There’s a large tusk from a mastodon. A trilobite fossil from the Paleozoic era. A large slab of petrified wood.
I wonder if they’re real. Forrester residents would have no idea whether this was a regular elephant tusk, a 3D-printed fossil, or a regular piece of wood glazed so that it’s shiny.
Actually, the lumberjacks around here might recognize regular wood.
There are little silver plaques describing each drawer. Some people breeze through this room, while some linger over each plaque reading the full histories.
Maisie’s eyes light up when she sees an offshoot room with large uncut gemstones held in secure cases. She pauses to look a long time at each sparkly red and purple and green.
I hang back, perusing more fossils and specimens, some of them quite delicate, wondering how they transport them safely from city to city.
“Psst. Sienna.”
I look around but no one else is standing in the room with me. Chills run over me. The voice sounded quiet, almost muted. “Who the fuck is there?”
“Sienna. Turn around.” I whirl around to face an empty corner, where there’s only what looks like a brass doorknock that’s hollow in the middle.
Speaking tube, proclaims the silver plaque next to it. Dating back to the 1800s, the so-called acoustic telegraph allowed people to talk up to sixty miles away.
“It’s me. Travis.”
I take a step toward the tube and speak into the brass hole. “Fuck you.”
“We need to talk.”
“If you want to let Kyle beat you up, that’s your decision. I’ll stay out of it.”
“This isn’t about him.”
I frown. Travis and I hadn’t really talked for years. The only reason I ever got involved is when Kyle bullied him, but he made it clear yesterday that he didn’t appreciate the intervention. “Where even are you?”
“Go back to the hallway and past the Adults Only section.”
Good Lord. Coming from anyone else in Forrester that would be a come-on, but with Travis, I can be sure it isn’t. I follow his directions and find him in a dark corner with a red EXIT sign above him. “Okay, you got me here. Please say you brought drugs. That’s really the only thing that will make this spy subterfuge worth it.”
“What did he say to you?” Travis says, sounding urgent. Even in the dimness, I could see that he’d managed to get all the thick white paint off his face. I wonder if he used Vaseline.
I put a hand on my forehead. “I’m trying to catch up. Who are you talking about? Kyle? Because I haven’t talked to him since yesterday.”
“I mean Whitmere.”
“I’ve literally never heard of anyone named that.”
“Logan Whitmere.”
“Oh, Logan.”
“Oh, Logan,” he says, mimicking me as if I’m being ridiculous. He’s impatient, which would be annoying if I didn’t also sense a frantic edge to him. And Travis, for all his bluster and fear, isn’t usually frantic. He definitely didn’t call me over to dark corners. “What did he say to you?”
“He said…” The dark peach of your lips makes me want to kiss you. Even though that should be the last thing on my mind after seeing those fuckers hurt you. I throw up my hands. “I don’t know, he said a lot of stuff. Why does it matter?”
“I need to know why he brought the circus here.”
“If this is part of the mysteries and curiosities act, it’s very convincing. Because I’m confused as fuck. The circus is here because it travels. And he didn’t bring it here. It just…came.”
“He decides where it goes.”
Something tugs at my memory. The circus doesn’t run itself. “Like…the navigator?”
“Like the owner, Sienna. He owns the freaking circus.”
I rub the place on my sternum, the intimate place he’d touched me. “He does?”
“You didn’t know that?”
“How would I know that? He didn’t have a name tag that said I own the fucking circus.”
“His signature’s all over the permits.”
Travis’s mom works at City Hall, so naturally she’d see them. And apparently, tell her son about them. It’s a little weird that I’d met the man who owned all this, that I called him by his first name. That he gave a VIP ticket to the barista at the only coffee place in town. “Okay, so I’m caught up on who Logan Whitmere is, but I still don’t know why I should care.”
“He was asking about you, for one thing. Asking where you worked.”
Had he? Is that why he’d really come to the Bean and not to get coffee? “How do you know?”
An eye roll. “This is Forrester. Nothing stays a secret.”
If the gossip mill knows that some circus man—the owner, no less—asked about me, then it also knows the reason why. Sex. That assumption isn’t one I made. It’s the one the town makes, and slowly, like a poison, it seeped into my skin. “So he has a hard-on for me. He probably isn’t the only guy in the circus trying to fuck someone in town.”
Travis pulls out his phone and hands it to me. It’s apparently the Instagram page for Cirque des Miroirs. My eyes widen. There are almost a million followers. One video shows a couple performing high in the air, tangled up artfully in billowing red curtains. There are thousands of likes and comments. Thank you for a great night, Memphis! reads the caption.
It was a few weeks ago, so I guess it makes sense they could have traveled through cities to get to Texas. But it’s on a completely different scale. Memphis must have hundreds of thousands of people. I don’t even know, but nothing like the fifteen hundred that make up Forrester’s city limits. It’s strange. “What the hell does this mean?”
“They didn’t even put up the big top. They can usually seat ten thousand people a night. They didn’t put up their second biggest tent, either. That one they’re using can only seat a few hundred people, and that’s not even sold out.”
I hand back the phone, unease tugging my stomach. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because they’re here for something, and it’s not ticket sales. Since Whitmere was asking about you, I thought you might know the reason.”
“Well, I have no idea. Why do you care, anyway?”
He looks away, and for a moment the years between us fade. There are only two old friends standing together. “Because you don’t need to get mixed up with someone like that.”
“Let’s get one thing clear. I’m not mixed up with anyone, least of all some random guy who owns a circus who’s only going to be in town for a few days.”
“He’s going to ask you to run away with him.”
“He’s going to ask me to run away with the circus?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“Because he asked me.”
I’ve dreamed about running away from Forrester a thousand times. I never thought about it leaving me. A lump forms in my throat. “What was your answer?”
“I told him I’d think about it.”
He has eyebrows so blond they almost disappear. And a too-thin nose. His face is both familiar and not. We played for hours when we were kids. Now as adults who barely ever speak, his face has sharpened into a painful memory. “If there’s anyone who deserves to escape this hellhole, it’s you. But… Be careful.”