Flor and Miranda Steal the Show Page 4

  The first step was to get her comfortable standing on the board. I dropped a few pieces of kettle corn on it. She waddled over, ate them, and stepped off when she was finished. “Good girl,” I told her. “You got this.”

  I reached into the bag and scattered a little more popcorn on the board. Only this time, when she stepped on and started chewing, I added another handful. Then, before she was finished, I gently pushed the skateboard forward a few inches. And then a few inches more. It bobbled over the hard-packed dirt.

  Betabel lifted her head and grunted.

  “All right, all right, I’m sorry.” I gave her some more kettle corn. “Here you go. See? It’s not so bad. You can do this. You were born for this.”

  But just as I was getting ready to give the skateboard another push, a shriek rang out from the petting zoo. Betabel hopped off the skateboard and scuttled back inside the shed. I sprang off the ground, dropped the bag of kettle corn on the counter, and rushed over. It could have been a chicken pecking someone’s ankle. Or worse, one of the goats mistaking some kid’s finger for a French fry. It had happened before, and it was never good. Angry customers were almost worse than no customers at all.

  I scrambled around to the animal pen, and when I saw what the fuss was about, I threw my head back and groaned. The Fairest of the Fair, all of them in white summer dresses and high-heeled sandals, turquoise sashes draped over their chests. The one in the middle—this was Dinuba, I remembered, so she must have been the Cantaloupe Queen—wore a glittery crown.

  Just like every fair had a local band, each one had a pageant. The Peach Blossom Princesses or the Dairy Debutantes. Whoever they were, whatever town they were from, they always stopped by Rancho Maldonado for a portrait with the animals.

  “One of them gave Chivo a cookie,” Maria whispered, then sucked the last droplets of frozen lemonade through her straw. “And then he licked her finger trying to get the crumbs too. That’s how come she screamed.”

  “Didn’t she see the sign?” I had made it myself: PLEASE DON’T FEED THE ANIMALS. UNLESS IT’S ANIMAL FEED—$1 A BAG.

  “I tried to tell her.”

  Maria and I stood in the back of the pen and watched as Papá offered the girl a wad of paper towels and some hand sanitizer, while the photographer tried to guide the rest of the Cantaloupe Court into two straight lines. “All right, ladies, all right. Just a few more shots. Can one of you hold the rabbit? Scoot in a little closer, aaaaand perfect.”

  Barsetti was there, standing next to the photographer with his hands behind his back. Only he wasn’t watching the Cantaloupe Court, he was studying the zoo. I tried to see it the way he must have. Four goats, five chickens, three bunnies, and a sheep, munching on hay and burrowing in the wood shavings. Wire fencing wrapped around skinny wood posts. Nearly empty.

  But there was so much more he couldn’t see. Like how Papá had been teaching Maria how to trim the sheep’s hooves because she wanted to be a veterinarian when she grew up. Or how, that Thursday before the fair opened, when we were setting up, he traded spots with Ms. Alverson so Lexanne would have some shade while she studied. Maybe we would have had a bigger crowd if we hadn’t set the zoo up in the sun.

  “Hey, isn’t that Libby? It is! Libby, you’re back!” Maria started hopping and waving her arms.

  I looked closer. It was hard to tell at first because her hair was shorter now, but Maria was right. Liberty Chavez. Her dad was a mechanic and they used to travel with the carnival until someone offered him a better job—in Dinuba. They’d left us after last year’s fair. Mr. Barsetti had been furious.

  Libby looked over her shoulder and fluttered her fingers at Maria and me, but she didn’t say hello. She just turned right back around and smiled at the camera.

  Maria’s shoulders dropped, and she wrinkled her nose. “Oh,” she said. “I guess she didn’t hear me.”

  I nodded and squeezed Maria’s shoulder. Libby had heard. But with new friends like that, why would she ever want to admit she had been one of us? That was the way it was outside the carnival. Maria didn’t know because she had never lived anyplace else. She was practically born on the midway.

  The photographer slung her camera strap over her neck. “I think I’ve got what I need here. What’s next?”

