The Cirque (15 page)

“Look, I’ve moved on, Ari. It’s time you did too,” he said, helping Hope into her jacket.

They walked away holding hands. Dmitri succeeded in presenting me as a psycho ex-girlfriend to ensure Hope wouldn’t believe me.

Dmitri continued to push the limits. He openly pursued Hope and taunted me as if he wanted to provoke a reaction from Gabriel. I knew I had to do something before this all blew up. Dmitri was like a savage animal and once he smelled the meat, he wouldn’t stop until he devoured it.

Hope sat at his table in the cafeteria, and since they were still hanging around together, I figured she hadn’t yet slept with him. Sasha and I were actively conspiring for ways to get Dmitri fired. But he was Del’s prized possession because of his aerial act, so we knew there was little chance of that happening.

Shane and I were ready for our first live performance that night. Del kept his word and placed us at the beginning, as a dramatic way to start the show. We stood, nervously holding hands behind the curtain. Gabriel stood behind me and his presence was calming. He placed his hand at the small of my back, barely touching me, yet the heat from his hand was enough to set off fireworks along my skin. It was strange how one small gesture from him instantly made me feel better. It was like he had finally stopped shutting me out and I didn’t want it to stop as abruptly as it started.

Our cue to go on was when the lights went black. I squeezed Shane’s hand and we ran for center stage in the darkness. When the spotlights came back up, Shane and I were in position. There was an excited energy to the opening of the show since there was no expectation for what the audience was about to see. Our act carried a special newness that the following acts couldn’t muster. I was about to burst with anticipation.

When our music started, I forgot everything else. I didn’t focus on the audience, or any specific movement, but I felt my body move – and Shane’s as an extension of mine. The routine flowed beautifully and at the end, I was drained and emotional for reasons I didn’t understand. The crowd erupted in cheers for us, and I fought back tears. Sasha pulled me into a hug behind the curtain and told me she was proud of me.

I ran into Hope after her performance and grabbed her hand solemnly just as Dmitri began his approach. “Hey – be careful with him,” I warned. She nodded, a nervous tension on her face. Once she was out of my sight, I could barely breathe.

After the show I took a hot shower to relax and then lay with Gertie on Gabriel’s bed while he painted. Even though she had to be the world’s ugliest dog, she was starting to grow on me a tiny bit. I watched Gabriel work on a new painting as I lay tangled up in his sheets, which smelled deliciously like him. The scent of him made me want to distract him from his painting and make him come join me, but I also liked watching him work. And I didn’t want to push things too far with him since it seemed he was finally getting used to being my friend.

I didn’t ask about this painting, but knew it symbolized something in his life. It was a pair of hands raised in prayer with chains binding the wrists. It was gritty and realistic – you could see veins in the hands and dirt under the nails. It made my heart ache for him when I watched him paint. His face held a look of deep concentration like he had to get it right.

“I want to learn more about you,” I said twisting an unraveling thread from the blanket around my finger.

“Ask me something,” he said without looking up from the painting.

“What were you like in high school?”

He chuckled and cocked his head to the side, looking at me. “That’s what you want to know?”

“Why not?” I shrugged. “I think it says a lot about a person.”

“Hm.” He considered my question and turned back to his painting. “The teachers didn’t trust me – based on my appearance and background. I didn’t mind getting kicked out of class, though. I hung out in the library. Read pretty much every book they had.” A crooked smile escaped his lips as he remembered back. “I hated school, the structure of it, the authorities who acted like they cared, but really didn’t. Didn’t matter though, I lived to read. To escape into another world and forget who I was for an afternoon….” He trailed off.

I thought about the love stories I’d seen him read and wondered if he imagined himself in those stories. He didn’t strike me as particularly romantic, but he continually surprised me. “How come you read romance novels?”

He shrugged, lifting one shoulder then dropping it and for a second I worried he wasn’t going to respond. “I guess I’d like to think that’s out there. Love, passion like that. Happy endings.”

Wow. Stun me into speechlessness. I stared at him open mouthed, my mind processing this information.  Life had taught him
that happily-ever-afters were only for silly love stories, and that real life was more complicated than that, yet he still wanted to believe. My heart tripped in my chest.

“What were you like in high school?” He smirked, turning the question around on me.

“I never went to a regular high school. I moved away from home for dance school when I was twelve. For years it was the same thing every day. Every morning, I would warm up, then go to conditioning, and various dance classes, then on to strength training, and of course academic classes too. I used to feel robbed of the traditional high school experience…football games, prom, boyfriends, but now I don’t regret it as much.”

He looked over at me. “You’ve never had a boyfriend?” Of course that was the comment he latched onto, making me feel like a freak.

I shook my head. “Never even been on a date. I got a whole different kind of extracurricular education though,” I said, quickly changing the topic. He was quiet and waited for me to continue. “I got to see what I never wanted to become. Eating disorders and drugs to keep thin were almost the norm. We spent hours a day in skintight leotards in front of mirrors, which isn’t great for girls with body issues. You could actually count the ribs on some of the girls I danced with.”

I was quiet for a second remembering back to those days. “I knew girls who had to be taken away and hospitalized and fed intravenously. A girl in my class eventually had to stop dancing to avoid a relapse.”

“What about you? Ever have an eating disorder?” he asked looking over his shoulder at me.

“You’re just really uncovering all my weaknesses tonight, aren’t you?” I glanced at him from the corner of my eye. Gertie woke up and stretched and then curled up next to my legs. Her body was warm against my calf. “I guess I didn’t care enough to go to that extreme. I mean, I limited my intake, we all did…. But no, I never had a problem with it.”

