Aiden calls from the nearest concession stand as he pours butter-flavored oil into the popcorn popper. The scent of rotating sausages and heating cheese makes my stomach rumble, but I yawn and hurry on my catty-corner path across the main drag toward my grandmother’s tent. What with working nights, I can’t seem to get enough sleep anymore. I spent this afternoon on the living lot crashed on a hammock in the sunshine. The carnival scene is only vaguely freakish. Sure, talk has it that the carousel is haunted and my grandma really has the sight and the owner is some kind of shape-shifter, but that’s just talk. And our roustabouts are on the tough side, but you could say the same for the losers back at my high school in Detroit. Other than one bit-off ear and one small-time drug bust, nothing remotely interesting has happened all summer. Right now, we’re set up on the outskirts of Nowhere, Oklahoma. It’s July, just past sundown, and the front gates open in fifteen minutes.
