That Time I Joined the Circus

by J. J. Howard

  I was determined to make a go of it on my own, or without Nick, at any rate. The crowds ended up smaller without him, and now I had a feel for the whole thing, so the first night passed uneventfully. Clay, the boy from the ring crew helping me, was skinny and blond, but he had a handsome face. He looked a little like an Abercrombie & Fitch boy who hadn’t quite done enough reps at the gym yet, so he pulled in some female customers.

  The first night without Nick turned into the second, and the third. On Wednesday, Louie let me open my attraction late so that I could watch the early show to see the Flying Vranas use the song I’d chosen, one by The Pierces. The ethereal-sounding song made their act seem very cool, kind of Cirque du Soleil. I was excited they had used my idea. Walking out of the tent that night, I felt a slight chill in the air — the first time I hadn’t been hot since coming to Florida. I felt pretty good right at that moment, like I was part of things here. And I was saving money — slowly, granted, but I was. I could get my GED, and then I could go to college, get back on track. Though suddenly the thought of leaving made me incredibly sad. I hadn’t wanted to come here, and now I didn’t want to leave. Life was weird.

  I had no idea at that moment how weird it was about to get.

  I woke up at some point in the middle of the night. It sounded like someone was scratching at my window. I lay very still for a moment and waited for it to stop, hoping it would, but it just got louder, and then I heard, “Lex-i. It’s me.”

  Who was “me”? I was pretty sure I didn’t know anybody in this place who would either scratch on my window in the middle of the night or classify themselves as my “me.”

  I gave up the whole ignoring tactic, sat up, and shoved my feet into the flip-flops that were my new footwear staple. I looked down and decided my Arcade Fire T-shirt and pajama shorts were presentable enough for the middle of the night. I tried to look out the window, but the glass was pebbled and all I could tell was that my visitor seemed in fact to have a head. I tried to sneak out of the trailer quietly so I wouldn’t wake up Lina.

  Gracefully tripping out of the trailer and launching myself off the tiny steps were my next moves. And then I was in Nick Tarus’s arms, my face inches from his.

  “Hi,” I said stupidly.

  “Hi,” he said, laughing. “Miss me?”

  “A little,” I managed, too breathless to be any wittier. “I thought you had to go back to work.”

  “I did go back to work. And now I’m back here to check on you. I kept having visions of you being chased out of town by an angry crowd.”

  As happy as I was to see him, my face fell — I could feel it. “You didn’t think I could do it?”

  Nick put me down beside him but kept his arms around my waist. “I was worried about you. But I also have faith in you. They’re not mutually exclusive, you know.”

  For the first time since that day we’d met, it sounded a little, just then, like he was talking down to me.

  “You’re not here to stay, are you? Or to check on me. You’re here to say good-bye, aren’t you?” I had a tiny bit of trouble getting the words out, but I pushed through. Standing there with his hands still on my waist, his eyes looking into mine, I knew I was right, even though I didn’t want to be.

  He sighed, and I felt it travel through me, too. He lowered his eyes away from mine.

  “I’m no good for you,” he murmured.

  “You are not that much older than me.”

  “It’s not just about my age — or yours.”

  “You know how old I am?” I asked, distracted.

  “I stole your wallet,” he told me, pulling me a bit closer to him. “For a few minutes, anyway. Though it took longer to figure out your age than I thought — I was looking for a driver’s license. Finally found some kind of ID card.”

  “I don’t know how to drive,” I admitted. “New York City girl — it costs a fortune to keep a car in New York.”

  “You should learn,” he told me. “Now that you live out here in the middle of nowhere.”

  “But you’re not going to teach me.” I steered the conversation back toward the iceberg I knew was inevitable and just up ahead.

  He shook his head. “I told you, it’s not a good idea. For a lot of reasons. But I didn’t want to just disappear without saying good-bye, not after …”

  “It’s not your fault, what happened to my dad,” I told him, guessing what he was not saying.

