Chapter Thirteen
“Enough already, Brad, let’s go,” Jules says, tugging her boyfriend’s arm.
“One more try,” Brad says, handing the carnival worker a five-dollar bill. Ever since his buddy won Amber a giant stuffed Bart Simpson doll, Brad is intent on winning something for Jules.
“Seriously, you’re wasting your money. The games are rigged.”
“Now hold on, sweetie,” the carnival worker interjects.
“I take great offense to that.” He grins and he has tobacco in his teeth, and it reminds her of something, sends a prickle of fear all over her body.
“If it was rigged, she wouldn’t have that,” the guy says, gesturing to the Bart Simpson doll, goading Brad.
Brad grabs the ball, throws it hard toward the metal milk bottles. It connects, but only two of them topple over.
“Oooo, so close,” the carnival worker says. Jules can’t take another grin, so she leaves them to play the dumb game.
Making her way through the crowd, she rummages through her handbag for a mini bottle, but she’s out. She looks around for anyone she knows, someone who might have a flask or some weed.
A group of kids, the burnouts, huddle over by the spinning teacups.
She’s reminded a moment of Quinn Riley and how much he did not fit in with them.
She imagines him in the army. He’ll be a proper grown-up before she’s even finished her first year of college.
But Quinn Riley always seemed more grown up. An old soul, her grandmother would say.
Through the loudspeakers, Whitney Houston belts out “I Will Always Love You.” If Jules hears that song one more time, she swears to god …
She spots Miranda in the crowd. She doesn’t know why she forgave her friend—or Brad, for that matter—after the cheating incident. She thinks it’s because she doesn’t really care. Worrying about what Brad does, about infidelity, about a high school betrayal, seems so trivial now. On her Death Day.
Miranda sees her and walks over. “Hey,” Miranda says. “Where is everyone?”
Jules directs her gaze to the carnival games. There’s another roar from the group as Brad gets so close but doesn’t knock down all the bottles. “You got any stuff?”
Miranda looks around conspiratorially, then hands Jules a Gatorade bottle. Jules takes a big gulp.
“Did you hear?” Miranda says.
“Hear what?”
“They found another body—over in Ralston.”
A blade of panic slides between Jules’s ribs. “They think it’s—?”
“The May Day Killer,” Miranda says, her eyes alight. Like it’s more exciting than horrific. “One of Todd’s cop buddies told him.”
Jules takes another big drink, and Miranda tells her not to be a hog.
Just then, the others amble over, Brad looking defeated without a giant stuffed animal clutched under his arm.
“Ferris wheel!” someone in the group says.
Soon, Jules is in the creaky Ferris wheel, her head spinning from whatever Miranda had in that Gatorade bottle, from her friend’s words: “They found another body.”
They rock in the cabin at the top of the wheel as the carnival worker helps one of the riders off down below.
Brad makes a show of looking around. “I don’t think anyone can see us up here…”
She watches as Brad unbuttons his jeans, then puts his hands behind his head, leans back.
She’s done this before for him. She cried afterward. She just needs to buck up, get over herself. It’s not his fault what happened to her.
She feels his hand on her head, pushing her down.
That’s when she vomits all over his lap.
Later, she sits in the porta potty—the stench nearly making her puke again. Voices plead with her to come out. Say that it’s okay, no one is mad at her. That they cleaned the Ferris wheel with a hose, said it happens all the time.
They think she’s embarrassed about throwing up all over Brad. Ashamed that Jules Delaney made a fool of herself. Worried that the cops are coming. But it’s none of that. It’s that he took another life. That he’s out there.
And that she did nothing to stop him from striking again.