Harley in the Sky

by Akemi Dawn Bowman

  “I know you’re being sarcastic, but it’s true.”

  I shake my head. “I have to go.”

  “Okay,” she says.

  I tap the screen, and the second her name disappears, something changes. By the time I reach my trailer, most of the heat has left my face.

  I want to be angry at her. Because she’s wrong, and I don’t deserve the way she’s treating me. Like I’ve done something wrong. Like what I’m doing is wrong.

  But in the quiet, when I can’t hear the hurt in her voice, my anger feels like a kindling burdened by rain, too damp to catch fire.

  Burdened by the things Chloe said—the parts that might even be true.

  Because I do forget about her when I’m busy. Not on purpose, but it happens. I get so caught up in the frenzy of whatever I’m focused on that texting my best friend just takes a back seat.

  The worst thing about people being a little bit right is that sometimes when you tug that one tiny thread, what starts to unravel looks a whole lot like more truths.

  But right now, there’s too much going on. I don’t have the emotional resilience to unpack whatever it is Chloe is trying to tell me.

  Some truths are better left tangled and distorted.

  Because if I can’t see them clearly, I can pretend that none of them really exist at all.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Vivien’s shriek sends an ache through my ears. When I spin around, I see her and Dexi in the doorway, clouded in smoke.

  I wave the dishcloth at the air frantically, trying to push some of the clouds from the room. “I’m sorry—it was an accident.”

  “What is that smell?” Dexi presses the back of her hand to her mouth and coughs, waving her other hand in the air and running to the back of the trailer to throw open the rest of the windows.

  Vivien peers into the kitchen sink, where a tray of burnt food sits abandoned, too ambiguously charred for her to make out. “Is it dead?” she asks with widened eyes and a goofy smile on her face.

  I’m still waving smoke through the open doorway. “I was trying to make you guys brownies.” Embarrassment washes over me.

  Dexi appears with a towel and tries to coax the smoke toward the windows. “Are you sure? Because it kind of looks like you were trying to burn the trailer down.”

  Vivien glances nervously at the microwave. “Did you remember to turn it off grill mode?”

  “What the heck is grill mode?” I ask like I’m in pain.

  Dexi shakes her head. Vivien stifles a giggle.

  “Come on,” Vivien says. “We’ll leave the door open and wait for the smoke to clear.”

  The three of us plant ourselves in the grass out front. Every single person who walks past us freezes in concern when they see our trailer, which makes sense, being as it looks like a giant fog machine on wheels. But then they spot me, wedged between Dexi and Vivien, a look of deep remorse plastered on my face. It’s enough to make their concern fade.

  “You know they make brownies at the Lunch Box, right?” Dexi eyes me suspiciously.

  “I know,” I say. “But I wanted to make them myself. It was supposed to be like a thank-you present. You know—for being so nice to me.”

  I was trying to make an effort. I wanted to prove I wasn’t a terrible friend.

  Vivien wraps her arm around my shoulder and squeezes. “Aww, Harley!” She pauses. “Maybe just a good old-fashioned card next time, though, huh?”

  Dexi snorts. “Or some new batteries for the smoke detector.”

  Vivien nods. “Yeah. We really need to get that fixed.”

  I fold my arms over my knees and hide my face. I feel like I’m ruining everything. I’m a bad friend when I don’t make an effort, and I make things worse when I try too hard.

  How do people find a balance?

  Is it this hard for other people to maintain basic friendships?

  “We were only kidding,” Vivien says gently. “It’s really not that big of a deal.”

  Dexi nudges me with her shoulder. “Yeah. I like you even better now that I know you’re a low-key pyromaniac.”

  I lift my head and scrunch my face at the sunlight. I start to speak, but my eyes snap toward the nearby crew members pointing and whispering like we’re exotic fish in an aquarium.

  “Move along,” Dexi barks protectively.

  “What happened?” one of them calls back anyway.

  “We’re steam-cleaning, obviously!” Vivien shouts.

  The crew members look at each other and shrug before walking away.