  “I know,” he told me, reaching up and tucking a lock of my hair behind my ear. “I guess I have this problem staying away from you. You know” — he smiled a little — “I was ready to hate you when I first heard about you.”

  “I kind of got that from you yelling at me. But” — I looked up at him — “you still might …” My voice dropped to a whisper. “Hate me, I mean … It’s a fine line …”

  I saw the muscle in the side of his jaw tighten at that, and he stepped closer to me. “I couldn’t hate you,” he told me. “But I know what you are saying, Lexi. We should not … I will not …” He stepped away from me and started walking.

  “Wait!” I didn’t think, just called after him and started following.

  He stopped. “I’m not leaving you right now — I’m just clearing my head. Come on.” He grabbed my hand and led me toward the eerily quiet midway, where the abandoned rides lay waiting for tomorrow’s crowd. He stepped up onto the carousel, and then picked me up with his hands on my waist. He sat me down in one of the small seats designed for parents riding with really little kids, then sat beside me, but not too close.

  I was quiet for a moment, just watching him. I hated even such a small distance between us, but I felt frozen, afraid to move any closer. From the first time I saw him, basically right after we had stopped fighting, I had been pulled into his orbit, felt like I belonged there. But maybe he didn’t feel the same way. He cared about me, felt sorry for me probably, but that was all.

  I felt Nick take hold of my hand, and I found the guts to slide closer to him so that we were squashed together in the seat. My heart was racing and I think I forgot to breathe.

  “Lex …” His voice was low in my ear. “You know I have to go. Aren’t you kind of playing with fire here?”

  “Yeah, well, I’m actually taking the advice of someone who does that for a living,” I told him, turning my face to his. He let go of my hand and raised his to my face, tracing the line of my jaw with his finger. He leaned in closer and kissed me. We sat together on the silent ride for a long time. We didn’t talk about his leaving anymore, but I felt the words hovering in the air between us. It didn’t matter how close I sat next to him now. In the morning, I knew he would be gone.

  112 Bowery — Friday, October 1

  After the police station, and the morgue, I went home. I had heard all the details of the accident. I had smashed my phone to destroy the evidence of the frantic messages my dad had left me in the last minutes of his life, when he was wondering where I was, and also to destroy the messages from the NYPD.

  It was all such a stupid waste. My dad was just crossing the street at the wrong time, and the cabbie was new, and he was lost, going the wrong way on a one-way street. They were both just trying to get home.

  I let myself in with my key, but after that I had no idea what to do. I waited for someone to come and find me, to notice what had happened, but the sounds of cabs, horns, and sirens outside the apartment proved that life in the neighborhood was going on just like it had yesterday.

  I wanted to call Eli and tell him what happened, but I kept flashing back to the morning, and his face. The cold fire escape against my naked legs; the cold pavement and sharp gravel under my bare feet as I ran away.

  I have no idea what happened to the rest of that day and night. My dad’s lawyer came by the next morning and brought me to his office. After he broke the news to me — that I was broke — he gave me the TracFone he’d gotten me, a little black flip phone. He’d tried to call all night, and said he was worried I had lost my pho
ne in all the confusion. He didn’t know I didn’t have anyone to call. But I took it and said thank you.

  I put it in my pocket and walked the twelve blocks to Bailey’s place. I didn’t have a horribly painful memory of her face like I did with Eli. But as soon as she opened the door, I knew that she knew. I knew she hated me. Eli had felt guilty and unburdened himself, I guess. She slammed the door in my face.

  It took only three more days to figure out that I had no place to live, no school to attend, and no money. I pawned the few things I could find in the apartment worth anything and started packing.

  Boca Raton, Florida — Friday, December 3

  “Butter or kettle corn?” I asked Lina.

  “Butter, definitely. But don’t tell my dad or Liska,” she warned. “Now that I’m grounded for a couple months, they’ll be watching me like a hawk to make sure I don’t get fat.” She made a glum face, then turned her attention to the grocery store’s impressive selection of potato chips.

  “That sucks,” I told her. “I guess flying through the air is kind of a job for the skinny. I never really thought about it.”

