Flor and Miranda Steal the Show

by Jennifer Torres

  All at once the players started shooting. Some squinted; some stood up. When the water hit the targets just right, the little racehorses inched forward.

  “Looks like Number Seven is in the lead,” the operator said. “Oh, but look out for Number Four, coming up from behind. Hurry, folks, time is running out.”

  The players kept squirting. A couple of them stuck their tongues out like Junior did when he was really concentrating on a chord.

  “Just ten seconds left… Now eight!”

  I stood on my tiptoes to watch. I counted down with the rest of the crowd. If that was what it felt like to be part of an audience, it was almost as good as being onstage.

  Six! Five! Four! The racehorses wobbled forward. Three! Two! One! We got down to zero, and the air horn blared again.

  “That’s it, folks,” the operator said. “Better luck next time.” Everyone groaned, including me. None of the horses had crossed the finish line. The player who came closest got a consolation prize: a stuffed penguin wearing sunglasses and a tropical shirt.

  Mikey shook his head. “Pitiful. No technique. See, there’s a secret to winning. You want to hear it?” Before I could answer, he whispered, “It’s easy. You aim just above the target, not right at it. Optical illusion kind of thing. Works every time. Now, come on, try it yourself.”

  He steered me toward seat number five. All the excitement—the cheering, the chanting, the laughing, the prizes—made me forget about my empty stomach. As breathless as I was, you would have thought it had been a real race and I had just run it. I dug into my pocket and started counting out two dollars’ worth of quarters to pay for a round of Water Gun Derby.

  But just as I was about to slide them across the counter to the game operator, someone reached out and pulled on my sleeve.

  “Don’t waste your money.” It was the girl from the petting zoo. Flor. “Let me guess. He’s trying to tell you there’s a secret? Trust me, the secret to winning on the midway is knowing that nothing is as easy as it looks.”

  Mikey elbowed her in the ribs. “Hey! Come on, Flor. She was just about to play.”

  “Then I got here just in time,” she said. “You’ll thank me later.”

  Flor

  (2:45 P.M.)

  Johnny Bean, Mikey and Maria’s big brother, was working the Water Gun Derby that day. He had just turned seventeen, and it was the first summer Mr. Barsetti had let him run his own booth. He scowled impatiently at Mikey and me as Randy’s hand hovered over her quarters and she tried to decide whether to play.

  “Flor,” Mikey whispered through his teeth.

  Letting her play would have kept her occupied, which was exactly what I wanted. Only, it was a little risky too. What if I lost her again in the crowd? What if she spent all her money, got mad, and went right back to her family? No. I was going to have to take charge somehow.

  “Are you kids coming or going?” Johnny asked. Like he didn’t know either of us, like he was ten years older instead of just six. “People are waiting. The race is about to start.”

  Every seat except number five was taken. Another girl stood right next to it, ready to jump in if Randy gave up the spot. But Randy wasn’t moving yet. She glanced up at the stuffed animals, beady-eyed and neon-furred, swaying from a cord stretched across the top of the booth.

  “Well?” Johnny said again, drumming his fingers on the counter.

  It was just like I told Betabel: Now or never. I swallowed and said, “Going.”

  “What?” Mikey and Randy both looked at me.

  I cleared my throat and tried to say it louder. “Going. I mean, we should go. Come on.” I dropped my chin to my chest, grabbed both of them by the wrists, and pulled. Mikey barely had time to reach back for that giant pink gorilla he always had with him. He glared at me, annoyed I had cost him the fifty cents Johnny would have given him for reeling in a new customer.

  Someone bumped into Randy, knocking off her baseball cap, as we shouldered through the knot of people gathered around the game.

  “No! Wait!” She froze, hands on her head, eyes darting frantically left and right as she tried to find where it had landed.

  Mikey ducked down and scooped the hat up off the grass. “Got it.”

  I led us out to where the crowd was thinner, and we leaned against the side of a pizza stand. It smelled like basil and garlic and warm bread.

  Mikey passed Randy the hat. “The Outlaws?”

