There were so few people that most of them had their own seats. I saw my backpack and the suitcase in the seat right behind Remmy, so I sat there.
“I thought you’d left and changed your mind because of our talk last night.” Remmy pulled the bus away from the fairgrounds. “But I should have known a kid like you wouldn’t be scared away that easy.”
He gestured back toward the guy across the aisle from me.
“Spartacus, meet my business partner, Robin Marx. We own the show together.”
Robin Marx was a big, sturdy man with a thick, handlebar mustache and a black bowler hat. “Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr. Spartacus,” he said. He had a dramatic, booming voice, and I thought I recognized it as the announcer’s voice from the show last night. His mustache was mesmerizing. It was so big and thick it looked cartoonish and bounced when he spoke. “So you think you’re ready for Bartholomew’s?”
For a moment I thought he was talking about my rescue plan and had no idea what to say. Then I remembered they thought I was trying to join the circus.
“I hope so,” I said. “I mean, I think so.”
“Bartholomew’s is a pretty big show for a First of May.”
“A what?” I asked, thinking I’d heard him wrong.
“That’s what we call a novice,” he said. “A beginner. A First of May. You have some tricks ready? Some dare-devilry?”
“Uh, well—” I searched my brain. “I can throw knives.” And I wasn’t lying. I wasn’t great at it, but it was the one thing Mom had taught me how to do.
“That’s always a showstopper,” said Robin. “What else?”
That wasn’t enough?
I brainstormed, thinking of what was the best lie I could tell.
“I can also,” I said slowly, “get out of traps. Like small suitcases and being tied up and stuff.”
“Oh, we’ve got a regular escape artist here!” Remmy turned over and beamed at me. “We could use one of them, couldn’t we, Robin?”
“Hey, stop, Remmy. There’s Zeda,” Robin said. He was leaning over his seat and pointing up ahead, out the windshield. A girl stood on the street corner, waving at us.
The bus lurched to a stop. I realized she—Zeda, apparently—was the girl my age that I’d seen twice last night. The bus stopped just for a second, long enough for her to jump on. She had a couple of big, white paper bags in her hands.
“Breakfast is here!” Zeda announced, holding the bags up high as the bus pulled forward. Everyone cheered. Zeda turned to me and I realized I’d been staring. I tried to make it look like I was only looking at the Rainbow Brite tattoo on her arm.
“Hey, I remember you,” she said.
I didn’t say what I first thought to say, which was, “I remember you, too.” Because I did. Of course I did. She was…well, she was beautiful. Beautiful in a completely different way than Erika Dixon was with her carefully styled hair and shiny pink lip gloss. Different than Hailey with her trucker clothes and goofy smile. This girl had dark eyes, and her hair was crazy and tangled, but still looked somehow like a beautiful planned-out work of art.
Get a grip, Spart.
“You’re the one who went crazy last night, right?” Zeda said, smiling.
I winced and reddened at the same time. That was why she remembered me. Of course. This was Erika Dixon and the Brenville Pool all over again. Nothing had changed.
“Yep,” I said, forcing a smile. “That was me.”
“You want to help me pass out these veggie breakfast burritos?”
“Sure,” I answered with a lot more enthusiasm than made sense, and then I stood up too fast. She noticed both, but just smiled at me and handed me one of the bags.
I remembered why girls my own age made me so nervous. They were always so much more confident than I was—and they acted like they knew it. Oh, yeah, and they were all taller than me. Zeda was no exception on all counts.
“That’s my daughter,” said Robin sternly, but his eyes twinkled. “Don’t get any ideas.”
“Lame, Dad,” she said, but then she laughed. I forced a small, dry laugh and then followed behind her, helping her hand out the food.
“Have you met Spartacus?” Zeda asked almost every single person.
My name made me feel uncomfortable and I wondered if maybe Zeda was making fun of me. Then again, these were circus people. Their names were all just as weird as mine was.
