Circus Summer (Circus of Curiosities Book 1) (16 page)

            I shake my head. “No, of course not. But I want to win. I need to win, Zachary.”

            “For your mother.”

            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

L
ike 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.”

            “Relax,” Zach reaches out to touch my chin. “They’re invited too.”

            “But I still have to…” Thomas is walking up to us with Mason right behind him.

            “Leela,” Thomas rushes forward. “When I saw you fall…”

            He reaches out for my hand, and I feel Zachary stiffen as he does.

            “I’m fine,” I say.

            “Fine and going to my graduation party,” Zachary adds. “You’re both welcome to come.”

            “You think I’d go anywhere with you after what you pulled?” Thomas demands in an angry tone. “You deliberately nearly let Leela drop. I bet you only caught her again so it would make you the favorite with the crowd.”

            “I didn’t deliberately slip,” Zachary insists in an equally angry tone. “Whatever you think of me, and I know what you think when it comes to Leela, I wouldn’t do that.”

            “You slipped, and you’ve got every reason to let her fall.”

 “But he didn’t,” I point out.

            That makes Thomas look, if anything, even angrier. “You’re trusting him now?”

            “I have to,” I say. “Working with him is the best way to survive here, Thomas.”

            “Really?” Thomas glares at Zachary. “So, why did you slip?”

            “Someone flashed a light in my eyes.”

            “I saw that,” I say. “Did you see where it came from?”

            “One from the oddly dressed crowd, I think,” Zachary says. He doesn’t look comfortable about it. “I think they must have something to do with the Center. You saw the way Dex was with them.”

            That’s what I thought about them too. “Why would they come here, though?” I ask.

            “I think they probably come to every performance,” Zachary says. “I’ve seen them though… in visions.”

            Visions. “I need to talk to you, Zachary,” I say. “About my mother.”

            Despite Thomas being there, Zachary takes me into his arms. “It’s okay, Leela. I know. She was having visions before she fell.”

            So she’s not crazy, but really seeing people? I don’t know how he knows that, and I don’t get the chance to ask, because Dr. Dex heads over to us then.

“Leela, Zachary, good performance tonight. The crowd loved your ‘young couple in love’ act. Keep it up and you could go far.”

“It won’t be hard to pretend,” Zachary says, slipping an arm around my waist.

Dr. Dex smiles. “Good. Very good. Even our… visitors ate that one up. Particularly the part where you only just caught her.”

Zachary’s fingers intertwine with mine. “I plan on continuing to catch her as long as I can.”

            Dr. Dex laughs. “Go home and celebrate graduation, or whatever it is you were going to do.”

            He adds that like he doesn’t already know. I doubt there’s much he doesn’t know around the circus. He walks off and Zachary steps back from me, looking at Mason and Thomas.