Sleight: Book One of the AVRA-K

by Jennifer Sommersby

  “He makes the Mind Freak guy look like a monkey, Gemma.

  You gotta come see this!” The reigning Queen of Hyperbolandia.

  “If you don’t come out and say helo, I wil bring them back here, or at least Henry. Guess what? He’s asked about you, Gemmmmmma…”

  “No one in ze kitchen! Sortez!” Jean-Pierre overheard Junie’s threats.

  “You heard the man. No one in ze kitchen. That probably includes you, Junie,” I said.

  “Gemma, please,” she flashed Jean-Pierre a dirty look. “Please, come out here and say helo. Stop being so emo. It’s not your style.

  And stop pouting about the school thing. It’s not like Ted and Marlene are shipping you to an orphanage—” Junie stopped a milisecond too late. Not enough time had passed for orphan jokes.

  Not yet. And with my mystery father the parental equivalent of Houdini… Junie must have been desperate for me to come out of hiding if she was wiling to drop that sweet little grenade.

  “Thanks for that, Junie. Your sensitivity is touching.” She blushed, her head down. “You know what I meant, Gems.” She grabbed both my hands, knocking the coin onto the counter, and puled me from the stool. I couldn’t hold her off any longer, and she had a point. It was just school. And Dmitri Holdings was going to be paying the bils for some time to come, so I should avoid the later wrath of Ted and at least pretend to be civilized.

  “I’l give you five minutes, Juniper Thomassen.”

  “Trust me. Five seconds is al you’l need.”

  Locking her elbow around mine, Junie puled me through the swinging door into the dining room. The performers and kids were lined up at the buffet, some for second helpings. The mood was festive, as it had been the other night after the mad shopping spree.

  The buzz of conversation was punctuated by the enthusiastic exclamations of a group of company members nearer the eastern side of the tent. They were standing, gathered around someone tal, though I could only see the back of him. His hair was dark, almost pepper black, interspersed with a little salt, just enough to hint at his age. He was dressed in a long black wool overcoat, tailored to his lean body, and despite the drizzle and sloppiness of the grounds between the parking lot and the mess tent, he was impeccable. Not a stray splatter of mud, not a wisp of hay. Perfection. He reeked of money.

  I’d seen this body before, with its long lines, that fine coat.

  The crowd surrounding him erupted with applause. A trick. He must have done something amazing and the entertainers were entertained. My limited knowledge of Lucian Dmitri included that he and Ted were old chums, and from Junie’s exaggerated report, his skil with sleight-of-hand was amazing. I’d seen Ted with a deck of cards—he was phenomenal—but the clot of humanity hovering around our new boss was clearly impressed by whatever they were seeing. I couldn’t help but feel intrigued, and annoyed.

  Junie and I wove through the tables toward Mr. Dmitri and his rapt audience. Even the few performers Ted had pegged to do walk-around tricks were standing stil, watching the action. Just before we reached the edge of the group, the man of the hour turned, shoulders squared, and extended his hand.

  “Gemma Flannery, I presume,” he said. I stopped. Our eyes locked and in that instant, I saw a reflection of something sinister in his eyes, a familiarity I couldn’t pin down. The hairs on my arms stood on end. We stood in that position, me just a couple of feet in front of him, Lucian with his arm outstretched inviting me to shake his hand, suspended in time. Though it was mere seconds before I responded, something had happened as he inspected my face, looked at my eyes, the curve of my mouth, the curl in my hair. Like he was memorizing me. It was weird.

  “I have heard so much about you, Gemma,” Lucian said, his stern face brightening into a wide smile. As with everything else about his appearance, his teeth were flawless, white as fresh snow.

  But there was something about his eyes… They didn’t match his smile, and the effect only added to my feeling of revulsion.

  “It’s a pleasure to finaly meet you, Mr. Dmitri. I’ve heard a fair bit about you, as wel.” I shook his hand. Marlene would’ve scolded me if she’d seen the timid, 1890s-fainting-couch handshake. She’d always taught me to be strong, bold, make my presence known through the strength of my grip during introductions. The point wasn’t to squeeze and cause pain—just let them know you’re capable of standing on your own two feet.

