Shadowmaker (7 page)

“Is the homework getting done?” Tammy’s mother called from the next room.

“Yes, ma’am,” Tammy said, which made us start laughing all over again.

On Saturday, close to three o’clock, Lana Jean arrived at our house, the trio of dogs loudly announcing her coming. Her T-shirt had streaks of old makeup around the neckline, and her jeans looked like the ones she’d been wearing all week.

After she said hello to Mom, I led Lana Jean to the front porch, out of Mom’s way. I said, “I’ll get some Cokes and Oreos, and you can eat while I read what you’ve written in your journal.”

“Journal?” she said, and gasped. “Oh, no! Would you believe I went off and left it on my bed?”

“How could you leave it, when that’s the reason why you were coming here?”

She looked a little hurt. “Well, there are other reasons too. Like being friends.”

While I fumbled for the right thing to say, Lana Jean went on, as though our friendship was taken for granted. “And I was thinking about the carnival.”

Tammy and Julie had asked me to go to the carnival with them, and I’d had to turn them down because Mom had practically insisted that Lana Jean and I go together. I wasn’t any too eager to go to the carnival in the first place. “Listen, Lana Jean,” I said. “About the carnival … I really don’t …”

She wasn’t listening to me. Her cheeks grew pink as she rattled on: “I wish I could go with Travis, but of course he didn’t ask me, and I don’t want to go alone. What time should we
get
there? I wish I knew what time Travis is going and if he’s going with a date or with his friends, but I don’t, so why don’t we get there at seven?”

She paused to take a breath, and I said, “Listen to me, Lana Jean. I don’t want to go to the carnival.”

“Oh, sure you do!” she cried, and the pleading in her face was awful to see. And then she said something that hit me in the stomach like a fist. “Usually I go to the carnival alone. That’s not much fun.”

“Well … okay. I’ll go,” I said. But I took a good look at Lana Jean and came up with an idea that made me feel a lot more hopeful about the whole thing. “You didn’t bring
your journal,” I said, “and we’ve got some time to kill, so why don’t we do our hair and makeup and stuff?”

“I didn’t bring any makeup.”

“That’s okay. I’ve got some sample stuff from a department store giveaway that I haven’t opened because it would look terrible on a redhead. There’s a pink lipstick that would be just right with your light coloring.”

“I guess I could try the lipstick.”

“Not so fast,” I said, and put on a French accent that was so bad it made Lana Jean giggle. “Madame Katherina, who does zee famous make-overs of zee stars, requires you to be putty in her hands. We start weeth a bubble bath and shampoo.”

“You’re crazy,” Lana Jean said. “I can’t take a bath at your house.”

“You are not at a house. You are at zee salon of zee famous Madame Katherina. I will provide zee shampoo and bubble bath, and while you are bathing I will even wash and dry your clothes.”

I guess I wasn’t subtle enough, because Lana Jean looked down at her shirt and jeans and mumbled, “Okay. So they’ve got a few spots.”

“You want to make a good impression on Travis. Right? So don’t think about anything except how great you’re going to look with a new hairdo and makeup and all that. I’ve got a blue skirt that’s too tight for me to get into, and it would look terrific on you. Want to go for it?”

Lana Jean turned those trusting cocker spaniel eyes on me, as though she were willing to put her life into my hands, and said, “Will Travis think I look pretty?”

“You bet,” I said, and led her to my bedroom, where I pulled out the full blue cotton skirt and sacrificed a pale blue blouse to go with it.

She was so excited about the clothes, it was hard to get her into the bathroom, but eventually she emerged, wrapped in an oversize towel. I got out some mousse, a comb, the blow dryer, a curling iron, and set to work.

Before long Lana Jean’s hair fell softly around her face, turning up just a little at the ends. She watched me intently, every step of the way, and when I stepped back, saying “There. How do you like it?” she stared at her reflection as though she couldn’t believe it.

“Travis will like it, won’t he?” she whispered.

“He’ll love it. You saw what I did. You can do it too.”

“No, I can’t. We don’t have a blow dryer and all the other stuff.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I immediately got busy with my makeup samples and began applying some of them to Lana Jean’s face.

