Show Stopper

by Hayley Barker

  The footsteps are getting closer and I stop hesitating, pick up on her panic and do what she says, sliding myself under the flimsy metal frame. There’s just enough room for me to squeeze under there, but I’m totally squashed in, my nose pushed against the springs and the dirty old mattress.

  Within seconds the door opens and a pair of the shiniest ankle boots I’ve ever seen appears in the doorway – the unmistakable Silvio Sabatini himself. I can actually make out my own face reflected on the sheen, so I hope he doesn’t look down. A sharp voice demands:

  “You see anything? Hear anything?”

  “Huh? No… What’s going on?” Hoshiko’s voice is groggy, as if she’s just woken up.

  “Break in. Or break out, we’re not sure which yet. The doors have been tampered with. Looks like it’s from the outside.” The syrupy silkiness of his voice whenever he speaks to me or Mother has vanished.

  “No way!” The shocked tone she adopts sounds way too over the top to me, but hopefully I’m being paranoid. “Who would break in here?” she asks incredulously.

  “Someone with a death wish. Get into the assembly hall right now for headcount.”

  “Why?” she asks. “You’ve already seen me, Silvio.”

  “Enough questions,” he barks. “How dare you answer me back? Get up and get in there. Now.”

  The feet turn abruptly and the door slams.

  A second later, her head appears, hanging upside down over the bed. Her hair brushes the floor and her eyes appear kind of googly and strange. The blood has rushed to her head too, so it looks all strained.

  I’m hiding under the bed of this crazy, angry Dreg girl in the living quarters of the most dangerous circus in the history of the world. She could turn me in at any minute. She hasn’t though. Why not?

  She feels it too, that’s why; I know she does.

  I smile at her, hopefully. She scowls in return, cutting me to the quick when she speaks.

  “Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, you rock up and cause even more trouble. Thanks for that. Nice one.”

  She disappears from view and before I can work out how to respond, I see her bare feet on the dirty floor, the door opens, and she’s gone.

  HOSHIKO

  We assemble in the hall. No one makes a sound; we all sit with our heads down, trying not to draw attention to ourselves.

  There’s a really charged atmosphere. The guards are pacing up and down, staring at us as if they’ll aim those guns and fire if we so much as move which, let’s face it, they probably will. Why not? It’s been done before. No one would complain, well, no one who actually matters anyway. In fact, the guards would probably be given a promotion.

  Greta files in with the rest of our dorm. Her nervous eyes flicker across the room, and I know she’s seeking me out. She smiles when she sees me, trotting straight over to squeeze in next to me – no wonder people call her my shadow. She rubs her eyes, sleepily, and I can’t help putting my arm around her, even though I know it’s forbidden.

  She’s carrying her dirty old rag doll, hugging on to her possessively. She should be snuggled up in bed with her now, at home, safe with her family, instead of trapped here, in hell. If I die, she’ll be totally alone. If she dies – the thought petrifies me, I can’t even go there.

  I clench my fists together as white hot fury floods me: I want to punch someone.

  I try to focus on the faces in the room. Everyone’s looking furtively around. They’re all trying to work out what’s going on; it’s been years since we had an emergency night-time roll call like this. Everyone’s anxious, no one knowing why we’ve suddenly been plucked from our beds, what we’re supposed to have done wrong. No one except me.

  Ezekiel, tiny and wide-eyed, is standing next to Emmanuel, whose hand is clasped protectively on his shoulder. It looks like they’ve bonded already; I’m glad about that. Emmanuel’s been a shell since he lost Sarah; maybe Ezekiel will give him another reason for living – for however long they have together, at least.

  Ezekiel sees me and his face lights up with a huge smile. I give him a quick thumbs up across the hall, but then turn my eyes quickly to the front when I catch a security guard frowning at me.

  It’s not until the atmosphere feels as if something will crack that Silvio enters. He’s only a little man but, you have to hand it to him, he certainly knows how to make an impact – just as you’d expect from the world’s most famous ringmaster. He was born for a life in the circus, and he plays his part flawlessly, on stage and off.

