stranger fairs /pietro

The fair slips onto the pier early on a Friday morning.

It does that yearly, makes it seem like magic, people stop in their tracks on their way to work, act like they've never seen a ferris wheel before. You can always spot the moment that begrudging excitement takes hold. Their shoulders, sloped downwards in defeat from the weight of years gone unreaped, lift.

It's the nostalgia point, probably.

I listen to them set-up all morning into the afternoon from my place below on the sand. There's the scattered remains of the fire I lit last night to keep warm at my feet and I chew on a bit more of a sandy sourdough loaf a baker gave me a couple of days ago. A seagull lands a few feet away and then cocks its head to the side before taking a step closer.

"No," I promise it.

Two minutes later its nipping at a dollar-sized chunk as I shove what's left in my mouth before it can beg for more. Once the bread's gone, the bird's gone too and I'm alone on the beach again.

I don't like fairs. I know I'm supposed to, I'm a clown right, but I don't. Always stirs up things I don't want to think about.

I comb through my bag, hand closing around a worn plastic bag housing a collection of pills, no two the same. They're all ones I stole from medicine cabinets and I recall what maybe three of them do. It doesn't matter, I pick out the ones I think are the cutest and I swallow them dry. Then I rest my head on my knees and let the sun warm my skin. I listen to the waves crash against the shore, listen to them getting closer and closer and I wait for the ocean to collect me.

When I raise my head again, it's dark.

But loud.

Footsteps from hundreds of people pass over my head, there's laughter and so much sound. My head pounds, my lips so dry I can't stretch them without splitting the skin. I open the bag again, pick out three new pills in the half-light and make them join the others. My stomach turns, tries to push them back out but I hold my breath and force them back down.

It's been a few days since I last was in the neighbourhood.

Only two days on Flick's couch and I was being pushed out the door. "The pot smell hurts the bugs," Flick told me apologetically.

"I get it," I said, "No worries."

But there were some worries. This time of year it rains a lot, it's hard to find dry wood to burn. You have to keep warm in other ways. I know a few ways to do that. There are a few reliable people who'll let me stay the night if I do a couple things in return. Once I run through them though I always feel a little bit more less than I was.

And it's starting to get harder to come back.

I could go to the fair. It's happening right above me, I can see the neon lights from the carnival rides through the slats of the boardwalk. People scream as they fly through the air, exhilarated by a false sense of danger. People like clowns at fairs, that's where they expect them to be. I'd fit in there.

But I wonder if I'll see someone I know and I don't want to go anymore so I just curl up on the sand instead and dig my cold fingers into my armpits and I wait again for the ocean to collect me.

Charlie kicked me out a couple weeks ago when Curt was at work. "You know he works doubles just to put food on the table for the twins and I?" She didn't have to say anything else, her eyes said the rest, gaze running over me layered under three blankets in a corner of the couch, an apple from the basket on the table clutched tight in my hand like it was made of gold.

And even though he's clueless, Charlie's seen the way I look at Curt.

Kyle tries to defend me sometimes, says I just have gentle eyes, that I look at everyone like that.

But I don't.

And I think I like the act of longing for something I can't have more than actually having it so when Charlie asks me to go I do. I really try to go as far as I can get. Curt always finds me though when I'm at my lowest and he always brings me home like I'm some poor mangy mutt he's got to nurse back to health.

So this time, I hide beneath the pier, so close to his work that he'd never think to look here. Or maybe he will and that's what I want to happen. I'm not really sure anymore, there're conflicting things going on in my head most of the time and making it all stop is the only game I know how to play.

And I've gotten so good at it.

When I was six my dad lost me at the fair. He let go of my hand at the shooting range booth, told me to wait as he tried to win a stuffed bear for my mom. But I got shuffled out of the way, and I think my dad forgot I was there too. When I pushed my way back to the front, he was gone.

Part of me was relieved. I brightened a little, the bruises from training stung a bit less. A clown found me wandering and decided to try and find my parents for me but first he drew a little blue raindrop on my cheek, just under my eye. "There you go kid," he said, "You can cry." (I didn't back then.)

I ate cotton candy and it turned my tongue green, the lights of the fair were bright but warm and I laughed a lot. On our search the clown kept stopping to perform gags for the crowd and he made me part of them. For a moment, I was going to travel with the fair for the rest of my life. Trade in my bow and arrow for juggling clubs.

