The Kissing Booth Girl and Other Stories Page 13

  “Of course!” she exclaimed, and the dead man looked at her with startled, lantern-like eyes. She wondered if he was seeing horizon and shore instead of the endless blue-green around them, whether he felt a breeze rather than the current moving against his drowned flesh.

  “It’s so simple!” Lucy grinned.

  She jumped up and spun a little pirouette in the waves. The water was almost completely dark now that the sun had set. Even so there was luminescence all around from glowing seaweed and phosphorescent eels, moving like slow bolts of lightning, and darting fish like lost stars.

  “Don’t worry,” Lucy assured the dead man. “I know exactly what to do.”

  “I want to go home.” The dead man’s voice was very soft, as though he had barely heard her words. There was a plaintiveness to his tone, and now Lucy was certain he was remembering the stars beyond the water’s beveled-glass sky, and aching after them.

  The dead man’s hair lifted in the current, stirring against the mossy algae clinging to the bones of the ship. Through one side of his ruined face, Lucy could see his skull; it was the same color as the ship’s hull.

  Lucy grasped the weed-slick wood with her bulky-fingered gloves. It was soft and rotten, and she was surprised at how easily the plank came away in her hands. She continued stripping the flesh from the bones of the ship, and as she worked the dead man began to sing.

  It was more than a sound. It enveloped Lucy and cradled her, as familiar as the waves that had borne her up all her life. She drifted in the dead man’s song, and it was an echo in her bones—a sweet, aching longing that spoke of all the things she had never known and whispered of their wonders. Inside her helmet, Lucy caught her breath, and her faceplate fogged with tears.

  When she had a sizable pile of timber beside her, Lucy turned to the dead man.

  “Do you think you can wiggle free?” Her voice was husky with the tears, but she smiled through them, tasting the salt that was like her native home.

  The dead man nodded, and she grasped his arm, ignoring the softness of his flesh. After a moment of gentle tugging he was free. He drifted before her, anchored to the ocean floor by her touch. The lost look had not left his eyes, and she could see the hurt in the low-banked fires of his gaze. The years of salt and waves drifting through him had hollowed him out, but left enough of his humanity that he could still dream of what had come before. How long, she wondered, had he been dreaming?

  Lucy took a deep breath and forced herself to meet the dead man’s eyes.

  “Do you trust me?”

  “I want to go home.” The dead man nodded, as though that was all the answer he had or all that was needed.

  “Okay.”

  Lucy braced herself, and reached for the dead man’s arm. She held it so it was stretched straight in front of him, worked her fingers under a loose chunk of flesh, and pulled. It was like peeling the boards from the ship. His skin was rotten and soft and came away easily in her hands.

  The dead man did not flinch, and that was almost harder to bear. Lucy felt her eyes well up with tears again, until she could barely see through the smudged blur of her faceplate. But she forced herself to keep looking at him. And once more, the dead man began to sing. It was a lullaby, like the first she had ever heard as a babe abandoned by the shore.

  As the dead man sang, Lucy continued methodically stripping his flesh from his bones, casting it into the waves so the fish could feed. When she was done the man stood before her—all naked salt-bleached white, gleaming in the light of the distant moon. There was an aching beauty to his vulnerability, and Lucy almost lost her nerve. But she took a deep breath and, as gently as she could, Lucy began to take apart the dead man’s bones.

  His eyes, as luminous as any of the star-bright fishes, tracked her with a kind of detached curiosity. Even stripped bare, he continued to sing. Even when she wrenched his skull from the remains of his spine and laid it on the cold ocean floor, impossibly, he continued to sing.

  When she had a pile of clean, white bones beside the pile of wood, she started to fit them together, interweaving them with long strands of seaweed until a small vessel began to take shape. The waves were dark and Lucy was exhausted when she at last fit the dead man’s skull to the prow. With her hands on either side of his bleached skull, Lucy looked into his glowing eyes.

  “Are there others like you? Other dead men who sing beneath the waves?”

  Very slowly, on his curving prow-neck of wood and bone, the dead man nodded.

  “Okay.”

