Flying Tips for Flightless Birds Read online

  I cornered him at the Oklahoma dress rehearsal. I was in the chorus (I can’t sing; I only signed up because he was in it) and the costume department had gone overboard with the gingham, so even the boys were in gingham shirts under their waistcoats and most of the girls were in flounced gingham dresses. If you looked at everyone up on-stage together, it made your eyes cross. James had managed to wangle a plain blue shirt, so he was the only one who didn’t resemble a picnic blanket.

  After he and Kitty, who was playing the female lead of course, had gone off on their honeymoon and the rest of the cast were done pretending to be overjoyed for them, I followed him off-stage to where everyone was milling about, waiting for instructions from Mrs McDonagh, who was arguing with the music teacher. James was sitting alone at the edge of the crowd, checking his phone.

  “Nice shirt,” I said, sitting next to him. “Don’t suppose you want to swap?”

  “I don’t do gingham,” he said.

  “Do you want to come over tonight? I could help with your art homework.” Art was the only subject I was better at than him. I sucked at it, but less than he sucked.

  “Nah, that’s OK, I have a lot of stuff to catch up on with all these rehearsals,” he said.

  “Sure.”

  He stood up to go.

  “I mean, unless you need some help?” I stood too and tugged his elbow and he turned back, glancing down at my hand on his arm but not at my face. “If you’re behind with stuff I could, I don’t know, I could … help.” I shrugged.

  He took a step away, then paused. His lips tightened and he stepped back close to me, hissing, “I don’t need any help. Stop crowding me, Finch.”

  “I’m not!” I tried to laugh it off but he didn’t laugh back. “I just…” I took a deep breath. “Why don’t you want to be friends any more? What did I do?”

  By now people were starting to notice us. A couple of James’s friends had wandered over and were watching. When he saw them, he stepped away from me again. “Get a grip, Finch,” he said, louder. “You’re clingier than my bloody girlfriend.”

  They laughed. He laughed.

  I don’t know what I was thinking. I wasn’t thinking, I suppose. I put my hand out to get his attention, stop him walking away, I don’t know… I just laid my hand on his shoulder and said, “Don’t be like that.”

  A jeer went up from the boys behind him. “You’ve upset her now, Jamie, better buy her some flowers!” someone called.

  James looked me in the eye. I think it was the last time he ever looked me in the eye. And then he punched me in the gut.

  Thanks to all the juggling, I have lightning reflexes. I managed to hit him once, square in the jaw, before everyone piled on. Mrs McDonagh was on her way before I even hit the gym floor, but there were still a good thirty seconds when I was being shoved, punched and kicked by a mass of eleven-year-old boys in gingham, while Kitty Bond led the girls up on-stage for a better view.

  It was Birdie who picked me up. She’d been waiting outside for rehearsal to finish and rushed in when she saw what was going on. While Mrs McDonagh handed out detentions to everyone within shouting distance, Birdie got me out of there.

  I suppose you can’t go around doing backflips and cartwheels with your pink-tutu-clad sister without attracting a few comments, but I never thought James would be like that.

  “You have been pretty obsessed with him,” Birdie said as she helped me out of school that day. “Even I wondered. Do you…?”

  “What? No!”

  “All right, all right, just asking.”

  “I just thought he was a nice guy,” I said through the blood running out of some unidentified place in my mouth. “I thought we were friends. I guess I was wrong.”

  Unfortunately, we ran (or limped) straight into Little Murragh’s resident maniac.

  “Hi, Lou,” I said.

  “Christ almighty, child, you look like you’ve been trampled,” she said, handing Birdie her handbag to carry and me a greying hankie, which I reluctantly used to wipe the blood off my chin. “What happened?”

  “Long story,” I muttered. “Can we just get out of here?”

  Lou had been walking past the school on her way to our house, probably out on one of her phone-box change-slot raids around town, so we couldn’t avoid walking home with her. Her battered tartan trolley bounced along behind her as if trying its hardest to get away, and occasionally she’d turn and curse violently at it.