“Bet you’re excited to meet Bartholomew,” said one woman.
“Can’t wait,” I managed.
Inside, though, my heart was already pounding.
I was glad Zeda was seated in the back so she wouldn’t see me devour my burrito in a few seconds like a ravenous animal.
“Gotta love that green chili, huh?” asked Robin. I looked up from the crumpled paper in my hands to see Robin still had half his burrito left.
“I was kind of hungry,” I said sheepishly.
“It’s okay,” he said good-naturedly. “I’m going to lick the wrapper when I get done with mine, too.”
“How long it is to Las Vegas?” I asked.
“At least nine hours or so,” he said. “It’s gonna be a grueler.” With that, he settled back into his seat, pulled out a fat book, and turned to the first page.
I followed his lead and arranged my bags on the floor so I could stretch out in my seat. The rest of the bus fell into a quiet, relaxed groove. As the New Mexico scenery flew by in a brown blur, my mind automatically returned to the robberies.
It seemed pretty clear that Bartholomew was robbing places wherever the circus went. Eli had seen the evidence, too. I hadn’t imagined that part of it. But I was trying to decide what it all meant.
Does it change anything?
No, not really. My mom still needed my help. I still had to get her out of there. I guess what had changed was that I wasn’t breaking into just any old evil circus anymore. Now I was trying to free Mom from inside a tent of professional criminals.
I was going to need to improve my plan—and to do that, I was going to need to get some more information.
Remmy had said that the sideshow knew Bartholomew’s Circus pretty well. Maybe I could get them to give me some more information without blowing my cover.
“Remmy?” I said out of the blue, startling him. Remmy looked back at me in the rearview mirror.
“What you need?”
“Uh, what’s the…what’s the layout of Bartholomew’s tent like? Is it kind of similar to yours?”
“Not one bit.”
“Oh,” was all I could think to say. Keep cool. Don’t make your questions too obvious. I tried a different approach. “I’m just curious. Where is Bartholomew’s—where is his office? Inside the tent, you know. I want to know where to go to audition tonight.”
I felt pretty pleased with that question.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Remmy laughed. “You don’t audition in his office. And not tonight, that’s for sure. Do you even know your set?”
“My set?”
“My boy, you’re as fresh as the morning dew!” Remmy chuckled. “I think you could use some tips. We can give you a little training right now.”
Training? On the bus? I must have looked a little skeptical.
“Trust me,” said Remmy. “Go into the back and find Nero. The skinny guy with the sideburns. Ask him to teach you something.”
Okay. What could it hurt? And maybe I could press this Nero guy for more details about The Incredible.
I got up from my seat and walked down the aisle. It was funny seeing all the same people from the night before without their masks and snakes and clown faces. In the daylight, there was nothing all that freaky about them. I mean, sure, there were still tattoos and piercings and this woman whose makeup made her look like a Disney villain, but no one was d
oing anything crazy like hammering a nail up their nose (the Human Blockhead routine Remmy had told me about) or bending their joints backward. In fact, most people were sleeping. I saw Zeda in one of the bunk beds in the back, her tattooed arm hanging out.
Seated near the middle of the bus was a guy with dark sideburns shaped like lightning bolts. He was dressed all in black, including these black leather bracelets with shiny metal spikes. He was staring out the window as I approached, absentmindedly flipping a knife around his fingers the way Will spun pencils.
Okay, so the people were mostly normal.
“Hey. Are you Nero?” I asked in a soft voice, trying not to wake anyone.
“Yeah,” he said, looking up kind of dazed from the window. He smiled when he saw me. “Spartacus, right?”
“Right. Cool sideburns,” I said, touching my face where his lightning bolts were. It was the first time I wished I could grow facial hair.
“Thanks,” he said. “They’re kinda my thing.”
I nodded, then said, “Remmy told me you might be able to teach me something for Bartholomew’s?”
