Girl on a Wire

by Gwenda Bond

  So far, my plan had gone well. But the plan was only to right the things I’d messed up, to make up for my own trespasses and mistakes. And to try to convince our foe to blunder out into the open, revealed at last.

  I wasn’t as sure of my footing as usual. I tilted the parasol this way and that to make up for the subdued quality of my performance. Hopefully Dad’s inability to be anything but jaw-droppingly wonderful would distract from any perceived lackluster on my part.

  We made it to the middle of the wire where we’d agreed to the do the lie-downs. That was when I glanced up at my parasol in preparation for lowering it. I intended to hook the handle over the wire behind me, to dangle there during the trick.

  The green scarf was attached to the inner net of metal ribs. Tied there, the loose ends pointed down in either direction, like some crazy grin directed at me.

  This, too, was my fault. I should have checked the parasol, but I’d been in such a hurry. I’d left the perfect opening for someone else’s plan to overtake mine. Here I was, trapped on the wire with Dad.

  Breathe. You have to get through this.

  My hand trembled around the grip of the parasol. I placed my other hand over it, and tried to stay calm as the trembling spread to my limbs.

  My whole body began to quiver like a leaf. There was so much noise. The band, the hum of conversation, Thurston’s patter.

  My father smiled as he held position, waiting for me to hit my mark so we could lower ourselves in tandem as we’d agreed.

  I closed my eyes, opened them. Sucked in a deep breath. Looked up again at the scarf. So bold and green. Such bad luck.

  “Julieta.” It wasn’t a whisper, not with all that other noise. He spoke it with flat calm. “What is it?”

  If I hadn’t given the coin to Remy, I’d be safe as ever. I’d smile at Dad and pirouette and show the world that no one could touch me.

  My hands tightened around the base of the parasol. No. No. I didn’t need the coin. This was the moment it all became clear: What was I capable of? Who was I now, after everything that had happened? What was I willing to give up?

  “Jules,” Dad said again, more insistent now.

  A rivulet of sweat trailed down my temple and slithered across my cheek. Another ran oh-so-slowly down the center of my spine.

  Thurston’s patter had turned nervous in tenor, but none of the words penetrated.

  “Dad,” I said, my voice even, “I need to take a rain check. I’m going to turn and go back to my platform. You finish this.”

  He considered what I’d said, his worry plain.

  “Always trust a performer when they tell you they need an exit,” I said.

  He’d taught me that. I stayed as still as I could manage, my fingers shaky around the parasol grip. I would have let it go, but I didn’t trust my stability without the aid.

  Dad nodded to me. He lowered his body to a crouch, hooking one leg over the top of the wire and eased back, like he was going to take a nap. There was applause, but not wild applause. Because there I was, still standing.

  I had to get off the wire.

  I turned with more care than I ever had, and took one step and another. My platform wasn’t that far. If I could just make it there, I could let go of the parasol and be safe. Only a few more steps.

  I didn’t make the mistake of looking down. This time, I made the mistake of looking up, and seeing that flash of green. Flickering in its place, I saw the old photograph on the murder board, the clowns around the trunk, one of them brandishing the scarf. And then I wasn’t on the wire at all. I was running toward the ring the night of Sam’s accident, Beauty rearing and screaming. Sam bleeding in the sawdust, the scarf discarded beside him . . .

  I dropped the parasol, tracking it as it sailed through the air and jounced into the ring with enough force to cave in on one side.

  Raising my arms straight out to my sides, I tried to find that line, that invisible tether of spine that led to balance. But I lifted them too quickly and—

  I was falling too. I grabbed for the wire, caught and held on to it with both hands. I held on to it for dear life. Mine.

  The thick cable hurt my palms, but I couldn’t let go. I was no longer a girl on a wire, but a fish on a hook. The parasol would have been hanging just like this, if I’d completed the earlier trick.

  My father was sitting up, out of the lie-down that had protected him when I’d lost my balance. If he’d been standing, my fall would have been enough to knock him off.

