Midget Stella ✓

“For the road,” he said.

The only person who didn’t laugh was Dutch, the carousel operator. Dutch had a missing thumb and a quiet way of looking at people like they were more than their worst parts. One night, after a particularly cruel heckler called her a “broken toy,” Stella sat on the steps of the carousel, hugging her knees.

The girl smiled. Not at her. With her.

She packed her acorn cap into a cardboard box. Dutch watched from the fence. He didn’t say goodbye. He just handed her a small wooden horse he’d carved himself—imperfect, lopsided, one ear chipped.

Stella smiled. She curtsied. She collected her fifty dollars and walked back to her trailer, where she washed the green face paint off and stared at the real person in the mirror. midget stella

The owner, a man named Coney with cigar ash on his vest, fired her on the spot. “You don’t break the fourth wall, Stella. You’re not an artist. You’re a midget.”

“Neither do we,” Dutch said. “But we still turn.” “For the road,” he said

She was billed as “Midget Stella,” though she loathed the word with a heat that could melt asphalt. Her real name was Estella Marguerite Finch, and she was twenty-three years old, three feet eleven inches tall, and tired of being a joke with a heartbeat.