Nightrise Read Free Page B

was as if real life went on somewhere else, and they had been dumped outside.
    Sometimes Jamie thought back to life before Uncle Don had come and introduced him and Scott to The Circus of the Mind.
    After all, it hadn't been that long ago. But the days added up into weeks and then months, and now it was as if a single, long road had been smashed through all his other memories and all that was left were shabby theatres and circus tents, hotels, motels, trailers, and camper vans. Hours spent on the dusty highways crisscrossing Nevada, always on the move, often in the middle of the night, chasing the next dollar…wherever it might be.
    He wondered how he had managed to survive the last three years without going mad. But he knew the answer. It was stretched out on the bed in front of him. Scott had been the one constant in his life, his only true friend and protector. They had always been together. They always would be. After all, it was only when the adults had tried to separate them that The Accident had happened, the beginning of this whole bad dream in which they were now trapped. Jamie examined his brother. Scott seemed to have fallen asleep. His bare chest was rising and falling slowly, and there was a sheen of sweat on his skin.
    He thought back to what Scott had told him, that night in the big tent where they were performing —just outside Las Vegas. It had been the end of the first week. The first public showing of the telepathic twins.
    "Don't worry, Jamie. We're going to get though this. Five more years and we'll be sixteen. They can't keep us then. They can't make us do anything we don't want to do."

    "What will we do?"
    "We'll find something. Maybe we'll go to California. We can go to Los Angeles."
    "We could work in TV."
    "No. They'd turn us into freaks." Scott smiled. "Maybe we could set up some sort of business…you and me."
    "At least we'd know what the competition was thinking."
    "That's right." Scott warmed to the subject. "We could be like Bill Gates. Make billions of dollars and then retire. You wait and see. Once we're sixteen, we'll be unstoppable."
    They still had two more years. But Jamie was aware of a growing anxiety. It seemed to him that with every day that passed, the dream was fading. Scott was becoming more silent, more remote. He could lie still for hours at a time, not quite asleep but not awake either. It was as if something was being slowly drained out of him, and Jamie was afraid.
    Scott was the strong one. Scott knew what to do. Jamie could go on performing. He could put up with Uncle Don and the casual brutality of his life. There was just one thing that scared him.
    He knew he couldn't do it on his own.

    ***
At the far end of the corridor, in a corner office with views in two directions, Don White was sitting behind a desk that he couldn't possibly hope to reach. His stomach was too large. He was. an immensely fat man with flesh that seemed to fold over itself as if searching for somewhere else to go. It was ice cold in the room — this was the one place in the theatre where the air-conditioning worked — but there were wet patches on the front of his shirt and under his armpits. Don sweated all the time. For a man his size, even walking ten steps was an effort — and he looked permanently exhausted. There were dark rings under his eyes and he had lips like a fish, always gulping for air. He was eating a hamburger.
    Tomato ketchup was dribbling between his fingers, dripping down onto the surface of the desk.
    There were two men sitting opposite him, waiting for him to finish. If they were disgusted by the spectacle in front of them, they didn't show it. One was bald. The other had dark hair. They were both wearing suits. They both waited silently while Don finished his meal, licked his fingers, then wiped them on his trousers.
    "So what did you think?" he demanded at last.

    "The boys are very impressive," the bald man, Colton Banes, replied.
    "I told you — they can really do it.