Wonder Show

by Hannah Barnaby

  “What little boy?” she asked Short.

  “The ghosty one,” said Tall.

  “I’m gonna kill that kid,” Mosco muttered.

  “His name is Joseph,” Portia told Short.

  “I do the talking,” Tall told her.

  “Too bad,” Portia said. “I’m not tall enough to look you in the eye. And if I’m going to go anywhere with anyone, it’s going to be someone I can look in the eye.”

  “Wait a minute,” Gideon gasped, still breathing hard from running. “Who says you’re going anywhere?”

  “The man who hired you,” Portia said to Short. “Is he ever going to give up?”

  Short shook his head.

  “Is he ever going to let me go?”

  He shook his head again.

  Portia pointed at Short and said to Gideon, “That’s why.”

  “That’s . . .” He put his hand to his temple and rubbed at it, as if he could dislodge the word he was looking for.

  “Brave?” Portia offered.

  “Ridiculous,” said Gideon. “You’re going to give up because he won’t? It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “It’s not just that. You were right. This is no way to find someone.” She reached for Gideon’s hand. She did not care what the others thought anymore. She wanted to imprint her touch on him while she had the chance, to make him understand. “I have to go back to where I started before I can figure out where to go next. I’m just hiding here. I can’t hide here forever.”

  Gideon did not pull away. He did not move. He simply looked at her.

  His eyes were flecked with gold.

  She would not cry.

  She let go of his hand.

  “Okay, then,” Tall said. “Let’s go.”

  He started toward the black car, reached for Portia’s arm as though he was sure she’d try to run. But she knew as well as he did, maybe better, that there was nowhere to go. She sidestepped his hand and walked just behind him, with Short a half-step behind her.

  Suddenly Tall stopped. He looked back and scanned the cluster of trailers. Then he looked at Portia.

  “Where’s the bicycle? He told us to make sure we got the bicycle, too.”

  She pointed, silently, to Gideon’s red truck, where the bicycle lay nestled in its bed. Tall strode over and hauled it out, came back with it hoisted over one shoulder. “Let’s go,” he said again, and the black car was right there, waiting to swallow her whole.

  Meanwhile

  There was something else.

  Mister still had her file.

  All summer Portia had searched the crowds. For Max, for Sophia, for her aunts, her uncles, her cousins, anyone familiar. She thought she would find them. And she wasn’t sure if she didn’t because they weren’t there, or because she couldn’t remember well enough what they looked like.

  The only thing she was sure of was this:

  Mister had a file on each and every girl who resided at The Home. That file contained information. And information was the one thing that Portia couldn’t make for herself. She could make a life, a future, a new dress, friends, pies, conversation, noise, peace. She could probably even learn to live with what she’d done to Caroline. But she could not let Mister keep the story of what had happened to her family.

  It did not belong to him.

  PART THREE

  Return

  The drive was shockingly brief. For all the faces she’d seen, breaths she’d taken, meals she’d eaten, thoughts she’d had, songs she’d heard, all the stories, steps, dollars, dust, mosquitoes, stars—she had not managed to put much distance between herself and Mister. She had imagined herself in an unreachable place, another world, like a child with her hands over her face who thinks herself invisible.

  But the names of all the towns she’d been to fit on one small slip of cardboard, which she still had in her pocket.

  Short drove, and occasionally looked at Portia in the rearview mirror, but he remained utterly silent. Tall, too. She wondered if they felt guilty.

  But they must do this all the time, she thought. It’s their job. And that made her sadder than anything, to think there were men in the world whose whole purpose was to bring people back to the places they had tried to escape.

  She watched the still, dry land roll itself out along the road, and when it blurred through her tears, she wiped her eyes with her sleeve. The wet spots on the fabric looked like ink stains, or fingerprints.

  She hoped they dried before she got to Mister’s.

  But this was not a day for any of Portia’s wishes to come true, and the spots were still faintly visible when the black car pulled into the driveway. It was just like the first time she’d been delivered there by Aunt Sophia, and she suddenly felt a strange kind of attachment to the black-suited men, as if they were more family she was about to lose.

  “Please,” she whispered, “don’t leave me here. Please.”

  Tall sighed and said, “She lasted longer than I thought she would. Usually they start this routine as soon as we find ’em.”

  Short looked up through the windshield and finally spoke. “Give her a break. I wouldn’t want to stay here, either. Place gives me the creeps.”

  Portia had expected his voice to sound rusty like a dry hinge, but it was soft, gentle. It reminded her of Max’s voice, which, to her embarrassment, brought a fresh round of tears.

  “Geez,” said Tall, “I hate it when they cry.”

  “You have always lacked compassion,” Short remarked.

  “Compassion don’t pay the bills.”

  “Well, anyway,” said Short, and he turned, extended his hand over the back seat to give her a piece of paper. It was a business card.

  KIMBLE BROS.

  PRIVATE INVESTIGATORS

  READING 4-1136

  Portia put it in her pocket with the route card.

  “What are you doing?” asked Tall.

