Chapter 6

Everyone stared.

Ticket takers stopped taking tickets.

Mothers stopped breathing.

Crickets stopped chirping.

Elvis looked straight up into Lucy's eyes, lifted his left arm, and pointed at the fan above their heads, slightly to the left.

It had stopped spinning.

This child.

Lucy looked across the turnstile at her sister and shook her head. "The fan is out of batteries."

People stood, dumbfounded, as one gentle tear slipped softly out of Elvis's left blue eye, and then another. At number three, he blinked, shifted his gaze to the right, and discovered another fan.

This one worked.

Life resumed as usual.

In the rush of one person at a time slipping through the turnstiles, Laney had left one stroller behind, and gestured to Lucy to bring it in. Lucy slipped her backpack off her shoulder and stowed it in the back luggage rack, directly above her sister's tricolor cowhide purse.

Before slipping through, Lucy paused for a mandatory metal detector scan. When it beeped frantically, the rent-a-cop focused in on the backpack. Lucy, obeying orders, opened it up immediately to reveal her $2,000 camera.

A nod from rent-a-cop sent Lucy, Elvis, and the accompanying stroller through the turnstile and off to enjoy the fair.

Thirty yards later, Laney yanked her purse out from underneath Lucy's camera bag, hurriedly unzipped it, and rapidly closed it once again, stowing it absolutely away underneath camera bags, sippy cups, and a large plastic duffel bag.

"Sheesh, I forgot I still had Leland's gun," she whispered heavily under her breath.

"Laney Anne!!" Lucy exclaimed, shocked.

"What?" their mother said, unperturbed.

"You brought a gun?" Lucy said, too loudly, and was immediately shushed.

"Don't worry, he's meeting us here anyway," Laney said, starting to walk again. Her husband, a police officer, obviously carried a handweapon.

It still shocked Lucy that no one was dead yet.

They continued walking to the bathrooms, their usual stop and rendezvous with the rest of the family.

Lucy, still being held by Elvis's hand, looked around at the hot tubs, the end of the midway, the radio stations set up for remote broadcast, the dippin dots stations, the Budweiser tent... the usual suspects. Nothing changed. And then she saw him.

Tucked somewhere inside the mini-lot display of million dollar recreational vehicles, a boy. A man. A someone.

He didn't wear blue jeans. He didn't wear boots. He wore a newsboy cap in soft shell gray. She saw it almost before she saw him.

And she saw him.

He had a guitar, and he was strumming. Is that what they call it? Touching. Feeling. Tickling. Playing. His hands swayed gently, his fingers brushing little flecks of shade into the open hole of the guitar. How she wished she was those strings.

And then, miracle of all miracles, he glanced up from his guitar. She glanced up, too. When their eyes met, there was a sort of a mild boom.

A couple minutes later, when the crowd dispersed and Lucy no longer saw butterflies, she was told there had actually been a boom. Some guys carrying a wooden pole toward the milk display had inadvertently stopped, sideways, in Lucy's path.

Before her lights had gone out, she'd seen sparks.

And a boy.

A boy.

That was different.