“Yesterday I passed another town surrounded by walls. At least, that’s what it looked like. Do you know what’s inside it?”
Anand shrugged. “Depends on which one it was. There are dozens of them.”
It felt as if Anand had just pulled the ground out from underneath her. Dozens? “What’s in them?”
Anand leaned back and looked at the ceiling. “Let’s see. There’s Medieval Village, where we dress up in tunics and cloaks and fancy hats and watch a lot of jousting.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “There’s Marathon Town, Sex City, Treasure Town.” He paused. “Treasure Town can be okay sometimes. It’s people following maps and clues, searching for hidden goodies. Tomorrow we’ve got two shows. Circus Town, then Kidsville.”
“I’ll slip off on the way to Circus Town. Which way is it to civilization?”
Anand shook his head. “It’s all open ground between here and Circus Town. You’ll have to do it on the way to Kidsville. There’s cover between Circus Town and Kidsville.”
More lost time. She pictured Janine in that bed, her life slipping away by the minute. Now that she knew where the audience came from, she was afraid civilization wasn’t as close as she’d thought.
“In the morning I’ll take you to wardrobe and you can pick out an outfit that helps you blend in better.”
“Ooh, a makeover,” Celia said, her tone flat and dripping sarcasm. This was not going as planned.
“Ten minutes to lights out,” someone called from below.
“What keeps the audience from slipping off into the woods between towns, if I can do it?” she asked.
“Some do,” Anand said. “Most make it a few days before the Redsuits catch them and bring them back. Then the audience makes sure they regret slipping off.” His tone made it abundantly clear he didn’t think much of this. “The audience takes care of its own.”
“What do they do?”
“Depends. They might break your feet with a two-by-four.”
Celia grasped the steel support jutting from the corner of the cot to steady herself. “Oh my God.”
“Makes it tough to walk to events, but there are no excuses. Nobody misses events.” Anand seemed surprised by her reaction. “That sort of thing doesn’t happen in your town?”
“No. If you break the law you’re put in jail. If you don’t break records, you don’t get paid, and you end up in shitty housing, or homeless, and can’t buy anything from the catalog.”
“The catalog?”
Suddenly Celia felt like a prima donna who got upset when the maid forgot to put out her preferred flavor of jam at breakfast. She changed the subject. “So where’s the idiot who left the backpack on the steps?”
The muscles in Anand’s jaw rippled as he studied the floor, thirty feet below. “Not sure.”
“You’re not sure?” Celia scanned the bunks on the opposite wall, seeking someone who looked particularly dim. “What are there, maybe three hundred people in your whole world? How can you not know? Was it a he or a she?”
Anand flashed her a warning look. “Just drop it, all right?”
Celia didn’t want to drop it, but Anand’s whole face had suddenly changed. Fanboy was gone; he looked ready to shove her off the bunk.
Then it hit her: she’d tripped while she was passing Anand. Maybe the backpack had been his. That would explain why he’d stuck his neck out to save her, and why he was evading the question. Fair enough. She leaned back against the wall and crossed her legs.
“She’s your mother?” Anand asked.
“What?”
“You said, ‘You saw what happened to my mother.’ You know who your mother is?”
“I call her my mother because she’s acted like a mother ever since I left training school and joined her team.” Celia tried to think of some memory of Janine that would explain what she meant to Celia. “Do you remember when I broke the record for being encased in ice?”
“A hundred and twenty-two minutes,” Anand said without hesitation.
She felt a rush of pleasure, a thrill, that this guy knew her career so well. “Very good. I’m impressed.”
“It was hard to watch.” Anand’s eyebrows pinched in concern. “You were in agony.”
Celia could still hear the sound the ice cubes made as they poured into the glass chamber she’d been standing in wearing nothing but a bathing suit, until she was covered to her neck.
