Circa Now Read online

  “The Boones will be here any minute,” Mom said. “Mr. Boone will be on his lunch break, so I need to be ready.”

  Mom ran her fingers through her tangly, black-brown hair. “I’m going to get cleaned up real quick,” she said. “You want to wake up our guest?”

  “Sure,” said Circa, closing her door to throw on a T-shirt and some shorts.

  Next door, Circa found Miles in the very same position she’d last left him, and still snoring. She called out to him quietly.

  “Miles?”

  It occurred to her that he probably wasn’t used to anyone calling him by that name, so she resorted to clearing her throat obnoxiously loud, which instantly did the trick. Miles bolted upright and gasped a little.

  “Whoa,” said Circa. Miles seemed both embarrassed and confused. He looked all around the room, and then back at her.

  “Circa,” she reminded him. She’d been accustomed to reintroducing herself to her Maple Grove friends on a regular basis. “Do you remember where you are?” she said.

  “Yeah,” he said with a stretch. “Good morning, Circa.”

  “Do you remember who you are?”

  Miles yawned and shook his head no. “And I still don’t remember your dad,” he said. “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” said Circa, trying to mask her disappointment. “Come on downstairs. Mom says Nattie and them will be here soon for their portrait, and I bet they’ll bring pie.”

  “You kids sleep okay?” Mom asked as the three of them met up at the top of the steps. They both nodded drowsily as Mom gave Circa a little half hug and patted Miles on the arm. As they descended the stairs, Circa could see the silhouettes of the Boones through the frosted glass of the front door. She opened the door before they could even knock, and was thrilled to find most of the family loaded down with food. The Boones came in like a little parade of kindness, greeting Circa and Mom and Miles warmly. First there was Mrs. Boone with Nattie’s little brother, Durret, in tow, then Mr. Boone in the middle, his arms piled high with a small mountain of groceries. Then Nattie at the rear, which was an unusual thing for her. Nattie was looking just as snazzy as ever, and she’d put on her best smile, but Circa sensed that something was wrong.

  “Oh, do come on into the kitchen with all that goodness,” said Mom. “Just please excuse the mess.”

  “Friend, you’ve seen how we live,” said Mrs. Boone. “Thanks to our professional mess machine here.”

  Circa could see three damp spots where they’d already had to wipe things off of Durret’s little man suit. They all proceeded to the kitchen, where Mr. Boone set a pie on the counter, along with a loaf of bread and a stack of paper plates. The rest, including a pot roast, some black-eyed peas, and a gallon of milk, went straight into the fridge.

  “You shouldn’t have gone to all this trouble, but I’m sure glad you did,” Mom said.

  Circa eyed the peanut butter pie. She was glad too. Most of Mom’s customers had postponed their portrait appointments because of the storm, but Nattie’s family wanted to keep theirs. Circa knew this was just so they could help. Mom was always so calm with the Boones.

  “Oh, everyone, I’d like for you to meet Miles,” said Mom. “He’s been, well, displaced during the storm and will be with us for a day or so until his family can come get him.”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miles,” said Mrs. Boone. Mr. Boone reached out and shook his hand.

  “Well, since you’ve gone and done all this, I guess I owe you guys a decent family portrait, huh?” Mom said. “But won’t you all sit down for a bite first?”

  “Oh, certainly not,” said Mrs. Boone. “This is all for you.”

  “We had a big breakfast anyway,” said Mr. Boone.

  “Well, we’re sure grateful,” said Mom, cutting a big piece of pie each for Circa and for Miles. Nattie smoothed her skirt and joined Circa and Miles at the table, while the grown-ups and the spoon-chewing Durret went all whispery-whispery on the other side of the kitchen.

  Circa hadn’t seen Nattie look so bummed since the day Mr. Boone officially told her she couldn’t have a dog. She thought of giving Nattie her own slice of pie to help matters, until she remembered that her best friend hated peanut butter as much as she herself hated jelly.

  “Hey, Nat, you want to go with me and Miles to visit Maple Grove today?”

