Girl on a Wire

by Gwenda Bond

Dad chimed in to agree. “Your mother is right. Say the word and we’ll stop this.”

  But he only said that because he knew I was set on doing this. My no was a slice of my chin through the air. “I’m ready,” I said, “to get started.”

  Mom said, “I trust you. Take care out there.” She pecked my forehead lightly enough to leave my makeup undisturbed.

  Dad led me to the unremarkable corner office we’d taken over and made into our staging ground. There were two old leather chairs and a desk hidden by stacks of papers. Dad handed me the small canister of gym chalk for my palms and feet.

  “You should go down too,” I said, opening the top of the tin. “You’re just making me nervous.”

  He lingered uncertainly, but I shooed him. “I can’t believe Nan didn’t come up here to try and interrupt too.” Except she knew I’d be safe . . . if the coin truly was magic. What if she only believed it was? What if none of the objects were? I might be wrong about everything. Still. “Go, be with her and Mom. I’m fine.”

  “I’m very proud of you. You’re a strong girl, and you’re right that this will help. It will lift spirits to see you being so strong.”

  “Go.” I shooed again, waving my chalk-coated hands.

  He gave me a small nod and left.

  My balance pole was next to the open window, ready for me to climb out onto the roof. Remy’s dad and his crewman were waiting, and so was Thurston. I’d cross the section of roof to get to my starting point on the wire.

  This next part was going to be tricky.

  I took off my slippers and chalked my palms and the soles of my feet. Then I fished in my duffel until I found what I was looking for: the large pale-pink parasol I sometimes used during my act, folded to the size of a big umbrella.

  I stashed it behind the businessman’s desk. “Thurston,” I called. He poked his head in the window, and I motioned him inside. “Hold me steady for a sec.”

  I used his elbow to balance while I added a tiny bit more chalk to my foot and tugged the slipper snug, checking again for the small, solid shape. I plopped the chalk container in his hand. “Can you put this with my stuff?” I nodded at the bag. The moment he bent, I grabbed the parasol and went out through the window.

  Remy’s dad started to say something to me as I breezed across the roof, but I just said, “Thanks,” and walked at as fast a clip as I could to the wire. But Remy was beside him, and I heard him shout, “Your pole!” at the exact moment I flicked open the parasol. Thurston said, “Wait, Jules!”

  “Don’t come closer,” I said, loud and calm, so they’d all hear and understand. “Interfering will only make this dangerous.”

  I waved the parasol, getting a feel for how it would hold the barely there wind. Bird had balanced with one at a height close to this. I gazed out into the canyon of buildings in front of me. LaSalle Street was thronged with people, and I was going to give them—and the person who’d killed Sam—a show to remember.

  Don’t mess with a Maroni. Not when they have Garcia luck.

  “Jules,” Remy said, fear in his voice.

  I’d have to do something about that.

  I put a foot on the wire, and then another, leaving behind the safety of the building edge. This was madness, but not if I trusted Nan. And I did. I did.

  I hadn’t fallen since I was a child, until that rose wrapped in elephant hair turned up. I had stalled on the bridge because of the peacock feather. And Sam would never have toppled from the back of a horse if that green scarf hadn’t been on his costume.

  If Nan said the coin would protect me, I had to trust her.

  I traipsed forward on the wire.

  I took two steps, then three, letting my feet find the surest path, learning the feel of the wire and its slight sway. I didn’t look down, but I looked out, at all those people, at the city beneath my feet. The parasol wagged gently at the end of its handle, a vibration against my palm’s firm grip.

  For a pounding heartbeat, my step faltered. A vision of myself falling to the street took my breath, it was so real.

  But a phantom gust of wind tugged at my parasol, guiding me back where I belonged.

  Wait.

  I lifted my foot and dangled it to the side, letting the parasol dip. The wind pushed it up, my foot hitting its mark with as much grace as if I’d done it intentionally . . . which I hadn’t.

