Free That Time I Joined the Circus by J. J. Howard Page A

work.
    “Yeah, maybe. Hey, stay down here in Florida awhile; maybe you’ll not be translucent by the time the winter’s over.” Jamie laughed.
    I didn’t point out that I did not, in fact, have anywhere else to go. Even someone as pathetic at flirting as me knew that sounded kind of desperate.
    “Maybe I will,” I told him. “I could tell Louie about your idea …”
    “Tell him it’s yours. Louie is always impressed with ingenuity. We have a couple more months in the season down here; maybe you could make a go of it by then.”
    I watched Jamie walk off, wrapping up the cord, and I stood alone on the empty midway.
    A couple more months, Jamie had said. A couple more months and the circus would be in winter quarters. The year I had once dreaded for stupid reasons would be over. I didn’t need a tarot deck to read my fortune. I wouldn’t be going to college.
    I wouldn’t be going anywhere.
     
    I told Louie the idea the next morning at breakfast. I tried to give Jamie (at least some) of the credit, but Louie didn’t seemto hear that part; he said I’d had a great idea. Before lunch, Louie set me up with a small abandoned trailer. It was seriously dirty, but Lina volunteered to help me, saying she was free until her five o’clock call for the first show.
    Lina showed up with an impressive array of cleaning supplies. At first I’d waved away the face mask she tried to give me, but I quickly changed my mind as I began to feel woozy and light-headed from the bleach.
    We cleaned for hours, our hair tied back in colorful scarves she’d brought. Lina and I laughed as we dug up some of the crazy props, costumes, and unidentifiable items that had found their way into the unused trailer. I found an enormous piece of foam shaped like a hammer and chased Lina with it, calling her a Whac-A-Mole, and then she got the hammer away from me, and I really was the whacked mole, because her aim was way better than mine. We collapsed outside on the grass in front of the trailer, recovering from our hysterics.
    Jamie, of course, chose that moment to walk by. I struggled to my feet. Lina got one last big whack in just then, though, so I fell right back down to my knees. That started us both laughing again, and Jamie gave up on whatever he had stopped to say and, shaking his head, kept on walking. A few seconds later, I noticed somebody else watching our show. I recognized the fire-eater from the show rehearsal. As he came closer, I noticed that the skin of his throat was very scarred — occupational hazard, no doubt. He was veryslight-statured, with wiry arms poking out of his old-fashioned white sleeveless undershirt, which was neatly tucked into his black pants. He could have walked out of a 1930s circus. I looked away, then peeked again. Nope — he was too tan to be a vampire. I’d read too many YA novels — everybody was a vampire these days.
    “Lexi, this is Julian,” I heard Lina say, smiling at us both. “Julian, my new friend Lexi. She’s going to be joining us for a while.”
    “Pleased to meet you.” I held out my hand, then realized it was still covered in a glove that was pretty nasty from our cleaning job. “Sorry,” I said as I peeled off the glove and tried again. Julian bowed very formally over my hand before taking it.
    “I am very pleased to meet you, Lex, is it?”
    “Lexi,” Lina said. “But I hear she changes it sometimes, so I’ll have to let you know.”
    “Ha ha,” I said to her. “So, Julian, you’re the fire-eater. That’s pretty intense. How did you … get into fire-eating?” I wasn’t sure if it was rude to ask questions about fire-eating, but it was a public spectacle, so I hoped it was fair game. And for some reason, I sort of liked him right off the bat. I remembered my second day at Europa, watching the show with Jamie — Julian had bowed in our direction.
    “My father taught me when I was very young. It is a family tradition, so to speak.” Julian grinned, as though