  Lucy nodded in turn, her jaw set into a firm line. There was a nervous fluttering like a school of fish swimming in the pit of her stomach, but in an instant she had made up her mind. She knew who she wanted to be.

  Through the dark waters, Lucy swam, pulling the boat of wood and bone behind her. When the final mass of the day was at an end, Lucy slipped into the chapel and led Sister Francine of the Eternal Abalone out to admire her handiwork. Lucy held her breath as the Mother Superior studied the little rowboat.

  Sister Francine’s lips twitched, caught halfway between a smile and a frown.

  “And just what do you plan to do with this boat, child?”

  “Increase our ministry!” Lucy answered evenly. It was not a lie.

  “You propose to become a missionary, then?” Sister Francine arched a brow, her expression wry.

  “If you’ll allow it, Mother Superior.” Lucy bowed her head demurely, and hid her smile.

  Sister Francine shook her head, a gesture that was both exasperated and amused.

  “Very well. May the Drowned Virgin watch over you and guide you, child.”

  When Lucy looked up, Sister Francine was smiling.

  “One more favor, if I may, Mother Superior.” Lucy looked at Sister Francine hopefully.

  “Yes?”

  “May I gather the order to help christen my ship?”

  Sister Francine sighed and shook her head again, but her lips quirked upwards at the corner. With a smile Lucy swam up to the bell tower, and rocked the great lichen-crusted bell. It was heavy and hard to move underwater, but the clapper in the sleeve echoed through the waves and called the sisters back to the chapel yard.

  There, among the bright anemones and the gently waving kelp, Sister Francine blessed the ship of wood and bone and gave both it and the dead man a new name. Lucy could feel the other sisters around her. On one side, she was flanked by Sister Genevieve of the Holy Kelp, and on the other, Sister Iris of the Unwavering Coral Reef. Their voices were strong in the water, and they gave Lucy strength, too. As the order prayed, Lucy raised her head and snuck a glance at the Mother Superior. Behind her faceplate there was a twinkle in Sister Francine’s eyes—a spark that might have been pride.

  At dawn the next morning, Lucy pulled the little boat up to the surface and righted it upon the waves. As she surfaced, her copper helm was a gleaming twin to the rising sun. Lucy pulled herself on board, and then looked back down through the waves.

  The beveled view was strange, like seeing the world upside down. Drifting in the current, the Sisters of the Blessed Diving Order waved, and just beyond them she saw Sister Francine, hanging back a little, but still smiling. The Mother Superior raised her hand, and Lucy raised hers in turn.

  The waves lapped gently against the hull of wood and bone, and though it had been hastily built the sea bore it up and it did not leak. Cautiously Lucy reached up and undid the seals on her helmet. There was a hiss of air as she twisted it and lifted it free. The breeze kissed her cheeks with the new sun, and both light and wind played in her long red-gold hair.

  Lucy leaned forward, and rested her hand on the dead man’s skull. She let her touch linger a moment, and then she took up the oars. The dead man was silent in the prow, his bony face turned into the wind, but faintly she could hear a song much like his shivering through the waves. There was much work to be done. Lucy turned The Fisher of Men towards the sound, and began to row.

  An impact woke Beni from a dream of
gears and a face like burnished gold in the setting sun. She sat up, nearly hitting her head on the bunk above hers.

  “Shit.”

  Mouse snorted in his sleep, rolling over. She’d seen him sleep through the worst thunderstorms, but how the hell could he sleep through this? The ground trembled as Beni swung her legs out from under the covers, an aftershock traveling up from the soles of her feet.

  She snatched her trousers and work shirt from the pile at the foot of her bed, never mind they were streaked with the previous day’s dust and sweat. She hopped barefoot into the trousers, then she was out the door, running.

  Her first thought was of one of the rides gone up in flames, or something terrible happening to an animal from the Mechanical Menagerie. But whatever had happened seemed to have happened just beyond the midway and the trailers where the performers and workers slept. A glow like nothing Beni had ever seen backlit a knot of people, turning them to silhouettes against the lightening sky. The stars were still out, but they were pale, half swallowed in pearly-gray light.

  “What’s going on?” Beni buttoned her shirt as she reached the edge of the crowd.

