That Time I Joined the Circus

by J. J. Howard

  “Don’t ever get in between two guys who are about to fight, Lexi. I learned that the hard way once.”

  “But I think they’re about to fight about me!” I squeaked.

  “We’re not going to let them fight,” I heard Louie say behind me. “Just don’t you go stepping in between ’em.”

  “Xandra!” Eli sounded upset, and a little confused.

  Nick shot me a strange look with a question in it.

  I sighed. Talking to Eli was not something I felt like doing ever again. But it didn’t seem like he was going to leave.

  “Let me talk to him, okay?” I said to Nick. “For, like, a minute,” I added, giving Eli a dark look. Nick took a step forward, but I put my hand up to stop him. “I’ll be fine,” I told him. “I was just … surprised to see him. I’m fine. It’s all fine.”

  “Yes, because fainting and then obsessively repeating the word fine is so very reassuring,” Nick said dryly as I walked past him, back toward the trailer. I didn’t look to see if Eli followed me — I figured he had. If he was going to give up easily, he’d had his chance at that anytime in the last half hour.

  I walked back up the stairs of the trailer, sat down on the couch, crossed my arms, and waited. Eli came in a few seconds later, and I saw him pull the door shut. And then I was looking at Eli, whose face I never thought I’d see again. I was transported back to two months ago, when all I had wanted was someone to be there for me. And the one person who I’d thought always would be had left me completely alone on the day my father died.

  “Why are you here, Eli?” My voice sounded cold even to my own ears.

  “I came to find you.” He stood in front of me, his hands in the pockets of his jeans and his head down. “It wasn’t easy … No one knew where you’d gone. I finally tracked down your dad’s lawyer … He … helped me.”

  “Great.” I sat back so I could look up at him. “Speaking of my dad. He died, Eli. He died, and you didn’t come to the funeral. Or check on me, or give a damn about me then. So I guess I’m back to the original question. Why are you here? What could you possibly have to say to me now?”

  “I came to apologize, X. I know … what I did. I know — but, look, it was complicated —”

  “No, it wasn’t, Eli. It was simple. He died. In the street, like a stray dog. With no one to claim him, because I was off fooling around with you.” I snarled the last. “And then when they finally found me, it was just in time for me to get kicked out of the apartment, kicked out of school, and have just enough money after selling my dad’s records to buy a bus ticket out of there. So it’s all really pretty simple. While you went back to your beloved girlfriend, I figured out, all alone, what to do with my dad’s body. And then I figured out how to not starve to death myself. So, yeah. Thanks for the apology, but I don’t really need it anymore. That time has passed — it’s over. It’s all over. You and me, we’re definitely over.”

  And suddenly I just wanted to be out of that trailer. Eli was staring at me with what looked maybe like tears in his eyes, and I didn’t want to see them fall, didn’t want to feel bad for him, didn’t want to go back there. So I ran.

  I didn’t get far; Nick caught me and picked me up again — it was getting to be some crazy romance novel habit of his. He carried me away from Eli and from two months ago, and I let him.

  He put me in his car, and we drove for a while. “I won’t ask you about that kid,” Nick said as we drove. “But if you want me to get rid of him for you, I will.”

  The way he said it, he sounded so serious — like he was a mobster offering to off somebody for me. I giggled, but then it sort of turned into a sob.

  “I’m sorry!” I told him, forcing myself to stop cry-laughing. “You don’t have to get rid of him. I mean, he’ll probably go on his own. It’s just … he used to be my best friend. And I haven’t seen him since that night … when my dad …” I swallowed hard. I couldn’t finish.

  “You don’t have to tell me anything.” Nick looked over at me, then reached out and found my knee and squeezed it. “It will all be okay.”

  “Feels like it now,” I told him. With you here was the part I didn’t say out loud. I remembered Lina telling me about how Nick always took care of everybody. “I’m sorry I fainted like an idiot,” I told him.

