Girl in the Shadows (11 page)

twelve

The Atlanta grounds were near a nice neighborhood with tall trees and generous sidewalks. I was on the latest of many walks around them, my next move eluding me. I felt stuck in neutral—my magic and my mother had refused to show up again for the past few days. After what happened when I tried to change the penny back, I half wondered if it was still within me.

Instinct told me it was, though. And that it would surge again with no warning.

For the remainder of our Jacksonville shows, the others had stayed quiet, not wanting to talk more about the break-ins when I’d made attempts to bring it up. The drive had been uneventful, and now I suspected Dez was avoiding me. There’d been no more private conversations, no more stolen kisses.

I shouldn’t have cared, but that didn’t change the fact that I did. Still, I hadn’t sought Dez out. I was happy enough that his heart in his chest was beating.

But I needed to do
something
, I decided, besides waiting around. I wrapped up my walk and returned to the Airstream. Jules and Remy were holed up in his room; I could hear their muffled voices as I passed it. When I got to ours, Dita wasn’t there yet. Tomorrow was our first day of shows here, but I had enough time before the midway began to squeeze in a visit to Nan. I wanted to tell her about the great mother-search setback and ask for advice. I could only hope she wouldn’t accuse me of being behind the break-ins or being here for the magic coin again. I sat down to take off my sneakers.

Someone knocked at the front door. I assumed it wasn’t for me, but Remy called, “Moira, it’s Dez.”

I jumped to my feet, then told myself to stop with the stupid surge of excitement. I hadn’t kept carrying the heart-shaped penny. I’d buried it among my socks. That was the sort of cool logic I needed to employ here. Be cautious. Be governed by head, not heart.

I knew,
knew
, that it was a bad idea to get involved with him. I had
hurt
him, even if the effects hadn’t been permanent. Next time they might be. And seeing him make that second heart around the random audience person, well, that had hurt
me
.

This was the last thing I needed.

And yet . . .

Anyway, he was probably here for nothing.

All of these thoughts were apparently not sufficient to keep me from stopping to slick on some lip gloss and run my hands through my messy curls. It barely helped. As always, without product to tame it, my hair went everywhere. And there was nothing to be done about my pale freckled cheeks—along with my height, the source of my Pixie nickname—which made me seem younger than I was.

Oh well.
This was me. This was how I looked.

The lovely assistants had taught me this lesson without meaning to. Listening to them critique their beautiful bodies and faces, I had long since decided there was no bigger waste of time than worrying about looking like anyone besides yourself.

“Moira? You coming?” Jules asked, from right outside in the short hallway.

“Be right there.”

Noble philosophy about looks aside, I resisted the urge to pinch some color into my cheeks like one of my romance heroines. I had a feeling Dez would have me blushing in no time.

I made my way into the hallway and past Jules and Remy. And then I stopped dead in the center of the living room. “Um, hi?”

Dez was dressed to impress. He had on black pants and a collared shirt, white against the brown of his skin, the throat open a little at the top. No tie—let’s not go crazy; it was still Dez. But he’d gotten a haircut. And he was holding a bouquet of flowers.

They were from a grocery store, the plastic around them a dead giveaway. I didn’t care. No one had ever brought me flowers.

“You’re here for me?” I asked, though Remy had said he was.

“Yes.” He was plainly struggling not to grin.

“Did you text me about going somewhere?” I asked, looking down in a panic at my jeans and ancient gray T-shirt. “I didn’t get anything.”

“No, I decided to stop waiting for you to text me,” he said.

“You’re so dressed up, and I’m . . .” God, I was really bringing the awkward here.

“You look perfect.” He extended the flowers, coming a few steps closer. They were a riot of colors and varieties. Not red roses, for love, but it felt like they might as well have been. “These are for you.”

Jules sighed dreamily behind me. I looked over my shoulder to see Remy elbow her.

As soon as I accepted the flowers, she rushed forward and snatched them away. “I’ll put them in water. You go. Go.”

Dez offered me his arm. After a moment’s hesitation, I hooked mine through his. Though I had to let go again when we reached the narrow stairway out of the RV.

I used the break to take a deep breath, like I was about to do a straitjacket escape.

He stopped and picked up a small brown grocery bag he’d left on the grass outside.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“It’s a surprise,” he said.

“I’ve never heard of a surprise date before. Don’t you usually ask?”

“You might have said no.”

“I probably should now.”

So I surprised him by tucking my arm through his again. I inhaled, and he smelled good, a clean soap smell mixed with boy, like he’d taken a shower not long before.

“Are you sniffing my manly smell?” he asked.

“Maybe.”

“Then my evil plan is working.”

He was leading me toward the darkened midway. Everything was ready for tomorrow. There was an eerie sort of quiet to wandering the open ground in the middle of the deserted tents and booths. A light wind caused the tent fabrics to sway and crack occasionally, snapping back into place. The hush encouraged more quiet. Neither of us spoke to interrupt it.

