The people sitting at the tables were eating, talking, paying her no mind. The people …

What happened to the fat guy sitting at the second table with half his butt showing? What about the two ladies in the pink Take Off Pounds Sensibly T-shirts eating salads? Where’d they go, and how did they move so fast?

She must have been sleeping quite a while. Her eyes went in search of the clock on the end of the Corn Dog booth.

No clock. Different booth, and this one sold … it took her a moment … Vietnamese food. Vi-et-na-mese?

She looked a careful, second time at the faces around the commons, the people sitting at the tables. Nobodylooked the same. Not even the tables. They were blue; they used to be green.

She carefully pulled in her feet and got them under her.

Was she in a different place? She twisted to make sure she was still under the tree. This one was bigger. It was a honey locust, but a lot bigger. Where was the smaller one?

A couple walked close by, and the guy gave her a quizzical look. She was about to return his look stretched out of proportion when it occurred to her that her own stare might have started it.

Smile, Mandy.

She smiled. He gave her a halfway, “it’s cool” smile, then looked to see where he was going.

She looked down at herself. No, crouching under a tree in nothing but a hospital gown and staring holes through everybody didn’t blend.

She’d better find Joanie and Angie.

Unless they were the ones who did this to her. But they never pulled weird pranks like this.

Maybe this was a drug trip. Somebody slipped her some acid in that diet soda. She’d never done drugs; she wouldn’t know what to expect.

She stood, keeping her back to the tree as she prepared the gown for walking in public. Blades of grass tickled between her toes. Any other time that would have been fun.

Daddy taught her to stop and think when they used to go hunting. He’d say, “What’s the first thing you do when you’re lost?” and she knew the answer from the last time he asked her, “Stop and think.”

She eased away from the tree. She could walk. She could breathe. Her eyes were working fine—well, lying to her, but at least they were in focus. She stepped across the grass, taking a few jabs in the feet from twigs and stones—those were real enough—and made it to the asphalt walkway that ran between the booths.

All the booths were different. New frames, new signs, new locations, and … and the Junior League Chicken Basket had changed to the Shriners’ Barbecue. She could feel her stomach tightening and her hands starting to shake.

Daddy used to tell her, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.”

“I’m having fun,” she said out loud so she could hear it, rubbernecking in the middle of the walkway with people passing on every side. “Just going nuts here and having fun.”

She caught a sideways glance from a lady but smiled back. “It was a girl! Seven pounds, five ounces! It went great!” The lady kept going.

The asphalt was hot under her feet and hurt with every step. Mandy bore the pain, stepping in any shadow she could find, searching the booths: Curly Fries. Mexican Grill. Huckleberry Ice Cream. Crab Cakes. Breaded Tenderloins.

No Joanie. No Angie.

She passed a little dispenser with a picture of a hand on it: Hand Washing Station. Wow. A place for people to wash their hands, right out in the open. But it took two hands, and one of hers was indispensably occupied.

Then came the Tobacco Free Zone. Where? Everywhere, or just there?

Huh. Since when did some of the boys start wearing really short hair, even butch cuts? Instead of an Afro, a black kid had no hair at all. Was that in?

She walked back toward the carnival rides, past Oklahoma Funnel Cakes, Elephant Ears, A Taste of Italy, Gyros Gyros Gyros.

The organ-grindy tune from the merry-go-round had changed. She made herself look: it was a different merry-go-round.

She came to the end of the food booths and turned two complete circles, one hand holding her gown, the other holding her hair away from her face and shading her eyes as she scanned the crowd.

Her friends were gone like they never existed.

She tried to fend it off, hold it down, but this feelingkept turning her stomach, shortening her breath, making her hands quiver: the Disneyland Freak-Out. She was little, with Mom and Daddy at Disneyland, and all she had to do was look away to watch Pluto go by and the next moment she couldn’t see them anywhere, only strange people, strange feet and legs and strollers and other kids, and no one looked at her and no one knew her, and she didn’t know them, and she’d never known such loneliness before, like dangling over death, so much so that she screamed for Mom and Daddy …

Her hand went over her mouth. This felt just like it.

Strangers. All these people were strangers. Even the buildings, the booths, the trash cans, the signs … all strangers.

At least the layout of the fairgrounds looked the same. She hurried through the carnival toward the livestock buildings. Her feet hurt, again and again. She couldn’t avoid the small pebbles, bits of trash and straw, and the heat, always the heat at midday with so few shadows. She was starting to limp, about to cry.

She passed three guys with long, snaky hair, tattoos all over their arms and backs, and their pants falling down, showing a pair of underwear falling down, showing another pair of underwear.

“Oh, Jesus, what have I done?”

She was drawing more stares now. Hobbling, fighting panic, her hair constantly in her eyes, she was getting noticeable and couldn’t help it.

A guy walked by with a funny plastic thing in his ear, talking out loud to someone who wasn’t there—“… well, how about four? You leave the kids off and then I’ll swing by … no, no problem.”

She asked someone, raced to the building labeled Camelid Barn, and found llamas content and quietly munching in straw-lined aluminum pens.

At the far end, a rancher on a raised platform, microphone in hand, was giving a llama lecture to a small crowd.

She’d never seen him before. She scanned the faces of those minding the animals. She once knew most of them; now she didn’t know any. She hurried among the pens reading the names: Johnson Sisters. Bingham’s Llamas. Sunrise Ranch. Lotta Llamas. No one she knew or remembered. She looked up and down, peering, searching through the people, pens, and long furry necks. She climbed to the second rail of a pen and searched again.

“Daddy?” she called.

She didn’t see him. A kid about twelve turned and looked in her direction, but only because she looked so out of place in here.

An answer was all she wanted. “Daddy?” Louder. “Arthur Whitacre, are you here?!”

Now the llamas were checking her out with huge brown eyes, starting to get nervous. That didn’t sit well with the owners, who were checking her out as well.

“Has anybody seen Arthur Whitacre?” Her eyes were blurring with tears and she couldn’t help shaking.

“Oh, what have we here?” somebody said.

A gentleman from the Sunrise Ranch, in plaid shirt and rancher’s hat, approached, extending a hand to her. “Miss, why don’t you get down from there?”

She didn’t know him and she didn’t come down. “I’m trying to find my father!”

“Shh, now just take it easy. We’ll find him. Just come on down before you get hurt.”

She stepped, nearly fell, from the railing. He reached and steadied her but she didn’t appreciate his touch and brushed him off.

“Arthur Whitacre! I’m looking for Arthur Whitacre!”

A nice, curly-headed gal in an Alpaca Acres T-shirt hurried to help, but just repeated his name, “Arthur Whitacre?”

Don’t play dumb with me!“Yes, Arthur Whitacre! The Wooly Acres Ranch! He had four llamas!”