Chapter 2 - Part 1

Brittney

I love carnivals. They’re so fun. We go every year to the one that comes to our town. It always comes in May right before school gets out for the summer, so the air is kind of charged with excitement, anyway. Mom and Dad used to both take us – Tommy and me – I mean. Tommy is almost six years older than me, so he would always go on the big rides and I would go on the little ones. I especially like the carousel – even now – even when I am almost ten and into double digits. Tommy always makes fun of me and calls the carousel a baby ride. I don’t care. I like what I like and why should I let him take that away from me? It used to seem like everything good and happy was being sucked out of my life, right before my eyes, but then I realized that some things were mine and always would be if I just held on to them tightly enough. Like carousel rides.

Anyway, Mom and Dad used to both take us to the carnival and we would always beg and plead that we be allowed to go on more rides. Sometimes they would let us and sometimes not, but it was always good to be at the carnival and stop worrying for a couple of hours about who was mad at who and who would be mad next. Mom says that I am very sensitive to other people’s feelings and that is a good thing. I wish I were not, though. It gives me stomachaches.

Even when we got older and Mom and Dad would just send us with some money, even then it was nice to get away and forget for a little while. Tom never stayed with me. He ran off to ride the roller coasters that shook and squealed and sounded as though they might break apart at any moment. That was okay with me. Then I was free to ride the carousel over and over. It doesn’t seem silly to me. A lot of people do things that make them miserable over and over and over. That is silly. I do something I like over and over and over. That is smart.

As we walked toward the carnival now, I could hear the music a little more clearly and start to smell the cotton candy and popcorn. We learned the word fortuitous in class last year. Running into this carnival right now was a very fortuitous event for my family. My stomachache had been very bad this time. A couple of hours in a different world could definitely help.

I closed my eyes to breathe in the smells of the carnival – only for a half a moment, I’m sure! But when I opened my eyes, we were there. Not just there as in at the outer edges, but there as in at the middle of the whole brightly lit, crowded-with-machines thing!

I stopped and looked behind me – looking for the edge of the corn field – but I couldn’t see it anywhere. All I could see was the carnival. Maybe because of the bright lights, I thought, but how did we get here so suddenly?

Then my heart stopped in my chest. There was still a ‘we’ wasn’t there? I spun around again and breathed lots more easily. There was my mother and Tommy standing not more than five feet away from me, looking around all confused-looking like me.

I ran up to mom and took her hand. Losing her once was enough for me. I wasn’t going to chance being separated from her again. I didn’t like being away from my mom.

**

Two years ago my elementary school had to meet in the old junior high for school classes while the old building I had walked to since kindergarten got torn down and rebuilt. The junior high was a little farther than my old elementary school had been, but it was still close enough that I could walk. My mom offered to drive me to and from school. I let her drive me there, but I really wanted to walk home.

“Are you sure?” she asked. “I could have Tom walk by there and get you, too.”

I could imagine what Tom would say to that! I didn’t need to give Tom any more reasons to call me a baby. Besides, I had some friends who walked home and I really wanted to spend some time with them. It would be fun and it would be grown-up.

“Yes. I’m sure mom! I can handle it!” I remember feeling that it would be easy for me and mom would be so proud to know all that I could do.

It didn’t go exactly as planned, though. After school, my teacher needed to talk to me and by the time I got outside, my friends had left. I looked around. There were children heading down the street to the left and children heading down the street to the right. Which way to go? I pushed down the panic I felt rising in me and tried to think which way mom had come when she drove me there that morning. Just then this jerky boy from my class came by and said, “Wha’s the matter with Britwey? Can’t find her mommy?”

Sometimes in books, when people are mad the author says that they see red. I don’t know what color humiliation is, but at that moment the entire world got blotted out by it. I started down the street – any street – just to get away from that boy and his laughing friends. I hate it when people just say things to make their friends laugh at you, but it is especially worse when you are afraid that what they said is true and you wonder how much more they would laugh if they knew it.

By the time I looked up from my feet where I had concentrated all my thoughts on my shoes and what the sidewalk looked like moving under my feet, I looked up to find myself in a neighborhood I had never seen before. It couldn’t be that bad, I told myself, and I turned right and walked as best I could figure in the direction my house must be. When that didn’t seem to be working, I turned left and walked some more. I turned and turned and walked and walked, until I couldn’t take it anymore and I sat down on the curb, put my face in my hands and cried.

