The Complete Short Fiction of Charles L. Grant, Volume IV: The Black Carousel by Charles L. Grant Page B

her eyes.
    Maddy snorted, jabbing an elbow into Susan’s
ribs; Susan slapped the arm away, but Fran saw that she was
grinning.
    “We know that, Zera,” Elly snapped. “You don’t
have to keep telling us all the time.” She rolled her eyes, plucked
at her skirt. “The problem is —”
    “Tell her,” Zera persisted. She looked at Fran
without expression. “Tell her.”
    “Oh for god’s sake,” Maddy said, and squinted up
at the sky. “Look, we gonna be here all day or what? I’m going
shopping with my mom in Harley.”
    “So go,” Susan said. Maddy didn’t move.
    The bumblebee landed on the root between Fran’s
legs, and she watched it turning in a slow confused circle, almost
didn’t hear Elly tell her that Chip was Zera’s friend, and you
didn’t share friends, that’s not the way it worked, but if Fran
really wanted one they would see what they could do even if she was
new. Susan said it was too hot, that she was going to fry, that she
wanted to wade in the pond, and if all they were going to do was
sit around and bitch, then she was leaving.
    “So go,” Maddy said with a smirk.
    Susan didn’t move.
    Fran looked up; they were watching her. Waiting.
When she glanced back at the root, the bee was gone.
    “Well?” Elly asked impatiently.
    “Well what?” Fran pushed herself to her feet,
dusted off her backside. This was no fun, no fun at all; if she’d
wanted to listen to people talk like this, she could’ve stayed
home.
    “Do you want one or not?”
    It was almost a command.
    Fran bridled. “If I want a friend, I’ll get my
own, okay?” She shook her head. “You guys are nuts, you know
that?”
    A quick disgusted wave to Kitt, and she walked
around the tree, into the bushes. Angry at herself for getting
angry at something so stupid. Angry at them for as much as telling
her she couldn’t see Chip because he was Zera’s friend. What kind
of a friend was that, that you only belonged to one person? And
what kind of a name was Zera anyway?
    She slapped a branch aside and came out on the
pond’s east bank. The ducks were still there, the rowboat gone, and
she walked slowly, every few paces picking up a pebble and tossing
it sideways into the water. Watching the splash. Watching the
ripples die before they reached the shore. Sunlight caught and
shattered on the surface.
    Beyond the evergreens she paused, indecisive,
then swung to her right and walked along the field’s edge. Kicking
at the grass. Watching the sunbathers. Listening to low music from
radios set on the ground. Watching the ball game and answering a
wave from Drake in the outfield. Passing another open stretch with
the bandstand on the far side.
    Climbing the low hill.
    Where she sat when she reached the top, and
looked out, looked down.
    She hated this place.
    Kids that started out okay and ended up as
snotty as the kids she knew back home, the ones who snickered at
her and teased her because she wasn’t quite as fast, quite as
strong, quite as smart, quite as anything as anybody else. She knew
the words and she knew the moves, but somehow they had never quite
all fit together. She wasn’t the only one. She knew that. But it
didn’t make it feel any better. And here, she could tell they
didn’t think she fit either. Maddy, Elly, that weird Zera . . .
they didn’t know it, any of them, but they were a club that had
dumb rules just like all dubs had, and the way they talked to and
about Elly made her the queen of the club.
    The Queen of the Club.
    What a joke.
    Someone sat beside her.
    She moved her eyes, not her head, and saw Chip
with his legs crossed, a shirt with the sleeves rolled above the
elbows, jeans with patches and carefully torn holes. His feet were
bare. He smelled, for a moment, like cotton candy.
    “Hot,” he said, nodding toward the field.
    “Yeah.”
    “Hot up here too, but at least there’s a
breeze.”
    “Yeah.”
    She could feel him looking at her, and it made
her feel funny.
    He poked her thigh with a