Wiped Clean
Claude’s long, skinny legs moved fast, and Bertie had to jog to keep up as they made their way to the Big Top. Bertie cleared his throat. He had a question to ask his uncle, and he knew just how much his uncle hated his questions. “Uncle Claude?” he began.
“Hmm?” Claude murmured. He was mumbling to himself about money—probably what they’d make at their next show—and Bertie couldn’t tell if he was even listening.
“I was wondering,” Bertie continued, raising his voice to try to get his attention, “if you put my wages away for me this month?”
“Of course I did,” Claude spit out. Under his breath, he muttered, “Seven hundred and ten dollars, seven hundred and thirty dollars, seven hundred and sixty dollars . . .”
“And do you think,” Bertie pressed, “that one day soon I’ll have earned enough to visit my mom?”
Stopping short, Claude spun around, grabbing Bertie’s shoulders. He shook them hard, his fingers digging into his skin. “Didn’t I say I’d tell you when you had enough?” Claude snapped.
Bertie nodded. “Yes, but—”
“Then,” Claude said coldly, cutting him off. “That’s your answer.” Pushing Bertie aside, he took off for the Big Top, his long legs kicking up dust behind him.
Bertie took a deep breath. Yes, Uncle. That was what he was supposed to say; he knew that. But Bertie had turned ten last month; that marked five years since he’d first gone on the road with the circus. And the longer he was there, the harder it became to stay quiet. If only he could remember more about his past! Then maybe he’d know the right questions to ask his uncle. But the accident that had stolen his dad from him had stolen Bertie’s memories as well—wiped him clean.
He could summon just the vaguest images of his parents: his mom’s long red braid, his dad’s bright blue eyes, the way they would both ruffle his hair before bed. He barely even remembered the accident itself—just the heat and the way the fire had come out of nowhere, turning his world upside down and inside out and never the same again.
When he was about seven, Claude had finally told him the story of the accident. They’d been on a drive in Claude’s brand-new motorcar: Claude, Bertie, and Bertie’s father, who was Claude’s brother. But halfway through the drive, something went wrong. The car began to hiss and shake, and suddenly they were veering off the road, straight into a tree. Bertie was thrown from the motorcar, his head smashing against the ground. Claude managed to get out, but Bertie’s father was trapped. And then the car went up in flames.
When his dad died, something broke inside his mom, something that couldn’t be put back together again. So Claude sent her off to that hospital, and then he took his circus—and Bertie—on the road. “You’re just lucky you didn’t wind up in an orphanage, boy,” he liked to tell Bertie. “Little boys get eaten alive in orphanages.”
Whenever Bertie asked about visiting his mom, Claude reminded him just how expensive it would be. “Maybe if you didn’t waste so much time sleeping at night, you’d finally have enough money,” he told him. So month after month, year after year, Bertie had worked until his hands blistered and his back ached. And still, he never had enough.
Throwing back his shoulders, Bertie jogged after Claude. “Uncle,” he called out, refusing to let a tremble creep into his voice. “When exactly do you think it will be?”
Claude stopped in his tracks. Slowly, he turned around. This time, he didn’t yell, he didn’t grab Bertie, he didn’t shake him. He just looked at him, his eyes cold and steely. “You are never,” Claude said slowly, “ever to talk back to me.” He took a step forward, closing the space between them. His hands were trembling at his sides. Bertie’s heart began to pound. “Unless,” Claude continued, “you’d like to spend a few more days in that cabinet. Understood?”
Bertie dropped his eyes. The memory of the cabinet surged through him like an electric shock, setting every one of his nerves on edge. “Yes, Uncle,” he whispered.
“That’s what I thought.” Grabbing Bertie by the nose, Claude pulled him toward the Big Top. “Now hurry up, boy. You have work to do.”
Chapter Eighteen
Rabbits Don’t Wear Bows
Bertie counted to ten over and over in his head as Claude dragged him toward the Big Top, but the numbers did little to quell his anger. Five years was a long time not to see his mom. In five years he’d grown to twice his height, his freckles had multiplied, his red hair had darkened. Soon, she might not even recognize him anymore.