  “You never know who your next client might be,” remarked Short. “You looking for someone?” he asked Portia.

  She nodded.

  “See?” said Short. “Everybody’s lost someone. It’s what makes our line of work so rewarding.”

  They sat in silence for a moment.

  “Well,” said Tall, “let’s get this over with.” He opened his door, got out of the car, and reached for Portia’s door handle, all of which gave Short just enough time to turn again and say,

  “Sorry, kid.”

  Then Tall was pulling her out of the car, and like a specter, or a bad dream, Mister was on the porch.

  “Welcome home,” he said.

  Bluebeard’s Closet

  Portia tried not to breathe too deeply. The air was hot and stale and swimming with dust—made, she imagined, from tiny pieces of paper and cardboard that had broken away from the boxes of files all around her. She felt as if she were inhaling the stories of all the wayward girls, as if she were actually breathing ghosts.

  She could hear sounds from other parts of the house. Footsteps and muffled voices, the occasional creak or bump from the house itself, but nothing that gave her any comfort. Mister had put her in the secret room (no longer a secret to anyone now) without any indication of when she might be let out. Delilah came twice a day with bread and apples and water. From counting her visits, Portia knew it had been three days. Three days that felt longer than the entire time she’d been away.

  She wanted to picture Gideon’s face but stopped herself, in case she couldn’t see him. It already felt, too much, as if she’d never been anywhere but Mister’s. She had had reasons for coming back. It had made sense at some point. It must have, or she would have fought harder when Short and Tall came after her.

  But whatever her thoughts had been, they were now as faint as breath in winter air.

  If she could only find the box of matches and the candle, she could put her time to good use and search the files. Mister had taken her notebook along with the rest of her things, but it didn’t matter—she had memorized the list
of names by now, and she had spent long enough thinking about the graveyard girls. She was here for herself this time. But after exploring every nook and corner, all she’d found was a lot of cobwebs and one dead mouse. Holding the mouse in her hand, Portia felt her childish imagination lurch to life like an old carousel, and she brought herself to tears with a story about how the mouse had died all alone in this dark place. She let a torrent of sadness wash over her, too tired to fight, too tired to pretend she didn’t care.

  Now she simply sat, her knees pulled up to her chest, and tapped a rhythm on the dusty floor with her boot heels.

  She had lulled herself so thoroughly that she didn’t hear Delilah approaching, and her stomach skipped when the little door swung open.

  “Dinner,” Delilah sang. She leaned to set the plate and the glass on one of the boxes just inside the door and started to close it again.

  “Wait,” Portia whispered. “What day is it?”

  Delilah smiled. “What difference does it make?”

  Portia couldn’t quite say why she wanted to know, except that she still had the Wonder Show’s route somewhere in her memory. If she knew the date, she might be able to figure out where they were. To be with them in her head, standing on the bally or watching the road roll by from Gideon’s truck.

  “I just want to know.”

  Delilah stepped into the room. She kept one hand on the door frame behind her as she squatted in front of Portia.

  “You don’t get it, do you?” she said. “He is never going to let you leave again. He might never even let you out of this room, angry as he is. So it does not matter what day it is, or what month, or what year. This is it. This is all there is for you now.”

  Delilah sounded different, more refined. More like Mister.

  “Did he tell you to say that?” Portia asked.

  Delilah smiled again. “No. I just happen to know how he thinks. He’s been helping me with my reading. He can be very kind, when he wants to be.”

  Portia’s stomach flipped again, unpleasantly. “Why does he care so much that I ran away?”

  “It wasn’t the running away. Girls have run away before.” Then she added, “Although no one has ever taken his bicycle.”

  “That’s what this is about? The bicycle?”

  “Of course not,” Delilah said. “It’s because of Caroline.”

  No matter how many times she had said it to herself, tried to absolve herself, tried to forget, hearing Caroline’s name in the dusty air was like seeing her die all over again.

  But how did Mister know that she had given Caroline the poison? How did he know she had been in this room before, found the bottle, and taken it from here? She had been so careful not to tell any of the other girls about the files. The only other one who knew was . . .

  “You!”

  Delilah stood up. “What?”

  “You told him!” Portia’s voice caught in her throat. “You told him?”

  Portia watched Delilah’s face as it struggled to decide what expression it wanted to wear. It settled on something like irritation.

  “Yes. I told him.”

  “But . . . why?”

  “You keep asking questions when the answers don’t matter. Here’s where you are. What do you care about why? Why don’t get you anywhere.”

  But it did matter, to Portia. After all the stories she’d learned from Jackal, all the tales she’d heard from Mrs. Collington and Doula and Violet and everyone else, she had come to believe that knowing where she’d come from was much more important than knowing where she was going next. The future would always be uncertain. Who she was, that came from the past.

  “Tell me. Please.”

  Exasperated, Delilah smacked her hand against the door frame. “Because you promised me. I brought you here, and you promised you’d pay me back, and then you just left.” She leaned in, ever so slightly, and lowered her voice. “You left me here. And I saw you go. So, yes. I told him.”

