I caught Zeda watching me with a half-smirk from across the parking lot. I stopped hooting and clapping like a regular carnival schmuck and tried to look cool—as cool as a twelve-year-old in face paint can look. At least she hadn’t seen my cheeks burning red.
“Five minutes ’til lift-off!” Remmy called from the bus.
I ran to use the bathroom one more time, and washed the paint off my face while I was at it.
I was the last one back on the bus and Remmy closed the bus door behind me with a thwack. Just as I sat down in the front seat, I was lifted into the air.
“Hey!” I yelped.
It was Nero and Robin. What the—?
Nero held my arms at my sides while Robin started wrapping a thick rope around me. I struggled against them, but they were too strong and too fast.
“What are you doing?” I yelled at the top of my lungs.
“What’s it look like we’re doing?” grunted Nero. “We’re tying you up.”
Everyone on the bus was standing up in their seats, laughing and hooting as I was spun around in the narrow aisle. Even Remmy, as he drove, was laughing hysterically.
My heart thumped as I realized that I’d been tricked. I had trusted them, even after Hailey had warned me not to trust anyone. They knew who I was. They were all in on it.
They’d been working for Bartholomew all along.
“You won’t get away with this,” I growled. This just made everyone laugh harder, which made me angrier. I fought back like an animal. I kicked Robin in the shin and he cursed. He wound the rope tightly around my legs.
“Gosh, boy, you’re a fighter, aren’t you?” Robin hooted. He turned to Nero. “Did you hear that? ‘You won’t get away with this?’”
“Classic,” answered Nero.
I stood there, immobile, glowering at them. I was about to spit in Nero’s grinning face, the way they do in movies (or, the way White had done), when they both took a step back.
“Now, escape,” said Nero.
“You’re funny,” I said, glaring at him. “People will be looking for me.”
“No, no, no,” said Nero, shaking his head, his face stretched in a smile. “Seriously. Escape.”
“What?”
“Yeah,” said Robin. But not like a villain. Like my gym teacher encouraging me to do a pull-up. “We wanted to see your amazing escape-artist skills.”
I wished my hands weren’t tied up so I could have used them to cover my red, red face. That’s right. I’d told them I could do stuff like that. What had I been thinking?
“Sorry about kicking you,” I said to Robin in a quiet voice. I could barely look at him.
“My fault entirely,” he said sincerely, his hand on his chest. “We shouldn’t have jumped you like that. Seemed funny at the time.”
“Uh, I’m a little bit out of practice.”
“Take your shoes off for a start,” Nero said. I slipped off my shoes and well, just kind of wriggled around, trying to look like I knew what I was doing. I was able to get my feet out of the ropes, but it was slow going.
“Try lying on the floor,” Robin suggested. “That way you can use the ground to move the ropes for you.”
With some work, I was able to get on my knees, then to the floor. It was a little easier. As I struggled, everyone else went on with what they were doing, reading magazines, playing cards—essentially not paying attention to me.
It was getting hot and the bus had become an oven, despite the open windows. It took me about fifteen sweaty minutes to finally get free. I stood up exhausted and soaked with perspiration. There was polite clapping from the other passengers who looked up from their books. I took a slight bow before falling over in my seat. Robin gave me a bottle of water while Nero wound up the rope.
“Tough, huh?” asked Robin. I nodded, gulping the water.
“Ready for the second round?”
I laughed and drank some more water.
“No, I’m serious,” he said. “Stand up.”
I gave him a look. “Do I have to?”
“Well, you got out. So you technically did it. But sorry to say, it wasn’t impressive. It’s not going to bowl anybody over, except maybe your little sister”—I bristled—“and there’s no way Bartholomew would keep on watching you after the first four minutes. Come on, try again—but this time, we’ll give you some tips.”
I took a deep breath and stood back up.
