Flight of a Starling Read online

  “I could do with an early night too,” I say.

  “Bed already?” Ma asks.

  “I suppose so,” Lo says, and we get up together, like twins from the womb. I lean over to kiss Dad. My mom sweeps her fingers over her forehead before touching my own, passing her good dreams to me.

  “Sweet dreams,” she says as she does the same to Lo.

  My shoes feel cold as I put them on, Lo holding my arm to stop herself from toppling.

  “Night all,” she says, before we close the door on them.

  I’d forgotten about the rain. It’s not too strong, but it’s reminding us it’s there. Lo runs to Terini, jumps up the steps and unlocks our door. She holds it open to me, with one arm behind her.

  “I won’t be long,” I say. I know she’s confused. “I just need to see someone.” I’m walking away, so that she can’t ask too many questions and I won’t have to lie.

  “Ash?” she asks.

  I wave my hand at her. “Don’t worry,” I say. “I’ll be back soon.” And I run quickly around the edge of the big top so that she can no longer see me.

  Chapter Three

  Lo

  The rain is drying, but the morning sky is still gray as I walk back toward our van.

  “Lo, come and see this.” Spider appears from the side of the big top and grabs my hand.

  “What?” But he puts his fingers to shush my lips, and I let him pull me through new puddles that float our sawdust on their surface.

  We run around the edge of the tent, until we’re outside Rob’s van. Spider crouches low, and I copy him.

  “What is it?” I mouth.

  “Look.” And he points to the window above us. I hesitate. Rob would kill me if he saw me looking in his van.

  I don’t know what I expect to see through the crack in the curtain, but it isn’t this. In the grim light of his van, Rob is naked on his bed.

  I duck down and screw my face up at Spider.

  “Why would I want to see that?” I ask.

  Spider looks suddenly awkward. “I thought it was funny.”

  “Who’s he with?” I ask.

  Spider’s face sparks into life again. “I don’t know.”

  Slowly, he slides up toward the window. I’m not sure our luck will last. If Rob sees him, the heavens will fall.

  Something crosses over Spider’s face, before he crouches quickly down again.

  “Who is it?” I ask.

  “I couldn’t see,” he answers. “Let’s go.”

  “You did see.”

  “I didn’t. It’s too dark in there. Let’s go.”

  He takes my hand, so I have no choice but to be led away.

  I try to leave the image of Rob behind, but it trails along beside us.

  “Who was he with, Spider?” I ask again, when we’re far enough from the van to stop walking and to talk without whispering.

  “I said I didn’t see, so I didn’t.”

  “I know a lie when I hear one,” I tell him.

  “I wouldn’t lie to you, Lo,” he says earnestly, ripping honesty in two.

  “Lo.” Spider grabs my hand.

  “I want to see who it was.” I pull myself free and start walking back.

  Spider is beside me. “It’s too dark. You won’t be able to.”

  “You saw.”

  “I didn’t.” He squeezes in another lie. “It’s no business of ours. You can’t go spying on people.”

  “You brought me here in the first place.”

  “I thought it would be funny.” His voice is quiet as we get close. I stand to the side of the window.

  “Lo,” Spider whispers.

  Through the line of glass I see Rob turned away from us. Next to him is my mom, standing by the bed, pulling her shirt over her bare arms.

  Spider drags me back.

  “You saw?” he asks, but I can only stare at him.

  He’s holding my hand, and we’re walking over a ground that feels split in two. The air is too thick, and I make him stop.

  “My mom.”

  “I know.” He shakes his head, as though trying to loosen the image and let it drop away.

  “Did I see it wrong?” I ask.

  “I don’t think so.”

  I watch my feet step on the grass. I need to rewind time.

  I need to have not seen it. Because if I haven’t seen it, maybe it hasn’t happened. It could erase, so it never existed.

  “My dad,” I say. The words are attached to so many others.