“Mmm, right,” he nodded, thinking. “Let me get some stuff together and I’ll meet you up front. That way we won’t wake up everyone back here.”
In a few minutes, Nero switched seats with Robin so he was right across from me. He had a small tackle box and a book with him.
“What do you do in the sideshow?” I asked.
“Well, my big thing is swallowing stuff—razor blades, swords, umbrellas—”
“Umbrellas?” I asked skeptically.
“Yeah. It’s just like swallowing a sword. They’re not open or anything. Right now I’m working on the world record for most swords swallowed at the same time. The record is seven, so, you know, I’m working on nine. Just to make sure no one breaks it for a while.” He laughed.
“What’s the trick?” I asked.
“The trick is that there is no trick,” he said. “You’re actually swallowing a sword.”
“You’re going to teach me to swallow swords?” I said, eyes wide. “On the bus?” I was terrified and thrilled. But mostly just terrified.
Zeda, who had obviously been listening to this all the way in the back, snickered and Nero grinned.
“It might take you six months to work your way up to a small dagger,” he snorted. “Besides, that’s the kind of cool stuff you’d get to do in the sideshow. But you’re an Incredible-man, right?”
I nodded reluctantly.
“Right. No sword swallowing under the big top. Strictly the big time there. But I can teach you something that will come in handy in any circus.”
I was excited. What was I going to learn? Trapeze stuff? Trick motorcycle riding? Magic? I knew we were on the bus, but maybe he was going to give me some starting-out theory.
Nero opened the tackle box, exposing tubes of paint, palettes, and little sponges.
“I’m talking,” said Nero, “about face painting.”
Face painting?
My eyes immediately glazed over.
“I promise you,” he said. “It’s not just painting horsies and rainbows.”
A little more than an hour later, Nero had taught me how to paint myself in two different clown styles. I wasn’t too impressed. Then I wiped it off and he showed me how to put different shades of green and brown on my face to make camouflage, like you’d see hunters wear.
“You can even put stuff under the paint, to make a big nose, or a wart or something,” he explained.
He showed me how to paint my face to look like a lion, with a big, yawning mouth and sharp fangs.
“Hey, you’re getting good at this,” said Nero. “You’re a pretty decent artist.”
This was turning out to be kind of cool, but I still felt like I was wasting my time. I needed to gather some useful information while I was on the bus. Who knew how long I’d have after we got to Vegas?
“Have you ever seen the guy with Bartholomew’s who looks kinda fishy—I mean, like an actual fish? A shark?”
“His name’s Finn,” he said, his lip curling in disgust. “Yeah, I know him.”
“I saw him—um, I saw pictures of him online,” I stammered. “Is that just paint or…”
“It’s real,” he said grimly. “Well, kind of. I think he started out with the gills—maybe an accident at birth or something, but then he got the fin implanted. Then he filed down his teeth and started wearing those contacts that cover his whole eye.”
“The black ones. Right,” I said, remembering his face. I shivered in the hot bus.
“I don’t know why Bartholomew even has him in the show,” said Nero. “He’s not very talented—but I guess it gives the circus the scare factor that Bartholomew’s looking for. Personally, I think it creeps out the kids.”
“What’s Sharkman—I mean, Finn—what’s he like?”
Nero didn’t answer right away, but then he looked at me, deadly serious. “He’s bad news. I’d stay out of his way. He’s not going to be your friend.”
“Do you think that…well, I mean, I heard that Bartholomew has a plastic surgeon who travels with him?”
Nero furrowed his brow, looking confused. But I rushed on, “I mean, do you think they ever make, well, make performers look like other people? Maybe so a trick looks better?”
I was thinking about Not-Mom.
“No, I never heard anything like that,” Nero said. “But then, there’s a lot of strange stuff that goes on with them.”
“Like what kind of stuff?”
I thought that Nero started to look uncomfortable.
