Circus Mirandus

by Cassie Beasley

  It’s just a stupid project. It’s just homework. He’s not dying. You can’t cry like a little kid in the middle of class.

  Jenny jumped to her feet. “The supply closet!” she hissed.

  “What?” Micah croaked.

  But Jenny was already pulling him out of his seat and top-speeding him toward the back of the classroom.

  The craft closet was tiny and dark, and it smelled like glue. Jenny and Micah barely fit. Something that was probably an elbow hit him in the chin before Jenny managed to pull the chain that turned on the single lightbulb.

  “I don’t think we’re supposed to be in here together,” Micah whispered.

  “Are you okay?” She was still twisting one of her braids around her finger. Her eyes were filled with worry. “This is a good place for . . . I thought you were going to cry.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,” she said. “What . . .?”

  She trailed off. Micah knew by the way her lips pressed together that she was bottling up a hundred questions. He braced himself. She was going to ask him why his half of their project was a mess and who was sick and other painful things. He wasn’t sure he could stand it.

  But after a moment, Jenny said, “Never mind.”

  Micah blinked at her.

  She dropped her braid and clasped her hands in front of her skirt. “I’ll finish the project if you need me to. I’ll tell Mrs. Stark you helped.”

  Maybe it was because Jenny hadn’t asked, or maybe it was because she was the kind of person who knew that the craft supply closet was a good place to hide when you were about to cry. Whatever the reason, Micah found himself telling her the truth.

  “It’s my grandfather who’s sick. I didn’t mean to forget about the presentation.”

  Once he’d told her that much, Micah didn’t quite know how to stop. Jenny didn’t interrupt while he talked about Grandpa Ephraim and Aunt Gertrudis and the horrible sound of the breathing machine. Everything came out of him in a rush, like he was a punctured balloon.

  He even told her about Circus Mirandus and the miracle.

  Jenny didn’t say anything at first, and Micah became uncomfortably aware of the fact that he was standing beside a box full of Christmas tinsel, pouring his secret thoughts out to someone he barely knew. He could hear his classmates talking just feet away, their voices garbled through the door.

  “I’m so sorry,” Jenny said quietly. She sounded like she really meant it. “About your grandfather and your aunt. That’s horrible.”

  Micah opened his mouth to say that it was all right. But it wasn’t. Instead, he reached into his back pocket and pulled out the ripped copy of the letter he’d taken from Grandpa Ephraim’s room the night before.

  Jenny leaned back against a shelf full of pipe cleaners and read it. “The Lightbender,” she said. “I guess that’s a stage name?”

  Micah shrugged. “I don’t think he has another one.”

  “I don’t mean to be rude, but . . . wouldn’t he be dead by now? If your grandfather met him when he was a boy?”

  “Of course not.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a magical circus,” Micah explained. “He’s lived a very long time.”

  It was only after Jenny started to shift uncomfortably from foot to foot that Micah realized how strange a phrase like “magical circus” sounded at school.

  “You don’t believe me.” Of course she didn’t. She probably thought he was crazy.

  Jenny shook her head. “I don’t think you’re a liar.”

  Her smile looked nervous to Micah.

  “It’s just . . .” she said. “Well, I think you might have misunderstood what your grandfather was trying to tell you.”

  He fought down the urge to snap at her. “I didn’t.”

  Jenny stared with narrowed eyes at a spot a few inches above his head. After a minute, she said, “I really will finish the project. You won’t get in trouble that way. You should spend as much time as you can with him.”

  “I can’t let you do that,” Micah said automatically.

  But he wasn’t sure he could finish it. After the way the knots had behaved today, he wasn’t sure about anything. “I can . . . I’ll try to make it up to you somehow.”

  She shook her head. “When my grandmother found out she was dying a couple of years ago, she told us she was going back to Mexico. To her hometown. She wanted to see it one last time. My dad—well, he didn’t approve. He told her she was too old to make a trip like that, but she sold her house and her car and she went. She called me when she got there, and she sounded so happy.”

