The sun that had relentlessly tortured us with its heat throughout the day was slowly giving up, sinking below the trees surrounding the patch of land the carnival had settled on. The hours didn't seem to pass between packing up all our existence and the show and breaking tents afterwards. I carried a basket with my freshly washed costumes, avoiding the main entrance and sneaking between the trailers of the living quarters. Usually, I washed and hanged the costumes mid day so they would be reasonably dry by nightfall but I was held up helping out with the packing. A real misfortune today, since having your clothes outside at night invited townies to the apparently universally known game of stealing underwear from the girl with the elephant they had seen at the show earlier. I'd learned the hard way that every town had its own weirdo who had to break the rules knowing the issue wouldn't be brought before the police.

But if normal rules didn't apply to this game, I had to make my own. Putting up the clothesline on top of our family trailer would hopefully put a halt to every perverted attempt and save my favorite panties.

I spread my costumes on the line, carefully avoiding the loss of sequins and wrinkles to spear me some time tomorrow morning. I had an hour max to iron and fold everything and then tend to May in her enclosure to prepare for travel before the whole caravan of trailers would head out at six. The schedule reiterated in my head over and over again while I smoothed a bodysuit and treaded from one foot to the other to give my bare soles time to adjust to the heat the metal roofing emanated.

It took seven side steps for me to reach the end of the trailer. Barely enough space for four people to live. Maybe that's why it was always empty throughout the day. Mom and Dad were always rehearsing or at someone else's trailer, sitting on plastic chairs bleached from the sun, discussing the same future over and over again while my brother was off God-knows-where. Probably getting in trouble with some townie who thought himself brave to dare a carnie. But it didn't matter because we were off before the townie knew he lost. Always on the road, never resting. And even if we were, it was never home.

My parents called the trailer home. But home is not something you could climb and barely hang a clothesline on.

When I was six, they asked me if I wanted to go to a real school. A boarding school somewhere far away. Live in a room, in a house. Sitting in a classroom. I was dumb and childish when I said no, scared to leave my family because once you're away, you're gone.

We were a tight knit community forged by the same fate. People survived, succeeded or died together. And if you dared to go beyond this destiny, you became an outsider, always cursed with the knowledge of not understanding. There were kids who went to boarding schools. Sometimes during winter break, they'd visit their parents and there was a silence that accompanied them. Silence from us because we knew not what to talk to them about and silence from them because they knew we didn't understand the world outside. Even once they're adults, they lost so much of where they came from that no one ever returned. Lost ones never comes back, ever.

The fear had kept me from going to that school and it still kept me here now. I stayed dumb and childish, but this familiarity was all I had. There was no place beyond the carnival for a girl who only knew gymnastics and how to train an elephant. Maybe a little cleaning and how to wash your clothes by hand in a bucket when there's no nice old lady living near by who let you use their washing machine for free.

I was glad I hadn't agreed as much as I hated myself for my cowardice. But that had other reasons.

"Angela?"

A simple question, timid and small, carrying tastes of childhood and longer summers within a voice I barely recognized. I couldn't help myself but look for the person my spoken name belonged to. Stupid, as if you could actually find a phantom of your imagination with your open eyes. But this time he was actually there. Standing in front of my trailer, looking up at me with a halo of blond curls and a self assured smile that looked nothing like the smile I remembered in his face.

His face looked nothing like I remembered his face being. There was no softness, no apparent dimples but stubble and edges. Essentially the only thing still remaining were his blue eyes and even those looked at me differently.

"Patrick." My dry mouth uttered. "You're back."

How could it be that he was here now and looking so different when he didn't age one bit in her dreams all throughout the missing years?

I turned back to the clothesline, carelessly throwing bodysuits over it now, trying to keep it together.

"Where've you been? Haven't seen you in a while." I tried to sound indifferent and inconspicuous in case I did finally go crazy and began talking to apparitions conjured by years worth of longing and dusk. Or rather because I had waited all these years for an explanation and a return and now that it was in reach, it felt just wrong.

"Oh you know..." He began, seemingly oblivious to my inner turmoil. "I had business to take care of."

"Jail is not business, Patrick." My dry throat ached for a scream but I swallowed it down. When he didn't immediately clap back, I searched his face and found the shock or hurt pride I was looking for. I shrugged contently. "You just left without any explanation so people gathered their own."

If he was bothered by my pettiness, he didn't show.

My insides were screaming and hands shaking. His appearance felt so ghostlike in the murky remains of sunlight that I anticipated to realize it wasn't him all along and it was only my mind playing tricks on me.

Then he let his head hang, shaking no, dragging his foot in a curve in front of him. The gesture was so familiar that it pinched my heart. Every time we had to answer to angry interrogations by our parents he had had that stance. Trying to lie but not really managing to.

I looked away quickly, finishing up my task and hiding my face at the same time. I felt dizzy, breathing too heavy for too long. Sickness clenched my stomach. This is all wrong.

"No. No." He managed to put his head shaking into words. "I was… - Can I help you with that?" He changed subjects. Half of me wanted to see if his hand would just go through anything he touched. Maybe he had died and decided to haunt me while I was awake, too.

"It would help if you'd stop staring at my underwear." My voice was croaking with the desperate attempt to find some sort of humor in this. The words were more resentful than I wanted but the lack of explanation infuriated me. It's not like I had expected anything. Honestly, I hadn't even expected him to return when he had suddenly disappeared without telling me one word about it beforehand. But having him back now made it all the worse.

He did come back and didn't care to give any kind of excuse. No 'Sorry'. No 'I had this important thing that couldn't wait.'. Just this. A terrible moment, I thought it would've been better if he'd stayed away and left me to my wholesome dreams of his return and the painfully sweet memories instead of this.