As we neared the Ferris wheel, it flared to life, like a constellation come down to Earth right in front of us.

“Dez, is this for us?” I dropped my arm and gathered my hands in front of my chest. The motion was a little girl’s, but I didn’t care. I didn’t feel like a little girl. I was on my own, eighteen, on a surprise date with a beautiful boy who had apparently arranged for us to have a private ride on the Ferris wheel.

“All tonight is for you. Come on,” he said.

He directed me to the base of the wheel, stretching tall and bright above us. A wonder.

“How?” I asked.

“I’ve made some friends. I’m very charming, if you didn’t notice.”

“Oh, I noticed.”

One of the friends was apparently the beefy ride operator. He tipped an imaginary hat to us, and Dez slipped him a handful of cash.

“Right this way,” the operator said, only a touch of sarcasm in his voice.

He waved us to one of the enclosed metal cars, waiting with the door open. I entered first, and Dez slid in next to me. Close, so close, as the operator lowered the door into place, locking us into the car together. Like a very romantic cage.

“This is some surprise,” I said.

He still had the bag with him, and he set it on the floor of the car between our feet. “Just wait.” He failed to hide a small smile.

This was
too
romantic. I couldn’t trust it.

“Uh-oh,” he said as the ride began to spin, our car rising through the night air, giving us a view of the darkened midway and, beyond it, the Cirque camp spread out across the field. I saw a trailer door open, and a few lights switch on inside others. We were making a scene. A spectacle.

“What?” I asked, registering his uh-oh.

“A second ago you were biting your lip. You’re supposed to be thinking about me. About how wonderful I am.”

“You’re almost too wonderful.” I narrowed my eyes. I meant it. “Why would you do something like this? So . . . big.”

He drummed his fingers against the seat, seeming nervous for the first time ever. “I could tell you would keep running away unless I made it impossible.”

“I did not run away. I . . .” Okay, I’d pushed him away and taken off. Fair, but he didn’t know the whole story. “That still doesn’t explain why you’re convinced I’m worth all of this.”

The night wind wound around us, the car swaying as it traveled toward the top.

“My dad’s nickname was Silver-Tongue, as in ‘silver-tongued devil.’ I get it from him,” he said. “He believed in grand gestures, in turning on the charm.”

“Believed, past tense?”

He nodded. “I don’t know why you would think you’re not worth this. You’re obviously too good for me.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

We reached the top, and the car dropped, looping around so we faced the other side of the grounds on the trip down. The big top loomed in our vision in this direction, the spires stark against the sky, and in the farther distance, the city’s skyline. The night presented an unbearably romantic scene, even for a girl who professed not to be swayed by such things, who swore to herself that she didn’t believe in them. Not really.

And then he took my hand.

There was this whole big world rushing up to meet us, and I had so many questions, but all I could focus on was Dez’s skin against mine. Such a simple contact. He rubbed his thumb across the top of my hand, and then he released it. I wanted to grab his back, not ready to let go.

He raised his palms to the sides of my face and placed them lightly on my cheeks. “I’m going to kiss you now, if that’s okay?”

I nodded, still stunned into silence.

I remembered to close my eyes at the last second, and then his mouth met mine.

We were kissing and spinning through the night, and it felt too good to worry about if I was doing the right or the wrong thing, the smart or the dumb one. His hands were still on my face, and this was not some gentle peck. This was what my romance novels described as “ravishing.”

One of
those
kisses.

There might have been an untoward cheer from the operator as we flew past him and back around to the top side, where the ride slowed, coming to a stop.

I relaxed into the kiss until I felt heat surge within me, bright and burning, and had a momentary spike of panic—

Which Dez must have detected, because he eased back an inch or two and breathlessly asked, “You all right?”

“I just . . .” But it wasn’t my magic. That wasn’t the heat I’d felt this time. It could have been, though. I had no way to be certain whether something like this could bring it out or not.

I pressed back into the corner of the seat, as far away from him as I could get.

“You’re running again. I think this calls for surprise number two,” he said. “Though I kind of want to just keep kissing you now.”

My cheeks flamed.
Danger, danger,
my brain said. My heart beat faster.

My heart didn’t care if it was stupid to respond this way. It just did.

He bent to get the bag, and I looked out over the night. We were stopped at the very top of the wheel. The stars above were faint, because we were so near the city light. He extracted a cheap green bottle of champagne and two plastic glasses from the bag.

“Look out,” he said.

And popped the cork, which zoomed out into the night. He handed me two glasses and clumsily poured some champagne into them, a little bit bubbling over onto my hand.

He blinked at me for a moment, serious. “To first dates,” he said, accepting and then raising his plastic glass. He set the bottle on the floor of the car.