She didn’t turn out to be a raving beauty by any means, but her eyes seemed larger and her mouth prettier, and the makeup base covered most of the blemishes on her skin. I had to pull Lana Jean away from the mirror so she could get into her washed and dried bra and panties and the new blouse and skirt.

When she had finished dressing and called me into the bedroom to show me how she looked, she had the same expression on her face that Cinderella probably had when her fairy godmother got through with
her
makeover.

“I can’t believe it’s me!” Lana Jean squealed.

Mom came in to see if we were hungry yet for dinner, and she did a doubletake when she saw Lana Jean. “You look beautiful!” Mom said.

Lana Jean glowed. “I
feel
beautiful,” she said. “And I’m not going to eat a thing because I don’t want to ruin my lipstick.”

“You can put on more lipstick,” I said, but she shook her head.

“Not until Travis sees me,” she insisted.

Mom looked at her watch. “It’s nearly five-thirty,” she said. “Why don’t you go to the carnival now? You can get hot dogs or pizza and whatever else they’re selling right there.”

“That’s a good idea,” I said. The sooner we went to the carnival, the sooner we could come home.

“You can take the car,” Mom told me. “Just give me an idea of when you’ll be home.”

“Eight,” I said.

“Midnight,” Lana Jean said.

“Compromise,” Mom suggested. “How about ten? If you want to stay later, just give me a call.”

Gritting my teeth, I led Lana Jean to the car. Ten o’clock seemed like a week or two away. In spite of Lana Jean’s excitement, I didn’t look forward to going to the carnival.

The rides and booths were set up on a large lot that had been cleared for a proposed mall that had never taken shape. The faded and torn billboard, erected near the road, still offered space for rent. Around it pickup trucks and cars were parked wherever they could squeeze in, and beyond
them crowds of people swarmed under the colored lights and balloons. I parked in the only spot I could find, way down the road, and Lana Jean and I walked back to the carnival.

I should say,
I
walked. Lana Jean was so high on excitement that she was all over the place, like a little kid going to see Santa Claus.

As we reached the fringes of the carnival, some kids from school spotted her and stared hard. One even waved, but Lana Jean didn’t notice. She was busy looking for Travis, and nothing else mattered.

Floating over the din of raised voices and tinny music, came the spicy fragrances of hot dogs and pizza. My stomach growled, and I realized how hungry I was. “Let’s get something to eat,” I shouted.

“Not yet,” Lana Jean yelled over her shoulder. “I have to find Travis first. Come on!” To make sure I’d stick with her, she grabbed my wrist and tugged me in her wake.

In front of a ring-toss booth she stopped so abruptly I plowed into her, nearly losing my balance. She pulled my face close to hers and whispered, “There he is!”

Ahead of us, at a shooting gallery, stood Travis, rifle in hand, a confident leader of the pack surrounded by his friends, including my least favorite person, B.J. Behind his cloud of cigarette smoke I recognized Duke Macon, a tall, hefty, dark-haired guy who was repeating history along with Delmar Johnson. Delmar was a quiet guy who sat in the back row, slumped so far down that he rested on the back of his neck, and never got an answer right when he was called on. The three of them were egging Travis on,
daring him to beat their scores, stopping only when he raised the rifle and fired.

Someone bumped into me, and I tried to edge out of the main path. “Okay, we’ve seen him,” I said. “Now what?”

Lana Jean turned to look at me with wide eyes. “Well, now it’s time for
him
to see
me
,” she said. “He’ll be through shooting in a minute, and we’ll walk past him and say hi.”

I had to think fast. I was not going to walk past that group of guys with B.J. and say
anything.
“It won’t work if I’m with you,” I said.

“Why not?”

“Then they’d have to talk to both of us. You want Travis to see only you.”

“He’d see me,” she said, but there was a question in her voice, and I jumped to answer it.

“But not as much, if he had to talk to me too.”

Lana Jean took a long breath and let it out in a sigh. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll go alone, but where will you be?”

“Right here,” I said. “I’ll wait for you.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

“What’ll I say?”

“What you told me you’d say. Say
hi
to him.”

“That’s all?”

“Unless he says something to you. Then you can stand there and talk for a few minutes.”

Lana Jean straightened her shoulders and, as though there were only two people at this carnival, walked as gracefully as she could right through the crowd that elbowed
and pushed around her, until she reached Travis’s cluster of friends.