  “Something fell from the sky,” Mattie, who ran the ring toss game, said. His red hair stood out at all angles, and sleep gummed the corner of his eyes.

  Beni had visions of a month’s worth of work undone. “What was it? It didn’t hit any of the rides, did it?”

  “I dunno.” Mattie grinned, gap-toothed; the constellation of freckles across his cheeks stretched to fit his smile. “Let’s go see.”

  He took off, and Beni followed, weaving through the crowd of performers and workers roused from sleep. A constant hum vibrated in her back teeth; she clenched her jaw against the sensation.

  “Stand back, everyone, back.” Phineas Akers, the owner of the World’s Last Steam Circus and Wondrous Mechanical Traveling Show, spread his arms, still muscled from his days as a performer, and used his body like a cattle scoop against the growing crowd.

  “You.” Akers singled Beni out, though she was far from the only one craning her neck to get a look. “Back to bed. Don’t let me catch you sleeping on the job tomorrow.”

  For the sin—in Akers’s eyes—of her sex and her brown skin, the carnival’s owner was constantly looking for any excuse to berate her, or give her more than her share of work and less than her share of food. He threatened to fire her at least once a week, and he’d never have taken her on in the first place if not for Lotts. Beni’s mentor had designed all the Steam Circus’s rides and attractions, and he still ran the crew that kept them going, even if his role was diminished these days. He’d made it clear when he signed on with Akers that he and Beni came as a package deal.

  A sharp reply leapt to Beni’s tongue, but the force of the crowd moved her back. Hank and Fen, Akers’s muscle-men, were out now, shooing away onlookers. Winnie, the World’s Strongest Man, had been enlisted, too. Beni watched him kneel to lift something from the ground.

  No, not something, someone—a girl with skin that wasn’t just pale, but as white as the chalk the aerialists used on their hands; she was the source of the glow The girl opened her eyes, and despite the gathered crowd, looked right at Beni… Beni froze.

  Winnie turned, and the bulk of his body hid the girl from sight. Beni blinked, free from the intensity of the girl’s gaze. But an afterimage remained, the girl—luminous as a fallen star—repeated in a dozen flickering iterations each time her lids closed.

  Beni sheltered in Gertie’s shadow, and pressed a sweating soda bottle to her brow. If the mechanical elephant hadn’t spent all day baking in the brutal sun, she would have risked leaning against Gertie’s massive leg. Beni’s work shirt lay crumpled on the ground beside her. Let Mr. Akers fire her; she would strip her flesh from her bones if she could, just to get relief from the heat.

  A shadow fell across her. Mattie kicked the scuffed sole of Beni’s left boot, looking smug.

  “I’m on break.” The last thing she was in the mood for was Mattie’s damned freckle-faced grin.

  “You’re missing it.”

  “Missing what?” Beni shielded her eyes against the glare.

  “The thing that fell from the sky. They’re setting it up on the midway now. It’s the new attraction.”

  Not it, her, Beni thought, but she didn’t say it aloud. She’d almost convinced herself she’d dreamed it. It had been nearly a week, and in the intervening time, Akers had kept her so busy she’d fallen exhausted into her bunk every night. There had been no time to sneak out and see whether a girl had really fallen from the sky, or whether she’d imagined it.

  “Come on.” Mattie reached down, and Beni let him haul her to her feet.

  Mattie let out a whoop, pelting down the midway, stirring dust in his wake. “Let’s go!”

  A crowd had already gathered around the newest booth. Beni could smell the paint, still fresh, hastily slapped onto the plywood. Jimmie Seeds, the Steam Circus’s best barker, threw open the booth’s shutters with a flourish.

  “Ladies and Gentlemen: I give you the Kissing Booth Girl! Lips that beguile. Oh, I promise, the nearest thing to nuzzling an angel can be yours—today!—for a shiny round Seated Liberty I know you carry in your very pockets as I speak.”

  Beni sank her teeth into her lower lip to keep from letting out an astonished whistle. Even in broad daylight, the girl shone. The whole thing seemed even more like a dream now. The girl who had fallen from the sky sat perched on a stool in the deep-cool shadows of a midway booth.