“Pick up the pace,” Claude barked, giving Bertie’s nose a hard yank. “We’ve got an important show coming up.” Bertie wondered briefly what was so important about it, but he quickly brushed the thought aside. There was probably a purveyor of cocoa coming to the show, and Claude was hoping for a free refill for his urn. He counted silently to ten again, shoving his anger deep down inside him.
“No, no, no!” Claude’s sharp tone made Bertie look up. Claude had his eyes trained on one of the caravans. Susan was out front, stretching in her shimmery blue leotard and skirt. “She’s going to ruin her costume,” Claude seethed. “And if she thinks I’m going to buy her another one . . . well, she is sorely mistaken.” Pinching Bertie’s nose, he dragged him toward Susan.
“What are you doing, girl?” he spat out when he reached her. Bertie could feel his cheeks heating up as Susan’s light brown eyes traveled from him to Claude and back again.
“I just thought—” she began.
“Well, don’t,” Claude cut in. “I didn’t bring you here to think. I brought you here to perform. Now go practice inside your caravan, where the dust and the dirt and the”—he cringed—“nature won’t ruin your costume.”
“Yes, Master Magnificence,” Susan said softly. But she stared unflinchingly at Claude as she spoke, and Bertie got the sense she wished she was saying something else altogether. Bertie could feel his eyes crinkling up with the tiniest of smiles, and he quickly looked down at the ground before anyone could see it.
“Come on, boy.” With a final glower in Susan’s direction, Claude yanked Bertie toward the Big Top. But as Bertie stumbled after him, he couldn’t help but glance over his shoulder, just in time to see Susan disappearing into her caravan.
* * *
Susan waited until the door to her caravan was firmly shut behind her before letting out a loud groan. It had taken all her strength not to kick Master Magnificence right in his velvet-covered shins. She wondered what Bertie would have done if she had. For a second, before he’d looked down, she could have sworn she’d seen a flash of amusement in his eyes, almost as if he’d known what she was thinking. But maybe it was just her imagination.
With another groan, she headed into her tiny sleeping compartment, pulling the curtain shut behind her. If Claude didn’t want her practicing outside, then she wouldn’t practice at all. Kneeling down, she reached under her burlap sack bed, feeling around for her paint set. Earlier today she’d found an almost completely clean napkin in the trash, and she’d been itching to paint on it ever since. But as she pulled her paint set out, it wasn’t the napkin that came out with it. It was a photo, the photo, the one she’d found tucked away in the pocket of her coat on her very first night at the circus.
Susan blinked as she stared down at the square of paper. A man and a woman stared back at her. The man was smiling so wide you could see the tooth missing in the back of his mouth, and the woman was looking up at him with the same light brown eyes that Susan had, her blond hair tumbling over her shoulders. Susan shoved the photo of her parents back under her bed. Every time she looked at it, she could hear Claude’s voice in her head. They didn’t want you anymore, Susan. Little girls are too expensive for poor farmers like your parents.
Susan took a deep breath. Thinking about her parents, about home, made everything seem darker, like someone had taken a pen and colored over the sun. She reached bac
k under the bed, fishing around for the napkin. There was only one way she knew to beat back that darkness. Opening the napkin on her lap, she pulled out her paintbrush. An image of that dog—Rigby, she’d heard one of the Lloyds call him—flashed through her mind. She knew exactly what she wanted to paint.
* * *
Over in the Big Top, Smalls, Rigby, Tilda, and Wombat were being led into the ring in chains. “That chain was ruining my fur,” Tilda sulked as Lloyd freed her. She twisted her head around, trying to catch a glimpse of her back. “Be honest, Wombat. How bad is the damage?” Wombat just gave her a gentle nudge in response.
With a sigh, Smalls shook out his paws. Lloyd had wrapped the chains around them so tightly that pins and needles had started to prickle through his legs.
Over by the door, Loyd and Lloyd had their heads bent together. “You know what I’ve been wondering, Loyd?” Smalls heard Lloyd ask.
“I do know, Lloyd,” Loyd replied solemnly. “Because I’ve been wondering it too. What exactly makes all these lights light up?”
Loyd and Lloyd looked up at the tent’s ceiling, where thousands of tiny bright bulbs were strung. “Maybe they’re actually bottled stars,” Lloyd said thoughtfully.