That was when the nice lady in the house I had chosen to sit down and cry in front of came out and asked me what was wrong and if she could help. Somehow she managed to understand me through all my hysterical gasping and sobs and in just a minute she had me in her car and drove me home to the address I gave her.

There was a police car in front of my house when I got there and I went inside to find my mother hysterical, too. She hugged me and hugged me until I about couldn’t breathe and we both cried together. She thanked the nice lady over and over and finally she and the police officer left and it was just me and my mother again.

“I’m sorry, Mom! I just got lost and I couldn’t find the way!” I tried to explain, “I just couldn’t do it!” I felt tears stinging my eyes again, but this time not from the fear of having lost my way, but because it feels awful to find out that you can’t do something.

“Oh Brittney,” Mom said, smoothing my hair, “It’s just too far for you. From now on, I will be there everyday and you won’t have to worry about it again.”

She sat and held me for a long time. I told myself that I felt better and that everything had turned out fine. But inside, something inside of me had died.

**

I noticed that the rain had stopped. Actually, looking at my feet, it didn’t seem to have rained here at all. I looked around. This just kept getting weirder and weirder. There seemed to be a sort of half-light coming from the sky, though there seemed to be something between us and the sky.

At home, the city pool puts a big billowy tent over the water in the winter and heats the area underneath so people can still swim. It looks like the top side of a pill bug from far away – a very big pill bug. I wondered if that was what was around us now?

But then, we would have had to come through a door . . . I looked around again, but all I could see were the flashing lights of the carnival rides and the booths with their cheap prizes and expensive balls that you could throw into the hoop or to knock down a pyramid of milk bottles.

Something else was weird about this place -- though, I couldn’t quite figure out what. That was when I saw a little girl sitting against the tent not ten feet away from us. That was it! That was what was weird! There were no people! There weren’t even people in the flashy prize booths were there was usually at least somebody telling you how easy it was to win a prize and you should spend your money here, yada, yada, yada.

I was so proud of myself for figuring out what was weird about this place that for a moment, it didn’t even creep me out. Just for a moment, though. I needed to talk to that girl. I wasn’t sure why, but it sure seemed to be the only thing to do. My heart started thumping in my chest.

I let go of Mom’s hand and started walking toward the girl. Mom noticed and after a minute, followed softly behind me.

Chapter 1 - Part 2

**
The first heavy drops of rain hit our windshield as we continued to speed away from the park where the reunion had been held, to speed away from the hurt and humiliation, to speed away from home. I had stopped looking out the window now and was facing forward staring at Dad.

“Turn around!” I pleaded with him mentally. “Can’t you see we are going nowhere? Turn around! We need to go home!”


**
Once, for Halloween, I wanted to be the Invisible Man.
“You mean a ghost?” my mom asked.
“NO! I mean the Invisible Man!” I insisted.
It may have been impossible, but my mom tried to think of ideas for my sake. Afterall, she attempts the impossible everyday for my sake.

We finally decided that since it would be night while I was trick or treating, that I could dress all in black. I would wear a black stocking cap and Mom would paint my face black including my eyelids, so if I stood very still and closed my eyes – it would seem like I disappeared!

That night I went out in my costume to show Dad as he got home from work. I stood by the car as he was getting out and I said, “Hey, Dad, we made it work! I really am the Invisible Man!”

Then I closed my eyes to make the effect complete. But I had to crack them open a second later as I heard Dad leaving his car and heading for the house, without even glancing toward me. I stood there in the darkness watching as he climbed the stairs to the house and shut the door.

I closed my eyes again. “I am the Invisible Man,” I said to myself. I didn’t have to worry about anything I said giving me away. I knew I couldn’t be heard either. My dad had just proven that to me.

**

The clouds suddenly opened up and let out a deluge of rain. Individual raindrops could not even be discerned on the windows. It seemed more like we had driven under a waterfall. It was really dark outside now and the windshield wipers beat furiously against the rain. I felt bad for them somehow. I knew that they could race and beat and do the very best for which they were made, but they still wouldn’t be able to help us. We still couldn’t see. The headlights weren’t any help either.