I lifted my glass, but my hand shied away when he went to tap his to it. “Dez, this can’t be a date.”

“It can’t?
You
called it one first.”

I opened my mouth to explain, but he cut me off.

“You should know this is the first date I’ve ever been on,” he said, sheepish. “Ever taken someone on.” He eased onto the seat beside me, leaving a gap between us, scanning the horizon. Was that color in
his
cheeks?

“I don’t believe it,” I said, sipping the champagne. I knew from comparing it to the few sips of champagne I’d had at special occasions with Dad that it was terrible, and yet, still, it somehow managed to instantly become my favorite champagne of all time, the best thing I’d ever had to drink. Ambrosia.

This
was dangerous.

“I’ve had hookups, sure, but never a date.” He paused. “We moved around a lot. I never met anyone that made me take the risk.”

“What risk?” I frowned. The more I heard about where he was from, the more I didn’t think it was any good.

“The risk of having my heart broken.”

“Oh.”

“I can tell it’s not going to be easy. You’re a runner,” he said. “So thing two wasn’t the champagne. I want to prove to you I’m serious . . . and I grew up around people who know how to seal a deal. There’s something in it for you.”

“What do you mean?”

“You came here to do magic, on a stage, like your friend Raleigh does, right? Not just card tricks.”

Where is this going?
“I want to eventually.”

“I’ve watched you enough to know that’s more important to you than any romantic gesture I could make. So, what if I helped you out? What if you could open for him?”

I shook my head. “Raleigh will still say no. He’s not convinced I’m ready yet.”

“Who said anything about asking him? You’ll be good, right? I’ll help you plan it. We’ll steal his stage for just a few minutes. Get your chance for you,” he said. “Just think about it.”

I was tempted to say yes with every fiber of my being.

Dez set down his plastic glass and reached for mine. “I’m not going to kiss you again, not right now. And I think Jimmy will make us come down soon. I don’t want to—I’d rather stay here, and not have to run the risk of you saying no to doing this again.”

“I’ll think about it,” I said.

“Good.”

We circled the world one more time before our feet touched the ground, and from the vision in my head of myself on Raleigh’s stage, I already knew I’d say yes.

No matter how reckless or stupid I had to be to do it.

thirteen

I opened the front door and was greeted by three faces and two giant pizza boxes. Remy, Dita, and Jules were on the couch, apparently indulging in a late extra dinner.

“Finally! Jules told me you went on a date,” Dita said. “Come save me from watching these two try not to give each other swoony looks, even though they see each other all the time. It’s like they’re in some kind of novel.”

Jules had a pizza slice flat on one hand, in contrast to Remy’s New York–style folded piece. She sniffed. “Please. We’d be in a movie, not a book. Black and white. I’m Katharine Hepburn, and he’s Cary Grant.”

“The Latino Cary Grant,” Remy said, rolling his eyes affectionately. “He knew how to do a few flips,” he told me.

“A few flips? He got his start in vaudeville.” Jules shook her head as if she was surrounded by barbarians, then took a delicate bite of pizza.

“I sense a movie marathon in my near future,” Remy said.

Dita gestured to the box, and I took a slice of cheese and eased down onto the floor in front of them. My technique at pizza was somewhere in the middle of theirs, a sort of half fold. I could control a deck of cards like a maestro, but I couldn’t eat pizza without leaving a grease trail on my T-shirt. It was inevitable, like bad weather or the grave.

“
Soooo . . .
how’d it go?” Jules asked, rocking forward.

The evening with Dez had been confusing. And, alternately, like being hit by lightning. I could hardly say that. “We’re probably better off as friends.”

“Ha!” Jules shook her head. She pointed at the flowers. “Friends don’t bring friends flowers.”

“Some friends probably do,” Dita said.

“Not many,” Jules argued. “Unsatisfying report,” she said to me, and took another bite of pizza.

I wanted myself off the agenda. Dez and I weren’t something I felt comfortable discussing. I decided to change the topic to the Garcias’ act. “Rehearsal going all right for you guys?”

A storm passed over Dita’s face. “I’m hoping to take some time off. Maybe the whole week. Not just from rehearsing.”

“Dita,” Remy said, “I won’t do the act if you aren’t in it. And we have to do the act.”

Uh-oh.
I hadn’t meant to cause this.

“Don’t be that way,” Dita said, glaring at him. “What if I need a break but don’t want to mess it up for everyone?”

“You love being up there,” he said. “You of all of us have always said it feels like flying. Even when Granddad was still around and coaching us, the worst days. You loved it. Why wouldn’t you want to fly?”

“Maybe I can’t anymore.” She stood and stalked back to our room.

“Sorry,” I said.

“You didn’t know,” Remy said. “It’s a sensitive subject.”

