That Time I Joined the Circus

by J. J. Howard

  “Perhaps seven or eight. I was very good at it when I was quite young. It is only when one gets to be closer to your age that … distractions get in the way.” Julian’s hand seemed to go reflexively to his throat as he said this.

  “Like girls? Or a girl?” Lina asked in a teasing voice.

  “Yes, there was a girl. And she was very beautiful. Far too beautiful to have around when one has to keep absolute focus. I once learned a hard lesson when I was about your age.”

  “Was she worth it — being … distracted, I mean?” I asked carefully. It sounded as though this might be a painful story for him — figuratively and literally.

  Julian looked surprised. “Oh — no — that’s not what I meant at all.” Suddenly he smiled a curious smile, and his eyes were far away, unfocused. “No, not at all. If I had to do it once more, I would be distracted all over again. You must always take your chance, Lexi. That is what being young is for. It was a great pleasure to meet you, Lexi. Elina.” He bowed briefly to each of us and then walked slowly off.

  “Weird,” I breathed. “I think that I just got told to not be so boring by a fire-eating circus guy. And your name is Elina?”

  “Yep,” Lina said. “To both. But call me that again and you’re toast.” She started chasing me with the foam hammer again, and I didn’t get far.

  I felt bad later, for laughing, and forgetting, for three whole hours, that my dad died alone in the middle of the street, and that the police couldn’t even find me for five hours because I wasn’t where I was supposed to be …

  When it hit me, I was sitting alone in my new closet-size room in Lina’s trailer. I’d been lying there trying to sleep for what felt like hours, and the already-close tin walls started to move closer, and I think I started hyperventilating. So I got up off the little bed — I honestly think it might’ve been a child’s mattress; luckily I wasn’t overly tall — and slammed out of the trailer as fast as I could.

  I was just walking, and there was Jamie, unloading boxes from a truck that had just arrived with some kind of delivery. I hadn’t wanted to see anyone, but for some reason when I saw Jamie, and he looked at me, I stopped walking and felt myself willing him to come over to me. For once I didn’t want to be invisible. I didn’t want to be alone. He took one look at my face and dropped the box he was holding, took my hand, and led me away from the truck.

  Jamie led me behind the tiger trailer and dropped my hand, the one he’d grabbed to take me back there. I stood, numb, not knowing what to do with my arms, feeling like they weren’t even my arms just then. I started to wrap them protectively around my middle, for lack of anything else to do, but Jamie stopped me, taking a step toward me, standing so close I couldn’t pull my arms up without hitting him. He reached up slowly, tucked a stray lock of hair behind my ear. That’s how it started.

  My heart was beating very fast, and a voice in my head was yelling at me to get out of there, reminding me how no good could come of my racing heart or cute boys who didn’t belong to me.

  But I forgot to act like a spaz, forgot to overthink everything that was happening, forgot that I pretty much had no idea what I was doing — unlike Jamie, who totally knew what he was doing. I just wanted not to think about New York.

  So I closed my eyes and let go. It was like dancing, just letting him lead. And he was kissing me, and I was kissing him back. And then it was over, and all the awkwardness came rushing back, and I stepped back away from Jamie. I started walking, then running, back to my little room in Lina’s trailer.

  Somehow, Lina knew, right away, about me and Jamie.

  “So, you and Jamie, huh?” Lina asked, handing me a box of Honey Nut Cheerios.

  I felt my face get red and hot. “Um. Yeah. It was kind of an accident.” I poured some cereal into my bowl and handed the box back.

  “I probably should have warned you; he’s a bit of a player.” She looked at me before turning around to put the box away. “I guess I thought you’d figure that out.”

  “He definitely seems like one,” I said, nodding. “Like I said, kind of accidental. I don’t have any, like, delusions about him.”

  “Smart girl.” She laughed as she turned back around and added milk to her bowl, but there was something weird about the sound. Was this about Jamie? Did the same stupid musical-chairs dating go on here just like back at Sheldon?

