Page 3 of Atone

The flowers bring back some of the better memories of my childhood. The kinder ones. The joy that’s possible in this place if you don’t look too closely.

I pause for a breath and close my eyes, inhaling the floral breeze. Remembering the carnival games and laughter. What it meant to roam free when the rest of the world has so many restrictions.

It was nice until it wasn’t, like so many things. The same flowers that decorate the carnival became the ones atop her coffin, and now I can’t look at them without my lungs squeezing. It’s disheartening how something beautiful can represent love and loss in equal measure. How sadness can so easily wipe the fondness of a memory away.

Blinking my eyes open, I brush those thoughts from my mind.

Today is going to be a good day, in a different town, at a different carnival from the one I grew up with.

My roommates have continued walking, so I hurry up to match their pace. While to everyone else here, the traveling carnival is a welcome escape for the end of sophomore year, for me, it’s tarps, lights, and memories I’d rather not revisit.

“This is not what I was expecting.” Violet’s blue eyes widen as she takes in the field. “There’s a merry-go-round, popcorn stands…” Her neck arches back as she looks up. “A whole Ferris wheel.”

I shield my eyes from the sun as I follow her gaze to the top. “It’s a carnival.”

“Atravelingcarnival.” Violet pulls my attention as she sweeps her straight black hair off her shoulder.

“Yeah, I guess it is a pretty big production.” One I know from firsthand experience isn’t simple to put together.

Traveling carnivals like this one—similar to my family’s—move every summer instead of every few months. It’s a big task to tear it down, transport it, and assemble it over and over again. Which is why they tend to settle in one spot longer than smaller productions.

“At least there are no clowns.” Teal frowns, scanning the crowd. “There are no clowns, right?”

Her nose scrunches as she turns to me. Sunlightbounces off the many colors in her hair. Blue, pink, green. A stark contrast to her blonde roots.

“There’s always clowns.” My nose scrunches. “They’re probably on the opposite end of the grounds. So just try to avoid them.”

Teal frowns, her eyes darting to a line of tents in the distance.

Clowns never bothered me when I grew up surrounded by them. Masks and face paint were the least of my worries. People truly out to hide something tend to do so in plain sight.

Violet and Patience pause at a cotton candy stand, debating whether they should order that or popcorn. With the sun high in the sky, the fairgrounds are fairly empty. But as soon as night descends and the college students start to overwhelm the crowd, it will be busier.

Patience shifts closer, her white-blonde ponytail swaying with the movement. “I still can’t believe Bristal got a carnival for the summer.”

“Me either,” I admit.

Bristal isn’t the kind of town a carnival stands to make much money in. It’s small and isolated. My parents would have never chosen this spot or this town when the right plot of land outside a bigger city would draw bigger crowds.

“It figures, doesn’t it?” Patience’s face puckers, and my attention snaps back to her.

“What does?”

“There’s finally something interesting to do in Bristal for the summer that doesn’t involve Sigma House, and I’ll be leaving for my internship in a few weeks.”

“Sigma House isn’t the only entertainment in this town.”

She hitches an eyebrow, silently arguing her point.

“Fine,” I concede because she’s right.

Bristal is known for two things: our paper mill and the fraternity that rules Briar Academy: Sigma House. Known to anyone from here as Sigma Sin.

Their members are twisted, and their fraternity has bred everything from billionaire stockholders to presidents. Sigma Sin hides in every corner of Bristal. It fuels every business. But more than that, the influence of this single discreet fraternity runs through the veins of power in the country. They’re feared for it. Revered for it.Worshipped for it.

And it’s why Patience Lancaster hates them.

Her older brother, Alex, pledged the fraternity in his freshman year just like his father and his father and his father.

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