Read That Time I Joined the Circus Online
Authors: J. J. Howard
Tags: #Young Adult, #Contemporary, #Romance, #Music
That Time I Joined the Circus
The Corner of Bowery and Rivington — Tuesday, October 5
My life has a soundtrack — it plays in my head all the time. Sometimes it’s on automatic, just a song stuck on repeat from the last thing I listened to. And sometimes I’m like a DJ, making a selection to suit my mood or the general circumstance. When there’s music playing in the outside world, though, sometimes it takes over. Like now.
My father taught me about music, which is how I know that the sound coming out of the bar called Mission doesn’t qualify. I think it’s Nickelback, or someone who was on, like,
American Idol
, but it’s completely beneath me to know for sure. I am a music snob, and proud of it. I’m a New Yorker; smugness is my birthright. But being alone, cold, and hungry — and homeless as of around ten o’clock this morning — has taken some of the smug out of me. I never thought I’d live anywhere but New York — never even thought I’d live above Houston Street.
Maybe if I hadn’t messed up quite so completely, one of my two (former) best friends would be standing here with me. Maybe if I’d actually bothered to learn how to drive … maybe if my dad hadn’t died … But no maybes would help: I had, I hadn’t, he had.
So here I am saying good-bye to my neighborhood, alone, with no plan beyond the bus station and a really crummy song about love stuck in my head. And of course my stupid mother to go and find. What kind of father sends all his money to his crazy ex-wife and leaves his daughter completely broke? And what kind of mother runs away and joins the circus?
Orchard Street and Avenue A — Thursday, September 30
Eli won — again. He’s my best friend, but that doesn’t make it any less annoying. We were sitting on the floor of his bedroom, which is not that easy, because his room is even smaller than mine. I had just lost seventeen dollars and forty-two cents playing five-card draw. We were trying to stay awake to see a midnight showing of
Robot Monster
at the Den of Cin on Avenue A. And waiting for Bailey to arrive. Things had been pretty weird since Eli and Bailey — my two best friends — my two only friends, to be completely accurate — started dating each other a few months ago. Having Eli all to myself that night had actually been kind of nice. Being the odd freak out had not been all that awesome.
Eli Katz and I have been friends since we started at Sheldon in sixth grade. I’d gone to public school for elementary, and Eli had gone to a little yeshiva down the street.
Neither of us fit the Sheldon Prep mold very well. I had a dad who looked like a teenager in his D G A: N
OW
S
TART A
B
AND
T-shirt and a missing mother. Eli had strict parents and almost never ventured more than three blocks from his apartment. My dad, Gavin, and I taught him to be almost as obsessive about music as we are. Gavin even taught him to play the guitar, which was a big improvement over the clarinet he’d been trying to play when I met him.
Eli and I hated the Sheldon kids — that is, until Bailey Conners came along in ninth. Bailey was pretty enough, and naturally non-awkward enough — and wealthy enough — to fit in with the typical Sheldon kids. But for some unknown reason, she picked us instead. Eli and I had both been flattered and kind of grateful.
It took me a little while to figure out what it was about Bailey. She certainly looked like someone who could have her own show on The CW. But she didn’t quite fit in with the shiny people at Sheldon. The day she brought the pigeon with the smashed wing to class with her (in a Jimmy Choo shoe box, no less), I started to figure it out. She had a soft spot for wounded birds. Bailey has a good heart, and she loves a project. Her makeover scheme had worked on Eli, at least.
And I guess if I am honest with myself, I had seen right away that Eli’s feelings about Bailey hadn’t stopped at gratitude. When Bailey spoke, Eli’s head always tilted to the side, and he gazed at her sort of like a faithful hound dog.
“X? Call?” Eli’s voice brought me back to the game.
“Fold.” I threw in my cards with a huge sigh. “You’ve got my popcorn money, and my download budget for at least the next two weeks.”
“Try two days, addict.”