“Why’d you do it, if it made you so miserable?” he asked.

I picked Gertie up and set her on my lap. She didn’t seem too happy about being moved, but stayed put. “Dancing was fun when I was young, but then it just became my job. It put strain on my relationship with my mom. She had trained to be a ballerina too, and was always criticizing, always pointing out what I was doing wrong, what I needed to do better. I guess I resented ballet for robbing me of a good relationship with my mom, from having a normal life. But then I was in too deep. It was all I knew, all I was and I didn’t know what else to do.”

“How do your parents feel about what you’re doing now?”

“They don’t know,” I said sheepishly.

“Let me guess…. They wouldn’t approve and that only makes you want this more,” he taunted.

“They would most assuredly not approve. No.”

“About which parts? Slumming it in a trailer, performing in a second rate circus or winding up with a guy with a ‘troubled past’?” He used air quotes.

I tried to act like I could brush off his comment about himself as my future boyfriend, but my stomach did a little flip. “Anything less than being a perfect ballerina, I suppose.”

He nodded, then turned back to focus on his painting.

“So, what? We’re going to be friends now?” I asked.

“Friends,” he said leaning over to offer me his hand. I placed my hand in his and his fingers reached all the way up to the underside of my wrist and rested there while my pulse thumped steadily at his touch. It was unlike any handshake I’d ever felt, clumsy and made me oddly aware of his body in relation to mine. I couldn’t deny that I had an unhealthy fascination with Gabriel, one that all common sense told me was wrong. But that boy was like crack – oh so bad for you, yet addicting as hell.

***

The next day we arrived in Colorado Springs. It was my first time out west, and the colors of the landscape were completely new to me. Instead of the greens I was used to back home, everything I saw was pink and red and sandy brown. The mountains were so beautiful I didn’t know how I’d lived this long without seeing anything as majestic. While the showgrounds were being set up, Sasha and I sat up on a hill a few hundred yards away, watching the crew work.

“Not a bad view, huh?” she said shielding her eyes from the sun. I thought she meant the mountains in the distance, but I followed her gaze down to the crew. She had a crush on one of the guys and watched him work shirtless, pounding a stake into the ground with a hammer. We sat there while all the stakes were driven in and the ropes were set taut, lifting the big top into the sky. Next, the trailers got lined up and leveled out.

These were the secrets of the circus kept from the patrons. They never saw the miles of ropes, chains and cables that stretched through the dirt, the generators powering our little city, and the unloading and set up of props, not to mention the cleaning of septic tanks. When t
hese locals showed up, all they would see was the magic. And magical it was – especially at night when thousands of twinkling lights caused the big top to glow in golden hues against the darkened sky.

I got up and dusted the dry earth off my jeans. “It’s too hot out here. I’m going to the trailer.”

“I think I’ll stay a bit longer and enjoy the view.” She smiled.

When I opened the door to our trailer, I’m not sure how, but I knew someone else had been in there. I looked around and spotted a note folded up on my pillow. I opened the paper.

I.O.U. one date. Meet me in an hour at the Jeep.

Gabriel

I smiled. Gabriel remembered that I’d never been on a date. I wasn’t sure what to wear or what kind of date this would be, but he didn’t strike me as the typical dinner-and-a-movie type of guy. I opted for jeans, a cream-colored ruffled tank top and my Converse sneakers. I brushed out my hair and put it in a low ponytail so the waves hung loosely down my back. I felt both nervous and excited for my first ever date.

I met Gabriel beside the Jeep as he set a backpack on the backseat. I was relieved to see he was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt.

“Are you ready for your first date?” he asked, smiling crookedly at me.

“That depends. Where are you taking me?” I didn’t care. I would go anywhere with him.

“Do you trust me?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Then get in.” He walked over to his side of the car and got in, leaving me standing by the side of the Jeep.

I hopped into the front seat. “So, what’s with the backpack?” I glanced to the backseat.

“We’re going hiking. To the Garden of the Gods,” he said, glancing over to see my reaction.

This was way better than any date at a restaurant, sitting awkwardly across from each other at the table, with me fretting over what to order and trying not to spill anything on myself.

“And in the backpack…I packed us a picnic,” he added.

I felt a surge build in my chest, a flame that burned with more insistence at every new thing he did for me, each new side he showed me. A boy had packed me a picnic. This was like pouring gasoline on the fire inside me, further fueling my hopes of being with Gabriel. I had
come here wanting to free fall for a while, definitely not wanting a relationship, but I couldn’t deny how I felt any longer.

I was quiet on the drive there, and Gabriel seemed content to look out the windows at the rocky hills and endless blue sky stretched out before us. After about fifteen minutes, he turned onto a dirt road and we wound slowly into the forest. We came to an empty gravel parking lot and he parked by the start of
the trail.

We consulted the map at the trailhead. By the time I finally found the little ‘You Are Here’
mark, he had planned our entire route. “Ready?” He tightened the straps of the backpack and we set off.

We followed a wooded trail, the forest creating a tighter canopy over us the further we went. It was utterly quiet other than the sound of pine needles rustling under our feet. The trail elevated gradually and just when I’d gotten used
to the pine trees all around us they thinned out, becoming sparse, giving way to big boulders, rocky cliffs and open sky.

After a little while, Gabriel stopped and unzipped the backpack. “Thirsty?” he offered me a water bottle.

“Thanks.” I took it gratefully and drank. He watched me while he took a sip of his own.

“Everything okay?” he asked. “You’re pretty quiet.”

“Yeah. I love it out here.” Growing up in the city, I’d never really been hiking. This was perfect. I handed the bottle back to him.