Nothing to Lose by Alex Flinn Page A

girl was riding, black tank top shoved up, her head in her boyfriend’s lap.
    “People think they’re invisible up there. Or maybe they just don’t care what we see.” The car came closer until I could see exactly what they were doing. The girl was really young, maybe twelve or thirteen tops. Probably there with her parents and talked them into letting her go out on her own. The guy seemed older, my age. I looked away.
    “You wouldn’t believe the shit I see,” Cricket said.
    I thought he meant the night before. I said, “Kirstie and me, we didn’t…”
    “Yeah, I know you didn’t,” he said. “Kirstie ain’t like that. She likes her privacy a lot for a carny. We screw with her about it all the time.”
    “Do you and she… I mean, do you…”
    He laughed. “Yeah, she’d like to think so, huh? But no. I’m not crushing Her Kirstieness. But I love her, you know?”
    I nodded.
    Cricket looked at the wheel, and I followed his eyes to the couple from before. When I looked back at Cricket, he’d moved to the ride controls. He stopped it just as the couple reached bottom. They didn’t budge.
    I knew what he wanted me to do. I walked toward them. “Okay! Ride’s over.”
    The girl started pulling down her shirt, quick, not making eye contact. Real young. The boy opened his eyes.
    “Let us off last,” he said.
    “Sorry. You have to wait in line to ride again.”
    From the corner of my eye, I saw Cricket nodding toward a uniformed cop. He was standing about twenty yards away, collecting his free orangeade from a tired-looking orangeade wench. But before I had time to point him out, the girl climbed over her boyfriend. “Come on, Ian.” She still didn’t look at me.
    I moved away.
    When the ride loaded up, Cricket came back over.
    “So you’re, like, the morals police?” I said, laughing.
    “Hey, you let people do that, they mess up the seats.” He laughed too. Then he got serious. “The marks, the people in the real world, they think we carnies are, like … what do you call those dudes in India no one talks to?”
    “Untouchables.” I was surprised he knew that.
    “Right. We’re untouchables. But that’s because they don’t see what’s happening in their own clean little world. The stuff that’s going on in front of their own eyes.”
    I thought of Walker and his Man-of-the-Year dinner, and I knew what he meant.
    Cricket fished out a crumpled ten. “Why don’t you check with Kirstie, then come back when she tells you to bail?”
    I did that. And when Kirstie told me to come back at ten when the carnival closed, I almost didn’t mind.

THIS YEAR
     
    “Put the mole in the hole. Prize every time.” It’s five thirty Saturday. Only about forty hours until I see Mom. My guard is up, but I do my job. I focus on two girls in sorority jerseys and real short shorts. “I’m not talking pocket-sized junk either,” I tell them. “We’ve got really big junk here.”
    One of the girls—the one chewing gum—giggles. “You’re cute.”
    Her friend nudges her. “Lisette…”
    “Hey, Lisette,” I say, “ever play this game?” I know how to get money from girls.
    “How old are you?” Lisette asks me. She has dark hair and looks a bit like Kirstie, if you don’t look too close.
    Her friend’s still nudging her. “Lisette, are you trippin’?”
    “Yeah, better watch out for me, Lisette.” I grin, knowing how she’ll react. When her friend looks away, I say, “I’m Robert. I’m nineteen. Want to try?”
    Lisette hesitates. “Can I have a freebie?”
    I shake my head. “Wouldn’t be fair.”
    Lisette’s smile tells me she’s not mad, that, in fact, I have a shot with her. There have been a lot of shots this year, a lot of opportunities, both with other carnies and with townies who like to feel wild by making it with one of us. Kirstie once told me carnies sleep around so much because they’re lonely … even though they’re never alone.
    “Does it help?” I’d asked