Ouch. I probably deserved that.
“I’m trying to,” I mumbled, and found myself the one avoiding eye contact.
“Okay,” Winnie said skeptically, folding her arms.
We were both silent for a few seconds. But I decided that just because Winnie was going to be withholding, it didn’t mean I had to be.
“I’m not planning on telling a lot of people this,” I said quietly, “but I thought you might be able to help me understand. She mentioned Ethan while we were up on the Ferris wheel.”
Winnie’s jaw tensed.
“What did she say about him?” Winnie asked, staring at me so fiercely that I didn’t have time to consider telling her anything but the truth. I reported our brief exchange:
How did you even get up here?
Ask Ethan.
Winnie’s expression softened, and she looked more perplexed than angry.
“Does that make sense to you?” I asked.
“No,” Winnie said softly. “It’s just…sad. It’s sad she had to go through that. Finding him. But in a way I’m glad it was someone nice like her and not someone else. Someone who might talk about it later like they had celebrity status or something. Like someone who would talk about it on Halloween.”
I nodded, feeling the weight of her words, realizing in that moment that I couldn’t ask her the last couple of questions on my mind. Morgan said she saw something the day she found Ethan. Do you know what it was?
Maybe Winnie knew the answer. Maybe she and Morgan had even talked about it the day Ben had seen them together. Or maybe Winnie would have no clue what I was talking about. And hearing it could be really upsetting, on a number of levels. I didn’t want to risk it for now. I’d be seeing Morgan later. Maybe she was feeling better today, and maybe she’d be willing to tell me everything.
Winnie walked over to the red velveteen rope that closed off the carousel entrance. She unhooked it and then turned back to me.
“Was there anything else?” She looked at her phone again. “It’s nine oh-one. They’ve opened the gates by now. I’ve got to turn the music back on, because Chris and your dad like it to be playing as folks walk in. Like, good-time mood music or whatever. That’s why I had it on,” she said matter-of-factly.
“Okay, but…”
The calliope music drowned out my next thought.
“What?” Winnie yelled.
“I was wondering if you would be willing to be Cinderella in the parade tomorrow.”
“I’ve got fried dough duty!” she screamed back.
“I’ll get one of the guys to cover!” I yelled, then stepped closer to her so I could talk a little softer. “Will you do it? I think the costume would fit you.”
Winnie shrugged. “Sure. Whatever.”
“Are you afraid of horses or anything?”
Winnie laughed. “No. I fucking love horses.”
So she wasn’t quite as gentle or princessy as Morgan. Or even Heidi. But she’d have to do.
“Never mind,” I said. “Nine o’clock we put on princess costumes in the break room behind the pavilion. I’ll text you a reminder. Okay?”
“Yep,” she said, and then waved at the gray-haired man approaching with two wriggling little boys holding on to his hands.
I felt like there was something Winnie wasn’t saying about Morgan, but at least my dad would be happy. All the princesses were accounted for.
FIVE
It wasn’t until three o’clock that I finally got off popcorn and cotton candy duty, after which I spent about an hour in the main office checking up on the final Princess Day Parade details. I’d given up trying to text Morgan; when I’d called her mom on my lunch break, she had confirmed that they wouldn’t let Morgan have her phone at the hospital, and told me that she was probably going to stay there for a few more days. Her mom also noted that In the part of the hospital Morgan’s in, any visitors under eighteen need to be accompanied by an adult. Assuming that I wouldn’t be allowed to visit by myself at seventeen, I’d called Mom for help. She was willing, and I tried to push away the uncomfortable hint of the part of the hospital she’s in and just be grateful I was going to get to see Morgan, regardless.
After texting Mom the update, we had agreed that I’d meet her at her place by four-thirty and she’d drive me to the hospital to see Morgan before we picked up dinner.
I still had about ten minutes to kill in my dad’s office. And something Ben had mentioned had been bothering me all day. Specifically, that he wasn’t sure who had closed the night of Ethan’s death—and that normally it would’ve been Winnie’s night to do so.
Chris generally made the employee schedules on his laptop, sent them to each employee, and then forwarded them to my dad. My dad, who’s not particularly high-tech, tended to print them out, put them up on the various employee bulletin boards around the park, and then file copies in one of his many overstuffed folders. He keeps everything on paper. He has this persistent paranoia that someday everything on all the computers and phones is just going to disappear.
Still, I found the Schedules document on his messy computer desktop, and opened it.
I clicked on the week of June 25–July 1 and scanned down to Thursday, June 29. Under Closing, it said Supervisor: E. Cork. Assisting: W. Malloy.
There were two unusual things about this. One was that my dad was the closing supervisor. Chris usually did Thursdays. But Chris must not have been available, and had my dad cover. That in itself wasn’t all that weird—they traded shifts occasionally. But, like Ben had said, Winnie was scheduled to close that night. And if she had someone fill in for her, it must’ve been very last-minute, as it didn’t make it into the schedule.
I opened my dad’s lower desk drawer and found his Work Schedules folder. The schedule for the week of June 25 was a few pages back. On the hard copy, W. Malloy was crossed out and Reggie was scribbled in, in blue pen. It looked like my father’s handwriting. And he probably didn’t know his employees’ last names well enough to maintain Chris’s more formal way of identifying them.
