper cars knocking against each other.
Kes nodded casually at the carnie taking money at the entrance.
“Got yourself a girlfriend, Kestrel?” he said, laughing widely so I could see dark gaps where his teeth should have been.
Kes shocked me by cussing, but the man just laughed some more. Sure, I’d heard language like that before from high schoolers, I just hadn’t expected to hear it said in front of an adult. Since he’d saved me from my wicked parents who’d locked me in my lonely tower, I’d thought of Kes as my prince. When I came to know him better, I changed my mind, thinking of him instead as a dark lord. But that came later.
I could see him watching me out of the corner of his eye, waiting for me to comment on his dirty mouth or the fact that the man had called me Kes’s girlfriend, but I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction.
“Kestrel? Is that really your name?”
Kes sighed. “Yeah, but I don’t really like being called that. My brother’s name is Falcon, but everyone calls him Con. No one thinks that’s weird, because it’s short for Connor, too. My name really sucks.”
“I like it,” I said,
nodding firmly so he knew I was serious. “It’s different.”
Kes narrowed his eyes. “Bullshit,” he muttered, but his tone was hesitant as if he really hoped that I meant what I said.
“I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t think it,” I said, softer now. “Anyway, it suits you.”
And it did. There was a quickness, a sharpness about his movements that reminded me of a bird of prey, and he saw everything, his keen eyes missing nothing.
He side-eyed me again, but then I saw him smile to himself. It was his private smile, one that he didn’t share very often, one that I felt was mine alone.
That magical afternoon, we knocked over targets with baseballs, fished for prizes in a pond, ate hotdogs so spicy that my tongue nearly shriveled, rode every ride, played every game, and never paid a dime. We shot ducks in a row, threw balls into a net to win prizes, and rode on the bumper cars three times. Once, Kes even let me drive, his expression magnanimous until I slammed us into a bunch of cars as hard as I could. Then he held on tightly and grinned at me as I smiled proudly.
Kes even stole a couple of cans of soda when a female carnie had her back turned. She caught me staring at the empty space where the cans had been, then saw Kes smirking at her.
“You little booger!” she yelled, and reached out to grab him.
He danced away, still grinning, and winked at her.
Then he ran off down the midway and I had no choice but to run with him.
He finally flopped down in the same place as Saturday, our backs against the wooden skin of the Ghost Train, the rattle of cars and happy screams a constant percussive accompaniment.
Kes passed me a soda, and I pressed the can to my face, enjoying the cool slide of the aluminum against my overheated cheeks.
I was sensible and let the can rest for a while before I tried to open it, but Kes aimed his right at me and soaked me with a sticky stream of cola. I screeched and lashed out, sending the can flying, covering his t-shirt.
I stared at him, a little afraid he might yell at me, but his grin was even wider.
“Nice punch, slugger!”
I felt inordinately proud of his compliment, no matter how misplaced.
He wiped his face with his t-shirt then yanked it off and tossed it onto the ground. I couldn’t do the same thing, so I had to sit feeling hot and sticky. But the books were digging into my butt, so I pulled them out and stacked them next to me.
Kes’s eyebrows popped up.
“Why’d you bring those?”
My cheeks pinked as I admitted that they helped break my fall.
Kes burst out laughing, holding his ribs as he rolled on the ground. I pouted crossly. It wasn’t that funny.
Eventually, realizing that laughing by yourself is a lonesome sport, Kes rolled onto his stomach, his dimpled grin coaxing a smile from me.
“Alright,” I sighed, “it was quite funny.”
“Read me some more about that hobbit?” he said, phrasing his words like a puzzle he had to solve.
I grinned back at him, rubbing my dirty hands against my shorts, because books were precious and I didn’t want to soil the creamy pages.
Kes rested his chin in his hands as he gazed up at me, spellbound by the words I conjured in front of him. It occurred to me that I had found magic at the carnival after all, just not in the places that I’d been looking.
After a while, my throat felt dry and sandpapery, and as I’d drank all of my soda, I had to stop.
Kes was lying on his back, his eyes closed, his chest and back coated with red dust and speckled with blades of bent grass.
“You read really good,” he said again, as my voice cracked and rustled to the end of the chapter.
I could hear the longing in his voice.
“I can teach you, if you like,” I offered.
He opened one eye, his expression skeptical, then he shook his head.
“Cluck! Cluck! Chicken,” I crowed and flapped my arms.
He shot up, anger pulling his eyebrows together.
“Am not!” he hissed.
I grinned at him, then smoothed a patch of earth over, making a clean surface to write on. Slowly, I dragged my fingers in the dirt and scratched the letters for him to see, sounding them out as I wrote.
“K.e.s. See? The first letter is sharp and prickly like it sounds, and the ‘S’ is just like a snake, hissing and squirming.”
Kes’s eyes lit up. “That makes sense,” he said grudgingly.
“And the ‘e’ is like a knot that ties the two sounds together.”
I got him to write in the dirt, copying the shapes I made.
His letters were wobbly and uneven, and the ‘S’ was backward, but it spelled ‘Kes’.
“I wrote my name,” he said, and his voice wobbled like his word.