  “Yeah, try being on a diet for your entire life; you’ll think about it more than you ever wanted.” Lina smiled defiantly as she threw a bag of Cheetos into our grocery cart. I threw in another one for good measure. Nick was gone, and maybe never coming back. I planned to drown my sorrows in junk food.

  Lina was bummed, too. She had gotten hurt the other day — not a bad injury, but a sprain in her left arm. So we were on a quest for snacks. I was amazed and a little horrified at the Boca Raton version of a grocery store — the floors were marble, and about half the store was super-expensive organic food, European sodas, and cookies. It was like the Upper East Side only much, much bigger — and tanner and blonder. Lina and I skipped past all the designer produce and went straight for the good stuff. We were planning a movie night as soon as the show closed, but we already had enough for at least two of those in the cart.

  When we got back to Europa with our five bags of junk, I got a surprise: Nick.

  “I talked Louie into closing the Fortune Trailer,” he said by way of hello.

  Lina took half of the grocery bags from me, hit me in the stomach with them when I started to protest that she was hurt, and promptly disappeared.

  “Well, hi to you, too, Nick Tarus,” I said, blushing at the sight of him. “Glad you could drop by to get me fired, or whatever. I hope the ring crew is willing to take me back.”

  Nick grabbed the rest of the bags from me. I tried to fight him, but we were crushing the chips, so I let go. “I’m not trying to get you fired. Louie called me. I know what’s been going on at this stop, Lexi.”

  Nick wasn’t wrong. This was our last stop of the season, in what had turned out to be a rotten location. Boca was gorgeous, but the circus looked almost shabby here. Even though I’d felt like an outsider at the circus just a couple of months ago, now I felt like an outsider among the customers. Here, the parking lots were full of BMWs and Bentleys, and even the toddlers looked expensive.

  The affluent teenagers who came out to spend a few bucks on the games, the rides, and the food looked like aliens to me now. Some of them came to hassle us, too — the guys hit on us girls in a way that made us feel dirty, and they kept trying to start fights with our guys. Jamie and the two Romanian brothers who worked on the ring crew had all showed up to breakfast the other morning sporting black eyes and looking proud of themselves. Louie made them wear makeup for the show, though, so that took some of the swagger out of them. And the crowds had been huge: college kids home on holiday break, the high school kids almost out of school, and everyone acting slightly crazy, drunk with freedom.

  “But now you’re back —” I began.

  “I’m back because Louie called me to help him. I can’t stay with you at the Trailer all night, so he’s closing it. But don’t worry, I got you a fun new job. You and Lina. I’ll see you on the midway.” Nick took the bags in, then reappeared a moment later, winked at me, and took off toward Louie’s trailer.

  It turns out it actually was a fun job.

  “We get to run Go Fish tonight!” Lina squealed as soon as I opened the trailer door.

  “Is that a good thing?” I asked.

  “It’ll be awesome! It’s over by the Tower, so there’s loud music all night, and I get to wear jeans!”

  I could understand the attraction for her there. Her usual work uniform looked very binding and was full of poke-y sequins. “That’s cool. But what is it?”

  “You’ve seen it. It’s in the little stand over by the funnel cakes. For two bucks you get three Ping-Pong balls, and you throw ’em and try to get one in a fishbowl.”

  “Doesn’t that hurt the fish?”

  “No, Lex. There’s a trick to it. The ball doesn’t hit the fish. And they’re not playing for the live fish — we’ve got stuffed ones.”

  “Can we bring Coke and potato chips?” I asked her.

  “Yeah we can! Now, go change into that black shirt with the scoopy neck. Nick will be hanging around that part of the midway for sure.” She waggled her eyebrows at me and gave me a push toward my room.

  Go Fish was much easier than telling fortunes. There was a giant trash can full of small-fish prizes, and we gave away probably more than we should — every cute kid who came our way left with a fish, whether their dad or mom showed any ring-throwing skill or not.

