want to reply. But you tried to take the trapeze away from me. I had no choice.
Except I know, deep down, there’s always a choice.
And talking to Mom might make me feel like I made the wrong one.
My parents aren’t bad parents. Maybe, with another daughter, they might have been happier. She might have listened to them, and trusted them, and been okay with venturing down the path Mom and Dad had set out for her.
But I don’t want to follow anybody’s path. I want to make my own—through the woods and beyond the mountains and into the stars. I want the circus, with all its ups and downs. With all its uncertainty.
Because even with everything going wrong, I still know I’m more content here than I’d ever be at school.
Mom won’t see that. She’ll only see how I’m wrong, and how I’ve been a bad daughter, and how I’m not mature or responsible enough to take charge of my own life.
She didn’t even trust me enough to tell me the truth about her life.
But… still.
I know I was wrong to hurt them.
What I did to Dad can’t be justified with my dreams, no matter how big they are.
And since I can’t defend myself, I shove my phone under my pillow and pretend I didn’t see the email at all.
CHAPTER TWENTY
I don’t know why tonight is different.
I shouldn’t look. I should stay by the popcorn machine, in the empty foyer, listening to the hum of the soda machine and Pia giggling with her boyfriend who’s busy showing off his juggling skills next to the corn dog stand.
What’s going on inside the big top has nothing to do with me, and no amount of audience cheers should tempt me to leave this spot.
But I’ve always been terrible at standing still, and worse at listening to my own advice.
I move across the room, half expecting one of the other crew members to warn me away from the curtains, but they don’t. I think they’ve forgotten I exist at all.
Pulling back the dark fabric with my hand, I peer inside and see Maggie, legs stretched into an oversplit, her weight held up by her arms. She moves like a feather dancing in the wind—a delicate creature covered in turquoise and gold jewels, with a headpiece around her forehead and a bundle of lilac curls. When she stands on the bar, I see the feather-and-sequin skirt, and the way she lifts her chin like a dancer, graceful and proud and strong.
A cascade of blue silk ribbons hangs from the sky, and lights flutter around the room in time to piccolo arpeggios. Maggie wraps herself in the ropes, hitting pose after pose effortlessly. And then she’s hanging from the bar with one hand, feet moving in slow motion through the air like she’s underwater. She pulls herself back up, resting her body against the bar, and stretches her arms out like she’s spreading her wings.
Up in the air, covered in sparkles and light, she looks like a princess from another world.
And in that moment, the fragmented shell of my heart shatters, and emotion floods out of me in one powerful wave. There isn’t a thing I can do to stop it.
I’m kidding myself, thinking I have any chance of ever getting to where Maggie is. I’ve been naive, and horrible, and I can’t make myself belong in a place that doesn’t want me.
I don’t even remember leaving the foyer or making my way back to my trailer, but the next thing I know, I’m slamming the door and sobbing big, hot tears into my hands, grasping at my skin and hair like I wish I could take everything back.
What would I have done differently if I could go back in time?
Maybe train with Tatya anyway. Because at least Tatya saw something in me—even if it was something small.
And then I remember how she hates me too. Because I ruin things. Because for some reason my brain won’t stop shooting words out of my mouth like we’re Commander Shepard under a Reaper attack.
I have nothing left to go back to.
I should call Mom. She’s good at fixing things—she likes fixing things—and maybe she could fix this.
I call Popo instead.
“Hello?” She sounds alarmed, maybe because she wasn’t expecting to see my name on her caller ID.
“Hi. It’s me.”
Popo must know I’m crying, because she makes a noise like she understands everything. “Ah. Have you called your mother yet?”