  “Thanks.” She smoothed her hair back with her hand and put it on. “They’re minor league. From where I’m from,” she said quickly and quietly. “It sort of reminds me of home and how far we’ve come. And since I don’t know when we’ll go back there…” We waited a few seconds for her to finish the sentence, but she never did.

  Still, Mikey didn’t look away. He studied Randy’s face until his eyes opened all big and round and cartoony as he finally recognized her. See, sometimes, when he was trying to find contestants for the carnival games, Mikey and his gorilla came along with me to the Family Side Stage.

  “Oh, hey!” he said. “You’re from—hey, ow!”

  Tricking Miranda into missing her show would be harder if she knew that we knew who she was, so I pinched the back of Mikey’s elbow to stop him from giving it away. Just hard enough to get his attention.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Thought I saw a spider.”

  Mikey rubbed his arm, glaring at me again, only this time looking more confused than angry about it. He didn’t say anything else, though. He might not have known exactly why, but he knew I wanted him to keep quiet. It’s like I said, we looked out for each other.

  “Mikey, this is Randy. She’s with the carnival. Her family’s new here, so I’m showing her around.”

  “I thought you said you were too busy.”

  “Well… I… changed my mind. Anyway, this is Mikey. He’s with the carnival too.”

  “We met,” Randy said, holding out her hand to him. “Sort of.”

  “And,” I continued, “he’s just mad at me because if you had actually played that squirt gun game, he would have made fifty cents. And that’s not counting what he gets for dragging the gorilla everywhere he goes.”

  Joe Ochoa—he’s the games manager—he would pay us five dollars a day just to carry those giant stuffed animals around. It made people think, if some kid could win a big prize like that, well then, anybody could. Then they’d come and play and find out that nothing was as simple as it looked.

  For two Saturdays in a row, I lugged around a green alligator so big I could have used it as a mattress. That was just so I could chip in for Lexanne’s graduation present. Most of the time, I didn’t think Joe’s offer was worth the trouble, all those strangers pointing and staring at me wherever I went. Mikey, though, he was always saving up to buy something, so he had that gorilla with him almost all the time.

  Johnny gave him another fifty cents for each customer he brought over to his booth—the top-selling game at the end of every carnival always got a bonus from Mr. Barsetti.

  “You were trying to trick me?” Miranda pulled her hand back and put it on her hip.

  “I didn’t trick you,” Mikey insisted, placing the gorilla in front of him like a shield. “You wanted to play, didn’t you? Anyway, I didn’t know you were—” He looked at me before he continued. “I didn’t know you were with the carnival. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have wasted all that time.”

  “Wasted your time?” Randy took a step toward him.

  “Don’t worry, Mikey,” I interrupted. “We’ll help you find someone else.”

  You would have thought it was easy—the last afternoon of the fair was always so busy. But the thing about it was, being at the midway was a little like being inside a kaleidoscope of strollers, tank tops, sunglasses, snow cones, water bottles, popcorn, and cotton candy—all mixed up and always moving. You had to pay attention to see faces instead of a crowd, to hear words instead of noise. To pick out just the right person. It was a good thing I knew how to pay attenti
on.

  I looked around. “There.”

  A family drifted between the booths. One of the kids, a little younger than us probably, had a stuffed orange python with shiny silver stripes draped over her shoulders, almost dragging on the ground. The other kid, the smaller one, dawdled behind. He didn’t have a snake of his own and paused in front of every game, staring hungrily up at the prizes.

  The parents stopped at a bench across from where we were standing. They unfolded a map.

  “Yes.” Mikey nodded.

  “See? I told you.”

  Randy watched them too, but she didn’t see what we saw. “Is one of you going to tell me what we’re looking at, or what?”

  I jerked my chin toward the smaller kid. “See how tired he is, how bad he wants a big prize like his sister’s?” The boy climbed on the bench. He rested his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands. One of his tube socks was slouching down around his ankle. “If he sees the gorilla, he will want it. And if he wants it, he will whine for it. And the only way to get him to stop whining is to win the prize. And the only way to win the prize—”

  “Is to play the game,” Mikey finished. He was already lifting the gorilla over his head.

