The Bonaventure Adventures

by Rachelle Delaney

  Except she wasn’t watching the tightrope walker or any of the students standing on their hands.

  She was staring right at Seb and Frankie. And she did not look pleased.

  THAT FIRST WEEK at Bonaventure felt like three.

  By the time Friday afternoon arrived, Seb was completely exhausted; it was all he could do to drag himself to the student lounge and sprawl on a couch while the other students streamed out the front door to the cars awaiting them. He felt a small stab of envy thinking about the hot dinners they’d enjoy at home, while he had a few days of cold cafeteria food ahead of him. But mostly he just wanted to be left alone, to sleep and read and think about his predicament.

  “Hey, Superstar.” Sylvain plunked down beside him. The old couch springs squeaked. “Want this?” He held up his bag of candy—or what was left of it.

  “Really?” Seb said. “You don’t want it?”

  “My mom has loads more at home,” Sylvain assured him. “I’ll just bring more on Monday.”

  Seb felt another small stab. He wondered if Sylvain’s mother was anything like Aunt Tatiana—minus the obvious facial hair.

  “Well, have a good weekend!” Sylvain jumped back up. “Oh, and watch out for the directrice. I hear she stays around some weekends.” He turned and jogged out the door.

  Seb sighed. “Great.”

  Soon the front door slammed shut one final time, and Bonaventure fell quiet—deeply quiet. Seb could even hear the drip of a leaky pipe in the cafeteria.

  Frankie had been right: barely any students stayed around on weekends. And there was only one teacher supervisor, but who knew where they were? It would be easy, Seb decided, to go the entire weekend without running into anyone.

  Which sounded just about perfect.

  He headed first to the cafeteria to get a sandwich for dinner. But as he passed the gymnasium, he noticed a light on inside. He paused to peek in and spotted Banjo Brady, dressed in his usual grass-stained jeans and a plaid shirt.

  As Seb watched, Banjo secured a flat nylon rope between two posts. Then he kicked off his sneakers, wiggled his toes and hopped up onto the line.

  Arms spread wide, Banjo took a few tentative steps on his slackline, then bent his knees so he could bounce when the line bounced and sway when it swayed. A soft, half-smile appeared on his face, and suddenly, he looked totally, completely at peace.

  “It’s called the state of ‘flow,’ ” Seb remembered Maxime once explaining. “It happens when a person is completely immersed in what they’re doing, whether that’s juggling pins or swinging on a trapeze. It could even be baking a cake or writing a song.”

  “Or swallowing sharp medieval weapons?” Seb had asked.

  “Even that,” Max confirmed. “It’s hard to describe, but I swear to you, it’s the very best feeling in the world.”

  “I’ve never felt it before.” Of this, Seb was certain.

  “You will,” Maxime promised.

  Now Seb’s chest felt tight again, so he stepped away from the door, no longer just wanting but needing to be by himself. He dashed to the cafeteria, grabbed a sandwich and was heading up to his room when suddenly, he remembered the choir box.

  He did an about-face and headed for the theater. Thankfully, its doors were unlocked, practically inviting him to come inside.

  It was just as wonderful as he remembered it: grand and stately and tranquil all at once. Rainbow light from the stained glass windows played upon the scratched floors. The saints stood at attention under marble archways.

  What a space for circus shows! Seb marveled once again. If he were in charge, he’d put on a production about ghosts, starring aerial silks performers dressed in white. He pictured them tumbling from the ceiling, stopping their fall just inches above the audience’s heads.

  For the first time all week, he felt content.

  He headed for the staircase at the back of the theater. A rope still cordoned off the stairs, but he stepped over it and climbed up. At the top of the stairs, he let himself into the choir box and looked around. It was a small space—big enough for only three or four musical monks. But it was just perfect for Seb.

  He stretched out on his back, watching the dust dance in the rafters. “Finally,” he sighed. Time to think.

  He started by taking stock of the week. On the one hand, he hadn’t been sent home, forced to give up his place to one of the more deserving students on the wait list. So that, as Frankie said, was a win.