  He’s dressed in his finery even now, in the middle of the night. Surely he doesn’t sleep in that costume? It’s funny to think of Silvio at rest, or wearing anything other than that smart little red suit. I picture him in a pair of striped pyjamas, and for a second I almost laugh. I need to keep a tight grip on myself.

  Amina’s expression is stony but that familiar twinkle’s there in her eye; I bet she’s thinking exactly the same as me.

  As always, Bojo sits on Silvio’s shoulder, dressed in a tiny version of his red suit. That monkey must be the only thing he’s ever given a damn about.

  The steely glint in Silvio’s eyes is more fervent than ever tonight as he paces up and down on the platform in front of us. It must be a full minute before he speaks, and in that time, the tension keeps right on mounting.

  Finally, he talks. Really quietly and calmly, his tone almost sing-song.

  “Ladies and gentlemen.”

  He always calls us that – it’s the same thing he says to the Pures – a compliment, you’d think, but the gentle and respectful tone somehow makes it even more menacing. We’re scum to him. We know it, and he knows we know it. And we loathe him for it, every single one us: the only thing worse than a Dreg-hating Pure is a Dreg-hating Dreg.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he repeats. “There has been a breach of security. Someone has tampered with, and opened, the door. Since the head count shows no one is missing, we can only assume that one of you has tried, unsuccessfully, to leave the safe confines of our family home and, given that the lock is on the outside, has had help doing so.

  “There is no need to remind you all, I hope, of the foolish nature of such an act. Even if the guilty party had made it from the building, we would have quickly found them – found them and destroyed them, and everyone else they care about.”

  His tone is still calm, gentle almost, but he’s like a purring lion, and we know better than anyone never to trust a lion.

  “You, my friends, are the property of this circus. And we will not tolerate the removal, the theft, of our property.”

  The silence seems to last for ever.

  “Someone in this room must know something,” he says at last, diplomatically. “You have five more minutes in which to confess or there will be a withdrawal of all rations until the mystery has been solved.”

  There’s an audible intake of breath across the room. We were put on food deprivation once before, when some money went missing. I must have only been about six, but I still remember it really clearly.

  “As I said,” Silvio reiterates, “the perpetrator has five minutes.”

  There is complete silence again. Even the guards stop pacing, no one moves, no one even appears to actually breathe.

  Last time food quotas were cut back it wasn’t that bad for me; Amina gave me pretty much all of hers, and I remember others too, who are no longer here with us, feeding me little tit bits. I think the idea was that we had just enough to survive, that we were almost starving, but that no one actually died. It didn’t work though. Esmerelda, the old fortune teller, didn’t make it.

  I think she was the first person I saw die off the stage. She keeled over in front of us all, during group rehearsals. They made us carry on while they picked her body up and carted it away.

  She was one of the few lifers. She’d been here from the age of four, as some sort of psychic phenomenon, and made it to middle age, old age almost. She was like a grandmother to everyone. />
  I remember asking Amina what they’d done with the body, and the way she wouldn’t look me in the eyes when she said she didn’t know.

  One of the older boys told me though, a couple of days later.

  “She’ll be lion food by now,” he said. “Much cheaper than buying in meat.” When I said I didn’t believe him, he laughed. “That’s not the worst of it,” he told me. “Not by a long shot. Ever notice that the only time we get meat is after someone’s died or vanished? Think it’s just a coincidence do you?”

  I ran straight to Amina in floods of tears. She wiped my eyes and said he was just scaremongering.

  “The truth is that none of us know what they’ve done with Esmerelda, or what they do with anyone who dies,” she said. “We just have to hope they deal with them decently.”

  “They never treat us with decency when we’re alive,” I said. “Why would they bother once we’re dead?”

  She shrugged. “What’s the point in thinking the worst? What good does it do?”