  Vivien rolls her eyes. “So nosy.” She looks at me and grins. “You were saying?”

  My smile feels heavy. “I wanted a fresh start because I felt like my parents weren’t being supportive, but now that I’m here—I don’t know. It feels like I can’t start over, because everyone else is still holding on to the past. And I just want to move on and be happy.” I shake my head. “I don’t know why that’s so hard for everyone else to see.”

  Vivien and Dexi exchange glances.

  “This is about more than friendship brownies, isn’t it?” Vivien asks.

  I laugh. “I guess I’m tired. I feel like whenever I’m trying really hard at something, nobody ever notices. They just point out all the things they think I’m not trying hard enough at. It makes me feel like I can never do enough to make everyone happy.” I tap my fingers against my knee. “Also, I think sometimes I can be a really crappy friend when I don’t mean to be.”

  Vivien shrugs, tucking her dark curls behind her ear. “Maybe what you think is being a crappy friend is just you outgrowing a friendship. Sometimes that happens, and it’s nobody’s fault.”

  I think about Chloe. It’s always been the two of us, for as long as I can remember. I never imagined a day when we’d stop being friends. I didn’t think we’d ever grow apart.

  “Is it still outgrowing each other if neither of us wants to stop being friends?” I ask.

  “All relationships take work—even the non-romantic ones,” Vivien offers.

  Dexi flicks the grass with a slender finger, her nails painted the color of black cherries. “But at the same time, if someone is making you feel bad about yourself… Well, there’s a difference between a friend who is just being honest with you and one that’s negatively affecting you. If you’re spending more time arguing than just being friends, then I think that’s usually a pretty good sign that a relationship is less than healthy.”

  “Unless you both like arguing,” Vivien notes. And when Dexi makes a face at her, she adds, “What? Everyone is different, right? You just have to make sure you’re both on the same page. That you’re both okay with the terms of the friendship.”

  I nod. “That makes sense.”

  “If it makes you feel better, lots of people notice how hard you try,” Vivien says with a smile.

  I sigh, letting my knees drop to the grass. “It still doesn’t make anybody want to be my friend.”

  “Oh, come on,” Dexi says. “Even you must’ve noticed it’s not as bad as it was when you first got here.”

  I’m trying to think of the last time someone ignored me, or pretended they couldn’t see me, or ran in the opposite direction when they saw me approaching.

  And the truth is, I can’t remember when it was.

  I’ve been so busy training and worrying about my parents and Chloe that I hadn’t noticed there was a change.

  Slowly, without even realizing it, I stopped being the new girl.

  I notice his leather boots first, and when I look up at Vas—dressed in gray and black even though it’s September in Arkansas—he’s peering down at us like we’re the neighborhood kids who’ve egged his car.

  “Is everyone okay?” His voice scratches like sandpaper.

  Vivien flashes her teeth and points her thumb in the air. “All good here. Harley was trying to cremate some brownies, that’s all.”

  Vas’s green eyes fall on me. “Was there a fire?”

  It takes me a sec
ond to remember myself. “No,” I say finally, shaking my head to be clear. “Just a lot of smoke.”

  “I didn’t hear the alarm go off,” he says, and I realize that what sounds like stiffness is actually concern.

  “The batteries died in our smoke detector,” Vivien says with a sigh.

  Vas frowns. “Do you have any spares?”

  “Nope,” Dexi says, squinting from the sunlight. “They’ve been dead since the last time we almost had a fire and you lectured us about the importance of fire safety.”

  “So you haven’t had batteries for seven months?” he asks, lifting his brow.

  Dexi clicks her tongue. “Correct.”

  Vas shakes his head and walks back to his trailer without another word, returning with a box of AA batteries and a scowl on his face. He disappears into our trailer, and a few minutes later the alarm sounds for a brief second. When he steps back onto the grass, he’s holding an empty box.

  “Thanks, Vas. You’re the best,” Vivien says in a singsong voice.

  “The best,” Dexi repeats.

  Vas clenches his jaw, shakes his head, and wanders off without a word.

