Free The Stupendous Dodgeball Fiasco by Janice Repka Page A

distance, he saw a circus tent. It was your grandfather’s eighteenth birthday. He looked at his parents’ turnip truck rumbling down the dusty road. He looked at the colorful tent. Your grandfather got the last ticket for the afternoon show. There he fell in love at first sight with the lion tamer’s daughter.”
    Phillip guessed, “Grandma Maybell?”
    “That’s right,” said Aunt Veola. “He joined the circus, and they got married. Your grandfather became one of the greatest lion tamers in circus history. Then your father was born. They named him after the fiercest lion in the act.”
    “Leo Laugh-a-Lot?” asked Phillip.
    “Back then,” Aunt Veola explained, “his name was Leo the Ferocious. More than anything else in the world, he wanted to be a great lion tamer like his father.”
    Phillip asked, “Why didn’t he?”
    “It turned out he was allergic. His sneezing and wheezing got so bad that one day, when he was eleven, his parents sent him to live with relatives in Arizona.”
    “I didn’t know,” said Phillip.
    “It’s not something he talks about. The fact is, he was miserable. The circus was in his blood. When he turned eighteen, he came back and took up clowning.”
    “What happened to his allergies?”
    “He had outgrown them,” she said. “The day he went back, he met your mother, who had joined the circus the year before. She was juggling flaming arrows. They fell in love and got married. Then you came along. They were so happy. Your father swore he would be a clown forever, and he would never leave the circus again.”
    Phillip looked down at his half-full cup of hot chocolate. The steam was gone, but it still tasted good.
    “We each have a place in this world,” Aunt Veola said. “Someday, you’ll find out where you belong. Do you understand?”
    Phillip nodded.
    “Until that day comes,” she added, “you need to stay out of trouble.”

A unicyclist trying to ride on a high wire can use an umbrella to maintain his balance. An eleven-year-old boy trying to avoid trouble on a four-day suspension from school is on his own.
    The next morning, Phillip accompanied Aunt Veola to the courthouse. He sat in a wooden chair next to the metal detector, counting floor tiles and thinking about his visit to the vice-principal’s office.
    “You’re not going extra hard on him because of what happened between you and my sister when you were in school together?” Aunt Veola had asked Mr. Race. After Phillip had counted all the floor tiles, out loud, twice, he asked Aunt Veola what she meant.
    “Some parts of a person’s past are better left in the past,” she said.
    A short, old man with a long, white beard made the metal detector go off as he passed through. Aunt Veola swept her handheld device under his whiskers and made him remove a tiny flag pin from his shirt collar.
    “But I still want to know,” said Phillip.
    Aunt Veola watched a tiny television-like screen showingan X-ray picture of the items in the man’s bag.
    “Please?” Phillip asked.
    She stared at the screen a long time before she spoke.
    “Someday, when the time is right, we’ll talk about it.”
    Before Phillip could ask another question, she removed a crisp five-dollar bill from her billfold, let it drop into his hand, and sent him to the snack bar.
    Phillip realized that if he went to the snack bar Sam would ask him why he wasn’t in school. What would Sam think when he told him he had gotten suspended? Would Sam still want to be his friend if he knew how much trouble he kept getting into? Phillip wasn’t in the mood to find out. He looked around for another place to hang out.
    He saw a room with comfortable-looking upholstered couches and a nameplate that read: LAWYERS’ LOUNGE . Ancient men in dark business suits sat in thick leather chairs reading newspapers and napping. Scattered about were end tables of decorative wrought iron that were topped with sheets of clear, thin glass. Phillip kept looking.
    On the