It turns out that the most important part of escaping ropes is what you do while you’re being tied up. Robin and Nero taught me to puff out my chest, hold my arms a bit away from my body, and flex my muscles to make myself bigger while the ropes were being wrapped around me. That meant I’d have more slack to work with. And, if you did it well, like Houdini did, no one would even know you were doing it.
The second time, with their instructions, I was out in five minutes. The next time I was out in three, the next in two.
The applause from the bus that last time was genuine and loud.
“Ready for the big time!” called someone from the back. Zeda gave me an appreciative nod. I bowed deeply and then collapsed in my seat, suddenly exhausted and peaceful. Then I slept.
We arrived at an empty dirt lot on the outskirts of Las Vegas, Nevada, around four in the afternoon. I’d never been to Vegas before, and I was amazed, even at a distance. There were all sorts of crazy-looking buildings on the horizon, like a pyramid and a Ferris wheel and the Eiffel Tower, all flanked by palm trees.
“I didn’t know Las Vegas was like this,” I said to Remmy in awe as we climbed off the bus.
“It’s Disneyland for jerks,” he said, not even looking in that direction. “Come on; let’s get unloaded.”
I tore myself away from the sight of the skyline and got to work. Bartholomew’s trucks weren’t there yet, so I felt pretty safe hanging out in the open, helping everyone set up. I held stakes and pulled ropes while they put up the sideshow tent, and then I carried boxes and props inside.
A large, square container covered with gray canvas sat in the shade of the sideshow’s lone truck. I was about to peek under the canvas cover when a voice spoke up from behind me.
“I wouldn’t do that.”
I turned to see Zeda stepping down from the running board of the truck. She’d been putting on dark purple lipstick in the side-mirror.
“Why? What’s under there?” I asked, feeling myself getting nervous again.
“Who’s under there,” she corrected me. She grinned at me when I took a step back from the box. Then she pulled a stick of gum out of her skirt pocket and popped it in her mouth before offering me a piece.
“Um, okay, who’s under there?”
“Matilda,” she said crossing over to something that resembled a wooden cutout, shaped like a person.
Matilda. I’d forgotten about her. The Single-O! The box was the right size for an animal. A lion? A tiger? I took another involuntary step away from the cage.
“Come on, Spartacus, you’re braver than that,” she said, laughing.
“Actually, I’m a chicken,” I confessed. It felt good to finally say it.
“I don’t believe it,” she said.
“I am. If you don’t show me what’s under the canvas, I won’t be able to sleep tonight.”
Zeda gave me half a smile. “She isn’t at her best during the daytime. She’s nocturnal. Here, help me carry this thing.”
Zeda and I hefted the wooden dummy across the parking lot. (Zeda said it was for my ‘specialty’—knife throwing.)
“So what is she?” I asked as we worked. “Is she a big cat? A lizard?”
Zeda laughed, amused.
“Matilda is an aye-aye.” She pronounced it like eye-eye.
“And what?” I asked.
“
An aye-aye is an endangered lemur from Madagascar.”
“An endangered lemur? Like, what, a monkey? A deadly, endangered monkey?”
“Sorta like that, yeah,” she said, shrugging.
“What’s her death trick, then?”
“It’s not a trick.” She blew her bangs out of her eyes. “It’s all myth—and that’s why she’s so endangered. Some people in Madagascar think aye-ayes are some sort of death omen, so they kill them. They have this really long finger, and the myth is that if it points at you, the only way you can stay alive is by killing it. It’s ridiculous. But, of course, Remmy, who is completely old-school, sees nothing wrong with promoting a stupid superstition to make some money.”
“You’re pretty angry about this,” I said, not knowing what to say.
“Of course I am!” she said, looking at me with fiery eyes, her face flushed. “How can I feel good exploiting the very reason she’s endangered?”
“You’ve got a good point,” I said. I’d never heard anyone speak with so much feeling about a monkey—er, lemur—before. “That…sucks.”
“No kidding,” she said flatly, helping me set the wooden board down. “Circuses shouldn’t even have animals, let alone endangered ones.”