  Between the holiday mood that the carnivalgoers had brought with them — on vacation, or about to be, from school or work — and us being away from our “real” jobs at the circus, Lina and I were giddy and punchy. Craig, the ride operator for the nearby Tower, was blasting classic rock, and Lina and I sang along to songs by Blue Öyster Cult, Styx, Kansas, the Eagles, and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Somehow we managed to gather a little crowd as we sang along to Journey’s “Separate Ways.” I caught Nick’s eye from a distance; he was watching me, but I kept right on singing. He looked younger than he usually did tonight, dressed in a black T-shirt and holey jeans.

  We were singing the chorus — “Someday love will find you, break those chains that bind you” — and really selling it when I saw him standing there in the crowd.

  Eli.

  I know I stopped singing, and something of what I felt must have shown on my face, because I saw Nick take a step forward. The world looked impossibly bright for one instant, and then everything went completely dark.

  I came to with my head in Nick Tarus’s lap, Lina’s concerned face a few inches from mine. We were on the floor behind the wooden box that enclosed the game, and I couldn’t see past the edge of it to see if Eli was still there, or if he ever had been. It seemed like I’d imagined him. But another part of me knew I hadn’t — the shock of seeing Eli appear in this world had to be what knocked me out. I wasn’t a fainter — in fact, I had been pretty sure a few minutes ago that I would successfully navigate my entire life without fainting like an idiot. I hadn’t fainted when they’d told me about my dad, even.

  I heard the ominous opening chords of Hendrix’s “All Along the Watchtower” and struggled to sit up, determined not to act like a stupid fainty girl for one more second. But I sat up too fast and heard Nick say, “Whoa, slow down.”

  “I’m fine,” I told him, but he was still holding me.

  “Lexi, what happened?” Lina asked, her delicate features contracted in concern.

  “Stay put, Lex,” Nick said as I struggled against his arms. For some reason, it seemed really important that I get to my feet.

  “Let her go,” I heard a familiar voice say, though the tone of it was unfamiliar. He was trying to sound macho, which was new, and would be amusing if I hadn’t just passed out. And in front of two of the three guys I had seriously made out with in my life. Now if Jamie were here, I thought wryly, my humiliation would be complete.

  “Jamie, go get Louie,” I heard Lina say one second later. Of course.

  “I mean it, let her go.” Eli, who Nick seem
ed to have utterly ignored, tried again, stepping even closer to the edge of the box and leaning over.

  Without a word, Nick scooped me up, hoisted me in his arms, and carried me out of the game box, Lina scurrying ahead of him and opening the back swing-door as though they’d choreographed it. Ha! Take that, Eli. It was almost worth fainting, that look on his face as he saw Nick pick me up.

  “Have a couple of the guys … detain … that boy,” I heard Nick tell Lina, who nodded and disappeared.

  For the first time in my life, I had been rescued, just like in one of those ridiculous Regency novels. The only trouble was, I was pretty sure that when Nick found out why the sight of my former best friend made me pass out, he wasn’t going to be too interested in saving me anymore.

  Eli followed us to Louie’s trailer, where Louie was waiting for us, wringing his hands and asking Nick if he needed to call a doctor. He was still wearing his ringmaster gear, minus the hat, but he looked pretty funny dancing around Nick, who put me down on the couch in the trailer.

  “I’m okay!” I protested.

  “What happened?” Louie asked Nick.

  Nick looked down at me, narrowing his eyes. “She fainted. She saw someone who apparently she did not want to see. Someone I’m going to go take care of right now.”

  “Wait!” I yelled after him, but he was already out the door.

  I got to my feet and was headed for the door as I heard a strange replay of my first conversation with Nick.

  “Who the hell are you?” he was demanding of Eli. Emerging out onto the rickety trailer steps, I could see for myself that Eli was backing away slowly; he looked so young and skinny next to Nick.

  “No, who the hell are you?” Eli asked belligerently, in spite of the fact that he was still backing away. I saw his chin go up a little like it did when he was deciding to be defiant.

  I started to walk toward them, meaning to step between them, when Lina tugged my arm back.