The Other Side of the Lights

At four in the morning, thirty feet up a Ferris wheel with a wrench in her teeth, Frankie Varga is taking the stars apart. She's done it every dawn of her seventeen years — the last one to leave the sky dark, the first to string it back up in the next town over. She was born on the road, raised under the lights of her family's traveling carnival, and she can rebuild a Tilt-a-Whirl gearbox blindfolded or talk a stranger's last five dollars out of his pocket at the ring-toss. What she can't do is tell a single soul about the scholarship folded into thirds beneath the felt tray of her toolbox — the door she cracked open once and can't stop looking at.

Because the Vargas don't leave. It's painted in gold on the lead truck, two feet high: WE DON'T LEAVE. Not bulbs, not debts, not each other. And wanting more than the midway — wanting a name for a star, a life of your own — is a kind of betrayal.

This last summer refuses to behave. There's Theo, the Greenly boy who has loved her one week a year for as long as she can remember. There's a grandfather whose failing heart seems tangled up with the show's failing luck, his color going gray under the work lights. And there's a woman standing on the far side of the lights who looks exactly like the mother Frankie has spent twelve years learning to hate.

Told in a voice as sharp and tender as a socket wrench in a careful hand, The Other Side of the Lights is a warm, aching coming-of-age story about belonging and forgiveness, about the people who made you and the future you're afraid to want. Frankie has survived every summer of her life. This one, she'll have to choose.

Step beyond the lights. Start reading today.