He was just handing the rifle to one of the other guys with him when Lana Jean stepped up and spoke.

Travis looked down at her with a kind of puzzled look and said something. I hoped he was telling her she looked great, but I doubted it.

“Hi, Katie,” someone said behind my back, and I whirled around. Tammy went on. “I saw you come in with Lana Jean. You made her look good. It was you, wasn’t it?”

I just nodded.

“I recognized your blue blouse.”

“Where’s Julie?” I asked. “Wasn’t she coming with you?”

Tammy smiled and said, “She’s here, and so are some other friends you haven’t met yet. Want to join us and get something to eat?”

My stomach rumbled, and I giggled. “Sure,” I said, but then I remembered my promise to wait for Lana Jean. I glanced at the spot where she’d been talking to Travis, but the guys had left, and there was no sign of her.

“Did you see where Lana Jean went?” I asked Tammy.

“B.J. and Travis and those other guys they hang out with went toward the rides,” she said. “Lana Jean waited a minute, then I think she followed them.” Tammy paused and looked embarrassed. “She’s had a thing for Travis all year,” she said, “and it’s so obvious, everyone knows about it. Travis’s been really rude to her, but that hasn’t discouraged her for a minute.”

“She shadows him,” I said.

“I know. That’s probably what she’s doing now.”

For an instant I was angry. She’d told me to stay here and wait for her, then she went wandering off. “Where are we meeting your friends?” I asked Tammy. “I’m getting hungry.”

For a while I looked around for Lana Jean, but there was no sign of her, and no sign of Travis and his friends either. Tammy and I and the other girls tried the Ferris wheel and merry-go-round and a crack-the-whip ride that nearly brought up the hot dogs I’d eaten. I was actually having fun, and I had to admit to myself that I was glad I’d come to the carnival.

Tammy’s father came to pick her up a little after ten, and I noticed that the crowd had begun to thin out. I purposefully began searching for Lana Jean, even checking all the rides, but I couldn’t find her.

I
grew more and more upset. I wanted to get out of that place, but I was supposed to give Lana Jean a ride home. If she’d gone somewhere with someone else—I couldn’t imagine it was Travis—she should have let me know.

I decided to walk back to Mom’s car to see if by any chance Lana Jean had gone there to wait for me. Outside the gaudy, bright circle of carnival light, the road was dark and lonely. I hesitated, waiting for others to leave so that I’d have company.

Two women and an elderly man walked past me, laughing as one of them said to the man, “Finally had enough, did you? Or do you want to go back and have a try at that crack-the-whip?”

I stepped forward eagerly, grateful to have company on
the dark road, but their car was parked close to the carnival entrance, and they drove off, leaving me standing in the middle of the road, wondering what to do next.

The plop of running feet behind me caused me to yelp and whirl, ready to defend myself, but a voice called, “Katie! Where are you going? You said you’d wait for me!”

“Wait for you!” I repeated, anger flooding out the fear. “How long did you expect me to wait? It’s almost eleven! My mom is probably worried. Where have you been all this time?”

She stopped in front of me, breathing hard, her head down as though she were a child being scolded. “I thought you’d know,” she said. “I was watching Travis.”

In spite of the problems she’d caused me, I felt so sorry for her I couldn’t stay angry. “Lana Jean, why do you spy on Travis? He must know you’re shadowing him.”

Her head jerked up, and she insisted, “No, he doesn’t! I’m real good at it.”

“But why do you want to? He isn’t even friendly to you.”

“He isn’t
un
friendly.”

“How can you say that?” I started to walk to the car, and she trotted along beside me. “Look, this is what I mean: Tonight … what did he say to you tonight?”

“Hi.”

“That’s it? Hi? Nothing else?”

“I asked him if he was having fun, and he said yeah. And then I asked if he wanted anything to eat, and he said no. And then they started to walk away, and B.J. told me to get lost.”

I groaned. We’d reached the car, so I unlocked it, automatically checking the backseat, and we climbed in. “Why don’t you forget Travis and get interested in some other guy?” I asked as I swung the car around and headed back the way we had come.

“I can’t,” she said.

She gave me directions to her house, and I let her off in front. She thanked me again for the clothes and the makeover. “I really felt pretty tonight,” she said.