Chapter 64

Meanwhile, Lucy's nephew was waking up in a most unfamiliar place.

This boy loved everything electrical: fans, motors, gears, outlets.

As he came to, he looked around... and he was quite happy with what he saw.

Chapter 63

Jay and Lucy climbed as far skyward as they possibly could, hanging on for dear life as the pigs roared and the farmers slammed the trailer doors ominously closed.

The darkness closed in around them, punctuated by pig squeals and streaming pockets of light poking through the ventilation holes.

An engine roared to life.

Lucy and Jay's eyes, growing used to the semi-darkness, locked onto each other, and broke into smiles.

The world roared around them.

Their hearts rattled.

Their eyes found quiet.

Chapter 62

Smiles were shortlived.

A sound akin to a heehaw disturbed the almost-lovebirds. Suddenly they were shaking.

Earthquake?

No.

That sound.

Jay and Lucy lifted their heads off the hay to look down past their toes towards the source of the noise. The noise was rapidly coming towards them.

Their eyes widened.

The biggest pigs the pair had ever seen proceeded to continue their sprint into the opened trailer toward them with an echoing cacophony of squeals, oinks, and screams.

Jay and Lucy picked themselves up rapidly, climbing up the trailer walls backwards, together, like very frightened spiders.

Chapter 61

On the other side of the world, Lucy and Jay ditched a giant monster truck, abandoned and keyless.

They ducked behind a shed, racing for cover, finally choosing a parked, covered trailer full of hay.

Falling breathless into the sweet smelling pile, Jay and Lucy fell quiet, suddenly listening hard beneath the silence.

After a few moments clarity, and discovering no audio evidence that they'd been followed, Jay and Lucy each inhaled a breath, turning their heads in the hay to face each other.

They breathed the longest breaths.

Their wide eyes softened. Their cheeks smiled.

Their souls smiled.

Chapter 60

Meanwhile, in their wake, a stunned management team stood, jaws open, watching the exhaust and scream trail float behind a rapidly minimizing monster truck.

The crowd, first baffled, then broke into cheers.

This was a planned stunt, they thought, by the most handsome and charming white boy ever.

He could drive MY truck, they thought.

Their roars eclipsed the entire fair.

Chapter 59

Lucy and Jay bounced and bounded down ramps and across alleys, around fences, into tents, trying to escape.

The further they got from those who wanted them, the more they wanted each other.

Chapter 58

As the bodyguards opened the doors to jump out on the platform and surveil the encroaching estrogen, Lucy's nose flickered.

She tried.

She tried so hard.

And eventually she failed, in that terribly way that happens so often when you try extraordinarily hard to prevent something from happening, and then the very thing you were trying to prevent happens with the excessive combined force of the thing and your misdirected efforts.

BLASHEW!!!!

The end of her sneeze kept going so long you could hum a verse of happy birthday from mouth open (eyes closed, eyebrows up) to the choo.

This was the kind of sneeze that would disrupt an entire church service, and then ripple in echoes of laughter around the room.

Lucy and her sister would have laughed hysterically.

But Lucy opened her eyes post sneeze to see a body guard's face mere inches from her own. He had not yet shut the door.

His face shone and dripped in a most unusual way.

Just when Lucy realized it was actually her snot sliding down his forehead and nostrils, the bodyguard realized who had sneezed on him, and that she was hiding underneath Jay's seat, clutching his left shoe.

The bodyguard's face changed like a wind chime.

Jay, just in time, gunned the engine and sped forward down the exit ramp, leaving his bodyguards on their bums, eating his dust.

Chapter 57

A swarm of fan girls had grown antsy waiting for Jay to slow-poke it on over to the Chevy Main Stage, and were throwing beer bottles into the air, pulling each other's hair, and fighting for proximity.

As Jay arrived at the designated parking spot, his two bodyguards leapt onto the platform, jumped to the sideboards, opened the doors mid-flight, and launched themselves protectively into Jay's monster truck.

Lucy, hearing a door thump before opening, rolled herself forwards underneath the front seat in the nick of time. Jay felt her head brush against his boots, glanced in the rear view mirror, and sighed with relief.

"We're taking it up," the bodyguards said, buckling their seatbelts.

"Up?!" Jay careened his neck forward to look at the giant display of Chevrolets hoisted at various and incredible heights above ground on a platform behind the stage.

He swallowed.

"That way," the bodyguards said, pointed precariously to the right, and dramatically up.