  “You aren’t an idiot. I think you’re actually pretty brave. You came here all alone, you’ve handled everything Louie’s thrown at you. You never even cried, unless you count the time some jerk yelled at you.” I looked over at him and saw him smile in the dark. “And you make the best mix CDs,” he added.

  I had finally worked up the courage to give it to him right before he left. I’d obsessed over that mix more than any one I’d ever made. I turned a little away from him to hide a giant smile. I was an emotional yo-yo tonight. “You liked it?”

  He reached over and turned up the volume, and I could hear that he had it playing in the car. We listened and drove for a long time. The CD started over, but he kept on driving.

  Frostproof, Florida — Saturday, December 18

  So Eli Katz works at my circus now. Whatever.

  It’s some sort of self-imposed penance. It’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of in the entire history of the world.

  But it turns out Louie really does have a soft spot for strays — not just me — and he gave him a job. We’re not even open; we’re in winter quarters, for God’s sake, and he gives Eli a job. Eli, who can’t even open soup cans properly — this is who Louie has helping Jamie do preventative maintenance on the rides. Good luck not dying, townie children.

  So Eli is here, and he stopped trying to talk to me, finally, but there isn’t much reason for him to be here if you don’t count me. It’s probably winter break from school, but he doesn’t show signs of budging. Unless he randomly decided to forgo senior year at Sheldon and applying to Columbia in favor of carrying Jamie’s tools, because that would definitely make sense.

  Everyone else who I actually wanted to be here was gone. Lina and Liska were visiting their aunt in Michigan, and Nick had gone off to Miami to check on some apartment building he owned. The fact that he owned actual real estate seemed to separate him even further from a person such as myself whose worldly goods would fit inside a decent-size duffel bag.

  The weather finally turned almost cold. It was nothing even approaching October-in-New York cold, but it felt more like winter. We were parked in the whimsically named town of Frostproof. There was nothing there, and, if there were, I would need a car to get to it. Liska had surprised me with a GED study book, but it seemed pretty cake-y after my year of hard time in math and more math, since that was the only class I’d ever really struggled with.

  The combination of boredom and Eli being around was really reminding me of last summer, which was the exact last thing I wanted. So for the second time in as many months, I decided to run away from home.

  One hundred and eighty-six miles away there was a city — not New York, but an honest-to-God city. And suddenly I knew I had to go there. I wasn’t going to let not knowing how to drive, or not having a car, stop me.

  He looked pretty surprised to find me knocking on his door. I tried to smile my most charming smile.

  “What do you want?” Jamie asked, sounding kind of surly. He ran his hand through the back of his wet hair; it seemed he’d just gotten out of the shower.

  “Hey to you, too.” I frowned. “I need a sort of favor …”

  “My foot’s still throbbing from the last Lexi-related favor.” He gestured down to his foot, which was black, blue, purple, and a little yellow all around his toes and up the middle.

  “Eli was not a Lexi-related favor. I tried to tell Louie to make him go home. I don’t want him here. I have no idea what he’s even still doing here. In fact, let’s pick a new winter spot and leave him here.” So much for my being charming.

  Jamie seemed to thaw fractionally. “That guy is so annoying. No wonder you left him.”

  I did
n’t point out the extreme lack of accuracy of that statement, nor did I go into the many compelling reasons I had left New York. I only nodded my head in agreement and looked sympathetically down at his foot.

  “So what did he do?” I asked.

  “Dropped a wrench on it,” Jamie said, and then cursed in some language I couldn’t recognize and hadn’t known Jamie spoke. But I could figure out that he wasn’t saying anything too great about old Eli.

  This made me smile, and Jamie almost smiled in return. “So, you said something about a favor?” he prompted.

  I nodded. “Teach me to drive?” I asked him.

  “You don’t know how to drive?” Jamie asked, his tone sounding as though he were asking something more like You don’t know how to convert oxygen into carbon dioxide?

  “No,” I told him. “Remember how I told you that nobody drives in New York?”

  “But how do you go anywhere?”

  “Subway. Bus. Taxi. Walking — mostly walking.”

  “Wow.” He shook his head, probably thinking how long a walk it would be from here to … anywhere.