  “Cantaloupe milk shakes,” Barsetti said. “And then deep-fried cantaloupe on a stick.” He waved at Papá and they all left, the princesses holding up their dresses and tiptoeing over the hay.

  Maria tossed the empty lemonade cup into a trash basket. “Well, they’re gone. I better go bring out some fresh water.”

  Maria changed out the animals’ water at least once an hour, way more often than we needed to. But Papá had said, “Déjala,” so I left her alone and went searching for Chivo, to make sure he was all right after all the commotion.

  He was fine, of course. Eating out of some girl’s hand as she babbled away to him in the strangest-sounding Spanish I had ever heard.

  Miranda

  (2 P.M.)

  The goat was tiny and black and so much easier to talk to than my dad. He had a white tail and a diamond-shaped patch of white hair right between his eyes. The goat, I mean. Not Dad.

  The goat listened.

  The goat was patient.

  The goat didn’t argue.

  “I mean, I’m the one standing up there and singing in front of everyone. All I was asking was just to try something different. I have ideas too. ¿Me entiendes? You understand?”

  I had a feeling he did. I scratched his nose.

  The petting zoo was the only place I could think of to go when Mom told me to take a walk. It was Lexanne’s mom who had first pointed it out to me, one of those times Ronnie and I met her at the lemonade stand for a grocery run. “Have you met Flor yet? She’s about your age. Her parents run the petting zoo. You should go visit.”

  But I never had time to visit. That was because, except for trips to the grocery store or the laundromat, we mostly rehearsed. Or got ready to rehearse. Or talked about how rehearsal had gone.

  Well. Dad talked about how rehearsal had gone. The rest of us just listened.

  Dad had wanted to be a headliner once. Thought he’d rule the whole ranchera scene. Instead, his band broke up right after Ronnie was born, and he became a DJ and wedding singer. Voted number one in Kern County—that’s what it said on the side of his van—and that was enough for him.

  Until he realized Ronnie and Junior and me could play. Then his dream, like a little seed planted deep in his heart, started growing all over again.

  After a while, after I saw how my voice could make people stand up and dance, that little seed started wrapping its roots around my heart too. Around all our hearts. We wanted a record deal. We wanted to hear our songs on the radio. We wanted to sign autographs and sell out stadiums.

  Except I never stopped wanting all the normal stuff too. Like a pet.

  Dad never let us have one, not even a goldfish. We wouldn’t have had time to take care of it, he said, and we couldn’t take an animal out on the road with us.

  “Well, you don’t mind being out on the road, do you?” The goat nibbled oats and sunflower seeds out of my hand. The brown paper bag of animal food had cost me a dollar’s worth of quarters, and the way he was eating, I had a feeling I was going to have to buy another one pretty soon.

  “Tienes hambre,” I told him as his rough tongue tickled my palm, searching for more oats. “You’re hungry,” I said again in English, just like the voice from You Can Speak Spanish!

  I listened to it so much I had started repeating myself the same way the lady on the recordings did. It really bugged Junior, but I couldn’t help it.

  I reached into the paper bag, grabbed another handful of oats, and held it out to the goat.

  Meh, he bleated happily. Meh, meh.

  “¿Cómo estás?” I asked him. “How are you?”

  “Muy bien, ¿y tu?” I answered in a gravelly, goaty voice. “Very well, and you?”

  I fe
lt someone step up behind me. “He doesn’t talk back, you know.”

  “Huh?”

  It couldn’t have taken more than half a second for me to turn and look up at her. But that was all the time the goat needed to snatch what was left of the oats and devour it, bag and all. Then he came in closer, nosing around my pocket, almost knocking me into a bale of hay.

  “Well, I bet if you offered him enough to eat you could get him to talk.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” She laughed, just a little, and pulled the goat off me, but as soon as she let him go, he charged at my pocket again.

  “What do you have in there, anyway?”

  “Just some quarters,” I said, scratching his neck. “That’s it,” I told the goat. “You ate everything else. Todo.”

  Meh, the goat said as if he didn’t believe me. Meh.

  “Better watch out,” the girl said. “You can’t hide anything from Chivo.”

  “You call your goat… Goat?”