  Lou is our granny, but “granny” has never seemed the right word. “Granny” suggests someone with kind eyes and sweets in her pockets. Lou has the bloodshot eyes of a 3 a.m. drinker and her pockets are full of pipe tobacco and scratchcards.

  For some reason she seems to like me and Birdie, not that you’d know it from her behaviour. In fact I thought she hated us until I saw how she treated other kids, or “parasitic little cretins”, as she calls them. We always get her least horrific hand-knitted jumpers for Christmas, for example; completely unwearable of course, but usually with the right number of sleeves. And she’s less likely to hit us round the head with her handbag for no reason.

  Mum is forever getting phone calls complaining about her. The manager at Tesco rings all the time because she steals the pick ’n’ mix; she’s had to be collected from O’Brien’s pub on more than one occasion because she’s “lost the use of her legs”, as Edna O’Brien politely puts it; and she’s been banned from the park for life for “wilful intoxication of wildlife” (she was feeding the squirrels Christmas pudding soaked in rum).

  By the time we reached our house, I was battling with the tartan trolley myself because I was sick of apologizing to people she’d bashed with it, but since I was still spitting blood and Lou was just spitting, people were giving us a wide berth anyway.

  “God, I’ve desperate gas,” she moaned, rubbing her stomach with the palms of both hands as we came through the front door, where Jay appeared to be building the world’s longest car track in the hall. “I’m like an oxygen balloon.”

  “Helium,” Jay said, ducking automatically as one of her hands swung at his head.

  “They’re both gases, aren’t they, you little—”

  I pushed Jay through the kitchen door and stepped over the complicated motorway system to get into the living room. Lou followed me, flattening a bypass like Godzilla.

  “Do you want tea?” I asked.

  She made a face. “Gives me palpitations. Any whiskey in the house? A wee nip would do me the power of good.”

  “Mum says you’re not—”

  “God almighty, will you do as you’re bid! If I needed your mother to nursemaid me twenty-four hours a day, I’d ask. I don’t know how you lot were brought up, but in my day…”

  I didn’t hear any more because I was halfway down the hall in search of whiskey, while Birdie absorbed the impact and tried to calm her down. Jay was hiding in the kitchen.

  “Dare you to put laxatives in it,” he whispered as I poured a small glug of Dad’s whiskey into a glass.

  I considered it. “Nah, she’d only be here all day and then describe the results to us in graphic detail.”

  “Ugh.” Jay made a face and went back to the car track, now stretching across the kitchen counters since the floor wasn’t safe.

  I took the whiskey to Lou, wondering how to get rid of her so I could run upstairs, die of humiliation and then convince Birdie to run away and join the Ringling Brothers circus with me.

  “There’s a good lad,” Lou said, downing the lot.

  “There isn’t any more,” I said, before she could ask.

  “Well, you’d better get some in from O’Brien’s. If anyone’s ever been in need of a drink, it’s your father, poor man.”

  I blinked. I’d never heard her say a nice word about Dad in my life. When she’s talking to Mum, she calls him “that killjoy you married”. But I suppose her main concern was the whiskey.

  “They wouldn’t sell me it, would they,” I pointed out.

  �
�Could you not get one of them fake IDs? All the kids on telly have them.”

  “I could, but since Edna O’Brien sends me and Birdie a birthday card every year, I doubt she’d fall for it.”

  “Busybody,” she muttered. “So what’s wrong with you anyway?”

  “You mean in general?” It was possible she meant in general.

  “You’ve a face like a busted sausage. What happened?”

  I don’t know why I told her; she’s the last person on earth you’d confide in. But I burst into tears at that point (I was only eleven) and had to tell her something.

  “Well, for God’s sake, no one died, did they?” she said when I’d finished hiccuping out the whole story.

  I glared at her. When she was my age, she could walk a twelve-metre-high wire with a tiger prowling the ground beneath her, but sympathy has never been one of her skills.

  “We’re talking social death here,” I explained. “Which is worse than actual death because you have to go on living after it.”

  “What do you care what that lot think?” she said.

