Re: [Carnival: Mars, Jamie, Si, David, Hannah]
Hannah hadn't expected Jamie to show up and step, step onto the shadow of her words, and her reason for saying them had been genuine. She still wasn't very good at social nicities, at knowing what was okay to say and what wasn't, and she really was worried about Jamie. Whenever she talked to him, he was so very sad, and it seemed a lot of that sadness came from thinking he wasn't loved. Hannah knew she wasn't loved. She knew the love in the Mayer family belonged to a girl that was only bones, and she knew the hate was the same, at least on Mars' part, but Jamie belonged, and she really did want him to feel accepted. If not liked, it not understood, then loved and accepted, and that was family, wasn't it? Hannah thought so, and she wasn't sure how much of that was her, how much was Amy, and these days she wasn't certain how much it all tangled up inside her. So, Jamie arrived, and Hannah hugged him back tightly and without even the slightest hint that she'd said something uncomfortable at all.
Next, she absorbed David's comment that Mars looked healthy, and Mars did, and Hannah was happy to see that. She knew about the kidney, and she still wasn't sure about receiving kidneys for Christmas, but Mars looked really, really good, and that made Hannah's smile a happier one. She felt responsible for Mars, for the girl's youth and the trauma she'd endured. This didn't take that away, and she knew Mars hadn't forgotten, but healthy was good. Healthy was really, really good. "I'm only sometimes late," she added, thinking of literary White Rabbits. "But I'm never late when it comes to crossing scary doors," she went on, thinking the entire carnival kind of charming in a macabre way. "I went to the abandoned amusement park in the Capital, and when you walk inside it stops being abandoned. It was amazing," she said, and she was going to need to reach out to Jeremiah. Running had been childish, and she knew that, but she didn't know how to look at someone who knew she wasn't real. It was hard enough with Si, and with Si she was pretty sure Amy was just refusing not to stay. "Mom always said that a house was like a body. And every house has eyes and bones and skin. A face. A heart. Maybe amusement parks and carnivals are the same way," she mused, her voice dreamy and bundled up in whimsy.
Inside they went. In, in, and Hannah skipped ahead a tiny bit and led to the midway. She didn't actually know it was called a midway, because she couldn't remember any carnivals in her youth, but the dirt and grass was a line of games on each side, and she stepped into the very, very center. At the end, there were tents and a freak show, a ferris wheel and carousel, and a haunted house to walk through, and there her gaze lingered and lingered. But Hannah thought the games were maybe a good idea.