  She looked at the ground and twisted her toe into the dirt “Why? What else would you call him?”

  “I don’t know, is that one named Goat too?” I pointed at another little goat, a brown one, napping in the straw.

  “No,” she said, like it was the most ridiculous thing she’d heard all day. “That’s Cricket.”

  “Hey!” Chivo dove at my pocket again, almost taking a bite out of my denim skirt. “All right, all right. Look, I’ll show you. There’s nothing in there.”

  Well, when I reached into my pocket there were quarters but also two Froot Loops. Must’ve fallen in somehow when Junior and I were throwing them around the Winnebago.

  “This? This is what you want?”

  Meh. Chivo gobbled up the Froot Loops and looked at me, crunching accusingly.

  “See? I told you. You cannot hide anything from Chivo.” She tapped her fingers against a homemade sign that was stapled to the wall. “And, um, you’re not supposed to feed him cereal.”

  “Well, he didn’t exactly ask permission.”

  The girl brushed her hair out of her eyes.

  It was curly and brown.

  She wore a green-and-white baseball shirt.

  Everything clicked.

  I had been pretty far away when I saw her earlier, but I was sure this was the girl from the show. The one who had walked out. Who had run out.

  “Hey, I’ve seen you before. Weren’t you at the Family Side Stage today?” Maybe I could ask her why she left. Find out what she didn’t like, what had gone wrong. “At the lunchtime show? Miranda y los Reyes?”

  She had been watching Chivo, but when I asked about the side stage, her eyes darted back to me. They were all big and round, like maybe something had clicked for her too.

  But a moment later, she looked away again.

  “Nope. I don’t have time to watch the concerts. Anyway, I… I heard the band was overrated.”

  Overrated?

  “Are you sure?” I asked. “Because I… I mean they… I mean, I heard they were okay. Pretty good, actually. That’s just what I heard.”

  It must’ve been someone else I’d seen. Still. She looked so familiar.

  I took off my hat. “I’m Randy, by the way. Ms. Alverson told me about you. You’re Flor, right?” I held out my hand.

  She looked at it a long time before shaking it.

  “Flor,” she finally agreed, barely unclenching her jaw.

  “Flor,” I repeated in my You Can Speak Spanish voice. “Flower.”

  “No. Just Flor.”

  “Just Flor. Sorry.”

  Something had gone wrong, but I didn’t know what. I didn’t know when. A few seconds earlier, we were having a completely normal conversation, and now she looked like she couldn’t stand looking at me. Like if she were a goat, she’d ram me right over the wire fence.

  I chewed the edge of my thumbnail. If I had been singing and I needed to warm up the audience, I would’ve invited someone onstage with me. That always got a big cheer. Or maybe I’d flip my hat into the air and catch it on my fingertip. But offstage, in the petting zoo, there weren’t any tricks for making someone like me. The real me, I mean.

  You can’t make everyone like you. Ronnie’s voice drifted into my thoughts like an old song.

  But just like always, I couldn’t let it go. I had to make her like me. I had to keep trying.

  “So, this is your zoo?”

  “My family’s.” Flor scooped Chivo up and held him across her arm, rubbing his head as if he were a puppy.

  “Have you been with the carnival very long?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Why do you want to know?”

  I put my hat back on. “Well, it’s just that we’re with the carnival too. My family, I mean. We have an act—a musical act. But we’re new here, and I thought you could maybe show me around?”

  She set Chivo on the wood shavings next to a girl with yellow braids who was pouring water into a dish. She was the one who had sold me the bag of food. Chivo stretched his neck to sniff her fingers. For such a small animal, he sure had a big appetite.

  “Go on,” said a man raking out straw on the other end of the animal pen. Flor’s dad, I guessed. “It’s quiet around here. I can manage. Plus, I have help.” The girl with the braids stood and smiled. “Go. Have fun.”

  Instead, Flor took a metal comb that had been resting on one of the fence posts and started brushing wood chips out of the sheep’s wool. “No,” she said, more to me than to him. “It’ll start picking up around here soon. It always does.”

  You can’t take it personally, I tried to remind myself. You can’t make everyone like you.

