I loved to swing.
My hair, which I’d straightened so impeccably this afternoon, was getting blowsy from the air rushing back and forth and beginning to curl in the humidity. Zach, the boy I’d straightened it for, was leaning up against one of the supports of the swings and smiling as I kicked up higher.
The date had been dismal.
When the circus was in our tiny town, I stayed busy. The entire damn town went out to see the trapeze artists and the freak show and the balloon man, and to laugh at the antics of the clown.
It was simply the event of the year, where you simply had to go, or you would simply be mocked for the rest of your existence. I’d managed to circumvent the whole ridicule bullshit by telling as many people as I could that I would not be going. Rinse and repeat, annually.
Morgan, my best friend, said that I had coulrophobia—fear of clowns. She loved to throw the word around because it had five syllables (and was most likely the longest in her repertoire). The girl was a genius with music (anyone who could play nine instruments deserved the title in my book) but couldn’t spell worth a cent.
I wasn’t afraid of clowns in the least. I wasn’t afraid of anything at the circus. I just found the whole thing stupid: everyone from age two to ninety-three (Mrs. Josephson, who had given me piano lessons until I was nine) nearly crapped his pants with anticipation, and then discussed it for weeks afterward. As if it weren’t the exact same every year.
Today was the fourth date between myself and Zach (after an absurdly long courtship), which made him almost like my boyfriend, and he’d called me this morning saying that the movie theatre was closed because whoever ran the place was a sadist who’d gone to the circus. Zach had admitted reluctance to breaking our date.
“What’re we going to do, then?” I’d asked, painting my toenails with one hand and holding the phone to my ear with the other. “Everything’s closed.” This was painfully true. The entire town practically went into lockdown on circus weekend. My mother had actually told me, on Thursday, that we had to remember to stock up on milk, since the grocery store would be closed.
Zach paused. That was never a good sign; Zach was usually a well of good ideas. And his pausing didn’t necessarily mean that he didn’t have one—it meant that did, and that I wasn’t going to like it. “Well,” he said. He paused again. “Clowns may be present.”
Even though I should have seen it coming, I’d wound up knocking the bottle of nail polish all over my foot, staining it Go Go Green. Because the fates only hate me a little, I had been in the bathroom with the tile floor instead of my bedroom with the carpet.
“Zach,” I said, desperate, knowing that it was this date or no date, “you have to be kidding me.”
The pressured feeling in my chest was something, I think, called resignation. I was resigned to the fact that I had to choose one or the other, and since I only got to see Zach (not counting school) on the weekends when I wasn’t shipped unceremoniously off to my dad’s house—in another crappy small town where everyone got all hot and bothered over the travelling fair—I didn’t want to pick no date.
“Rebecca,” he tried to reason with me, “there’s nowhere else to go.”
That was true, and so I conceded, which led to my soaking my foot in acetone and then meticulously straightening my hair until every wave was properly controlled and then putting on my best jeans and going to the goddamned, mud-wallowing, egg-sucking circus.
It was boring, of course.
It wasn’t boring in the way your little sister’s band concert is boring when none of your friends are there. Everyone was there; Morgan gave me a surprised little wave from the top row, where she sat with the band geek she had traded for another band geek wit h another, female band geek. It was amazing how they passed each other around.
At the boring, boring, boring circus, each and every person did one of several activities: the small children in the front sat with wide-eyed rapture, because they’d only seen it four or five times, and it hadn’t lost its charms yet. The teenagers with dates sat in the back, making out, and ignored the entire show. The teenagers who were there alone (plus Zach and I, who weren’t really fond of necking in public—though I was almost willing to give it a try, in the face of such boredom) sat sullenly and tried to think of ways to silently and stealthily kill themselves with the two dollars in their pockets, shoelaces, and chewing gum. The adults, all parents and grandparents of small children, pretended to be as excited as their spawn. And Mrs. Josephson clapped her hands gleefully, because she was so old that, by the time the circus rolled around, she’d forgotten last year’s show, and it was all new to her.
I thought about using the chewing gum and shoelace (two dollars to be saved for a soda later) to being my sword-swallowing career: swallow the gum, then pull it back out again with the lace. But then I realized that if I actually pursued this career, I would have to join a circus. And I hated circuses.
After an eternity (my watch said two hours, but everyone knows that Circus Time is akin to Fairy Time and doesn’t parallel Real World Time) the accursed show ended and the whole town trickled out of the big top like former zombies released from some horrible curse in some lame horror movie. And then it happened, like it did every year; as if the sun was some sort of evil spell, the pain and boredom, boredom, boredom of the last two hours were forgotten, and everyone had only joyous memories of high-flying tricks and hilarity and general revelry.
Even Zach tried to make the best of it. “It wasn’t that—”
“I will rip your tongue out,” I threatened as we stood amidst the general hubbub, with everyone milling about, looking dazed. “And then I will make you eat it, if that lie passes any further through your lips.”
He closed his mouth tightly, and gave me that la!-oh-my-dear-Rebecca-you-are-simply-so-amusing look, as I scowled. Then he suggested that we go to the park, and I forgot everything of my former irritation because at the park there were swings, and I loved swinging.
We had been swinging for quite some time and I was at the peak of my contentment when Zach came and started pushing me from behind. The swing moved in gentle arcs. I closed my eyes and laid my head against the chain, letting my grip relax.
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