Immediately she’d been freezing cold, shaking all over, teeth chattering. That had been only the beginning, though. The pain had built slowly, from a dull ache, to a sharp one, to blinding agony that felt as if someone was drilling through the marrow of her bones with razor-sharp shards of ice.
She ran her tongue over her slimy teeth, wishing she’d packed a toothbrush. “That was a bad one. What you didn’t get to see was what happened before and after. Janine was so nervous the night before, that she didn’t sleep at all. She sat beside my bed while I slept. Somehow, knowing how worried she was kept me from worrying. Does that make sense?”
Anand considered. “I’ve never been that close to anyone, but I’d like to think I can imagine how you felt.”
The thoughtfulness of his answer surprised her. Most people would have said ‘yes’ without really thinking. Celia went on. “When they pulled me out of the ice, Max carried me home. He was Janine’s partner, my father, until he got the call to retire. I’d been planning to crawl under a pile of blankets to work the cold out of my bones, but it turned out Janine had built a sweat lodge in our back yard.”
Anand frowned. He had a wonderfully expressive face. “What’s a sweat lodge?”
Celia smiled, remembering her own confusion when she first saw the tent in the yard, steam billowing through a hole in the top. “She saw it in a movie. You dig a fire pit, ring the pit with big rocks, then burn a fire until the rocks are super-hot. Then you cover the whole thing with a tent. It’s hot inside that tent, and it felt wonderful. Janine built it, and she stayed in there with me most of the day.”
Anand was actually a little choked up. “I understand why you’d swim through a water pipe for her.” Celia decided she liked this guy. Not only had he saved her from being beaten to death with bags of ice (there was irony there somewhere) but he had a heart. He reminded Celia of Max—a little gruff, but warm at the same time.
“I’ll let you get some sleep.” He got a strange look in his eyes, as if he was surprised all over again that Celia was there. Then he reached up, hoisted himself using the steel framework, and edged along the cots until he’d put a little distance between them. He swung his pack into a cot and flopped in after it.
Even though she was supposedly under Minnie’s protection, Celia felt incredibly vulnerable, lying there in the open. She slid the knife strapped to her calf out of its sheath and set it between her chest and the wall. Then she lay on her side, hands folded under her cheek in lieu of a pillow, and watched Anand produce a pencil and sketchbook from his pack. She couldn’t see what he was drawing from her vantage point, but he worked on it until the overhead fluorescent lights flicked off, leaving them in darkness.
#
She was jolted awake by a full-throated shriek. Panicked, disoriented in the darkness, she swung a leg out and slid halfway out of bed. When her foot hit nothing but empty air she remembered where she was and managed to clutch the ladder, narrowly avoiding a thirty-foot plunge.
Anand was the one shrieking. He sounded half out of his mind, screaming until his lungs emptied, then filling them with a sharp squeal and screaming again. Celia wanted to go over and try to help him, but was afraid she’d fall in the dark.
“Would somebody shut him up,” a woman shouted from a few bunks below Celia.
A silhouette rose from the bunk below Anand’s. Clinging to the frame, whoever it was shook Anand’s shoulder.
Gasping, Anand sat straight up.
“You were having one of your nightmares,” the woman who’d woken him said.
“I’m sorry.” Ana
nd sounded half asleep. He raised his voice. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re always sorry,” someone shouted back.
As it grew quiet, Celia could hear Anand’s labored breathing, as if he’d just run a marathon.
Chapter 8
They cleared a rise, and the white walls of Circus Town broke into view in the distance. There were no markings, no calliope music or brightly-colored signs. If the town hadn’t been surrounded by forest down in a valley instead of in a clearing at the top of a gentle rise, Celia could have been marching right back into Record Village.
Anand was always looking around, at the treetops, the mountains in the distance. He seemed to enjoy the walking.
“Can I ask you something?” Celia asked.
“Sure.”
“Why were you smiling at me, at that event?”
Anand looked startled. “I wasn’t smiling at you. When?”
