Someone was watching her; she could feel it. Pip turned and found their eyes: a terrified gaze trapped in a plastic stare. With a mechanical groan the red-and-white carousel slowly started to turn, and the unblinking horse spun away from her midgallop. Replaced by another pair of frightened frozen eyes. Then another.
Pip watched the carousel until a carnival worker whistled to his colleague and the horses creaked to a halt.
Someone shouted for her to move out of the way as another huge truck pulled up onto the grass, people circling it, waving their arms. The vehicle sighed as it slowed to a stop, a folded-up Tilt-a-Whirl ride strapped onto its bed.
Pip walked on, stepping around the wheel-churned tracks in the grass. Her mom would complain about the damage to the park tomorrow night when the carnival opened, just as she did every year.
“Pip!” Cara’s voice sailed over to her from just beyond the bumper cars. Pip followed it, remembering only at the last second to put the limp back into her walk. They were all here—her friends. Draped around the bench as they watched the chaos of the emerging winter carnival. It was tradition.
“I tried to text you,” Cara said, running up to her and taking her arm. “But then, duh, I remembered you don’t have your phone—I do.” Cara guided Pip over to the bench, shooing Connor away so Pip could sit. Then she shuffled around in her pocket and pulled out Pip’s phone. “You were right, you had somehow left it in Dad’s car. It was wedged under the back seat.”
Pip took it. “Oh, don’t know how that happened.”
“Did you get your app in, Pip?” Zach asked.
“Yeah, just in time,” she sniffed. “Sent it in three minutes before midnight.” She had thought she wouldn’t make it, barely had time to read over her essay before she pressed submit. And then, of course, spent hours rereading when it was too late to change anything. Then stared at the darkened corners of her room, creating faces out of the shadows, trying to bargain with sleep.
“Yay, you’re free,” Cara said, waving Pip’s arm in celebration for her.
She knew she should feel something; excited or relieved or nervous. But she felt empty, trapped behind a vacant stare, like one of those carousel horses. The bench was hard and cold against her back as she feigned a smile. This bench. Her bench. ANDIE BELL, TAKEN TOO SOON. And now Pip knew who by.
They watched the drop-tower ride being set up, its name, Down-Time, wrapped around it in ghoulish font. Then the pirate ship pendulum ride as Connor inserted as many pirate puns into the conversation as possible. Pip felt separated from them all somehow, like she was wrapped in an invisible barrier. Through it she could hardly hear as Ant complained that tickets for the Ferris wheel had gone up to ten dollars or as Lauren admonished him, reminding him it was for charity.
A couple of hours later, a truck pulled up with a new ride they’d never seen before. From a distance it looked like a giant octopus, and her friends stood up to go and get a closer look. Pip didn’t move.
“Go ahead,” she said to them, pointing down at her ankle as explanation.
“I’ll stay,” Cara said, taking Zach’s place on the bench as the others wandered off across the park. “How are you?” She turned to Pip when they were alone.
“Fine,” she lied. “I’m fine. You?”
“Yeah, OK.”
“Naomi?”
“A bit less than OK.” Cara shrugged. “Spends most of the day upstairs in her room. She didn’t shut her door last night when I got in, and I saw she was writing in her diary again. I guess that’s good. It’s what the therapist tells her to do, you know, the one she’s been seeing since Mom…”
Pip nodded. It was now—she had to ask now or she might not get another chance.
“Hey, you know my mom’s doing a showing of a house on Gravesend Road in New Canaan today,” she said. “Isn’t that where you used to live?”
“Yeah,” Cara said. “How funny.”
“Number forty-four.”
“Oh, we were forty-two.”
“Does your dad still go there?” Pip asked, making her voice flat and disinterested.
“No, he sold it ages ago,” Cara said. “They kept it when we moved because Mom had gotten a huge inheritance from her grandma, and they rented it out for extra income while Mom did her painting. But Dad sold it a couple of years after Mom died, I think.”