  Miles stopped midbite.

  “Oops. Sorry I didn’t run that by you, Miles,” said Circa. “Okay with you?”

  Miles nodded and went back to his pie.

  “I’ll be lucky if they allow me to go get the mail this afternoon,” Nattie grumbled.

  “What do you mean?” said Circa.

  “I mean I totally got busted for coming to your window last night.”

  “Oh no. So sorry,” said Circa. “Maybe Miles and I will just run up there real quick while you’re getting your picture done then.”

  “Wait. What about tomorrow?” said Nattie. “Can we all go then?”

  “No, Miles might be gone by tomorrow,” said Circa.

  Miles nodded and shrugged, making Nattie slump in her chair.

  “Here’s sort of a neat thing,” said Circa, grasping for good news. “There really are freckled eggs in that nest, just like you said.”

  “That’s cool,” Nattie said halfheartedly. “Hey, when I get ungrounded tomorrow, if Miles is still here, you promise I can hang with you guys?”

  “Promise,” said Circa.

  Once the kids went totally silent, the parents hushed their whispering and made their way toward the studio door, summoning Nattie to join them.

  “It was nice to meet you, Miles,” she said.

  “Yeah. You too,” said Miles.

  “Mom,” said Circa, “while you guys are doing the pictures, can I go to Maple Grove for a little while?”

  “Circa—” Mom began, but Circa interrupted before Mom could get out a decent no. Circa planned to answer all the questions before Mom could even ask them.

  “I’ll take Miles with me,” she said. “We’ll walk. And I’ll show him the neighborhood. There’s no chance of rain today. It will be good for Miles, right? To get to meet some people up there…I mean, like the un-Stanley people.”

  Mr. and Mrs. Boone smiled at the fast-talking. Circa sensed that Mom was about to buckle under the pressure.

  “Okay,” Mom answered reluctantly. “But do take Miles with you, and just for a little while.”

  “Just a little while,” assured Circa.

  “But you keep an eye on him,” Mom said. “And really, don’t be gone too long, in case somebody calls to come get him.”

  “Got it,” said Circa.

  As soon as their pie was done, Circa and Miles were out the door. “Thanks for coming with me,” she said. “Even though I didn’t really give you a choice.”

  “What else am I going to do?” Miles kicked a rock across the driveway.

  “I think you’ll like Maple Grove,” she said. “There are real nice people there. Not including Smoochy Stanley, of course.”

  “Yeah, well, your mom sure doesn’t seem too keen on the place,” said Miles, looking all around him as they walked, like he was on a scavenger hunt for something that rang familiar.

  “Yeah, well, she wouldn’t know because she’s never even been,” Circa said indignantly. “Anyway, I was going to say…Lily the nurse and Joe the food man are the ones who work in the daytime. Joe’s the one who gives me glass-bottle Cokes. And then there are the people who live there. There’s pretty much two categories of them, the ones who remember enough to talk to you about it, and the ones who don’t.”

  “Kind of like you and me?”

  “Come on.” Circa jabbed Miles with her elbow. “The thing is, my dad and me used to go visit there a lot. He was…well, we were working on this amazing Memory Wall for the residents.�
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  “That’s the project?”

  “Yeah, it’s this really cool collection of old pictures that he was fixing up, so that the people there could visit their lives anytime they want to. Like little sparks of memory. And there’s supposed to be a lot of old photos of Wingate history on it too, so Dad was excited that it would make more people notice what a great place Maple Grove is. Like if they knew a person who needed their help…or even if a rich guy wanted to donate some money or something.”

  Circa slowed her walk. “The wall’s supposed to be unveiled in August,” she said, her voice falling flat. “And I want real bad to try and finish it myself, but my mom won’t let me. Even though my dad showed me a lot about restoration, she doesn’t think I’m good enough.”

  “So are you?” said Miles.

  “Am I going to finish it?”

  “No. I mean are you good enough?”

  Circa gave a defeated shrug. “Maybe not yet,” she said. “But I’m still going to ask Nurse Lily if she’s got any more photos collected to give me.”