  “No,” I said, pleading for him to stay where he was. “No.”

  “Julieta,” he said. “I’m coming.”

  “No, don’t.” I struggled to get the words out.

  There was a commotion below us in the ring—shouting, familiar voices—but I couldn’t look down. Not and hold on.

  “Yes,” Dad called down to whoever it was. “Yes, bring it out! Now!”

  My muscles screamed at being asked to hold this position, the wire cutting into the tender skin of my palm. I needed to lift myself higher if I was going to have a chance.

  What was I capable of?

  I was capable of fighting with everything left in me.

  Using every last bit of strength I had, I inched upward until one forearm was level with the wire and I could hook an elbow over it. I didn’t have the power to get the other one up. But it was enough to stabilize me, so I could see what Dad was telling whoever was below us to bring.

  Remy was in the ring, and he was directing the crew to position a net beneath our wire, maybe the same one they’d just used for the trapeze act.

  My father was telling them to bring me a net. My father, who had never believed in them.

  Nets might be for amateurs, but there were worse things to be. Like dead. “Dad,” I said. “Finish the act. Get an ovation.”

  Remy backed up, the net strung wide, ready and waiting. If I had the courage to fall, it would catch me.

  If Nan was right, her magic was about amplifying what already existed inside something. So all I had to do now was amplify my own courage. That was what I tried to do. Finally I would be strong enough to let go. Strong enough to get back to the honest performer and person I knew I could be. Steadying myself as much as I could with one arm to hold me up, I took a breath.

  And I let go.

  I

  let

  go.

  As I fell, I pictured Remy doing it. I’d watched him jackknife into the net so many times. He fell with intention.

  I pulled my body into that approximate V shape—falling, falling—and bounced in at an angle. As soon as I landed, the net threw me up again, not wanting to keep me.

  A moment later, Remy’s hands were on my waist, and then they found mine. He pulled me onto my feet. “Pretend you’ve got a limp,” he said, putting an arm around my shoulders.

  He wanted it to look as if he were supporting me, like I’d had to come down off the wire because of an injury.

  “No.” I pressed him back. “Thank you, but no.”

  I lifted my arms above my head and bowed low. Valentines applauded, even though all I’d done was . . . fall. But it had been one of my most important acts ever, hadn’t it? I raised myself even taller and bowed lower.

  When I finished, Thurston was frowning at me, which transformed into gawking as he glanced up at the wire. Where my father was prancing, putting on the show of his life. He never showboated.

  “Did you see the green scarf?” I asked Remy. I knew no one would be watching us when Dad was doing that. Which, I was positive, was why he was doing it.

  “No,” he said, “just that you were in trouble. Jules, I could barely breathe.”

  “Thanks for the save. But we need my parasol. It has the scarf in it.”

  Remy took my hand—earning a few wolf whistles, I was guessing from fans so devoted they were missing the walk of a lifetime to keep an eye on us—and steered me toward the parasol. Letting go of his hand, even though I didn’t want to, I plucked it off th
e sawdust. Dirt smudged the half-caved-in canopy. When I flipped it upside down, the green square of fabric that had caused so much trouble was still there.

  We reached the curtain just as my father finished. Thurston had recovered and was saying into the mic, “Please show this man your appreciation. Now that was the sight of a lifetime!”

  I looked up to see Dad bow to the crowd from the middle of the wire. They were on their feet.

  “We always get our standing ovation,” I said.

  Remy touched the parasol. “Do you have any idea how it got there?”

  “None,” I said. “I left it where I always do.”

  Nan and Mom were on top of us as soon as we exited the ring into backstage. Mom patted me from head to toe to make sure I was okay. “I’m fine. A little net rash tomorrow probably, but fine,” I reassured her, pressing her back with my free hand.

  Then I dropped the parasol to the ground and bent to remove the scarf. Such a small thing to have caused so much pain. I handed it to my grandmother.

  “Give it to her, that’s a great idea,” Novio said, appearing with a sneer. Behind him, Dita tried to pull him away, but it was clear that she’d have no effect. She backed off. It was too late to stop him.