  “Yeah, I’m kind of challenged when it comes to all that stuff,” I said. “Under normal circumstances I’m like a nun or something. But I kind of had a meltdown last night.” I was looking at Lina, trying to figure out if she was mad or if something really was up. But she was keeping her eyes on her Cheerios. Because those are so interesting to look at.

  “I guess you took Julian’s advice,” Lina said next, skipping over what I’d said about my meltdown. “You took your chance.”

  She looked at me then, and winked and smiled, then flopped down on her little love seat in the middle of the trailer and flipped on her tiny TV. She started chattering about her performance with Eliska and Eddie the night before. She seemed to be acting like normal Lina, but I knew it was just that: acting. I had done a lot of that kind of acting myself in the last year.

  Perfect. I found someone who could be a real friend, who even let me move in with her, and that’s when I completely jump off my normal track for five seconds and manage to make out with the cutest boy in maybe all of Florida … and he’s the guy she likes.

  Well, I wasn’t ever going to go near Jamie again — not like that. I wasn’t that girl. I swallowed hard, remembering that night back in New York when I had been that girl. And anyway, it wasn’t likely that Jamie would even be interested in kissing me again, not with so many new distractions buying tickets every night in every new town.

  This was really the perfect start to my new job as fortune teller, giving other people advice. About things like love.

  112 Bowery — Thursday, September 23

  One more year. One more year. This had become my mantra over the course of this long, sweltering summer. My dad had been gone almost all the time. Bailey and Eli had been in the Hamptons. And now that they were back, they were different. They kept acting weird — at least around me.

  I wished so badly that I was going to college this year instead of next year. I wanted to start over, be somebody else. I was so tired of being invisible Xandra. None of the forty-seven people in my class noticed or cared what I did. To be fair, it was kind of mutual — I didn’t adore most of them, either. I was so ready to reinvent myself. Talk more in class. Stop skulking around to cult films and used bookstores and complaining about stupid people. I wanted to just have, I don’t know, fun — for a change.

  I felt like in college there would be some kind of a map of how to do that. Places I’d have to be at specific times, new faces to meet and memorize. But until then, how was I supposed to shake things up? Did I just strike up conversations with strangers? This was New York: That could end badly.

  So I kept skulking around the city, mostly by myself, eating food on sticks or in little foil envelopes — because food by yourself in a restaurant is just sad. It’s okay with a book, but eating and reading is not that easy. And I’d been to every used bookstore in a forty-block radius, and anyway, I was sick of books about interesting people — people who had actual lives. Instead, I watched real people go about their real lives, taking advantage of my invisibility, noticing people’s quirks, the way they talked, everything.

  I think my dad finally noticed my extreme funk, because he made a big deal about us having dinner together that night. He seemed pretty intent on my being psyched about the plan, so I’d promised him about six times that I’d be home at seven, ready for father-daughter eating and bonding.

  I got home from school early and headed for my room. I usually liked hanging out in there. I had concert posters covering most of the available surfaces, and the bedspread I’d wanted for a year: black with little silver embroidered stars. I still had my eye on the matching curtai
ns, but for now I was making do with some purple silky ones I found in a little store on Seventh Street. I had two sets of twinkle lights, in the shape of little purple gargoyles, strung together and draped over the window ledge and the little Chinese screen in the corner. Technically, they were supposed to be a Halloween decoration, but I liked them all the time. The rest of the room, minus the bed, was almost completely taken up by bookshelves.

  But somehow I didn’t feel like being in my room today. It seemed more like the world’s smallest and worst organized library and less like the haven I needed. So I sat out on the fire escape until it started to drizzle.

  I was setting out plates and cups in the kitchen when Gavin came in a few minutes later, shaking his damp hair, a destroyed denim jacket over his perpetual T-shirt (this one was for the band Minus the Bear). I was sure he got it for free; my dad hasn’t bought clothes since around 1994. Unfortunately, he was wearing jeans with the denim jacket.

