I approach the rusty gate which looks like it hadn't been open in many years. It started to make a creaking sound as I opened it, as if I were entering a graveyard. I looked up towards the sky and noticed a gloomy trial in the clouds, moving slowly above the Carnival rides like shadows.
I was alone and scared; I didn't know what or who was here. The entire park looked as if it were a ghost town, and the rides that once brought joy to young children were worn out, broken down, and forgotten.
I watched as the Midway pulled away and furthered down the tracks until I couldn't see it anymore. Now I knew I had no where to go but stay by my self in an abandoned place, not knowing if there was anyone else to help me.
~*~

As I walked around the unknown park I felt an intense pain in my stomach that made a blood thirsty roar, I hadn't eaten since this morning and it was almost three thirty in the after noon. I began to look around the deserted park to try and find some type of food that they served here.
~*~

I walked towards a large velvet circus tent, hoping an inspector was there. I walked in after hearing music playing; at first I thought the music was coming from a phonograph, but it was from a music box in the center of the room playing with no one else around. I walk towards it and clutch the sides. As soon as it stops playing one of the old brooms falls to the ground making a hard sudden noise. The big bang is over and my heart slowly stops beating.
"Hey!"
I suddenly turn around and saw a very short jester standing in the place of where the music box was.
"Who are you!?" he asks.
"I'm-" he then interrupts.
"Never mind, how did you get in here!?"
"I-" he again interrupts.
"You are very slow, you need to speak clearly so that I can hear you! Now what is your name?"
"Kinsley-Kinsley Grimes" I say.
"Louder!" he yells.
"Kinsley Grimes!" I raise my voice just a little.
"Louder!" he shouts.
"Kinsley Grimes!" I scream.
"I'm Rob, pleasure to meet you Kinsley."
"Rob...what happened to this place?" I ask.
Oh, little one our situation is a complete and utter catastrophe! he continues to say that everyone just stopped coming here and they have been out of business ever since. "We...who's we?" I ask suspiciously.
"My workers of course! They haven't had a visitor to perform for in ages, won't you be their first?" he begs.
"I-don't know...are they good?" I say.
"Oh, not just good but great indeed." he reply's.
"What do they do?" I ask.
"Oh they do many things indeed; from performers, to acrobats, to cheat cheating card players." "They used to bring moochers from all over just to play games." "Our best cheat cheating card player Nani really gets the aces from the marks by playing games like Gaff or Flat...well until they would go bankrupt and decided to burn the lot of this once glorious genre of the arts."
"But isn't that illegal?" I question.
"For someone so young you ask a lot of questions; tell me, is it just out of curiosity?" "Besides you have yet to tell me how you got in here, shouldn't you be off in a cozy retreat eating your supper with family?" his look of puzzlement was unbearable. I stared at him with a blank face and quietly spoke.
"I don't have a family."
From then on the subject never came up again. We were both mum on the subject for many years; that's how our relationship worked, I never asked him about his family, where he came from, how he got here and he would not ask the same of me.
"Where are your employees?" I asked.
"Are you mad child, never and I say never refer to them as employees; for if you do, it will be the last word you will ever speak again." he replied.
"Sorry..." I said.
"Well then, they are most likely in the boneyard." he says.
"The what!" I pondered.
"No my child it's a term you see, for a place where carney's can take a chill from running the mills." he says as a riddle.
"Like a hang out place?" I ask.
"Precisely." he reply's.
I follow him through the park which still had that dark gloom over it. He suddenly stops in front of the ferris wheel and stares up at it, he then turns to me.
"Oh glorious...this is the most special ride in the park and I favor it over the others." he says.
Curiously, I asked why and what the enormous wheel meant to him; he looks at me silently and utters these exact words.
"Do you know why the ferris wheel is the most popular ride in all carnivals; after all it's possibly the only ride that is used in all carnivals." he explains.
"No...why?" I questioned.
"Well little one in all places such as this there is always a middle or a mid-point, and the ferris wheel is our mid-point; our bask to treasure in every single day...but sadly it does not run anymore...our key...our key to the midway is broken."
~*~

Rob and I started to chat on the way to the carny hang out, which I liked to call it, however every time I did he would try to correct me. The only thing that seemed to bother him was an ignorant child who didn't know about his life style. While we were talking, instead of saying my name he would always address me as "new". When I asked him about it he said not to take it personally and that all the newbie carny's had to deal with it.
I remembered at one point in the conversation that I even asked him if I could stay there.
"I tell you what "New" I'll let you stay here with us if you can beat the carney's at a little game." he said.
In my head it sounded like a bad idea, I didn't know who they were,what they looked like, or let alone what they could do...but I had no one else to turn to. After all I had no family or friends, maybe becoming a carney was my destiny...
So, I said okay.