Jay felt Lucy's hands wrap around his left ankle, and he tucked it closer to her as she closed her eyes.

He secured his seatbelt, tipped his brow to the orange-vested safety worker flagging him up a just-lowered entry ramp, and put it back in drive.

Lucy's face, absurdly close to the bottom of Jay's boot, suddenly flexed.

Oh no.

Her nose twitched.

Please God.

Don't let me sneeze...

Chapter 56

With the blind, narrow-minded, and big-mouthed cowardice common to most terrorists, the three sordid Mexicans crawled out of their gassy pickle-shaped tomb to retrieve the camera bag.

After Lucy bolted, they spotted the camera bag's stroller being abandoned by a spit-up covered mother.

No one was watching.

They made their move.

Chapter 55

"Your parents told you that?" Jay managed to say, both hands on the wheel, one eye in the rear view mirror.

"No!" Lucy exclaimed, shocked. "They would never threaten me."

She described the two men to Jay, who grew increasingly irate.

By the time he parked the truck in front of the Chevy Main Stage, his blood reached two hundred and twelve degrees.

Chapter 54

As the engine hum began to sound like a friendly rhythm, Lucy gathered courage to speak.

"They told me to stay away from you," she whispered.

"What?!" Jay shouted, letting go of the wheel to spin round and give her his full attention.

An exterior shriek reminded him he could kill someone... so he whipped back around to face forward, yanking the wheel to steer the truck off its collision course with a cotton candy cart.

Both white knuckle hands on the wheel, he let his voice go to her, eyes straight ahead.

"They said what?" he said, low, almost a growl.

Pause.

"They told me to stay away from you," she fought a wet frog in the back of her throat, rumbling and threatening to sob. "Or else."

His white knuckles turned red.

Chapter 53

Paralyzed by fear, Lucy lay in the back of the pickup truck.

Egged on by the crowd and his manager's evil eyes, Jay began to drive at two and a half miles per hour toward his intended destination.

It took everything he had not to veer off course, gun it, and take this fledgling love far far away from all this madness.

Chapter 52

Across the park, three fake Mexicans were in a pickle.

On strict instructions from their boss, they were to apprehend Lucy's camera, specifically its memory card, and destroy it.

They'd sweatily traversed the entire park before discovering members of Lucy's family in the greenhouse.

To monitor the exit and remain unseen, they clamored, one after another, into a large papier mache three dimensional pickle billboard directly in front of the greenhouse.

They poked minute holes through the eye-level pickle bumps and waited for their opportunity to snatch.

Unfortunately, with the ant-like activity inside the greenhouse, they could barely keep up with Lucy's whereabouts and which of the two identical strollers housed Lucy's camera bag.

After thirty minutes, the pickle began to overheat.

The three fake Mexicans began to breathe heavier.

The three fake Mexicans' stomachs began to rumble.

The three fake Mexicans had to make a decision about whether to ruin the pickle or abandon their posts for a bathroom stall.

Stupid Tex-Mex.

Chapter 51

Every time it rains outside her family's house, a familiar frog begins a peculiar trek.

Back and forth from one end of Lucy's street to the other, this frog hops, making a beeline down the exact center of the street.

He hops high, and he keeps going, back and forth, back and forth, until the rain that began has met its end, and then he disappears.

Lucy, laying in the back floor of a monster truck, felt her tears going back and forth, back and forth from her throat to her eyes.

She closed both, trying to keep it hopping back and forth, not spilling over. She clenched her fists, trying to figure out why that frog hopped.

Was he completely overjoyed? Was he frightened?

Was he waiting for his world to drown?

She opened her eyes, and saw Jay.

Chapter 50

Lucy, still slightly asleep, was jolted awake as she ricocheted forward, then slammed into the seat back.

Jay whipped around to see what bird he'd flown.

It was his bird.

His alarm turned to joy turned to concern.

He put his monster in park, unbuckled his seatbelt, and began to jump over the seat back to rescue her.

Shaken to life from dream, she initially saw his face peek over in one of those glowing white orb lights of a dream.

She smiled.

As her brain woke up, her smile turned into dismay, and then into fear.

She put her hand up, motioning Jay to stop. He paused, poised to leap.

As the tears began to escape from her eyes, Jay's heart convulsed. He wanted to suction every sadness she had ever felt out of her heart.

He wanted to save her.