  On the other hand, he had gone and convinced everyone at Bonaventure that he could breathe fire. This was not exactly a foolproof situation, especially because everyone now wanted details. He’d have to do some research so he could answer them convincingly.

  He sighed. Lying was exhausting. He had no idea how his father kept it up.

  He was trying to remember details from the Konstantinov fire breather’s routine when he heard the theater door creak open. He sat upright, hoping he’d heard wrong. But a moment later, he heard it close, and soft footsteps tiptoe in.

  “Oh no,” he whispered, praying whoever it was would leave. But the footsteps tiptoed on in…and over to the staircase.

  And then they were climbing the stairs.

  Seb scuttled backwards, heart pounding. He tucked himself into a corner, though of course it wouldn’t hide him. He was very much trapped.

  Then the door to the choir box opened, and a figure appeared, backlit by the rainbow light. A tall, skinny figure topped with a rat’s nest of hair.

  Frankie de Luca.

  “You!” she exclaimed.

  “You!” he returned.

  “What are you doing here?” she demanded.

  “I could ask you the same thing,” he pointed out, sliding out of the corner as casually as possible, as if he’d just been curled up there for a nap.

  “This is my hiding spot,” Frankie said. “It’s perfect, see? No one can bother me up here.” Then she frowned at him, as if to say, “until now.”

  This annoyed him—she couldn’t just claim it as her own. “It’s my hiding spot too,” he informed her.

  She stared at him for a moment, then shrugged and sat down. “So you’re here to watch the show?”

  “What show?” he asked.

  “The soiree,” she said.

  “Oh!” He hadn’t even thought about it. “But we aren’t allowed to watch the shows, are we?” he said.

  “We’re not invited,” she corrected him. “That doesn’t mean we can’t watch.”

  He wasn’t sure about the logic, but once again he decided not to argue with her.

  “I guess we’ll watch it together then.” She leaned against a wall and stretched out her legs, which were so long they took up nearly half the box.

  This was definitely not the Friday evening Seb had had in mind. He considered taking his candy and heading for the library, or back to his room. But then the theater door swung open again, and in tromped a half-dozen riggers, chatting in French. Minutes later, they were testing the lights and setting up a trapeze.

  Seb sighed. They were trapped. And what’s more, now he’d have to share his candy—he couldn’t very well keep it all to himself. Grudgingly, he pulled out Sylvain’s bag and pushed it toward Frankie.

  Her eyes lit up. “Where did you get that?”

  “Can’t reveal my sources,” he told her, taking the last gummy bear for himself.

  “Mysterious,” she said, grabbing a string of licorice. She sounded like she approved.

  They chewed in silence for a moment, then Frankie said, “So this fire breathing thing. Is that real?”

  He coughed and swallowed. He hadn’t expected this. “Of course.”

  “Be honest,” she warned him. “I’ve got three little brothers—I can smell a lie from a mile away.”

  “I’m not lying,” he snapped, then remembered the riggers below and lowered his voice. “I’m…I’m a fire breather. Or, I used to be. I’m…retired now.”

  He was beginning to wonder whether
he’d actually inherited his father’s talent for making up stories.

  She grinned and shook her head, clearly unconvinced. “All right, Fire Breath. Whatever you say. But you definitely got in without an audition.”

  There was no point in denying that one: she’d seen his handstands. “Nice work, Detective,” he said.

  She laughed. “They didn’t make me audition either.”

  “Really?” Seb recalled the Scout’s brief story of how he’d discovered her. “So the Scout just found you? Doing parkour in Rome?” It sounded just as odd as the Scout discovering Banjo at Stumpville’s Logger Sports Day.

  “Pretty much.” Frankie leaned forward and touched her toes. “I wish I could be outside doing parkour right now. I would be if I weren’t on probation.” She looked up at the ceiling rafters as if considering scaling them. “Parkour is the best way to explore a new place.”