  Amazing the language that could come out of simply shaking hands.

  But I could hardly summon the courage to alow Lucian Dmitri to touch me; by being so shy, I’d given Lucian the upper hand, literaly, a big no-no in Marlene’s book.

  “Please, cal me Lucian. And the pleasure is al mine. Have you met my son?” Lucian turned and gestured across the room, a flick of two fingers beckoning Henry.

  “Yes, sir, we met at school today,” I said. Didn’t matter. He was going to cal Henry over to say helo, and Henry would oblige and put up with the polite helos and how-do-you-dos because that’s what you do when your dad owns the universe.

  I looked in the direction of Lucian’s gaze and saw Ted and Marlene step out of the way, their faces alive with happy conversation as they released Henry from their chat. As he rotated and began to move in our direction, his face and torso in ful view, my breath caught in my throat.

  I felt Lucian’s eyes on me, then on his son, back to me. A smal smirk spread across his lips.

  Junie poked me in the ribs and I broke my stare, exhaling just as Henry entered our intimate circle.

  “Henry, Gemma tels me you two have already met,” Lucian said.

  “Yes, sir, I was honored to serve as Gemma’s buddy for her first day at Eaglefern. Good to see you again, Ms. Flannery,” Henry said, extending a gloved hand.

  “Nice gloves,” I said. Junie ribbed me again. Harder this time.

  “Cold tent,” he said, referring to our surroundings. My cheeks burned. “I see you survived the first day in one piece?” He seemed stiff, formal. Way different than he’d been at school.

  “Don’t tel Ted and Marlene,” I said. Sympathy laugh from Henry. Harrumph from Junie. Lucian turned around to resume his card act for the captivated company members.

  Henry took a few steps away from his father. “Have you had a chance to get going on that essay for Perkins’ class yet?” he said, slightly more relaxed. I shook my head no. “Wel, if you get it done tonight, send it to me.” He puled a pen from the chest pocket of his long coat and then reached for my hand. He pushed my fingers back and touched the pen to my palm. The balpoint tickled, but I resisted the urge to squirm. As he formed letters and numbers, I examined the fine stitching on his leather gloves.

  “This is my cel and email. Text or friend me on Facebook. We’l be home in another hour or so, by the looks of it,” he said, leaning in. “Lucian is going to run out of tricks here soon.”

  “Okay, cool. Thanks, Henry. Wel, I, uh, I’m gonna go.

  Homework. And elephants, you know. Gotta say goodnight and al that,” I stumbled back into a table, nearly faling on my ass. I regained my footing and touched Lucian on the shoulder. “Mr.

  Dmitri,” I curtsied as I said his name, “thank you for coming tonight.” A curtsey? What, was I five al of a sudden? I looked back to Henry. He was smiling, looking as though he was trying to squelch a laugh. Yeah, so what? I curtsied!

  I had to get out of there, away from the unnerving vibe roling off of every inch of Lucian, and far, far away from the intoxicating depth of Henry’s blue-green eyes, the delicious smel of his cologne.

  As I moved toward the exit, I froze in my tracks: the whittler—

  the shade who lives in the corner of the mess tent—was gone.

  He was never gone.

  :8:

  You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.

  —Plato

  I was glad to be away from the others, relieved I wouldn’t have to put on a fake happy face for Lucian or share information wit
h Marlene I had yet to fuly process. Yes, today had turned out better than I’d thought it would. Surprising, given that I’d walked into the high school this morning after several hours of running comprehensive worst-case-scenario drils in my head. And dinner, or what little time I’d spent in the company of other people eating dinner, was fine. Not too terribly traumatic. Plus I’d gotten Henry’s digits out of it.

  But where was the whittler?

  Upon walking into the trailer after a little decompression time spent with my elephants, the box from New Horizons caught my attention. Again. I needed to just suck it up and get rid of it, maybe have Marlene move it somewhere, away from me. It kept me awake, but I knew I wasn’t ready to open it. Not yet. Maybe Marlene could put it in one of the storage trailers for me. Soon.

