by Janice Repka
“Sure. We’re all different,” said Sam. “That’s what makes us so much alike.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” said Phillip.
“Yes, it does. Look at you and me. We’re about a world apart. We don’t look alike. We don’t sound alike. We don’t act alike. But already we’re friends.”
“I guess,” said Phillip.
“I’ll make you a deal,” Sam said. “Anytime you need someone to share your problems with, you come see me. Anytime I need someone to share my problems with, I’ll come see you.”
Phillip could hardly imagine how this strong, dark man with the confident smile could ever need him for anything. Still, the thought that he had made a friend did make him feel better. So what if Sam wasn’t a kid his own age? Sam was cool.
“Should we have a secret handshake?” Phillip asked.
“How about a secret signal. A sound of some sort?” suggested Sam.
Phillip liked the idea. He was used to signals. The Windy Van Hooten Circus band would play John Philip Sousa’s “The Stars and Stripes Forever” whenever they wanted to warn the circus workers that something was wrong. Phillip picked up the salt and pepper shakers and banged them together.
Clink.
“That’s good,” said Sam. “Anytime you need to talk, you give the signal and I’ll come over.”
Phillip had a friend. He could hardly wait to tell Aunt Veola. During the car ride home, she wanted to hear about his day. He told her he had played his first dodgeball game. He skipped the part about climbing the rope and getting stuck and the janitor bringing a ladder. Then he told her he had made a friend who looked like he would be good at sports. Maybe he could give Phillip tips on dodgeball.
“What’s the boy’s name?” she asked.
“He’s not a boy,” Phillip explained. “I met him at the courthouse. His name is Sam.”
“Sam what?”
“I don’t know his last name,” said Phillip.
“The only Sam I know who works in the courthouse is Sam Phoenix. He’s the cashier at the snack bar,” she said. “But Sam couldn’t give anyone tips on how to dodge balls.”
“Why not?” Phillip asked.
Aunt Veola replied, “Sam Phoenix is blind.”
Lions are not smart and are easily distracted. When a lion is about to attack, the trainer will crack his whip. When it hears the noise, the lion will forget what it was thinking and will not attack.
The next day, Phillip smiled at anyone who looked his way. He hoped that if he distracted his classmates with his friendly personality, they would forget that he was a complete idiot in gym class. It was not working.
“B.B. is going to murder you for that Tarzan stunt,” a kid warned. “She doesn’t like to lose.”
“I didn’t make her lose,” Phillip said.
“You made it a tie. If there’s anybody not out on the other team when the bell rings, it’s a tie. B.B. hates ties.”
The week was a blur. Phillip got up, dressed, and went to classes. After school, he went to the cafeteria and ordered a root beer and chips and did his homework. All he could think about was how to survive his next dodgeball game.
Suddenly, it was Monday.
“If I were you,” a smaller kid told him, “I’d lie down and let her hit me.”
“That way you get it over with,” agreed another kid.
Phillip thought about it. “I couldn’t do that,” he decided.
“Then you’re gonna get creamed,” the smaller kid said. Phillip imagined a banana-cream dodgeball speeding toward him.
“Look on the bright side,” said the other kid. “It couldn’t be any worse.”
The bell rang and Phillip went to lunch. Today’s menu was meat loaf. Phillip tried to eat as much as he could, but he wasn’t hungry. He was so lost in his thoughts, he didn’t notice when he approached the table where B.B. and her friends were sitting. Suddenly, Phillip tripped. His tray full of leftover food flew up.
Crrrashhhh!!!
Wrinkled peas and bits of syrupy meat loaf rained down on B.B. Tyson and her friends. Globs of sticky brown meat clung to B.B’s hair. A piece of smelly garlic bread perched on her left ear.
“Stanislaw!” B.B. screamed. A gooey pea skied down her nose and fell off the tip. “You’d better start shopping for a tombstone.”
Fifth period came and went too soon. Everyone knew B.B. would be trying to whack him in gym. The whole school was placing bets on how long he would last. Phillip marched to gym class as if in a funeral procession. Should he climb the rope again? In the gym, Phillip saw the rope had been tied up and off to the side, out of reach.
