Odd One Out: Chapters 6–10

This is the thinking behind my decision to forgo my usual post-football-game ritual of knocking out homework while waiting in my room for Jupe to get home from do-gooding so we can watch movies for most of the night, and instead accompany my squad mates to a carnival that popped up in the empty parking lot of an abandoned Kmart.

“You and Brit stepped up to the carousel, and this funny look came over your face like you were flabbergasted. Then you just fell over forward. Your head hit the edge of the platform.”

“And I honestly wasn’t planning to give it back, but then...Well, with what happened last night, I realized it might be a bigger deal than I initially assumed. Figured it was time to return it and tell you I’m sorry for absconding with it.”

My literal worst nightmare immortalized.
I haven’t looked at this picture in almost twelve years: it’s a throwback to the worst day of my life.

Pictures with Carl were taken just inside the entrance, then we were cut loose to enjoy the carnival part: rides, games, delectable delicacies like Koolickles and deep-fried Ho Hos, the whole deal.

Pictures with Carl were taken just inside the entrance, then we were cut loose to enjoy the carnival part: rides, games, delectable delicacies like Koolickles and deep-fried Ho Hos, the whole deal.

In the center of the floor was a massive grand carousel, brightly lit with a top that looked like a gilded crown or something.

By the time they left, I understood: my daddy was never coming home. It’s like the carnival incident was some kind of premonition or bad omen or something.

My love of Carl was akin to hero worship.

“Yeah. I think I had an inkling stuff was off between them, but I guess I was too young to realize what that meant. All I knew was something bad happened at the carnival, and Carl was gone, then my parents’ fighting got worse, and my mom was gone.”

“Probably sounds dumb, but the end of Carl felt like the end of normal for me. Eventually my sister left, too. It was like...the catalyst for this foundation-shifting chain reaction.”

“You know, I actually feel a lot better now. Having talked to someone also deeply affected by Carl’s demise?”

Are we really discussing Google like it’s a sentient being?

“Trust me, if he’d died, we would’ve heard about it. Carousel Carl was a major childhood icon for a lot of people: no matter where he’s been or what he’s been up to, his death would’ve made national news. Like there was some guy named Mister Rogers or something like that? He died when you and I were toddlers, and my dad still bemoans ‘the loss.’”

Anyway, three weeks after launching Operation Crae Crae, or the Carl Conundrum, as Rae calls it, this is what we’ve learned: he checked into a psychiatric facility just outside Augusta, Georgia, right after that Birmingham show, and then someone reported seeing him panhandling off I-20 in downtown Atlanta five years ago.

Anyway, three weeks after launching Operation Crae Crae, or the Carl Conundrum, as Rae calls it, this is what we’ve learned: he checked into a psychiatric facility just outside Augusta, Georgia, right after that Birmingham show, and then someone reported seeing him panhandling off I-20 in downtown Atlanta five years ago.

To think the guy whose downfall basically took our respective childhoods with it was begging for change fifteen minutes from my house six years later?

And it really has been a nice deviation from the norm.

We get into her driveway, and I rush out of the car thinking I’ll head to my house for a subzero shower and thoughts of the glacier grandmas, but when I take a step toward my door, she gives me this look. Like she’s appalled or something.

“Oh...” I shift my feet, hopefully inconspicuously. “I kinda need a shower.”

It’s quite the predicament.

Delaney Patterson kissed Jupe on the lips in the fourth grade, thereby stealing Jupe’s heart and simultaneously smushing my soul to dust between her puckered little lips, the wily seductress.

“My mom is shaped like you,” Rae says. “All voluptuous and everything? My sister is, too, actually.”

“Hmph. Somebody’s testy,” Golly says with his mouth full.

“Right. It might be said that I have fairly extensive abandonment issues when it comes to women since my mom left and my sister eventually joined her?”

Like Rae and I deliberately don’t touch each other or banter or flirt if Jupe is around. It feels like I’m going behind Jupe’s back or something.

“So you know how I’m all exuberant-shiny-happy-nicey-nice-vivacious all the time?”

“So you know how I’m all exuberant-shiny-happy-nicey-nice-vivacious all the time?”

“Honestly, the only time I’m legitimately happy is when I’m with you or Jupiter. The rest of the time, I’m just”—she looks down—“unshakably disconsolate.”

"He tends to go with whatever I tell him because of some...points of contention with my sister. She barely speaks to him now because he went all helicopter parent on her after my mom left.”