  The Dmitris’ black BMW X6 was stil in the parking lot, so there wasn’t a rush to get to my computer. Not that there should’ve been a rush. I didn’t want to come off as desperate or too eager. That would send the wrong message. But staring at the cel number and email address scribbled across my palm…yeah, I was curious.

  The trailer was chily. I changed into my pajamas, goosebumps forming on my skin, and wrapped up in my favorite wool blanket. I clicked on my computer to check email and wandered around Google until inspiration for the essay took hold.

  My inbox chimed to alert me to two new messages: one junk email from the Apple store, and a friend request from some person named Susie Sucksalot (“Ash Thomassen has suggested this friend for you”—delete!). I opened a blank Word document and tried a few opening lines, erasing them as soon as I’d typed them. Omne initium est difficile—every beginning is difficult—Mr. Titlebaum, one of our tutors, used to say. Driled it into our heads so we’d learn to not fear the first line of a story or essay. I stil did.

  I heard voices outside the trailer as people congregated in the common courtyard. I peeked out between the curtains, glad I didn’t have to hang around for the niceties required by business protocol.

  I’m sure Ted would’ve appreciated me being a little more present, a little more accommodating, but I didn’t have it in me.

  Lucian and Ted shook hands and the few adults in the group waved as the Dmitris walked toward their car. Henry turned his face and caught me staring through the folds of the curtain. He smiled at me and mimed a writing motion, his right fingers gripping an invisible pen over the gloved palm of his left hand. I smiled back and let the curtain fal.

  I clicked open my email program and started a new message: Henry,

  Tag. You’re it. Now that you have my email address, you wil have to be kiled.

  —Gemma

  P.S. This essay sux.

  Send. Now I just had to wait for Henry to make it home, open my email, and decide if he wanted to respond.

  Not even a minute later, a new message arrived.

  Hey, Gemma Flannery…

  Thx for dinner. Your family is awesome—love Uncle Irwin.

  What a riot. And thx for hanging out with me 2day. On Facebook yet? Do it! I’l be home in 20. Let’s chat thru homework and plot world domination.

  —Henry

  P.S. Yes, the essay sux asssssss.

  Sent from my Blackberry

  I giggled out loud (glad there was no one around to hear me).

  He’d responded from the car? Despite my fervent opposition to becoming another social networking drone, I navigated to the Facebook homepage to sign up. So much for living off the grid. But Henry’s invitation to plot world domination was too juicy to resist.

  As soon as I completed the registration process—screen name Gemma Stradivarius, after the world’s most amazing violins—I sent Henry the friend request. Click, click, click. Done. Now wait. He’d said he’d be home in twenty minutes. And I needed to get moving on the essay.

  Again I peeked out through the curtains, expecting the courtyard to be empty. It wasn’t. The shade from school, the woman who hovered near Henry in the lunchroom, was standing near Ted’s trailer. Her face was beautiful, but there was an underlying sadness in the way her mouth turned down at the sides. She was new to me as of today, and her appearance on the grounds was a little unsettling. The shades didn’t usualy folow me from one location to another. Feeling uneasy, I dropped the curtain.

  Seeing the shades—the ghosts—freaked me big time when I was little. But after a while, and with much help from Irwin and Marlene, I learned that they didn’t want to hurt me. The shades just made themselves known, often appearing once and then not again.

  Of course, there were exceptions, like the whittler in the meal tent.

  For a few years, I’d seen a young man in the backstage area of the big top—he would pop in as if looking for something, and then fade out through the canvas side. But I hadn’t seen him in a long time. I hope that meant he was wherever he needed to go after his time in the in-between.

  Up to this point, none of the shades had delivered news or warnings or winning lottery numbers. They just were. Because of my mother’s schizophrenia, Marlene, Ted, Irwin, and I agreed long ago to keep my little “secret” under wraps. No one trusts a crazy.

  Outside our “family,” only my violin teacher Irina knew I was different, but that’s because she was a psychic and they whispered to her. No one else knew, not even Junie or Ash. There were those times when I thought Junie suspected something was up—when we were younger, we’d be playing and I’d stop and stare off at a shade, but when Junie’s mom mentioned it, concerned for poor little Gemma, Marlene pawned it off on my active imagination.

