Matt & Zoe - Charles Sheehan-Miles Page 0,25

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 shared no classes. I didn’t care. I knew that somehow, this winter was my chance.

I had little opportunity to do anything about it in the first few weeks. Dad had made the decision that this year would be my first one actually performing in the ring. I would be doing a few simple tricks—a simple crossover and a half somersault. As always, he insisted on incessant practice to make sure we were safe. I was under strict orders to come straight home from school, park myself at the kitchen table and finish my homework no later than 3:30. Once homework was done, it was back out and to the gym.

The gym was owned by the circus, with unusually high ceilings and plenty of netting. It was here that we practiced during winter quarters—an endless procession of leaps and jumps and falls to the net. The first day that winter, I didn’t fall to the net to Papa’s satisfaction.

“You think this is a joke, Matty? You think you’re going to screw around on the ropes?”

“No sir—it was a mistake.”

“You can make your mistakes when you’re chasing that girl. Not on the ropes. You understand?”

I felt the skin on my face heat up. How did he know about Carlina? “Yes, sir.”

He nodded, his expression grim. I could tell from Tony and Messalina’s faces that I was going to remember it. Both of my older siblings had been in training longer than I had. Tony just stared off into space—sometimes it was better to not get involved. Messalina stared frankly, her face curious, one eyebrow raised. Her wild curly hair, normally flowing free, was tied into a bun whenever we practiced. That didn’t subtract from her essential character, which was far wilder than her hair.

“Five hundred falls. Before you cross the ropes again, you do five hundred falls. The right way.”

Tony and Messalina gasped.

Five hundred? That would take forever. It was