Chapter 4
Rocket
Gemiah
“Gemiah Lincoln Farrel, get your ass off the silks right now. Your sister wants to do a last run before we start pulling the rigging.”
It’s at least the third time my mom’s yelled at me, but I pretend I can’t hear her over my dad’s classic rock playlist blasting Cream over the Bluetooth. Plus, Josha is finally here, and he’s already climbing onto the stage.
I pop my leg straight, releasing the top of the silks, and whip through the three rotations with my limbs spread-eagle and my core tight. Not as fast as a pencil drop, but the tail makes an impressively wide spiral as I spin, and I land perfectly, looking up into Josha’s admiring face.
“Hey, Rocket.”
“Stop calling me that. You know I’m taller than you.” His ears go pink, but they do that when he’s pleased as well as when he’s annoyed. And with me it’s usually the former, so I kind of like it. It’s nice to have an effect on someone.
“It’s not about size.” I flip upright, and because I’m still a few feet off the ground, I get to smirk down at him. “It’s about how you stole Cheyenne’s fake leg last week.”
“You mean her acro stilt? I was fixing it.”
“Which makes you a mechanical genius, exactly like Rocket. With a fetish for synthetic body parts.”
“I do not have a fetish for—whatever. Dax.”
“No way am I Dax. He’s bald and tattooed.” I shake my full mop of curls as I kick my legs free of the fabric before sliding the remaining distance to the stage.
“Fine. Groot, then.”
“I’m obviously Quill. Didn’t you see my moves just now? Star drop. Star-Lord.”
“I’m not calling you ‘Star-Lord.’”
“Whatever you say, Rocket.”
“Gem,” my mom calls. “I’m not gonna ask you again. If you and Josha need something to do, you can start taking down the sidewalls.”
Josha perks up, because he probably thinks fucking around with heavy laces and canvas is a fun way to spend an afternoon, and being helpful is like crack to my boy. But no way am I wasting our last day together doing chores.
I wouldn’t even need “something to do” if my mom had given me a solo act in the show. Even Milla has a tiny act this year, but no, I’m not ready to perform on my pole.
Granted, I haven’t exactly been trying that hard lately. Monkeying around on the thing is fun, but real training is kind of boring. And a lot harder than I thought it would be when I was watching Zach Branson perform during our last gig in Zurich.
The only time I really enjoy it is when Josha’s here and he takes a break from helping my dad to watch me.
He never pays attention to Milla—no matter how big a fuss my mom is making over her—or any of the visiting pro performers unless he’s at the light board.
But whenever I practice, he sits in the dirt beside the mat and absorbs every move.
Even when he has other stuff he could be doing.
He doesn’t care that I can’t do anything super crazy or cool yet.
And he never comments when I fuck up a trick.
For the first time in my life, I wish my family were normal.
That I could spend the rest of the summer here with Josha and start high school together in the fall.
His sister Rachael’s boyfriend has been teaching us to surf on the weekends, and Josha’s gonna be way better than me by the time I get back from tour.
Maybe Penny will finally convince him to be her boyfriend, and he’ll want to spend his time making out with her instead of being my dad’s bitch in the tent all winter.
Not that he’s nearly as enthusiastic about her obvious crush as he is about running cords and hanging lights and talking about bearing loads of the king poles, or whatever.
“Are we gonna work on those sidewalls?” he asks as we clamber off the stripped stage.
“Nah. Let’s bail and ride our bikes down to the river. I bet it’s warm enough to swim.”
“Think the rope swing is still there?” He doesn’t even look guilty, which is one of the best things about him—even though he’s a frickin’ genius and has pretty much replaced me as the favorite son around here, he never hesitates when I ask him to ditch and hang out.
My family has never lived anywhere long enough for me to have a best friend before, and it’s cooler than I expected. Especially when he’s the only person in my life who never looks at me like I’m a disaster or makes me feel stupid—which is ironic since he’s the smartest person I know.
“If it’s not, you can make us a new one. Let’s go raid the box truck for some rope.”
“Gem? What are you doing here? I thought you weren’t coming home for another month.” Josha presses his nose to the screen, rubbing his eyes, his voice scratchy with sleep.
“Here” is outside his window in the middle of the night, with fresh scratches on my arms from riding my bike over the trail between our properties in the dark.
“We came back early. Everything went to shit.”