“Must make it hard dealing with Bartholomew’s, huh?”
She snorted. “Tell me about it. One of these days, I’m going to open all the cages. See what they do then.”
“That…that would be crazy,” I replied.
“Exactly,” she said. “Anyways, I’ll introduce you to Matilda tonight, when she’s awake. You’ll see why I like her so much.”
We worked side by side in silence a bit, carrying in more stuff from a truck before I spoke up again.
“Your dad is Robin, right?”
“Yeah.”
“And he owns the sideshow with Remmy?”
“Something like that. Oh, set that over there.”
I put down the box I was carrying before asking thoughtfully, “So does that mean you’ll…inherit the sideshow someday?”
“Never.” She exhaled loudly when she dropped an orange sandbag into a pile of other sandbags. “No circuses for me. I’m thinking about running away to the Amazon to study aye-ayes.”
“‘Zeda the Adventurer’ has a nice ring to it,” I said shyly. Was this flirting? Was I flirting?
“Sadly, it just doesn’t have the same ring as Spartacus,” she responded, giving me a sly look as we walked back to the truck.
I cringed. Here come the jokes.
She saw my face and elbowed me, giving me a genuine smile. “Come on; it’s actually a cool name. Is it real?”
“Unfortunately,” I answered, but inside I was marveling. She thought it was cool?
“Are you kidding? It’s awesome.”
“Well, not if you don’t live in a sideshow,” I said and then felt bad, like maybe I’d insulted her. I changed the subject quickly. “That’s a cool Rainbow Brite tattoo.”
“It isn’t real, you know,” she said. “You can’t get a tattoo until you’re eighteen without a parent signing off.”
“Yeah, that blows,” I said, acting like I already knew that. “Well, it looks real. What is it? Permanent marker?”
“Yeah,” she said, looking at it admiringly. “I’ve retraced it every day for over a year now to prove to Dad that I wouldn’t regret having it as a tattoo. He’s still saying no.”
I thought about all the stupid stuff I’d get tattooed on me that I’d probably regret after a few months. I bet Lloyd/Dan even regretted his tattoo—especially because it made him easier to identify.
“I’ll give you one, too. That is, um, if you’d like,” she said.
“Yeah. That’d be cool,” I managed, but inside I was like, Wow.
“I’ll think up a good one for you in the next day or so, one that suits you,” she explained. “Then you could retrace it until you’re ready to get it done for real.”
“Awesome,” I said. And I meant it—except that I knew I didn’t have the next day or so to hang out with Zeda or the sideshow. Bartholomew was going to be there that night or early the next morning. And then what? How was I going to go back to being incognito after the circus came? And what if one of the sideshow people told Bartholomew’s people I was there, waiting to try out?
Why did you give them your real name, buttface? Will’s voice had returned to make me feel stupid—and it was working. I was lost in thought when Zeda spoke up.
“Hey, Spartacus,” she said. “Wanna learn something cool?”
Letting a girl I hardly knew talk me into breathing fire might be one of the stupidest things I’d ever done.
“I’m going to do it a few times, and you’re going to watch,” she said, gathering up a box that said Zeda Marx on it. “And then I’ll teach you.”
“You’re going to teach me to breathe fire?” I asked, my voice cracking halfway through the question.
“Shh!” she hissed, putting her hand to her lips. “I’m not supposed to show you. Dad said it was too dangerous for a novice, but I think you’d be great. Unless, of course, you don’t want to,” she added, her dark eyes daring me to say No.
“No, sounds good,” I managed. She told me to fill a bucket of water from the spigot and meet her around the side of one of the buildings where nobody would see us.
It turns out that, like sword swallowing, there is no trick to fire breathing. There’s lighter fluid, a torch, and a flame, and then—bam!—fire is flying from your lips!
I’d had crushes on girls before. There were a couple of girls besides Erika Dixon in Brenville that I’d liked at some point. Of course, I’d never really talked to them or told anyone I liked them—or even admitted it to myself. When you start liking girls, you have to be ready for rejection. I had already had enough of that in my life.