“Well, a lot of them are cool. I don’t want to say they’re all bad. But, if I were you, I just wouldn’t ask too many questions. They don’t like that.”
Of course, then I had a million more questions. About Bartholomew. About my mom. But at that moment, we slowed and pulled into a rest stop.
“Thanks for showing me all that,” I said to Nero. When I went for the towel to wipe off my face paint, Nero stopped me.
“You’re with a sideshow,” he said. “Leave it.”
We’d stopped at what seemed like—to me, at least—a normal rest area. But to all the regular people who’d stopped? This might have been the highlight of their car trip. Normally, you’d see kids rolling in the grass, screaming in happiness about being free from their car. Parents standing around checking their phones. Dogs peeing where they shouldn’t.
But with the sideshow bus there, everyone at the rest area who wasn’t in the bathroom—four families, a young couple and an old couple, a weird heavy-set dude with two pairs of sunglasses on, a woman with a wiener dog on a leash, and five kids who seemed to be alone for some reason—crowded maybe ten feet from us, just watching us, expecting something, I dunno, weird to happen.
If my face hadn’t been painted, I might have felt more comfortable hanging around with the “Normies” (as Nero called the normal folk), but as it was, I was “with” the sideshow. So I stood awkwardly next to the lady with the snake, stretching our legs in the shade, glad no one was trying to talk to me.
That’s when Nero took a sword out of a storage space under the bus. And that’s when he waved me over.
Nothing really prepares you to see sideshow people do their thing. And I’m not talking about lightning-bolt sideburns and face paint. I’m talking about seeing something impossible with your very own eyes. Like Nero said, there’s no trick to swallowing a sword. It’s not a prop, like a retracting sword or something. It’s just sticking a sharp blade down into your guts. Well, around your guts.
“So, the sword goes into the mouth, then down the throat,” Nero explained to me—and to the crowd of Normies who pushed closer. The sword had a gold hilt covered with jewels and was almost as long as his arm. He mimed the movement of the sword outside his bod
y.
“Next, it passes the voice box, goes down the esophagus, and then between the lungs. Then you kind of nudge the heart to the side—”
I coughed. “Nudge? Your heart?” I asked, my insides squirming. The audience murmured the same thing.
“Yeah. Then you relax the lower esophagus, and you put the blade through the diaphragm, then past the liver, and down to touch the very bottom of the stomach.”
“Where your food is?” exclaimed a young, red-headed kid with chocolate pudding on her face.
“Well, yeah. Unless you do it wrong and puncture an organ on the way there—then you’re dead.”
“Isn’t that dangerous?” asked the wiener-dog lady, looking concerned. Meanwhile, the five kids were looking from Nero to me in awe, like they thought I was part of the show. I felt a bit taller standing with him, if you want to know the truth.
“Definitely,” he said. “Hey, can I borrow that?”
“My dog?!” The woman hugged her dog to her chest.
“Ha, no, the fruit.” Nero pointed to the chunky dude with the two pairs of sunglasses who was holding an apple. He gladly handed it to Nero.
Nero held it in one hand. With the other hand, he held the sword up and let it rest lightly on the apple. Without any effort from Nero, the weight of the sword pushed the blade all the way through the apple.
The wiener-dog lady looked even more distressed. Nero handed the apple back to the sunglasses man. The kids crowded around him as he showed them the hole in the apple. Nero pulled a cloth out of his pocket and wiped down the blade.
“Do people ever die doing this?” asked the old guy.
“Not if they do it right,” Nero said. “Like this.”
And then, without hesitating, he did it. He swallowed the sword. To the hilt.
All of us held our breath.
When he pulled it out again—and there wasn’t a lung skewered on the end or anything—I stopped trying to look cool and applauded with everyone else as Nero took a bow.
“Oh, wow!” I said, my eyes bugging out as I shook my head. “That was awesome!”
Spartacus Ryan Zander and the Secrets of the Incredible Page 17
