“It’s weird, right?” my older brother says as we watch the muscled men set up the tents over on the fairgrounds. “I mean, I don’t remember the last time I heard of a circus in a big city, let alone a little shithole like this.”
“Hush!” I snap, enthralled with the way they hitch the poles and raise the faded, striped fabric. Horses whinny from inside rusted trailers, and I would bet every quarter in my piggy bank that there was a lion around here somewhere. Someone may as well have pulled the circus from my dreams, from the faded photographs I copied with the library’s machine.
With my arms over the edge of our fence and my feet braced in a hole in the wood, I look around for Mama. She’s still inside, on the phone, with her back turned to us. I steel my resolve and say, “It’s not a — a shithole. It’s our home.”
Zane pats my shoulder and smirks like he always does when he thinks he’s right. “Give it two more years, squirt. You’ll be calling it worse when you realize how boring it is.”
“It’s not boring,” I say. “We have a circus.”
(more…)