  I think I should be crying, but I’m blocked up by a feeling I’ve never felt before. It’s like anger, but it’s bubbled tight onto something else that wants to pop and spill inside me.

  Spider keeps hold of my hand as he leads me away and across the open park. The wall he finds for us to sit on is low and backed by a single line of trees, before the road.

  We look back toward our vans. They’re different now, smudged with something that wants to push them flat. Our big top stands red and yellow in the middle, the center of it poking too high toward the sky.

  “How can I ever look at her again?” I ask finally.

  “She’s your mom.”

  “Not the mom I thought she was.” It suddenly feels like my family has thick dirt on them, but my mom used to shine like stars.

  “You don’t know all the story,” Spider says.

  “My parents being together is the story.”

  “Do you think he knows?” Spider asks.

  My dad, sitting at the table, his arm around our mom.

  “No,” I say.

  Spider spits on the ground.

  “I hate Rob,” I say, but the words hurt.

  “Will you tell Rita?” Spider asks.

  “I won’t tell anyone,” I say. “It’ll kill my dad if he finds out.” I look up at Spider, more earnestly than I ever have. “And you mustn’t too. Promise me, Spider.”

  He looks lost. I know he wishes he hadn’t seen it either.

  “I promise,” he says.

  The air is solid, and I don’t like the way it makes me breathe. But we walk back through it, back to a world that’s shifted, and I no longer know where I fit.

  Spider leaves me near Terini. I watch as he walks away, and then, instead of going up the steps as I should, I turn and start to walk out of the park.

  If anyone sees me, no one says. No one shouts my name. I make it look like I’ve got a purpose, my steps stronger than I feel.

  Our vans all have their backs to me as I head for the rush of cars. I follow their stream and stop for the light and cross the road we walked up two nights ago, when my life was whole.

  The gray shops are open now, sucking in and spitting out shoppers. The fountain is here. I should have left the coin sunk at the bottom. It’s brought the wrong luck, the bad kind that whips your eyes to make you see.

  The child touching the spray is what makes me cry. His mom holding his hand, keeping him safe. I walk on past and wipe my eyes on my sleeve. My mom was meant to keep holding our hands, not be the one to throw us to the lions.

  The shops end abruptly, replaced by a merry-go-round with horses that creak up and down in endless circles. A girl looks up as I cry. She doesn’t mind that she stares at me.

  Then houses. Lots of them, that let me walk alongside them and don’t even pretend to look away from the girl in the broken circus.

  “Hey!” I can’t see where the voice is coming from. “Laura.”

  I turn and it’s him. Dean from the fountain, and he’s running toward me.

  “Are you OK?” he asks. I just look at him. “I saw you from the window. That’s my house.” He points back down the street.

  “I’m just looking around,” I say. But he must know that something is wrong as I cough and wipe my eyes.

  “I can show you,” he says.

  “Show me what?”

  “Around.” He smiles. And it’s there, despite my world disappearing, there’s that feeling in my bones. A spark I want to light
to see where it leads me.

  “OK.”

  We walk together, away from the merry-go-round, away from the fountain and the park with our tents and my mom in Rob’s van pulling her shirt over her naked arms.

  “Where are your friends?” I ask.

  “They’re at college.”

  “You’re not?”

  “Not until this afternoon.”

  At the end of the street, we turn into another, with more houses.

  “Where’s your sister?” he asks.

  “At the site, getting ready for later. As I should be.”

  “You have a show today?”

  “Two.”

  We walk with our arms almost touching.

  “Did you have a fight with her?” He looks at me and my mind tumbles.

  “No. We rarely fight.”

  But now there’ll be unspoken words drawing a big, dark line between us. I want to unpick it, to scrub it out, but it’s there, waiting to divide us.

  “I liked your show,” he says, awkward for something to say. I can feel that he’s looking at me again, but I keep my eyes on the pavement that quietly takes my feet.