  Vivien and Dexi laugh beside me, but all I can think is how even if the rest of the circus has started to look at me differently, there’s one person who has been the exact same since day one.

  And even though I shouldn’t care what a boy thinks—especially when I have a trillion other things going on—the thought of Vas truly seeing me sends sparks through my bloodstream.

  Shreveport, Louisiana October—Week 7

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  I have vegetable korma, rice, and peshwari naan for lunch, along with an enormous glass of water. People always talk about drinking eight glasses a day, but I think I’m the only person I know who actually does it. Because if I don’t hydrate, I’ll wake up in the middle of the night with the most painful leg cramps in the history of the universe. Seriously, Wolverine probably went through less pain when they bonded his bones with adamantium.

  Dexi told me bananas help too, so now I eat one first thing every morning. The Lunch Box has a whole crate of them that never seems to run out.

  Vivien plucks at her own meal—boiled rice with grilled chicken, steamed spinach, and carrots. “I think my favorite things in the South are deep-fried Oreos.”

  Dexi pretends to gag, and I scrunch my nose.

  “Gross,” we both say.

  Vivien narrows her eyes at us. “I bet neither of you have even tried it.”

  “I don’t need to, the same way I have no interest in tasting cyanide.” Dexi blows gently at her ginger tea, scattering the rising heat. “You don’t have to try something to know you don’t like it.”

  “I thoroughly disagree,” Jin scoffs, falling into the empty space beside Dexi. His bowl of curry lands with a thud on the table. “I try everything once. Some things twice. And some things I know I don’t like, but I try them again anyway because who says you can’t change your mind?”

  “I swear to God, if you’re talking about sex—” Vivien is already rolling her eyes and she hasn’t even finished her sentence.

  “I’m talking about food, you perv,” Jin corrects. “Though, to be clear, it works in any scenario.”

  I laugh before realizing how strange it is for Jin to be sitting here of his own accord. Normally I’m like a social land mine—wherever I am, nobody will be.

  “What, did your latest hookup end in disaster, or is there a more garbage reason as to why you’re sitting with us again?” Dexi challenges. I guess I’m not the only one who thinks it’s weird.

  “Yeah, traitor,” Vivien barks. “Doesn’t Maggie have you under strict orders not to associate with us as long as we’re friends with Harley?”

  My skin prickles. It’s the first time any of them have said out loud what I’ve known all this time. That Maggie wasn’t just trying to turn people against me—she was straight up telling people they weren’t allowed to talk to me.

  Because she wanted me to feel isolated.

  Jin laughs easily, like he’s incapable of feeling cornered. “Maggie’s had her fun for long enough. Besides, I don’t take orders from her.” He looks at me seriously. “It wasn’t personal. Some of us just don’t like to get too attached to the feeder fish.”

  I frown, but Vivien leans in with an explanation. “He’s talking about the people who turn up thinking the circus is going to be some kind of magical party, and then get eaten alive by reality a few weeks later.”

  “In other words, he’s being rude.” Dexi scowls.

  “No,” Jin says. “I’m being honest. Are you two seriously going to tell me Harley didn’t scream of wide-eyed naivete when she first turned up?” He flattens a hand on the table. “But everyone gets things wrong sometimes, and in this case, I was very wrong. I’m sorry for assuming you didn’t have it in you.” His words morph into laughter. “I hear you’ve been training every night in the big top. Sometimes until almost midnight. You’re a fighter, which is a good thing to be around here.”

  My stomach twists up and over and under, like taffy being pulled apart and pushed together again. “Did Vas tell you that?” For weeks it’s felt like our untouchable secret. I’m not sure I like our late-night rehearsals being common knowledge.

  “Vas? Not a chance. I’ve known that guy for years, and believe me when I say he has as many secrets as a cat has lives.” Jin shovels a bite of food into his mouth.

  “So he has nine secrets? That’s… oddly specific,” Dexi says blankly. When Jin looks confused, she sighs. “Never mind.”

