Free Matt & Zoe by Charles Sheehan-Miles Page B

didn’t matter to me. I didn’t get paid anywhere close to minimum wage for those jobs, but over time I’d used that occasional pocket change to amass a sizeable collection of cards, including some rare collectible ones.
    Those days were gravel and dust, the heat and humidity of Indian summer, the longing I felt whenever I saw Carlina Herne, the daughter of one of the animal trainers. She was thirteen and had long flowing locks of black hair that hung well below her shoulders. Her eyes were sapphire, her lips curvaceous and inviting.
    Or I suppose they were inviting to somebody. Not to me. She was a year older than I was, but she was so far out of reach she might as well have been the daughter of the President.
    That didn’t stop me from thinking about her constantly, watching her whenever I could, fantasizing that one day, she would realize that I wasn’t just a kid… I was a flyer; one day I’d be the star of the circus just like Papa. As it was, the only words she’d ever spoken to me were, “Get out of my way, runt .”
    They weren’t kind words, but they’d been said in her rich, lilting voice. I treasured them.
    The first sign that something had gone awry that day was when a stranger appeared, towering over me. I looked up, assessed the situation, then stood. In front of me was a kid a couple years older than me, with powerful shoulders and upper arms. His expression wasn’t friendly, but it wasn’t hostile either. Looking back, I still think it’s possible Red set out that day to make a friend.
    His desire to make a friend evaporated when Carlina came around the corner of the building.
    Carlina with her flowing black hair, her shapely body, her tantalizing eyes.
    Red saw her, and decided… what? To impress her? He looked back at me and his eyes narrowed. “Give me those cards.”
    I started to back away, confused. I shook my head, and began putting the cards in the metal tin I carried them around in.
    His face screwed up into an angry bunch. “I said, give me those cards.”
    “L–L–L– leave me alone.”
    I was wholly unprepared for the punch. Out of nowhere, he brought up his right fist and jabbed it at my face. He connected hard, and my vision went black instantly, and I fell down on my ass. He kicked me in the side. “I said , give me my cards!”
    “Leave me alone!” He kicked me again, and I started to cry.
    “Look at the little baby cry!” Then he grabbed the box of cards off the ground next to me. “Don’t you ever touch my stuff again.”
    My last sight of him that day was when he walked over to Carlina and said casually, “Hey. I’m Red. I’m new here.”
    The remainder of that fall was terror, sometimes mixed with rage and frequent boredom and anxiety. Red was the perfect bully. He came out of nowhere, struck by surprise, and humiliated in the process. As the fall continued, he got bigger every day, while I stubbornly remained the same size. Small. I wasn’t just physically small. He made me feel small. I didn’t understand how or why this had happened to my life.
    What I did understand is that within two weeks of his arrival, he and Carlina were a couple, and I was in fear of my life every day.
    ***
    Of course, it wasn’t always that bad. That winter, when we returned to Florida, I had a reprieve from Red. He and his Dad went wherever they went for the winter, and I prepared to spend four months in school in Sarasota. School was never a good experience—I was always a stranger, an oddity, a circus freak. I was there for a few months a year; always out of sync with both the curriculum and the other kids.
    Something had changed. Carlina’s family had joined the small community of circus families living in Sarasota—they were renting a house five doors down from mine. So during those four winter months, normally a period of bewildered shock and sadness, I was on a high.
    It’s not that she noticed me. After all, she was an eighth grader and I was a seventh grader. We