  “Now’s not the time, Novio,” Remy said. “Jules could have been killed.”

  “Yes, she could have,” Nan said, closing her hand around the scarf. “This is what killed Sam.”

  “What do you mean?” my mother asked, aghast.

  Maria Garcia had apparently been summoned by the presence of Nan and controversy. She echoed her son. “The girl’s careless on the wire. That’s all.”

  “Was it you who set Jules up?” Remy asked her.

  “No,” she said, dismissive. “How could you think I would harm her? You’re my son.”

  “You’ll give us the coin back now, won’t you?” The words were low, and they came from Novio. I almost thought I’d misheard. But he repeated it. “You’ll give it back? Now you see that I know everything. It’s time to make this stop. Just give back what belongs to us.”

  Remy stepped between Novio and me, or maybe he was putting me behind him. “Novio?”

  We were all quiet, and Novio began to talk. “I was his heir. The oldest Garcia son. It should have been mine. He told me everything. What had happened. How it was stolen. That Thurston would bring you here, and that I could get it back.”

  Maria scrubbed her cheek. “Dad put you up to this before he died?”

  “He told me about the ancient coin that should have been my birthright. How it’s powerful enough to make you the best you can be. Nancy Maroni stole it from him. I just wanted what belongs to us. I put all the pieces together. Granddad had the clippings and the photographs in his study, up in the attic. The objects were in the trunk. All these years.”

  “The murder board,” I said. “It was yours.”

  Everything clicked into a sad, sick kind of sense. My mother couldn’t have understood half of what was going on, but she said, “If Nan says you endangered my daughter, you have no life on this show.”

  Novio ignored her, nodding at me. “I wanted Remy to know, to see it when we got here. I knew Thurston was trying to hire the Maronis, because Granddad told me. I thought Remy would come to me, and I’d tell him the whole story. That he could help me. But you tricked him. He stopped caring you were a Maroni. But I can never forget. The coin belongs with me.”

  I moved in closer, standing beside Remy. “That’s why you picked a fight with Sam. So we would think there was no way the break-in could be you. And the rose was you too?”

  “I meant to give it to her”—he jerked his head at Nan—“but she wasn’t there, and I didn’t find the coin in your RV. When the lights went out in the big top, I gave it to you on impulse. I had the rose in my jacket.” He shook his head. “The coin was my birthright. You were here to steal the spotlight, just like she took it.”

  And I understood. He was in the same shadow that had consumed his grandfather. Something darker drove him than his siblings, the same hunger for recognition and power that had driven Roman. Remy was all about work and achievement. Dita was fighting to be herself. But Novio, he was a creature of family. I understood him. I might not have gone about it in the same way, but I recognized the need to secure the place he believed belonged to him.

  My plan had worked, even though drawing out the culprit had been the longest shot part of it. We knew who was responsible. But what would we do, now that we knew?

  Dad and Thurston exited the ring. “Explain,” Thurston barked.

  I could see Dad had plenty of questions of his own, but he took in Nan and the Garcias, Mom and me. He faced Thurston and said, “This is family business. We will talk with you later.”

  Thurston’s assistant emerged from the curtain, with a phone in her hand, and she gave Thurston one sharp shake of her head. “Producer who was here for the announcement says no,” she said, regretfully, to both of us. “No special. Not this year.”

  Easy come, easy go. Thurston stood where he was for a long moment, and I expected him to challenge Dad. But he said, “Come with me,” and went off with his assistant.

  Which left us with the very messy family business to conclude.

  “Give me the coin,” Novio said.

  “Novio, I understand why you think you want it—” I started.

  Remy took two steps closer to him. He looked from me to Novio and back. He laid his hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Jules gave it to me before. And it’s gone. I got rid of it.”

  My mother’s arms were crossed. “The boy must be punished. He can’t stay here. Nancy says he caused Sam’s death, tried to hurt Jules.”

