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When they went back into the Hall, the look Adrienne gave them sparkled with wry amusement.
But Dad had no idea.
~oOo~
Signal Bend had been putting on seasonal fairs and festivals as long as Gia could remember. When she was little, they were small events, not much more than a parking-lot carnival, and the attendees were almost all local, like a party for friends and family. But they got steadily bigger over time, as Signal Bend itself had grown bigger and stronger. Now each event drew people from all over the state. Often, at least one reporter from the Springfield TV stations showed up. Occasionally, somebody from Kansas City or St. Louis did a feature report. National news had shown up once, the year after the movie Signal Bend had been nominated for a bunch of Oscars. Gia was too young to remember that one, but Showdown had recorded the story, so she’d seen it a few times.
These events were among the things Gia loved best about her hometown. Though they’d gotten bigger, and the Horde now paid two farmers for the use of (and damage to) a field each, to accommodate parking and other needs, they were still small-town events. Only local businesses were allowed to put up a tent, cart, or kiosk. Only arts and crafts and event-themed merch got sold. The games were all old-fashioned carnival games. The food was local. The music came from regional bands who played often at the town venues. The night always ended with a big finish—a dance party, or caroling, or fireworks, or a bonfire—and people tended to stay to the end.
More than the Main Street Shops, more than No Place or Valhalla Vin or the Chop House or Marie’s, more than the wacky town hall meetings, more than any other feature of this treasure of a small town, to Gia, the seasonal events encapsulated everything good about this life.
Often she felt like Signal Bend wrapped itself around her throat and squeezed. It was impossible to live under the radar when you knew the middle name of every single person who lived within ten miles and they knew yours.
Everybody knew everything about everybody. Mistakes never faded from the long memory of a whole town. Judgments might yellow with time, but they never crumbled away. And, in a phenomenon she understood better thanks to her study, when everybody around you had the same experiences of life and the world, went to the same schools, the same churches, the same shops, it was almost impossible to be taken seriously if you had a differing view of life and the world. Small towns tended to press on difference until it wore away. She hated that very much.
There was a lot about life in Signal Bend Gia struggled with, and always had.
But when it put on its fancy clothes, she forgot all that struggle and remembered how great it was to be part of such a close-knit community.
She climbed down from the ladder and took in the work she’d finished: attaching a vining cord of faux autumn leaves, apples and tiny pumpkins across the banner that read SIGNAL BEND HARVEST FESTIVAL! WELCOME & ENJOY! It draped over Main Street, just before the shops.
“Looks good!” Zelda said. She’d come with Zaxx to help out today, and had been holding the ladder. “These things are so cheesy, but they’re fun, I have to admit.”
“I like cheese,” Gia said with a grin.
“I guess I like it more than I used to,” Zelda answered, also smiling.
Gia looked around. In all directions, people were working, preparing the town for its big fall day. The shop fronts and boardwalks lining Main Street were decorated with similar garlands, and with piles of pumpkins, bales of hay, bunches of wheat, bushels of apples, and scarecrows ranging from fancy to raggedy. Amber and orange lights lined window frames and door jambs and twisted over railings. At the visitor center, kids were decorating the wagon that would carry people for evening hay rides.
It was all so fucking adorable. The Hallmark Channel in real life. Not many people could say that they came from a town like this one, but it was the set dressing of many people’s fantasies of a simple life.
“You wanna go over to Sweet’s for a pumpkin spice sundae?” Zelda asked.
Gia laughed. “Half an hour ago, you did a full set on basic bitches and their love of fluffy beige sweaters and pumpkin spice lattes.”
Zelda did a smirking, twisting shrug. Her expression made the still-red scar across her nose bunch up. “Yeah, but I want a pumpkin spice sundae. Totally different thing. And I’m wearing one of my dad’s ripped-up sweatshirts. Nothing basic about this bitch.”
That sweatshirt was a formerly black hoodie that hung on Zelda like a big sister’s castoff dress. Under it was a baggy pair of jeans, so long their hems were stringy from dragging on the ground. Since the summer, Gia had seen her dress the way she always had, in cute little edgy, anime-punk ensembles, but when she was in Signal Bend, she dressed to disappear into her clothes. Too many people knew about what had happened, Gia guessed, though nobody ever talked about it.
The one person who probably needed to talk about it would not. Gia had offered her ear a couple times, but Zelda had responded as if she had nothing she needed to say.
“Okay,” Gia told her now with a smirk. “If you say so. But I’ll pass on the pumpkin and get an eggnog shake instead.”
The noise Zelda made clearly conveyed her opinions about eggnog.
As they started to cross the street, Gia looked up to admire her handiwork. “Hold on a sec.” She pulled her phone from her jacket pocket and stepped to the middle of Main Street. Turning her phone up, she took a photo, centering the banner she’d hung, framed by the festive trimmings of a Hallmark-Channel small town ready to celebrate.
She opened her friend chat and posted it. Jealous?
For the first time in a while, she didn’t mean that ironically.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Zelda grabbed Zaxx’s arm and yanked. “I want kettle corn.”
Zaxx laughed and let her drag him across the fairway to the kettle corn cart. The sign above it shouted KETTLE KORN KART in loud red letters. Whoever had designed said sign had made the unfortunate layout choice to arc the phrase and make the first letter of each word at least twice as big as the rest of the letters, which, with the intentional misspellings of ‘corn’ and ‘cart,’ had made the sign read KKK at a distance.
Zaxx had noticed it right away, as had Zelda. He figured a lot of people had noticed. But the nasty association of those three letters so close together didn’t seem to be affecting business. The line before it was about ten people deep.
