That Time I Joined the Circus

by J. J. Howard

  “As ready as I’ll ever be,” I told her. “I just hope somebody shows up. And, if they do, I hope they don’t laugh. Or ask for their money back. Or throw rotten tomatoes at me.”

  Lina moved to stand in front of me. “I know things are different where you’re from, and you have some misconceptions about life outside the big city. But, Lexi, honey, I have to tell you, no one carries rotten tomatoes around with them.”

  I laughed a little then. “Well, that’s one worry off the list, anyway.”

  I was sitting alone at the reading table in the trailer, shuffling my tarot cards over and over, trying to psych myself up for my debut, when Liska walked in.

  “Lexi, would you do a reading for me?” she said. “It could be like practice, maybe?”

  I tried not to show my surprise. “Have a seat.” I waved my hand at the chair opposite mine. “How do you think everything looks?” I asked, then instantly regretted my choice of small talk. What if Liska wasn’t impressed with the way the trailer had turned out? I trusted her to not lie to me — but I also trusted her opinion. Liska looked around slowly, not one to rush into anything. “I really like it,” she told me, with an almost-smile. “You did a great job. In fact, this is much nicer than what Madame Tarus used to have. She relied on looking so much the part, I think.”

  “Thank you,” I told her, meaning it. I shuffled the cards one more time and asked Liska to cut the deck. “So you have some questions in mind?”

  She laughed. “One very big one, actually. But I thought I wasn’t supposed to say …”

  “No, you’re right! I should probably remind people to think of a question, but not say it out loud.”

  Liska smiled. “See, it’s good you’re practicing on me.” She paused. “Lexi, what will you study in school? When you go away to school?”

  I paused in laying out her spread, surprised by her question. “I don’t know if I’m going to get to go away to school,” I told her. “I have to finish high school or get my GED first. And then there’s the minor matter of how to pay for college. Your dad’s being really great,” I added, “but it’s probably not going to be enough, not for a long time.”

  She nodded sadly. “I’m sorry. I guess your father would have sent you — would have paid for you to go?”

  I nodded back and pushed my words past the sudden lump in my throat. “He would have,” I told her. “I was gonna go to NYU, if I got in. But I’m not sure what I would want to study. Of course in college you can take a bunch of classes until you figure out what you’re good at, or what you want to do.”

  Liska sighed. “That sounds amazing,” she said. “I’d love to go.”

  “Wouldn’t Louie send you?”

  She shook her head. “He needs me and Lina and Eddie — needs our act. Without us, there isn’t much left of the old circus. He couldn’t stand it if all that was left was the carnival part — the games and the rides and stuff. It would kill him.”

  “But Louie must want you to be happy.” I was upset for her now. Louie had kind of saved me, so I tended to think of him as Santa Claus. But it seemed that he was failing Liska in a big way. Of course, I had only met the Vranas at all because my own dad had failed me, though I felt like a bad daughter even thinking it.

  “What about Lina?” I asked.

  “Lina needs me to do the act; it’s what we do. And she is happy here. She wants to stay here, with our father, with the circus. I couldn’t leave,” she said.

  “But you came here with a question in your mind …” I trailed off, raising an eyebrow at her.

  She grinned at me then. “Well, I didn’t say the word never,” she allowed.

  I smiled back and finished laying out her cards, then turned over the first card: the Empress. I couldn’t stop my reaction; I showed surprise. I was going to have to do better at this tonight — that was for sure.

  “What does it mean?” Liska asked. “This first card sort of stands for me, right?”

  I nodded. Madame Tarus must have done a reading for her at some point. “It does. The Empress, though, it usually means marriage, fertility. It’s kind of a card of staying put.” I couldn’t help it; I frowned at her. This card didn’t seem like a good answer to the question I thought she was asking.

  Liska, though, was smiling. Kind of confusing, given that she had just revealed her desire to get the heck out of here.

  “Lexi, I will give you a piece of advice,” she told me, still smiling. “Don’t assume you know what the question is. After all, how do you know the question I asked was about me?”

