by Kailin Gow
So I go home, and I spend the day there. Not really doing anything, even though it probably looks like I am. I tend the garden, and I make sure that Mason and Mom are okay, but really, I’m just killing time until the next performance, trying not to show how nervous I am.
Mom is still better than she was, but she’s acting strangely now. The other night, when we were at the restaurant, she started talking to someone who wasn’t there, and when we got her home with the help of Thomas and his parents, she fell asleep almost immediately. Thomas’ mother has promised to look in on her while I’m at the circus tonight, but that can’t change how worried I am about her.
I start to get ready for the circus, picking out a sapphire blue sun dress to wear. They’ll have a costume for me once I get there, but I want to look good as I show up. Why? In case Zachary sees me? I shake my head. Can’t I just want to look good? After all, there will be plenty of people there.
Not the kid who was burned though. I wonder if he managed to survive, with the medical know how that’s available in Sea Cliff. Even if he does, the injuries he has now are horrendous. What will his life be like? All because he wanted to be in the Circus of Curiosities. I find myself thinking about Dr. Dex as I get ready. He’s told me that he always gives people a chance to back out, and I heard about the kids who didn’t come back from his tests, but seeing something like that live is a different thing completely. I find myself wondering if everyone will come back to the circus tonight. Will they all want to compete now that they’ve seen first-hand what will happen?
Do I want to compete? That question has been gnawing at me all day. I need to help Mom. I need to find out more about what is going on at the Center. Yet do I need it so much that I’m willing to risk that happening to me? Do I want to end up burned, or eaten by some kind of mutated creature, or worse?
I’m still thinking about that when I hear Mom downstairs in the living room. She’s been so calm, so well, all day, but now I can hear her talking to people in a panicked tone, like she isn’t quite shouting but might start any second. I rush downstairs, trying to find out what’s going on. I make it into the living room, and I see her standing alone. She’s talking to people who aren’t there, the way she was in the restaurant. The way she was when Dr. Dex healed her.
This is scary. If I didn’t know about Dr. Dex and Zachary, I’d think that she was going crazy. After all, that’s what it is when people start talking to people who aren’t there. That’s about as good a definition of crazy as most people get. But I know now that it isn’t that, and somehow, that just makes it worse.
“No, you can’t. I won’t let you.” Mom looks past me to someone I can’t see. What is going on? What can she see that I can’t? Mason comes rushing into the room, looking from her to me and back again.
“Leela,” he says. “What’s happening? Why is this happening to Mom?”
I wish I could explain. I wish I had answers for him that he would understand. I wish I could tell him about Dr. Dex, but that would mean telling my brother about Zachary too, and for some reason I don’t want to do that. Maybe because it isn’t my secret to tell.
Mom looks at me then. Not past me, but straight at me, her eyes boring into mine. When she speaks, her voice is stronger than I’ve heard it in years. “Leela, I worry about you so much. I worry about this dangerous, foolish circus. I worry about so much else. I wish I could keep you safe at home.”
“I’m not going anywhere, Mom,” I promise. Anything, if it will keep her calm.
“You are though,” Mom insists. “It’s your destiny. I know. I know. You have to get to the Center. I wish it were different, but it’s what you have to do. I’ve fought for you for so long… I’m fighting for you now. Against them. Always them. They want you, the way they took your father. They took him from me, and now they want to take you from me too.”
There’s part of me that starts to think that maybe she is crazy, because none of this makes sense, but then she collapses, leaving me to catch her and move her onto the sofa. I look over at Mason.
“Mason, get Thomas.”
“But Mom…”
“I know,” I say. “Mason, go get Thomas. He can help.”
It doesn’t take long for Thomas to show up. His mother is with him, looking serious as Mason leads them into the house.
“Leela, what’s going… oh,” Thomas says, seeing Mom passed out on the sofa. “It happened again?”
I nod, and I try to explain. “She was talking to people who weren’t there. Then she passed out.”
I don’t tell him what Mom said to me. That doesn’t even make sense to me. Even so, what I tell Thomas is enough to make him pale. His mother puts a hand on my shoulder.
“It’s all right, Leela,” she says. “We can cope with Kinley. And with Mason, too. I know that you have to get over to the circus.”
“I…” I think about what Mom said before she passed out. I nod. “I have to.”
“I know,” Thomas’ mother says. “Don’t worry. Everything will be fine here.”
So I go. I have to hurry, too, because the time it has taken to look after Mom means that it’s later than I want it to be when I leave. I have to practically run to make it to the circus on time. Would they start without me? Would they assume that I had just run off? Decided not to take part after everything I’d seen? Maybe. Either way, I run a little faster to make sure. I think about Zachary while I’m running. Will he know what just happened to Mom? With his gifts, maybe he’ll understand. Maybe he’ll have sensed something about what’s going on.
Except that I have to go through Zachary to get to the Center. I knew that before. I knew it, but I thought there might be a way around it. Now, with what Mom has said… I can’t take the risk. I have to get there, whatever it takes, and if only one of us can make it there… I’ll do whatever I have to.
