Diary of Emmeline Grace Carter

July 14th, 1923

It is the hottest day of the year…

Mama says the heat makes people act strangely — says it sours the milk and curdles good sense. But I don’t think it’s the sun that’s gone to my head. I think it’s him.

The morning started like a sigh. Heavy and slow, like the air itself was stuck between breaths. The kind of heat that makes your skin feel tight, like the sky’s leaning in too close. Even the bees seem drowsy, bobbing through the garden like they can’t be bothered. I hear a cicada start up just after breakfast, and the sound buzzes through my bones like it’s trying to tell me something I don’t quite understand yet.

Mama made me wear my white pinafore — the one with the lace collar and tiny pearl buttons. I complain it’s too tight in the back, that it clings when I sweat, but she says a young lady should look proper, especially when the fair’s in town. She ties my sash with care and tucks a small handkerchief into my palm. “For the heat,” she says, but I think she means for my nerves.

Because today is not just any day.

The traveling fair has come to Hollow Creek.

It’s the first time in all my thirteen years I’ve seen anything like it. They rolled in just before dawn, a slow parade of painted wagons and creaking wheels, horses with feathered headpieces and men shouting things like “Fortunes told!” and “Magic tricks tonight!” The whole town’s been buzzing for days. Mr. Harris from the bakery even closed shop early, and that man hasn’t taken a day off since the war.

Mama presses a nickel into my palm. “One treat. No more. And mind your manners, Emmeline.” I nod like always. But my heart’s pounding. I don’t know why. Or maybe I do.

I walk down to the meadow where they’ve set up, past the church and the pond where the frogs croak low like they’re warning someone. The fair looks like a postcard from somewhere else — red and yellow banners snapping in the breeze, the scent of candied apples and hot peanuts heavy in the air.

And then I see him.

He’s standing by the ring toss booth, one hand resting lazily on the counter, the other twirling a coin between his fingers. His shirt is wrinkled and too big, sleeves rolled up, suspenders half undone like he doesn’t care how the world sees him. His hair curls at the tips, like he’s just stepped out of a windstorm, and his skin is sun-browned and glowing. But it’s his eyes that stop me. Brown — the kind of brown that makes you think of late summer fields and molasses and warmth. When he looks at me, I forget what I came here for.

I try the game — the ring toss — because I don’t know what else to do. I miss every time. The wooden rings clatter against the bottles, rolling off like laughter.

“You’re aiming wrong,” he says, voice low and amused.

I turn, cheeks burning. “Excuse me?”

“You’ve gotta aim for the third bottle. First two are tilted forward. Rigged.”

I blink at him. “How do you know?”

He shrugs, easy as breathing. “Been watching. They don’t make it easy for girls in white dresses.”

I don’t know what he means, not exactly, but I laugh anyway. Because he does, and his laugh sounds like something soft cracking open inside me.

He tells me his name is Thomas. He says it like it doesn’t matter — like names are just air. He’s fifteen and talks about it like he’s seen the world. He tells me he’s from Charleston, but he’s here helping his uncle for the summer. I pretend to be uninterested, but I ask too many questions. He doesn’t seem to mind.

We walk through the fair together. He buys me a lemonade without asking, hands it to me with a quiet smile like he’s done it a hundred times before. I take it even though I still have my nickel. Our shoulders brush once. I feel it all the way down to my toes.

He asks what I like and I say “poetry.” He raises one eyebrow and says, “Say something poetic.”

So I say, “Blue.”

He grins. “That’ll do.”

We sit on the edge of the creek later, where the air is cooler and the shadows are long. My feet dangle over the water. I try not to stare at his hands — the way his thumb keeps brushing against the grass, like he’s restless even when he’s still.

He tells me he’s leaving. Soon. His uncle’s sending him back to Charleston — says there’s work for a boy like him in the city. Machines, factories, telegrams. His voice gets quiet when he talks about it, like he’s already gone and just hasn’t told his bones yet.

“I don’t belong here,” he says. “This place is too small.”

I want to tell him that I’m here. That I belong with him, wherever that is. But I say nothing. I look at the water and pretend it doesn’t feel like something inside me is unthreading.

I ask if he’ll remember me.

He doesn’t answer right away.

Then he says, “Every time the cicadas scream.”

He picks a wildflower from the bank and tucks it behind my ear. I forget how to breathe. I think maybe I’m going to remember this moment forever.

The sun starts to set and everything turns gold and pink like it’s been painted just for us. He walks me back to the fair, but slower this time. Like we’re stalling the clock.

At the ring toss booth, he gives the man his last coin and aims for the third bottle. The ring lands with a click. Perfect.

He hands me a glass elephant — tiny, blue-tinted, trunk curled like it’s dancing.

“Something to remember me by,” he says.

I want to say I don’t need anything to remember him by. That I’ll carry the sound of his voice, the curve of his smile, the warmth of his lemonade in my hand until I’m old and grey and no longer thirteen. But I just nod, holding the elephant in both palms like it’s made of something more than glass.

We don’t say goodbye. Not really. He just tips his cap and smiles that slow, easy smile that undoes me. Then he walks off toward the shadows and the wagons and the edge of something I can’t follow.

And just like that, he’s gone.

The fair will be gone tomorrow, too. The meadow will be empty again, just grass and quiet and ghost-laughter on the wind. I’ll go back to braiding my hair and shelling peas and pretending I don’t know what it feels like to fall halfway in love with a boy who isn’t meant to stay.

I don’t think this is what grown-ups call love. I don’t think it has to be. It’s something else — something sweeter and sadder. Like the way a melody sticks in your head long after the song ends. Like the smell of smoke after fireworks. It lingers.

I hold the elephant up to the light. Its blue belly glows, and I imagine Thomas’s hands shaping it, his breath fogging the glass. I tell myself stories. That he thinks of me when the train passes a meadow. That maybe, just maybe, he kept the wildflower I gave him in return — the one he tucked in his shirt pocket with a laugh and a wink.

I press the flower he gave me — now wilted — between these pages, careful not to crush it completely. I want it to stay.

I want this to stay.

Maybe one day I’ll be old and married and living in a house that smells like rain. Maybe I’ll have children who never learn the name Thomas. Maybe I’ll find this diary in a box and smile at how silly and soft I was.

But right now?

Right now I am a girl on the edge of something I don’t have words for. And I miss someone I barely got to know. And it hurts. And it’s beautiful.

And it’s mine.

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Recovered from a weathered leather-bound journal found in Whitmore’s Antique Shop, Savannah, Georgia. Its edges are curled, the ink faded in places, but one entry remained intact — tucked between pages still scented faintly of lavender and sun. Emmeline Grace Carter, age 13. Written in careful script beneath the fading hush of summer. A single, flattened blue wildflower clings to the page — like memory, like hope, like the sound of cicadas in the heat.