Читать книгу Zillie the Circus Freak - Alley Bucci - Страница 7

The second I saw my new room, a love-hate relationship was born. I loved the fact that finally, I no longer had to share four walls with my peculiar, geeky brother Zenny, but on the other hand, I resented the fact that a cardboard fruit box would have been bigger than this teeny space that was to be my room. Who would be so ridiculous as to cover these tiny walls in Christmas-themed wallpaper anyway? Who did my parents rent this matchbox of a house from? Mr and Mrs Claus? My thoughts were interrupted by piercing squeals of joy. I peeked my head into the next room and what do you know? King Geek was jumping on his very own double bed, excited by the plastering of colourful planets and rockets, stuck all over his bedroom walls. Once again, typically, Zenny had struck gold.

“What a beaut room hey Zil? We thought Zen might as well keep the bed because it doesn’t fit in your room,” Mum chirped as she helped unpack Zenny’s clothes into his enormous wardrobe.

“That’s because nothing would fit in my room. Maybe it was the elves’ room …” I muttered under my breath.

What eight year old got that much space? He hardly needed it. He insisted on wearing the same outfit every day, had a pet ant (which he named, very imaginatively, ‘Ant’) that he kept in an old fish tank and he had a shoebox full of his prized collection of buttons. That’s all that he needed space for!

“Elves? What dear? Can you yell out to Dad and tell him to get Uncle Stan to tell Aunty Jan to park the caravan out the back? They’re blocking the street”.

As I walked outside, yep Mum was right, they had literally stopped the caravan in the middle of the road, so in the mere forty-two minutes that had gone past since the Crombies had arrived in Brookevale, we had already managed to stir up a commotion.

Great.

A man in a suit jumped out of his sparkling, freshly polished, canary yellow sports car and started yelling and flailing his arms in the air like he was swatting at a swarm of flies.

“You hillbillies! What do you think you are doing? Move this junk out of the way before I …”

And that was when I first saw her.

She got out of the car, flicking her silky black hair over her shoulders, like she was in a cheesy shampoo commercial and placed her hands on her hips. The sun bounced off her sparkly diamond ring and poked me straight in the eye, which in turn left me standing there squinting stupidly, like a hyena in midday sun.

“If I’m late for my audition I will get Daddy to sue the pants off you all, you gypsies! Won’t you daddy? Sue them rotten.”

“Holly get back in the car,” he bellowed.

“Now, now loves, pardon us for the bother, you see we are all new to town and got a bit caught up in the excitement of our new home, it’s just such a beauty. Here, have a free discount coupon to make up for the nuisance.” Aunt Jan gave the crazy suit man a ‘25% off’ ticket to our opening night. He looked at it and laughed as he scrunched it into a ball.

“The circus?! What the heck is a circus doing in Brookevale? We all move here to get away from freaks. No-one ain’t wanting to pay to see this! Now move your rubbish and park that dump of a van at the back of this dump of a house, before I do as my daughter says and sue the pants off you all.” Right on cue, tall skinny Uncle Stan came out blazing. He undid his belt and started to take off his pants, exposing his polka-dot boxer shorts and hairy, chicken legs. “Have my pants you honky tonk! Here you go!” and he threw his brown trousers at Mr Suit. “That’s my pants off, now buzz off!”

Dad moved the caravan into the yard and called for us all to come inside.

I looked at our new home. It certainly was nicer than the other fourteen we’d had, but looking at the surrounding houses, Mr Suit was right. It was a dump. All the other houses were cookie-cutter perfect, and ours looked like it had been decorated by a tribe of hippie apprentices that just gave up before they were even half-way through. It probably had potential somewhere, if you had the money to do it up, and no doubt everyone would have ideas on how to improve it, but as usual, nothing would ever get done and time would not allow us to stay long enough to make any improvements anyway. Before Mum and Dad had Zenny and I, they happily lived it up in the caravans like the rest of the crew. Their possessions were few, so they didn’t have much to cart around and they preferred to sit on foldup chairs with herbal teas and make up their own stories, rather than watch someone else’s problems on TV. For the first seven months after I was born, they simply made do, but when I started to crawl, things changed and one time – things got a bit hairy. Apparently mum had left me sleeping in a bouncer one afternoon and stepped out without closing the door properly. I woke up and somehow ventured out, because they soon found me just about to enter the horse enclosure; covered in mud and holding a pile of droppings. From then on, they said a caravan was no place to raise kids, and insisted on renting out homes that backed onto parkland, or were very close to the circus. That way, we were close to the action, but still had some kind of normalcy. They tried to stay at the one site for as long as possible, even as long as four months sometimes. That gave everyone time to recover from the last show, rehearse any changes to the acts that might be necessary, set up circus and market surrounding areas so that the audiences could come to us, rather than packing up all our stuff just to move twenty minutes down the road. This also made it possible for us to attend the local school, since being home schooled by Uncle Stan and random circus performers as special guests, was not proving to be very successful so far. Although on the plus side, Zenny and I could now speak a bit of Russian and Romanian, which was pretty cool.

Zenny is, naturally, ridiculously smart. A teacher was once so impressed, she gave him school books from a few grades ahead to take home and he soaked it all up like a mop in just one week. Harry Highpants, the dove trainer, was probably his best friend. Actually his name wasn’t even Harry, but everyone called him that. He always wore his pants as close to his chin as possible and when someone once asked him why he wore them so high, he answered, “Because I am Highpants Harry.” And since that day, the name just stuck. He was a sweet, smart, old man and Zenny was always doing something brainy with him. Me, well I’m just an all-rounder I suppose. Good at everything, but great at nothing. I jump head first into things and ask questions later. My words often get muddled up, especially if I’m nervous and it is most frustrating how clumsy and klutzy I can be. Mum and Dad said I had been a bit moody lately, rightfully so, but I just couldn’t put my finger on what my problem was. They asked me if I wanted them to quit the circus, but I found that too difficult to answer. Sure it’s frustrating at times, but a more traditional way of life might bore me silly. I was so used to all the colours and sounds, everyone buzzing around the place, the animals … without all this, would the silence drive me batty? And would that mean an end to using the excuse; ‘the donkey ate my homework?’

My thoughts were interrupted, as another four caravans rolled into the drive. The other circus freaks had arrived …

I decided to crawl into bed early with my bad breath … I still reeked of garlic from the vegie souvlakis we’d had for dinner. Of course I didn’t manage to have a shower, because by the time the bathroom was finally free, my pea-head brother had not exactly left it smelling like roses. Need I say more? I would just have to get up early and have a nice hot shower, while there was some hot water, and have my hair all freshly done for the first day of school at Brookevale College.

Usually I didn’t mind so much starting a new day at school, but this town seemed different. I wondered how I would be able to slot in discreetly. My red curly hair that bounced around like a slinky was bound to make me stand out. Hrmmm … maybe I ought to use the hair straightener that Aunt Jan bought me for Christmas, the most normal present anyone in this family had ever given anyone. Ever.