  Randy scrunched her eyebrows. “So you’re just going to walk over there and hope he sees you?”

  “He’ll see me.”

  “Good luck,” I said.

  “Wait.” Randy stepped in front of him. “Let me try.”

  Mikey put the gorilla down. “Are you serious? You don’t even know what to do.”

  “You just told me what to do. How hard can it be?” she said, grabbing a handful of the gorilla’s pink hair. “Come on. Before they get up and start walking again.”

  Mikey looked at me, and I shrugged. She had a point.

  He wasn’t convinced, though. “I don’t know.”

  “You can keep the money. I just want to see if I can do it.”

  “Fine. But don’t be too obvious about it, okay? I don’t want to lose another customer. All you have to do is just let the kid see you.”

  The corners of her eyes crinkled as she smiled and sauntered off with the gorilla in a one-armed stranglehold. Mikey and I put our hands to our foreheads, shielding our eyes from the sun, and watched.

  Miranda strode past the family and back into the noise of the midway games. Then she spun on her toe like a ballerina and doubled back, this time more slowly, like she just happened to be walking through, browsing the sunglasses at a concession stand, considering the menu at the pretzel cart.

  Finally, a few feet away from the family, she stopped, winked at us, and set the gorilla down so that it was facing the little boy. She dipped her hand into her pocket, scattered a handful of quarters on the ground, and shouted, “Whoops!”

  Then she knelt down to pick them up. It was like everyone on the midway was her audience.

  “So why’d you pinch me for, anyway?”

  Mikey had been my first friend at the carnival. Maybe my first friend ever, if I was telling the truth about it. When we first joined Barsetti & Son, I never left the petting zoo or our RV. But Maria kept showing up to play with the animals, and Mikey kept showing up to bring her back to their RV at the end of the day. And after a while, he started coming on his own.

  Later, when I mentioned I wanted to train Betabel, he didn’t laugh or tell me it was a dumb idea. He went out and brought me his old skateboard.

  I told him what I had overheard. How Mr. Barsetti was giving Miranda y los Reyes a chance to perform on the main stage. How Randy’s dad wanted them to sing up there permanently, how he had asked for a raise and threatened to leave if they didn’t get one. How the only way Mr. Barsetti could pay them more was if he kicked someone else off the show. Maybe us.

  “Mr. Barsetti wouldn’t do that.”

  “He retires games that aren’t popular anymore, doesn’t he? And he got rid of the Salad Wagon after no one ate there.” I lowered my voice. I was not sure I wanted to say the next words out loud. “Plus, he said it might be time to make some changes. He said Rancho Maldonado isn’t bringing in crowds like it used to.”

  Mikey sucked in a big breath of air through his teeth. “So what are you planning to do?”

  When I had recognized Randy at the petting zoo, all I’d wanted was for her to get away from me and Dad and the animals—and everything else I cared about. As fast as possible. Seeing her there, feeding Chivo, and knowing she could ruin everything for us, had made my hands start to shake.

  But later, after she left, I started wondering what would happen if she had a bad show instead of a great one. I imagined what might happen if she didn’t sing at all. Mr. Barsetti wouldn’t give them another chance like this one, not for a long time. He would probably be relieved that he could keep the Reyes family on the show without spending any more money. I could almost hear him: “Looks like she’s not quite ready for the main stage. But don’t worry, Reyes, those kids of yours still have a real future with Barsetti and Son.”

  And maybe he would forget what he said about it being time to make some changes.

  That’s when I followed Randy onto the midway. I went looking for Mikey first, to see if he would help me. It was just good luck that she happened to be standing right next to him and that neon-pink gorilla.

  My plan was simple: Keep her busy, keep her distracted. Keep her off the main stage, whatever it took.

  “I have to stop her from singing.”

  “She’s good,” Mikey said. “Like she could be a professional, almost.”

  I slid down against the red-green-and-white-painted side of the pizza booth. “I know.” But he didn’t mean just Randy’s voice.

  She had rolled one of her quarters right in front of the boy’s swinging legs.

  “Excuse me? I dropped my quarter. Can you get it for me?”