  Without meaning to, Beni took a step forward, stretching on her toes to get a better look. The girl’s hair reminded Beni of ropes of pearls, a series of complicated knots woven around the top of her head dripping down to her shoulders. She wore a sleeveless dress, just a shade darker than her pale skin. Her arms ended in unmarred stumps just below her shoulders. She resembled those pictures Lotts had showed her of the marble statues in Rome. Art intended for the pedestal, to be admired, never to be touched.

  A row of people two deep stood between Beni and the Kissing Booth Girl, but the girl’s gaze slipped past them. Her eyes an impossibly bright blue. Like her skin wasn’t just pale, her eyes weren’t just blue either. She wasn’t like Mattie, or Lotts, or any other white person Beni had ever seen. She was uncanny. Her gaze lifted a moment to lock on Beni, just like it had when Winnie had first picked her up from where she’d crashed into the ground. Then the girl flashed a smile, and Beni had the brief impression of many teeth. The Steam Circus had a real live shark as an attraction for a while, but the mechanical tail to replace one hacked off by hunters eventually poisoned the water in the tank with oil. That ever-grinning fish had taken off Muddy Cowler’s hand in the brief time it had been with them. Muddy hadn’t lasted long after that either.

  And now she wondered if Muddy’s stomach had flipped so at seeing the smile before the bite. Warmth spread through her that had nothing to do with the beating sun. Fear and a thrill of excitement all at once, and it made her want to squirm out from under that gaze.

  She became ashamed of the grease worked deep into her skin, her shorn-close hair, dewed with sweat, and the fact she was wearing nothing but her grimy undershirt. She hitched up the straps of her coveralls, crossing her arms over her chest.

  “I’ll take a go.” A man stepped forward.

  Beni didn’t recognize him—a paying customer then. He dug in the pocket of his clean linen pants, and flipped a quarter to Jimmie Seeds, who caught it in the air.

  “Now, sir, hold on just a minute.” Jimmie vanished the coin neatly before putting a hand against the man’s chest. “There are a few especial rules, you see. Our Celeste is very particular about who she kisses. You pay to start, but you got to give a little something extra.”

  The crowd tensed. “What kind of scam is this?” the man asked as he reached for Jimmie’s shirt. Jimmie evaded the man’s grasp like a weaving prizefighter. He winked at the crowd.

  “Celeste is no ordinary girl. And the World’
s Last Steam Circus and Wondrous Mechanical Traveling Show is no ordinary carnival. A kiss from our Kissing Booth Girl—well, it’s wishing on a falling star. You might get your heart’s desire, but you gotta win her over first. We all know you have to impress a lady.”

  A rough-looking man in the crowd grabbed his crotch. “Hey, I got something to impress her right here!”

  Jimmie Seeds ignored him, eyes fixed on the mark in front of him. Beni had seen it a hundred times before—the sincere look Jimmie got when calculating the best way to take someone for everything they were worth.

  “Do you think you have what it takes, sir?” Jimmie asked the man who hadalready paid, with his best I’m-rooting-for-you-pal expression.

  Beni held her breath. No one in the crowd spoke. The quality of sunlight shifted, going lemon-gray, like the build-up before a storm. The man licked his lips, and leaned forward, putting his lips against Celeste’s ear.

  Celeste’s quiescent expression remained unchanged. The entire Wondrous Traveling Show stood still for a moment, and Beni’s pulse with it. The Kissing Booth Girl shook her head. The man flinched. He started to turn away, but at the last moment, he wheeled and reached into the booth, grabbing Celeste by the back of the neck.

  The Kissing Booth Girl’s stool rocked precariously. The man crushed his lips against hers. Almost immediately, he let out a muffled cry and leapt back, clutching his face. Blood seeped between his fingers.

  “You bitch!” The words emerged crimson-flecked.

  He lunged, but Jimmie was there, smooth as ever, a bulwark preventing so much as a finger from reaching Celeste. Despite his slender build, Jimmie Seeds could be strong as a bull. He winked over the man’s shoulder, and addressed the crowd as though letting them in on a great secret.