by Gwenda Bond
I coated my palms in gym chalk so they wouldn’t slip on the rungs, and started up the ladder to the lower wire. Climbing, I was all nerves and determination, determination and nerves. It was the same emotional seesaw I’d been on all day long. One minute I felt sure I’d mastered my act, the next I felt 100 percent certain I was a hack who’d get booed as soon as I put my stupid feet on the wire. My mental state was worse because of our reception, but the up and down was normal enough. I would never trust anyone who didn’t get at least a little nervous on the cusp of doing something important to them in front of other people.
I climbed onto the platform with my parasol and took a breath. Arranging my arms into the balletic carriage I’d been working on—difficult because it wasn’t a traditional balancing strategy and I had to account for the gauzy umbrella—I traipsed onto the wire. I canted my upper body to the left and to the right, gracefully I hoped, and took another three steps until I was about a quarter of the way across.
A few more high steps brought me to the center of the wire.
The pirouettes were a little crazy. No one did this kind of thing anymore on wires this high, not without a safety wire or harness. They were my best chance to wow the audience, though, so I wanted to nail them. And I was still toying with the idea of trying to do something even more spectacular than this.
I started the series of three twirls that would take me to the end of the wire. Spin, I told myself. I did, and the wire felt as solid under the ball of my toe as ground would beneath my feet. I breathed easier when I completed the first and then second rotations without a wobble.
When I went into the third spin, I saw Bird as clear as if she were right in front of me. It was like she stood on the wire, and I was traveling toward her. Except it wasn’t this wire. I saw her between those buildings, leaning forward, her skirt ruffled in the wind. Most of all, I saw her crooked. Off-kilter, unbalanced like her portrait on my wall.
Everything around me spun into motion, my third pirouette incomplete. Interrupted. Air raked across my face and through my hair. Confused, I dropped the parasol and my hands clawed the wind. My feet pawed in a desperate search for the wire.
I didn’t stop trying to right myself until I bounced into the net. I hit hard, exhaling in a whoosh, the diamond-shaped pattern of rope biting into my skin.
I hadn’t fallen since I was four years old. I hadn’t had a net to save me since then either.
When I went outside, the grounds were deserted, which was a relief.
I was freaking out. I fell I fell I fell. At least no one had seen. I hugged my arms against a cool breeze and started my walk home. But it was only a few steps before I decided on a detour, past the Garcias’ practice space.
Remy had acted like he knew everything, so maybe it was time to find out if the Garcias’ side of the story matched up with Nan’s. Maybe he’d be alone again and I could get some answers. After plummeting into the net, I wanted to feel like I was back on solid footing.
Luck was with me.
I opened the door to find the same tableau I had when we arrived. The lights were off in the entryway, but shone down on Remy as he practiced solo. Once again, I stood quietly and admired the way he moved through the air, strong and purposeful. I shivered as I remembered how I’d touched those warm, muscled arms the night before, the same arms that were now propelling him high overhead.
Last night while he was insulting your family, Jules. Get a grip.
To distract myself, I traced the fading diamond impression the net had left on my skin, touched the rose as if for more luck, and took a few steps forward just as he launched from the swing into the revolutions of a quad attempt. One, two, three, four—
Holding my breath didn’t help him. His placement coming out of the spin was too fast and a little low. His body rocketed down and down into the net, where he punched it. Swore.
I squared my shoulders to come forward and announce my presence. But I waited a beat too long. He saw me first, and when I took an involuntary step back, he leapt out of the net, his feet scuffing the mats as he rushed toward me.
I backed up. “It’s not what you think—” I started.
But he reached me and his strong arms surrounded me, forming a light circle that my back bumped into before I stopped.
“You’re not spying? Or here to hex me, maybe?” Remy asked.
His body wasn’t touching mine, only his arms, but heat radiated from him. I didn’t move. I didn’t even want to.
He dropped his arms.
“I’m here to talk.” I was ready to apologize for sneaking in. I’d invaded his privacy.