The kids counted off. It occurred to Phillip that if he and B.B. were on the same team she wouldn’t be allowed to hit him with the ball. It must have occurred to her, too. She made sure she sat next to him.
“One,” said B.B.
“Two,” said Phillip.
The game began. Balls flew and rivals squared off. Phillip scurried to the wall farthest from the line separating the teams. He watched the smaller kids. Some ran. Some dodged. Most tried to hide behind bigger kids. Phillip scanned the gym for a good place to hide. That’s when he saw Shawn O’Malley. He was the fattest kid in school. Big as an oak, with legs like tree trunks planted firmly into the floor. Why had nobody else thought to hide behind Shawn? Phillip all but disappeared behind him. B.B. will never find me now, Phillip thought.
A ball zipped across the room and beamed a kid in the gut. He skid across the floor on his backside. Shawn held his belly and laughed. Over Shawn’s lowered shoulder, Phillip spotted B.B. rearing back with the ball. Shawn didn’t even see it coming. The hard orb blasted his left shoulder and knocked Shawn off balance.
It happened as if in slow motion. For a fraction of a second, Shawn teetered. His weight tilted forward. It shifted to the tips of his toes, then back to the balls of his feet. Finally, he toppled backward. Straight back.
Down.
Down.
All two hundred and five pounds of him.
Lucky for Shawn, Phillip was between him and the cold, hard floor. Not so lucky for Phillip, who stuck his hand out to break his fall. He heard himself scream as his wrist twisted backward.
An hour later, Phillip was in the school nurse’s office waiting for Uncle Felix. The ice on his wrist made him shiver. It was almost worse than the throbbing pain. He wanted to complain, but Coach was standing there and would call him a wuss. Coach had already lectured him on why not to hide behind a fat kid with poor equilibrium during dodgeball.
“Got here as fast as I could,” said Uncle Felix as he entered the room. He removed his cowboy hat, and messy blond curls spilled onto his forehead. He knelt next to Phillip and inspected his wrist.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“I think it’s broken,” Phillip said, trying not to tear up.
“More likely it’s a mild sprain,” the school nurse explained. “But you might want to get it X-rayed if the swelling keeps up.”
“How’d it happen?”
“Gym class,” Coach said. “The boy trips over his own two feet.”
“Some kids aren’t athletic,” the nurse agreed.
“This one’s something special,” Coach said. “You’d think he’d never played organized sports before.”
“Well,” Uncle Felix said, “coming from a circus family, there’s not a lot of that.”
Phillip felt a flush rush through his body, so hot it nearly melted the ice on his wrist.
“Circus family?” asked Coach.
Please stop talking, thought Phillip. Please stop. All his life he’d waited for a chance to be part of a normal family in a regular town. If the kids at school found out about his weird circus family, how would he ever be one of them, ever fit in?
“Sure,” continued Uncle Felix. He sat in a chair next to the nurse’s desk. “Phillip comes from a diverse line of circus performers. The Stupendous Stanislaws, they’re called.”
“Why, is
n’t that cute. Did you ever do any circus stunts?” the nurse asked Phillip.
“Not Phillip,” Uncle Felix said. “He was too young for a serious act. Mostly he shoveled the elephant pens and worked the pooper-scooper during shows.”
Phillip wanted to melt into liquid and leak under his chair. He wanted to stay there until he had evaporated completely and was gone.
“Don’t you have to get back to work?” Phillip asked.
“I forgot.” Uncle Felix laughed. “We should get going.”
Twice on the drive home, Phillip opened his mouth to ask Uncle Felix not to tell anyone else about his circus past. But his uncle was talking about his younger days as the mascot for the Hardingtown Hedgehogs and never paused long enough to let him get in a word.
“I had this great stuffed dodgeball costume,” Uncle Felix said, “with this hedgehog hanging off the front. I’d run around in front of the stands during the halftime show, pretending I was getting thrown. The crowd loved me.” He talked about flirting with Aunt Veola at dodgeball matches where she was the Official Team Scorekeeper. “Even back then, she was a nononsense gal,” he said, “but I could make her smile.”