  “But if I’m going to live here, I really do need to know how to drive,” I told him. “I really, really want to learn. And I promise not to kill your car,” I told him.

  Jamie was shaking his head back and forth very emphatically, and my heart sank: He was going to say no.

  “Not my car,” he said. “Mine’s a stick. But I think I know whose car we can borrow.”

  “Eli came in a car?” I asked, mystified now myself as I followed Jamie out to where a few cars were parked. “I knew he could drive, but I didn’t know he had a car …”

  “I don’t think it’s his,” Jamie said. “Not sure whose it is. It’s about a hundred years old, though, so who knows how fast it’ll go. But should be good to learn on. And from what I hear, the dude owes you.” I didn’t comment on that, but saved the knowledge that Eli had unburdened himself to Jamie.

  Jamie used the key he mysteriously had in his pocket (I didn’t ask), opened the passenger-side door, and got in. I surveyed the old compact car for a moment: It was a sort of dull grayish color, and I wouldn’t have had any clue what kind of car it was, but the back said yota Ca r, so I was guessing it was a Toyota Camry. I got in the driver’s seat beside Jamie, putting my backpack between the two front seats.

  Jamie put the key in the ignition. I was a little surprised when the engine immediately roared to life. “Runs pretty well,” Jamie observed. “I drove it down the 630 a ways, ran real good. Okay, now.” He sat back in his seat and put his hands flat on his lap, maybe restraining himself from doing any more of the driver’s side jobs. “Go ahead and put your seat belt on, then get ready to pull out of here.”

  I put on the seat belt, no problem, but the “pull out of here” thing was a whole other story. “Don’t you want to explain it to me first?” I asked. “I mean, give me a lesson?”

  I heard him sigh a very small sigh, but he smiled and spoke patiently enough. “This is the lesson, Lexi. It’s kind of a hands-on thing. Just put your hands on the wheel, three and nine o’clock. Good. Now put your right foot on the brake.”

  “Which one’s the brake?”

  “Wow — square one. Okay, the one on the left, the one that’s longer across than up and down.”

  “Where does my left foot go?”

  There came the sigh again. “Your left foot goes nowhere,” he told me.

  My look of confusion must have been pretty intense, because he barked a laugh. “You don’t have to shove it out the window, just don’t drive with it. Put it up on that little, like, shelf over there, get your whole left leg out of the way.”

  “I thought people used two feet to drive. I feel like I’ve seen that.”

  “Stick shift,” Jamie said on a yawn, so it sounded more like rick lift. He leaned his head back against the seat and closed his eyes for a second. His bright blue eyes opened and fixed on mine. “You are really going to owe me for this one,” he said.

  “I know.” I smiled. I tried to breeze past the sudden flashback of my one night playing the role of the townie girl Jamie made out with behind the midway. “Okay, so what now?”

  “Now you drive. No putting it off any longer. Put your foot on the brake, put the car in gear, move your foot to the gas — gently — and let’s go.”

  I fumbled and got the gearshift out of P and into D, then moved my foot super cautiously from the left pedal to the right one. It didn’t seem to be working, so I put more of my weight on the right-hand pedal, and the car lurched forward. But Jamie didn’t yell at me, just gritted his teeth, from what I could see out of the corner of my eye. We had been parked in the grass, so I tried to steer toward the partially paved path that led out toward the road.

  The field where the show was parked for the winter was off of a quiet two-lane country road. I remembered that it was kind of to the right, so I began to take that path, but Jamie broke in and asked me why I was driving into the woods, so I turned the wheel the other direction.

  I practiced stopping and turning. We went out onto the main road and I pushed the accelerator down until the speedometer said sixty.

  “I think you’ve got the hang of it,” Jamie observed, laying his head back against the seat again and yawning once more.

  “When do you have to be back to work?” I asked him.

  “March 1,” he said, opening one eye slowly, like a big blond owl. “I’ve put the rides to bed. I was basically hanging out.”

  “Do you mind if we keep going?” I asked him.

