That Time I Joined the Circus Read online

  And the waffles at the diner on Pike tasted like butt.

  Winter Springs, Florida — Sunday, October 17

  I was sitting in one of the plastic chairs that someone had set up outside the crew trailer, reading and thinking that it was weird that it was still hot in the middle of October. We had moved sites, and I’d helped again with the setup, already feeling more like I knew the drill. The little circus city sprang up from nothing but empty field once again, right before my eyes.

  A shadow fell over The Desperate Viscount, and I looked up to see Louie’s daughters standing over me.

  “You wanna come to town with us?” Lina asked.

  Her almost-black hair was down for a change, and it hung to her waist. She was wearing a one-shoulder black top and skinny jeans. Even without makeup, she looked exotically pretty. Her sister, Eliska, stood just behind her. She didn’t wear makeup, either, that I could see, but her hair was in a messy bun and she wore a T-shirt and pink cardigan sweater paired with nondescript jeans.

  I was so surprised, I almost waited too long to answer, because I saw an expression of annoyance just start to cross Lina’s face. But I regained my composure and answered, “Sure!” with probably too much enthusiasm. Lina turned and started walking toward the parking lot, and Eliska followed her. I raced inside the trailer, grabbed my wallet and cell phone, and caught up to them.

  “There’s a mall about fifteen minutes from here,” Lina told me as I came up beside her. “It has a Barnes & Noble, so we thought you’d like to go.”

  “Thanks for thinking of me,” I said, still surprised. “I didn’t … I mean, just thanks. It will be nice to have a change of scenery for a bit.”

  Lina rolled her eyes. “Imagine being stuck here all your life. We have to get out sometimes or we’d go crazy.”

  Lina had led the way to an old gray Honda Civic. It was very clean, especially on the inside. Lina got behind the wheel, and Eliska surprised me by getting in the back. She had an iPhone with her and seemed to be reading a book on it.

  “Don’t worry about Liska,” Lina told me as she put the key in the engine. “She doesn’t talk that much.”

  As we drove down a moderately busy two-lane highway, Lina asked me questions about why I’d come to the circus, where I was from, what New York was like. I skirted around the details, but I did tell her that my father had died and that I’d originally come looking for my mother. “When she wasn’t here, I pretty much had to find a job and a place to live,” I explained. “And your dad was nice enough to give me a job that came with a place to live.”

  Lina snorted. “If you want to call it that. Besides, dad’s given you jobs, plural. And crew quarters — I don’t know, I don’t feel like you belong there. Especially after what just happened, losing your dad and all.”

  I didn’t argue with Lina. As grateful as I was, I still wasn’t really sleeping. Jamie had helped me rig up a little privacy curtain like most of the other crew members had. But I was afraid to sleep, because of the nightmares about my last days in New York. And then there was the fact that the bathroom was a portable job outside the trailer — a fact that had me cursing my small bladder several times a night.

  We had come to a stoplight. Lina looked over at me. “I’m real sorry about your dad. And I’m glad you could find some work here.” She seemed to be deciding something, and was quiet for a few minutes. We pulled into the parking lot for the mall, the Oviedo Marketplace, and we all piled out of the car.

  “Books first,” Eliska said, and led the way. Lina just smiled sort of indulgently at her sister, and we followed her into the Barnes & Noble. Lina stopped at the Starbucks counter at the front of the store. “You want anything?”

  I looked down at the wallet in my hand and decided that a four-dollar coffee was no longer in the budget. Trying not to sound regretful, I said, “No, I’m okay, thanks.”

  Lina shot me a look. “My treat. You got my sister to stop complaining about the school for three whole days. That’s worth a latte. What flavor would you like?”

  “Caramel?” I couldn’t help smiling at the sort-of compliment from Eliska.

  “Done.” Lina smiled back.