  For the first time in days, I could think. I no longer felt trapped, horrified by things I couldn’t control.

  I’d learned something from falling for Remy, and from burying Sam. Everything could end at any moment. The difference between life and death was one breath, one second, one act. And that meant that life was worth everything, every minute of every day.

  I walked a simple walk, like an old-fashioned girl in the park holding a sun umbrella, until I got to the middle. Being here was so right, the wire so perfect . . . Maybe it was that small wind gust, or the feeling that no one could touch me up here. I didn’t close my eyes or anything insane, but the rightness of this walk coursed through my limbs, bringing a certainty.

  I wasn’t going to fall. Not today. Not with that coin in my shoe. The coin was magic. It worked.

  And so I did a single pirouette, using the parasol like I would have in my act. I danced forward out of it. And I did another one. The certainty flowed within me. I couldn’t fall. Not with the magic. I laughed, and did another pirouette, letting the parasol help me find my balance at the end of each. The wind that had been absent before now buffeted strategically like it was a friend called in to do a favor.

  The roaring cheers below reached me, but it wasn’t them I thought about. It was how I wanted to stay up here forever, because there was nothing but the wire and the air and my moving through it.

  It was the biggest middle finger I could give, and I did it with gusto. With glee.

  When I reached the far end of the wire, I intended to turn and go back across. I didn’t want the walk to end.

  But Thurston was waiting there—he must have raced through the halls of the building—and he grabbed me as soon as I got close and pulled me onto the roof. There were Dad and Mom, hopping over the window ledge and jogging toward us. Nan came through behind them, slower, but no less pale. Their faces were washed of everything but worry. I didn’t know why Nan would be worried.

  Thurston had called me the Princess of the Air before, but now I was.

  I imagined my own flushed cheeks, success coloring them. That had been a walk worthy of Bird.

  There was a TV camera waiting behind Thurston. He’d told me the crew would be there for a postwalk interview. I waved the female reporter forward with a deep breath and a smile, using the same hand to tell my family to stay back. Her camera guy was open-mouthed in awe. Remy, behind them, was wide-eyed with a lingering panic.

  “That was something,” the reporter said, a woman with shiny brunette hair and lips as glossy as my own. I focused on her. “What were you thinking of while you were up there? Do you ever get scared?”

  I looked straight into the camera, holding the parasol so it would frame me, and said, “I was thinking of my cousin Sam. That one was for you. It was good-bye, not just from me and the Maroni family, but from the entire circus.”

  I imagined the reaction of our foe on hearing that, and my smile bloomed wide as the building.

  twenty-eight

  * * *

  Our next stop was Milwaukee, a short two-hour drive up the interstate.

  We settled into a grassy field adjacent to the fairgrounds, mercifully roomy after the cramped quarters in Chicago. Being back on the road felt as right as being on the wire had—and as wrong as not having Sam with us, as wrong as keeping secrets from Remy. I didn’t have an outdoor walk scheduled, and so I stayed close to Mom and Dad during the parade. People in the crowd kept calling out to me, and I dutifully smiled for their photos.

  There were definitely more of those calls than usual. But I was too busy hoping the person I’d most wanted to had caught my
big walk to pay much attention.

  At the evening mess, after I went through the line, I hesitated, lost when I realized that I didn’t have Sam to sit with. But I recovered and ended up claiming our usual spot. The acrobats and Kat were at the next table, and a sense of fragility clung to everyone, left over from the accident and its aftermath. But people had been nice to me all day. The irony wasn’t lost that pity was what it took to make the circus embrace us.

  “Excellent!” “Beautiful!” The eldest acrobat brothers stood and congratulated me in tandem for yesterday’s walk with broad smiles, and then sat back down and resumed chattering away to one another in Mandarin.

  According to Thurston, the Board of Trade performance had landed me—and the Cirque—on the front page of a half dozen of the country’s major newspapers, and the twenty-four-hour news networks were playing it on repeat. Nan had been watching it earlier on CNN, in place of her usual TCM, and she’d shot me a warning look. “Such daring. You promised me care.” But that was all she said, and I went on my way.

