The Stupendous Dodgeball Fiasco (2 page)

Whap!
It tipped over. Clowns scampered out, bowing and curtsying to the cheers.

Phillip searched the bleachers. Where was the boy? People, shaking with laughter, blocked his view. He dropped his shovel, climbed onto the bleachers, and awkwardly made his way through. Three times he had to apologize for stepping on toes. Finally, he made it to where he had seen the boy.

“Where is he?” Phillip asked a girl with braided hair. “The boy who was sitting next to you.”

“What boy?” She eyed Phillip like he was an alien.

He wondered if the boy had been part of his daydream.

“Sit down,” said a woman from behind him. “I’m trying to watch the horses.”

The horses! He had forgotten. Phillip glanced into the left ring. Helena held a hoop, and Wonder Star jumped through. Behind them, a brown blob steamed. A couple hundred children were between Phillip and his shovel.

“I’m sorry. Pardon me. Coming through, please,” he said, shuffling over peanut shells and empty cups. He bumped a man whose lemonade splashed down Phillip’s shirt. Startled by the sudden cold drizzle, Phillip backed into a freckle-faced girl with a caramel apple.

Smack!
The gooey ball hit him in the head and stuck to his hair.

“Gimme back my apple,” the girl demanded. She grabbed the stick and pulled.

“
Ahhhhhhh!
” Phillip cried.

The girl tried to twirl the apple out, but this only made it stick more.

“Give her back her apple,” said a teenage boy holding a bag of popcorn. Phillip darted out of the way as the teen lunged for him. The popcorn flew in the air and became rain. The kernels stuck to the gooey caramel.

In the left ring, Helena walked backward as Wonder Star led a dance line, each horse’s front legs balanced on the horse before it. All were unaware of the slippery land mine ahead.

Squish!

Helena’s foot hit the blob and skidded out from under her.

Fump!

She landed on her tush.

Her arms flailed back into a pile of hoops, sending them flying. Wonder
Star swerved and knocked over a rolling shelf loaded with props. The horses scattered as the props clattered to the ground.

The sounds of “Stars and Stripes Forever” filled the circus tent. Half the clowns chased after the horses, while the other half ran over to Helena.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the circus announcer shouted. “Please look to the skies for the death-defying Angela the Amazing Acrobat.”

While the crowd diverted its attention to the high-wire act, Cuddles and Jingles helped Helena stand. Leo sprayed her backside clean with seltzer water. She looked like a stuffed doll limp from too many washings.

Phillip scurried to the edge of the bleachers. He fell and did a belly flop onto the ground. Peering up, he saw Helena leading Wonder Star out of the ring. She headed straight for him. He darted under the bleachers. The smell from Helena’s boots made him pinch his nose to keep from gagging.

At least she doesn’t see me, he thought.

Something pulled his hair.

“Ouch!” he cried.

Wonder Star yanked out a hunk of the gooey caramel apple.

“You!” Helena pulled Phillip by his ear. The horse balanced on her hind legs, begging for another bite.

“I’m out there slipping in poop, and you’re taking a nap?” she snapped.

“I wasn’t taking a nap,” Phillip said, trying to escape from Wonder Star’s appetite. Each time he moved, the horse moved, too. It looked like they were dancing. Helena grabbed Wonder Star by the bridle.

“Why were you hiding under the stands?” she demanded.

“I wasn’t
under
the stands,” Phillip said. “I was
in
them.”

“In them? During the show?”

Phillip wanted to explain about his new bat and the boy in the baseball cap, but he doubted she would care. Helena wrested a piece of caramel apple stick from Wonder Star’s mouth.

“You’re a circus boy,” she reminded Phillip. “You don’t belong in the stands with the regular folks.”

Phillip’s eyes stung. He pulled up his T-shirt and rubbed his sweaty face. A piece of popcorn stuck to the lemonade stain scratched his cheek.

“Your mother will hear about this,” Helena said. “Now go clean up that mess.”

Phillip grabbed his shovel and raced out to the left ring. Why did things always go wrong for him?

Tiffany the Bearded Lady once told him that kids from the regular world dreamed of running away to join the circus. As he scooped away the afternoon’s humiliation, Phillip wondered if he was the first kid who dreamed of running away from it.

O
ne way to get elephant skin soft is to use furniture soap. But no matter how much furniture soap you use, an elephant will never be a coffee table.

As he hosed down Einstein the elephant after the show, Phillip thought: No matter how long I live with the circus, I’ll never be a circus boy. “I’m tired of going to sleep in Silver City and waking up in Albuquerque,” he confided to Einstein. “I hate not having friends my age. It’s not fair. I want to live in a regular town, like a regular kid.”

Einstein lifted a back leg and Phillip squirted his underside.

“Know what’s the worst about circus life?”

The elephant flapped his huge ears.

“The way the audience looks at us. Mom and Dad don’t even care. They want people to stare and laugh at them.”

Einstein raised his trunk for a drink, and Phillip squirted into his mouth.

“Being in the circus makes you different,” said Phillip. “Being different makes you a freak. That’s not the life for me.”

The side window to his family’s trailer opened, and
Phillip saw Helena prop it with a piece of wood. Familiar voices drifted out. Phillip crept to the window to hear better.

“His heart’s not in it,” sighed Phillip’s mother, Matilda the Fat Lady.

“That’s no excuse,” said Helena. “I can’t do my act if I have to worry about slipping. He must pay attention. My Oscar could do it when he was Phillip’s age.”

“Well, if Oscar can do it…”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Helena. “You know Oscar gets shot from the cannon at three o’clock. He’s busy preparing for that.”

