“Hi,” she says the moment she’s in the room. “You must be my roommate. I’m Riley.”
“Jennifer,” I say. “You’re not from around here, are you?”
Because I’d have remembered a girl with bright-red hair and crazy clothes. This isn’t a town where people try to stick out. I think they just save that for when they run off to college.
She shakes her head, making her puffy red hair fly. She’s got deep-brown eyes the same color as mine, and she’s roughly my same height and size. And that’s in her clunky gunmetal-gray boots, too.
“Nope,” she says, dropping her bags by the free bed. She’s carrying two bags, another slung over her shoulder. “I’m about an hour away. Near Jefferson City.”
“Lucky,” I say. “Welcome to the Middle of Nowhere. Your nightly entertainment will be an old movie theater that only plays movies already on DVD and an arcade with one working pinball machine.”
She laughs and hauls a suitcase—black with pink stars—onto her bed. “Sounds like a fun place to grow up.”
“It’s a place to grow up,” I say. “But I guess I can’t complain; we got the circus after all.”
“I know!” She slides the small duffel bag from her back; it’s incredibly lumpy and covered in bumper stickers saying everything from DON’T TEMPT DRAGONS TO SAVE THE HUMANS! “I’ve been waiting all school year for this.”
I’ve known her less than five minutes, and I can already tell she’s going to be a fun roommate. When she starts pulling juggling pins and stringless tennis rackets from her bag, my thoughts are confirmed.
“Let me guess,” I say. I flop down on my bed and watch her unpack her bag of tricks. “You’re a juggler?”
“How could you tell?” she asks. “Was it the hair?”
“Totally. Jugglers always have weird hair.”
“Goes with the territory. What about you? What’s your focus?”
“Flying trapeze,” I say. No hesitation.
“Really? Huh.”
“What?”
“It’s just that I didn’t know they had a flying trapeze school here.”
“They don’t,” I say slowly. And that’s when it dawns on me: She’s already a juggler. She’s been doing this for years. Crap.
“Oh,” she says. She stops rummaging through her bag and sits on her bed, facing me. There’s barely three feet between us—I don’t know how two college kids can live in here for a full year. “Have you done classes somewhere else?”
“Nope. It’s just something I’ve always wanted to do.”
She nods. “I don’t mean to be rude, but you do know you have to try out for that department, right?”
“Yeah, I know,” I say. “I saw it in the flyer. But, I dunno. I’ve always wanted to do it. It sounds stupid, but I guess I just know it’s something I’ll be good at.” I decide not to tell her that Leena said I looked like a natural—I’m starting to think maybe the girl was just being nice.
She shrugs. “Not stupid. I felt that way about juggling and learned a basic three-ball pass in five minutes.”
“I . . . honestly, I have no idea what that means.”
Her grin goes wider. Her cheeks are covered in freckles; she looks like one of those girls who’s used to smiling a lot.
“I’ll show you,” she says. She digs into her bag beside her and pulls out six multicolored juggling balls. “A three-ball pass is the basic juggling form,” she says. Then she tosses three to me.
“Oh, I don’t juggle,” I say, though now that I think of it, I don’t think I’ve actually ever tried before.
“Come on,” she says. “You gotta try at least.”
My first impulse is to say, No, that’s okay, I just want to see you try. But that’s the old Jennifer. Today, right now, I’m Jennifer reinvented, and I’m not going to turn down any opportunity. I mean, how many times in my life do I have the chance to be taught juggling by a girl with fire-engine hair? I pick up the balls from where they landed on the bed and watch her.
“Okay, it goes like this. Start with two balls in one hand, one in the other. I always start with two in the right because I’m right-handed, but everyone’s different.”
I follow her lead and put two in my right hand.
“Now, you’re going to toss the one from your right hand into the air, trying make its apex just above eye level. Like this.” She tosses the ball up in a perfect arc, its peak right below her hairline, and catches it without even moving her left hand. “You try.”
I do. And much to my surprise, it’s a pretty good toss. The ball lands just beside my left hand.
“Nice,” she says. I smile. “Okay, now for the second toss. Don’t try to catch it just yet. You want to throw the ball in your left hand when the first ball is at its peak. Once you’ve done that, you’re going to throw the third ball when the second is at its peak. Got it?”
I nod. “I think so.”
She demonstrates, tossing her balls up in a steady rhythm and letting them fall on the bed. I mimic her.
“Nice,” she says again. “I think you’ve got the hang of it. Now we try it with the catch. Remember, you don’t want to have to move your hands around too much, and you definitely don’t want to throw the balls forward or back, or else you’ll be running all over the place trying to catch them. Always throw the next ball when the other has reached the apex. Rinse and repeat.”
She picks up the balls and tosses them in the air a few times, making clean catches and tosses—the balls are a blurred arc in front of her face. I lose track of how many times she tosses before she stops and looks at me.
“Your turn.”
I try.
The first few catches are a disaster—I’m so focused on catching the ball that I forget to toss the next. When I do remember, I end up throwing it at the closed window. Thankfully, the balls are just Hacky Sacks, so the window doesn’t break. I have to give Riley credit: She doesn’t laugh at all. Just watches me and gives me little pointers like, “Don’t move your torso so much” or “You’re not trying to hit the ceiling! It’s a gentle toss.”
After about five minutes, she stops watching me and goes back to unpacking. I’m hooked, though, and I don’t stop practicing. Not until I’ve managed six tosses in a row. And that takes a good ten minutes.
“Not bad,” she says. She managed to unpack everything in the time it took me to get the pass down. “You’re definitely starting to get it.” She glances at her watch. “Just in time, too. I think we’ve got the intro meeting in a few minutes. Do you have any idea where the gym is?”
I nod. “Yeah, I’ve been there a few times. My mom used to be a secretary here, and we went to a few games.”
“Funny. I wouldn’t peg you for a basketball sort of girl.”
“I’m not. Band nerd all way. But I’ll never say no to free popcorn and an excuse to watch a bunch of college boys running around.”
Her smile is huge.
“We’re going to be good friends, Jennifer,” she says. She hops off the bed and takes my elbow with hers, prom style.
“Definitely.”
Chapter
Two
The gym is nothing at all like I remember from the games. The bleachers have all been folded back against the wall, making the space seem twice as big as it usually is. But that’s not what makes the room look so strange. Half the room is covered in blue tumbling mats, the other half lined with unicycles and large metal hoops bigger than I am tall. I’m assuming the people in green T-shirts with KARAMAZOV CIRCUS emblazoned on the back are the coaches; they’re the ones setting everything up, and a few are even practicing as the rest of the campers filter in and huddle by the entrance. Coaches run up and down the length of the tumbling mats, doing flips and cartwheels and other tricks I don’t have names for. One coach is on one of the big hoops—he spins around on it like a coin tossed on the ground, dancing about like it’s the easiest thing in the world.