  You couldn’t just give someone a magic coin and expect them not to use it.

  After a few bites of the roasted-vegetable dish on my plate, I decided to try catching Remy’s eye. A few stolen moments here and there weren’t enough, not anymore. He was across the room, surrounded by his family—including Dita, still radiating misery and clad in another ratty T-shirt. He must have been waiting, because our glances snagged immediately. I worried someone would notice, but ticked my head the slightest bit to the left anyway.

  We both went back to our meals. I barely tasted the food, and soon enough, I was finished. I left, hoping he’d managed to read my cue. I didn’t head toward our RV, but to the back of the tent. The least likely place to be spotted by someone randomly passing by was the far left corner. I leaned against the line tied to the stake, where we’d made out what felt like ages ago, back when even the most complicated things had been far simpler.

  In moments, Remy came around the corner, and I said, “Great minds,” and launched at him like a missile. He caught me, easily, and we stayed like that, holding each other. I’d missed everything about him. Including the way he smelled. I inhaled that mix of faint sweat from physical exertion and the scent of a men’s shampoo I’d probably have turned my nose up at before experiencing it like this. Up close and so very personal.

  Finally he pulled back, and I stared into his kind eyes. What am I going to say? I want to tell him everything, and I can’t.

  “Everything feels like a wreck,” I said.

  “Dita can’t stop crying,” he said.

  I nodded. Her eyes had been red earlier. “So . . . how awkward on a scale of one to ten is it to talk about my grandmother accusing your mom of being behind everything the other night?”

  “No one else in the world talks like you.” He smiled. “I would say it’s a nine.”

  My heart had skipped at the compliment. At least, I was pretty sure he meant it as one.

  “Flatterer. Not a ten?”

  “I hate to give anything the highest ranking. For all we know, something even more awkward is coming. We did already uncover our grandparents’ affair.” He transformed into what I recognized as serious-as-a-fall Remy. “I finally got a chance to ask around about whether any trunks were missing, and no one knew of any that were. But we know that scarf is still out there, and so we have to assume the person behind all this has it. Why would anyone else bother to pick it up?”

  “Logical,” I said.

  “I looked through every picture I could find posted from the crowd that night, but I couldn’t see anyone take it. There were too many people in the way.”

  My stomach tightened at the idea of such photos. I could envision Sam’s battered body in the ring. All I had to do was close my eyes. “That was smart, to look at them. Those crime books have turned you into an excellent boy detective.”

  He stayed serious. “I didn’t tell you, because I would never have asked you to look at them. And I know you’d have wanted to help. I also studied the pictures on the board again. It does make sense that Nan accused us. You know I looked for evidence of the same thing at first. I wasn’t offended.”

  “But it really only makes sense if your granddad is doing all this from beyond the grave.”

  “That occurred to me,” he said.

  Really? “I was joking.”

  “But what my mom said seems most likely—that someone else is involved. The thing that bothers me is the picture of him and my grandmother.”

  “Why?”

  “Because of whatever shiny thing he’s got in his palm. It must still be out there too. Another object.”

  I didn’t have the coin on me, but I felt like I did. A completely illogical need to protect it spiked through me.

  The missing lucky coin obviously wasn’t something the whole family knew about—wasn’t a story Remy had ever been told. I’d figured that was the case, since he’d never brought it up, but part of me had wondered if he was keeping the facts about the coin from me. Unfair, since I was the one keeping it from him.

  “I have something for you,” he said, and reached into his pocket.

  “Or are you just happy to see me?” The joke made my cheeks blaze.

  “Close your eyes.” He said it slowly, and so I complied.

  His hand slid down my arm, turning my palm up, and then . . . placing a chunk of metal in it. I opened my eyes and peered down at a cell phone.

  “My number’s already programmed in. I want you to be able to reach me anytime. Call, text, whatever you like best.”