“Oscar could do it if we shot him out with the shovel in his hand,” said Phillip’s dad. He hit a button on his neck strap and his bow tie spun.

“Leo, it’s time you stopped clowning and took matters seriously,” Helena said. “Your son is not pulling his weight. He daydreams through his chores. He’d rather read a book than stick his head in a lion’s mouth. He’s doing crossword puzzles when he’s supposed to be practicing his juggling. His behavior is most…uncircuslike.”

“We’ll talk to him,” said Matilda.

“See that you do,” said Helena. On her way out, she slammed the door to the trailer so hard it shook. Phillip hid behind Einstein until Helena was gone and then inched back to the window.

“Do you think buying him a baby chimpanzee would help?” Leo asked Matilda.

“We tried a pet,” Matilda answered. “Remember the python disaster?”

“I still don’t understand how that snake thought it could eat him.”

“We’ve tried it all,” she said. “Juggling lessons, the junior tuxedo and top hat, training stilts, the purple unicycle.”

“He was crazy about that unicycle.”

“He hated it.”

“Well, he rode it like the wind.”

“That’s because you clowns chased after him, throwing custard pies.”

“We were teaching him how to clown. He loved it.”

“Is that why he fled up the rope to the trapeze artists’ platform and hid from you?”

“He’s a great climber,” Leo said. “He could be an acrobat—if he didn’t freeze at the top.”

Matilda took her husband’s thin, gloved hand and held it to her chubby cheek. “He’s unhappy here,” she said. “All he wants, all he’s ever wanted, is to be a regular boy.”

“But he’s not a regular boy. He’s a Stupendous Stanislaw.”

“Maybe he wasn’t meant for circus life,” Matilda said.

“Nonsense,” said Leo.

“We’ve discussed this so often,” said Matilda. “Maybe it’s time we let him make his own decision about what he wants to do. Send him to stay with my sister in Hardingtown. Let him get away from the circus for a while and experience what it’s like to be in the real world.”

Leo pulled off his floppy shoes and replaced them with his bunny slippers. “Children don’t run away from the circus. He needs to find a way to fit in. Maybe if we sent him to clown school.”

Outside, Phillip dropped the hose. It slithered back and forth, splashing his pants. Clown school! A room full of smelly makeup, tiny tricycles, and whipped-cream pies filled his head. He squeezed off the valve to the hose.

“Talk to him,” Matilda said. “We have to do something.”

“I’ll talk to him,” agreed Leo.

Phillip heard the trailer’s squeaky door. He poured lemon-scented furniture soap onto Einstein’s hide and began scrubbing with a long push broom.

“Whoa, boy,” Leo said. “You don’t want to wear a hole in him.”

“I’m sorry,” Phillip said. “I know I shouldn’t have gone into the stands during the show.” He gnawed his bottom lip. “Please don’t make me do it, Dad.”

“Do what?”

“Don’t make me go to clown school. I’d make a terrible clown. I don’t even have a sense of humor.”

His dad laughed so hard he had to pinch his nose and hold his breath to regain his composure. Phillip hated how hard it was to have a serious conversation with a clown.

“Why were you in the stands?” Leo finally asked.

“I wanted to talk to a boy,” Phillip said. “I should have waited. It won’t happen again.”

Einstein roared. Leo helped Phillip rinse him off. When they were done, they flipped their buckets and sat.

“What’s it like, Dad? Life outside the circus?”

“Not as good.”

“It’s got to be better than shoveling elephant pens.”

“Trust me, son.”

“How will I ever know for sure?” Phillip asked.

“You belong here. You need to find something you’re good at, that’s all, and I have just the thing.” Leo went into the trailer and came back with the long box. Matilda came out, too.

“Happy eleventh birthday, son,” said Leo.

Phillip grabbed the present and tore into the wrapping paper. He lifted the top off the box and pushed aside the tissue. A long sword shone up at him.

“It’s a swallowing sword,” Leo said.

Phillip gulped.

“For a sword-swallowing act,” Leo added.

Phillip stared at the shiny metal. He picked it up by the handle and watched the sun glint off the sharp-looking edge.

“See,” Leo said to Matilda. “I told you he’d be crazy about it.”

Crazy is right, Phillip thought. Just looking at the sword made his throat hurt. All the disappointments of birthdays past came rushing back: the hot-coal-walking kit, the red and yellow striped leotard, the purple unicycle, the snake that almost ate him. He had been polite, said thank you, and pretended to like the circus presents. But this time, his hopes had been too high. He couldn’t even force himself to smile. It was so unfair. How could he get his dad to understand that he would never be a circus star?

Phillip jumped up and flung the sword. It sailed straight into one of the wooden posts holding up a tent and stuck fast.

“Wow. Great throw,” said Leo. “We can use that in the act.”

“I don’t want to be in the act,” Phillip told him.

“What?” Leo asked.

Phillip didn’t want to hurt his dad’s feelings, but he couldn’t stop himself. His words poured out like clowns from a fallen phone booth.

“I don’t want to be in the act, and I don’t want to be in the circus. I’ve tried, but I don’t fit in. I want to live in a regular
town like a regular kid. Let me stay with Aunt Veola and Uncle Felix.”

“I don’t know,” said Leo, scratching his wig.

“Only for a while,” Phillip added. “So I can figure out where I belong.”

Einstein stomped, demanding attention. Matilda rubbed his trunk.

“I’ll call Veola,” she told her husband.

“Let’s not rush into this,” said Leo. “Pennsylvania is hundreds of miles from here, and we don’t even have money for a train ticket.”

Phillip asked, “If we did have the money, could I go?”