Buffy the Vampire Slayer 1 Page 2

  CHAPTER TWO

  For the next two days, there was no further sign of the coyotes, so Buffy started to relax and fell back into the lazy rhythms of summer. Sleeping in late, waking after her mother had gone to work, eating chocolate brownies for breakfast—it was a life she could get used to.

  Buffy had Giles’s home telephone number, and she thought about calling him to report the coyotes—but he would probably just scoff at her too. Thinking about it now, it did seem lame to be afraid of a few wacked-out coyotes, even if they did snack on dog-kabobs. Once school started, Giles would be back in his beloved library, and then she could ask him about coyotes and Coyote Moon. Until then, it was her duty as a teenager to enjoy the long, hot nights.

  The coyotes were gone, but signs started popping up around town advertising the carnival. By the time Friday night rolled around, the Bronze was empty, and every self-respecting teen was eating cotton candy and pitching quarters into fishbowls.

  “Cool!” Xander exclaimed as they crested the hill and got their first look at the whirling neon lights of the Ferris wheel, the Octopus ride, the Tilt-a-Whirl, and other stomach-churning delights. Overnight a vacant lot had been turned into a gaudy wonderland, swarming with young people. The tawdry sights and sounds drew them like moths to a patio bug light. Surfer music blasted from crackling speakers, promising the endless summer they were all dreaming about.

  Well, all of us but Willow, Buffy thought.

  Even from a distance, Buffy could smell the greasy french fries and sugary apples. She heard a jumble of sounds: calliope music from the merry-go-round, screaming girls on the roller coaster, barkers working the crowd, and gasoline generators keeping the lights burning. Buffy knew she should run in the other direction, because all of this was designed to separate her from her hard-earned cash—but her feet began moving of their own will. Transfixed by the throbbing neon lights, Buffy shuffled down the hill toward the carnival.

  “Isn’t this fun?” Xander asked with a grin.

  “Lots of fun,” Willow agreed. “I’m just trying to decide whether to have my corn dog first, then throw up—or whether to throw up first, then eat the corn dog. The second way makes more sense, but the corn dog doesn’t taste as good.”

  “That’s our Willow, always being practical,” Xander said with amusement.

  Buffy pulled her eyes reluctantly from the dazzling sights. “Why does it have to be either/or? Why can’t you just ignore the rides that make you hurl?”

  “They all make me hurl,” Willow answered. “And I always get talked into going on them anyway.”

  Xander put his arm around her slender shoulders. “Hey, Willow, to make it easy on you, we’ll start with the fun house. We’ll work up to the rocket ship thing where you’re strapped inside a cage, spinning around. If you’re brave enough, maybe I’ll even buy you a corn dog.”

  Willow looked plaintively at Buffy. “See what I mean? The only time Xander ever buys me anything is to get me to go on the rides with him.” She sighed. “But it works.”

  “I’m going to be sensible,” Buffy vowed. “No upchuck express for me.”

  “But the roller coaster is calling your name,” Xander said with a twinkle in his eye.

  “Okay,” Buffy admitted. “How did you know I liked roller coasters?”

  “Because you’re Danger Girl!” he proclaimed.

  “That’s Vacation Girl,” Buffy reminded him.

  They walked under banners and lights stuck high on slender wooden poles. Xander pointed toward a weathered metallic skeleton that stood three stories high and was the size of a large barn. The roller coaster didn’t look safe to stand under, let alone ride on. As a string of cars rose slowly up the first hill, the tracks clacked ominously, like a busted jackhammer.

  “That’s a rickety-looking roller coaster,” Xander said with a worried grimace. “You know, it’s the kind that moans and shakes a lot when you go around the corners.”

  His theory was verified by the terrified screams that rent the air as the coaster took its first and deepest plunge. Then it whipped noisily around a sharp corner, eliciting more anguished shrieks. Buffy gave Xander a look of dread, which she managed to hold for a few seconds before they both grinned.

  “No, I wouldn’t like that at all,” Buffy said.

  “We’ll do it first,” Xander agreed. “And Willow can hold our food and our stuffed animals.”