  Then she took a deep breath, coughed, and folded her hands together. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”

  Portia felt her neck getting hot. It had been a long time since she’d had cause to be so angry at someone. It almost felt good.

  “So that’s it then, Delilah?” she hissed. “You go back to the kitchen and bring me bread and water and what? You wait for me to die here?”

  Delilah shrugged. “You know as well as I do, when Mister gets an idea in his greasy head, there ain’t—isn’t anyone who can change his mind.”

  “What idea?”

  “How should I know? I’m just the kitchen girl.”

  And she slammed the door behind her.

  The Big Idea

  Five meals later, Portia was set free.

  Except that there was very little freedom involved.

  He sent Delilah to fetch her, as if Portia were a disobedient pet. The two girls exchanged no words as the one escorted the other from the not-so-secret room, down the hall, and into his study.

  He sat in his wing-backed chair, facing the fireplace. His head crested the top of the chair like a dark sun on the horizon.

  He did not speak.

  Delilah left her at the door. Portia searched her face for any sign of apology, of regret or sympathy, but the girl held her blank expression. Portia recognized the look. It was the same kind of forced disinterest that everyone wore on the midway as they approached the sideshow, the same determination not to look excited. Not to look like anything. To make a mask of their own faces.

  Mister waited until he heard Delilah close the door. Then, rising slowly, he turned and treated Portia to the same repulsive grin he’d worn when she first arrived at The Home. “I’ll skip the pleasantries,” he said. “We have so many things to discuss.”

  She held her tongue. There was nothing to say. Yet.

  Mister strolled across the room and stood next to his desk chair, waved one spidery hand at the chair on the other side, and waited for her to sit down before he did the same. It was oddly familiar—as if all the days when she’d sat in the same spot, wearing the same dress, feeling the same mix of revulsion and dread, were now swirling together through time. Erasing the borders of days and weeks so there was no measure of time, no past, no future. Only this room. Only this moment, over and over again.

  “Well,” said Mister as he leaned back in his chair, “what do you have to say for yourself?”

  She felt afraid and hated herself for it. She pictured herself on the bally, the day that Jackal had told her his story. Truth is not what the audience wants, he’d said. And she knew he was right. Mister would never know her as she actually was—he knew a version of her, a disobedient child in need of punishment. That was whom he spoke to now, and that was who would answer.

  She shrugged and petulantly replied, “What do you want me to say?”

  He raised one eyebrow. “Tell me why you did it.”

  “I don’t know.”

  Mister studied her for a long moment. “Tell me,” he said again.

  His voice was getting harder, colder, and Portia knew she was pushing him. She also knew he would push back.

  She shrugged again and crossed her arms. “No.”

  Could he see over the desk, see her knees shaking like cornered animals?

  “Tell”—he leaned forward now—“me.”

  She would not let herself look scared. If Delilah could keep her mask on, if all those rubes on the bally could do it, so could Portia.

  “I don’t owe you an explanation,” she said. “I don’t owe you anything.”

  He laughed then, a dry sound like old wood breaking apart. “Oh, but you do,” he said, his voice low. “You owe me everything. Do you want to know why?”

  She tilted her head ever so slightly, offering one ear.

  “Because I fed you, sheltered you, clothed you, when no one else would. Because I kept you alive. And because I sent those men to get you instead of calling the police.”

  “Should I thank y
ou now?” Her voice sounded like every spoiled little girl she’d seen on the midway, whining for popcorn and cotton candy and one more ride on the Ferris wheel. It made her feel as if she were channeling someone else. And it made Mister furious.

  He stood up, pounded one hand on the desk, and bellowed, “You murdered my wife!”

  The air stood still, frozen, waiting. Portia swallowed and forced words from her gripping throat. “It wasn’t . . . I didn’t mean . . .”

  Mister sat down, brushed the lapels of his jacket as if he were smoothing the bristled fur of some wild animal. He detested such displays of emotion. Composed once more, he said, “Of course you didn’t. But still, there must be consequences. Obviously I can’t let you leave here again.”

  There was only one way he’d kept girls here before.

  “I will never marry you,” Portia spat.

  Mister’s face twisted as if he’d just tasted something vile. “I should hope not,” he said. “Don’t flatter yourself, my dear. I have no intention of marrying again. It just never seems to work out for me.”

  “Then, what?” Her voice nearly broke. “Why would you want me to stay if you hate me so much?”

  Mister sighed. “Oh, Portia. You have never understood this place properly.” He leaned back once more, wove his long fingers together, and settled them on his chest. “The very essence of the McGreavey Home for Wayward Girls is the girls. Without the girls, there is no life here. There is no purpose.”

  This, Portia supposed, was the way he spoke to parents, to the townspeople, to anyone from Outside who would listen. He sounded like a preacher delivering a familiar sermon.

  “And the truly beautiful part is the transformation. Girls are brought here for many different reasons, but then they find each other, they merge. They all become the same. They become better.” He raised an eyebrow in Portia’s direction. “Of course, some need more time than others to complete their metamorphosis. But I am a patient man. I will keep them for as long as it takes.”