This kind of storm was never good news in Nebraska. When the clouds roll in across the plains and it turns dark in the middle of the day. Well, then you know, that’s tornado weather, that is. And if you’re out in the middle of nowhere, like we were, heading away from home, then there’s nothing to shelter you from all those angry blasts.

Mom had noticed, too. I saw her reach over to turn on the radio.
Dad immediately switched it off. “I don’t want that on!” he growled.
“Sam, there might be a storm warning . . .”
“Ya think?” he demanded. “We are obviously having a storm.”
“But . . . a tornado?” my Mom asked feebly.
“Enough! I don’t want the radio on right now. Is it too much to ask to have just a little bit of alone time just a little bit of the time?” he demanded.

After that, it was silent again. I changed my mental pleading, “Please find some shelter. There must be somewhere to keep us safe. There must be! Stop the car! Get us somewhere safe!”

“What’s that sound?” Brittney asked at my side. I didn’t know how she could hear anything with the rain pounding on the car and the wheels swashing through the water on the road. But I strained my ears to listen anyway. Dad and Mom hadn’t even heard her ask the question.

“What are you talking about?” I demanded. “Nobody can hear anything right now! The rain is too loud!”

She glared at me. “Don’t you think I know that? I think it’s weird, too.” She paused for a moment, “But I hear music.” She glanced up front at Mom and Dad. “It’s not the radio, either.”

“Nope. Not the radio,” I agreed.

Just then I heard it too. It was indistinct and sounded like it was still quite far off in the distance, but I could hear it too. I couldn’t hear an entire melody – only snatches that seemed to be carried to us on the wind that buffeted the car and threatened to blow us off the road. The simultaneous experience of being pushed by the wind and hearing a snatch of music made it feel as though the music very much wanted us off of that road. As did I.

Brittney was staring hard out her window again. “As if she’ll be able to see anything in all this rain,” I thought bitterly to myself. But then, she grabbed my sleeve. “Tommy! Can you see that?”

I leaned over so that I was looking out her window, too. At first, all I could see was rain and the deep gray/black of the storm obscuring the fields outside our windows. I strained my eyes ahead to the far horizon where Brittney had pointed and I thought I did see something. Lights maybe, clustered together in the distance. Not enough lights to be a town but too many to just be a house or a barn.

As we got closer, the lights seemed to form into shapes. One group of lights in particular, seemed to be higher than the rest and seemed to be . . . a circle.

“It’s a Ferris Wheel!” Brittney exclaimed as she turned her excited eyes up to mine. “It’s a Carnival!”

An awful screeching noise suddenly shuddered through the car. Dad swerved madly back and forth trying to stay on the road, as the engine made several more horrible noises and the car shuddered to a halt.
“What in the tarnation?” Dad hollered as he flung open the door and stomped out into the rain. He lifted the hood and we thought we could hear him tinkering around in there.

Several minutes passed. “When’s Dad coming back into the car, Mom?” Brittney asked.

“I don’t know, honey. Soon. I’m sure.”

It was then that I saw him. He wasn’t under the hood. He was striding through the corn field headed for the lights of the carnival. “Look!” I said, “There he goes!”

Mom craned her head around until she could see around the uplifted hood. She shook her head. “He must be going to get some help.”

We all stared as his figure retreated into the dark. I didn’t trust my dad. He was leaving us and he might not come back.

**
In ninth grade, my mom wanted me to play football. My dad loved football. He wore red. We had pictures of him in college with his face painted at football games. We did, after all, live in Nebraska. I think my mom thought that if I played football, I would cease being the Invisible Man.

“I want to take Karate!” I told my mom. “In Karate, you don’t have to be big, but you can still fight. That sounds like something useful to me – not running around on a field pushing people down and fighting over a leather ball.”

“Tommy,” she had said and my heart twisted inside me because I knew what she was going to do. “I don’t get a lot of happiness in this world.” Then she sat down and started to cry.

I signed up for the football team the next day.

On the first day of practice, my stomach was tied into knots. I felt like I was going to be physically ill. The thought of being run over by guys twice my size had kept me up all night. Mom asked Dad to drive me to practice, even though he had other things he had to do. As he stopped the car in front of the field, the panic almost overwhelmed me. In desperation, I turned to my dad and did something I never would have normally done. “You’ll pick me up, Dad, won’t you?” I asked him. “You’ll be here when I’m done?”