  The boy hopped off the bench, picked up the quarter, and brought it back to Randy—and the gorilla, which she had positioned right in his path. She lifted one of its furry arms and waved it. “Gracias. Thank you,” she said, her voice deep and mumbly like she had a mouthful of marbles.

  She held the gorilla’s hand up for the boy to slap. And he did.

  “Almost,” Mikey muttered. “Any second now.”

  Then it happened, just like we both knew it would.

  “Mom! Dad!” the kid yelled, arms around the gorilla’s neck. It was taller than he was. He almost couldn’t lift it. “I want one!”

  The parents looked up from their map. Randy flashed a perfect side-stage smile.

  “Please, Mom?”

  The boy took the gorilla by the arms and danced with it. He teased the hair on its head into three tall spikes. There was no way he would let his family leave the fair without one, even if it meant they had to spend the rest of their day, not to mention the rest of their money, at the Water Gun Derby.

  Randy stepped over to the parents. She took off her hat. She waved it in the direction of the Water Gun Derby.

  “Tell them Mikey sent you!” she called out as they folded up their map and started walking toward the games. She picked up the gorilla and skipped back over to us, cheeks pink, eyes gleaming. She dropped the gorilla at Mikey’s feet and took a bow.

  I felt like we should clap.

  Mikey did.

  “That was unbelievable!” he said. “Hey, it’s not that late. I bet Joe would still hire you to carry another one of these around for the rest of the day. We could work together to help Johnny win the bonus.”

  That hadn’t been part of my plan, but it could still work. If Mikey kept Randy busy enough, maybe she would be late to the main-stage show. Maybe she wouldn’t have enough time to practice. Maybe she would have so much fun she wouldn’t even want to go back.

  “Maybe some other time,” she said. “All I want right now is something to eat. Nachos, remember? You promised.”

  That was an even better idea. “I can take you!”

  I knew where to find enough sugar, oil, syrup, and sal
t on the fairgrounds to curdle even the strongest stomach, and hers wasn’t used to fair food. It wasn’t like I wanted to get her very sick, you know? Just too sick to sing.

  “Are you sure? You don’t have to go help your dad?”

  “Yeah, Flor,” Mikey said, winking at me. “Are you sure?”

  With the sun still so high and bright, the pizza stand’s shadow gave us only a skinny strip of shade to stand in. Beads of sweat tickled my nose, and I swiped them off with the back of my hand. Over at the petting zoo, Chivo and Cricket were probably climbing a stack of hay bales. They loved to climb. Papá might have been combing the sheep. Betabel would be rolling her beach ball around the shed. Rancho Maldonado was their home. It was my home. Miranda could find another stage to sing on, but the fair was the only place I belonged.

  I was sure.

  “Have you tried the deep-fried pickles yet?”

  Miranda

  (3:15 P.M.)

  Every spring when we played the national anthem at Outlaw Stadium, we always got to stay and watch the game. For free. One time they even gave us all a baseball cap. Everything else cost money, though. More money than it was worth, according to Mom and Dad.

  We watched other kids eat hot dogs, slurp Slushees, and squirt mustard onto their warm salted pretzels, and we didn’t even waste our time wishing we could have some too. We knew what the answer would be if we asked: “How much? For a hot dog? Wait till we get home—I’ll make you six hot dogs for that price.” Instead, Mom snuck in water bottles and little bags of potato chips. Maaaybe some Pelon Pelo Rico candy, but only if we had just been to the Mexican grocery store that day. This one time, when Ronnie complained about how we never got to eat Cracker Jack like in the song, Mom snuck in a bag of microwave popcorn. She had a real big purse.

  All our extra money went back into the band. We needed money for costumes—for the cowboy hats we special ordered, and for the vests we made ourselves, sitting around the table with a BeDazzler and a sparkling pile of rhinestones. We needed money to buy strings for Junior’s bass guitar and a new accordion for Ronnie when Dad said it was time she had something more professional. And then, when Dad decided the only way we’d get more exposure was to leave home and hit the road, we needed money to buy Wicked Wanda.