I rush to the circus, and I smile when I see that the show hasn’t started yet. I’m not too late. I rush towards the entrance, and I’m just stepping through it when I feel a hand on my shoulder, pulling me aside. I turn to see Zachary, standing there staring at me with an intent expression that reveals nothing behind it.
“Leela. I wasn’t sure that you’d come.”
“You didn’t think that I’d still need to get through this?”
“I saw you last night,” he says. He shakes his head. “You were pretty shaken up. Are you sure you should be here tonight?”
“You aren’t going to talk me out of this, Zachary,” I say, trying to sound more confident than I feel.
“Maybe you should let me try,” he counters. “You sound… I don’t know, different tonight. And look at you, you’re shaking.”
He runs his hands over the bare skin of my shoulders, and sure enough, it’s trembling. Though maybe that’s just at being touched like that by Zachary.
“It’s the cold,” I lie, even though I know that Zachary will guess that I’m lying.
“It’s more than that.” He shakes his head again. “You can’t go in there with something hanging over you like this, Leela. I’ve seen some of what we’re doing tonight.”
“Seen it, or…”
“I’ve seen it.” He doesn’t put it more directly than that, but he doesn’t need to. He’s seen some of what’s going to happen in a vision. “It’s dangerous. It’s the kind of thing that will take concentration. Get it wrong and… I didn’t see it, but I could feel it. Something bad happens tonight, Leela.”
“Worse than last night?”
Zachary hesitates, but then nods. “Yes. So if your head isn’t in the game, you should back out. I… I wouldn’t want you to get hurt.”
“You should want me to get hurt,” I point out. “I’m competing with you, remember?”
Zachary looks shocked. “That doesn’t mean… Leela, I could never hurt you. Are you saying that you want me to get hurt?”
I shake my head. “No, of course not. But I want to win. I need to win, Zachary.”
“For your moth
er.”
I nod. I wasn’t going to tell him about this, I try to remind myself, but that doesn’t make any difference now. I have to tell him. I have to tell someone. And Zachary might just be the only person who can understand.”
“She’s worse again,” I explain. “She was seeing things, talking to people… and she said something. Something I can’t explain. She’s talking about the circus being my destiny. About my having to get to the Center. About trying to keep me safe.”
For several seconds, Zachary doesn’t say anything. I wonder if he knows something he isn’t telling me. Something about my mother, or about what I’ve just told him. Something that will help to make sense of it.
Then he takes me in his arms, holding me tightly against him, his mouth so close to my ear that he barely needs to whisper. “I understand, Leela, but if you have to do this, then do it properly. Stop thinking about the outside world. Stop being distracted. Cut it off. Cut it all off and focus. If you don’t… I don’t want to think about what might happen.”
“Why are you giving me advice?” I ask. “Why do that when you want to win too?”
Zachary shrugs. “Because I don’t want to see you hurt. Why would I do anything else? Now, you should hurry and get ready. I saw the Svenkos waiting for us. We’re all doing the trapeze and the high wire tonight.”
The trapeze. I try not to think about what that means, but I can’t help it. It seems that my life is literally going to be in Zachary’s hands.
Chapter 18
Like the performance last night, the tent is filled to the brim with spectators, making enough noise as I walk out in a tiny silver and blue costume that I can barely wear. It seems from the big top floor that the entire town is here. I’d have thought that after last night, they might not have wanted to come, but they have.
They aren’t the only ones. There are a few spectators here and there who don’t look local. They don’t even look like they might be from one of the nearby towns, because they’re dressed very differently from anyone around here. Their clothes seem to have a more modern edge to them, and there’s a kind of urban formality to them that seems more at home in a city than in a small town like Sea Cliff. Maybe they’re from closer to the Center than us, because I guess that everything will be that little bit better the closer to the Center people get.
Dr. Dex seems to know them. At least, he goes around to them one by one, seeking them out in the stands, exchanging a few words with each of them before he comes down into the ring to make the announcements.
“Last night, you saw our candidates performing with fire and steel,” he says, his voice ringing out as some of the circus’ acrobatic clowns come out to start setting up equipment. “Tonight, you will see them defying gravity itself! Behold the high wire! The trapeze!”
That gets a roar of approval from the crowd and Dr. Dex gestures to the first of us to begin. It’s Ellis. His first performance of the evening involves climbing almost to the top of the tent, scrambling along the metal framework of it the way the clowns did on that first night so many days ago. By the time he gets there, the clowns have pulled a small pool of water into place between them.
Ellis lets go. He drops, falling perfectly, landing in the water with a splash that sends water flying out. If he’d missed the pool, he’d be dead. If he’s dived wrong, he might still be. But no, he stands up unsteadily, waving to the crowd as they cheer.
The others follow one by one. One of them performs as a human cannonball. Another has to do flips while being flung from a kind of giant seesaw. Then it’s my turn, and for the first part of it, I’m doing a solo routine on the long scarf, tethered to the ceiling only by that length of cloth. I wrap myself up in it and perform, trying to ignore the fact that for these performances, there isn’t any safety net. If I slip, if I get it wrong, I could die.