Chapter 49

Lucy started watching the rainbows inside her eyelids. Her stomach began to growl.

She squeezed her legs tighter to her chest, thinking about how her grandmother used to eat onions like apples.

Onion Rings would be awesome right about now. She smiled, seeing Onion Rings inside her eyelids now. With ketchup.

After a few minutes, the endorphins of imaginary eating began to kick in. The adrenaline fate left her nervous system ready for a crash.

She hugged her knees, smiled, and fell asleep.

Approximately nine minutes later Jay climbed into the cab, paused to wave at thirty television crews below, and buckled himself into the driver's seat.

He closed his eyes.

Sigh.

Grasping a hand-sized key with white knuckles, Jay said a prayer and almost strained a muscle trying to start the engine. It came to life with a lurch, a grind, a squeal, and a splat, the latter two being Lucy, bluntly awoken from her nap and thrown into the floorboard behind Jay's seat.

He slammed on the brakes.

Chapter 48

Lucy read thirty seven messages of love and gratitude and apology and condescension and nagging and regret from her mother upside down.

Whether it was her topsy turvy position, stuck upside down through a monster truck's sunroof, or the barrage of emoticons beeping into her brain via her eyes, Lucy suddenly felt flush with blood to her head.

She precariously tipped her feet upward, trying to dislodge herself from gravity with gravity.

If only she had the keys, she could turn on the engine, stretch for the control panel, and open the sunroof a little more so she could squeak through.

But the crowd like mice at the far end of the earth began to move from that busy corner of the truck pavilion toward hers, and Lucy worried.

No one was above her, but still: what if they saw her underwear?

She'd better squeeze.

Sucking in her insides until she felt inside out, Lucy closed her eyes and pushed.

Plop.

Landing in the backseat, she flipped her hair out of her face, hugged her phone, and curled up into the fetal position, eyes closed, to ponder her next move.

Where do you go when everyone wants you and nobody knows you?

Downtruck, Jay was thinking the same.

Chapter 47

Lucy, meanwhile, still sobbing in a port-o-john, began to hear other things besides the ruckus of people outside the door.

A faint beeping from the area of her nether regions at first rolled off her ears like lint, and then, through its persistence, penetrated her ear drum like fire.

There was a beep coming from her bum.

Lucy let go of her face and wiped her tear stained hands on her dress, then froze to wait for a beep.

If only she had an echolocation device.

Wait.

Wait.

BEEP.

Beep.

Beep.

Lucy stood up, eyes still adjusting to the darkness of the room sans tears.

Beep beep beep.

It couldn't be.

But those men had said, "Or else."

That was a threat.

They meant business.

Who knows what they would do.

And this beeping, it sounded like something... not a microwave exactly, but something Lucy had heard somewhere before.

She suddenly had a flash of MacGyver's face across her brain. And then the A-team. And then Daniel Craig.

What was it they all had in common?

Think, Lucy, think.

BEEP.

A bomb!!!!

Bombs beeped. They beeped before they blew up and killed you!!!

Lucy hit the wall of the port-o-john so hard that it actually rocked on its axis.

Fumbling around in the darkness, she finally found the locked latch and released it.

She hit the ground like a beast, running on all fours at first, then after a collision with a Jay Walker and the Texas Rangers sign while looking back at the port-o-john to see if it had exploded yet, she rolled to her feet and ran.

She ran.

After a long time and a single breath, she made it to a Monster Truck display.

High, she thought. I need to get high, so those men can't find me and try to blow me up again.

Seeing a crowd gathered to one side of the massive outdoor pavilion, she scooted toward an abandoned corner with the largest most colorful truck, and climbed, tire tread by tire tread, until she was in the back of the truck.

And in Texas, when you say back of the truck, you don't mean back seat. You mean bed.

She laid down, face up, closed her eyes and caught her breath.

BEEP.

Lucy opened her eyes and saw white above her. Have I died? No, it's the tent. Yikes, it's a bomb. They knew I'd come here. How'd they know? I don't know. Get away, get away... Quick!

She leapt to her feet and, realizing she wouldn't be able to climb down fast enough, decided to await her fate in a fetal shaped ball in the front seat of the truck. At least it probably had an air bag to cushion the blow.

The doors were locked. She would have to jump for it.

An open sun roof on top of the cab let her try.

She jumped.

She soared.

She partially made it.

Her body hung through the sunroof, upside down, face first, butt out in the air underneath the big white tent, feet flapping in the breeze. She was stuck.