  Miles slapped some of the dust from his pant legs.

  “Hey,” he said. “I really am sorry about causing you guys all this trouble when you’ve got your own junk going on. It’s just…I really thought that picture meant something. That maybe you all would just walk up and know who I was, you know? I guess that was a pretty thick thing to assume.”

  “I don’t know,” said Circa. “Maybe not totally thick. The weird thing is, you do seem sort of familiar to me. I mean, there’s the crinkle and then I don’t know, something about the way you smile kind of lopsided.”

  “Huh. Okay, lopsided I get,” said Miles. “But, um…the crinkle?”

  “Yeah, you know,” said Circa. “That crease there between your eyebrows. My dad had the very same one.”

  The two of them approached Circa and Nattie’s favorite stone bridge, making Circa wonder if Nattie was okay back in the studio fake smiling for the camera. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Miles feeling his forehead for the crinkle.

  “Nattie Boone, my friend you met,” she said, “she loves everything nature. She told me once that a termite colony could build a structure three times as strong as this bridge using their own spit.”

  “Oh, really?” said Miles, grinning.

  “Yeah, she’s supersmart about stuff like that.” Circa searched the clouds once more. “Does it make you feel scared, to not know anyth— Well, you know, to not know?” she said.

  “Kind of,” said Miles. “More empty than scared, though. You know, like something big was yanked away.”

  “Yeah, I do know,” said Circa, looking down at the sidewalk. She wasn’t sure if it was sad or reassuring that another kid was able to put her feelings into words so perfectly.

  “Makes me feel really freaky,” he said. “As if I’m just going through motions like some kind of robot person or something.”

  “Yeah, I bet,” said Circa, trying briefly to imagine Miles as a robot. “But you know what? My dad used to say something about Great-Aunt Ruby and the other people at Maple Grove. He said that just because the book’s too high up on the shelf to reach, it doesn’t mean the story’s not there.”

  “Yeah, I get it,” said Miles. “I just wish I even knew where the shelf was.”

  “Maybe something hit you,” suggested Circa. “No matter what that doctor said, maybe you really did get bonked in the head, and that’s why you don’t remember anything. And then when your brain heals, it will all come back.”

  “Maybe,” said Miles, shuffling on quietly alongside her. The silence-laden half block made Circa wish Nattie were along to fill in the blanks with a few nature facts.

  “So what’s the deal with the Stanley guy?” Miles said as they neared the business part of town.

  “Ugh,” said Circa. “Don’t even ask. He’s, like, nineteen, and he’s some kind of grand-stepnephew of the lady who donated the land to build the residence on, and so they promised to give him a job.”

  “You mean they can’t fire him?”

  “Lily says not until the grand-stepaunt passes away. She told me once she prays every day for him to just up and quit. Unfortunately,” Circa added, “Stanley also happens to be the big brother of the meanest kid in my grade, Chad, the guy who calls me Circus Monroe.”

  Circa grabbed a magnolia leaf off the ground and fanned herself with it. “Used to be, my dad would always get between me and Stanley when we’d come up here, so he couldn’t aim his yuckiness at me. Kind of like what Nattie does with Chad Betts at school. She’s always standing up for me.”

  “Wait. Circus?” said Miles. “Why? Just because of Circa?”

  Circa hesitated, then held up her pinkie-less left hand for Miles to see.

  “That?” he said. “What’s the big deal about that?”

  “You’d be surprised at what a big deal it is,” she said. “Like those scars you’ve got,” she said, wondering if she shouldn’t have soon as it came out. “Bet they’re probably a big deal to you, right?”

  “Well,” Miles said, looking at his arms. “I guess they would be if I could remember how they happened.”

  Circa tried hard to look away from the many scuffs and dents on Miles. She snagged a wildflower from a crack in the sidewalk and changed the subject as smooth as she could. “It sure is going to be hard to start school this year without Nat there,” she said. “But at least she’ll do fine. Nattie can be kind of foo-foo, but she’s also tough.”

  “Where’s she going?”