  And I’d learned to adjust to seeing them, hanging around groups of the living, frequenting places from their own days as animate, breathing souls. The shades were always intact, not zombies or half-rotten like in the movies. They didn’t turn blue or black; worms didn’t crawl out of their eye sockets. Sometimes they seemed so real, I couldn’t tel if the person I saw was dead or alive.

  As interesting as this little trick might have been to some (had they known), it certainly wasn’t the sort of thing I used to start conversations. “So, the other day, I was walking down the street and this dead guy floated past me…” But my mother, the ghosts tormented her. For her, they manifested as voices. Told her things, raged at her, especialy at night. When she was around, it was painful to witness, her screaming at air, puling clumps of her hair out and scratching at her face. They would get close, sometimes even close enough to touch her, and she hated that. It kiled me, knowing there was nothing I could do. I never saw her people, just my own.

  Mine have always been quiet, unassuming, not at al intrusive. I wished the same could’ve been true for Delia.

  Laughter in the courtyard puled me back to the present. I shook my head to clear it and took a deep breath. The essay. Focus. Irwin and Othelo were a good place to start. Let’s see…a little history, my life as a circus kid, nothing about my mom or my obvious lack of a father. I didn’t need the teacher to feel sorry for me. Maybe a snippet about my favorite musicians—stuff I’d want people to know, without getting too involved or too personal.

  Three paragraphs down and an unfamiliar pop sounded out of my computer’s speakers, accompanied by a flashing indicator bar in my Web browser. “New message from Henry D!” it read. In true form, my cheeks tingled. I moved the mouse to click on the message alert.

  “Hey, Gemma…you there?”

  I smiled.

  “Yup,” I typed. “Stalker!”

  “I prefer ‘man of action.’”

  “Thx for the warning.”

  “How’s the homework?” he wrote.

  “I’ve got about three ’grafs done. You made good time getting home.”

  “Lucian drives like a maniac.”

  “Hey, thx x 10 for being my buddy today. I’l be sure to let Mrs.

  Thyme know that she should excuse al future tardies.”

  “Yeah, Thyme Management. She’s brutal. :)”

  “Then again, if u don’t show up for late slips anymore, ur gonna ruin the poor
woman’s pink-filed fantasies. One less tardy slip to write with that pen of hers,” I typed. I could now understand the appeal of this online messaging thing—flirtation sans fear.

  “Bet she dreams about writing tardy slips w/ her pink Trol pen.

  Did you see her Trol colection…?”

  As we bantered back and forth about nothing important, a quiet disappointment settled over me. At some point, we would have to sign off and get our respective assignments done. And sleep. And then get up and do it al over again. But I only wanted to talk to my new friend, this “Hottie McNaughty” who so far seemed witty and awesome and not weird, my first connection outside the circus world of pseudo-siblings and overworked, controling adults.

  “You writing about the lion story?” his message said.

  “Yup. What about you?” I was curious about what Boy Wonder would write. It seemed that everyone knew something about the Dmitri family, and based on the reactions of various females at EHS, I guessed that there had to be more to him than money and good looks. But I’d seen enough wild romances amongst the circus folks to know that women could be shalow creatures, especialy when it came to hot guys with fat walets. Summer had commented that she thought Henry was gay, but that could’ve been motivated by her own unrequited efforts at grabbing his attention. I wasn’t catching a gay vibe from Henry, at least not yet. Wel dressed? Yes.

  Handsome to the point of pretty? Definitely. But gay? I wasn’t feeling it.

  “Same boring stuff. Probably wil reuse an essay from another English class and throw in some details about the scheming you & I wil do to rule the world.”

  “We should make the Hershey or Ben & Jerry’s plant our lair of evil,” I wrote. “Ample chocolate and ice cream to fuel our maniacal plotting sessions.”

  “Ur a fan of ice cream and chocolate, I take it?” I laughed and spoke my response out loud as I typed it. “Duh!

  I’m a GIRL!”