The audience clapped a lot, and I don’t think it was just to be polite. When you’ve performed enough, you can tell when they mean it. Backstage, people patted our shoulders and gave us the thumbs-up. A guy in a green cowboy hat walked toward the stage with giant marionettes, and just like that, our part was over. I gave the costume back to Musky and became Newt again. I drank cherry soda and ate cheese cubes and crackers. I couldn’t get enough food.
“Good job, Newt!” Gilda smiled so wide. People I didn’t even know asked how we’d thought of it and said they hoped we would do it again next year. Leti came backstage and gave me a hug.
“Abby and I are sleeping at Ramona’s. We knew it was you the whole time, but that just made it better.” People high-fived and snapped pictures. At the festival, just for one night, we were all teammates in the middle of a game where everybody wins.
The mermaids rolled the clamshell away to get ready, so I stood and watched another magician, the octopus, a band, and a contortionist. There were only a couple of other kid acts. Gilda came out and made jokes while stagehands rigged a cable and spread blue-and-white fabric over the floor. I looked for Izzy again, but the audience was a dark forest. The first year, when we did our card trick, I told myself they were trees, and it was easy to believe.
Gilda left and the audience hushed. A giant crow with wide onyx-colored wings, a shiny bodysuit and tights, and a face-sized beak with a feathered headpiece climbed onto a wire tied across the stage. The crow faced the audience, and the violinist in the band played music that sounded as if the song itself was trying to balance on a wire. A stagehand turned on a fan, and the fabric rippled across the stage to become clouds and sky. The crow lay down across the wire and spread its enormous wings. The hall hushed, except for the violin. The crow tilted to one side and the other, as if flying through the currents of a fabric sky. Goose bumps covered my arms, even though backstage was a million degrees. The crow lifted its head to turn its beak to the other side of the wire. The light caught its neck, and I froze.
The costume covered almost everything, but I saw it: a purple ribbon with four milagros. I couldn’t see what they were, but I knew: a truck, a goat, a boy, and a flaming heart. She turned, and the D.S. tattoo at the base of her right thumb rode over an imagined current. The crow was my mom.
The performance was flawless. Her best ever. Even though she didn’t sweep snow or swing fire like the big hits of the first half of the show, the audience stood and cheered. Mom curtsied and hopped down from the wire. She ran right past me.
“Mom!” I said, but it got lost in the brush of her wings against Marvelo. “Vivian, wait!” The curtains fanned over me, and she was gone.
I looked for her but only found one glittery black feather on the props table. Ethan juggled stars outside. “Did you see her?” I asked, but he hadn’t.
For the rest of the show, I stayed by Ethan and the jugglers near the backstage door. I hoped to catch my mom, but there was no sign of her or the black wings. Gilda called us inside when it was over, and we all crowded on the stage to take our bows. Without the bear costume, the stage lights felt like sunshine. All the houselights, every lamp and lantern, shone brightly. The band kept playing. People stood around like they didn’t want to leave. I didn’t either. Everything I loved about the festival ran from the stage boards under my feet to the rafters. I whispered an apology for forgetting how amazing it is. I took deep breaths of each magical speck of festival dust. Trying to memorize everything was like trying to cup water in my hands. I’d almost missed the whole thing.
Izzy came toward the band pit, a salmon swimming against the current. I bent down to the edge of the stage.
“You were magnificent!” she said.
Somebody finally turned off the bright stage lights, but I still felt warm. I wanted to ask Izzy if she saw my mom, but she’d never met her.
“Do you want to go to a party?” I said instead. I was planning to skip the wrap party, but she said yes. We followed the parade of people under supernova lights on the lake path to the café. Ethan still wore his whole costume, even the top hat, and offered people unsolicited advice.
Mom wasn’t at the party either. I looked for Gilda. She must have known, but she hadn’t told me.
I wanted to dream about the show. Maybe in a dream my brain would show the parts I’d missed, the way it did with nightmares. Somebody asked if I was the bear guy, and I said yeah. I didn’t know if they meant the show, the attack, or Huxley. I led Izzy over to meet Ethan.
“What did you tell him about me?” she said. I remembered how we’d talked about her hair crabs and nettles, and how she could be a fugitive.
“I told him that you’re my friend.” We got a slice of cake. “And maybe you’re imaginary.” Ethan stood with a dancer and a couple of aerialists.
“This is my friend Izzy,” I said. “Izzy, this is my friend Ethan.” Ethan raised his eyebrows.
“Fig didn’t make you up!”
“He didn’t make you up either.” She eyed him. “I know about the bear. Newt left me a note,” Izzy said.
I felt my face get warm. I leaned toward them. “I think we should make our plan to get Huxley back.” We took even more cake to the lake gazebo and talked about all the ridiculous ways we could get Huxley and the Rooster back. Izzy watched the water like she thought Marvelo might jump out.
“You’re not going to see anything over there,” I said. Izzy laughed, but she still faced the lake. “We could offer to buy it back from him? Like a Rooster ransom?”
“Do you have any money?” Izzy asked. I did not.
“I could get my coins,” Ethan said. I laughed, but he didn’t. It was hard to see in the dark, but he looked serious. “My 1913 buffalo nickel, the 1909 penny, and my 1982 No P Roosevelt dimes. You can have them all. Mr. Mustard might take a trade for the coins. Antiques stores buy coins! Or we could sell them for the money and offer that to him.”