She sighed.

And then something fell from the sky. From above her head, near the roof of the cab, her cell phone slid out of her upside down pocket and clonked her on the chin.

Her cell phone.

It came to rest on the driver's seat, face up.

It beeped.

Oh, she thought.

A message from my Mom.

Chapter 46

Lucy's mother sat on a bench in a sad little greenhouse, texting her beloved daughter.

After typing everything she could think of in one long epic apology text, she put her phone in her pocket and folded her hands.

Every thirty seconds thereafter she would think of something else to say, pull out her cell phone, and send Lucy another quick text.

Finally satiated with her sorry, she lifted her eyes towards the Greenhouse door, looking past her other daughter, her son, her grandchildren, into the wild blue yonder.

Backlit by bright sunshine, a human shape appeared in her field of vision, coming through the double doors like a breath of fresh air.

Her husband.

They would celebrate 35 years together in September.

He walked directly towards her, across the tropics, and with each step his bright smile faded a little more until he was upon her with a worried, downcast haze.

She looked up at him.

He sat down.

She reached out for his hand.

"She knows about California," she said.

He sighed.

"Where is she?" he said.

"I don't know."

After a long pause punctuated by a flat train engine choo chooing above their heads, she spoke again.

"She wants to be so independent," she said, close to tears.

"You worry about her too much," he said, looking at her for a nanosecond, squeezing her hand forever.

She looked back at him.

"Hello kettle," she said. "I'm pot."

They both smiled, and sighed, and stopped smiling.

They held hands for the longest time, gazing out those greenhouse doors at the world who wanted their daughter.

They wanted her first.

Chapter 45

Manager's cell phone twerped, and he, still mulling over the problem of the gobsmacked audience and his capricious country star, absentmindedly plucked it from his pocket.

As he began to read the Google alert flicking across the screen, his eyes widened, bigger and bigger until his face looked like he'd just pooped worms.

A YouTube video just posted of Jay's rogue pop/jazz/crooner (re: decidedly anti-country) ballad had already raked in three and a half million views.

"What is it?" Jay asked, not caring. His deflated heart was quietly exploding all over the St. Augustine underneath his blue jean-ed bum.

"Nothing." Manager was in full on methamphetamine mode. "Let's go."

He flipped Jay's discarded cowboy hat off the ground with his boot, catching it midair and brushing off the dust in one fast left-handed motion, and grabbing Jay by the ear with his other hand.

Jay winced but stood anyway.

Manager smacked him in the belly with his own hat.

"Come on, Walker, get it together," he said.

Jay put on his hat.

They were headed to a post-concert press briefing at the Monster Truck display, where Jay would be photographed driving a Chevrolet.

Promotional consideration.

Chapter 44

Jay frantically searched high and low for Lucy, eventually making his way into an empty circus striped puppet tent. His manager sat on the only chair, in the center of the room, hands folded on his knee, calmly watching Jay.

Jay exploded.

"Did you see the girl? Where is she?"

After a long 15 second pause, the manager calmly looked into Jay's frantic eyes.

"What exactly was that?" he asked, his anger threatening to boil.

Jay, already almost through the curtain on his way out, turned to look. He held onto the striped tent flap with his left hand.

"Did you know your record deal could be gone faster than these people fry beer? And what would your father think of you then?" The manager childed Jay like a child.

Jay let the flap fall, his hand tucking into his pocket.

He stared at stripes for a long time. Finally turning to face his music, he closed his eyes.

"How are we going to fix this with your fans?" his manager said, shaking his head.

Jay opened his eyes.

Chapter 43

Lucy found herself in a musty port-o-potty with two very large humans.

After what seemed like an eternity of adjustment, Lucy's eyes began to flex their muscles, allowing her to see gradually after being thrust from the bright sunlight into an unsanitary and crowded plastic water closet.

When her pupils focused on the two gruff faces towering near the ceiling, she wished she was blind.

Their angry, rough, exceptionally threatening countenances peered down on in with distorted depth perception so that their heads looked even larger than they were, which already were quite large, having actually been appointed to their positions because of their size.

Lucy felt very, very small. She almost lost her knee strength, beginning to sink down away, away, from doom.

A slight rustle from a fecal-feasting animal down below her buttocks stopped her descent in its tracks.

She bolted upright, accidentally bumping bellies with her captors.

They didn't speak for ages.

