Rain Village - Carolyn Turgeon [72]
We ate lunch in the cookhouse, tired and sweaty, having helped to remake the lot until it seemed like that land had always had a huge blue tent rising out of it, a Ferris wheel whirring next to the sky.
“So,” Lollie said, setting down her fork, “Tessa is going to show us her trapeze skills a little later. In an hour, maybe?” She looked at me. “That should give us time before the show.”
I could feel my face turn red, feel all their eyes on me.
There was silence, and then Mauro was the one who spoke. “Great,” he said, winking at me. The rest of them kept eating. I glanced up and saw both José and Ana look quickly away.
I would later learn how opposed they all were to letting in someone new, how they saw themselves as inhabitants of the air and everyone outside the circus as rooted in the earth, like vines.
That hour crawled by. I locked myself in my compartment and stretched my legs and torso, moved my arms around to get them loose and burning. For the first time, I wondered what I would do—what I could possibly do—if I failed. I thought of all the months I’d wasted in Kansas City, and cursed myself.
When the time came, I changed into the leotard Mary had given me and entered the big top.
The trapeze swooped up above me, right in the center of empty space. I would have to climb a long ladder to a platform to reach it. I was used to Mary’s trapeze, hanging from a beam in a jam-packed library, and the length of rope hanging from a tree by the river—not this elaborate contraption made of metal and pulleys, stretching down from the top of the tent, swinging in empty space. A gleaming silver net stretched out underneath like something hauled up from the sea.
My whole body was shaking. I looked up at Lollie and all her brothers, and noticed then how many more people were gathering close to the tent.
I had to do it, to go up there. If I could just catch the bar, I’d be fine.
Lollie looked at me. “Go on. You can’t be shy here,” she said.
“Privacy is something you have to give up,” Carlos said, winking at me. “Especially if you come as a friend of Marionetta’s.”
Outside, I could hear the midway starting up, the people beginning to come in. The air had that electric quality, and I could hear the buzzing of the lights, the Ferris wheel spinning round.
This was my one chance.
The bird girl Clementine was in the tent now, I saw, talking to Mauro. Ana and her family stood huddled on the other side. I caught Ana’s eye and she waved, just as the Kriminov Twins, a brother-and-sister team from Romania, slipped in and sat on the bleachers.
“Don’t worry,” Paulo whispered, leaning down. “They’re all curious because of Marionetta. Just show us what you can do.”
I breathed in. I went to the ladder and climbed up, feeling as if someone else were navigating that thin, narrow contraption instead of me. Slowly, rung by rung, I watched the ground pull away, woozily.
As I stepped onto the platform, I swooned for a second, with nausea.
Paulo climbed onto the platform opposite. He reached out and grabbed the trapeze. “Hep!” he called, throwing it out to me.
His voice was the first thing that threw me off. I reached for the bar, leaping out a second too late. For a moment there was nothing in the world but that bar looming in front of me—until I looked down at the net. I hesitated again, froze, and when I lunged for the bar, I was several seconds too late. My hands stretching out, I fell down to the net, which reached up and smacked my neck and face and legs.
“Are you okay?” Lollie rushed over. “Are you hurt?”
The ropes burned and slashed my skin. I couldn’t think.
Mauro pulled the net back and leapt into it, then swept me up and into him.
“Can you move your neck, Tessa?” he whispered, looking right down at me. Even in a state like that