  “No, no,” Willow said stalwartly. “It’s corn dog express, full speed ahead!”

  The three friends were laughing as they entered the giddy realm of the carnival. It is its own shimmering town, Buffy thought, with all the features of a real town. There was food and drink, none of it even remotely healthy. The music was a jarring combination of surfer records, heavy metal, and gooey kids’ songs. There was entertainment, but not even the cleverest boy could win the stupid games, unless he discovered the magic of a first date on a hot summer’s night. Then a lucky girl might take home a gigantic stuffed animal.

  As they wandered down the midway, Buffy found herself watching the people more than the attractions. The carnival was packed with teens in muscle shirts and halter tops, hanging all over one another. Raging hormone time, Buffy thought. At moments like this, she really regretted being terminally single.

  It was bad enough that Willow and Xander knew about her Slayer secret and insisted on helping and/or meddling, as the case may be. A boyfriend would never fit in with her student-by-day, Slayer-by-night lifestyle. As she had discovered, even trying to have a simple date with a guy was way too complicated.

  Buffy was afraid to ask Giles what became of Slayers when they got older. She was certain they ended up as old maids and spinsters, or dead. Probably dead.

  Still, it would be nice to bump into Angel at a place like this, Buffy thought. She quickly squelched that thought. Bad Buffy, bad! Angel was a good vampire, cursed to have a soul and feelings, which made him even weirder than she was. It was better not to think about boys at all, but that was difficult when so many were on display under the sizzling neon.

  If the teens from the town looked hot, so did the carnies who ran the rides and games. Buffy was surprised to see that so many of them looked young and buff, not like the grizzled dudes she remembered as a kid. Oh, they were kind of scruffy and dangerous-looking, as if they needed a shave and a new tattoo, but that was part of their charm. So was the leer in their eyes and the promise of fun in their voices.

  “A free shot for the woman with the great legs,” said a muscular young carny, spinning a basketball on his fingertip. He had a deep tan and about four days’ growth of beard; his insouciant smile stopped her cold. Buffy knew that the hoop behind him was a lot smaller than regulation, and a stop to talk to the carny would likely cost her two or three dollars.

  “Later,” she said, meaning it.

  She had to shove Willow out of the way, because she had also stopped to gape at the carny. “Uh, maybe we should play some games,” Willow suggested innocently.

  “Okay, Miss Money Management—we discussed it,” Xander said impatiently. “Ride tickets first, then food, then, if we have any money left over, games.”

  “For once, he’s right,” Buffy replied.

  “Hello, nurse!” Xander exclaimed as he veered toward a pretty young woman in cutoff shorts and a skimpy top. She smiled like a gypsy as she beckoned him to her booth, which was already crowded with guys. After exchanging worried glances, Buffy and Willow trailed along to see what the scam was all about.

  The beautiful dark-haired girl was only the bait. The main attraction was a seedy clown in a dunking machine. With a rainbow wig, streaked makeup, and old clothes, he didn’t look like much of a clown; but he was sitting on a wooden plank perched over a big tank of water. The sign said that it cost two dollars to throw five balls at the disklike target, in the hope of dumping the clown into the water. He looked awfully dry to Buffy.

  The clown also had a microphone hanging over his head, and he wasn’t afraid to use it. “I’ve never seen so many beautiful women in one place,” he grumbled in a voice that boomed across the midway. “So where did you babes get these ugly guys? Man, the dog pound must be empty!”

  One clean-cut young man stepped up to the dark-haired girl and declared, “I’ll knock him in.”

  “Two dollars, farm boy,” she said in a teasing voice.

  “Oh, now we got a local hero!” the clown crowed. “Let’s see if you’re man enough to knock me into the drink. Maybe you can win a kiss from Rose!”

  The girl pouted and posed, showing off a rose tattoo on the top of her cleavage, and Xander drooled along with the rest of the guys. Rose collected two dollars from the dazed boy and handed him five old softballs. Buffy and Willow exchanged a sigh. Didn’t boys ever learn?

  The clown sneered. “What a wimp! I bet he can’t even get it to the target! Go on, wimp, take your best shot!”

