I was walking towards my trailer with a bunch of wet clothes in my hands. Actually, the plan was to hang them up midday so there would be enough time for drying but I had to help all day breaking down the tents of the carnival so we could start traveling early in the morning.
I usually didn't keep my costumes out during the night. Things got stolen when townies knew they wouldn't be reported. But today I had no other choice. Costumes needed to be dried, ironed and folded until eight tomorrow. Nine was usually time to leave. When I arrived at my family´s wagon I started to throw the different colored suits on the clothesline that my brother tautened between our home and a nearby tree.
Our trailer was barely big enough to walk inside let alone live with three other people but it was all we had. Right now it was abandoned and quiet. Mom and dad were probably busy supervising the packing of their trapeze swings and training net. Danny was doing whatever. My parents, my brother and I, we all worked at the carnival. We worked and we traveled through the whole country, moving to another city every other week. That was basically all we did. That has been our family business for generations.
Even grandma didn't know the feeling of living in one place for more than a month. One time, when I was six years old, my mother had asked me if I wanted to go to a real school, a boarding school where I could stay and they would come visit me every few months. But of course I'd declined. I'd been too scared of being away from my family and familiarity. I hated my past self for it. All I wanted was to escape from this hell called carny life.

"Hey, Angela, right?" I flinched at the voice that suddenly broke through the quietness of the mostly empty field. As I turned around a golden-haired young man walked through nightfall right towards me.

"You're back." I said indifferently and turned to my work again, pegging out the rest of my washing. "Where have you been? Haven´t seen you in a while."

"Oh, you know..." He began when he finally reached me. "I had business to take care of."

"So it´s true? The jail thing?" For a moment he looked at me with shock in his handsome face and I felt the need to explain myself. "Oh, you know... You just left and there were rumors."

If he was bothered by my pettiness, he didn't show.
My insides were screaming. His appearance felt ghostlike in the murky dusk. How long has it been? I was questioning myself if I didn't just imagine him. I must be going crazy.

"No. I was just... Can I help you with that?" He changed subjects, pointing at the clothesline in front of us. Half of me wanted to see if his hand would just go through anything he touched. Maybe he had died while he was away all these years.
My voice was croaking while I tried to find some sort of humor in this. "It would help if you could stop staring at my underwear."

A weird twitch crazed his eyebrows and he turned slightly, hands always in his washed-out tattered jeans' pockets. The silence made me hate the decision to try to be funny.
He was back. Whatever took him so long. He was here.

"It's great to see you around again, Patrick." I sent him a sweet smile, hoping it would mend all the wrongs and save me from the awkwardness. 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.
I reciprocated his smile and rose to speak again hoping it would break the awkwardness.
"Can you help to feed May? I need to get it done before it gets completely dark." What I left out of it was that I needed to get it done because my dad would be angry if I was out the night before travel.

"Sure."

"Great."

I started walking hastily but he kept up with me.
"So it´s your job now to do the acrobatics with May." I was thankful for the small talking but I didn't appreciate him looking at me every other moment.

"And you inherited your dad's deductive mind, 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?
Then suddenly he started a bitter laugh. "I probably wouldn't be here again if it wasn't for that and my ability to earn Alex's money." The bitterness in his voice was unmistakable and calling his dad by his first name was new.

"Don´t say that." I uttered more compassionate after a while. We had reached the elephant´s enclosure. Patrick didn't bother replying. He just stared at May coming towards us because she recognized my voice.

"Look at her." Patrick said seemingly astonished by this sight, his face lighting up for the first time. 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 Jane. Simply Patrick. I wished for a chance to turn back time and take on this challenge 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. This second was all that I allowed myself.

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, but waited outside.

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

"She just needed training, that´s all." I shrugged it 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 lot more. 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 would have liked to complain about the work in this impermeable heat around us that made it even more exhausting or the dark that 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 afterward while I was watching him climb in and out of the lake. He didn't show a sign of annoyance that I just sat there and did nothing besides 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 X-ray eyes and hence irritating others. When he suddenly showed up again, I couldn't help but jump-start back into the pattern of always being irritated by him. He was new and somehow delicate in the way that he hauled the full buckets out of the lake with sweat on his shirt and wet calves.

It hasn't even been my intention to let him work for me. I wanted him to sit down with me so we could talk but he just walked back through the woods to the enclosure. I sighed remarkably 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. 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. My fingertips tingled.