“Or maybe,” Loyd replied excitedly, “there’s a firefly glowing inside every one of them!”
“Yes,” Lloyd agreed. “That sounds exactly right.” Suddenly, he blinked. “But that wasn’t what I was wondering, Loyd.”
Loyd scrunched up his forehead. “Then what, Lloyd?”
Lloyd walked over to Tilda. “I was wondering,” he said, “what that red thing on top of the rabbit’s head is.”
Tilda looked up sharply. “Thing?” she sputtered. “That thing is my bow! Made of genuine red silk!” She looked over at Wombat, who was busy trying unsuccessfully to burrow a hole in the tent’s velvet floor. “Tell them, Wombat.”
“Genuine red silk,” he agreed. “Found by yours truly in the apple orchard. And Tilda, it’s Fred now.”
“It looks like a bow,” Loyd said, ignoring the squeaks and grunts coming from Wombat and Tilda. “But rabbits don’t wear bows!”
The twins looked at each other worriedly. “We should probably get rid of it before Boss sees,” Lloyd said.
Bending down, Loyd tore the bow out of Tilda’s fur. “There,” he said, tossing it into a trash can next to the row of seats. “Problem solved.”
“My bow!” Tilda screeched. As Wombat rushed to her side, Loyd and Lloyd smiled proudly at each other.
“What would Boss do without us?” Loyd asked.
“He’d be lost,” Lloyd replied. “That’s for sure.”
Chapter Nineteen
Fire Sticks
Claude opened the door to the Big Top, shoving Bertie inside. Bertie rubbed at his nose as he stumbled forward. For a man whose most physical act of the day was lifting his jug of cocoa, Claude sure had a strong grip. Bertie glanced toward the ring to where the new animals were waiting. They were all gathered around Tilda the rabbit, who was squeaking loudly.
Claude grabbed his arm and began spitting out instructions. “We’ll bring the Lifers in later, but let’s focus on the new animals for now. They’ve got plenty to learn. Lloyd, you take the bear,” he ordered. “Loyd, that leaves you with the rest of them. I, as always, will supervise.”
As always, Bertie mimicked in his head. Since I, Claudius Magnificence, would never dare lift a finger myself!
“Did you say something, boy?” Claude asked, looking down at him coldly.
“No, Uncle,” Bertie said quickly.
Claude narrowed his eyes at him. “Go get my little friend, Wilson,” he snapped. “I left it in the supply caravan.”
Bertie nodded, hurrying out of the Big Top. He blew out a long breath as Claude’s voice faded into the distance. Up ahead, he could see the supply caravan. Just like all the other caravans, it had probably been magnificent once, red and shiny and gilded. But now it was caked in so much dust and dirt, it was nearly brown. A few feet down, the Nilling cousins were practicing their act on the dusty ground. One by one, they climbed onto each other’s shoulders—until they’d built a human tower five Nillings high. Bertie paused, watching as the top Nilling flipped into the air, making three full rotations before landing gracefully on her feet.
Pushing his baseball cap off his forehead, Bertie climbed into the supply caravan. It was stuffed to the gills—filled with trapezes and curtains, stilts and tight ropes, tickets and juggling balls, hula hoops and unicycles, costumes and wigs—so it took him a minute to find Wilson. The stick looked like it always did: long and lean, the silver end shiny and curved. When Bertie first saw it, he’d thought it was a cane. Then he’d noticed the sharp tip at the very end.
Out of the corners of his eyes, Bertie could see that awful cabinet he’d spent days in, but he refused to look over at it. Holding tightly to Wilson, he jumped down from the caravan and hurried back to the Big Top. But when he pulled the door to the tent open, he froze in place. In just a few minutes’ time, the ring of the Big Top had turned into a disaster zone.
In the front of the ring, Loyd was trying to teach Tilda, Wombat, and Rigby their tricks all at once. But instead of balancing on a beach ball, Rigby flopped onto his stomach. Instead of walking across a tightrope, Wombat tumbled to the ground. And instead of leaping into a top hat, Tilda somehow landed underneath it. But that wasn’t what drew a gasp from Bertie.