Suddenly Celia felt like an idiot. The way she’d asked made it sound like she thought he’d been flirting with her, like she thought she was some beauty he couldn’t keep his eyes off of, and that wasn’t it at all.
“The night I tripped on that damned backpack on my way down the stadium steps. You smiled like you knew me.” She hoped that clarified it. He’d smiled like he knew her, not like he wanted to ask her out.
Anand didn’t answer. Celia waited, not wanting to let him off the hook on this one, despite the awkwardness. If Anand hadn’t smiled at her, she was fairly sure she wouldn’t have tripped.
He finally answered, haltingly, clearly uncomfortable. “Something about you made me think that you were like me, that you wondered about things, that you weren’t okay with playing by rules you didn’t even understand.” He gestured at her. “And here you are, so I guess I was right.”
“How could you see that from the stands?” Celia asked.
“It was your body language mostly, but there was one day in particular. You were cheerleading for your friend, I forget her name—”
“Molly?”
“Molly, right. She was trying to break the record for the hundred-meter dash on stilts. She didn’t make it, but as you were leaving the field you went out of your way to pick something up.”
Celia nodded. “A big leaf.”
“Right.” Anand pointed at her. “You remember that day. You walked off the field looking at that leaf, really studying it.” He held his fingers close to his face, pinched together as if he was holding the leaf. “And just before you disappeared into the breezeway, you looked at the sky, and I knew exactly what you were thinking.”
“The leaf came from outside. I was holding something from outside—something that wasn’t a box of Martino crackers or a can of Magellan peaches.”
“And you were dying to know what was out there,” Anand added. “I could see it. I don’t know how, but I could.”
They were skirting the edge of one of those topics people didn’t talk about. Celia looked around. They were at the back of the group, twenty paces behind the closest audience members. “Only as it turns out, there are no answers out here.”
Anand shook his hair out of his face. “Only more questions.”
“I guess we’re supposed to wait until we retire to find out what’s going on here. My friend Molly’s scheduled to retire in a couple months.”
Anand gave her an unreadable look.
“What?” Had she overstepped, talking about this stuff?
Anand shook his head. “Nothing.”
The gates of Circus Town were a hundred yards ahead, suddenly reminding her of a huge open mouth ready to swallow them.
“I’m going with you.” Anand’s voice was so low Celia barely heard him.
“Wait, what? No. They’ll break your feet if they catch you.”
Anand slowed to a stop, his eyebrows raised. “What do you think they’ll do if they catch you? Take away your catalog privileges?”
Celia had been awake most of the night mulling a variety of questions, including that one. She had no idea if anyone was even looking for her, but someone had gone to a lot of trouble to build all these walls to keep people from seeing too much, and she’d already seen a lot. When she first escaped Record Village she’d thought if she got caught they’d wag a finger at her and take her home. She hadn’t understood the stakes. She wasn’t sure she understood them now.
“I know these trails,” Anand said. “I’ve been walking them every day for months. I can at least show you where you aren’t going to find the way to the outside.”
“Sure. Fine. It’s not like I don’t want you along. I was just trying to spare you a painful death.” The truth was, Celia was thrilled. Anything that helped her get outside as quickly as possible was a good thing.
The trail wound along a gorgeous lake that pressed right up against the wall. “Once we’re out of Circus Town, we should slip away separately.” Anand pointed out a rendezvous point: a hill a few miles off, with a rocky outcropping that resembled a face in profile. “Everyone’s expecting you to go, so they’ll look the other way. You can waltz off whenever you like.”
“Yeah, I think I’ll walk. My waltz is a little rusty.”
Anand glanced at her. He tried to give her a Be Serious look, but broke into a grin. “Very funny.”
“Why do they even care if you leave?”
“If I vanish, they’re held responsible. They’ll have incentives taken away, and they don’t like losing their coffee and cigarettes.”
