Matt & Zoe - Charles Sheehan-Miles Page 0,26

crazy harsh. I started to stammer and protest, but then stopped myself. There was no point in that—when my father said something, he meant it. I wouldn’t be allowed to do anything until I fell to the nets five hundred times.

The thing about my Dad—he was a legend in the circus world. Our family was the prime act at Ringling Brothers. He was the first flyer in history to make a quadruple forward somersault, and he was the only flyer who performed it in the ring on a relatively regular basis.

My father commanded respect. When he said move, we moved. So I said, “Yes, sir,” then got started.

I ran to the ladder and started climbing up. It was going to take a long time. Down below, on the floor, Mamma said something to him. His face twisted, and his lips formed a firm line. “No, it’s not too harsh. He’ll learn. They’ll be no accidents on my watch.”

I can do this, I thought. It took about ten seconds to climb the ropes, and no time at all to fall. Unfortunately, I couldn’t start until practice was over—I wouldn’t be performing my amateurish tricks until I finished this job. It was 8 o’clock before I began. The first ten were easy… climb up the ladder, instead of the platform, and drop-down. Each time, my father grunted in satisfaction. The next ten were almost as easy… my arms and legs were growing fatigued from climbing the ladder over and over and over again. On the fourteenth fall, I hit at a weird angle, and scraped a rash down part of my back.

“Do that one over,” Papa said.

I kept my mouth shut, and swallowed. Up the ladder I went, then dropped down. This time I hit correctly, but I felt pain where the rope had scraped me.

I was on jump number thirty-four when my father said, “Keep going. When you get home tell me how many you did.” Then he turned and walked out, leaving me alone in the gym.

My first thought was, does he expect me to keep going? I could just go home and tell him a number. Even as the thought ran through my head, I grabbed the ropes, planted my foot on the ladder and started climbing up.

It was midnight when I staggered home. I don’t know how I got there, because I was moving in an exhausted haze. My body was incredibly stiff, and what had started out as a single rope burn had turned into ugly red welts all over my back. My biceps and thigh muscles ached, my mouth was dry as the Texas scrub country, and under the surface I felt a seething rage.

When I opened the door to the house, I immediately saw that Papa had the living room to himself. He was sitting on the threadbare couch with a copy of Variety in his lap. The magazine was unopened; the television was tuned to the Tonight Show.

We met each other’s eyes.

“Hundred and fourteen.”

He nodded. His face stretched into the same grin he always had when crossing the empty space in the ring. Then he nodded.

“Good job.”

Papa was a stern man, and not one to hand out compliments. At his words, I felt a wave of emotion… Pride, mixed with an extraordinarily powerful love.

It took me twelve days to make those 500 falls. For virtually all of them, I was alone—nobody stayed at the gym to count or make sure I was doing what I was supposed to be doing. They didn’t have to. Something inside me drove me to completing that monstrous task. When it was all over, on the last day, my father wrapped his arms around me, and said in a rough voice, “Matty. I’m proud of you.”

I don't like you that way (Matt)

During the two weeks when I was learning to fall, dropping into the net over and over and over again, I was exhausted.

Every day at 7 o’clock, I was on the school bus, no matter how I felt. Papa insisted I learn to fall. Mamma insisted I keep up on my school work. Between the two, there was little time to sleep. As a result, every morning I fell asleep during that thirty-five minute school bus ride. It didn’t matter how loud the kids were around me.

It was on a Wednesday of the second week when I woke up suddenly, my heart pounding as I bounced on the seat on the bus. I gaped in shock.

Carlina was sitting