  “I have to spend every day for the next seven years with ‘that lot’. I care a fair bit what they think.”

  “Then more fool you.” She raised her whiskey glass as if to have another swig, remembered it was empty and tutted at it. “Listen, pet,” (Pet! I was so surprised I stopped sniffling) “you’re not bawling because they laughed at you, you’re bawling because you care that they laughed at you. And that’s easy fixed.” She got up then and put on her cardigan. I noticed she was already wearing two, and one of them was Dad’s.

  “You’re a Franconi, Finch,” she said as she left. I waited for her to elaborate on that, but instead she farted loudly. “God, that’s better!” she called on her way through the door.

  Parlari, you rokker?

  Posted by Birdie

  Every tribe has its own language. That’s why when you say, “Mum, did you see Finch wipe-out at training? It was sick! Hashtag legend! He was, like, twerking in mid-air!” and your little brother says, “Burn, brah!” and your twin says, “And your face, douche,” your parents look blankly at you, and you say, “What? It’s just bantz.”

  Circus people have their own language too. It’s a way of talking in secret, a way of saying who belongs and who doesn’t. It’s called Parlari, and it’s a mixture of slang, jargon and foreign words collected from their travels around the world.

  To the beginner it can be a bit confusing, so here’s a handy glossary to circus lingo that will let you pass for a pro in any big top:

  Barney – an argument or punch-up, as in “Mum, the police called, Lou’s had another barney in the veg aisle at Tesco.”

  Bats – shoes, as in “Get your bats off the furniture, Lou.”

  Buffer – a performing dog, as in “You want to borrow my bats? Sit up and beg, buffer.”

  Chapiteau – the big top, as in “Is that a dress you’re wearing or a chapiteau?”

  Chovey – a cheap clothes shop, good for clown outfits, as in “Where did you get that chapiteau, a chovey?”

  Dekko – look at, as in “Take a dekko at that chovey!”

  Dinari – money, as in “You paid dinari for those bats?”

  Flick-flack – a backward handspring, as in “I’ll give you all the dinari in my pocket if you can do a flick-flack.”

  Gaffer – the boss, as in “You’re not the gaffer of me!”

  Gardy loo! – watch out, as in “Gardy loo, the gaffer’s coming!”

  Kativa – bad, as in “That flick-flack was kativa. I’ve seen better buffers.”

  Manjaree – food, as in “I’m starving, is there any manjaree?”

  Mr and Mrs Wood and All the Little Woods – empty seats in the audience, as in “Please come to our show so Mr and Mrs Wood and All the Little Woods won’t be there on their own!”

  Nantee – no or none, as in “I need to buy a ticket for the show but I’ve nantee dinari!”

  Omee – a man, as in “Be an omee and join the circus!”

  Panatrope – recorded music, as in “Omee, your panatrope sounds like someone drowning a bag of buffers.”

  Polony – a young woman, as in “Polonys can out-juggle omees any day.”

  Ring-door curtains – the artists’ entrance to the ring, as in “My dressing room is through the ring-door curtains with a big star on the door.”

  Rokker – to understand, as in “No, the big dressing room is mine, you rokker?”

  Shush – to steal, as in “Finch, stop shushing my manjaree!”

  Slap – make-up, as in “He’s just doing his slap, he’ll be ready in about four hours.”

  Tawni – small, as in “This was a tawni introduction to Parlari!”

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  Every circus also has a word for non-circus folk. Officially they’re called “jossers”, but the particular breed of non-circus folk roaming the corridors of Murragh High are known to Birdie and me as “the Ginghams”.

  Me caring that every person in our year seemed to suddenly know who I was (and not in a good way) was not, as Lou reckoned, “easy fixed”. But on the Friday after Oklahoma Monday, as it was forever after known, when I was sick of being sniggered at in class, shoved in the corridors, evil-eyed by Kitty and the Bond Girls (who’d decided it was my fault James was kicked out of the musical), and having Finch and James 4eva scrawled on the toilet walls, I decided Lou might have a point.

