Description: Island County Fairgrounds The third fire happened at Island County Fairgrounds in August, and it was the first one to get serious attention. The other two weren''t big enough. One was set in a trash container outside the convenience store at a forested place called Bailey''s Corner, which was more or less in the middle of nowhere, so no one thought much about it. Some dumb practical joke with a sparkler after the Fourth of July, right? Then, when the second flamed up along the main highway, right at the edge of a struggling little farmers'' market, pretty much everyone decided that that one took off because an idiot had thrown a lit cigarette from his car window right in the middle of the driest season of the year. But the third fire was different. Not only because it happened at the fairgrounds, which were just yards away from the middle school and less than a quarter mile from the village of Langley, but also because the flames began during the county fair when hundreds of people were milling around a midway. A girl called Becca King was among them, along with her boyfriend and her best girl friend: Derric Mathieson and Jenn McDaniels. The three were a study in contrasts, with Becca light-haired, trim from months of bicycle riding, and wearing heavy-rimmed glasses and enough makeup to suggest she was auditioning for membership in the reincarnation of the rock band Kiss; Derric tall, well-built, shaven-headed, African, and gorgeous; and Jenn all sinew and attitude, hair cut like a boy''s and tan from a summer of intense soccer practice. These three were sitting in the bleachers set back from an outdoor stage upon which a group called the Time Benders was about to begin performing. It was Saturday night, the night that drew the most people to the fairgrounds because it was also the night when the entertainment was, as Jenn put it, "marginally less suicide-inducing than the other days." Those other days the entertainment consisted of tap dancers, yodelers, magicians, fiddlers, and a one-man band. On Saturday night an Elvis impersonator and the Time Benders comprised what went for the highlight of the fair. For Becca King, with a lifetime spent in San Diego and just short of one year in the Puget Sound area, the fair was like everything else she''d discovered on Whidbey Island: something in miniature. The barn-red buildings were standard stuff, but their size was minuscule compared to the vast buildings she was used to at the Del Mar racetrack where the San Diego County Fair took place. This held true for the stables for horses, sheep, cattle, alpacas, and goats. It was doubly true for the performance ring where the dogs were shown and the horses were ridden. The food, however, was the same as it was at county fairs everywhere, and as the Time Benders readied themselves to take the stage after Elvis''s final bow during which he nearly lost his wig, Becca and Derric and Jenn were chowing down on funnel cake and kettle corn. The crowd, who turned up to watch the Time Benders every single year, was gearing up its excitement level for the performance. It didn''t matter that the act would be the same as last August and the August before that and the one before that. The Time Benders were a real crowd pleaser in a place where the nearest mall was a ferry ride away and first-run movies were virtually unheard of. So a singing group who performed rock ''n'' roll through the ages by altering their wigs and their costumes and re-enacting the greatest hits of the 1950s onwards was akin to a mystical appearance by Kurt Cobain, especially if you had any imagination. Jenn was grousing. Watching the Time Benders was bad enough, she was saying. Watching the Time Benders at the same time as being a third wheel on "the Derric-and-Becca looove bike" was even worse. Becca smiled and ignored her. Jenn loved to grouse. She said, "So who are these guys, anyway?" in reference to the Time Benders as she dipped into the kettle corn and leaned comfortably against Derric''s arm. "God. Who d''you think ?" was Jenn''s unhelpful reply. "Y''know how other county fairs have shows where has-been performers give their last gasp before they finally hang it up and retire? Well, what we got is unknown performers re-enacting the performances of has-been performers. Welcome to Whidbey. And would you stop feeling her up, Derric?" she said to their companion. "Holding her hand isn''t feeling her up," was the boy''s easy reply. "Now if you want to see some serious feeling up . . . ?" He leered at Becca. She laughed and gave him a playful shove. "I hate this, you know," Jenn told her friend. She was returning to the previous third-wheel-on-the-looove-bike topic. "I shoulda stayed home." "Lots of things come in threes," Becca said. "Like what?" "Well . . . Tricycle wheels." "Triplets," Derric said. "Those three-wheel