  “Um . . .”

  “I was proud of her,” Jenny explained. “She got her dying wish. Things like that are important. It sounds like your grandfather’s dying wish is to see this Lightbender person one last time.”

  Micah nodded. “For his miracle. The Lightbender can make him better again.”

  Jenny bit her lip. “Micah? You know magic isn’t real. Right?”

  Micah opened his mouth to say that of course he knew that. He didn’t believe in dragons or leprechauns or witches. Those were just fairy tales. But Circus Mirandus was different. The Lightbender was different.

  Before he could say any of these things, though, Jenny was talking again. “Your grandfather . . . maybe he just embellished the real story. Maybe there really was a circus, and it was special to him. That’s why he wrote the letter. Now that he’s sick, he’s trying to find the circus again.”

  “He didn’t embellish.” Grandpa Ephraim had told the whole, plain truth.

  “Oh, of course he did!” Jenny cried.

  She glanced at the door and lowered her voice. “He was trying to make the story more fun for you. He was trying to make it exciting and special. That’s what grown-ups do when they tell stories to children!”

  Micah tried to take a step back, but there was no room. He shook his head. “You don’t understand.”

  Jenny’s face scrunched with sympathy, and Micah jerked his eyes away. What was he thinking? That a brainy girl like Jenny Mendoza would believe in magicians and miracles? Just because she had been nice about the project . . .

  He shouldn’t have told her. He should have known better.

  “Micah—”

  She was interrupted by the door swinging open. The sound of their classmates’ chatter filled the closet.

  Florence stood in the doorway. “What are you two doing in here?” she asked suspiciously.

  “Nothing,” Jenny and Micah said at the same time.

  “Well, I need some glue, so . . .”

  “Here.” Jenny thrust a bottle of X-tra Strong Craft Paste at her. “We were having a private conversation about our project.”

  “No we weren’t,” said Micah. He pushed past Florence and headed for his desk.

  “Micah, wait a minute!” Jenny called.

  He pretended not to hear her.

  Aunt Gertrudis was in the living room when Micah came home from school that day. She was on the house phone with one of her Arizona friends, and she was talking about joining an aquarobics class that would be starting at her health club there in two weeks.

  Micah knew it would be best to ignore her. He just wanted to check on his grandfather, and she hated to be interrupted when she was on the phone. But as he headed for the stairs she said, “Of course I’ll be back by then, Harriet. This thing can’t drag on forever, and I’ve already got everything sorted out here. I’ll be on the way home before you know it.”

  It’s fine, Micah told himself as he started up the steps. Who cares what she thinks? She probably will make it back in time for her stupid aquarobics. Grandpa Ephraim will be better by then.

  “Oh, it’s nice of you to worry,” said Aunt Gertrudis, “but I’m all right. Not that it�
�s been easy with my brother and the boy. I do my best, but the situation just isn’t healthy for either of them if you ask me. Honestly, I’m relieved that it’s almost at an end.”

  Micah froze. His hand clutched the banister so tightly that all of the blood was pressed from his knuckles. It’s fine. It’s nothing. You promised Grandpa Ephraim you would try to get along with her.

  He took a deep breath and let go of the banister.

  “It’s better this way really. It’s even better for the boy in the long run. He doesn’t need . . .”

  Micah would never know what his aunt thought he didn’t need, because he was somehow in the living room, and he was somehow yanking the phone line out of the wall, and he was somehow standing in front of Aunt Gertrudis, gasping like he’d run a race.

  For just a moment, she was speechless, staring at him.

  It was long enough for Micah to say exactly what he meant. “Something is wrong with you.” He launched the words at her like missiles. “Why are you even here? You don’t like me. You don’t like Grandpa Ephraim. And even if Grandpa Ephraim loves you, I don’t! I never will. Because you’re mean.”