“Tom! I’ve got to meet with Harry and go over the programming he’s done for me. I have things to do to support this family and you can walk home. It is not that far.”

“Dad!” I said. “Please! Just today? Just on the first day of practice?”
He had looked at the desperation in my face and then turned away. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll come.”

I waited a full 30 minutes after practice until one of the coaches who had stayed behind to wait with me asked if he could give me a ride home since he wanted to get home himself.

“No thanks,” I said. “You go. He’ll come.”

I walked home that night at dark. He didn’t come.

**
I sat up. “I’m going with him!” I said -- my hand on the handle of the car.
“Tom!” my mom said, “We need you here with us.”
“Please, mom?” Brittney said at my side. “It’s a carnival. Let’s all go!”

Mom looked out into the rain. It had abated somewhat so that it was only tickling the top of the car, now. Rain in Nebraska did that. Pounded on you, then lightened up, then pounded on you again.

“If we hurry,” Brittney said again, “we won’t get too wet!”

Mom looked out toward the lights and at Dad steadily getting farther and farther away from us.
“Alright,” she finally said reluctantly. “Let’s go.”

Chapter 1 - Part 1

It was while I was still in elementary school that I first started wondering about families. Not necessarily about all the different types like why one family has no dad and another has two or why some families live all bunched together with aunts and uncles and in-laws and out-laws, and others have been whittled down to just one or two. Well, not really one – since you need at least two human beings to make a “family,” or some semblance of it anyway. Because, it’s true. I could look around and see many different groups of people who call themselves family, when, I imagine, the first real way of having a family was with a mom and a dad and the children who came to them along the way. I didn’t start to wonder about this. What I started to wonder was, why? Why do people live together at all? Why live together in groups when really, it just seems to result in a whole lot of pain.

For instance, take that traditional family – you know, the mom and dad and the children they created together. I could see easily why all families aren’t that way. I could see it in my own house. People live together and first it’s just little things like the absence of being nice to each other and then they start doing little mean things and pretty soon they aren’t just little mean things – they’re giant mean things. The longer people live together the more time they have to really build up momentum and just drown each other in meanness. That’s when people have to separate and go start over with someone else, so they can start over with the niceness and then have a little bit of time to enjoy little meanness before they drown in the big meanness again.
Which brings me to my first question, Why do people live together as families in the first place? I can see us all living in individual apartments. That would work, don’t you think? They could see one another at school or work and then go back to their own place and do their own thing and not be mean to anyone at all.

I hold this image in my mind and I concentrate and I try to think of all the details that it needs to make it very, very real. But always, before I can quite cement it into my head, I remember.

I remember a day at the beach. The sky was blue from horizon to horizon and the sun sparkled on the waves as they first crashed into the water and sped forward before running slowly backward leaving bubbles where the sand crabs furrowed deeper into their homes. I had gotten new sand toys for our vacation and had built a mammoth castle at the water’s edge. I had made flags out of toothpicks and the leftover foil from our picnic lunch and was just putting a flag on the top of each tower when a giant wave came and washed out half of my castle. I was only six. I raged and screamed at that wave and then – oh ,horrors! – even to a six-year-old boy -- I started to cry. That was when my mom came over to me. She hugged me and said she would help me to build it again.

“What you need is help from a master builder!” I turned around in surprise to see my dad picking up a bucket. My mom laughed and splashed my dad. He laughed and splashed us both. I remember being happy that they were both being so silly – like a kid – like me. After a truly drenching water fight, we rebuilt the whole castle better than before and I have a picture of me in front of it proudly displaying my new sand toys. I’m alone in the picture, but the castle was made with more hands than mine alone.

It’s a great memory – warm and happy and even, dare I say it, sun-kissed.

But I hate that memory. It hurts me every time I think of it. It’s the reason my system doesn’t work.
**
The car sped down the highway. Nothing but miles and miles of fields on either side. It was just after noon, but the storm clouds darkened everything flashing by my window so that it seemed almost night. Normally, I would have entertained myself by poking my sister or making her crazy by playing with one of her toys. Afterall, I have to practice my own meanness for when I have a family of my own. Instead, the car was dreadfully quiet except for the sound of the thunder in the distance and the tires speeding down the road. Speeding down the road the wrong way. Not wrong as in the left side of the road as opposed to the right. No, wrong as in taking us away from home instead of toward it. I ask myself for the hundredth time, “He wouldn’t have left us, would he?”
**
Family reunions are interesting things, don’t you think? You drive for an hour to go to a park with nothing but pit toilets and a few scraggly trees in order to be surrounded by people you don’t know and see just once a year at best. Your mom introduces you to a skinny kid about your age, tells you his name (which you’ve already forgotten), and says, “He’s your cousin!” as if that makes it guaranteed that you will get along and have loads in common. As it is, he looks at you (after your mom has left), nods, and then goes off to find kids that he already knows – you know, the ones he sees more than once a year. Whatever. I’d probably do the same if I had the option.