Pip nodded. Clearly Elliot Ward had been telling lies for a very long time.
She looked at Cara then, really looked at her. And the invisible barrier around her closed in, constricting her throat as she tried to push down the tears. The sadness she felt for Cara was black and twisting and hungry. How was any of this fair?
Pip leaned over, wrapped her arms around her friend, and pulled her in.
“What’s this for?” Cara’s muffled voice in her hair.
“Nothing.”
“All right, clingy,” Cara said, trying to wriggle free.
Pip didn’t want to let her go, didn’t think she could. But she had to.
A distant squeal made her look up, draw back. It was Lauren. Ant had just jumped out at her from the other side of the incomplete Waltzer ride.
“You know they got together last night?” Cara said, nodding her head in their direction.
“Really?”
“Yeah. And apparently, they kissed at the calamity party too. Lauren told me last week.”
“Oh, I had no idea,” Pip said. Yet another thing she’d missed lately. Add it to the list.
Pip’s phone was vibrating in her pocket as the others rejoined them at the bench. Messages from Ravi: Did you get your application in? She didn’t open them, in case Cara saw anything she shouldn’t.
It was past five when her mom called to say she was waiting in the parking lot. Pip hugged her friends goodbye, her breath stuttering when Cara said, “See you tomorrow.” Because tomorrow might be a different world for them all.
She limped away, past the bumper cars and the swearing carnival worker who’d just cut open his hand. Past a yellow car towing a hot-dog stand in its trailer, and around the corner of the disassembled fun house where she almost ran into someone.
“Oh, sorry,” she said, looking up.
It was Mr. Ward.
The sun flashed across his glasses as he smiled down at her.
“Ah, Pip,” he said brightly. “Did you get it in?”
“Y-yep.” Her breath felt gummy, like it was trying to choke her.
“And your ankle?”
“Not too bad; should be better by tomorrow.” Pip could barely hear her own voice over the sound of her heart in her ears. Surely he could hear it too? “Sorry, I’ve gotta go—my mom’s waiting.”
“Oh sure,” he said, stepping out of the way. “Do you know where Cara is? She’s not answering her phone, and I need to drop her home and get over to Target before dinner.”
Pip pointed behind her.
“Thanks,” Mr. Ward said, nodding to her as he walked away.
Pip limped on, checking over her shoulder. Watching him. When he crossed behind the bumper cars and could no longer see her, she dropped the limp and started to run. She didn’t stop until she reached the parking lot and her mom’s car, fumbling for the passenger-side handle.
“Hey, sweetie,” her mom said, starting the engine. She didn’t turn to look at Pip, but it didn’t matter; Pip saw, anyway. Her mom’s red-rimmed eyes.
She’d been crying.
Pip pretended she hadn’t seen and her mom pretended she hadn’t either, talking instead about Josh’s sleepover tonight. But Pip knew why she’d been crying. Barney, of course. And how much worse would it be when she found out why he really died?
Back home Pip said, “Just going to have a nap. I was up late.”
It was another lie. She went to her room to watch the time, pacing from bed to door and back. Waiting. Fear burned to rage, and if she didn’t pace, she would scream. Mr. Ward said he was going to Target, the one near New Canaan. And Pip bet she knew where he would be going afterward. She needed him to be there.
When it was after six o’clock, Pip tugged the charger out of her phone and pulled on her coat.
“I’m going to Ravi’s for a few hours,” she called to her mom.
Outside, she climbed into her car and tied up her dark hair on top of her head. She looked down at her phone, at the lines and lines of messages from Ravi. She replied: I turned it in, thanks! I’ll come to your house after dinner and we’ll phone the police then. Yet another lie, but Pip was fluent in them now. He would only stop her if he knew.
She opened the map app on her phone, typed in the address, and hit Go.
The mechanical voice chanted up at her: Starting route to 42 Gravesend Road.