  I brushed off my skirt and turned to go.

  “Well, it was nice to meet you anyway.” I bent down to pat Chivo on the head. “Adios, Chivo. Good-bye.”

  Mom had said to be back at the motor home by five thirty to get ready for the big main-stage show. That meant I still had three hours to myself. I wasn’t sure where to go next until my rumbling stomach suggested lunch. Except for those two mouthfuls of Junior’s cold Spaghetti-Os, I hadn’t eaten since breakfast.

  Just past the lemonade stand was funnel cake, and a little farther on, corn on the cob. Then onion rings, then garlic fries, then deep-fried Twinkies. There were too many choices to pick just one, but not enough quarters still jangling around my pocket to try everything.

  Dad would have decided for me if he had been there. He always had a plan, even when it came to lunch, and I almost never got a say in it. He would have chosen where we ate, and maybe even what we ordered. Now that I finally had the chance to decide for myself, to do whatever I wanted, well, I couldn’t decide whether what I wanted was a churro or cheese fries. Or something else altogether. I stopped at an information booth and took a map—Your Guide to the Dinuba Cantaloupe Fair—hoping something would catch my eye.

  What caught my eye instead was a gigantic pink gorilla.

  It was almost as tall as the boy standing next to it and twice as wide. He was licking a drop of nacho cheese off his thumb.

  The boy, I mean. Not the gorilla.

  And nachos, I realized right then, were exactly what I wanted.

  “Hi!” I said, walking toward him. “Where’d that come from?”

  He looked around like maybe I was talking to someone else. “Me?” He had light brown hair that fell in a straight line, as straight as Junior’s guitar strings, over his eyebrows. He wore a red-striped polo shirt and plaid shorts and sneakers with no socks.

  “Well, I wasn’t talking to the gorilla. Where did you get that?”

  He tilted his head. “Did your mom and dad give you some spending money or something?”

  I patted my pocket. “A little.”

  He pulled one more cheesy corn chip out of the paper tray and popped it into his mouth. Then he chucked the rest straight into a trash bin.

  “Good,” he said. “I’ll even show you the trick to winning.”

  “Winning?”

  “Sure. Anyone can do it.
I bet you get it on your first try.”

  “My first try?”

  “Yeah, it’s easy.” He picked up the gorilla. “You want to win one of these, right?”

  Just picturing us trying to stuff that thing into Wicked Wanda made me laugh. I wasn’t sure it would have even fit through the door. “No, I didn’t mean—”

  “Oh, you want a different color? That’s okay, they have all different colors: blue, purple, yellow. Teddy bears too. Whatever you want. You like unicorns? They have unicorns.”

  I shook my head. “No. Listen, what I actually wanted to know was where you got the nachos.”

  He glanced over at the trash bin like he was wondering whether he should just pull the tray out again and give it to me. Like it might be easier that way. Then he looked back at me and smiled. He had figured something out.

  “No problem,” he said. “Water Gun Derby, then nachos. I’m Mikey, nice to meet you. Let’s go.”

  He lifted the gorilla over his head and took off into the blinking, buzzing, bustling midway.

  “No, wait, I don’t want…” But it was too late. He wasn’t turning back. It was either go after him or find the nachos on my own. So I trotted off, following the bobbing pink gorilla as Mikey wove through the crowd. Around us, milk-bottle pyramids clattered down as people hurled softballs into them. Lights flashed as basketballs swished through hoops. Little kids cried for balloons or face paint or caramel apples. A man with a mustache said he could guess my weight within three pounds. “Just five dollars, little lady, step right up.”

  Finally, Mikey stopped in front of another game, Water Gun Derby. Giant gorillas and bears and unicorns in every color, just like he’d promised, hung from the top of the booth. Under them was a countertop with squirt guns, numbered one through eight.

  Inside the booth, the game operator leaned against a miniature racetrack with eight plastic horses ridden by eight tiny jockeys. Customers sat on stools behind each water gun and aimed at targets hanging a few feet away. “On your mark!” the operator shouted. “Get set!” He looked around. The players held their breath. “Go!” He blew an air horn.