“See that guy?” Genevieve lifts her eyes toward a man in chef’s whites standing near the long buffet table set up on the terrace. “You know what I heard? He’s Etienne Montpellier’s personal chef! Can you imagine being so rich you can hire your own chef?”
Etienne Montpellier owns Cirque de la Lune. He started out as a street performer and built the company into the world’s most successful circus. The guy is worth gazillions.
Leo licks his lips. “No wonder these hamburgers are so good,” he says.
Smoke billows out of two barbecues. At one of them, a chef is grilling regular hamburgers and hot dogs. At the other, another chef is grilling red-bean burgers and tofu hot dogs. From what I can tell, vegetarians outnumber carnivores two to one at circus camp.
Genevieve, Hana, Anastasia and I are sitting at a picnic table across from Leo and Guillaume.
Guillaume keeps sliding closer to Leo. Every time Guillaume does that, Leo rolls his eyes, swats Guillaume with the back of his hand and moves away. We all laugh when Leo comes close to falling off the bench. Guillaume tugs on Leo’s arm, then makes a reeling motion as he pulls him back up.
“Do you two ever stop joking around?” Genevieve asks.
“Not if we can help it,” they say at the exact same time, which makes us laugh some more.
“What is that you are eating?” Hana asks me. All she has on her plate is a tofu hot dog—and she’s only taken the teensiest bite.
“It’s quinoa salad.”
Hana has never heard of quinoa. Apparently they don’t serve it in Korea. “It’s a grain. This salad has raisins and apricots in it too,” I tell her.
She nods as if I have said something very deep.
The two chefs wheel their barbecues to the back of the terrace and move the buffet table out of the way. A rigger lays down safety mats. When the music starts, it’s so low that at first I think I’m imagining it.
But it gets louder, and I realize it’s that old Alice Cooper song “School’s Out.” Like me, Hana is tapping her foot. She may not have heard of quinoa, but she knows this song. I think about how there are so many people in this world and how music brings us closer. Circus does that too.
The lights on the terrace dim, then go out. When they come on again two minutes later, we see that two rows of old-fashioned wooden school desks have been set up on the mats. There’s one long desk in front of the others. The spotlights shine down on a woman sitting behind the desk. She’s wearing a black dress with a high collar and thick glasses with black rims. It takes me a minute to realize it’s Suzanne.
“No more pencils! No more books!” Alice Cooper’s voice wails through the speakers.
When he lands on the word books, Suzanne picks up two textbooks from a pile on her desk. She tosses one high into the air, and then, before it has time to land, she tosses up the other. I’ve seen people juggle balls and pins, but never books. When we applaud, Suzanne picks up two more books and juggles those too.
I’m so focused on Suzanne, I hardly notice the other performers. Four of them have lined up single file. Each wears a black cape and a mortarboard with gold tassels.
“Look! There’s Hugo Lebrun!” Leo points at the last performer.
When Hugo hears his name, he turns to our table and takes a deep bow. Leo and Guillaume stand up and bow back. Everyone laughs. Genevieve has a throaty laugh; Hana’s giggle sounds like wind chimes.
I catch Leo winking at us as he sits back down.
The rigger pushes the desks together so they form a long flat surface. A performer jumps up onto the desks and does a triple somersault across them.
A second performer pedals backward across the stage on a unicycle.
“That’s really hard to do,” I hear someone at another picnic table whisper.
The guy on the unicycle hoists himself up so that he is balancing on the handlebars, and somehow—don’t ask me how—he uses his weight to make the unicycle go backward. The crowd breaks into a round of noisy applause.
Suzanne is behind her desk, her hands on her hips, watching the others. She scowls when Alice Cooper sings the line “No more teachers’ dirty looks.”
On cue, the other performers whip off their capes and throw them down onto the mats. They are wearing gold lamé unitards that glitter under the spotlights. Why didn’t I notice the tightwire before—or that the riggers have pulled out scaffolding from the side of the building? It must mean there’s going to be an aerialist.
Two of the performers lift another performer up to the wire, and she takes tiny measured steps as she crosses its length. She steps halfway back, then does the splits along the wire. The crowd makes an approving ooh.
The rope climber is next. I get shivers as I watch him hoist himself up, working his arms, chest and legs. When he gets to the top, he flips upside down. All that’s keeping him hanging is the knot he’s tied over one foot. I look at the people sitting at my picnic table and at the tables near ours. I wonder if they are all thinking the same thing as me: Will I ever be that good?
Still hanging upside down, the rope climber releases a net basket. Inside it are hundreds of white paper airplanes. They flutter to the ground, and the show is over. We laugh, we applaud, and then we join in, singing and stomping our feet along with Alice Cooper. School is definitely out for the summer.
* * *
That night when I close my eyes in my top bunk, I still see images from the evening’s performance.
Not long after that, I hear whimpering. I wonder if somehow a small dog has gotten into the dormitory. But then I realize someone in a lower bunk is crying—and trying to muffle the sound. It’s hard to know what to do. Wait for the crying to end? Try to figure out who it is and whether there is something I can do to help?
The whimpering stops, then starts again.
Though I don’t know for sure, it could be coming from the bunk right under mine, where Hana is.
I hear someone get out of one of the lower bunks and then the sound of slippers padding along the floor. More sniffling.
I need to pee, so I get up too.
Hana is slumped in the hallway, her hands over her face. Is that a tattoo of a rose on her lower back?
“Hana,” I whisper, “can I help you?”
She shakes her head, so I leave to use the bathroom. When I come out, Genevieve is crouched on the floor beside Hana. “Poor thing is homesick,” she says.
Hana’s eyes are red from crying.
“Maybe you’ll feel a little better tomorrow,” Genevieve says.
“Would it help if you phoned your family in Seoul?” I ask.
Genevieve shoots me a look. “It’s probably too expensive for Hana to phone Seoul.”
“It isn’t the money.” Hana wipes her nose, then looks at Genevieve and me. “My parents are traditional Korean, meaning very strict. They did not like for me to come to North America. I do not want them to know I am so lonely for them.” Her face is solemn. “Please don’t say to anyone I’m sick for home.”
Genevieve and I promise not to tell.
“Cool tattoo. I guess you like roses,” I say, hoping to distract Hana from her troubles.
Hana’s dark eyes light up. “It is not a rose. It is mugunghwa. Korea’s national flower.”
Genevieve wants to see the tattoo. “I think we call that a hibiscus. Your parents can’t be that strict if they let you get a tattoo.”
When Hana shakes her head, I realize that mentioning the tattoo was a bad idea. “My parents know nothing about my tattoo,” she whispers. “They would not have given permit.”
It doesn’t seem like a good moment to tell Hana we say homesick, not sick for home, and that parents give permission, not permit.