  I had played teacher for three more days. On the first day, Eliska had caught me reading an old paperback copy of The Tempest that I’d found in the room. I’d sensed her watching me read while the little kids ate their snack and finally looked up. She’d asked me if I had read that book in school, and then we got started talking about the classes I’d taken at Sheldon, and then Eliska had asked if I could read the play with her. She’d pulled up a copy on her iPhone, and we read out loud. The little kids seemed to like to listen as I did different voices for the characters I read. I even made Eliska laugh once. But the new, actual teacher had arrived on Wednesday, just as we were about to load out.

  Lina and I sat down with our coffees. “Doesn’t Eliska like coffee?” I asked her.

  “Not this kind. Too fattening. My sister’s very disciplined. I have to be careful, too, but once in a while I cheat.” She held up her vanilla latte, which she hadn’t ordered nonfat. “Besides, she doesn’t want anything to take away from her time with the books. She’ll be in here the whole time. I’m going to go shop for clothes, some makeup — she’ll still be here. Liska really takes school seriously; she’s constantly after my dad to get better teachers for them at the school. But it’s not really the way most teachers want to work, traveling around and stuff.”

  “Is she going to go to college next year? She said she’s a senior like me.”

  “Sore subject.” She smiled. “Not so much with me, but with my dad and my brother. If she goes away, we’re down to two. Most trapeze teams are at least four. We could get someone else in, but Eddie’s kind of … challenging to work with. And he and Dad like that it’s the Flying Vranas. My mom’s family were trapeze people way back. My mom died when I was ten,” she added. “Cancer.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, swallowing past the lump in my throat and trying not to think about my dad. “That must’ve been really hard.”

  “Yeah. Liska took it the hardest, I think.” She shook her head and sat up a little straighter, and I could tell she wanted to change the subject. “But she seemed to really like reading that play with you.”

  As if summoned, Eliska appeared in front of us. “Hi. Lexi? Can I ask you to do something?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “You were talking the other day about that English class you had last year that was so great. Could you maybe recommend some of the books you read in that class for me to read? I’d just like to … I’d like to read some of them.”

  “Of course,” I told her, standing. “Let’s go to fiction and I’ll show you some good ones. Some famous ones that aren’t too dull.” I smiled. I looked back at Lina.

  “Go ahead,” she said with a laugh. “I’ll meet you guys back here in about an hour and a half.”

  I led the way to the fiction section and began pulling books off the shelves for Eliska.

  “Okay, so you should probably read something by Jane Austen,” I began, pulling down a copy of Pride and Prejudice. “You may not like it — not everybody gets Jane — but I love her.”

  “What are her books about?” Eliska asked, giving the girl-in-a-bonnet cover a dubious look.

  “Just read it,” I told her. “I can’t describe it.” I handed her Wuthering Heights next, then Heart of Darkness, then Brave New World and Hamlet. “I’m sticking to Brit lit,” I told her. “But there are lots of American authors, too. There’re too many!” I stepped back from the shelves. “How big is your book budget?”

  “I can probably buy about six,” Eliska said. “So one more. Can you pick just one?”

  “I have some back at the trailer, too,” I told her. “You can borrow whatever you want.”

  “Thanks, Lexi.” Eliska smiled that shy smile of hers at me again. Then I settled on Jane Eyre and found her a copy. We sat down to read in the café while we waited
for Lina to finish shopping. Eliska dove into Pride and Prejudice, and when I heard her laugh out loud, I knew she got it.

  As we were pulling back into the parking lot at Europa, Lina turned to me.

  “Hey, how attached are you to sleeping in the crew trailer? ’Cause I was thinking, Liska and I each got our own trailer last year, but mine’s still a double. I kind of feel bad with you in there with all those guys … You want to stay in the spare room in mine instead?”

  “YES!” I said, making them both laugh. I raced back to the crew trailer, got my suitcase out of the back, and met Lina outside her trailer. She helped me carry my bag inside and showed me the little room. It was very tiny, with just a twin bed and a small dresser, but compared to the shelf in the crew trailer, it looked like a thousand square feet.