But then the night was ending, the crowd was thinning and there was my big sister, arms encircling me, "Ki-tae! We've got you!" She wiped the raindrop off my cheek with her thumb and some spit before my dad could see it.

The tide washes over my sneakers, sinking through the fabric slowly, laying down salt crystals on the tattered rubber soles. But my body is numb and it's heavy and it's light and I might be made of sand.

My dad had high hopes for me, he wanted me to be doing this in the arena in front of thousands of viewers, not here, beneath the pier where the tide will carry me away and I'll just become another faded memory.

That's the best revenge I can think of.

The seagull's back.

I open my eyes and there it is, pecking at my bag, searching for more bread. I watch it for awhile as it pulls my things apart all untidy. My notebook ends up on the sand, then the tide, up to my knees now, takes it. A shoe follows, my foot bare in the water, toes pink.

And there goes the dried flower I kept from last summer, the one Julian tucked behind my ear.

The bird stops pecking when it's gotten all the way through my bag and found nothing to eat but the damage is done. My things get dragged out by the tide and I watch them go until they sink or I can't see them anymore in the dark.

There's a rolling sound above my head and then it stops. "Who are you even looking for?" "If he was going to be anywhere I thought it'd be here." "The twins are fussing, they're tired." "I'll meet you at home."

I smile a little bit. He's right, I'm here, that's so wonderfully tragic. Nothing's as wistful as a coincidence.

My mother caught me with a bloody knife in my hand five minutes after my sister was crying over a cut across her palm. She couldn't bend her hand properly for two weeks.

They learned after she got home with stitches that she'd broken a glass and the blood on my knife was just beet juice because I was helping Ben in the kitchen. By then it was too late, my fingers were already broken.

And I never saw beet salad on the dinner table again.

That was sad, I liked beets.

Nothing beats beets.

"Ah ha ha ha ha," I whisper.

A beam of light cuts across the sand beneath the pier and I shut my eyes against it. Yellow burns into my retina, making shapes on the backs of my eyelids, a tear slips down my cheek from the sting of it.

"Found him!" someone yells.

For a moment, my heart beats quicker. There's a shuffling sound in the sand of people surrounding me. Hands loop under my arms and drag me gently out of the surf, but it was kind of nice in there. The cold night air hits my wet pants and my body jerks with the sudden cold, "Wait," I beg.

The hands prop me up, and I open my eyes to lantern light. There's a woman I don't know kneeling in front of me, fingers on my wrist to check my pulse. Someone else pulls gloves onto my fingers, shoes are pushed onto my feet and a silver blanket is draped around my shoulders.

My heart droops, sinking slowly like a helium balloon losing air, I don't know them. Still I turn my head slowly to the side, wet hair dripping salt onto my cheek, "Curt?" I croak.

He was right here. I look upwards but it's dark above my head. The fair is long over for the night.

"Pietro." says the lady.

I blink at her but she's hard to keep in focus. "Yes?" I ask politely.

"I'm a doctor, if you agree to come with me, I can help you."

Waves crash against the shore. Someone lifts my arm, finger pressing into my skin, running up towards the inside of my elbow. "You can use that hole," I murmur, finger falling on an old wound, "That's the one he does."

"Pietro, look here," the woman snaps her fingers but the sound is muffled by little white gloves. I look back at her and the way her eyes gleam in the dark. There's a smile to the corner of her lips, a knowing look in her eyes. It's hard not to be obedient for someone like that. "If you agree to come along, I can promise you more of this."

She holds up my bag of pills.

"But better."

I gaze at her for a long moment. The comedown is already pulling me back down to a cloudless ground and there's pain in that, physical but in my head too. There's too many things in my head all the time. I don't know how else to to stop all of it except for the pills.

"Can I have those?" I hold a shaking hand out, "Please?"

"If you come with me," she repeats, tone so gentle, "You'll never have to touch down again." Her eyes flick to my arm then, at the needle poised to pierce my skin.

I wait for a beat, listen for the sound of a stroller rolling above my head, or for my sister's arms to wrap around me from behind. "Ki-tae, we've got you!"

But it's dead quiet. 

So I let my head fall to the side, "Promise?"

She smiles.

It only takes a moment to be devoured.