SHE HAD A ritual for nightfall at Riverview, and not even the urgency of talking to Clyde would change it. Unless it was pouring rain, she’d find a spot where she could clearly see the Hippodrome. Once the sun dipped below the horizon, colors bled from the world like dye from untreated cloth. The Hippodrome’s pale façade darkened to grey, its shadow angel, more mysterious and sinister: a guardian angel, but whom was it protecting? The fading light tinted women’s white dresses and shirtwaists lavender, turned the miles of red, white, and blue bunting into ashy ribbons.

She staked out a patch of grass and stared across the Lagoon. People streamed toward the Velodrome, eager for the evening’s cycle races, and crowded into the Waterdrome’s bleachers to watch the diving elephants. She made a tunnel of her hands, mimicking a camera’s lens, moved around till she found an angle that eliminated the crowds and other buildings, and gazed at the Hippodrome’s angel.

The world contracted to what she could see, what she wanted to see. She pretended she was back in the studio. That light on the Hippodrome needs to be hotter, she thought, and held her breath.

A cry went up from the people thronging the Pike as the Hippodrome burst into white flame, the angel no longer sinister but glorious: invincible. Every building and ride shivered with light, the coasters’ scaffolding and the Gyroplane flaring like a gigantic box of matches tossed into a fireplace, the Bob’s chute a shining knife plunged into the Lagoon. The Aerostat’s tower, five stories high, blazed like a torch that could be seen from twenty miles away.

Or so she’d been told. Pin had never been that far. She shoved her hands into her pockets and rejoined the crowd. No one paid her any mind. She was just another footloose boy, not big enough to pose a threat unless you found his hand in your pocket. After a few minutes she reached the Ten-in-One building. Garish canvas banners advertised what was inside:

ENGLISH SKELETAL GIANTESS: 7 FEET TALL, 90 LBS!

LOLITA THE SNAKE CHARMER

ESCAPEO, THE MAN WHO DEFIES LOCKS AND BOLTS

IDA, THE LIVING MERMAID! EIGHTH WONDER
OF THE WORLD

LORD CLYDE, THE HOO-DOO KING

There were six more acts, all part of Armstrong’s Freak Show, and Pin had seen them all. Gaffed freaks—fakes, except for Mildred the giantess and Flossie the fat lady, who weighed six hundred pounds and had a one-hundred-two-inch waist. The four-legged woman was real, even if she was dead and floating in a jar. And Lolita was very much alive—her real name was Alice—and so beautiful it hurt to look at her, wearing a slithery dress, a pair of poison-green boa constrictors named Honey Bunch and General Villa wrapped around her arms.