I flipped to the two previous weeks’ schedules to confirm that Winnie normally closed Thursday nights. She did. The week before Ethan’s death, she’d also been scheduled to work a Tuesday night. But her name was crossed out and Lucas’s was penciled in. Winnie was penciled in for Saturday, when Lucas normally closed. They’d obviously traded.
So Winnie had been scheduled to work the night of Ethan’s death. But there had been a last-minute change and Reggie had filled in instead. Not a big deal on the surface. Except that if Winnie had been working that night, Ethan wouldn’t have walked home alone. I sucked in a breath. No wonder Ben had warned me against asking her about it.
Winnie was supposed to be at Fabuland the night her cousin died. But she wasn’t.
My phone vibrated with a text from Mom saying she was getting ready, which was my cue to get going. As I closed the folder and stashed it back in the desk drawer, I couldn’t stave off the next thought: What had kept Winnie away from her shift that night?
Picking up my bag and heading down the stairs, I pushed the thought down. Asking a painful question like that wouldn’t bring Ethan back.
On my way to the front gate of the park, I caught sight of my dad handing out doughnuts to a group of kids near the game booths. Three girls and one boy, all about middle school age, with a cheerful-looking mom watching them and already chomping happily on a sprinkle doughnut.
I was just going to give Dad a casual wave goodbye—he knew it was one of my nights with Mom—but then I heard what one of the girls was saying to him.
“Hot dogs isn’t possessive. You know?”
The girl was about thirteen. She was wearing low-rise jeans, a white muffin top peeking out below her too-tight salmon-colored T-shirt.
“And wait”—she smiled slyly at one of her
friends—“why are you giving out doughnuts for free if you want people to buy hot dogs? Nobody’s gonna be hungry for hot dogs if they’re full on doughnuts.”
She kept stressing each pronunciation of doughnuts in that high-pitched, exaggerated way younger girls sometimes use to make a word seem ridiculous—even though she was clearly enjoying her chocolate-frosted doughnut immensely as she said it.
“I bet you could manage both,” I heard Dad say as the girl brought the last bite of doughnut to her mouth. And then I felt everything go into slow motion. My heartbeat felt heavy and my stomach dropped.
“You seem like you have a good appetite,” Dad continued.
I watched Dad’s mouth turn downward, into a pout. Red crept up his neck and into his cheeks. There was chocolate frosting smeared on one side of the girl’s mouth.
“Dad!” My voice was shaky, so I cleared my throat and tried again. “Hey, Dad!”
He turned but seemed to look through me, and then turned back to the girl.
“In fact, you might want to—” I heard him say.
“Dad!” I screamed, and pounced on the platter of doughnuts like a National Geographic lioness on a gazelle. “You have any toasted-coconut sprinkle?”
I grabbed a regular chocolate frosted with rainbow sprinkles, took a quick bite, and then talked through the mouthful. “Sorry about the sign. I typed it so fast this morning, I should have checked it.”
Dad’s mouth straightened, and then formed a gentle smile. “It’s okay, sweetheart,” he said. “Have a good time with your mom tonight. I’ll see you in the morning.”
He gave me a kiss on the cheek and then disappeared into another crowd with his stack of doughnuts.
The girl and her little group moved on. I stared up at the swinging Starship 360 and tried to catch my breath. Then I looked down at the doughnut in my hand, one third eaten, frosting melting on my fingers. Funny thing about doughnuts. They’re so pretty and enticing when they’re sitting together on display, sprinkled and uniform. But they quickly turn gross when you’re in the process of eating one.
“Are you okay?” someone behind me said.
I turned around to see Ben, who was finishing the end of a hot dog. He was apparently on his break. I thought of telling him why we were having the hot dog promotion but decided it was too late for that. And I figured he probably had a pretty strong stomach from working here a few years.
“Yeah,” I said.
“You look winded.”
“I’m fine. I think I’ve been watching the Starship 360 too long. It makes me sick just looking at it.”
Ben stared at the ride with me, waiting to see it do a full loop around. The screams from the riders intensified.
“I know what you mean,” he said. “Isn’t it amazing, what people do to themselves sometimes?”
I was quiet for a moment, then nodded. His words surprised me. I’d felt that way for a long time, about most of the rides. I feel the same way watching people drink themselves silly at parties. I don’t get it, but I’m not sure if that means there’s something wrong with me or with them.
“Your dad asked me to switch to that ride last year. Give Rotor duty to Winnie full time.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. But I said no, I wanted to stay on Rotor.”
To my relief, the Starship 360 completed its final full swing and then started to slow down. Everyone had survived. Nobody was screaming anymore.
“Is this so different from seeing people spin around on the Rotor?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “It is. We all like to spin. We do it when we’re kids. You spin around and around and get dizzy. It makes sense.”
“Uh…I don’t know about sense. I mean, by the same token, some people like to get flipped around, I guess. Is it so different?”
“It draws a different crowd,” he said. “I get the spinners. I don’t understand the flip-floppers, the upside-downers. Best to put someone on that job who understands them.”