Having been instructed by Jay's manager to keep her quiet for as long as possible before letting her go, they merely stood and stared at her, watching her lips and eyes quiver like flibbertigibbets.

Five fearful minutes later they issued her an ultimatum.

She must never look Jay in the face again, or she would end up below the port-o-potty, instead of in it.

And he must never see her again, either.

Not ever.

The men left the john.

Lucy sat down and cried.

Chapter 42

Lucy's pause, reflected in an entire audience, meandered over to Jay's manager, who'd been on his cell phone again.

With fire eyes cooled by a completely numb tongue, Manager took off his glasses, staring at Jay's profile.

Jay's band stood stalwart, too, open-mouthed and exceedingly confused.

From out of Jay's mouth came a melody not even remotely country. If music genres were politics, this brand new tune was decidedly partisan, and moreover was antithetically non-country and western.

His words dripped, agave nectar flow, sweet acoustic guitar strings plinking almost like a harp.

The crowd ceased everything: breathing, laughing, cheering, screaming, smiling, swooning. They stood like cocknied zombies, half buzzed on fried beer and fully confused at the un-boot-scootable-tune somehow being broadcast to their ears on Texas air space.

Lucy was the only one who eventually cracked a smile. It crept into her ears first, and then her heart. One side of her mouth began to flick itself slowly nearer to her nose, trying to fly.

Near the end of the song, Jay spotted her, a beacon of pink light at the end of a tunnel of dull dirt-colored darkness. Backlit by sun and front light by a beaming half smile, Jay fell even more in love with her. His lovesick, forlorn intonation suddenly flipped upwards to fulfillment.

Smiling through the last phrase and delightfully striking the final notes, Jay left his guitar on stage and bolted, straight forward, across the barrier, flinging his cowboy hat into the crushed and quiet crowd, directly toward Lucy's glowing light.

Suddenly a shadow passed in front of her, a small crowd of intoxicated and rather large Texans. Jay sidestepped to duck around them, eager to hold her in his arms.

But when he emerged from its edge, she was gone.

She was very gone.

Chapter 41

When Lucy liberated her afternoon, she left everything except her cell phone tucked into its forgotten home in her camera bag in the stroller's nether regions.

Jay thought about her relentlessly.

Perched on the inside of a dressing room wall, he let his head fall back, closing his eyes, drowning out sounds of his manager making plans and giving commands.

His first set started in 90 seconds.

Lucy, with tears in her eyes, speed walked through the madness of the Midway, lost in her thoughts, hearing sirens and hammer blows and watching scary teenage cowboy goths carry giant monkeys over their shoulders like comrades.

Jay braced himself for a freefall.

"60 seconds," his manager directed, smashing a well-worn and highly embellished cowboy hat down upon Jay's bowed head.

Lifting his head, Jay's eyes were almost gray.

He was blue.

"You know he's never come before," his manager said. "I don't know why you'd be so upset now."

He put his arm on Jay's.

"Buck up, cowboy," he said, patting him hard. "You're on."

Jay exited a door, climbed some steps, heard cheering like the muted roar of cherry bombs in his ears, and raised an arm and a flashy smile to greet three hundred screaming fans. His legs carried him to center stage, his heart lagging behind, downtrodden.

He took his seat, and began to play.

First song in the set was a guitar heavy boot scooter, and he took solace in the fact that the outer pep distracted from his deep deep slow sadness.

He played to the crowd, ransoming his soul for a happy twenty-seven minutes.

And then.

Then he broke down.

After the final song, Jay glanced sideways at his manager, the bandmates staring hard at the back of his cowboy head.

"And now," he said into the microphone, "I'd like to play you guys a new song."

The crowd's cheer were bigger than the manager's surprised eyes: a feat, because they bugged almost to Tennessee.

"It's a little different than what I've done before," Jay continued, turning to face the crowd with a more genuine grin than he'd mustered in a while. "I hope you like it."

Jay closed his eyes, held his guitar like a lover, and began to croon, unaccompanied, about a girl on a bus in California.

Lucy, finally free from Midway madness, strolled aimlessly down International Boulevard, carried along by the early chords of a song.

The song was coming from some sort of platform. Oh, she thought, it's the Chevy Main Stage. I must be close to the turkey legs.

She remembered why as a photographer she never shot weddings. It was because she spent the entire time staring at the bride, wondering what made her so much more lovable than she.