  “Dad, you do realize you’re wearing a denim tuxedo?”

  “Aw, Lex, give me a break. This is probably the closest I will ever come to a tuxedo, so maybe you should just enjoy my sartorial splendor and be thankful that I brought Thai.”

  “Ooh, Thai. Okay, wear what you want. Is it from Sticky Rice?”

  “Who do you think you’re dealing with? Thanks for setting the table.”

  “I was just getting out the plates. Did someone die? Since when do we eat at the table?” I paused for a moment in horror as an idea occurred to me. “You didn’t invite some new girlfriend, did you?” Every once in a while, Gavin got serious enough with some woman that she insisted on meeting his daughter. I got the feeling it was pretty much never his idea. The last one, Cherie, had been a year or so ago. That had been a fun evening. She spent all night telling me why meat was murder as we all sat around the table not eating the meatloaf I had tried so hard to make edible.

  “No.” Dad frowned at me. “I meant what I said before. We haven’t been spending enough time together. I wanted us to just have dinner. No ulterior motive.”

  He actually looked kind of hurt, so now I felt like a terrible daughter. I didn’t know what to say then, so I went to the fridge and got out the iced-tea pitcher while Gavin got out the cartons of food.

  “So what’s been going on with you lately? Anything new?” he asked.

  “The complete and utter absence of anything new. What about you?”

  “God, Lex — sorry, Xandra. Sometimes I can’t believe you are growing up in this city and you can’t think of anything good to do. If I’d lived here when I was seventeen, man, what I would’ve gotten into.”

  I shot him a look. “So you want me to act how I think you would have if you’d lived in New York when you were seventeen?” I raised an eyebrow at him and waited for the mental pictures to sink in.

  “No! I mean, you’re a girl …”

  “Great logic, Gavin. But you can’t have it both ways. I hang out in my room and read books. You should be the happiest dad in America. Or at least in the five boroughs.”

  “I don’t care about me being happy, Lex — I care about you being happy. And it worries me that you’re … not.”

  Wow. I struggled to swallow the dumpling I had tried to inhale at exactly the wrong moment. It was one thing to be sort of bummed and depressed; it was another thing for your father to sit you down over Thai takeout from your favorite restaurant and announce that he could tell you were unhappy.

  “I’m not super-extra happy right now,” I told him, once I got past the dumpling and the shock. “But I will be, when I get to college, which is really soon. High school is just … high school.”

  “So you always tell me. I kind of liked high school. No responsibilities, no job, time with your friends.” He stopped to look at me. “But maybe that’s the problem. Eli and Bailey have kind of cut you out of the picture a little bit, huh?”

  “A lot bit. But it’s okay!” I rushed to add. “I mean, they’re dating. He really likes her. And he deserves it.”

  Dad acted like he hadn’t heard me. “I never expected Eli to be like this. I thought more of him than that.” He shook his head sadly, for the moment looking more like a regular dad than he usually did. I could picture him addressing Eli, telling him, “I’m so disappointed in you.” Then I pictured myself saying that to Eli. Because, I realized in that moment, I was kind of disappointed in him.

  “I know he really fell for Bailey,” Gavin began carefully, looking into his nearly empty noodle carton as if there were something really interesting down there in the bottom. “But he was your friend first. You two have been friends for a long time.”

  “You make it sound as though I’ve been cast aside.” I gestured expansively with my arm, narrowly missing knocking the remains of the green chicken curry off the table.

  “That’s how you’ve been acting these last few months,” Dad said quietly. “It’s not like this is a situation that’s going on in my head.”

  Ugh. He had a point there. “So what do you suggest I do?”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “Part of me wants to confront Eli. Tell him how I feel, everything out in the open, all that. Part of me wants to just make it through the rest of this year.” I pretty much already knew which part was going to win. By the look on Gavin’s face, he knew, too.

  “I just never thought Eli would be such a jerk,” he muttered.

  “Dad! I thought you liked Eli.”