  “Good point.” I sat back in my chair and regarded her steadily for a moment. Then I leaned forward to uncover the rest of the cards. “Thanks,” I added. “I’ve done readings for my friends or friends of my dad, but this is different. I don’t know if I can pull this off.”

  “I know you will,” Liska said, sounding so certain that I felt instantly better, more like a pro fortune teller than a girl with a deck of cards she bought with her birthday money at Barnes & Noble.

  I flipped over the card in the second position. I explained to Liska that in the Celtic cross spread I was using, the second card is laid horizontally across the first card, because it represents obstacles for the questioner.

  “The King of Pentacles — reversed,” I read. Of course, I couldn’t get an easy major arcana card to start. I closed my eyes for one moment — calling up the memory of the card’s meaning — hopefully this technique would seem spiritual with my paying customers. “These court cards usually symbolize people,” I told Liska. “It could be someone in your life, or some aspect of yourself. This King is … well, he’s kind of greedy. The meaning of this card is someone who is very good with money. When the card’s reversed, it’s like the dark side of that trait.” I looked at Liska, who was staring down at the card with concentration. “Does this sound like someone you know?”

  Liska surprised me then by smiling. “Oh yeah.”

  “Okay, so that — or he — is the immediate obstacle to the question you were asking.” I flipped the third card, positioned to the right of the first two: the distant past. The card came up the Ten of Wands. “This is a card about burdens — duties.” I stopped myself from commenting on how apt this seemed, given Liska’s life of work here at Europa. At her nod, I turned over the fourth card, the recent past. This one was the Wheel of Fortune, but reversed.

  “Isn’t that a very good symbol — the Wheel of Fortune?” Liska asked.

  “It is, but when the card is reversed, the meaning changes. It stands for some sort of failure, an inability to meet challenges. When you look back at the previous two cards, there may be a pattern here. You may be trapped by circumstances, material concerns, or obligations — might need to face the challenge of breaking free from all that.”

  Liska still looked down at the cards, seeming to be lost in thought. I turned over the sixth card, the card of the immediate future: the Hanged Man.

  “Ah, my old friend,” I said to him. “I get this card a lot. You see how this little guy is hanging upside down, but he doesn’t look hurt or anything? It’s a card of suspension. But he can’t stay there forever. The message here is that after a period of being in one place, having time to think, we need to act on what we have learned.” Liska nodded again.

  I turned over the seventh card. This position was about the questioner’s state of mind. The card came up the Six of Pentacles. A rich man is trying to balance out his gold on a scale, and he just can’t do it. There are beggars at the man’s feet.

  “This is an interesting card,” I told Liska. “It’s not so much about money as it is about balance. To find balance, this man has to give something away.”

  “Wow,” Liska said.

  “I take it this makes sense to you?” I smiled. I had a feeling it made sense to me, too. I thought I knew what Liska wanted to give away — her life on the trapeze. But would she? I kept the momentum up and turned over the eighth card: the Hermit. Another one of my old frie
nds. “The Hermit is one of your external influences. It’s a wise person, someone who will help you find what you are seeking.”

  Liska looked up from the table and into my eyes. “I think I know who that may be,” she said slowly.

  The ninth card came up the Page of Pentacles, reversed. The next-to-last position is about the person’s hopes and fears. “When it’s reversed, this card symbolizes a rebellious young person, someone who wastes — money, their time, or talents.” Liska was nodding vigorously. “Okay, last card.” I turned it over. “The Eight of Cups.”

  “That looks like a bad one,” Liska said quietly. The card does look unpromising: A hunched figure turns away, setting off on a journey alone.

  “This card does indicate a change,” I told her. “It’s about the end of something, which is sad, but it’s also the beginning of something.”

  I sat back in my chair. Liska was still looking down at the table. After a few moments I asked her, “What do you think?”

  “I think you are very talented. You’ll do really well, but I knew that already.”

  “Thank you so much, Liska. Seriously. You don’t just hand out praise, I can tell.” I felt relieved to have gotten a good review. “But did you get an answer to your question?”