  When we were done putting my stuff in the room — in other words, in two minutes — Lina asked if I was ready to head to dinner. I followed her and joined her at her family’s usual table. Louie even smiled at me as I came in. Then came another surprise. I had gotten myself a plate of beef stew and sat down when Louie announced to me that he thought I was a good worker. “I can find a new clerk for the novelties wagon like this.” He snapped his fingers. “If you’re going to stay with us, you should be part of the show.”

  I was already shaking my head before my brain had time to form words. I had a sudden, very clear mental picture of what I would look like wearing one of Lina’s barely-there costumes. As cool as it would be to do something amazing like Lina and Liska, have people applaud for me, I knew it just wasn’t in the cards.

  “I don’t really have any talent,” I told him. At his raised eyebrow, I added, “I mean, I could never do anything like dancing or performing or whatever. Nothing anyone would want to watch.”

  “I’m not so sure about that. But for a start, what about something on the midway?” he asked.

  “Dad thinks you can come up with something creative.” Lina smiled. “It’s a compliment, really.” She waggled her eyebrows, and I laughed.

  “I can try to think of something,” I told him, and this seemed to satisfy him, because he returned to his beef stew without further comment. I poked at my stew without enthusiasm, wondering what I could possibly do to live up to this idea Louie had about me. He and his children were born into show business. He didn’t understand people like me, whose most astounding skill was the ability to be completely invisible.

  The show didn’t open until the next night, Monday night, so after dinner there was an unexpected lull in my jobs. Lina and her sister went off for yet another rehearsal, probably like the one I’d seen the week before. I walked down the midway, feeling restless. My only other option was a book, but I just wasn’t in the mood.

  “What’s shaking, city girl?” I heard Jamie before I saw him. He was wrapping an enormous black electrical cord around his arm from elbow to wrist. I walked over to him.

  “I have to think of something creative to do in the circus,” I told him glumly. “Somehow Louie got this idea about me. I have no idea how.”

  “I do. You impressed Lina and Liska. Not an easy thing to do.”

  “That’s cool, but now I’m sort of stuck. I have no skills whatsoever. But I don’t want to let Louie down. And now Lina’s even taking me in. And after I just showed up here, like a package sent to the wrong address.”

  Jamie gave me a sympathetic smile. “Well, you’re not a package I’d send back.” Before I could get too excited about this comment, he went on to ask, “Lina asked you to move in, huh? What does Liska have to say about it? That’s her old room.”

  “She hasn’t said anything.”

  Jamie looked thoughtful, but answered only with, “Hmm.” He walked a few paces away, hung the cord on a hook outside one of the concession trailers, then asked, “So, what are you good at?”

  Of all the questions for a completely talent-free person to keep getting. “Nothing that I know of.” I tried to smile.

  “I’m sure that’s not true.” Was he flirting with me? Or did he just have so much male charm that the excess just flailed out of him and landed on any girl who happened to be there?

  “Well, nothing useful for the circus, anyway,” I clarified. “I mean, I’ll do whatever he asks me to. I’m just really hoping not to be on, um, poop detail with Costi again.”

  Jamie made a face. “Man, that’s some rookie treatment, all right.” He looked at me for a second. “It’s just too bad you’re so pale.”

  “Um. Yes?” I was confused. I mean, I knew I was semivampiric in color, but it was the natural result of a life spent almost completely indoors. And I wasn’t sure how a tan would help my current talent search.

  “No,” Jamie said, laughing again. “It wasn’t an insult. It’s just that Reveka — Madame Tarus — just left us. She’s a gypsy fortune teller.” He rolled his eyes in a way I guessed was meant to convey his opinions about such things. “If you looked more like a gypsy, maybe you could get that attraction back up and running.”

  All of a sudden, I had an idea. “Jamie, why couldn’t I be a pale fortune teller?”

  “I was sort of kidding,” Jamie said. “But I guess you could be. Do you know what you’re doing with … that stuff?”

  “I’m pretty good at reading tarot cards,” I told him, my mind racing. “What else did this Madame Tarus do?” I was thinking about how I’d made up this really cool Divinations Class table for little kids on their Harry Potter day at the local library. But I wasn’t about to share this nerdtastic memory with Jamie.