  “Cell phones are so inelegant, but thank you,” I said, touched. “I’ll try to think of texts like a telegram, but without the stop at the end. I won’t use those awful abbreviations like Sam used to.”

  Saying his name hurt.

  “Well, then I’m number two in your directory, stop,” he said. “I refuse to take any more chances with your safety, and you should do the same. That walk . . . it was amazing, but I have never been so afraid that something was going to go wrong. I don’t know what I’d do, Jules.” He took my hands in his, phone still in mine, and cradled them against the gloriously solid muscles of his stomach. “You have to take care.”

  I was more careful with my answer than I had been dancing on the wire above LaSalle Street.

  “I did. I will. I promise.” I ditched the phone into my jeans pocket, then flattened my palms against his body, sliding them up to his chest, but keeping them on top of the thin T-shirt he wore. Neither of us looked away. “You know how sometimes you can just tell that a performance is golden, and you just follow it through, like the momentum is coming from a force beyond your body?”

  “I do,” he said, “but that was all you.”

  I didn’t have to respond. Luckily. He leaned in and kissed me, and I put into my response everything I wasn’t saying. Everything I couldn’t tell him, yet.

  But Remy wasn’t finished. He cupped my chin, and said, “Now, the next thing we need is a plan to search Thurston’s trailer. We need that letter.”

  I was already in my costume when Dad came into the RV and waved me to come with him before the evening show. “Jules, you have to see this.”

  My father’s tone was so flat I wouldn’t have been surprised by anything—not an elephant, or a spaceship, or the ghost of Roman Garcia. I followed him toward the tent. But he steered us not toward the backstage entrance, but the front. When I saw why, his face split into a wide grin.

  There was a crowd of about twenty girls, a few guys mixed in, outside the tent. Three of them were holding oversized signs with blown-up photos of me with my parasol walking in front of the Batman building. Some of the others were dressed in cheap tutus dyed red and wearing bright red lipstick. Others had hearts painted onto their cheeks or clutched frilly parasols. One of them spotted us and pointed, and they started our way.

  “You better go speak to your fans,” Dad said. Then, “You’ll need this.” He handed me a pen.


  “Fans?” I said. “It’s only been a couple of days.”

  But the squealing and shouting as they approached made it clear they were real. I took a deep breath and went to meet them, checking over my shoulder to make sure Dad was staying, in case I needed, well, help.

  The first to reach me was a girl with curly blonde hair, younger than me by a few years. She had a heart stenciled on her cheek and gripped one of the posters. “Oh my God, I can’t believe I’m meeting you!”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “Would you like her to sign your poster?” Dad asked.

  She nodded. The others swarmed in. I took it from her and drew a heart—since that was what she had on her cheek—and paused, not sure what to sign. After a second’s hesitation, I went with my full name: Julieta Valentina Maroni. But I wasn’t sure what to do next. I handed it back, and another poster was thrust at me.

  “Do you know Remy Garcia?” one of the girls asked. Another beside her said, “He’s sooo hot!”

  “Um, yes. I know him.” I didn’t look at Dad. Was I supposed to answer questions like that? I had no idea how to act. But they had so much energy, practically bouncing with it, that I was charmed.

  “Do you ever get scared?” one of the older girls asked. She wore a red tutu, but no makeup.

  “On the wire?” I asked, signing another poster. The girl nodded. “You can’t get scared while you’re doing it. You have to save your fear for before or after. While I’m walking, that’s all I’m doing. If it’s going well.” I remembered being frozen above the bridge in Jacksonville, and lowering myself to try to find my composure. I’d lied to her—I had been scared on the wire. Just not often.

  I heard the strains of the band start up inside. “You’d all better go get your seats. You don’t want to miss any of the show.”

  “But we’re here to see you,” a lanky boy with a floppy haircut protested. The girl beside him must have been his sister, from the resemblance. She elbowed him and said, “He’s in love with you.”

  The boy stared at the ground in horror.