Unbroken: 13 Stories Starring Disabled Teens Read online

  She hadn’t gone on a walk once since then. Not here, anyway. So I was part-surprised and part-relieved when she said, “Let’s do something.”

  “Like what?”

  She scraped her boot back and forth. Her rustling clothes sounded like hay under restless hooves. “Let’s go somewhere,” she said. “I’m bored. I’m so fucking bored, Eloise. Aren’t you sick to death of this place?”

  She turned before I could answer, and I followed her. Of course I did. I followed her when she headed past the house, past the barn, and down the road. I hesitated only when she turned into the woods.

  “Gem, you know I can’t go in there.” I gestured to my wheelchair with the hand that wasn’t on the joystick.

  She smiled, like she was about to share a secret. “I found a path. Come on.”

  Wary but hopeful, I crossed from paved road to forest floor. These were her woods, where she went on her walks or when she wanted to be alone. I’d never been able to follow before, not with my tires made for the level reliability of man-made floors. They’d sink sure as shit in anything looser than gravel and catch on any exposed roots. But just as Gem said, a clear strip of packed earth wound through trees that were half barren branches and half evergreen needles, all giants. Gemma took my hand once we were fully consumed by the dull green and gray-brown of Georgia winter. She led me, her arm twisting back to reach, her fingers resting on my wrist. My pulse fluttered the whole time. It’s not that we never touched. We’d grown up playing Miss Mary Mack and braiding each other’s hair like everyone else. But somewhere between middle and high school, we stopped holding hands in the halls, and suddenly those moments when our arms would brush in class or when she’d tug my sleeve felt strange. Creeping through the woods, connected like this, also felt strange.

  Too soon, the trees fell away, and Gemma’s touch followed them.

  “Oh,” I breathed, a slight sound, inadequate. This was a moment for gasping.

  She’d led us to a carnival. An abandoned carnival I never even knew was here, not two miles from my house. Grass with long blades covered the field in patches. We snaked around them, crossing from one bald spot to the next, Gemma in front to warn me of sudden holes or uneven ground. She’d taught me years ago to watch for darker shades of green in the grass, like she does on horseback, but that trick wouldn’t have helped here. Finally, we came to the entrance, one so old and disused that even the graffiti had faded to cotton-candy pastels. We had left the farm in the early afternoon, but the Ferris wheel, half-claimed by kudzu, threw its shadow nearly to the tree line. Maybe we had gone more than two miles after all.

  Once we got close, I could make out a name above the ticket window: STARLIGHT CARNIVAL. The name bothered me. It reminded me of whenever Mama read a cloudless sky and said, “We better get the horses ready. Storm’s coming.” I’d stare at the horizon, the earth, even into the sun itself, trying to see what she saw. I stared at that sign now, reading the words over, mouthing them, feeling foggy, like I was missing something. Maybe I had heard of this place before? Or read about it somewhere? Or maybe feeling unnerved at the sight of a strange, broken-down carnival was a perfectly normal reaction.

  “It’s amazing, isn’t it?” Gemma said. No fucking. I didn’t know if that meant more or less enthusiasm these days.

  She stepped toward the entrance. Her hair, normally ruby bright, looked coppery in the weak sunlight. Her neck must have been cold for her to leave her hair hanging loose on her shoulder blades like that. She hated the tickle of strands slithering down her shirt; she’d usually tighten her bun ten times every day to avoid it. I imagined that my fingers, still warm from her hand, could heat the skin below her hairline if only I reached out, if only I were able to reach up.

  I clasped my hands in my lap. “How’d you find this place?”

  She shrugged and sighed, maybe contentedly. It was hard to tell. Besides that small interruption, all was silent. No birds chirping, or rats rustling, or cicadas humming in the tall, sticky grass. Nothing to hear, I thought, and half expected the ticket seller to pop up and finish, Nothing to see.

  “Come on,” Gemma said. “We didn’t come here to look. We came for a fucking adventure.”