  He shrugged. “I only went in there once. I took this girl I met up in Maryland to see Madame T — the girl said she was into that kind of thing … But I know she read palms and stuff.”

  “Maybe I could switch it up a little. And be paler. Also, not a gypsy.” I tried not to hold my breath waiting for Jamie to answer. Suddenly, I really wanted this idea to work.

  “Yeah, maybe. Hey, stay down here in Florida awhile; maybe you’ll not be translucent by the time the winter’s over.” Jamie laughed.

  I didn’t point out that I did not, in fact, have anywhere else to go. Even someone as pathetic at flirting as me knew that sounded kind of desperate.

  “Maybe I will,” I told him. “I could tell Louie about your idea …”

  “Tell him it’s yours. Louie is always impressed with ingenuity. We have a couple more months in the season down here; maybe you could make a go of it by then.”

  I watched Jamie walk off, wrapping up the cord, and I stood alone on the empty midway.

  A couple more months, Jamie had said. A couple more months and the circus would be in winter quarters. The year I had once dreaded for stupid reasons would be over. I didn’t need a tarot deck to read my fortune. I wouldn’t be going to college.

  I wouldn’t be going anywhere.

  I told Louie the idea the next morning at breakfast. I tried to give Jamie (at least some) of the credit, but Louie didn’t seem to hear that part; he said I’d had a great idea. Before lunch, Louie set me up with a small abandoned trailer. It was seriously dirty, but Lina volunteered to help me, saying she was free until her five o’clock call for the first show.

  Lina showed up with an impressive array of cleaning supplies. At first I’d waved away the face mask she tried to give me, but I quickly changed my mind as I began to feel woozy and light-headed from the bleach.

  We cleaned for hours, our hair tied back in colorful scarves she’d brought. Lina and I laughed as we dug up some of the crazy props, costumes, and unidentifiable items that had found their way into the unused trailer. I found an enormous piece of foam shaped like a hammer and chased Lina with it, calling her a Whac-A-Mole, and then she got the hammer away from me, and I really was the whacked mole, because her aim was way better than mine. We collapsed outside on the grass in front of the trailer, recovering from our hysterics.

  Jamie, of course, chose that moment to walk by. I struggled to my feet. Lina got one last big whack in just then, though, so I f
ell right back down to my knees. That started us both laughing again, and Jamie gave up on whatever he had stopped to say and, shaking his head, kept on walking. A few seconds later, I noticed somebody else watching our show. I recognized the fire-eater from the show rehearsal. As he came closer, I noticed that the skin of his throat was very scarred — occupational hazard, no doubt. He was very slight-statured, with wiry arms poking out of his old-fashioned white sleeveless undershirt, which was neatly tucked into his black pants. He could have walked out of a 1930s circus. I looked away, then peeked again. Nope — he was too tan to be a vampire. I’d read too many YA novels — everybody was a vampire these days.

  “Lexi, this is Julian,” I heard Lina say, smiling at us both. “Julian, my new friend Lexi. She’s going to be joining us for a while.”

  “Pleased to meet you.” I held out my hand, then realized it was still covered in a glove that was pretty nasty from our cleaning job. “Sorry,” I said as I peeled off the glove and tried again. Julian bowed very formally over my hand before taking it.

  “I am very pleased to meet you, Lex, is it?”

  “Lexi,” Lina said. “But I hear she changes it sometimes, so I’ll have to let you know.”

  “Ha ha,” I said to her. “So, Julian, you’re the fire-eater. That’s pretty intense. How did you … get into fire-eating?” I wasn’t sure if it was rude to ask questions about fire-eating, but it was a public spectacle, so I hoped it was fair game. And for some reason, I sort of liked him right off the bat. I remembered my second day at Europa, watching the show with Jamie — Julian had bowed in our direction.

  “My father taught me when I was very young. It is a family tradition, so to speak.” Julian grinned, as though childhood fire-swallowing was normal, or maybe he was just anticipating my reaction.

  I couldn’t help it — I gasped involuntarily. “Seriously? How young?”