Uncle Felix talked. And talked. And talked. Phillip was polite and listened, but, in fact, he could hardly breathe.
“Breathe in. Breathe out,” Mario the stilt-walker would tell Phillip when he became nervous.
Phillip remembered how the children in the stands during the circus shows used to look at his family, gawking at his mom and laughing at his dad. You have to be like everyone else to fit in, Phillip thought. I can’t let them know I’m a circus freak.
“Please,” Phillip blurted out. “Don’t tell people I was raised in the circus.”
“Why would I do that?” Uncle Felix asked.
“You just did. You told Coach.”
“Sorry,” Uncle Felix said. “I didn’t know it was a secret.”
Phillip was glad he’d spoken up. He felt his lungs relaxing.
“Nothing wrong with having a little secret,” Uncle Felix continued, giving Phillip a wink. “Got plenty of my own. As I always say, what Veola doesn’t know won’t hurt me.”
Phillip took the ice pack off his wrist and set it aside.
“Set your mind at ease, little nephew. I’m an expert at keeping secrets. Nothing like Coach. Why, when we were growing up together, we used to call him Blabbermouth Tyson. He could spread a rumor faster than a hedgehog on a highway.”
Phillip grabbed the ice pack and put it on his head, where a giant headache was beginning to form. Maybe it would be better not to share his worries with Uncle Felix. But he had a bigger problem to deal with now. How could he stop Coach from blabbing?
Tigers don’t wear circus costumes. Horses, camels, monkeys, even elephants can all be outfitted, no matter how ridiculously, to suit the performer’s fancy. But you cannot force a big cat into a tutu.
Coach reminded Phillip of a tiger. He was strong, brave, and probably didn’t like other people trying to tell him what to do. Still, Phillip knew he would have to convince Coach to keep his circus life a secret.
Phillip’s alarm clock went off at 5:30 A.M. He would get to school early when the teachers started showing up for work. Then he could find Coach and explain. Surely Coach would understand. There would be no end to the teasing he would have to endure if his schoolmates found out that he was an elephant-poop shoveler. He would be different. They would never accept him.
Phillip located the teachers’ parking lot. He stood next to a dogwood tree near the sidewalk leading to the back door. The first teacher to arrive was Peter Periwinkle, the home economics teacher. He was a painfully skinny man who glided rather than walked. He typically carried fully loaded tote bags in his hands. Kids said the bags were full of rocks to prevent Mr. Periwinkle from being blown away by a strong wind.
Next, he saw Elizabeth Castapio, an auburn-haired student teacher, who helped in the chemistry lab. Miss Castapio’s classes were full of boys who became motivated to immerse themselves in science after catching the scent of her honeysuckle perfume in the hallway.
Finally, a red Mustang pulled up, and Phillip saw Coach get out. As Phillip moved in Coach’s direction, the passenger door flew open and B.B. Tyson exited. Coach went around to the back and opened the trunk. B.B. pulled out her backpack and slipped it on.
“Breathe in and out. In and out,” Phillip reminded himself, feeling faint.
Coach, he realized, was B.B’s father. They headed for the sidewalk. Phillip wished he could freeze them in place to decide what to do. What if Coach had already told B.B.? That was too horrible to think about. Phillip hid behind the tree until they entered the building. Then he went around to the front.
Twenty-five minutes later, the halls were bustling with the sounds of kids chatting and lockers slamming. One group repeated jokes from a television show. Another group gossiped about the couple caught kissing under the bleachers during a recreational dodgeball game the night before.
Phillip began to loosen up. Maybe he had been making a big deal out of nothing. Coach probably wouldn’t even remember his conversation with Uncle Felix. Besides, thought Phillip, I couldn’t be the first kid in school to have been in the circus.
Brrrrrriiing!
The warning bell was right on schedule. Phillip hurried to his locker. He tried to turn the combination with his hurt wrist.
“Ouch.”