“Is that what you told my dad?”
“Hell, no.” Ben smiled, and I was glad he didn’t seem mad at me for my awkward remark that morning. “I just told him that watching that all day would make me puke.”
I laughed and I could see the corners of Ben’s mouth quirk up as he scrunched the foil into a ball right as my phone vibrated in my pocket. I knew it was my mom, wondering where I was.
“Sorry, gotta go,” I called over my shoulder to Ben as I weaved through the wobbly riders exiting the Starship 360.
* * *
• • •
After we stopped for flowers and finally found a spot in the hospital parking lot, Mom offered to wait for me.
“I’ll be here just in case they insist on a chaperone,” she said.
She seemed to understand we might need to talk. I walked to the front desk myself, gave the receptionist Morgan’s name, and got her room number. The receptionist didn’t ask me my age.
“They’re going to need to get permission and buzz you in, honey,” she explained before pointing me to the elevator and telling me to go up to the second floor, to the McMahon Wing.
I followed her instructions and arrived at a set of big white double doors with a buzzer. I pressed it and then a female voice said, “Open the right-side door, please.”
When I did, I reached a desk with a couple of ladies in purple scrubs.
“You’re here to see Morgan, right?” one of them asked.
“Yeah.”
“Morgan said it’s okay. So we’re going to have you girls in the meeting room.”
“Uh, okay,” I said, breathing a sigh of relief.
I glanced back toward the double doors and realized that I’d had to buzz in because they were locked. This all seemed more complicated than it needed to be. Morgan had had a phenomenally shitty couple of weeks and had broken down a little. But she didn’t need this. I turned forward again, keeping my eyes on the lady’s gleaming white sneakers as she led me into a room with a circle of folding chairs.
Morgan was sitting in the chair farthest from the door, turned slightly away from us, looking out the window. She was wearing jean shorts and a long white T-shirt, her hair in a loose ponytail. I was relieved that she wasn’t in a hospital gown, but she didn’t acknowledge our presence.
“Your friend is here,” said the lady. “I’ll be at the desk if you need anything. I’m leaving the door open. Okay, Morgan?”
I didn’t like how she talked to Morgan—like she was a really old lady who needed every word enunciated to her. It scared me. And the yellow roses in my fist suddenly seemed sad—confirmation that Morgan was now an invalid of some kind.
“Okay,” Morgan murmured, still gazing out the window.
I sat close to Morgan, but with one chair between us.
“Hi,” I said. The cellophane around the roses crinkled as I sat.
“Hi,” she answered, glancing at me for a second and then stiffening as her gaze darted away.
“Your mom and brother been visiting?”
“They went out for dinner. Then my mom’s bringing Gavin back home to the babysitter and coming back here for a little while more.”
I nodded. “How are you feeling?”
Morgan shrugged. “I want to go home.”
“When do you go home?” I asked.
“When they believe I wasn’t going to jump or anything.”
“Do they not believe you?” My words came tumbling out, overeager. “Can I help? Can I tell them that I was there and you weren’t—”
“They’re on the fence, I think,” she interrupted. “Once they believe me, I can go home. I don’t think anything you say would help. They’re waiting for me to say the right things.”
The topic seemed to annoy her, so I decided not to ask her what “the right things” wer
e.
“So…what were you doing up there, Morgan?” I asked.
Morgan released a long sigh, letting her gaze slide over me and across all the empty chairs around us. “I was taking a break.”
“I get that,” I said, as gently as I could manage. “But—were you up there all night?”
“What better place?” Morgan paused for a moment. “I knew I’d be left alone.”
“Until morning?”
Morgan gripped her hands together in her lap. “Well, I guess I didn’t realize I’d stay up there that long.”
“How’d you get up there?” I asked, and then held my breath, waiting to see if she’d supply the same strange answer as yesterday.
“I climbed.”
“Jesus, Morgan.” I exhaled. “I’m shaking just thinking about that.”
I really was. And I could feel goose bumps forming on my arms.
Morgan took a long breath and glanced around the room before meeting my gaze. Once she did, though, she seemed to be studying my expression.
“Sometimes…,” she said, and then shook her head.
“Sometimes what?” I prompted.
“Sometimes I wonder if you’re scared of the wrong things.”
I wasn’t sure what that meant. Morgan has always known I’m afraid of heights—just like I’ve always known she’s kind of afraid of water. For a long time, we helped each other hide these things from the other girls so we wouldn’t have to admit to anyone but each other what wimps we could be. It helped us become closer friends. She’d pretend she didn’t want to go on the high rides, and I’d pretend to want to hang out in the shallow end.
“Morgan,” I said softly.
“Yeah?” Morgan seemed to sink into the chair as she stared at her fingernails. They had a little bit of purple sparkle on them—mostly chipped off.
“Yesterday you mentioned Ethan.”
Morgan rolled her eyes up toward the ceiling. “Yeah.”
I waited for a moment. “Did you want to talk about him?”
“What about him?”
I was silent for a moment. Somehow I’d expected her to take the lead on that subject.
All the Pretty Things Page 5