And then there was a song in the background of her crazy mind, calling.

She began to listen.

Wait a minute, this was real.

She looked up.

There was Jay, on a stage, with a guitar, singing about a girl he saw on a bus in California.

Singing about how he loved her.

She stopped walking.

Chapter 40

Lucy sat with Kristi a long time on a rotund white park bench amidst greenery in a Midway Greenhouse at the State Fair, making small talk and watching other people live their lives beneath a solar-powered train chugging effortlessly around and around and around in a never ending clockwise turn.

Kristi was in the CIA, but she couldn't talk about it.

Lucy wasn't even supposed to know.

But there they sat, surrounded by children shrieking with excitement and botanists leaning into specimens with bespectacled eyes and rounded backs.

"I miss living alone," Lucy uttered softly.

Kristi heard melancholy and, not accustomed to wading through emotional pools with others, decided to change the subject.

A thundercloud rolled by in the form of a napless baby in a vomit-covered stroller.

It was Lucy's sister-in-law, in a cloud of frustration, loudly ordering Kristi to retrieve Lucy's oldest nephew from the awning where he was hanging upside down and attempting to flip his hair back and forth.

With a shout, she was off toward the parking lot to intercept Lucy's father and pull a spare vomit-less stroller from the back of his truck. She would also hand him the baby while she took off on a mad walk to the nearest changing room with somewhat fresh clothing.

Lucy, suddenly filled with angst at the thought that she would see her father, needed to climb away. There were far too many cobwebs in her mind.

She'd never yelled at him. She'd never been angry with him. She'd never had a bone to pick with him. She'd always trusted him. WHY HAD HE FOLLOWED HER TO CALIFORNIA?

And then another, deeper, more insidious secret surfaced.

WHY DIDN'T HE TELL HER JAY WAS JUST ANOTHER STALKER?

A butterfly landed on Lucy's face, and she shrieked.

Her mother flipped a giant palm frond out of the way to see what all the ruckus was about, and the leaves smacked Lucy square in the eyes.

She was glad of it, because she had a reason for the tears.

"I'm going to go see the Budweiser horses before they're saddled up for the parade, okay Mom?" She said.

Lucy had never done her own thing at the fair before.

Every year, every time, she silently hobbled along, stuck to her family like glue, or sticking them together, or sticking it out, or whatever it had been that she'd done for twenty something years.

But now she needed to be alone, not only in her own silence, but in her own space, away from them.

On her way out, she turned back to her flabbergasted mother and shouted, "Oh, and tell Dad I know about California."

A train guffawed, and her mother's jaw fell down.

Lucy turned into the bright blue light and ran.

Someone in the bushes watched her go.

There would be trouble.

Chapter 39

A telephone call arrived.

Lucy and her mother were to meet the rest of the clan over in the Greenhouse, as after the corn kernel had been safely removed from Max's septum, his mom received a phone call from her best Army friend, who had just arrived at the fair to meet them and found herself lost, upon which time at the advice of her friend decided to stay put and wait for Lucy's clan to find her.

They went.

Trains and trees and ceiling and sky all in the same time.

Jungle.

Fortress.

Amusement.

Growth.

Flutters.

Leaves.

Birds.

Air.

Lucy felt her blood pressure sinking, and she breathed deeply, closing her eyes against the chaos.

Green.

Chapter 38

She stood up.

Fire flashed in her eyes. All traces of fear were gone, suddenly replaced by anger.

She looked down on him. "In California," she said, barely a whisper, but loud enough for him to hear his mistake.

"It's not what you think," he said, jumping to his feet.

She glared at his sorry face, so apologetic, and yet, so reminiscent of Sneller's after he'd been caught.

She tucked her chin into the air, turned 180 degrees toward Dallas, and walked away.

He called her name, but knew better than to follow her.

At least in broad daylight she might be all right.

But maybe he should...

Lucy took one look back over her shoulder and saw his hand reaching out for her and his steps beginning in her direction, his eyes.

She took off running, feeling faster and yet less free than seven hours ago on that Texas dirt road.

Lucy reached for her cell phone, rummaging through an invisible purse on her shoulder for a good thirty seconds before realizing she'd left her entire existence in the bottom of her sister's stroller.

It'd always been her nightmare that she would get left behind at the fair. She always pictured herself as the child crying at the Lost Children Stand with policemen up in their turrets scouting for the laissez-faire parents who'd been too consumed with corn dogs to keep up with their children.