Jules tapped her boyfriend’s shoulder. “Good job. Way to get a conversation going.” Then, to me, “Do you have brothers and sisters? Are they like this? I just had my cousin.”

Past tense and with a hard swallow after her question. I had Googled
Cirque American
and
Chicago
on my phone and read about the death. The sudden, tragic, accidental death. Obviously, they still carried it with them, just like Thurston had said of the circus as a whole.

“Not that lucky. No brothers or sisters,” I said, neutral.

“Maybe you should go try to talk to her,” Jules said.

It seemed like a weird suggestion. Dita and I didn’t know each other that well yet. But . . . “I’ll give it a shot. It’s bedtime anyway.”

I finished off my slice and got up. They didn’t stop me, and when I reached the little hallway, I heard Jules say, low, to Remy, “I’ve been thinking, and I have an idea about the coin.”

I shouldn’t have wanted to overhear their conversation. But I didn’t think they would notice if I lingered in the shadowy hallway, as long as I didn’t make a production of it or stay too long.

“No,” Remy said, keeping his voice down too.

“We can’t leave it there. It’d be better to move it . . . Listen.”

They were talking about the mysterious coin. I should stop listening. I should
really
stop listening. This was wrong.

Remy said no again, and I heard him climb to his feet. Before he could catch me, I turned and hurried the rest of the way to our room. Getting busted would have served me right, but I made it.

Dita lay on her bed, staring up at the ceiling.

“Families—am I right?” I said.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

There was no wiggle room to misinterpret. She didn’t want me to attempt to coax her into talking or provide a willing ear. She didn’t even look away from the ceiling. But I spoke anyway. “I hang out at a theater back home a lot. The women there like to give advice—to each other, to me. It’s nice. The way they’re always there for each other, for me. I’m pretty sure they’d tell me to say ‘That’s fine, Dita,’ and back off, so that’s what I’m going to do.”

She blinked, and I could see her eyes were watery.

I stayed at the door. “But they would tell you that talking about it to someone you don’t have so many emotions wrapped up with, like someone who’s not a member of your family, might make you feel better about whatever it is. I’m still backing off. But when you’re ready, I’m here.”

She drew in an audibly shaky breath and sat up. A tear trailed down her cheek, and I hated the thought I might have made her cry. But I didn’t think it had anything to do with me.

“What about you?” she asked. “Something’s going on with you too. You never talk about your family, not really. Or Nan’s interest in you. And you keep letting Raleigh brush you off about opening for him. I’m also here whenever you’re ready to tell all.”

“Touché,” I said. “I guess we’re the secret-keeping twins.”

“Ha, no. That’s Jules and Remy.”

How right she was, after what I’d overheard. “I think I’m going to let Dez help me sneak onto Raleigh’s stage and perform.”

She gasped. “Will Raleigh freak?”

“Almost certainly.”

“Good for you,” she said. Then she sighed. “I do love flying, I just . . . don’t seem to be able to do it anymore. I get up there, and I feel like myself right up until I don’t. You ever feel that way?”

“Remember my audition? I think everyone feels that way sometimes in front of a crowd.”

“It’s not the crowd. It’s . . . I’m afraid now. I never used to be, but now I am. And I don’t know how not to be, how to make it feel like it used to, being up there. Like I didn’t have to worry. Like nothing would go wrong. You can’t fly and be afraid to move at the same time.”

“I’m gathering you all lost someone close to you.” What Jules’s cousin had meant to Dita wasn’t clear to me, but he’d meant something. “It could just be you need more time to go by.”

“It’s been almost a year.” She said nothing else.

“Maybe what you need is to reinvent yourself a little,” I said. “Feel like someone who’s still you, but different too. For starters . . .” This was none of my business, but we were friends. I owed her the truth. “You don’t look like yourself when you’re performing. What if you did?” My eyes flicked to the closet. “You might feel better if you looked like you. Outside in, fake it to make it, and all that.”

She followed my gaze to the neatly hung rows of men’s clothing. “My mother would die.”

“No, she wouldn’t. She might freak out, but she won’t die.”

“Hmm,” Dita grunted.

“I need to visit the costume trailer to get a mask made anyway,” I said. “Some costume improvement of my own. You’ll come too? Our secrets, for the time being.”

“I like it,” Dita said. “Secret-keeping twins.”

Dita hesitated another moment and took another longing look at her closet. “If we go see her tomorrow, I’d say she could have something in a week—probably by Memphis.”

“Memphis it is. We play it cool here, and then
bam!
We make our moves.” Raleigh would never see my plan coming, not with Dez’s assistance.

“Partners in crime,” she said, offering me her hand. I shook it.

“I feel like we should go smoke cigars or something,” she said.

“The handshake is a classic,” I said.

For the first time that evening, I felt certain I was headed in the right direction. Dita had put it best: you couldn’t fly and be afraid of moving at the same time.