“Are you okay? What happened?” His deft fingers work their magic, and the screen pops free. I catch it before it can crash against the side of the trailer and lower it carefully to the ground.
“My mom is leaving.”
“What do you mean, leaving? Leaving Big Top?”
“Everything. Apparently, she’s decided she’s gay now, and she and my dad are splitting up.
” The betrayal of it all presses against me from the inside, too enormous and painful to fit under my skin.
I can’t see more than the pale wash of his face in the moonless shadows, but his silence stretches until I shift, wondering if I’ve lost him too, somewhere in this terrible summer.
“I don’t think anyone decides to be gay.” He sounds so careful, like the words are important in some almost-adult way that I can’t parse through my current distress.
“Can I stay here tonight?” I plead instead of responding.
We never stay at his place. Because of his dad, and because he shares a room with Jeremy, and his bed is too small for half-grown teenagers.
The bunks in the Airstream are easier, but there’s no way I’m going home tonight to face my mom’s sorry guilt and my dad’s misery.
I’d rather cram into Josha’s single bed and deal with Jeremy’s snotty snores. “I’ll be quiet, I promise.”
His shoulders heave in his white T-shirt as he sucks in a sharp breath, and for absolutely no reason, I’m abruptly curious about what color his ears are right now. But then he’s nodding and backing away to make room for me to scramble through the window, and all I feel is relief.
“Shhh,” he hisses when my elbow knocks the window frame, and “Careful” as he guides me through the minefield of Legos and laundry on the floor. “Jeremy’s a slob.”
Josha’s side of the room is only marginally cleaner, but my room smells like cum socks and hair gel after three months on tour, so who am I to talk.
“You can have the outside,” he offers, fumbling for a pair of sweats in one of the dark mounds on the floor and pulling them over his briefs. “Do you need…” He trails off as I strip down to my underwear.
“You’re gonna be hot,” I warn. “Shove over if you’re taking the wall.”
Without looking at me, he crawls to the far edge of the bed before offering me the pillow. “I only have one.”
“We can share.” Without waiting for him to settle, I fling myself down on the mattress, which turns out to be a mistake because it’s a lot flimsier than the built-in ones in the Airstream, and the frame smacks against the wall. “Shit.”
He presses a hand over my mouth and lifts his head like a rabbit in the grass, scenting for a wolf on the wind. But no creaking doors or heavy footfalls mar the silence, and Jeremy only snuffles deeper into his own burrow. After another long moment, he cautiously peels his hand away.
“Okay,” he whispers. “Tell me what happened.”
With his palms tucked under his cheek and his back against the wall, he watches me stare at the dark ceiling and try not to cry.
In hushed, halting words, I spill the story of the whole awful summer.
Of the slow-sudden decay of my parents’ marriage in whispers and gossip and fights.
How they finally sent the crew and performers home and came limping back to our lot, only to take me aside and tell me everything is over.
“She says she’s in love with Cheyenne. They’re taking Milla and moving back to Phoenix, where Cheyenne’s from.”
“But you’re staying here? With your dad?” The apprehension in his voice soothes a little more of the ratchety tension prickling through me.
Someone still wants me.
“I’ll always be here,” I assure him. Because she claimed Milla but offered me a choice. Because my dad is more wrecked than I am, and I can’t abandon him. Because I’m so, so mad at her.
Because Josha is here.
“And hey,” I continue, scrabbling for a lighter tone. “My dad says I can go to school this year, so we’ll get to do that together.”
His smile is lightning quick and luminous in the black, and I scoot a little closer to catch its brilliance before it fades.
“Are you sad?” I eventually ask. “She’s leaving you too.” The woman I know he idolizes. Who snatched him up the first time I brought him to the tent—the minute she saw who he was and what he could do. Who turned him over to my dad with a wink and gave him a place to thrive and belong.
He’s quiet for a long time, and I think about how I didn’t care that maybe she loved him more than me, because even when she smiled and joked about adopting him, he was looking at me like I was the coolest person he’d ever seen.
“Gem?” His voice breaks the darkness, and he snakes his arm tentatively across my chest. Maybe it should be weird—this bed is seriously way too small—but my muscles relax for the first time in what feels like weeks.
“Yeah?” I bring my hand up and thread my fingers through his. Maybe she lied. Maybe best friends are enough.
“I’m glad you’re home.”