“You’re so funny!” I said in my best fake voice. “For a retarded person, I mean.”
Eli threw his cards at me, but he smiled. “Clean up that mess you made, will ya?”
I leaned back against the side of his bed, stretching my legs while keeping them crossed in my little skirt. I hated shorts, but it was about 112 degrees out, and a little skirt was my only other option. Eli was wearing jeans, as always. I watched him gather up the cards I’d known he wouldn’t make me pick up. Eli was so different now — the way he filled out his T-shirt was such a change from the old string bean he’d been. It was hot in his room — his parents definitely rationed the air-conditioning — and I gathered all my hair up and held it on top of my head for a few seconds, wishing for a hair clip. It was getting really long. Probably time to cut it. I didn’t actually hate my hair — it was sort of medium brown, but thick with a little wave to it. It was just too bad I hadn’t inherited Gavin’s light blue, almost silver eyes. Mine were just regular blue.
As I watched Eli put away the cards, I was startled by the jolt of my cell phone in the side pocket of my skirt. I slid the answer bar and asked, “Hi, what are you doing?”
Gavin,
I mouthed to Eli’s questioning look. My dad was not the sort of dad that my friends called Mr. Ryan. I started
calling him Gavin a long time ago to annoy him, and then it sort of stuck.
Wherever my dad was, there was synthpop in the background. This was not exactly unusual. My dad is stuck somewhere in the late eighties. He visits me here in the post-millennium, but that’s not where he really lives.
“Where are you?” he asked.
“Eli’s.”
“Shock. I thought you were gonna be home early tonight, though?”
“When did I say that?” Gavin often got things scrambled.
“I thought you had that college fair thing.”
“Oh —
last
night. I went. No sweat. Already picked my school. The University of Kentucky. I’m looking into maybe getting some horses.”
“I was supposed to go with you.” He really did sound contrite.
“That’s okay.” I was mostly telling the truth. Gavin was an awesome dad, but not so big on the nuts-and-bolts stuff.
“I was working — I totally forgot. I’m sorry, Lexi.”
I didn’t correct him — Lexi was his pet name for me. He mostly obeyed my wish to be called Xandra now. As long as I didn’t have to be Alex, like that idiot Mr. Rosso, my chemistry teacher, insisted on calling me. When I tried to correct him, he said there are no proper names that start with an
X
.
“So … horses. Got it. I have to say, I kind of thought you’d go NYU, maybe Columbia. But, you know, Kentucky, that’s cool, too.”
“You wouldn’t think it was cool if you had to buy the horse,” I told him as I watched Eli flip open his laptop and stretch out diagonally across his bed. “What’s up, Gavin? Did you need something? It doesn’t sound like you’re even home.”
“My name is
Dad
. And no, I was calling about that school thing that I already missed. When will you be home?”
“Before you, probably. Be good, though.”
“I will if you will.” I heard the click. The man wasn’t big on good-byes.
“What did Gavin want?” Eli asked, looking up from his screen. His head was close to mine, hanging over the edge of the bed.
“Just checking in. I need caffeine. I don’t think I’ll make it through
Robot Monster
. I think I’m gonna head.”
“That’s too bad,” Eli said, his face aimed back down at the screen. “Bailey just messaged me; she’s bailing on us.”
I had a weird feeling — a sudden conviction, actually — right at that moment that I should get up off Eli’s floor and go straight home. Eli looked down at me, and I saw something mischievous in his eyes and a lock of dark hair falling over his left eye. When did he get so freaking cute? Why was this my life?
If only I’d listened to that weird premonition, the worst night of my life would have been a tiny bit less horrible.
I stood up, but then I sat back down on the bed, with my legs over Eli’s legs, my back against the wall behind his bed. Eli turned over and looked at me for a minute. When he spoke, his voice was pitched low; his eyes still held mine. “So, what do you want to do now?”
I didn’t make it home that night at all. I wish more than anything that I had.