I nodded solemnly. “Yes, you did. You’re not dumb.”
His eyelashes slanted down and I knew he was hiding tears. He sniffed a few times, then risked a glance at me.
“Thanks, Aimee.”
“You’re welcome, Kes.”
We both heard his name being called at the same time, and I cowered as his grandpa came stomping up. He stopped suddenly when he saw us, a flurry of confused expressions rippling across his face.
“You again,” he said flatly, staring at me.
I gulped and tried to make myself look as small and insignificant as possible. Kes crossed his arms and stood in front of me, and although his head hung down and he couldn’t look his grandpa in the eye, I felt like he was protecting me.
His grandpa’s gaze crawled over me, pausing at the books, then hesitating again at Kes’s name scrawled in the red dirt. When I dared to look up, he was staring right at me, his cold stony eyes the exact same color as Kes’s.
“Your folks know you’re here?”
I bit my lip and shook my head slowly.
“Okay,” he said, his gaze sliding again to our dust-writing. “Time for the show.”
Kes nodded, his shoulders slumping with relief.
I stuffed my books back in my pockets and trailed after them. No one had invited me, but I wasn’t leaving until they shooed my away. I was grateful that Mom ignored me most of the time, unless I was hungry or made too much noise. So with a bit of luck, she wouldn’t check my room. At least, I hoped not.
As I trotted along the midway, trying to keep up with their long strides, I realized that Kes and his grandpa were some sort of carnie royalty. His grandpa was greeted as ‘Dono’ or ‘Donohue’ which I supposed was their surname. He scared me, with his sharp bitter eyes, and fierce tattoos that covered his arms—I couldn’t think of him as ‘Grandpa’.
The greetings shouted at Dono and Kes were respectful, if more colorful than I was used to. I felt almost accepted as I strutted along beside them, my head held high. I was Kes’s girlfriend, and I wanted everyone to know it. I just hoped he didn’t try to kiss me—I didn’t like him that much. Not yet.
I followed them around to a small corral behind the mini bleachers, where three ponies stood in the shade of a tarp. I could smell warm hay and hot horseflesh as they snorted and stamped, tossing their tidy manes, and eyeing me warily.
Kes reached out and stroked the nose of the pony nearest to us. He was a pretty Palomino, his chestnut coat glossy, white socks not yet stained red by the dust. Enough people around here rode horses so I knew a bit about them, but I’d never been horseback riding myself.
“This is Jacob Jones,” said Kes, running his hands along the pony’s flank, laughing as the whiskery nose tried to push into his pocket. “You get your apple after the show,” Kes admonished him gently.
“You won’t bite me, will you, Mr. Jones?” I asked nervously.
Kes snickered. “You don’t have to call him ‘mister’.”
“It’s polite,” I said, undeterred. “We’ve never met before.”
Jacob Jones seemed to agree, tossing his head proudly. I reached out and patted him carefully, smiling as the pony’s ears twitched with
pleasure and he made soft snuffling sounds.
We were interrupted by an older boy, whose lanky frame had just teetered over the edge of adolescence, awkward and condescending at the same time.
“Who’s this?” he asked stiffly, his angry gray eyes fixed on mine.
Kes stuck out his lip and frowned, but didn’t answer.
The boy sneered at him. “Rubes aren’t allowed back here; you know the rules.”
“Grandpa said it was okay,” Kes spat back.
That wasn’t technically true, but I wasn’t going to argue.
I saw an expression of surprise wipe the anger from the boy’s face, but then he frowned again and shrugged his shoulders.
“Whatever. You have to get changed for the show.”
Muttering and grumbling to himself, Kes kicked off his tattered sneakers and dropped his pants where he stood.
I gasped and turned my back. The other boy laughed out loud.
“Your girlfriend is shy, Kestrel.”
“Don’t call me that, Falcon,” he huffed.
So this was Kes’s brother. He was good-looking, but arrogant, as if everything was a bad smell under his nose. I decided I didn’t like him; he was mean.
“Anyway, she’s not my girlfriend, she’s just Aimee.”
Oh, that stung. I felt the same sort of pain as if he’d slapped me. I didn’t realize that he was protecting me from his brother’s teasing, so the hurt settled inside me, hard and indigestible.
When I threw a haughty look at Kes, his expression was apologetic, but he didn’t say he was sorry—Kes never apologized. Ever.
He pulled on his cowboy costume of newish jeans and fancy Western shirt, then tied a red bandana around his face and plopped a black Stetson on top of his head, squishing his hair in one direction and spiking it up in the other.
Con pinned on his Sheriff’s badge and strapped a pistol to his hip. I hoped it wasn’t real, but it definitely looked it. The second ‘Sheriff’ was Dono, and that surprised me.
“You can wait over there,” he said, pointing a thick finger at the entrance to the small arena as he mounted the largest of the ponies.
I was excited to see the show up close, but I didn’t want to let him know that. I nodded crisply and marched off, so I didn’t see the smile that made his mustache twitch.
I jumped when the bugle call was blasted out right next to my ear. A small man was standing beside me, laughing at the pained expression on my face. And when I say a small man, I mean really small.
The Traveling Man Page 3