  I ran my free hand along the main gate, which had been left open. My fingers tripped along the bars like plucking the strings of a harp. A sliver of rusted metal sliced my index finger. I stopped suddenly, using my driving hand to help raise the other to my mouth. When I sucked the shallow cut and the taste of iron coated my tongue, I almost said I wanted to go home. We were trespassing, right? If someone found us … but that wasn’t really the issue. No one would find us. Gemma turned and raised a questioning brow: What do you want, Eloise? So I swallowed my blood and my better judgment, and followed her into the carnival.

  The area immediately beyond the entrance was open air, a scattering of booths and picnic tables. We wandered under a latticework of broken glass bulbs strung from wooden poles, past the ring toss and shooting-duck gallery and a funnel-cake stand. Mildew laced the air, but I imagined I could smell greasy dough and stubborn fried sugar underneath. My nerves morphed from a vague anxiety to the more familiar fizzy nervousness of being with Gemma—of being alone with her, where anything might happen if only she wanted it to.

  Gemma laughed when she spotted the merry-go-round and ran toward it like a child, footsteps hasty and thunderclap loud. She stopped beside a cockeyed horse, its paint chipped away in large patches like mange. I expected her to leap onto its back, one arm helicoptering like the bronco riders she screamed for at the rodeo. But she didn’t. She kicked it once, twice, three times, her body shuddering from the effort, before the horse toppled and thunked against the floor. My stomach dropped along with it, a combination of shock and sick thrill. She seemed overly bright, standing there above her kill. Beaming, without ever breaking a smile.

  We left the plastic horse—Gemma running and me trailing her at full speed—but the sound of its fall chased me. We sent hollow laughter back over our shoulders, as if we were brave to laugh at echoes.

  * * *

  Twilight had drained any remaining color from the carnival by the time we made it past the rides and games to the real attractions—the ones not meant for children with greedy, sticky fingers, but for everyone old enough to have greedy, sticky souls.

  “There’ll be ghosts,” Gemma said, standing in a patch of grass surrounded by a circle of large tents meant for freaks and frights. The tents were unmarked, whether because that’s how they’d always been or because the signs had been lost to time I couldn’t tell. I was glad not to have to see the crude drawings or ads naming the “attractions” I imagined. Gemma stood in there, one small girl in an open space, but she filled it; she belonged. After a moment she said, “Aren’t you afraid of the ghosts?”

  When I shook my head, something like fingers tickled the back of my neck. I shivered and smacked the spot, but it was only a piece of hair that had fallen out of my ponytail. “No such thing.”

  And there wasn’t. No such thing as ghosts or spirits or even the Holy Spirit, though I sang my toneless praises every Sunday just the same. I didn’t mind pretending, but I wouldn’t be afraid, not even if Gemma for some reason wanted me to be. Not even when she scoffed and entered the closest flap and didn’t hold it open for me. She had chosen the smallest tent, seemingly at random, with frayed fabric black as a starless night. The name on the sign out front flickered back to me: Starlight Carnival. And suddenly I realized what had seemed so off. Carnivals travel. They’re easy to pack up and ship along to the next way station, but this place was rooted into the earth like those pines we’d come through to get here. The surrounding gate was steel and posted deep into the earth. The booths, though largely wooden, were bolted down and chained. Even these tents, flimsy though they looked, must have been built strong to still be standing after so long. One springtime squall should have toppled most of these. Yet here they stood. I waited for Gemma to come back out so I could tell her someth
ing was wrong here. But the longer I waited, the harder it was to breathe.

  Sometimes when I couldn’t sleep, I’d pull my blanket above my head, the air getting warmer and heavier until my lungs burned with recycled breath. It was a pleasant pain, precisely because of the relief I felt after: ripping the blanket down, gasping, gasping again, mercifully cool air pouring down my throat. My lungs burned now. My face burned. My chest, my hands, my scalp. I did what I had to—I ripped the blanket away. I went into the tent.