We enter what Rob called the boneyard to find it deserted.
"Oh...those jokers; come on they're most likely back at the tent." he says.
Rob takes me back to the circus tent where we first met. He tells me that the Carny's aren't a force to be reckon with. Soon I felt butterflies in the pit of my stomach. When we entered the adobe there were a group of odd looking people. They turned around and stared at me, they didn't look like everyday people that you and I would see walking down the street. It looked like a freak show; with piercing's, tattoos, and needles that covered most of their bodies. Each introduced themselves, on the far right were twins Bonnie and Nani; Rob had said that Nani was a genius when it came to cards while Bonnie was a performer. In the middle were Pyro (who worked with fire), Styx (who was the ring master and handled the animals), and Axel (who works with swords and knives). Finally, Rob, of course and his puppet master-Domey.

~*~

Rob comes up to me and says that if I beat Axel at a dart game that only then can I move on to the next round.
Styx and Pyro pull an enormous circular platform up into the air and attach it to a stand. Bonnie hands Axel and I each three darts which we must use to land the target on the board. Axel begins first, he stands behind a red line that had been painted on the floor. He throws his first dart landing the middle target. He throws the second dart and again hits the middle. At the last throw he turns to me, closes his eyes, throws the dart and lands it. His gestures make me to believe that he did it on purpose...just to gloat.















Now it's my turn and I highly doubt that I can beat him. I've never throw anything in my life besides a baseball, however it hit the ground. I stand behind the same red line and stare at the bored. I visualize and keep my eye on the circle in the middle and throw my first dart, it completely misses the middle and hits the edge of the board. I hear Axel chuckling behind me, Bonnie tells me that it's okay and that I just need to try again. I throw again and it hits the circle closest to the middle.
"Close, but not quiet." Styx said.
I try for the last time, I took a deep breathe, closed my eyes for a second and threw the last dart landing it in the middle. Bonnie starts to cheer and for once I'm proud of myself, however it isn't over yet.
"Good job, but you lost..." Axel says.
"Oh don't worry though there are two more rounds to go." Rob said.
The second round which featured a deck of cards and the master of them all...Nani. In round two I had to beat Nani at a card game but not just any card game, I had to beat her at the card game Eleusis. In Eleusis one player makes up a secret rule to decide which cards are allowed to be played on top of the others. The other player, which would be me, has to determine what rule they picked by using logical thinking. The point of the game is for me to empty my hand and if I win I can decide the good or bad cards that the other player has. The only way I can win is if all of my cards are gone or I guess the rule right. In other words there's a one out of one hundred chance that I could win, especially against Nani.

~*~

Nani picks her secret rule and begins to distribute the cards. This time I only get two chances. We start to play and what starts off as minutes turns into hours as I try to figure out her strategies. Most of both of our decks are gone, I'm behind her by at least two. I decide to guess the answer, however I get wrong and lose the first try. She deals the cards again and we begin to play again. Another hour goes by and the game feels agonizing. It felt so hard and as I put another card down I hear:
"She won!" Bonnie yells.
"She did! She did!" Domey says.
I didn't realize that I had put my last card down, I began to celebrate with everyone. Nani looked at me with disgust, I was one step closer to staying and I already made an enemy.

~*~

I was ready for the last and final game. Rob comes to me and asks if I'm good at engineering , I gave him a shrug and he guided me to the ferris wheel. We arrive and begin an intense conversation, Rob tells me that in order to win round three I have to answer a question and he will only give me one chance to answer it. I said, "answer away." He asked me if I was willing to stay here and help them re-build, re-model, and re-open the old carnival. To which I replied yes.
"So then it's done, you will stay here...with us". Pyro says.

A number of days past and it seemed that the Carney's and I were getting to become fast friends. Bonnie was like the older sister I never got to have, she loved to dress me up in really girly clothes and taught me how to dance. It took some time for Nani to get use to me being around due to the fact that Rob chose me to re-model the carnival instead of her, never the less she helped me and the Carney's revise it.