He smirked. “If I’d known I had an audience, I would have tried harder.”
He was the most infuriating boy of all time.
“I already saw you the other night,” I said. “Just like tonight.”
His rich brown eyes narrowed. Sweat beaded on his temples. “You saw me do what, exactly?”
“Try for the quad. What you did was amazing.”
A corner of his mouth lifted. “So you do know how to spy successfully. But I had no idea you were so easily impressed.” The line of his shoulders was as straight and tight as a string about to snap. “Maybe you don’t know any better, but I didn’t actually do anything, amazing or otherwise. I didn’t do it. I’m trying to do it. Two different things.”
I should have known better than to offer praise. Performers are never more unpredictable than when they’re full of adrenaline and failure. I didn’t think it was possible for us to be standing any closer together, and I wanted to put distance between us so badly I imagined how to achieve it in seconds. In one second, I could move six inches back. In another second, six more. All I had to do was move two seconds’ worth. Then I could get control of the situation.
But there was no way I was going to give in and move first.
“How many people have actually done the quad? Three?” I asked.
“Four,” he said. “But only one in the last ten years.”
I shrugged. “Yes, well then, you’re a huge failure.”
His posture relaxed. The tension left his shoulders and chest. He gave me a skeptical grin. “I wouldn’t go so far as to say ‘huge’ failure. You wouldn’t feel the need to spy if that was the case.” The grin left. “Or maybe you would.”
“You mean because I’m a Maroni?”
He nodded.
“Tell me why. What do people say about us? What do the Garcias say about us?”
He paused. “You really don’t know?”
“I don’t know enough.”
He still hesitated. “And you want to?”
“I don’t like being in the dark, and what I’ve heard sounds made-up.” I put some challenge into the words.
He shrugged one sculpted shoulder. “Accidents happened when your grandmother was on the same circus as my family, years ago. She caused them, and she benefited. She could bestow her curse or her luck on whoever she chose, and no one wants to work with that kind of person. She was discovered. They ran her out on a rail.”
“That’s not true,” I said. But it was almost exactly what Nan had said the night before. It explained why Dad had never booked big shows despite being the best in the business. Not that I thought for a second Nan had been at fault.
“What do you know about these so-called accidents? She would never hurt anyone.”
“People did get hurt, though. Badly. People died.” He went on, quietly. “You can see why I might be disturbed to find you in here.”
I could, if he believed we were a family of saboteurs with no moral code when it came to hurting others. I tucked a stray hair behind my ear. “I was curious. That’s all.” But there was one thing I didn’t understand. “Do you believe in magic?”
He studied me, and when his black eyebrows lifted, I noticed the slant of a tiny scar just above the right one. For a second, I thought he was going to make a joke of it. Of me and my question. But his face settled into a serious expression.
“No,” he said. “But my grandparents did, and my mother does . . . and I do believe that something happened back then that’s hard to explain in other terms. I don’t know if it was magic or not, but it was bad. And your grandmother was to blame.”
I nodded, though the words hit like a blow. He really believed she’d done terrible things. They all did. It was time for me to head for the door, so I turned.
“Leaving so soon?” Those words were said lightly, but not the ones that followed. “Don’t go run and tell your boyfriend that I’m doing a quad, because it’s not part of the act. I was just playing around.”
My boyfriend? “You mean whoever gave me this?” I angled back toward him and touched the rose. When my fingers brushed the corded stem, I shivered inside again.
He frowned. “No, the blond guy.”
“You mean Sam?” Even with the shock of falling, and of what he’d relayed about Nan, I couldn’t help it. I laughed so hard that my eyes stung with tears. Dragging in a deep breath, I managed to pull myself together. Mostly.
