Pish Posh Read Free Page B

fat children eating corn dogs and a sinister-looking fortune-teller hunkered under a tent.
    In the center of the room was a real cotton-candy machine, stacked high with paper cones. Clara turned it on, then expertly put the cone in the machine and let the candy billow up around it. She liked the sweet, hot smell and the sight of the whipping pink sugar. But once she had made the cone, she didn’t really want to eat it. Still, it seemed the right sort of thing to have on a roller coaster, and she held on to it as she climbed into the first car—the red one—and pushed a button on its front panel. A great whirring motor started up, and loud music with a heavy beat began to play. The car lurched forward, trailing the other two behind it, and began a slow ascent up the first hill.
    Clara’s father had told her that she used to scream so loudly when she went on the roller coaster, he could hear her in his apartment below. She supposed it must be true, since her father never lied. Yet she could not remember ever having screamed on the roller coaster or anyplace else. In fact, there were so many things that Clara could not remember about being a child that she often wondered if something was terribly wrong with her. Did she have friends when she was little? Had her mother ever zipped up her jacket for her? Had her father ever picked her up when she cried? Had she ever cried? She had no idea. The past was so fuzzy. She might have asked her parents these things, but she was afraid they would consider her questions silly and childish, and she would not risk it.
    Her first clear memory was of when she was eight years old. She tried on a pair of large dark sunglasses in a boutique on Fifth Avenue. Behind those glasses she could stare long and hard at people in the store, and they never even noticed. She purchased the glasses, and soon after that she began to sit at her little round table in the back of Pish Posh, scanning the room for Nobodies.
    Now, as the roller-coaster car climbed the first hill, Clara decided to try to scream. She held her cotton candy firmly in one hand, and at the moment the car began to fly down the hill, she opened her mouth and tested a small scream. It sounded like a toy poodle whose paw had been stepped on. She tried it again on the second hill. She opened her mouth wider, took a deep breath, and pushed. This time a real scream did come out, but it sounded horrible—like someone who had just discovered a dead body in their closet. And that brought her mind right back to Dr. Piff and his mystery, so she pushed the button in the front of the car. The car slowed down and came to a halt at the bottom of the ride.
    The State Fair Room was no good, she decided, and she continued down the hallway to find another diversion. Over the years, her parents had consulted child experts to discover what children enjoyed. Then they had built the rooms accordingly. They reasoned that when Clara grew up and was attending a cocktail party where people were reminiscing about their childhoods, she could speak with authority on the thrill of the roller coaster and the taste of cotton candy. That way no one would think that she had had an odd, abnormal childhood, but she wouldn’t have to go to actual amusement parks where there were all sorts of undesirable people wandering about.
    A few doors down Clara paused to peer into the Day at the Beach Room. The second she opened the door, a warm burst of salty ocean air assailed her nose. She slipped her shoes off and stepped inside, her bare feet sinking into the thick, pale sand. Beneath a giant beach umbrella was a giant beach towel splashed with giant pink and yellow flowers. Beside it was a cooler, which the cook replenished every day with Spam sandwiches (even though Clara never ate them). At the edge of the sand was “the ocean.” It was a stretch of salt water, large enough to swim laps across and scarily deep at some points. A sound track played the