  Personally, Seb preferred a map. But he let it go, and helped himself to more candy.

  At seven thirty, the theater went dark, then some soft stage lights came up, along with beams of red and purple in the rafters. The riggers finished hanging some silks and disappeared behind the curtain. Then the music began—wavering wind instruments and faint, thumping percussion. It was nothing like the tinny orchestral march that opened the Konstantinov Family Circus, but Seb still felt the familiar pre-show thrill, anticipating the magic to come.

  His watch read ten to eight when the theater doors opened again, and in came the circophiles of Montreal.

  Peering over the side of the box, Seb did a double take. “What the?”

  “Whoa,” Frankie breathed, crouched beside him. “What are they wearing?”

  The answer seemed to be “pretty well anything.” Some wore fancy suits, others shimmering gowns and high heels. Still others looked as if they were headed to a costume party; Seb spotted one woman dressed head to toe in shiny green snakeskin, another wearing a birdcage on her head, and a man who’d waxed his mustache to stand out like cat whiskers, which complemented the furry ears atop his head.

  “Who are these people?” Frankie wondered. Seb had no idea.

  The music swelled, and a swarm of servers emerged from behind the statues, carrying trays of skinny glasses filled with some violet-colored concoction. They wove between the circophiles, who helped themselves. Soon everyone was laughing and drinking as they complimented each other’s outfits.

  The show began with a trapeze act—a lone woman tipping and twirling above the audience’s heads. She was skilled and strong, Seb noted as he watched her hang from the trapeze by just her neck—the same trick that Maria the Konstantinov aerialist was working on. But her routine was just that: a series of tricks, and no story.

  What’s more, the circophiles weren’t even watching. They strutted around, preening like exotic birds, more interested in each other than the performance above their heads.

  “Don’t trapezes usually swing?” Frankie asked. “I thought trapezists were supposed to fly across the room and catch each other.”

  “This is the static trapeze,” Seb explained. “It doesn’t move much, so it’s all up to the artist to make shapes that look impressive.” They watched as the woman flipped back up to sit on the bar. “It takes a ton of strength, but a good performer will make it look easy.”

  “Have you tried it?” Frankie asked.

  Seb nodded, recalling how Maria had had to heave him up onto the bar, since he wasn’t strong enough to pull himself up. Once he was up there, it became very clear to him how very high he was, and how many bones he might break if he fell.

  “Um, I think I’m done,” he’d said. Maria took one look at his terrified eyes and agreed. The trapeze was not for him.

  “Think Murray’s really a trapeze master?” asked Frankie.

  “I doubt it,” said Seb. “Mastering the trapeze takes more hours than he’s been alive.”

  They fell silent again, watching the show. After the trapezist came a tightrope act, then some silks performers. All were skilled, but no more so than Maria. And none of the acts seemed to tell a story, which for Seb was more than a little disappointing.

  Still, he concluded, there were worse ways to spend a Friday night than polishing off a bag of candy while watching a circus show from a secret hiding spot.

  A hiding spot, he had to admit, that actually was big enough for two.

  Part 3

  BÊTES NOIRES

  FOR A TIME, it seemed like Seb’s fire breathing excuse was going to work. He used it tentatively at first, murmuring it to the juggling teacher when asked to demonstrate a three-ball cascade, and later to the aerials instructor, who assumed he’d be a natural on the silks.

  “You’re a what?” The juggling teacher looked alarmed.

  “Mon Dieu!” The aerials instructor grimaced outright.

  “Yes.” Seb nodded ruefully. “My circus is pretty outdated. That’s why I’m here: to learn the ways of the modern circus.”

  The juggling teacher shook his head in wonder. The aerials instructor shuddered.

  “Take a seat, then,” both told him.

  It was almost too easy.

  He did, however, sneak off to the library one night to brush up on his fire breathing knowledge, just in case. And he found it was as he remembered. The gist of breathing fire was pretty simple: it required a fuel source, a flame and a disconcerting lack of fear.