  “Thanks.” I should say more, but all I can think of is Rob and Ma in that van. How her red lips and careful hair now make too much sense. When did the hoop earrings appear? Weeks? Months? How long ago did we lose her without knowing? How long has Rob been the extra person in our van, who we couldn’t see?

  Dean cuts down a thin alley, and I follow him. The bricks of houses either side hold us in. The air doesn’t move. It feels stuck with the breath of every person who ever walked down here. I share it with the ghosts of shuffling old men and running children.

  At the end, there’s a big, broken building with rows and rows of windows, going up and across. Every single one has been smashed through.

  “My mom used to work here,” Dean says.

  Our feet crunch on loose stones as he leads me around to the side. Dean climbs up onto an old bin and pulls himself on top of a rusting blue container. Without asking if I want to, he stands up and puts out his hand for me. And I go, up toward him, letting him help me until we’re standing together on the rickety metal.

  The window in front of us is empty of glass and Dean climbs through.

  “Careful,” he says, reaching back to help me balance. On this side, in here, I’m alone with him.

  “This way.”

  We walk together across the big room, its ceiling too low. The door at the end is open.

  “It was a soap factory,” Dean says. “You wouldn’t believe this place once kept the world clean.”

  The air holds memories I can almost touch.

  “I wasn’t born when she worked here,” Dean tells me as we walk together up the stairs. “I like to imagine it, what she was like.” His mother’s younger self runs past us. Her face is like his, and she looks at me and smiles before she disappears.

  “Where does she work now?” I ask.

  “In the supermarket bakery in the mornings and then as a cleaner.”

  “Was she happier here?”

  “I like to think so.” I can see unspoken thoughts on his face. I wait for them to leave him and trickle into the walls to find her ghost.

  “How many stairs?” I ask as we turn to see more going up.

  “A few more.”

  There’re too many, and there’s too much time to think about my dad, about the hurt waiting around the corner for him. I try instead to smell the flecks of soap hidden in the dust.

  At the top, there’s a metal ladder fixed to the wall.

  “It should be easy for you,” he says, and he’s right. I climb ladders in my sleep. “I’ll go first to unhook the latch.”

  I can tell he’s been here a hundred times. He pushes back the flat door at the top and lets the white sky come tumbling in.

  I hold the metal rungs and go up through the hole that leads to the roof.

  “Look,” he says. And I do, and I see over the houses and streets to a patch of green scattered with tiny white vans and the red and yellow of our big top so small that I could pick it up with my fingers.

  “Do you like it?” he asks.

  “Yes.” I’ve never seen so far.

  The roof is flat, with catches of puddles that haven’t dried. There’s no barrier at the edge, and I want to walk there, have my feet touch where the solid line meets the air.

  “There’s my house.” Dean points toward the street we just walked down. “The one with the red door.” Miniature buildings waiting patiently. I try to imagine the quiet. The stillness. The never moving on.

  “What’s it like?” I ask. “Living somewhere permanently?”

  “It’s good, I suppose.”

  “Who do you live with?”

  “Just my mom.”

  “Just your mom?” In my life there’s family around every corner, there’s noise and color so bright it suffocates at times. “Where’s your dad?”

  Dean raises his shoulders awkward. “I don’t have one.”

  “Did he die?” Although I’m scared to ask.

  “No. I just never knew him.” He speaks like he doesn’t care, but I can see he’s unsettled behind his eyes. “He stayed for about a year after I was born. There one day, gone the next.”

  “He didn’t keep in touch?”

  “No.”

  I think of our dad, keeping us safe on his shoulders above any storm.

  “Do you have sisters or brothers?” I ask, trying to make it OK again for Dean. And needing to block out thoughts of Ma’s betrayal striking into my dad.

  “I’ve got a brother who comes to visit sometimes, but he doesn’t live with us anymore.”

  “So there are empty bedrooms?”

  “No. We used to share our room.”

  “It must be very quiet, just you and your mom.”