  All week I’d been having the same sweaty nightmare about that crowd of people about to lay into me, that mass of gingham on the stage looking down and laughing. But it was only when I went to circus school on Friday night that I realized what was most horrible about it.

  When I walked in, Birdie was already on the trapeze practising with Mum.

  “Finch!” she called, swinging upside down above me. “I did it! The double! I did it twice in a row!”

  We’d been working on double somersaults for two weeks and neither of us had managed it yet. I immediately started stripping down to my workout gear, ignoring the bruised ribs I knew were going to hurt like hell as soon as I stepped off the platform. “Don’t get too smug!” I called back.

  As I climbed the ladder, looking down at Dad and Jay and the Juggulars watching from below, I figured out what was wrong in the nightmare.

  When stuff goes wrong in a performance – and stuff goes wrong all the time – it’s salvageable, because you’re in charge. The person on the trapeze, the person in the centre of the ring, the person on the stage – they’re in control. You can make a joke, you can pretend it was deliberate, you can get the crowd to go “Awwww!”, and if all else fails you can fall hilariously on your face and start again. The crowd are always right behind you, and they only get to laugh when you allow them to.

  If I’d been the one on the stage and all the Ginghams had been looking up at me, somehow I think I could have salvaged it. Somehow it would have been all right.

  I nailed the double first time, and decided that from then on the Finch Franconi Show was going to be choreographed exclusively by me.

  Birdie let me exhaust my rage on the trapeze that night, and then the two of us sat at the top of the rigging watching the Juggulars brain each other with juggling clubs far below.

  “Lou’s right,” I told her. “Trying to fit in is pointless; you just end up getting squished. Who wants to be a Normal anyway? It’s duller than plate spinning.”

  “Lou’s right? It’s my responsibility as your sister to remind you that Lou is madder than a bag of cats. You’re not going to get a tartan shopping trolley and start stealing cardigans, are you?”

  “No, but from now on, when I want to do something, the first question I ask myself will not be ‘What would James Keane think?’ or ‘Would Kitty Bond laugh at me?’”

  “You ask yourself that?” she said.

  “Don’t you?”

  She looked guilty. “Maybe. Sometimes.”

  “From now on, the only opinion I care about is min
e,” I said defiantly. “And yours,” I added. “Stuff the Ginghams. We don’t need them, we don’t want them, we aren’t friends with them, we don’t date them, we’re –” I looked down the length of the ladder to the ground below us – “ten metres better than them.”

  “Right!” Birdie said firmly. Supportively. But I’m not sure she knew then exactly what she was supporting.

  That weekend, Mum took us to the city and I dragged Birdie around The Rusty Zip vintage clothes shop while I bought all the brightly coloured, crazy-patterned, downright weird clothes I’d always loved the look of but had never had the nerve to even try on. I was still getting the hang of putting outfits together, so the stunned silence we got when we walked into first period on Monday morning was fully justified, but I’d decided turning up to maths in a tweed jacket, knitted yellow waistcoat and deerstalker hat (pink tea-dress and headscarf for Birdie) was probably good practice for the next seven years of our life.

  Ta-dah!

  Three years later, the Ginghams still treat us like a source of entertainment, but since that’s what we’re aiming for, I don’t think they get a lot of satisfaction from it.

  Not leaping into random friendships is a lot easier when you’re not being stalked.

  At lunchtime Hector is perched on the yard wall, head ducked down and collar up, like a scraggly sparrow sheltering from a storm, face in a book as usual. I can’t find Birdie anywhere, but these days it seems like everywhere I look, Hector’s there. He’s even started walking home with me, telling me random facts about the circus that invariably start with the words “Did you know…” (Yes, I did) and end with “I read about it.”

  He notices me and waves so I give up on Birdie, climb onto the wall and sit beside him.

  “Do you never get sick of reading, Hector?”

  “Yeah,” he says, turning a page of the enormous book cradled in his lap.

  “Oh.” What do you say to that?

  After a moment he adds, “It’s just a habit I’ve got into.”