Finally the dream came true, but she was an adult. An alone adult. An anomale. A singleton. A lost baby in a grown woman's body. Shoot.

Her sprint to the butter exhibit over in record time, Lucy paused beside the refrigerated glass window, leaning into it to catch her breath, feeling Marilyn laughing at her backside.

She spotted her mother across the hall, looking at an intricate beaded headdress.

"Mom!" Lucy called, relieved.

"Look at that!" Reba said, cooing over a beaded saddle blanket.

Great. They didn't even know she'd been gone.

"Where is everyone?" Lucy asked.

"Oh, Max stuck a piece of corn up his nose at the cooking demonstration," she replied. "So they went over to the dairy exhibit's nursing station. They have needle nose tweezers."

So matter of fact.

"Are you ready?" she asked, glancing at Lucy.

Lucy took one last glance at the wall with her portrait on it.

If she ever saw Carlos again she would...

Wait. If she ever saw Jay again she would...

Wait.

Her dad. IN CALIFORNIA.

"Yes, I'm ready," she said.

She'd never had a bone to pick with her father before.

Here it came.

Chapter 37

"Was that Carlos?" Jay said, looking straight forward over his hands, with his elbows propped up on his splayed knees.

Lucy flinched, careening backwards into the comforting wall of the dumpster. She shrank down small. She looked over her shoulder.

"No, no, no," Jay said, letting his right hand float into the air, pressing down the tension, calming her nerves. He wanted to let it keep going to her knee, or her shoulder, or her heart, but she didn't need that right now.

She needed protecting.

"Was Carlos one of the ones who grabbed you?" he said.

She placed her wide eyes on his like high beams, eyebrows arched, and slowly shook her head, mouth pinched.

He sighed.

She sighed.

"Who were those girls chasing you?" she finally whispered.

Wanting to divert her attention from that stoic fact, he deferred.

"I thought they were after you," he said.

She looked at him.

A small smile passed through his brow. She smiled back. He smiled bigger, and his teeth came out.

They laughed it off.

Soon they were upside down, on their backs, laughing uproariously: chuckling so hard they cried, and their lungs screamed.

Birds flew across the picture perfect sky above.

"You know, your Dad told me in California this happened to you all the time, but I didn't believe him," Jay laughed.

Lucy stopped laughing.

Chapter 36

Huddled behind a garbage bin in a back alley, Lucy let her back sink into the strangely comforting, smelly metal siding. All the air went out of her brain, and she closed her eyes with a sigh. 

Jay took one last look over the top and then sank down beside her, holding her closed eyelids with his caress of a gaze. The air went out of him, too.

After a few moments, Lucy's knees came up to her elbows, and her chin to her hands. She looked sideways at Jay. 

"What just happened?" She said, in a weary, wondering tone just above a whisper.

He looked at her. She closed her eyes, buried her brow in her elbows. 

He opened his mouth to explain the rabid fan girls, but decided he better let that cat stay in the bag a while longer, at least until she was stable. 

He lifted his arm to place it in a comforting loop around her shoulders. Wait. 

He reckoned those guys grabbing at her in the chase and at least the one who'd taken her picture would be more than happy to seize advantage in a time like this, and he reconsidered. 

Instead he stood up to peek over the dumpster lid one more time, just for reassurance.

He sighed, too.

Chapter 35

When Lucy's pink tweed clad body struck the fencing, she catapulted over the edge, holding on with all ten fingernails.

Her succinct grip upon the wire fencing lifted it quite literally out of the ground.

At first, two large pot bellied pigs stood in disbelief, suddenly face to face with a very large tortoise. And then madness struck the boars with such snarky elegance that they bellowed and charged, attempting to ram the tortoise in the 12 inch gap between fencing and floor.

These pigs, quite large and valuable for the size of their bodies and not their brains, ended up misjudging the distance and rammed each other in the face.

Quite stunned, the pigs needed a moment to regain their senses, upon which time they realized their tusks had become entangled. A few shrieks and side steps later and they were actually standing atop a giant tortoise, attempting to disentangle themselves.

Sensing danger, this tortoise made a slow and peremptory beeline for her mate, across the enclosure.

An unbalanced pig is an extraordinarily precarious thing, and these two were no exception. Lucy was still clinging to the off-kilter fence when two pigs locked in a tasmanian style swirl-off rolled off the back of the tortoise and tumbled toward her.