  “Used to,” Dad said around a mouthful of sticky rice. “Until he made my little girl sad.”

  I felt the sudden prick of tears behind my eyes at my father’s unusual mushiness.

  Gavin wiped his mouth with a napkin as he stood up. “You’ll take care of all this?” He gestured at the mass of cartons and the noodles we’d dribbled onto the table. “I have to go back to the station.”

  And as fast as that, the moment of mush was over.

  Winter Springs, Florida — Monday, October 25

  I was sitting on the grass outside the trailer, trying to sew two smaller pieces of fabric together to make a curtain. It smelled like rain, but it was still very warm. Even the ground was warm. All of a sudden, the sky darkened, and I stabbed myself with the needle.

  I realized as I sucked the blood from my finger that there was someone standing over me. He was blocking the light, so his features were indistinct, but I could tell right away that he was handsome. I mean, ridiculous. Square jaw, shiny black hair. Muscles bulging, visible though he wore a white button-up shirt.

  “Who the hell are you?” he bellowed at me without preamble.

  I always want to react appropriately to rude people. Later, I can always think of the perfect response. But my tragic flaw is that I always, always pause for just a second before I do or say anything. And with that second the moment passes. I spent that crucial second gaping at him instead of speaking, and he moved around me so that I could see his face clearly, by this time half hoping he had a beaky nose or bad skin. No such luck.

  “I said, who the hell are you? Are you deaf?” he snarled at me.

  “I’d rather be deaf than be like … you are.” Wow. That was the lamest comeback in the history of forever.

  “I was told my mother’s replacement was here. But Louie must have gone insane,” he mused aloud, as if I weren’t even sitting there. “He’s run off a seasoned professional, someone he’d made a commitment to, and hired a rude child.”

  I got to my feet, struggling a bit with the fabric that wanted to tangle itself around my ankles. “Child?” I snapped. “Look here, buddy. I don’t know who the hell you think you are, but let me tell you something: I am not rude, and I am not a child. You are the one who’s rude, you big, rude …” I sputtered, unable to think of a word horrible enough that I had the guts to utter just then.

  “Big, rude what? Nothing to say? Times must be tough if they think people will pay money to get advice from an unpleasant teenager.”

  He looked young, but he talked like
he was forty-five. “Unpleasant! Have you met yourself? What have I ever done to you?”

  “What have you done? Oh, nothing. Just what your kind always does. You show up — where you’re not wanted, by the way — and take the job of someone born to this life, someone with nowhere else to go. I’ve known your kind before, again and again: a bored young dilettante who just wants to stick it to mommy and daddy, so you run off to join the circus. You’ll stay maybe one season, if Louie’s lucky. And then you’ll go back to your real life. Tell me, what did Daddy do that was so terrible that you just had to run away? Ground you for the weekend? Did he take away your credit card?”

  I knew I shouldn’t, even in the moment I knew it. But he’d pushed me pretty far.

  “He died!” I heard myself scream, and I watched all the color drain from his handsome face.

  And then I burst into tears.

  When I got a tentative hold on myself, I looked at the guy again — who still seemed stricken — and then I started crying all over again, feeling like a really bad person for saying what I’d said about my dad, all to sort of win an argument, really. And then I just cried harder.

  It took a couple of seconds for me to realize where I was crying — in his arms, the arms of the guy who had just been yelling at me. After I pulled myself together for a second time, I blew my nose on one of the spare pieces of material that he handed me, and I looked at him. I took a step back, and he lowered his arms. All of his anger definitely seemed to be gone, but he still stood tensely; probably he was afraid to say or do anything for fear I would start sobbing again.

  He ran a hand through his thick hair, looked away and exhaled, then met my eyes. “I am so sorry. So sorry! Please forgive me. I was just worried … My mother was turned out from here, it seems. And I didn’t know. I don’t actually know where she is, so I was upset, you understand … But that’s no excuse for what I said to you. Please accept my apology.”