  It felt good to say it. And it felt dangerous, too. Aunt Gertrudis stood up from the sofa, her lips quivering with rage.

  “How dare you!” Her voice was a knife, but Micah was so angry that it couldn’t cut very deep. “I take weeks out of my life. I come here to help my demented brother and you, you ungrateful little boy, and this is how you behave? Like some kind of barbarian! I should leave you here to rot!”

  “Why don’t you?!” Micah shouted. “I don’t need you. Grandpa Ephraim doesn’t need you. The Lightbender—”

  Aunt Gertrudis laughed. It wasn’t a happy laugh at all. “Is he going to wave his magic wand and save the day?” she said cruelly. “Is he going to fix what doctors and hospitals and expensive medicine can’t?”

  Micah’s heart clenched, but he refused to back down. Backing down would mean letting her win, and in that moment, it felt like letting her win would be the worst thing that could happen to him. “You don’t know anything.”

  “Oh, don’t I?” Aunt Gertrudis spat. “This absurd fantasy is Ephraim’s doing. I know how he is. And it’s not good for you. It’s dangerous. I’ll put a stop to it right here and now. I guarantee you that!”

  That was how The Fight started, and it went on for quite some time after that. It ended when Micah, shaking so hard he thought he might fly apart, screamed, “I hate you!” and Aunt Gertrudis replied, “Get out.”

  She pointed toward the door. “I’m not letting you near Ephraim until you’ve come to your senses and apologized.”

  Perhaps she meant for Micah to get out of the living room, and not out of the house entirely. But she didn’t object when he dragged an old sleeping bag out of the hall closet. She followed him upstairs and watched him stuff his backpack full of clothes and shoes. She watched him walk out the back door, which she locked behind him, and she watched through the window as he marched toward his tree house. When Micah looked back at her, she closed the curtains.

  He guessed that was so she wouldn’t have to watch him anymore.

  The tree house smelled like new wood. It was missing one wall and the roof, but it was sturdy and well built. Micah’s hands were still shaking with fury, but he managed to climb the rope ladder. He threw down his things and stared toward Grandpa Ephraim’s window. It wasn’t open. Micah hadn’t thought that it would be, but he had hoped.

  His grandfather liked to smell the fresh air when the weather was nice. Eventually, Aunt Gertrudis would wake Grandpa Ephraim up to give him his medicine, and he would tell her to open the window because he hated it when he couldn’t see out.

  She should have known that. Micah did.

  But she doesn’t even try to understand, he thought. If his aunt was trying to understand Grandpa Ephraim like Micah did, then a hundred things would be different. The window would be open. The coffee table in the living room would still be covered in Old Maid cards, and the refrigerator would still be full of orange soda. Most importantly, Micah wouldn’t be all alone in a tree house while his grandfather was all alone in his room.

  I hate you. He could still taste the words in his mouth, and they tasted like the truth.

  He wasn’t a bother to Grandpa Ephraim, and Grandpa Ephraim had never filled his head with nonsense. They needed each other. If Aunt Gertrudis refused to see that, then what else might she refuse to see? The Lightbender could show up any minute, and she would think he was the mailman. Or a burglar!

  Micah set his jaw. He wouldn’t let Aunt Gertrudis get in the way. Not this time. He pulled a spiral-bound notebook and a thick black marker out of his bag and sat facing the window. The bottommost limb of the oak tree stretched out toward the house. It wasn’t close enough for Micah to climb onto the windowsill, but he thought that it would be close enough for him to have a conversation with his grandfather when the window opened.

  “The Plan” he wrote in large letters across the top of the first page. Then he wrote, “Step One.” This was as far as he got before he had to stop and think.

  Half an hour later, Micah had almost chewed the end off of the marker, but he was no closer to an answer. He slapped the notebook shut and threw the marker to the floor. He watched it roll toward the edge of the platform. He couldn’t muster up the desire to stop it. It slowed down until it almost wasn’t moving, teetered on the edge for a moment, then fell.

