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AMIRA
“Enjoy the show.” I handed two tickets to the elderly couple in line.
They headed towards the striped tents on the outskirts of the fairgrounds, the man supporting his female companion by her elbow.
Despite it being January, it was a warm, sunny day in the southern US. The multi-colored lights around the painted sign “Madame Tan’s Menagerie” over the entrance to the tents had been turned on, but their light paled in the sunshine.
I couldn’t remember the name of the town where the fair was taking place this week. Not that it mattered, anyway. The next week, there’d be another town, another name I’d quickly forget.
Radax, one of Madame Tan’s men, let the elderly couple inside the tents, then pulled down the flap of striped canvas after them, closing the entrance. Madame was about to start the tour of her menagerie.
A young couple rushed to my booth.
“Oh, no!”
“Did we miss it?”
The man tightly gripped the arm of the woman who held a wad of cotton candy on a stick in her other hand.
I stretched my lips into a smile that Madame demanded from all her staff when customers were around. “The next show is in forty-five minutes. You can wait here or come back later.”
The young man, who was really still a boy, probably a high school student, ran a hand over his neat, dark cornrows.
“What do you want to do?” he asked his companion. “Wait?”
The girl shrugged, biting off a piece of her cotton candy. “I don’t really care. We can hang around.”
“Okay. Two tickets, please.” The boy slipped a fifty-dollar bill through the cut-out in the plexiglass that separated me from the rest of the world. He glanced proudly at the girl, as if to make sure she noticed the money. Or maybe he was just happy he could afford to treat her.
She smiled, flipping her thin, black braids over her shoulder.
I counted out the change and handed him the two tickets. He shoved the tickets in his back pocket and stepped aside, dragging the girl with him.
She tore a piece of her cotton candy and offered it to him. “Want some?”
He held her wrist while eating the candy from her hand, then licked her finger. She giggled, jerking her hand away. He caught her around the middle.
“It’s sweet. Just like you.” He kissed her full, smiling lips.
It looked like a private moment, even if they did it in the middle of the crowded fairgrounds. I shouldn’t be watching them, but I couldn’t tear my gaze away.
The couple were a few years younger than me. Though no one knew how old I really was. Radax, who found me almost twenty years ago, thought I might be about twenty-four or twenty-five now. Yet, unlike these kids, I’d never been kissed. Other than a rare, friendly peck on a cheek or a quick hug from Radax, who had always been like an older brother to me, I’d never been touched by a man at all.
The boy squeezed the girl’s backside, then slid his hand under the hem of her shirt. I imagined his palm pressed to her dark, smooth skin under her top. What did his touch feel like?
The girl hooked her arm around his neck, pressing herself to him. What did it feel like being kissed this deeply?
“How much is a ticket, beautiful?” A male voice yanked me out of my musings.
Startled, I jumped on my wooden stool. Ogling people instead of doing my job—that was a sure way to get in trouble with Madame.
A group of men stared at me from behind the plexiglass.
I cleared my throat, pointing at the painted sign to my right. “The price is here.”
The man in the front, with wind-swept overgrown blond curls and deeply tanned face, studied me closely. Did he catch me watching the teenagers kissing?
Heat warmed my cheeks. I drew my chin into the wide scarf I wore around my neck despite the heat inside my booth.
“Is the show any good?” the blond man asked, not even glancing at the sign with the price.
“It’s the only one of its kind,” I repeated mechanically the words I knew by heart. “Never before seen by people of Earth.”
“How about those people?” He pointed at the group of visitors that started filing out of the exit from the tent.
The latest tour of the menagerie was over. A line of new customers was already forming behind the blond guy and his friends, waiting to buy tickets for the next one. Madame gave several tours a day, in addition to her VIP shows.
“Those guys have just seen it, so you can’t claim it hasn’t been seen by anyone.” The blond guy snickered, poking the nearest of his friends with his elbow, inviting him to join in the fun.
I looked straight into his baby-blue eyes. “They have seen it, but not you. Would you like to buy a ticket?”
He jerked his head to his friends. “She’s kinda snappy, isn’t she?” He squinted back at me. “And cute, too, in a goth kinda way.”
Goth?
I’d heard the word before, but I didn’t know its exact meaning. Despite being born and raised in this world, I knew little about life outside of the menagerie.
One of his friends scoffed, giving me a side eye. “She’s cute alright. Like Wednesday Addams. I bet all her dolls were missing heads when she was a kid.”
What was that supposed to mean?
I had no dolls growing up, or any toys for that matter. I’d had no time to play. For as long as I remembered, I’d always worked at the menagerie, and my chores grew in number the older I got. Like school, friends, or family, dolls were an abstract concept to me. I knew what they were, but I’d never had any.