  Candlelight greeted me. Gemma always carried matches she’d stolen. From diners and gas stations and kids at school. She never lit them; she said she liked their potential. She felt stronger knowing they were there, waiting for her to need them. She used them now, though, to light a fleet of gnarled little candle stumps. The scent of lavender, smoke, and old melting wax rose above crates, a dirt floor, and legless chairs. I’d had this fantasy before: the two of us completely alone in a room full of candles. But the soft light didn’t quite reach Gemma’s face, and the small tent felt more claustrophobic than intimate.

  “Gemma, let’s just—”

  “Have a seat, Eloise.” Her voice was so familiar, so comfortable. She turned her back to me and continued lighting the almost candles. Almost candles like almost snow. That had been this morning—just this morning? But there was no white dusting anywhere in this carnival. I hadn’t noticed before, but once we left the woods, the world turned dirt and dry again, like we were in a reverse snow globe.

  I pulled up to the table, planning to blow out the small flames Gemma had left there so that we could leave. The wood was oak with a grain that had been beautiful once, but rot pocked its edges. It must have been here for years, decades maybe. I traced the still-intact whorls, distracted. I couldn’t seem to keep hold of my thoughts. Something about candles. Something about snow. Placed perfectly in the center of the table was a small white box no bigger than a pack of cigarettes. I almost picked it up. Its strangeness stopped me. No dust. Everything else here showed age and abandonment. Even the parts that felt wrong (what had felt wrong?) looked empty of life somehow. This box was clean. Used recently? Or maybe Gemma had already wiped it off.

  Mama says a storm’s coming.

  Before I could speak (what had I been going to say?), Gemma opened the lid. Inside: a simple deck of cards.

  “Let’s play a game, Eloise.”

  “There’s too many of them to be playing cards.” My voice sounded strange. Muffled. I shook my head to clear my throat. No. To clear my head. My thoughts were muffled—no, muddled.

  She laughed. “That’s because they aren’t playing cards. They’re fucking tarot cards.” Her smile stretched wider than when she had burst into the clearing, than when we’d passed through the gate, than when she’d stomped that carousel horse. She was bright as the sun that had surely left us by now. I leaned toward her, fire and all.

  She tipped the cards into her palm, where they nestled against her calluses. The backs of the cards were plainest gray. They looked old, faded and yellowed at the edges. From nicotine, maybe. Gemma set them on the table and spread them across its surface, as if she’d done so a hundred times. Where had she found them?

  “Can’t be too careful,” she said, nodding at the cards. “Shuffling any other way can damage them. Tear the corners. Bend them.” She massaged them into disarray, then slowly built them back into a deck.

  I watched her hands. They seemed smoother in the candlelight than they had under the winter sun. I almost reached out and skimmed my fingers over them, but I didn’t want to interrupt.

  “What’s happening?” I asked. Seemed like I meant to say something else, but I couldn’t … “Since when do you know anything about tarot cards?”

  She placed the deck between us, waiting. I cut out of habit. They felt like normal cards, worn like the ones at home, though these hadn’t been used for all-night poker sessions betting gummy bears and crusty pennies.

  Gemma’s lips spread slowly. I’d seen a similar smile before, but only in the quiet dark of my room, alone. In my fantasies, her shoulders were always bare, and she teased her fingertips over her exposed collarbones, but I stayed focused on her mouth. In my fantasies, her smile was a promise—of teeth and tongue and taste. This other smile, the one she wore now and that curved like a scythe, was a promise, too; it was a warning I couldn’t understand.

  She drew three cards and placed them facedown. “This card represents the past,” she said, pointing to the one on my left. Then, moving to the center: “This the present. And this your future.” She lingered over the right one—the future—almost dipping to touch it.

  “Are you scared?” She asked it the way a child might ask, Has Santa come?

  I shook my head hard.

  “Your hands are trembling. It’s okay if you are. You can tell me.”

  I shook my head again, harder, and clasped my hands tight together, as if Jesus himself was watching me pray. “I’m not afraid of some old cards. Or my future.” Or you, I almost said, but the lie was honey clinging to the sides of my throat mid-swallow. I’d been afraid of her, of how she could break me, since the first time I caught myself wanting to kiss her. But this wasn’t that. Something about snow. Something about ghosts.