  “It just feels normal to us.”

  Normal. My normal has turned to dust. I look at his eyes, wondering whether I can trust him.

  “I saw my mom in a friend’s van,” I say quickly. “Where she shouldn’t have been. Spider showed me.”

  Dean looks at me, waiting for the words to settle.

  “It was Rob’s van,” I carry on. “He joined our circus a few years ago. He’s meant to be family.”

  “And they were together?”

  “Yes.”

  “When did you see it?”

  “Just now.” I want answers from him, on how to put it all right.

  “Did you suspect?”

  “No. I never thought she’d do this. I never thought Rob would.”

  “How come he’s in your circus?”

  “He wanted to join and he was good enough.”

  “That simple?”

  “He trained as a dancer but wanted something different. Tricks says if it wasn’t for Rob, our circus might not’ve survived. He made us change, so more people came to see us.” But the memory of his naked back burns into me.

  Dean puts his hands into the pockets of his jeans as he looks at me.

  “What’s he like?”

  “He’s just Rob.” I remember him turning up and asking to audition. Spider, Rita, and I sat and watched. He was beautiful, lost in his dance. And he brought with him pinches of stories from his life that had stood still.

  But he also brought this.

  “I’m worried that my dad is going to hurt.” Anger creeps up through the roof we’re standing on, through my shoes, seeping into my skin.

  “Are you going to tell your mom? What you saw?”

  I imagine it. I see myself walking up the steps of Mada and making her look at me, and I’ll tell her I saw Rob’s skin on hers.

  “If I do, my dad will definitely find out.” I could reach up now and touch the sky with my fingertips. Pull myself through the blue away from all of this. “I have to go back and pretend I know nothing,” I say flatly.

  “Will your friend tell anyone?”

  “Spider? No, he promised he won’t.” And
to him she was my mom who could do no wrong.

  “Is Spider your boyfriend?” Dean is looking at me again and it makes my anger change into something else.

  “No.”

  “And you’re not interested in him?”

  “No.” I can’t explain to him how Spider would never want to be with me. How people wait for us to be together, but Spider has secrets, and I know we never will.

  Dean nods and I don’t know if his smile is for me, or for the air that holds the tiny houses below us.

  “This is where I come to think,” Dean says. “You can come back if you want. If you need to.”

  “I’d like that,” I say, because I would. Up here, I feel like a bird, that I could fly anywhere.

  “I could take you there, too, if you’d like.” Dean points to a ribbon of river beyond the houses, just past where the fields start. “It’s a good place.”

  “Healing water?”

  “Maybe.” He smiles. We could sit together by the stream.

  “Are you at college a lot?” I ask.

  “A fair bit.”

  “Do you like it?”

  “It’s all right.”

  “I can’t imagine going to the same place all the time.”

  Dean pauses and looks at me. “Do you really like the moving on? Don’t you ever want to stop and set up home?”

  “I have a home,” I say, but inside I’m hesitating.

  “But put down roots. Be in one place?”

  “I don’t think I could. I’d be scared I’d fall off.”

  “Fall off what?”

  “The edge of the world,” I say. “I know it doesn’t make sense, but it’s how I feel.”

  “Then it does make sense,” Dean says. I look at him and wonder how he knows. How a flattie can understand. Maybe I could tell him how sometimes I do feel trapped by our moving wheels, tied tight to them, and I want to see what would happen if I cut myself free.

  “I’m going to have to go back,” is all I say and Dean nods.

  “Can I come and see you?”

  Dean, walking into our site, up Terini’s steps.

  “Dad wouldn’t be too welcoming,” I tell him.

  “If you introduce me, he’d know I’m nice.” He smiles, but he doesn’t understand.

  “He’d never let me get involved with a flattie.”

  “Never?”

  “No.”

  The word sounds like a final bell, hanging heavy on its own. I can tell by Dean’s eyes that he doesn’t hear it.