baby buggies for joggers who need to take their kids with them," Becca added. "Birds have three toes," Derric pointed out. Then, "Don''t they?" he said to Becca. "Great." Jenn reached for more funnel cake and jammed it into her mouth. "I''m a bird toe. Lemme send that out on Twitter." Which would, of course, be the last thing Jenn McDaniels could have done, since among them Derric was the only one who possessed anything remotely close to technological. Jenn had neither computer nor iPhone nor iPad nor laptop, because her family was too poor for anything more than a third-hand color television the size of a Jeep, practically given away by the thrift store in town. As for Becca . . . Well, there were a lot of reasons why Becca remained at a distance from technology and all of them had to do with keeping a profile so low that it was invisible. The Time Benders came forth at this point, climbing onto the stage past amplifiers that looked like bank vaults. Their wigs, pegged pants, white socks, and poodle skirts indicated that--just like last year--they''d be starting with the fifties. The Time Benders never worked in reverse. The crowd cheered as the show began, lit by the rest of the midway with its games of chance and its creaking thrill rides. The best of the fifties blasted forth at maximum volume. Over the noise, Jenn shouted at Becca, "Hey, you probably won''t need that thing." That thing was a hearing device that looked like an iPod in possession of a single ear bud. It was called an AUD box and, despite what Jenn thought, Becca didn''t use it to help with her hearing. At least not in the way Jenn thought she used it. Jenn and everyone else believed that the AUD box helped Becca understand what was being said to her by blocking out nearby noises that her brain wouldn''t automatically block: like the noise from other tables that you might hear in a restaurant but normally be able to ignore when someone was talking to you. That was what Becca let people believe about the AUD box because it did, actually, block out some noise. Only, the noise it blocked was the noise inside the heads of the people who surrounded her. Without the AUD box she was bombarded by everyone''s thoughts, and while hearing people''s thoughts could have its benefits, most of the time Becca couldn''t tell who was thinking what. So since childhood, the AUD box was what she wore to deal with her "auditory processing problem," as her mom had taught her to call it. Thankfully, no one questioned why the AUD box''s loud static helped her in understanding who was speaking. More important, no one knew that without it, she was one step away from reading their minds. Becca said, "Yeah, I''ll turn it down," and she pretended to do so. Up on the stage, the Time Benders were rocking and rolling through "Rock Around the Clock" while on either side of the stage, some of the older audience members had begun to dance in keeping with the music''s era. That was when the first gust of smoke belched across the heads of the crowd. At first, it seemed logical that the smoke would be coming from the line of food booths, all doing brisk sales of everything from buffalo burgers to curly fries. Because of this, the Time Benders audience didn''t take much note. But when there was a pause in the music and the Time Benders were getting ready for the sixties with a change of costumes and wigs, the sirens hooting from the road just beyond the fairgrounds'' perimeter indicated something serious was going on. The smell of smoke got heavier. People started to move. A murmur became a cry and then a shout. Just at the moment that panic was about to set in, the regular MC for the show took the stage and announced that "a small fire" had broken out on the far side of the fairgrounds, but there was nothing to worry about as the fire department was there and "as far as we know, all animals are safe." The last part was a serious mistake. "All animals" meant everything from ducks to the 4-H steer lovingly brought up by hand and worth a significant amount of money to the child who would sell it at the end of the fair. In between ducks and steers were fancy chickens, fiber-producing alpacas, award-winning cats, sheep worth their weight in wool, and an entire stable filled with horses. Among the audience for the Time Benders were the owners of these animals, and they began pushing their way in the direction of the buildings in which all the animals were housed. In short order, a melee ensued. Derric grabbed Becca and Becca grabbed Jenn, and they clung to each other as the crowd surged out of the midway and past the barn where the crafts were displayed. They burst out behind it into an open area that looked onto the show ring and to the buildings beyond. At the far side of the show ring, the stables were

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