“Let me get that for you,” said a tall student. He looked familiar. Phillip watched as the tall kid twirled the spinner until the door popped open.
“Thanks,” he said.
“No, thank you,” the tall kid said.
“For what?”
“For breaking my cousin’s fall.”
Phillip pictured Shawn falling backward onto him. The family resemblance was slight.
“Seriously,” the tall kid said. “Shawn’s got poor equilibrium. Bad balance. He told me you tried to catch him. That’s cool.” The tall kid slapped Phillip on the back and walked away.
Cool? Phillip repeated. Did that tall kid call me cool?
Phillip was going to keep a positive attitude. He would smile all day. He would say hello. So what if they didn’t respond? He grabbed his books and headed for homeroom. B.B. and her girlfriends were coming in the opposite direction. He suppressed the urge to run. He was cool. He would say hello.
“Hello,” Phillip said.
“Hey, circus boy,” said B.B. “Shovel any elephant poop lately?” Her friends howled with laughter. Phillip dropped his books and raced down the hallway. He darted into the boys’ bathroom.
Brrrrrriiing!
The late bell. Phillip knew he should be in class. But he couldn’t face the other kids. B.B. knew. They all knew. As soon as the hallway was quiet, Phillip sneaked down the steps and ran out of the school.
Once the Windy Van Hooten Circus was low on cash and had to let some employees go. When the tightrope walker was told he had lost his job, he asked the owner how he was supposed to get home to his family. The owner pointed to a string of telephone poles. “You can walk,” he said.
The whole way from school to the courthouse, Phillip thought about going back home to his family. He had to get away from Hardingtown.
“What are you doing here?” asked Aunt Veola, checking the courthouse clock. “Are you sick?”
She removed a thin, latex glove from the pouch on her security belt, snapped it on, and felt his forehead. Phillip pulled away. He used his shirtsleeve to wipe his eyes. It left a dirty streak across his face.
“I don’t want to live in Hardingtown,” Phillip said.
“You’re having a bad day, that’s all. It’s hard to adjust to a new school,” she said.
“I’ll never fit in here.”
“Give it more time, Phillip.”
“No. I want to see my parents. Call my mom and tell her I want to come home.”
“I can’t do that, Phillip,” Aunt Veola said.
Phillip felt as
if an elephant had fallen on him. “Why not?” he asked.
“Because I promised your mother I would take care of you. You’ve only been here a week. You haven’t even given it a chance.”
“I want to go home.”
“This is your home for now,” said Aunt Veola. “You’re going to have to make the best of it.” Tears trickled down Phillip’s face. Aunt Veola removed a pack of facial tissues from a zippered compartment in her security jacket.
“You can wear a rut in your face from crying too much,” she said. She handed him a tissue to blot his tears away. “You should wash up before you go back to school.”
In the restroom, the cold water stung Phillip’s exhausted eyes. Aunt Veola didn’t understand. It wasn’t just the circus teasing. There was the dodgeball problem, too.
Phillip considered his options.
#1—Go back to school and give B.B. another chance to hit him so hard his entire body would explode with such force that Mr. Vanderburg, the custodian, would take a week to mop him off the gymnasium walls.
#2—Go back to Aunt Veola’s house, jump into bed, hide under the covers, and refuse to go to school, after which a truant officer would lock him in jail, where he would be forced to eat cockroaches to survive.
#3—Run away.
It was time to pack his bags. Phillip heard his stomach rumble. Before he left, he would go to the snack bar for something to eat.
The snack bar was crowded and smelled like the Sauerkraut Bagel special. Phillip sat at a table to wait the line out. The salt-and-pepper shakers on the table seemed to stare at him. He picked them up and thought about the secret signal. Even if he told Sam what had happened, there was nothing a blind man could do. There was nothing anyone could do. Phillip was all alone. He put the shakers down, grabbed a bag of potato chips and a root beer, and got in line.
“Good morning,” said Sam.
“Morning,” Phillip answered. He made his voice sound lower, like a man’s voice.
“No school today, Phillip?” Sam asked.
“I’m on a field trip,” he answered, surprised Sam recognized him.