  Liska nodded slowly. “I did. I think I did.” I thought her eyes seemed suspiciously bright. “Lexi, thank you. For the reading.”

  We stood up. She hugged me across the tiny table, and with that she was gone.

  I knew at that moment that I had made two new friends at the circus. I wondered if Liska would manage to break free from here. When I had been suspended, stuck, life had kicked me out into the street. I hoped that whatever got Liska in motion would hurt a lot less.

  That evening, Jamie helped get my iPod hooked up with the speakers. The other day he had come back with a RadioShack bag full of magical cords, so now I could control the music from inside. Another donation to my cause. I hated feeling like a charity case.

  This thought strengthened my resolve to do well tonight. A few early customers were already coming down the midway, mostly families with kids in strollers, and some middle-school-aged kids.

  “You have everything you need?” Jamie asked when we’d checked out the sound and experimented with the volume a couple times.

  I tried to look confident. “Yep. Thanks, Jamie. For the love seat, too. That was really great of you.”

  “Least I could do,” I thought I heard him mumble before he turned away.

  How could Jamie possibly be this awkward with every girl he had kissed? Or maybe he usually confined his conquests to girls he was unlikely to ever see again, girls left behind at each circus town when we pulled up stakes and left.

  I watched Jamie walk off, pushing away the confusion and awkwardness I felt about that situation. I had other confusing and awkward fish to fry. I ducked back into the trailer and scrolled through my iPod until I reached my give-me-ten-dollars-and-I’ll-tell-you-your-future playlist.

  I took my seat at the table and closed my eyes, listening to the first song, “Fortune Days” by The Glitch Mob. I shuffled the tarot cards, spreading them out before me. I was very glad I had spent so much time playing poker with Eli, because I at least knew how to shuffle really well. I selected a card by feel, pulled it out, and opened my eyes. The Fool: the beginning of a journey or adventure. That sounded about right.

  “That’s a good card,” I heard a deep voice say, and I looked up, startled, into Nick Tarus’s very dark eyes.

  “The Fool?” I raised an eyebrow at him. Somehow I could talk to Nick without forgetting how to use nouns. I guess starting off being screamed at and insulted had sort of broken the ice with him, in a weird way. “It’s a card about beginnings, I know that. But the name of the card isn’t too complimentary. After all, the thing I’m the most worried about is whether or not anybody will want to have their future told by an unpleasant teenager.”

  “Ouch.” Nick mock-winced. “That hurts. But you’re an old soul — shows in your eyes. You’ll be fine.”

  The way he said it, flat-out like that, no joking or irony, seemed almost to make it true. And then I snapped out of the spell his eyes had briefly put me under and felt nervous again. Who was I kidding?

  “Practice on me,” I heard him saying.

  Had everyone in the whole circus decided I needed practice?

  “But your mom is a professional,” I told him.

  “My mother, yes. But I never let her do a reading for me,” he said as he expertly shuffled the cards. “So I really won’t know any more about it than anyone coming in off the street. It will be the perfect unbiased opinion.”

  “You never let her?”

  He narrowed his eyes slightly. “I don’t actually claim to believe in any of this.” He gestured to the cards and the crystal ball. “But my mother is quite insightful. Good at reading people. I was never anxious to volunteer to sit still and have her work her mojo on me.”

  “Well, you’re safe as kittens with me.” I reached over to take the now neatly shuffled and stacked cards from him.

  “I’m not so sure about that.” He smiled wickedly at me.

  I tried to ignore that one. I laid out the cards, hoping I didn’t blank on any of the divinatory meanings I had obsessively memorized for each of the seventy-eight cards — at least not in front of Nick. I turned over the first card, and I looked down to see a naked man and woman: the Lovers. Great.

  “Attraction and temptation are indicated by this card.” I tried to sound professional and avoid looking at him at the same time.

  “Maybe there’s something to this after all,” he said under his breath, and then looked up at me. “Go on.”

  “We’ll have to see what it means in the context of the other cards,” I hedged, my heart beating so loudly, I was pretty sure he’d be able to hear it. What was wrong with me?