#
There were elephants. Real, live elephants, with wrinkled gray skin and trunks that twisted and curled like snakes. They were the first animals Celia had ever seen that weren’t steaming on a plate, and the sight of them made her giggle like a kid. There were also acrobats and tightrope walkers, clowns and fire-eaters. They paraded into the big top along with the elephants as the ringmaster announced the evening’s menus.
“The top performers, as decided by audience applause, will be dining tonight on succulent roast baby lamb chops drizzled with a balsamic reduction, infused with allspice, cinnamon and juniper berries.” The ringmaster rolled his consonants and inserted dramatic pauses in a way that made the meal sound heavenly.
“Suddenly I’m starving,” Celia said.
“Right? I’d happily get shot out of a cannon for that meal.”
As the ringmaster ran down the list, the food became progressively less appetizing. The fourth-place performers would get hamburgers and hot dogs. The fifth, hamburger and hot dog buns.
The ringmaster’s lip curled as he finished his recitation with, “Our last place performers will be dining on slop.” Even from her seat toward the back, she could see disgust cross the faces of some of the performers.
“What do you think’s in the slop?” she asked.
Anand smiled. “Definitely no succulent roast baby lamb with balsamic reduction.”
“You’re right—they probably put the succulent roast baby lamb in with no balsamic reduction.”
Anand barked a laugh. “And without cooking it.”
Now that she knew the audience’s enthusiasm was an act, it added a sick, surreal quality to the whole affair. When clowns climbed on each other’s shoulders until they were stacked eight clowns high, then played a game of chicken, the audience made sounds that mimicked uproarious laughter, but their eyes were flat and bored. How had she missed that before?
She followed Anand’s lead, clapping and cheering and ‘ooooing’ when he did. Celia had read a few novels set in circuses, and this one seemed like it had been plucked right out of one of them. They were in an enormous tent supported by three posts, the edges of the tent secured by ropes tied around wooden stakes pounded into the ground. There were strings of pennants in bright, primary colors draped all around, calliope music, and at the center of it all, three rings where the entertainers performed.
“Peanuts! Popcorn? Ice cream!” A vendor climbed the wooden steps carrying a red and white tray laden with snack foods.
A balding guy a
dozen rows below raised his hand. “Ice cream.”
Celia nudged Anand. “Do you have any money?”
Anand leaned down and whispered in her ear. “We don’t have money here. If you have incentives due, you can use them on snacks. Most people use them on coffee or cigarettes, but Benjamin always gets ice cream at the circus.”
“You don’t have any incentives due?”
“I had two. Now I owe Minny eight.”
“Oh. Right. To save me from a painful death.” She watched the vendor longingly as he continued up the aisle. Breakfast had been hurried and paltry before the long walk to Circus Town.
“Right. So no ice cream for us.”
“I was going to get popcorn,” Celia said.
“Put your head down!” Anand’s voice was low and urgent.
Celia looked at the floor.
“One of our supervisors just showed up.” Anand cursed under his breath. “It had to be today. She’s checking up on us. Audits, she calls them. She’s going to move around, talk to people, ask questions.”
Celia tried to think. “Where are the restrooms?”
“Good idea.” Anand pointed up at the breezeway they’d used to reach their seats. “On your left. Just keep going.”
Trying to be casual, Celia pulled her hood on and headed toward the restrooms. She caught a quick glimpse of the woman out of the corner of her eye—Asian, dressed in a men’s gray business suit, hair tied back in a short, severe pony tail.
When Celia reached the bathroom, she pulled off her hood and splashed water on her face, then drank half a dozen handfuls of brownish water from the sink. She could hide out in the bathroom, but how would she know when it was safe to rejoin the audience? She’d just have to ask whoever came to the bathroom. They were in on the secret, after all.
She paced the length of the room—which had a big puddle on the floor and looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in a year—wondering how long a circus performance lasted. Celia needed to get back on the road. She’d left Janine two days ago, and was still no more than a few hours’ walk from Record Village. When they slipped away they’d just have to keep walking until they reached civilization, even if they had to walk all night.
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