Brittney comes over to the pavilion where I am sitting on a table and sits down by my feet. She doesn’t say anything. I already had to chase her away once. Just because the only people we know in this whole place is one another does not mean that we can be friends. I’ll let her sit by me as long as she doesn’t make it look like I’m allowing it. Anyway, although I’d never admit it, it’s kind of nice to not be completely alone.

Across from us, we can see “the royal entourage” as I like to call it – where Grandma and Grandpa sit and the relatives flock around, some stopping for only a minute and others getting the place of honor at either Grandma or Grandpa’s side while they smile at them and place a hand on their knee. Right now, my uncle Clyde was in the place of honor at Grandma’s side and had been there for over an hour. Clyde was rich. He hadn’t even gone to college. He started his own business out of high school and watched it do fabulously well. Now he hardly worked at all – just watched the money roll in while he sat by Grandma’s side and she patted his knee. It made me want to vomit.

While I watched, Clyde stood up. Maybe one of his kids needed help or maybe he needed to use the marvelously fragrant pit toilets. Whatever it was, he got up and his chair was empty. I caught my breath as I watched my dad walk over and sit down in the chair Clyde had just vacated. I nudged my sister. “Check this out,” I whispered.

“Oh no,” Brittney shook her head in disbelief.

My dad went to college. He got a degree in computer programming and was Grandma’s best friend when her computer went down. But she was not at all pleased when he suffered periods of unemployment before finding a new company who needed more programming done. Now was one of those unemployment times. Maybe she would understand this time. Afterall, Dad had proved that he could always find a new job and he had always provided for his family. The workplace wasn’t the same place it had been when Grandpa took care of her family.

I watched as Grandma turned to talk with dad. She smiled at him, but it was clearly a different kind of smile. She touched him on the shoulder and then quickly took her hand away. Then she pursed her lips in response to something Dad had just said, stared at him for a long minute, and then slowly turned away. It was clearly a dismissal.

I felt horrible. He sat staring at her for long minutes. From the look on his face, I thought he might pick up her high and mighty chair and stuff it down the pit toilet.

He stood. I watched as he searched his pockets. There was something there he couldn’t find. Suddenly, he was striding across the park toward where Mom was sitting with some of the women. That was when my heart started thumping.

He stopped in front of Mom and demanded, “Why didn’t you give me back my keys?”

“Y-your keys?” Mom faltered seeing at once the anger in his face.

“Yes! My keys! You borrowed them to put your dish back in the car. Is it so hard to just bring such a simple thing back to me when you are done?”

“Sorry, Sam,” Mom started fumbling around in her pockets. “I thought . . .”

“What does it matter what you thought???” he snapped as he snatched the keys out of her hands. “Next time bring your own keys! In fact, next time, bring your own car!”

Meanness. Humiliation in front of all those women she only sees once a year and was trying so bravely to befriend anyway. It is hard to feel humiliation and rage for two people you are supposed to love. I was paralyzed for a moment by these emotions and didn’t notice that my father was striding toward the car with my mother hurrying behind him keening out her apologies. Brittney jumped to her feet. “Tom! They’re going to leave without us!” Fear lanced through her words as she started to sprint for all she was worth toward the car. Suddenly that was all I could feel too – fear. Fear that they would leave us here, with all these people we didn’t know, too far from home to make our way back.

I ran, too, and barely made it to the car as the engine roared to life and jumped in as my dad threw the car into reverse. I slammed the door as he squealed out of the parking lot. At the highway, where we should have turned left, he stopped. His breathing slowed as he stared down the open road to the left. What was he thinking? What was he going to do? Then the wheels had squealed again as he jammed his foot on the gas and flipped the steering wheel hard right.