As expected, just about every living soul on By-the-Sea showed up to the festival, anxious and hopeful that something,anything,might happen—that Annabella might swoop down from the sky and alight on the gazebo, maybe.
The time passed quickly.
The same few kids rode the rides and bounced in the bouncy castle for hours. Then Jimmy Frankfurter stuffed himself with cotton candy and jumped immediately on theFerris wheel and puked at the very top, an impressive spray of sick that landed on the two unfortunate souls in the cars underneath him.
“Holy mother of shit,” Mary said when she noticed a few minutes later (having been occupied with a small technical glitch over at the carousel). I was trying to clean up vomit with some paper towels stuck to the end of a broom, because if I got too close to the mess I felt like I was going to puke myself.
“Jimmy Frankfurter,” I mumbled. At the last islandwide Halloween party he’d bobbed for and ate so many apples that he puked a brilliant pile of red. I hated that kid.
“Why did you let him on here?”
“I wasn’t paying attention,” I said.
In truth, I’d been diligently scanning the crowd for Prue; I was ready at the drop of a hat to very casually ditch my post and bump into her.
“Well, I can do the rest of this if you want,” Mary offered, which was uncharacteristically generous of her.
“That is uncharacteristically generous of you,” I said.
“I could change my mind atanymoment,” she said, and I thrust the broom into her hand without another word.
I wandered over to the bouncy castle and found it filled with more drunk adults than bouncy kids, which is how I knew it must be after nine, the unofficial time when the festival dissolved from a place of good, clean family fun (at least in theory) to one of debauchery.
“If Willard sees you guys, you’re gonna get kicked out,” I said to the unidentifiable jumble of limbs and feet in the castle. At least they’d taken their shoes off.
I figured now was as good a time as any to turn off the rides for the night (there was something very satisfying about the idea of the bouncy castle deflating around the group of drunk adults now residing within it), and I did so quickly, turning the last few kid stragglers away with the musings of a seventy-year-old woman (“Shouldn’t you be in bed? Where are your parents?”). I found Willard by the cotton candy cart and gave him the keys for the Ferris wheel and carousel.
“Another successful turnout!” he said, beaming, clutching the keys in his hands as if they were the keys not only to the kiddie rides, but tothe entire world.
I decided not to tell him about the vomit.
As the night grew darker, more lanterns were lit, including fairy lights that strung back and forth overhead. This was By-the-Sea in a nutshell: a weird little island with a festival dedicated to a bird who was late to her own party.
When I got back to the rides, the castle was fully deflated, the people within seemed not to have noticed, the vomit was mostly cleaned up, and my sister was gone.
I found Vira with her shoes off, sitting on the grass with her back against the ice cream cart and her legs spread out in front of her.
“We’re all out, girl scout,” she said, patting the cart.
I sat down beside her. “I don’t want your ice cream; I want your company.”
Vira put her hand on her chest. “Be still my heart.”
“How are you?”
“Tired. Stained with Frozen Blood.” An ice cream flavor; she held out her arms to demonstrate.
“Why don’t you go home?”
“To be honest, I was just saving up my energy for the trip. I amtired.”
“I’m tired too. Have you seen my sister?”
“Not for a while,” Vira said, shrugging. “I think she was talking to Peter earlier.” She put her head on my shoulder and actually started snoring. I resigned myself to being her pillow for at least a few minutes.
And then, there in front of us—not there one moment, there and beautiful the next, was—
“Prue,” I said. This single name was meant to convey a lot of things:Prue, I am so happy to see youandPrue, you look so beautiful tonightandPrue, if you keep looking at me like that I will have to kiss your entire face, societal etiquette be damned!