  “Silly girl,” she said, and flipped the first card.

  The top of the card read The Fool. An image of a woman balanced on a pedestal like a ballerina en pointe, arms spread wide, ready to fall into the darkness below. Ribbons red as bloody gashes wrapped her torso. She smiled, leaned forward.

  “Blue skies,” I whispered. Not a cloud above her.

  Gemma didn’t hear. She sighed, wistful. “Girls. So fucking eager to fling themselves into oblivion. All of you. What could be so fucking shitty about your life that you’d welcome it?”

  Something was wrong. Gemma was wrong. Maybe it was this tent, the haze from these candles, that was making her angles, her laugh, her eyes all needle sharp. I lightly touched my chair’s joystick and kept my voice from shaking, if not my hands, when I said, “It’s late, Gemma. Let’s go. We can always come back tomorrow.”

  “You don’t know that. We haven’t gotten to your future yet.”

  She flipped the second card. I would have backed away to the exit, meant to even, but she reached across the table and grabbed my driving wrist. She twisted—hard. I sucked all my shock and pain through my teeth and held it there, afraid to let go.

  “Eight of Swords,” she said as she flung my arm away from her.

  I stared down, cradling my left wrist in my right hand, throat tight with choked tears.

  She yanked my chin up. “Look at the fucking card, Eloise.”

  “Why are you doing this?” I didn’t care that my voice shook now, that even I could hear the pleading.

  A few years before, I’d watched as Gemma’s seventeen-hand gelding had bucked her mid-gallop. She shouldn’t have been running him in the first place. She flew, first across the open field on his back and then through the air. I raced toward her, begging my chair to move faster even though it was impossible. With her flat on her back and me still in my chair, I towered over her for once, unable to get closer without flinging myself onto the ground, where we’d both be trapped. But even from that too-great distance, I could see her eyes were glossy with fear. That look scared me more than the blood-matted hair at her temple, more than the raspy breath, more than the odd slant of her ribs. I wanted to comfort her, touch her, reassure her. But I was afraid and useless, and I ran for help instead.

  For a moment in the tent, with why settling around us thicker than the candle smoke, she reminded me of that terrified, broken girl. I reached for her cheek.

  “I don’t have a choice,” she whispered as my fingers grazed her skin. Then she lurched away and shouted, “Look at the fucking card, Eloise!”

  I flinched. I did as I was told. The Eight of Swords. Thorny vines encircled and strangled a swan. She strained against her bonds, wings and long neck reaching for the open air a
bove the briars. Eight swords stabbed the ground around her, too close. I imagined the tang of steel threaded through feathers. Would it tickle and sting like shaving? Would I strain harder, push the thorns deeper in my haste to get away?

  Was this the fool’s reward?

  “It was easier than I thought it’d be to get you here,” Gemma said. “So willing to follow her with no hint of where she led.”

  I stilled. “What?”

  “She knew, though. Told me you wouldn’t resist. Did you know you were that easy to manipulate?”

  My breath wisped away, eager and more able than me to flee. “Quit it, Gemma. That’s not funny.”

  She sighed, disappointed. “You know, for being so utterly infatuated with this girl, it’s a bit embarrassing you didn’t notice when she left one day and I came back.”

  The logic wasn’t what convinced me—the small changes and odd acts I’d noticed but ignored. It was the panic, the rush of blood, the buzz wasping through my limbs. It was my body begging: Run.

  “Who are you? Where’s Gemma?”

  Her (its?) laugh filled the space. The sound tasted cruel. “She’s here. We’re sharing. Isn’t that what you children are taught? To share? Share your toys, and your friendship, and the secret places you stumble upon in the woods.”

  Her birthday. That last walk she took without me. She must have come here, found this thing. There’ll be ghosts, she—it had said. Telling on itself. Toying with me by laying the truth out like a bear trap. The room had grown smoky with all the candles, but it smelled dense and sweet, like rotting fruit. My stomach turned, and my head swam. What about ghosts?