  Maria apologized in her smoker’s voice, face lined with years of unhappiness. “I had no idea. You’re right. He won’t be back. He is no longer part of this family.”

  “Wait,” I said.

  The line of balance that had eluded me on the wire, sent me tumbling when I tried to locate it . . . there it was. I stood straighter, like gravity didn’t apply. “Just wait. I’m not sure that’s what we should do. Think about it. We can’t send him to jail. He hasn’t committed any crimes, exactly. What are we going to say? This jerk kid took objects he believed were magic that had belonged to his grandfather and used them to cause an accident that led to Sam’s death?”

  I stopped to drag in a breath. When no one jumped in to argue, I went on. “While kicking him out would feel good, it wouldn’t make anything better. Not really. Your father had Nan cast out, and it solved nothing. I don’t even think it’s what Sam would want. He loved Dita, and he understood the importance of family. He wouldn’t want her to lose a brother too.”

  “I’m not a kid,” Novio said.

  But it was Nan who shushed him. She wasn’t born to the wire, but she carried herself like she was. “I think all the goodness that Roman possessed went into the coin, all those years ago. He was so closely linked to it.” She touched Novio’s shoulder, and he flinched. “I might be able to figure out how to take the poison from this one, put it somewhere we can destroy it. So the good in this boy can come back into the light.” She held up her hand to Maria. “I won’t make any promises, but I wrote myself off, all those years ago, for making terrible mistakes. I didn’t think I could earn my way back, and I refused to use my gift any longer. But he’s just a boy still, no matter what he says. Roman’s gone, but no one knows better than me how hard it can be to shake his influence. The boy, he might come through this yet.”

  “What are you talking about?” Novio said, fear shining out from him. “I won’t do it.”

  Maria and Nan stared at each other, like they had that predawn morning in the Garcias’ RV, seeing past the surface of each other. This time, Maria nodded and turned to her son. “Yes, you will. For Sam Maroni, Novio. You will do whatever she tells you.”

  He shifted toward Dita. “I didn’t mean for that to happen. It was all just supposed to scare them into giving us the coin.”
>
  “If they’re right, you killed my Sam. You broke my heart,” his sister told him. “You do this for me.”

  “I knew she had the coin,” Novio said, a weak protest. “I was right.”

  Nan held up her index finger and said, “Lesson one. Sometimes being right doesn’t matter.”

  Novio didn’t volley back an insult. He lowered his chin in a grudging but unmistakable nod.

  People were filtering out of the backstage area, giving us a wide berth. No doubt they were heading to the mess tent. Drama between the Garcias and the Maronis was juicy, but it couldn’t compare to free booze and an after-party.

  The Cirque had made it through the season. Everyone wanted to celebrate that. And I agreed. That our families in particular had made it through—even if we weren’t intact, and would never be the same again—was worthy of recognition.

  “So, it’s over?” I asked. “It’s all really over?”

  No one disputed it, but Dad looked like he wanted a fuller accounting later.

  Remy returned to my side, and reached an arm around my waist. “Yes, stop. It’s over, stop.”

  I faced him, grinning like a fool. If that wasn’t an apology accepted, nothing was. When our lips met, it wasn’t like going back in time, and it wasn’t like forgiveness. It felt as new as the first time.

  Our kiss was a beginning.

  thirty-eight

  * * *

  After the crew broke down the tent in Atlanta the next day, the caravan returned to Florida. But most of us wouldn’t be here long. There was going to be one final, epic party to mark our last night in Sarasota. With a few exceptions, the performers and crew wouldn’t spend the entire winter here. Everyone would head back to their homes—the nonmoving ones—and then early next year either we’d come back here to start training again or head off to other shows. The verdict on the Cirque’s future remained out, especially after I’d flubbed my chance at the TV thing. But I had faith in Thurston. What he’d created was too special to give up.

  Just before it was time to leave for the party, I went out into the living room. Mom gave me a sparkling smile from the couch. She and Dad sat beside Nan. “What is it you say, Nancy?” she asked.