As I left, I gave Remy one last look over my shoulder, and let it linger. “You should try it again. An attempt at something great . . . it’s not nothing. And I’ll be bringing my own personal best tomorrow. The Maronis have no need to put a hex on anyone.”
five
* * *
When I came in, Nan was the only one still up, sitting in her shiny red dressing gown in front of TCM. It was the Barbara Stanwyck movie about the professor collecting slang. I knew all the old classics from our years of watching her favorite films together. She muted it as I came in and settled next to her on the couch. I wanted to try to smooth things over. But when she looked at me, she froze.
“Jules . . .” She pointed to the rose. “What’s that?”
“A flower.”
“Hold still,” she said, and unpinned it from my top. As she held the stem, she went pale, as if instead of holding a rose she was communing with a ghost. “Where did it come from?”
I hesitated.
“Where did it come from?” she asked again, clearly intent on getting the truth.
Fine. “Somebody dropped it in front of me at the party last night.”
“You didn’t see who?” she asked.
I shook my head no. “It was during the blackout. Why?”
“I keep telling you there’s danger, and you keep refusing to see.” Nan tugged at the cord on the stem, and it began to come free. She unwound it, and once it was loose, I saw it wasn’t a cord at all. The long gray shape Nan held up between us put me in mind of a rat’s tail. Fronds of fuzz trailed off each side.
It was a long, dark, thick hair . . . of some kind.
“I wore that. Ew.” I couldn’t believe I’d touched it. “What is it?”
“It’s an elephant hair,” she said, squeezing the words out like they were sour.
I frowned. An elephant hair—from trunk or tail, so circus lore went—was supposed to bring good fortune. Getting one would be next to impossible, especially when there were no elephants in the show.
“Aren’t they a good luck charm? But it couldn’t have come from here. So maybe it’s a gift? What if someone is helping us, someone who doesn’t believe all the lies about you?”
She considered the hair, lowered it between us. Her green eyes were troubled.
“No one who gave you this is a friend. I’ve seen it before, long ago. Someone gave it to you thinking it would unsettle me. Or . . . Jules, has anything bad happened to you today?”
Thrown, I glanced over at Barbara Stanwyck for guidance. Nan reached for the clicker and turned off the movie. She set it down and tipped my chin back to her. “Jules,” she prodded.
“Okay, yes. But it doesn’t have anything to do with that weird hair,” I said, confident that was the truth.
“So tell me.”
I knew that expression. She wasn’t going to take no for an answer.
“I fell.” When her eyes widened in alarm, I clarified, “There was a net. It was no big deal.”
“Right, not a big deal. You never fall, not since you were four. I still remember that day. My heart almost stopped. Thankfully you weren’t so high, and Emil was there to catch you.” She lifted the hair again. “This is what caused your fall.”
“Are you joking?” As the words came out of my mouth, I knew the answer was no. I’d never seen her look older or more serious, all the color drained from her face.
“I wish I was, sweetheart,” she said. “But don’t worry. I’ll get rid of it. You’ll be safe from the bad luck it brings once I destroy it. Still, you have to be more careful. You understand that there are people here who want to hurt us now, don’t you? This proves it.”
Her grave expression kicked my worry into high gear—my worry that she really thought what she was saying was true. “Nan, you can’t think that someone planted a magic elephant hair to make me fall. You see how it sounds when I say it?”
She stood, towering over me, and propped one hand on her hip. “Do you trust me?”
I rose too, and faced her. “I trust that you believe what you’re saying, but . . . I don’t believe it. I can’t.”
Because it’s nonsense. We belong here. You can’t do magic. No one can. Which means no one can use it to hurt us or vice versa.
Nan didn’t back down. “Good luck, bad luck, superstition . . . Power is power, and magic is usually more complicated than good or bad. Things are what they are. Someone gave this to you. Then you fell. You can’t deny that.”
Lots of people in the circus are superstitious. My mom didn’t follow any kind of religion, but she had a small crucifix sewn inside every costume she’d ever worn. What’s more, Nan’s crazy theories sounded less weird when I thought back over everything that had happened since we’d arrived: the rose at my feet after the blackout in the big top, the destruction of the RV, the deep shivers when I’d first touched that hair, my unprecedented fall into the net. Remy certainly believed that Nan had hurt people . . . and possibly with the inexplicable powers she claimed to possess. I didn’t have a logical explanation for any of it. Now I understood just how easy it would be to believe mysterious forces were at work.