Jay, attempting to reach her, got his belt loop snagged on a fence post, and was rendered useless.

Her eyes grew larger as the swine approached, helter skelter, and as they struck the fence below Lucy like two three ton bowling balls, her rapid ascent and then more rapid descent through gravity was made more comical by her limbs, moving in a swimming motion, trying to gain traction midair.

She landed atop Jay, who cushioned her fall with his own body, and the help of the thick pile of sawdust and hay beneath them.

They were upright just in time to see their pursuant crowd approaching at breakneck speed.

As they began to run, shaking off sawdust with their sprints, another pot bellied pig began to scream, followed by an agonized honk.

Passing the fowled up mess of fencing, Lucy turned her head to the right one more time to see that the last tumble those two pigs had taken slammed them into the side of the goose enclosure.

There were suddenly birds in the air, flying in random formation, defecating, screaming, and colliding with derision.

In a nearby pen, the llamas and camels were so frightened by the cataclysmic events that they began to spit, launching large rancid streams into the general public, including Jay and Lucy's chasers.

This crowd, intent on catching their prey, suddenly found themselves covered in funky green grime that smelled of twice chewed dog food and week old fish. Camel spit, after all, is really chewed up cud: food regurgitated from one of the chambers of its fore-stomach.

And so, as the agitated and still entwined pot bellied pigs began to ram the goose fence, geese began to flutter into every pen in the petting zoo. Some of rapscallions within those pens took wishful chomps, and some were successful.

Children screamed, geese honked, and feathers flew until they landed upon the delightfully sticky camel spit covering most of the crowd.

When the fastest of the pack began to suffer from calamities related to goose feathers plastered over their eyeballs, the rear collided like dominoes.

And suddenly, Jay and Lucy, with one more glance behind them at the goose and sawdust cloud, realized they were in the clear.

They ran to safety.

Chapter 34

Jay and Lucy raced across Nimitz Drive to Pan Am Arena and the Children's Barnyard. In a flutter of chicken feathers and fowl screams, they flew into the shadows.

They were already halfway to the far wall when their eyes finally adjusted to the dimmer light of the indoor petting zoo.

A frightened giraffe heehawed and llamas long fur waved in the vortex of wind created by the pair's sprint across the hay covered pathway.

Approaching a left turn at the far back wall, Lucy took a glance behind her.

Her left foot, attempting to pivot, hit a slippery layer of hay, and kept sliding.

Lucy looked like an ice skater as she glided swiftly away from Jay's outstretched right hand.

With all the grace of Michelle Kwan, she shot towards the pot bellied pig display.

In slow motion she hit the waist-high temporary enclosure, and vaulted over the top, hands still outstretched, one towards the wall, one towards Jay.

As she soared, she made eye contact with Jay.

He almost smiled.

She looked like a bird.

And then he realized that based upon her current trajectory she would strike a three way barrier between the pot bellied pigs, the giant tortoise, and approximately one hundred geese.

He put his hand over his mouth, biting his tongue.

This was not a time for humor.

Chapter 33

As the music swirled to a crescendo, and the flurry of people and puppets on stage swung round in precariously rapid circles, Jay grabbed Lucy's hand and pulled her across his body, following her into the darkness of stage left.

Their puppet costumes rattled to a quiet slump on scuffed floor slats.

For a brief moment, their melancholic afterpulse almost erupted in mirth.

And then truth came back.

Fear crept into her eyes like a lunar eclipse.

He comforted her hands, holding them tighter.

She was frightened, and she let go, backing away.

He saw her eyes asking him questions.

There was no time.

A curtain rattled.

She grabbed his hand, and they ran.

Chapter 32

Jay and Lucy, breathless with calamity and epinephrine, stumbled onto the black stage, startling an entire audience, and causing a young thespian to pee her pants.

Feeling the threatening bustle at the back of the room that was their pursuant crowd, Jay and Lucy stuck their faces into the back of a couple of life size muppets.

Music thumped from a carnival loudspeaker.

Lucy and Jay, momentarily lost in a frozen sea of norepinephrine, glanced into each other's eyes.

Jay extended his floppy muppet hand towards Lucy's.

She felt the thumping rhythm bleat like a lamb in her heart.

She extended her hand, delicately, touching his.

She smiled.

He smiled.

They began to dance.

Dance.

Twirl.

Jump.

Flee.

Fly.

Higher and higher.

Round and round.