  Huffing and puffing, the boy wound up and threw. He was wide, but he threw hard and with authority.

  “My grandmother throws better than that!” the clown roared into his microphone. “But I think the peewee league has found a new pitcher!”

  In angry succession, the boy hurled four more balls, each one farther away from the target than the one before.

  “Come on,” Rose said with a purr. “You want to try again?”

  “No,” the boy muttered, completely embarrassed. “I’m outta here.”

  Although a lot of people were watching the proceedings, not that many were digging into their pockets for two dollars. The failure of the last contestant had scared some of them away.

  “What is this town?” the clown asked. “Sunny Jail?” The kids laughed at the takeoff on the town’s name of Sunnydale, and the professional heckler continued. “I don’
t want to say people are stupid here, but the biggest decision after high school is whether to marry your cousin or your sister.”

  Laughter and groans came in equal measure, and some of the guys were thinking about parting with their money. Rose turned to Xander and batted her eyelashes. “How about you, big boy? Have you got what it takes?”

  The teenager turned to mush and nearly melted under the stage, but Rose’s dark eyes held him up. When he didn’t move fast enough for his wallet, the clown on the platform sneered. “Hey, kid, is that a mustache or a third armpit?”

  Buffy had to laugh at that one, and Xander looked at her accusingly. Now there was no hesitation as he reached for his wallet and took out two dollars. He didn’t like clowns much, anyway.

  “Clown. Water. Prepare to meet,” he vowed, and the crowd cheered.

  “Money management!” Willow shouted to no avail.

  Xander took careful aim at the disklike target, but it was hardly any bigger than one of the softballs—and it was forty feet away. It would require a perfect throw to soak the obnoxious clown, and Xander would never be confused with a great athlete. His first pitch missed by six feet.

  “Omigosh, did he kill anybody?” the clown asked, to much laughter.

  “You can do it,” Rose said encouragingly.

  “Yeah, you can do it!” Willow shouted, not to be outdone.

  Xander reached back and threw hard, coming within two feet.

  “Visualize it!” Buffy shouted.

  “You visualize this,” the clown said, staring directly at Buffy. “You and me on a little date, at a fancy French restaurant. We’ll order some truffles and some fine wine—I’ll get you some soda pop.”

  She gave him what she hoped was a disgusted look, but his words were having the desired effect on Xander. Looking so angry that he couldn’t even see the target, he threw two straight misses. He only had one ball left.

  The clown mocked him. “Maybe it would help if we got you a Seeing Eye dog!”

  That was it for Buffy. She walked up to Xander and held out her hand. “Time for a relief pitcher.”

  He looked at her with a mixture of anger and frustration, but relief soon spread across his face. She could see his mind working: Buffy has perfect coordination, and Buffy could hit that target with any weapon known to mankind. Let Buffy throw the ball.

  “I’m giving her my last ball,” Xander said to Rose. He said it apologetically, as if he was sorry that her clown was about to bite it.

  “Oh, he’s the supreme wimp!” the clown hooted. “By all means, give your girlfriend the last ball. I’ll make it even easier for the little lady. Rose, give her an extra ball from me, too.”

  “No thanks,” Buffy said, hefting the spongy softball. “I’ll only need one.”

  “Awfully confident, aren’t you?” Rose sneered.

  This was called showing off, Buffy thought, and she shouldn’t be doing it. She could imagine the horrified look on Giles’s face if he knew what she was up to. But a Slayer has to do what a Slayer has to do. At least she was going to make an awful lot of people in the crowd very happy.

  The clown was saying something else insulting, but she tuned him out in order to concentrate. Unlike Xander, she did visualize the ball leaving her hand on a perfect trajectory and striking the target dead-center. She saw it trip the lever that held up the plank, and she saw the plank drop. She didn’t have to visualize the obnoxious clown falling into the water, because she was about to see that for real.

  Whirling nonchalantly, Buffy threw the softball on a line with hardly any arc. It struck the target with a reassuring clang, and the plank dropped with a loud clack! She relished the startled look on the clown’s face as he plunged into the water with a gushing splash. The crowd went wild, applauding and cheering, and the clown waved from the tank, as if he was taking the bows.