  “Yeah, it seems like a really mysterious card.” He grinned at me and leaned forward so that his right arm was touching mine. At least no other reading I could do tonight — or maybe ever — could be any more distracting. I quickly turned over the next card. I had already gotten the most embarrassing one, so I might as well keep going. I flipped over the Two of Swords, which shows a blindfolded woman kneeling, holding two crossed swords in the air.

  “An impasse,” I told him. “Whatever you are … asking about, there is an immediate obstacle or challenge to … finding the answer you are looking for.” I snuck a look at him then, but he kept his face impassive. “It looks as though you’re stuck in your own mind. You’re deciding something.”

  Nick nodded slowly; the playful smile had faded, and he looked a little serious. “Sounds about right.” He seemed to shake himself and remember that he was supposed to be encouraging me. “Go ahead, you’re doing great. What does the next one say?”

  I flipped over the third card, the one that was about the questioner’s distant past. I was pretty curious about Nick’s past myself; I wished I did know how to use these cards to pull some kind of answers out of him. But another part of me felt like that was a really bad idea.

  “Uh-oh,” I said to him, smiling a little. “The Queen of Cups, reversed. This is a card of dishonesty. May indicate an untrustworthy woman. Sounds like somebody in your past wasn’t who you thought.”

  Nick nodded again, looking more interested. “As long as she’s in the distant past, good deal. Keep going,” he told me.

  I guessed that was all I was getting there. I turned over the cards in the fourth and fifth positions, and both were from the Pentacles suite, more about material fortune than emotional, and both positive cards. The sixth card, indicating the immediate future, came up the Fool.

  “Well, well. I wonder who that could be?” Nick grinned again at me. He took my hand in his and raised it to his lips, slowly. What was with this guy and hand-kissing? It was like he knew he was dealing with a girl who was addicted to Jane Austen or something. The little trailer got really warm then.

>   I finished the reading, but I have no idea what cards he got, or what I said about them. He kissed me again, on the top of my head, after he got up from the table.

  “You will do very well tonight,” he said softly, and then he was gone.

  It took me maybe fifteen minutes to stop staring at the chair he’d abandoned and get up and move.

  He was right about one thing. There was no doubt at all about who the Fool was.

  13 Broome Street — Thursday, September 30

  Okay, so I stopped posting status updates on Facebook a long time ago. I noticed that whenever someone posts something completely mundane and stupid, like Sushi 2nite! seventeen people have to comment on that. I Sushi! and Spicy Tuna 4 meee! But if you ever try to actually say something serious about your feelings or, like, your life, every one of your 386 “friends” is suddenly mute. So there you have it: My life is a post with no comments. Less interesting than spicy tuna.

  I guess I could start a blog, but that would be like posting my diary online: no thank you. Plus, if no one has the time to respond to a seven-word status update, who, exactly, do I think would be reading some lame blog anyway?

  It was only fifth period, and the day was already dragging. I was sitting on the floor, a little ways outside the caf. All of a sudden, somebody’s face was right in front of me. Bailey smiled at me tentatively, looking kind of concerned.

  “You okay, X? You seem a little … I don’t know. I guess just, are you okay?”

  I nodded at her as she straightened back up, readjusting the strap of her black Balenciaga schoolbag. I only knew the brand name because I’d been with her when she’d bought it, and it cost just about the same as a month’s rent on our apartment. I think I’d bought some gum on that outing.

  “I’m just kind of tired, I guess,” I told her. “But thanks for asking.”

  The thing about Bailey is, she has these bags and shoes that cost as much as the car my dad used to have, but she never makes fun of me for having the same bag since tenth grade, or the fact that it’s from the Gap. When we first hung out, and I would admire something that was really expensive, sometimes she would try to buy it for me. After I said “no, but thank you” enough times she gave up, and she doesn’t do it anymore, but that’s the kind of person she is. I sometimes forget that when she’s being sort of the Adventure Barbie Bailey. And then I feel like a crummy person.