Chapter 14

Once more walking in a slow caravan towards the Embarcadero, Lucy let her mind slowly two-step through sights and sounds of this Fair.

Zac Brown's band warmed up on stage, letting cat calls and good natured slip ups go with a yell.

"There's no dollar sign on peace of mind," they sang...

There were so many food vendors lining this path to the Embarcadero. It was like death row. Oh, FRIED OREOS.

"I thank God for my life."

Turkey legs.

"Sic'em on a chicken."

Fried Snickers. Fried butter. Fried Frito pie.

"I think we lost a chicken."

Fried Jambalaya. Fried beer.

"But you can get another one..."

FUNNEL CAKES.

A perennial favorite--ahem, necessity-- Mr. Ballman bought a couple freshly fried, super powder sugared, awesomely fragrant plates of cakes to split amongst the women and children, who had suddenly lost any ability to proceed in a forward direction.

Lucy wondered if she'd ever have a husband like her father. He loved through action. He spoke almost as rarely as Big Tex, but when he did, you knew he meant every word. But then again her parents met before their 20th birthdays. Lucy wasn't a spring chicken anymore. She was getting older.

"Closes the door before the winter lets the cold in." Who wants an old fried chicken?

Lucy's eyes began to tear up, so she glanced away from her father's smile to look at fat people eat fried food. Her blue eyes landed on an orange and white striped food pavilion. They sold fried Oreos.

At a senior banquet ten years ago,  Lucy's father declared his children were like Oreos. No, DOUBLE STUFFED Oreos. And Lucy was the double stuff in the middle.

"He said I wanna see you again."

Oh man, here come the tears again. Lucy put on her sunglasses, then gazed at her big sister and her little brother. Oh, to be anything but the only unmarried middle child. Unattached. Unloved. Unwanted in the way that all these couples wanted each other. She was only in a family by default.

"When you're in the lost and found..."

She flicked an errant teardrop who'd escaped beneath a purple leopard print rim on her sunglasses.

"I don't want you but I need you."

Zac Brown ended their warm up set with a cacophonous drumroll, making Lucy's mother jump. Her red hair flashed in little rimlets of sun shining between food pavilions.

Lucy looked at them and wondered.

She wondered where she was going.

It seemed like she was always here.