  “Nice throw,” Rose said, looking suspiciously at Buffy.

  “Beginner’s luck,” the Slayer replied with a cute giggle. She grabbed Xander and tried to pull him away from the carny, but he was still fixated on Rose.

  “Hey,” Xander said sheepishly, “don’t I get a kiss? It was my ball, even though she threw it.”

  Rose leaned over dramatically and whispered to him. “Come back in half an hour, and I’ll take my break.”

  Xander gaped at her, then looked around, as if she had to be speaking to somebody else. Buffy rolled her eyes at how helpless he was around this vamp. That was vamp in the old-fashioned sense, because she didn’t sense anything undead about the girl. In fact, she seemed to be very lively. Buffy didn’t think that Rose was a proper playmate for Xander, although she doubted he would agree.

  Ignoring the hound-dog look on his face, Buffy used all her strength to drag Xander away from the exotic carny. Willow cut off his escape route to the rear.

  “Money management,” Willow insisted.

  “Creaky rides! Screaming girls! Whiplash!” Buffy reminded him. “All rides guaranteed to leave your stomach outside your body!”

  “Take me wherever you want,” Xander said blissfully. He checked his watch. “But you have exactly thirty minutes.”

  Willow shot a worried look at Buffy, who shrugged helplessly. With the vibes in the air tonight, they would be lucky if it was only Xander who got carried away. Buffy had to admit that Rose was quite an attraction—wild cheerleaders probably couldn’t stop Xander from keeping his date.

  They rode the roller coaster, and the girls screeched as they roared up and down the rickety peaks. Xander, meanwhile, kept looking at his watch. They rode the Ferris wheel, and Xander worried that they would be stuck at the top for too long. He couldn’t even enjoy the fantastic view of the carnival, shimmering like an island of light in the vast dreariness of Sunnydale.

  When they got off the Ferris wheel, Buffy noticed a grizzled old carny with oil stains on his face and hands. He stood beside the groaning machinery and slapped a wrench against his palm, watching them walk away. Buffy felt a disturbing sense of déjà vu, as if she had seen him before, looking at her that same way.

  At least there went the theory that all the carnies were young and gorgeous. He looked like the carnies she remembered from her childhood—gnarly and creepy.

  They still had plenty of ride tickets left, but Xander led the way as they drifted back toward the hucksters.

  “Free practice shot!” one shouted.

  “Everybody’s a winner!” another called.

  Xander stumbled along, transfixed by the lights, the noise, the games, and the girls. Buffy tried not to be angry with him.

  “Hey, Xander, keep it under control. Don’t be too eager,” she warned. “She said half an hour, not ten minutes.”

  “Yes, you’re better off to keep her waiting,” Willow suggested, not sounding very convincing. “And it may only be a fifteen-minute break.”

  “Fifteen minutes with Rose,” Xander said dreamily. “I’ll take it.”

  “I wonder how many guys she’s said that to?” Buffy asked.

  “Neither one of you is gonna spoil this night,” Xander vowed. He checked his watch again, then held it to his ear to make sure it was running, which was dumb, because it was a digital watch.

  “Hey, beautiful! Break my heart!” a masculine voice called.

  Buffy whirled around to see a tanned blond hunk with sleeves rolled up over brawny muscles. He was the most handsome carny yet, and he was standing in a dart booth, surrounded by posters of hot rods, puppies, TV actors, and bikini babes.

  The hunk pointed to a pink heart-shaped balloon on the corkboard behind him. “Look how big my heart is. I bet you could break it without half trying.”

  “Like I’m sure that hasn’t happened,” she admitted. The heart-shaped balloon was surrounded by smaller balloons and lots of white space. He seemed to be giving away the posters, but she didn’t need any more posters in her bedroom. Still, Buffy’s feet propelled her toward the booth, and Willow was right beside her.

  “Two lovely ladies—it’s my lucky night.” The carny smiled, revealing hidden dimples in the stubble of his blond beard. A merry twinkle in his blue eyes said he knew his game was a rip-off, but that made it even more fun. He held out three darts to Buffy. “Break it, and anything I have is yours.”