  A guy called Dimitrios confessed to taking the cash in the end. He wasn’t a performer, he was one of the circus riggers. No one ever knew if it was actually him. Maybe he couldn’t stand it any more, or wanted to save the rest of us – who knows? They killed him for it anyway, I assume, because they hauled him away and none of us ever saw him again.

  Do I think about giving him up? Standing up and declaring: The intruder is here in this building. I don’t know what he’s doing here, but he’s under my bed in the san. I’d like to say that I do, but it’d be a lie, I’d rather subject all these people to starvation.

  Why do I feel like I need to protect him? What would they do to him anyway if they found him? He’s Vivian Baines’s son, so they’d have to be careful but still, he’s pushing his luck, surely. He’s disobeyed protocol three times now.

  The only reason I’m keeping quiet is curiosity. I need to find out what he’s actually doing here, what he wants. If he’s caught now, how will I ever know? Plus, I’m in too deep anyway. I didn’t raise the alarm immediately, didn’t scream. I’m complicit already and, while they might be lenient with him, they’d shoot me right now without even thinking about it. Big show or not, no one’s irreplaceable; Silvio’s made that crystal clear often enough lately.

  “May I remind you, just in case you’d forgotten, what day it is tomorrow?” He knows we don’t need reminding; we’ve been gearing up to it for months now. “If anything happens to jeopardize my show, I will be very, very upset.”

  He leans forward, scanning our faces, looking for any signs of weakness, and then speaks softly. “More upset than you’ve ever seen me.”

  I shudder.

  BEN

  It feels like I’m lying under that dirty bed, trying desperately not to cough from all the dust, for ever.

  Finally, the door opens and I see her tiny feet again – don’t Dregs have shoes? In that circus ring they looked completely pointed and perfect. Close up though, I see that they’re covered in red raw blisters and hard skin from a lifetime of dancing on the wire.

  “Don’t move,” she mutters quietly. “Don’t speak. Don’t do anything. They’re checking the dorms.”

  I do what she says, mostly because I don’t want to risk her anger again. There’s a creaking of springs as she gets on the bed, and the mattress moves even closer to my face.

  The door opens abruptly and a big pair of heavy boots appears.

  “Anything unusual?” a gruff voice asks.

  “No,” she answers. “Nothing at all.”

  The door slams shut. I don’t know what to do; I can’t just stay here. She’s centimetres away from me.

  I pull myself out from under the bed. She’s scrunched up into a little ball, curled right into the corner.

  “Are you OK?” I whisper.

  She whips around like a firecracker. “No! I’m not OK! Do you realize how much danger you’ve just put me in?”

  “Danger? Why?”

  “Why? Because you’ve broken into the circus and I’m hiding you under the bed! What do you think they’ll do if they find out?”

  I don’t know what to say.

  “They’ll kill me, that’s what! They’ll take me outside and shoot me!”

  “But it’s not your fault. I’m the one who’d be in trouble … wouldn’t I?” Even as I’m saying it, I realize she’s right. Why would they punish a Pure, the son of Vivian Baines no less, when there’s a conveniently placed Dreg girl they can blame instead?

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t think. I’ll go and hand myself in, right now.”

  “You can’t! It’s too late now. They’ll know I’ve protected you.”

  “I’ll tell them I just hid here, that you didn’t know.”

  “They won’t believe you!” She shakes her head. “They won’t care, don’t you understand?”

  “But what else can I do? I should never have come here.”

  “No! No, you shouldn’t! What on earth did you think would happen?”

  “I don’t know. I wanted to see you; that was all.”

  She looks at me. There’s anger there still and grief, but there’s something else there too, the same thing that was there before. It’s like electricity crackling, like fire.

  She looks away. “I don’t know what to do. If you tell them you’re here, they’ll punish me. If you don’t, and they find out later…”

  Footsteps echo outside. We both freeze, listening to them getting louder and then fading away again. She sinks down next to me.

  “I’m sorry,” I tell her. “I’m so sorry. I never wanted to put you in danger.”