A weird twitch crazed his eyebrows and he turned his face away as if he was overlooking the field even though there was nothing to look at. Just the petty life he left behind, the petty people foolishly starving for his return. His hands remained in his washed-out tattered jeans' pockets while he avoided my gaze. Silence made me hate the decision to try to be funny.

"It's great to see you around again, Patrick." The words escaped my mouth before I could process what they would convey. My own tongue betrayed me and I tried to cover it up with a sweet smile.

No matter how long it's taken him to come back, I was still not ready to face him again.

"It's nice to see you again, too." He smiled and looked at me like he expected something from me. Whatever he could expect. He hadn't needed anything from me for all those years he was gone.

I reciprocated his smile, swallowing my bitterness, hoping it would break the awkwardness.

"Can you help feeding May? I need to get it done before it gets completely dark." What I left out was that I needed to keep him by my side for as long as possible. It would kill me to see him turn his back after so few words. Even though I didn't know what I wanted to say instead.

"Sure."

"Great."

I slid down the trailer and started walking hastily. He kept up with me. Everything around me disappeared in a haze, as if nothing existed apart from him walking next to me. Oh my god, he was back.

"So it´s your job now to do the acrobatics with May." I was thankful for the small talking but the way his eyes scanned me every other moment was nerve wrecking.

"And you are right back with your clairvoyance, I reckon." My sarcasm let his self-assured smile leave his lips. If I remembered correctly, before his disappearance, Alex tried to train Patrick to exert his psychic act. How many years has it been again? There were barely any untainted memories. Everything had replayed over and over in my head so much that I didn't know what truly happened or what was just my imagination adding parts and pieces.

Then suddenly he startled me with a bitter laugh. "I probably wouldn't be here again if it wasn't for that and my ability to earn Alex's money. Only reason he let's me stay." Calling his dad by his first name was new. Apart from that even the sound of his voice oozed coldness. A deep dislike. If he didn't want to be here why would he put us through it again. Would he even need to talk to me if he left again? You could barely call us friends. Not really. We were strangers with memories, nothing more.

"Don´t say that." I uttered after a while. It could be mistaken for compassion but what it really was, was begging him to stop making me care.

We had reached the elephant´s enclosure. Patrick stared at May coming towards us like she was one of the seven wonders of the world.

"Look at her." Patrick said seemingly astonished by this sight, his face truly lighting up for the first time and it was almost the expression I remembered. He grabbed the upper beam of the fence and let his body fall back holding onto the wood.

So no ghost, I reassured myself and was suddenly embarrassed by everything I had beaten him around the head with. For god's sake. It was just Patrick.

I wished for a chance to turn back time and take on this moment again. Couldn't I have just hugged him, welcomed him, told him that I had missed him every single day? But now it was over and he will forever remember this moment as me being hostile towards him. I couldn't take it back. My pride wouldn't allow it. For a second, I played with the thought of what could have happened instead but that was all I allowed myself.

It was Patrick but he was also just a stranger, merely carrying the same name and some of his mannerisms. This new person brought more abandonment with him than shared history and this disappointment is all I could think about.

Without a word, I lead May a bit to the right, closer to the wagon that carried her hay. She waited patiently until I pulled out a bundle and she even waited until I presented it to her. Only then did she carefully take it with her trunk after petting me on the head as her way of thanking me. I walked back into the wagon while Patrick followed me quietly. He waited outside, not even obscuring the entrance.

"Is this really her?" He continued watching her while leaning against the frame of the wagon. It felt like he wasn't talking about the elephant and ridiculous shame flooded me. "I don't remember her being this gentle."

"She just needed training, that´s all. A lot of Boundaries and love." I shrugged months and months of work off and handed him an empty bucket while keeping one for myself. "We need to get her water. Today was a hot day so we probably need to go to the lake twice."

Half-heartedly, I expected him to ridicule me and tell me to do my chores alone and I was braced for a whole tirade. He didn't.

He carried his bucket to the lake and back with me and then to the lake again without one bad word coming from his lips. Even I wanted to complain about the work in this impermeable heat around us that made it even more exhausting or the dark that continuously made it impossible to see, but he didn't. When we arrived at the lake a second time I let the bucket fall on the ground and sat down right by the waterside near enough to dip my feet in the cold water if I'd want to.

Without hesitation he filled his bucket and then mine afterwards while I was watching him climb in and out of the lake. He had his jeans rolled up to his knees and still they were wet up to his thighs. Mud and dried grass clung to his calves from climbing up the banks. He didn't show a sign of annoyance that I just sat there and did nothing beside letting him do my work. It was so unlike him or my memory of him. He had always been easily irritated by work or people while also being fast to brag with his deduction skills and hence irritating others. Swirls of how things used to be mixed with reality and I felt myself get into the same pattern of always being irritated by him. It's like his arrival jump-started a version of me that I had long since buried. A stupid, childish me that was always fed up and so, so in love with him.

He was new and somehow delicate in the way that he hauled the full buckets out of the lake with sweat on his forehead and wet splashes on his shirt.

It hadn't even been my intention to let him work for me. I wanted him to sit down with me, talk. I wanted to get to know him again, maybe elicit an explanation for years of heartbreak. But he just walked back through the woods to the enclosure, leaving me alone with my confusing emotions. I breathed a long, frustrated sigh before following him back to camp. I was confused and ashamed and euphoric at the same time. He was new and somehow even more exciting because of it. I caught up with him fast, timidly reaching out a hand to help him carry a bucket. It was like meeting a new person after all these years. And my fingertips tingled when he let me take over.