A group of people left the café in a burst of noise. One guy did cartwheels, and somebody played a trombone.
“I can’t take your coins, Ethan,” I said. “Thank you. I don’t think he would take money even if we had it. He wants Huxley. You can’t put a price on that.” I kept an eye on the paddleboats for any moms or crows.
“We could steal it,” Izzy said. “You didn’t leave the keys inside, did you? Wait. Did you?” They looked at me. I told them the keys were home under the Guadalupe statue by the front door. The rabbit’s foot was like a furry cushion for her feet.
“There you go,” Izzy said. “We don’t even need to hot-wire it. That’s where they always have trouble in the movies. But you have the keys. You know where it is. Let’s go get it!” It seemed easier than bartering with coins. But still, really stupid and dangerous.
“I don’t know,” I said. “That guy—”
“What do we know about this guy, Newt?” she said.
“Nothing,” I said. “But all we’d have to do is drive it away. Except it’s in Lincoln. I’ve never driven there because, you know, normal laws.”
“It’s up to you,” Izzy said. More laughter leaked out of the party, and the lake lapped the shore.
“I’ve got to go,” I said. Any plan would be risky. For now, we all went in different directions.
The rain smelled like oysters, tree bark, cement, and seagrass. Izzy wouldn’t let me walk her back to the cove, and Ethan’s mom was at the party, so he stayed. I took the long way home, around the lake under drizzle and supernova lights.
Maybe Mom would still have her wings when I got home. She might talk about the plate spinner or the mermaid I missed. She could say something about our act.
Walking alone in the dark freaked me out, but I kept going until I saw the warm light spilling out of our windows. Dad slept in front of the TV. Mom sat in the kitchen, drinking tea. She didn’t have wings. She wore a green hoodie and yoga pants.
“Where’d you come from?” she said. I could’ve lied, even if everybody in town said they saw me there, but I didn’t.
“The festival,” I said. “I went to the festival.” She studied me and twisted her mug over the tabletop. It left wet, broken circles over the surface.
“I thought you were going to Ethan’s,” she said.
I shrugged. “I lied.” I thought I’d feel guilty, but she had so many secrets lately, I didn’t. She pulled her knees up inside the hoodie.
“How was the show?”
I felt like I was looking down at us, as if we were a diorama in the Murphy Museum, or a tide pool. I watched her play with the milagros on her ribbon and held my words in my mouth as long as I could.
“You were fantastic. Why didn’t you tell me that you would be there?” I said.
“Did you have a good time?” Her face didn’t change, but her hand shook.
“Yeah, I did. We had an act, Ethan and me. I was the one in a bear suit. I think people liked it.” She didn’t say anything, so I kept going. “I loved it. Even though it was different than before.”
“That sounds wonderful.” She sipped tea. I eased down into a chair, and she smiled at me. “Would you like something to eat?”
“No thanks, I ate at the party. Did you see it?” I asked. “Our act?”
She spoke to the mug in her hands. “I missed it. I’m so sorry, Newt. I thought I was ready to be back there again, but I was wrong. I thought you weren’t ready, and I was wrong about that too.” She looked around the kitchen.
“Why didn’t you tell me you would be in the show?”
“Your dad knew, and Gilda, but that’s it. I wasn’t sure you’d understand. I didn’t want you to think I’d forgotten about what happened last year.” She squeezed my arm, and her eyes watered. I wanted her to talk about the stage, where I didn’t think about the bear at all. I wanted her to tell me if she had the same staticky feelings. She could say if it felt like her heart would come out of her chest too. But she didn’t. “I never forget. I worry about you all the time. I know it’s not the same as what you went through, but all that worry makes a weight.”
I nodded.
“I’ve been so sad. It’s exhausting. I wanted it to feel like it did before, like I could get up there and not worry about anything except what was happening onstage. It wasn’t the same, but it was good.” She held a finger up. “No. That’s not the right word. It’s necessary. I thought if it worked, I could get you to try it too. We need healthy escapes. But still, it was hard. I stayed in the truck until it was time to go on, and I left right after. I’m sorry I didn’t see your act.”
She looked like she wanted me to say something back, that I should tell her it was okay, but I asked, “Is that why you went out on the lake in the swan boat?”
Her head snapped up, and she got a wrinkle between her eyebrows. “When did you see me do that?”
She was full of secrets and sadness. I stared at her. “How often do you go out there?”
She half laughed. “It’s what I do when I need a break. Or I need to think. I didn’t realize anyone knew.”
“And you take the goats? And Chuck?”
“Chuck likes the water. Some of the goats do too. I figured if being on the water made me feel better, maybe it would relax them too.” She shrugged, like it was totally normal.
The best thing about being awake and not dreaming is that you can make your own choices. I tried it out in my head three times before I said it out loud.
“It’s ok. Maybe you’ll see our act next time.” It wasn’t totally fine, but it would be all right. “Your act, the whole thing…it was really wonderful.”
Mom kissed my head on her way out of the kitchen. I stood up from my chair, and it almost felt like I was onstage again. My skin buzzed, but this time the feeling stretched over the whole room.