But after seeing Zeda do her fire-breathing act, I knew there would never be another girl for me. Zeda was it.
“And you do this in the show?” I asked, watching her put the torch out with a wet towel.
“Yeah, that’s my thing,” she said. She gargled green mouthwash and then spat it on the cement. “I do a whole fire routine you can see tomorrow.”
I shook my head in amazement. “Aren’t you, like, my age?”
“I’m an old soul,” she said, preparing her tools again. “I met a fortune teller at a show once who told me I’d been breathing fire for thousands of years.”
“And you believed that?” I asked. I’d meant it as a real question; I was really curious if she believed it, but I think she thought I was judging her.
“I mean, I’m not saying I for sure believe it,” she said huffily. “But I think anything’s possible.”
I shrugged, not wanting to upset her.
“Are you ready?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” And I didn’t. If Robin didn’t think I was ready for this, should I trust his daughter to say I was? My Mistake-o-Meter was flashing a blazing red three. But when I looked at her holding the torches out to me, her pretty face expectant and encouraging, I couldn’t say No.
Some things are just out of our control.
For the record, I did it right the first three times.
It was the fourth time, when I tried to show off, that the wind changed and blew the flames back in my face.
“Oh, no!” Zeda shrieked. With zero hesitation, she grabbed the water bucket and tossed it on me. One moment I was breathing fire, acting cocky—and the next I was soaked to the bone, torch still smoking. I stood motionless, bewildered.
“Uh—what?” was all I managed.
“Oh, Spartacus, I’m so sorry!” She grabbed me in a hug, even though I was drenched. She sounded like she was about to cry.
“What, uh, what happened?” I asked, dazed, hugging her. I patted her on the
back because she was patting mine.
“The wind shifted and…” She pulled away and touched my face, inspecting, looking for something. “Nothing. There’s…nothing?”
She looked confused.
“What?” I asked, thinking I’d missed something.
“Well—honestly, your hair should be singed and your eyebrows should probably be burnt off, but…” She stepped back, looking at me like I was a strange specimen. “You’re a fire-breathing miracle.”
I went and changed into my holey jeans and my last black t-shirt. Then I joined Zeda and the others on some picnic tables, where we all ate pizza.
I sat there, knowing I should be thinking about what my plan was, but it was hard to stay focused. I mean, how often do you get to hang out with a sideshow and a cool, fire-breathing girl? And they were all cool. Nero entertained us with more of his tricks, and the woman with the huge snake came out and did a belly-dancing routine. Zeda told me about what it was like for her living on the road.
So yeah, I was a bit distracted from my mission. But I had the vague idea that I could just make myself scarce when Bartholomew’s people started showing up. Maybe I could tell Remmy and Robin to keep my presence a secret, because I wanted to surprise Bartholomew when I was ready.
Zeda had come up with an idea for my tattoo a lot sooner than she’d thought she would. She told me not to look while she drew on my bicep with permanent markers. I was kinda hoping it would take a long time to finish.
“Now she’s got you wanting a tattoo?” Robin asked, walking up.
“I don’t know yet,” I said.
“You’ll want one when you see how cool this is going to be,” Zeda said. Robin laughed and sat down to apply wax to his mustache. I couldn’t decide which was cooler—Nero’s lightning-bolt sideburns or Robin’s handlebar mustache.
“Do you go to school?” I asked Zeda, watching Remmy feed tomato slices to Lousy.
“I do it online. I’m going to graduate early, though. I’m already taking classes through one of those online universities.”
I turned to look at her in surprise and she turned my face away.
“Don’t look yet!” she giggled. But the moment her dad walked away, she pulled me nearer. “I need to tell you something.” She spoke quietly, so only I could hear. I scooted closer. “Joining The Incredible isn’t… it isn’t a good idea.”
Spartacus Ryan Zander and the Secrets of the Incredible Page 18
