My audition is the next evening, after training finishes. I haven’t actually told Kite and Ruben about the slightly enormous complication of my mum not wanting to move to Albury, or not even knowing I’m here at all, though by now she will know, since Barnaby was going to ring her for me. Boy, am I glad he’s going to speak to her and not me. Sometimes a big brother is an excellent thing to have.
In the morning, Kite and I are standing in a slab of morning sun in the driveway, waiting for Ruben, who is going to drop Kite at school first and then take me to the circus. The circus kids have their own school, and different classes go off at different times of the day to do their training session. Kite says some kids also go and train after school.
‘Does everyone get sick of each other?’
‘Not really. It’s more like one enormous family. Imagine having a family that big. It’s great, really.’ Kite’s reaching into the apricot tree but I can see he’s all lit up, eyes shining, because he has a huge family now. Makes me think how all his life he’s never even had a brother or a sister, and I can imagine how exciting it must be to be surrounded now by hundreds of kids, all of them doing something so huge and exciting together. I smile at him and I take the apricot he offers me, but I feel my thoughts snaking around and hissing up because I want to be happy for him, I really do, but mostly I feel my own selfish fears rising up and getting ready to bite. He’ll be swallowed up, I’m thinking, by that enormous, exciting, wonderful new family and will never again want to do dumb things like hedge walking in Brunswick with just me.
I sink my teeth into the apricot and I feel that opinion, the one that thinks, If I don’t get in that circus family, too, my life will be over. I feel it growing harder and firmer, and now it begins to throb and beat through the whole of my body. I walk out onto the nature strip and I look up at the sky, which is confidently blue, and I try to breathe in its largeness, and while I am breathing Kite comes up behind me and for a moment I can just feel him standing close. I can almost feel the warmth from his skin. But then he moves beside me and throws a pip at the letterbox.
‘Hey, don’t be nervous about the audition tonight. Dad was just saying all that because he wants to toughen you up. But the trainers are nice, they’re all ex-Fruities themselves. You’ll be fine.’
I imagine I am full of sky; I take a deep, quick, inconspicuous breath and act like I’m stretching my arms and then I just say in a ‘by the way, while I stretch my arms’ kind of a way, ‘So what about your audition piece? I guess you can’t use me, if I’m not in the same auditions. I guess you’ll be using Lola after all.’
I want him to say of course he still wants to work with me, but at the same time I don’t want him to know I want all that. I want to act like I’m not jealous and I’m not putting any pressure on. He’s still looking straight ahead.
‘Yeah. I kind of had no choice in the end. ’Cause we’ve had to start rehearsing our pieces two weeks ago. So I had to work with Lola. It’s a pity, but I couldn’t help it.’
‘That’s okay, I don’t mind,’ I say.
He looks at me as if he’s trying to see if I do mind, so I stare down at the ground as if I’m looking at the stones. And just to be convincing, I bend down, pick one up and begin to turn it over in my hand. Luckily, Ruben comes out right then and hurries us into the car, because I don’t think I could hide my disappointment if I had to speak.
Kite’s in the back of the car, so we don’t even look at each other all the way there. But by the time we drop Kite at the school I’m almost wishing I hadn’t come. I stare sadly out the window and wonder if Kite loves me at all.
Ruben says, ‘I got a call from your mother.’
‘Oh.’ I look down at my thin knees.
‘Last night,’ says Ruben. ‘She just wanted to make sure you were all right.’
‘Ahh-huh.’ I’m still looking at my knees and they haven’t changed.
‘I told her you were fine.’
‘That’s good.’
Ruben reaches out and rubs my head. ‘Little scamp!’
‘Was she mad?’
‘No. Just worried. She’s all right, she says to say good luck.’
‘Really?’ Now I turn towards him, eyes bulging. I can hardly believe it. All of a sudden I feel my ribbon flying. All of a sudden the sky inside me lifts up and spreads out and I feel lighter and lighter, as if I might just waft out the window. I didn’t realise how much it was weighing me down, not having my mum behind me. Suddenly, I feel infinitely better. I look at Ruben and he looks at me, and between us there’s a flash of knowing. He smiles because he knows I ran away but he understands why, and maybe he would have done the same thing once. I smile because I know somehow he would have made Mum understand that too.
‘Well, we’re here,’ he says, pulling into a small car park.
And there it is. A long, rectangular brick building painted white with bright red and orange and yellow strips of brick. At the top a sign which says:
THE FLYiNG FRUiT FLY CiRCUS
Instantly I am nervous again. It all seems so close, dangerously close. I close my eyes, I reach down into myself, I say, ‘Please, please let me join the circus.’ I don’t know who I’m asking. Just whatever it is out there that answers prayers. I know some people call it God, but because I’m unusual I might call it something else, like Janet, for instance. But right now I’m following Ruben inside, and I’m too excited to choose names for the Holy Spirit.