  “Science school.”

  “To study termite spit?”

  “Yeah,” laughed Circa. “Maybe so.”

  “Just teasing,” said Miles. “But wait. Back up. So why can’t you just blow off that Chad guy?”

  “I could, maybe. But other kids think I’m a weirdo too.”

  “Just because of the finger?”

  Circa glanced sideways at the many scars that populated Miles’s arms. Suddenly, a nonexistent pinkie didn’t quite measure up. “Well, there’s that…and my mom’s deal,” she said.

  “What, the nervous thing?” said Miles, tugging at his sleeves.

  “It’s just that she doesn’t much ever go out, except to church,” said Circa. “Since before I was a baby even. She has all these panics.” Circa stomped a dirt clod off her shoe. “She and my dad didn’t even tell anybody they were having me until the day I was born in the studio. Then when I was in second grade, Chad Betts started joking that I was really bought from the circus or something.”

  “Were you really born in the—” said Miles.

  “So?” interrupted Circa. “What if I was?”

  “You didn’t even let me finish,” he said. “I was going to say, were you born in the mouth of a lion or standing on a horse? Then it might not be so lame for them to say all that circus junk.”

  “Oh,” said Circa. “Ha. Sorry. I guess I’m kind of touchy about it.”

  Miles scratched at his neck. “But your mom took us those places yesterday,” he said.

  “Yeah,” said Circa. “And you saw how she was.”

  Circa pressed the big pedestrian crossing button at the intersection of Third and Broad. “My mom doesn’t handle stress very well. It makes her real scatterbrained. You know, she still hasn’t even noticed that you broke into our house.”

  Miles stopped in his tracks. “It was unlocked,” he said insistently.

  “I know,” said Circa waving him on. “Come on. I’m just kidding.”

  The two of them crossed over into Wingate’s business district, where the Maple Grove Residence’s greenery-surrounded, dome-shaped design made it look like a cupcake on a bed of lettuce. They turned one last corner and found themselves at the entrance to the side garden path, still strewn with a few of Stanley’s cigarette butts.

  “Here we are,”
said Circa.

  “So where is the Memory Wall supposed to be?” asked Miles, looking around as they wound their way to the front entrance. Circa tugged at the big iron door handle.

  “Right here in the main lob—” Circa began, when she was suddenly interrupted by a greeting that instantly set her skin to crawling.

  “S’up, Shrinkie Pinkie?”

  Nurse Lily shot Stanley a fierce shut-up look and came shuffling out from behind the front desk.

  “Circa!” she said, grabbing her up into a hug so big, she almost grabbed up Miles, too. “Sweet little lady, I’m so blessed to get to see you.”

  “Hi, Lily.”

  “Who’s this you got here, Circa?”

  “Oh, um, this is Miles,” she said.

  Without hesitation, Lily gave Miles his own hug.

  “We were hoping to get to visit everyone today,” said Circa. “Is that all right?”

  “Don’t see why not,” said Lily.

  On the other side of the lobby, Stanley leaned on a broom and watched the whole scene. When no one acknowledged his presence, he picked up the visitor phone and made like he was on a call. “Hey, Rach,” he said. “It’s you know who. How’s about you let a real man buy you a pizza tonight?”

  Circa knew better. She’d heard him do this routine before with all manner of different girl names. She always imagined he was calling his home number over and over and filling up his own answering machine. She might very well have felt sorry for the guy, if it weren’t his utter meanness that made him that lonely.

  Ignoring Stanley, Circa and Lily pointed out a few key features of the lobby to Miles. The sign-in book with the pen made from a feather from the peacock Miss Lily kept in her yard, the big brass chandelier above that reflected a dozen distorted you-faces, and the shiny black player piano that Lily would let Great-Aunt Ruby sit at and perform pretend concerts. Unfortunately though, Stanley, with his broom and his imaginary girlfriends, filled the spot directly in front of where the Memory Wall was to be.

  “Is that the place for the pictures?” asked Miles, pointing right over Stanley’s head and paying no attention to his act.