  Basically, the performer would take a swig of fuel, hold it in his mouth, then spray it over an open flame, which would make the flame burst into some striking shape, like a giant pillar or a ball of fire. So he wasn’t truly breathing fire, but just creating the illusion of it.

  Unsurprisingly, there were untold ways the performer could muck things up. He might spray his fuel in the wrong direction, or with the wrong consistency (a fine mist was best). The flame might balloon out of control or blow back toward him. And, of course, he could accidentally swallow the fuel, which would make him very sick, if not kill him outright.

  When you broke it down, Seb concluded, fire breathing was full-on bonkers.

  But it made an effective excuse, and so he kept on using it. Sometimes he’d even embellish it a little with stories he remembered the Konstantinov fire breather telling—like how he’d once misjudged the direction of the wind and received a faceful of flames.

  By the end of Seb’s first month at Bonaventure, telling this story had begun to feel almost normal.

  The daily routine was feeling normal as well. From Monday through Friday, the fifteen first-year students were nearly always together. They ate breakfast elbow to elbow each morning, raced each other to the cafeteria at lunchtime and haggled over the couches in the student lounge, where many did their homework every evening.

  And then on Friday afternoon, as soon as the last bell rang, they were gone, streaming out to the waiting cars, letting the front doors slam shut behind them. Sylvain would always leave Seb what remained of his weekly candy bag, which Seb would take up to the choir box to watch the Friday soiree, both for the acts and to see what the circophiles were wearing. Sometimes Frankie came too, if she wasn’t busy practicing her parkour moves in the gymnasium.

  Seb, however, never set foot in the gym on weekends. For one thing, there was really no point in practicing his skills. But more important, he didn’t want Angélique Saint-Germain to see him. It seemed that whenever he looked up during Juggling or Aerials or Basic Acrobatics, there she’d be, surveying the scene from her window with Ennui in her arms.

  And perhaps it was just his imagination, but she always seemed to be watching him, even when there were fourteen other students around. It made him cringe, which in turn made him mess up whichever skill he was attempting. He had no idea what she was thinking while she watched him, and he didn’t particularly want to find out.

  But of course, it was only a matter of time before he did.

  It was a Friday morning in late September, crisp and clear—or so it seemed through the little window in Room Number
5. Seb had yet to actually venture outside, which was getting a little tiresome. He’d tried on a few occasions to coerce the weekend supervisor into taking him out exploring, but someone always had to stay with Banjo Brady, who wasn’t ever allowed outside. So as a result, Seb still knew next to nothing about Montreal.

  On that Friday morning, he arrived at Basic Acrobatics and found an odd sight: the Scout and Monsieur Gerard arguing. Or rather, Monsieur Gerard was arguing; the Scout was listening to him patiently, nodding every now and then or humming with sympathy. Seb wondered if the Scout had dabbled as a therapist as well.

  “Basic Acrobatics,” Monsieur Gerard was proclaiming, “is the most important class these students attend. I have too much to teach them to give up an entire class for the sake of one student!”

  “I know.” The Scout gave him a gentle smile. “But it’s not for one student. You know that. It’s for her.”

  Monsieur Gerard opened his mouth to argue, then snapped it shut.

  “For who?” asked Camille.

  “Who do you think?” said Sylvain.

  Before she could guess, the door swung open, and in walked one of the riggers, carrying a crate full of some sort of equipment.

  It was an odd assembly of objects, Seb noted: a few bottles, some long sticks, gloves, a tarp, and—

  He froze. A few bottles…some long sticks…

  “No. Way,” he breathed.

  “No way what?” Sylvain turned to him.

  But Seb couldn’t answer, for he felt like he’d been socked in the gut. If he was correct, and he was fairly certain he was, those long sticks were torches. And those bottles held fuel.

  She was going to make him breathe fire.

  The door swung open again, and Seb whirled around to face her. But it was only Banjo Brady, late, as usual. He stammered an apology, but no one seemed to hear it—least of all Seb, who couldn’t hear anything over the hammering of his heart.