The Slightly Bruised Glory of Cedar B. Hartley Read Free Page B

Flying Fruit Fly Circus. You know that one, the professional one. They do shows all round the world. It’s a dream job for Dad.’
    â€˜But what about you?’ I said, looking directly into his eyes.
    He took a deep breath in and glanced up at me. ‘Cedar, I’m going to join the Flying Fruit Flies. I’ll train with them.’
    â€˜Oh.’ I nodded. Everything felt bad. Now even my face was reddening. I was afraid all my feelings were on show, blazing in my cheeks.
    â€˜I have to. What else will I do up there?’ Kite shrugged, as if this was all a breezy kind of a thing that had happened. As if it was no big deal. ‘You know this wasn’t planned. Someone saw our show at the community centre and that was how the offer came through. Dad is very sorry to have to leave our circus here but this is a real opportunity for him, and the contract is only for a year initially so we’ll probably be back.’
    â€˜You won’t be,’ said Oscar. ‘You’ll become a pro. Why would you want to come back here? You’ll be in Paris and you’ll be flying and…’
    He stopped. He had lurched up to sitting, leaning on one arm in a precarious startled way, but then he lay down again and looked up at the ceiling without speaking. For a while no one said anything. I was staring at my red feet. I could hear two people walking by outside and saying things that two people walking together would be likely to say. One said, ‘It was that house, I tell you.’ And then the other said, ‘No it wasn’t, it wasn’t that house. I should bloody know…’ And then I heard Kite saying something. So I had to stop listening to the outside, which was what I preferred to be hearing.
    â€˜I’m sorry, guys. In the end it wasn’t up to me. I couldn’t have said no to Dad.’
    â€˜You’ll have a good time there, Kite,’ said Caramella, so sweetly that I nearly glared at her. Oh why was she being so nice to him, when suddenly I didn’t like him at all? How could he go and leave now? Just when we had everything established. Didn’t he care? What did he think we were going to do?
    I stood up. I was so annoyed I had to stand. I had to do something.
    â€˜Well, I guess that’s the end of The Acrobrats,’ I said, brushing myself down as if I’d got creased from sitting there. I was really brushing away the last crumbs of the circus, our circus. Now it was me who was acting like it wasn’t a big deal, like oh–well-that’s-that, there we go, now who’d like a walk in the park? If Kite didn’t care then I wouldn’t either. No way was I going to let this get me. I wanted to walk out of there in one composed piece, gracefully, head held high as high. And then once I was out, I planned on utterly letting my head drop off: smash, kaput, shattering sounds, the whole thing. But you can’t do that in a garage, especially when it might betray the size of certain feelings you need to keep small.
    I started walking towards the door.
    â€˜Hey, Cedar, are you going?’ said Kite. He was walking towards me.
    â€˜Yeah. I’m going.’ I kept backing out. Kite came close and grabbed my hand for an instant, then he let it drop.
    â€˜I’m sorry,’ he said.

Chapter 4
    I was meant to say, ‘Don’t feel bad, Kite, it’s not your fault.’ But I didn’t say anything. I just dropped my head, spun on my heel and walked out. For one thing I had the wobbly lip tremors, which always make you feel like your words have suddenly got so heavy that they’re pressing your mouth into a quivery unbalanced sobbing shape and, if you let them out, they’ll pour down in a raucous torrent. But also, I didn’t really believe it wasn’t his fault. I didn’t believe that Kite wasn’t excited as hell to be leaving this hotchpotch gang of small-timers and hitting the big time with