~*~

The Carnival was built in 1879, fifteen years after The Midway train was built and then it closed down in 1895. However with my help the Carnival re-opened on September 21, 1912. On our first week we sold out tickets, and it seemed everyone was boarding the Midway train just to visit the Carnival. The rides brought joy to families from all over the coast and while they enjoyed their times here we basked in all of the loot we were making. A moment I would never forget was when Whitney, Bonnie, Pyro, Nani, and Esmeralda all posed for a picture that I took. We soon became this very abnormal family. Over a year or two the place was so successful that even moochers came and tried to buy it off of us which we never agreed to. Bonnie came to my room one night with a gift and said that I would like it. I opened the white box to find a beautiful porcelain doll inside that looked just like me. "Wow...I've always wanted one but I could never afford it, Thank you." I said.
"I thought you might have liked it." she said.
It was the greatest gift anyone could have ever given me. The next couple of days I was bent on brushing my dolls hair and making her presentable for everyone to see which she didn't disappoint, every time I would carry her around the park adults would respond with an "Awe...how cute" while other little girls would jealously ask their parents for one. I felt like a star whether it was the likes of my idols Gypsy Rose Lee, Lydia Thompson, or Lucille Ball. Many of the female performers also had a big impact on my life, for instance Esmeralda. Her mother died of pneumonia when she was very young, practically a baby, and one day when Esmeralda was six years old her father sold her for profit to this man he knew for only five minutes. I guess even with a troubled past people can over come it and make their dreams come true. Whenever I see her perform it's like seeing fireworks for the first time, powerful but beautiful...Rob always says "She's one hell of a performer" which everyone agreed. Not much was known about Nani and Bonnie except for the fact that they were twins. Bonnie was very feminine while Nani was tough, I noticed this on a day that I asked Both of them about their family; Bonnie was silent and looked nervous while Nani gave me a smirk. On a cold night I laid in bed, looked at the sky and thought about my days on the Midway Train; I came across the thought about the old woman but I couldn't remember what I had asked her. I wondered what it was and for the next few nights it tore at my skull.

~*~

Through those nights I remembered my time back at the orphanage, the long school days, the small rooms, the poor hygiene, and never getting adopted. I've always wanted to meet my real parents, not because I wanted to know who they were but because I wanted to know what they gave me up for. But I am thankful for the family I have now and for what they did for me.

~*~

The Carnival did what it did best! During it's month of re-opening there were tens to hundreds of people buying tickets to see the animal shows, performers, and of course to go on the rides.















It was the last days of November and as my birthday came along we all decorated the carnival in my favorite color, velvet.

~*~

I was rum edging through old papers in my closet when I stumbled upon an article from the New York Times referring to the disappearance of Howard Midway. Then it struck me to the core; I remembered what I had asked the old woman that day at Crows Cavern! It was about Howard and his train.
The news article read:

No Howard, No Midway To The South

Howard Midway has reportedly gone missing and while millions are left shock the Midway may be taken down. Reports also say that days before his disappearance Howard apparently signed off his entire masterpiece for a mere 100,000. What seemed to be a glorious train that led everywhere will now see its final steam blow. No reports on whether the Midway Carnival was part of this horrendous sell off.

I soon became curious and began looking deep into the stories and ways of the Carnival, the train, and Mr. Midway. I had a list of questions like:
What happened to Howard?
What did the train and carnival have to do with it?
Why would he sell off the land for such a cheap investment?
So many inferences but none made sense, it seemed the carnival workers didn't care whether Howard was dead or alive...but why? What did he have to do with the carnival?

Days turned into months as months turned into years. I kept searching, kept wondering what went on those many years ago...

I was seventeen now and times certainly changed. They had added color to films for the first time, people were now able to take transportation on airplanes, and everyone just had to have a radio so that they could here the music of swing caressing the dance floor around their feet. There was no doubt that I had thought the carnival had changed too. I wasn't a child anymore, now that I was soon going to have to perform in front of crowds like the others.
Looking back at old pictures from my childhood really helped me overcome my insecurities. I wasn't really accustom to change but I needed to know that I was safe here.

~*~

Soon I wasn't the only one noticing a change not just among us but in the carnival as well. Many carney's were rebelling against Rob because of his constant demands. "Don't do this!" he would rant "Do that!".