It was a pretty nice day, sunny and warm but not melt-your-face-and-start-your-hair-on-fire-if-you-stay-outside-longer-than-eleven-minutes hot like it could sometimes get in September. It was pleasantly warm on this particular day. Why is it that the worst things always seem to happen on the nicest days? Like when I’d almost gotten killed out at the Yard nearly a year earlier. The weather on that day had been almost perfect as well.

It was actually pretty funny that I was thinking about that whole thing at that very moment. I mean, not funny ha-ha but more funny-that-weird-coincidences-always-have-to-end-up-being-terrible.

So, anyways, I was walking home from school. Vince wasn’t with me because he had to be home within fifteen minutes of school ending every day to watch his little sister. His mom had gotten a new job recently, which was cool because then she could, like, pay her bills again and stuff, but it also stunk because that meant he couldn’t hang out until later in the day. So I’d been walking home from school alone this year. It wasn’t so bad, really. I lived fairly close, and the trip always gave me time to think about how easy life was now. So far, every walk home had been entirely uneventful.

But on this particular day I heard a voice call out from behind me.

“Hey, Mac.”

I didn’t stop walking. Probably someone looking for help who hadn’t understood that I wasn’t in business anymore.

“Mac!” the voice said, louder this time. I was annoyed, and I didn’t turn around. But I did stop walking.

“What?” I said.

“I need your help.”

Just as I thought.

“I’m sorry,” I said, as I had said so many times since school had started back up. “I’m not in that business anymore. I can’t help you.”

“I bet you’ll make an exception for me.”

The voice was closer now. Whoever it was had come out from wherever he’d been concealed, likely the bushes that lined the sidewalk. I could tell he was pretty much right behind me now. I could feel the cold of his enormous shadow engulf me. And that’s when I realized who it was.

I’d know that shadow anywhere. I’d never forget it for the rest of my life. Which is why it was also impossible that I was seeing it; the owner of that shadow had skipped town shortly after I took him down. Everyone knew that. A circus family that had yard sales every other weekend lived in his house now.

Vince and I went there to check out the rummage sales every once in a while because they always had the craziest, funniest stuff. Like a purple feather vest designed to fit an elephant. Or a Poo Sling, a slingshot designed specifically to fling animal poop. And haggling with them was the best part. I wasn’t as good of a negotiator as I expected. For my first purchase I managed to negotiate the price for a talking wig from seven dollars up to nine dollars. Yeah, I was that bad. But the wig was pretty sweet just the same. It could say only a few lines, but they were all awesome and insulting, such as, “Stop pulling on me, Scum Bucket” and “You make me look ugly, Crap Waffle.”

Vince, however, was a master negotiator. He’d worked the price of a car down to two bucks. Okay, so maybe it was only a model clown car and not a real one, but still, the original price had been twelve dollars.

But all this was beside the point. The point was that the circus family was there, living in the former house of the owner of this shadow. He’d left town. If he hadn’t, we would have known about it. He was so legendary that someone would have seen him lurking about and said something. Right? Right?!

It didn’t matter. All I could do now was turn around.

His smile hadn’t changed much; it was still all teeth and menace. And his laser-beam stare could still melt a penny at a hundred yards. And he was still huge. And he still looked like he could crush a pair of fifth graders in each hand like soda cans.

“Hello, Mac,” Staples said, smirking as always.