  “Ouch!”

  Micah jumped at the sound of the voice below him. He crawled to the edge and peered over.

  Jenny Mendoza was standing at the foot of the oak, rubbing one of her cheeks. It had a short black stripe on it where the marker had hit her, and she was smearing the ink toward her nose. “Yuck,” she said. “Why did you throw a marker at me?”

  “I didn’t know you were there!”

  She was still wearing the pink skirt she’d worn to school that day. It perfectly matched the pink bicycle helmet on her head. An adult-sized bike with a strange sort of wagon hooked to the back was parked beside her.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Jenny unhooked her helmet and clipped the straps around the bike’s handlebars. “That woman in your house told me to go away. She was very grouchy.”

  “That’s my aunt. Well, my great-aunt,” said Micah. He thought “grouchy” was a remarkably mild description. “She said the same thing to me.”

  Jenny stretched her neck back so that she could see him. “I already called my parents at work, and I told them that Florence Greeber had invited me over to spend the night.”

  “She lives four houses down.”

  Jenny shuffled her feet. “She didn’t really invite me. She doesn’t even like me. I’m here to see you.”

  When he didn’t reply, she added, “I’ll be in trouble if I can’t stay here. They’ll know I lied.” She pointed toward the wagon thing, and Micah saw through its clear plastic roof that it was full of books and craft supplies. “I’ve got everything we need to finish our project.”

  Micah didn’t quite know what to think. After his conversation with Jenny in the craft closet, he hadn’t been expecting something like this. Jenny didn’t seem like the kind of girl who lied to her parents often. But he wasn’t exactly in the mood for company.

  “I’m kind of busy right now, Jenny.”

  She nodded. “I brought stuff for your grandfather. I found a book on traveling circuses at school, and I printed some things off the computer. I brought peanut butter crackers and tuna sandwiches, too.”

  Micah was impressed. All he’d managed to do this afternoon was get kicked out of the house and scribble a few bad ideas in his notebook. Jenny had showed up with a decent plan, a small library, and supper.

  Even though he had messed up their project. Even though they had argued.

  Jenny might not hav
e much imagination, Micah realized, but she had a whole lot of something that was even more important. He pushed the rope ladder over the edge so that it unrolled toward the ground.

  “You can come up,” he said. “There’s plenty of room.”

  As the sun set, the air grew cooler. Jenny put one of Micah’s spare T-shirts on over her own clothes, since neither of them had a jacket, and they unfolded the sleeping bag to keep their legs warm. Micah was glad he had remembered to pack a flashlight and batteries for when it got dark. He was also glad that Jenny had come. Somehow, spending the night in the tree house didn’t feel as much like a punishment when he had company.

  “This isn’t working,” she said in a frustrated voice. “I’m following the instructions, but it looks all wrong.”

  She was hunched over the thing that was supposed to be their new quipu. It looked more like a rainbow-colored bird’s nest to Micah.

  A piece of tuna fell out of his sandwich onto The Big Book of Big Tops, and he brushed it off. “I’m not having much luck either,” he admitted.

  Jenny squinted at her string. She had brought a book on knot tying from the library, and a pile of thread and yarn from her mother’s sewing shop. She had decided to assign a different type of knot to all of the letters of the alphabet so that she could spell out the names of every student in their class. It was a good idea, but Micah was pretty sure she wasn’t going to manage it unless she stayed up all night.

  “Done!” she announced. She held up a loopy mess of a knot.

  Micah winced. “Here. Let me try.”

  She handed him a fresh strand of brown embroidery floss, and after a brief glance at the picture of the knot she had chosen, he started to tie. This wasn’t like what he had tried to do in class today. He wasn’t trying to make a knot that reminded him of anyone in particular, and as long as he was careful not to think too hard about Grandpa Ephraim while he worked, it was almost relaxing.

  “What letter is this one supposed to be?” he asked.