  He crossed his arms and settled down further into the seat like he was settling in for a nap. “You could use the practice,” he said on one last yawn. “Go for it.”

  “You don’t care where we’re going?” I asked him.

  He answered without opening his eyes. “Since I’m pretty sure you’re going wherever Nick Tarus went, I’m guessing Miami.”

  “Wow,” I breathed. “Maybe you should be the fortune teller.”

  “That’s what I keep telling everyone,” he said, and then he fell asleep. I found Route 27 south and sat back to enjoy my new driving skill.

  And I didn’t feel bad at all about stealing Eli’s car.

  Driving was awesome. On the quiet two-lane highway, we passed other cars only occasionally. The road was pretty much flat and straight, and I tried to keep my speed steady at around sixty miles an hour. The cars that came up behind me always passed me, and I didn’t mind. Sixty felt like flying. We passed a huge lake on the right, drove over a long bridge, and I got a sudden rush of what felt like freedom. I was somewhere I’d never been before, driving past houses with people in them I’d never meet. The world seemed so big and full of possibilities.

  I couldn’t believe I’d driven so far basically alone, because Jamie had slept through the whole thing. I was feeling pretty proud of myself when I pulled over at a gas station. According to the signs I’d been following, Miami was less than thirty miles away.

  My first act as a responsible unlicensed driver was putting the car in park and taking the keys out of the ignition.

  My second act was to scream and use my backpack to assault the stowaway in the backseat.

  What I had taken to be a bunch of Eli’s stuff under a blanket in the backseat had been Eli asleep in the backseat.

  That’s right: The first time I did something even remotely illegal — stole a car — it wasn’t actually stealing, because the owner was in the freaking backseat the whole time. At least I’d still driven without a license.

  “Hey! Xan, stop! It’s me.”

  “I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention these last few weeks, but it’s me isn’t exactly something that’s gonna make me stop hitting you,” I told him and wound up my bag for another swing. Jamie caught it, though, and, looking none too pleased to have been woken up, said simply, “Hey, cut it out, you two.”

  I didn’t like the way Jamie said you two, like, Oh, you two — isn’t it cute
how you’re play-fighting now, but we all know it’s giggles and hugs in your future? Ha!

  It was also kind of weird that Jamie didn’t seem surprised that there were two people in the car with him now.

  “Thanks, bro,” Eli said, looking smugly at me now that his ride-fixing buddy had spoken up for him.

  “Shut up back there. I haven’t forgiven you yet for crushing my foot.” Jamie put his head between the two front seats to look back at Eli. “And you should never say bro.”

  I giggled, then realized that in giggling I was pretty much fulfilling the tacit prophecy Jamie had made. My days of giggling with Eli were over.

  “Sorry, dude,” Eli muttered quietly.

  Jamie was back in arms-crossed, eyes-closed mode. “Yeah, you should also avoid dude.”

  I had to really work on not giggling at that one, but with Jamie at least feigning sleep, I finally had to look at/deal with Eli. And the ironic thing was, I had given him this captive audience opportunity, just like I’d gift wrapped it for him. We were somewhere outside Miami where I didn’t know anyone and I was in Eli’s car. As angry as I was at him, I wasn’t about to leave him by the side of the road in South Florida. I kind of wanted to, but I wasn’t going to.

  I looked over at Jamie; he was looking to be no further help for a while. So I took the one tack I knew would both please Jamie and unnerve Eli. Unfortunately, flirting is like a foreign language to me. But I resolved to give it a whirl anyway.

  I leaned over Jamie to open the glove compartment, leaning a little more than was strictly necessary. I heard a sharp intake of breath from the stowaway in the backseat and knew my evil plan was working. Jamie’s eyes opened to slits, but there was a familiar light in them. “Whatcha doin’ down there, little Lexi?”

  I summoned the spirit of the most vacuous and skilled flirt in my class at Sheldon, Ashley Smart. “Looking for a map.” I glanced up from under my lashes. “I’m lost,” I told him ruefully.