But even if I wasn’t ready to buy into the whole idea of magic being to blame, I resented whoever was stirring up the past to frighten Nan, to try to frighten the rest of us.
“Go to bed,” she said. “I’ll take care of this.”
I lay in bed staring at the ceiling, turning the situation over and over in my head. If Nan was right, someone who knew all about her bad history wanted to exact some kind of psychological revenge on our whole family. I needed to stop them. The first step was obviously to prove to everyone else that the Maronis weren’t into black magic that caused harmful accidents. If I could do that, there’d be another benefit: proving to Nan that nothing bad was going to happen to any of us because we were here. So she could put her doom and gloom to rest.
When the snick of a lighter sounded, I slipped out of bed. Noticing that the framed picture of Bird was still off-kilter, I reached over and set it straight. I eased out into the hallway, against the shadowed wall.
Nan knelt in the center of the living room, facing the dark television like she planned to worship it. I stayed flat to the wall and watched her. The silk of her robe shone dully in the flickering light of a short, fat, white candle, which sat on the floor in front of her. She was murmuring, too low for me to make out the words.
She lifted the stringy gray elephant hair above the candle. As she lowered her hand to the flame, it flared and sparked. Her eyes were closed. In her fingers, the hair seemed to writhe in the flame. The movement had to be a trick of the light, because it shifted like it was alive. A moment later, she jerked the hair back up, at least the portion of it that hadn’t been scorched away.
The flame flared again, and then Nan blew it out. She laid the remainder of the hair across her palm.
I wanted to hurry back to my room, but I went a
few steps closer. “What are you doing?”
She unfolded at the knees, standing. Her hand closed around the hair. “I was making sure it causes no more harm. Getting rid of it.”
“By burning it in a candle and chanting?”
She sighed like I’d never understand. “Yes. This shows someone is rooting against us, inviting our failure. We have to do something about it.”
Finally, something I agreed with. “I’m going to,” I said.
“No, Jules.” Her voice was steel, her expression set. “Let it be. You don’t need to do anything but be more cautious. Let me handle it.”
I’d never been afraid of Nan before. But I was in that dark room with the lingering scent of burning candle. If not afraid of her, exactly, then of her acting this way. Maybe this fearsome quality explained why people still told stories about her, decades after she’d left the circus. Maybe it explained why someone would still have a vendetta against her, and give me a rose that would send a message.
I would find out what was going on. That was what I vowed when I went back to bed. I’d start by planning the next day. The attempt at greatness I’d promised Remy was definitely coming. The stunt I’d dismissed before came back into my mind, and suddenly it was perfect. This would be a walk so dangerous it would test Nan’s theory that someone was out to get us.
six
* * *
From my vantage point below the wires, I looked up into the big top’s main spire, and my heart beat faster. It was part nerves—I’d woken up with them—and part awe at the elegance of the setup. Above the center ring on either side were the familiar black bars of the rigging, tucked amid the lights. Our wires were staged to the left, with Dad’s slightly higher than and five feet away from mine. The trapeze accoutrements were to the right.
The start of our season was tomorrow. The first show was two days away.
“Dad,” I asked, nudging him with my elbow, “if I want to do something crazy once the season starts, will you go along with it?”
He wasn’t listening, not even a little. I knew this wasn’t the time to tell him about my intention to follow in Bird’s footsteps. That now my sights were set on walking on air high above cities, like I was born on a cloud. I loved the idea so much I almost didn’t care if he approved, so long as he gave his consent to Thurston. I was confident I could pull off the incredible—and I wanted this stunt to be so big and so daring it would prove once and for all that whatever bad magic my Nan thought was out to get us didn’t exist any longer. Or never had.