But I don’t, and I finally spin my way down to the ground to rapturous applause while the next competitor gets ready to perform. They succeed. We all succeed, so we go onto working in pairs. That seems dangerous. It would be so easy for one of us to drop another, just to eliminate the competition. I wouldn’t do it, but I’m betting there are others who would.
Which is one of the reasons I’m so glad to find out that I’m performing the trapeze act I worked on in practice with Zachary. We climb up to the top of the poles where the trapeze starts, and as I do it, I can hear Zachary’s voice in my head.
“Just trust me, Leela. Follow my voice. I won’t let you fall.”
We swing back and forth, performing tricks in the air, leaping to each other’s bars with the kind of precision that can only come from total concentration. I have to keep all my attention on Zachary, and I know his is on me. He swings upside down and I leap once more, the way we did in practice, hoping that he’ll make the catch as smoothly as he did then.
Something gleams in the crowd, something dazzlingly bright, blinding. It flashes into Zachary and my eyes, causing me to flinch. His hand slips through mine and I grab for him automatically, managing to fasten a hand around his wrist, hanging without a safety net, several feet above the hard ground.
Zachary’s face shows the strain of holding my entire weight with one hand, but his grip is every bit as tight as mine.
“Don’t let me go,” I whisper up to him. I know he needs to stay in the competition, that it would mean a great deal to him and his destiny, whatever he’s set out to do at the Center, but somehow, I know Zachary won’t let me fall. He could eliminate me right here now, and it would look like an accident. But when I look into his steely greyish blue eyes burning into mine, I see a determination, a fierceness that transcended any doubts I have. He won’t let me go.
He doesn’t. Instead, he reaches down with his other arm, grasping my hand while I arch my body to get the swing of the trapeze going again. We swing up and along, and I have to judge the moment perfectly. I do, letting go just when I need to in order to land back on the platform I started on. Zachary swings to his and we raise our hands high, trying to make it look like it was what we intended all along. The crowd cheers, so loud it’s almost a physical force. We climb down and I run to Zachary, kissing his cheek as he throws his arms around me, pulling me in close to hug and hold me, his hands in my hair. Our cheeks are touching, and I can see how worried Zachary looked, how relieved he is that we’ve made it. That gets another cheer.
Banford and Sandy go next, climbing up to where the high wire is set up. It seems like such a bad choice of pairing, but the two step out onto the wire confidently, almost aggressively, like they’re continuing some kind of argument on it. They move along the wire, backwards and forwards, and then Banford reaches out to attempt some kind of lift with Sandy.
Sandy pulls away from him. At least, that’s what I think she does, and as she does so, she loses her footing. She reaches up for Banford, but the football player isn’t as fast to grab for her as Zachary was with me. She falls. I close my eyes. I can’t watch that. I know it’s over when the crowd gasp collectively and there is a scream.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Dr. Dex says, hurrying into the ring, while his clowns rush in to remove Sandy. “It seems that our show is over for the evening. We hope you will come back for our next performance, to see how your favorite performers will fare.”
I know what he means. He’s practically daring people to come back to see who will be hurt next. I hurry over to the clowns hauling Sandy out. She’s unconscious, but I think I can see the rise and fall of her chest.
“How is she?” I demand.
One of the clowns, the woman who dropped on top of the human pyramid, shrugs. “After a fall like that? The girl probably broke every bone she has. She’ll be lucky if she walks again. Why do you care? You’re through this performance, aren’t you?”
I want to rush out of there then, but the spectators are still filing out. The last ones to go are those strange, oddly dressed people, one of whom nods to Dr. Dex. I’m still thinking about Sandy. I’ve talked to her, I knew her,
and now… it could have been me. It so nearly was me. If I’d fallen… if I’d fallen, they would have stopped the show then, and she wouldn’t have been hurt.
I hear Zachary’s voice in my mind. “I think she might survive, Leela. Her legs and her ribs are broken, but the rest… she was lucky.”
I don’t ask how he knows. I just shudder. It’s all too close.
Zachary is there beside me then. He puts a hand on my shoulder. “Come on, let’s go. We should get out of here and celebrate.”
“Celebrate?” The last thing I want to do is celebrate.
“We’ll celebrate that we got through. We’ll celebrate that it isn’t us, and we’ll celebrate that nobody died. With this place, I think it’s the best we can hope for.”
I start to shake my head, but Zachary takes my hand. “You said yes before to coming to my party. Well, we’re holding it a little earlier. Tonight, in fact. I guess my parents want to get it in before…”
“Before anything can happen,” I say.
Zachary nods. “Please come. I want someone there who understands. No. I want you there.”
“How can you hold a party when Sandy just…”
Zachary shrugs. “Because we need this. Because if we don’t find some way to forget about it, it will eat us up.”
“Because we need to live our lives while we still have some left?” I suggest.
Zachary smiles. “Exactly.”
I go to get changed, and he’s waiting for me when I come out. He takes my hand and starts to lead the way out of the tent.
“Wait,” I say. “I’ll have to tell Thomas and Mason where I’m going.”