  She shrugs, looks at me again, and gives a funny little smile. “It’s OK. I haven’t got much to live for anyway.”

  I want to reach out for her. I want to hold her, just once. She’s so close to me that we’re almost touching. She moves away, stands with her back to me on the opposite side of the room, arms crossed.

  “My mother,” I say. “What she said to Silvio Sabatini yesterday…”

  “You mean about having me killed tomorrow night?”

  I wince.

  “It’s no big deal,” she says over her shoulder. “People die all the time in here, haven’t you worked that out yet?”

  “I’m sorry. I wish I could do something. Tell me what to do and I’ll do it. I’ll do anything.”

  She turns to face me, but she won’t meet my gaze. Her eyes flick up for an instant, but then she looks back down at the floor. “How come you turned out like this?” she says.

  “Like what?”

  “Half decent, as if you actually cared.”

  “I do care. I care more than I’ve ever cared about anything.”

  There’s a long silence. We stand there, inches apart, her looking at the floor, me looking at her.

  “There was a Dreg working at our house,” I tell her. “Her name was Priya. I used to talk to her about stuff. I … I loved her, but she’s gone now. My parents found out I’d been speaking to her.” My voice cracks. “I don’t know where she is. I think she’s dead.”

  “So you put her in danger then? Like you’re doing now, to me? It’s your fault if she’s dead.”

  Her words cut like a knife; she’s right, I know she is. I hang my head.

  Silence again.

  “I shouldn’t have said that,” she says a moment later. “It wasn’t fair.”

  “It’s OK. It’s true.”

  “What else are you supposed to do? Treat us like the rest of them do? I think my family must be dead, too,” she says. “But I’m not sure either. I know how hard it is, being uncertain.”

  We stand there, looking at each other.

  I know what this feeling is. I’ve known ever since I first saw her; first saw her perform, first saw her face, projected up into the sky. And every time I’ve seen her since, it’s got bigger and stronger; it’s overwhelmed me. It’s turned me into a different person, a better person. There’s no other feeling that could be
this strong, that could take me over like this. I have to tell her, before it’s too late.

  She’s still looking at me. I feel my cheeks flush; why can’t I get the words out?

  She breaks my gaze and turns away again.

  “You’d better get back under the bed, they could come back at any minute,” she says.

  I just stand there, like an idiot.

  “Go on then!” she hisses. “What are you waiting for?”

  I slide back under the bed. Above me, the mattress sinks as she lays back down.

  The tips of her fingers appear over the edge of the bed. Dangling there, just hanging over. Her body is centimetres away from mine, one thin layer of foam separating us. I can hear her breathing. We lie there in silence.

  Her hand has an angry cut on it; it must be from when she grabbed the wire. I have this almost overwhelming urge to kiss it. If I moved my head up, and to the right, I could do it. Instead, I reach my hand up, brushing my fingers against hers, lightly as a whisper. Her hand jolts for a split second, and I hear a tiny intake of breath above me, but she doesn’t pull it away.

  It makes me brave enough to move my hand up. To wrap it right around hers. Ever so gently, so as not to hurt her. She still doesn’t wrench away and, right at that moment, all the lights go off.

  I’m scared to move in case she pulls her hand away, scared even to breathe. The two of us, connected. Joined. I wonder if she has this funny tickling feeling inside too.

  Eventually she whispers, “I did feel it.”

  “Feel what?”

  “In the arena. And earlier, when we were trying to help Anatol. I felt it too.”

  I squeeze her hand, not too hard, just softly. After a second, she squeezes back. So, there we are, lying together in the darkness, waiting for morning and the trouble that’s bound to be coming.

  HOSHIKO

  I can’t explain why I don’t pull my hand away; I don’t know what makes me say what I do. He’s a Pure. He might seem a bit kinder, a bit more human than the rest of them, but it’s just an illusion. I’m too tired, that’s why; too tired to deal with anything else today, so I drift off to sleep, his hand encircling mine through the night.