  Jin shakes his head while he chews, looking at me. “No, I heard it from the many little birds who’ve seen you walking from the big top to your trailer at all hours of the night.”

  “Wait”—Vivien stiffens, hazel eyes pinned to mine—“are you and Vas hooking up?”

  My cheeks blossom carnation-pink at the suggestion, words wanting to come out in rapid fire but getting all mixed up on the tip of my tongue.

  It’s not true. Of course it’s not true.

  So why is it so hard for me to say the words?

  Jin’s laugh breaks apart my tangled thoughts like a sword slashing through a web of vines. “The only thing he’s in love with is his violin.” He leans into Dexi. “And I know you’re about to make a joke about him not being interested in me, and me being bitter, but I’m telling you—he spends all of his time with his music. And I’ve seen plenty of girls try to flirt with him over the years, and they don’t have any more luck than I do.”

  “He’s right,” I say, the words almost tart. “There’s nothing going on between me and Vas. We spend the entire time practicing, separately. We don’t say a word to each other.” When everyone makes a face like they don’t believe me, I add, “I’m serious. He says he doesn’t like small talk.”

  Dexi laughs in disbelief. Jin looks sideways, like he’s saying, I told you so.

  Vivien frowns, leaning her brown cheek onto her palm the way Popo always urged me not to. Not that Vivien needs to worry. Her complexion is flawless. It’s kind of unfair. “If you needed someone to train with, why didn’t you ask one of us?” She motions between her and Dexi.

  I shrug. “I didn’t want to bother you. I mean, you were the only two people who would talk to me. The last thing I wanted to do was make you feel like I was using you for something.”

  “That’s very noble,” Jin says, swallowing another mouthful of curry.

  “It’s the Hufflepuff,” Vivien whispers, winking at me.

  Dexi raises a brow, her lip quirking up like she’s almost smiling. “You keep doing what you’re doing, and the rest of the troupe will come around. You’ll see.”

  Vivien nods enthusiastically.

  And I want to believe them, because belonging is so very important to me, but I also know they’re wrong. Because “the rest of the troupe” means everyone. Even Maggie.

  I’m not sure there’s anything I can do to make Maggie like me. And after t
he welcome she gave me over the last few weeks, I’m not sure I want her to, anyway.

  But everyone else?

  Maybe there’s something there worth hoping for.

  To: FlightOfTheRedPanda@gmail.com

  From: Delilah.Milano@teatrodellanotte.com

  Subject: The time you spent a night away

  You were seven. Your dad and I were so busy with the company that we were worried you’d start to feel neglected. We thought you were old enough to spend a weekend at Popo’s house without us. We thought it might feel like an adventure. But you cried from the moment we put our shoes on and stepped out the door, and you didn’t stop for hours. I think that was frustrating for Popo—not being able to calm you down. Having to admit defeat.

  We picked you up the next morning and brought you to work with us. And that’s when I realized you weren’t upset about being away from your dad and me—you were upset that you were missing rehearsals. You spent the whole day in the skyrise, watching the flyers and the aerialists, and you had this look on your face that I’ll never forget. It was like you were glowing.

  I knew then how much you loved the circus. I’ve always known. And I’m not trying to dim your glow, Harley. In my own way, I’m trying to protect it.

  I know you don’t always trust me. And I know I don’t always do the right thing. But to me, you’re still that seven-year-old girl in the skyrise. A little light so desperate to shine.

  But I know you better than you think I do. You burn fast and bright, and then you burn out.

  And the last thing I want is for you to burn out. Not again.

  I hope you’re taking care of yourself. I hope you’d call me if you weren’t.

  Love, Mom

  Not again.

  Why can’t anyone see this is nothing like November?

  I’m happy. I’m trying to be happy.

  Maybe Chloe is only half right about me ignoring the people I care about when I get busy. Maybe I just don’t want to keep in touch with people who don’t understand what I’m trying to do.

  Because I’m trying. Here, at Maison du Mystère.

  If they don’t want to understand that, then maybe it’s not that I’m burning out—maybe I’m burning fast and bright and away.