Sitting in the center of the ring was a hoop of fire. Lloyd was standing in front of it, holding six flaming sticks in his hands. “No,” Bertie whispered. Claude couldn’t be teaching the new animals to use fire sticks already! Could he? As Lloyd tossed one of the fire sticks into the air, Bertie got his answer.
“Go!” Lloyd shouted at Smalls. “Catch the stick with your tongue!” Bertie’s heart sank as he watched Smalls. Instead of leaping through the hoop and catching the fire stick in his mouth, he just stood there, his head cocked to the side as he stared at Lloyd. The stick hit the ground with a crack, sparks flying everywhere.
“Worthless bear,” Claude muttered, his face reddening. He paced along the edge of the ring, stroking furiously at his beard. Bertie’s palms grew sticky as they clung tightly to Wilson. The stick was dangerous on Claude’s best days. Thinking about what Claude might do with it now sent a cold shiver running down his spine.
Claude gnawed on a fingernail, spitting it out at Tilda, who had just managed to untangle herself from the top hat. It landed on her back, sinking instantly into her downy white fur. She let out a strangled squeal as she began frantically trying to shake it out. Ignoring her, Claude turned back to Lloyd. “Again,” he ordered.
This time, Lloyd gave Smalls a hefty kick in the backside. With a growl, Smalls leapt forward, flying through the hoop. As Lloyd tossed the fire stick into the air above him, Smalls looked up, following it with his eyes. For a second, it looked like he might try to catch it. But as he landed on the ground, his back bumped against the hoop, setting a patch of fur on fire. Smalls howled wildly as he crashed to the ground, rolling back and forth to put out the flames. They’d just flickered out when the fire stick hurtled down on top of him, landing with a sizzle on his paw. Claude covered his ears as Smalls let out another howl.
Noticing Bertie for the first time, Claude waved him over. “What are you waiting for, boy? Bring me Wilson! Clearly this bear needs it.”
Bertie nodded. But his feet suddenly felt chained to the ground. As hard as he tried, he couldn’t seem to move them. His uncle’s voice rang out in his head. Animals don’t have feelings! But when Bertie looked at Smalls, he was positive it wasn’t just pain he saw in the bear’s eyes, but sadness too.
Claude stalked over to Bertie. “Worthless,” he muttered, grabbing the stick away from him. Twirling it in his hands, he turned back to Smalls. “Now, where were we?”
Chapter Tw
enty
A Sultry Wink
Smalls hurt all over. His tongue was hot and singed, his shoulders smarted from all the spills he’d taken, and his back throbbed from all his burns. He felt like an old machine whose parts were breaking down, one by one. But it was worth it because somehow he’d managed to avoid Wilson.
When Claude had grabbed that stick out of Bertie’s hands, something inside Smalls, something old and ancient and wild, had told him he didn’t want to see what that stick could do. So he’d done everything in his power to avoid it. He’d leapt. He’d jumped. He’d scrambled. He’d ignored the pain searing through his tongue and soared through the flames, catching fire stick after fire stick.
Now, as Claude ordered Bertie to get more equipment from the supply caravan and Lloyd and Loyd brought the Lifers in for their training, Smalls collapsed in the back of the ring, desperate for a break. Lord Jest came in first, the chains around his legs rattling as he lumbered into the ring. He shot Smalls and the others a nasty look as he passed them. The rest of the Lifers followed him, chained together in a single-file line. The lions, Hamlet and Juliet, were at the front. According to the brief introduction Smalls had gotten during their morning slop, Hamlet was the younger sibling, but he was larger, with thick paws and a dark, wild mane around his face. Juliet was fairer, with tawny muscles and silky fur the color of spun gold. Behind them was Buck, a zebra with snow-white hair and oily black stripes. Last came May, a thin, brown monkey with a hunched back and fur that had gone white around the nose.
As Lloyd and Loyd began unchaining the Lifers, Buck looked right at Tilda and lowered one of his eyelids in a sultry wink.
“Um, Tilda?” Wombat said slowly. At the sound of an um coming from Wombat’s mouth, Smalls, Rigby, and Tilda all whipped around to look at him. It was a rare moment when Wombat was anything less than fastidious about his choice of words. “Did that zebra just wink at you?”
The Daring Escape of the Misfit Menagerie Page 7
