Learning the Ropes Read online

  LEARNING

  THE ROPES

  Monique Polak

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  Copyright © 2015 Monique Polak

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Polak, Monique, author

  Learning the ropes / Monique Polak.

  (Orca limelights)

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-4598-0452-4 (pbk.).–ISBN 978-1-4598-0453-1 (pdf).—

  ISBN 978-1-4598-0454-8 (epub)

  I. Title. II. Series: Orca limelights

  PS8631.O43L43 2015 jC813'.6 C2014-906671-6

  C2014-906672-4

  First published in the United States, 2015

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014952059

  Summary: Mandy is thrilled to spend the summer at a Montreal circus camp, but she is forced to face her fears when another aerialist is killed in a fall.

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  Cover design by Rachel Page

  Cover photography by Ibon Landa

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  PO BOX 5626, STN. B

  Victoria, BC Canada

  V8R 6S4

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  PO BOX 468

  Custer, WA USA

  98240-0468

  www.orcabook.com

  Printed and bound in Canada.

  18 17 16 15 • 4 3 2 1

  For Lauren Abrams,

  the performer in our family, with love

  Table of Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Acknowledgments

  One

  A pile of suitcases blocks my way to the check-in counter.

  “Some people!” a woman in front of me mutters—loud enough for the couple who have left their suitcases in our way to hear. The woman tugs on her little boy’s hand and leads him around the suitcases. They duck under the cord (it’s easy for the boy, but the woman groans) and get back in line.

  I don’t mind the suitcases. For me, they’re something to play with.

  I toss my backpack over them. It lands with a small thud on the other side. I plant the heel of my hand on the top suitcase, nice and steady. Then I get a little bounce going in my knees, and I flip into a handstand. Which takes me right over the suitcases.

  The boy’s mouth falls open.

  He giggles when I turn to him and take a bow.

  Mom has ducked under the cord. “That’s my girl, always putting on a show,” she says to no one in particular, but not unkindly.

  Dad hasn’t come to Vancouver International Airport to see me off. He’s against my going to circus camp in Montreal. He’s against all things circus. You could get hurt, Mandy, and you know it. Accidents happen. Think about what happened to your grandpa. Are you even listening, Mandy?

  Mom’s the one paying for circus camp, not to mention airfare and my room and board. She says a person needs to follow her dreams, even if there’s a risk involved. Something tells me Mom’s dream wasn’t to do the billing for Dad’s engineering company.

  When I’m done checking in, I can feel Mom giving me a final look-over. I’m wearing my usual—comfortable jeans and a soft, black T-shirt. “You’re looking at me like I’m a package you’re about to put in the mail,” I tell Mom.

  She gives me a fierce hug. “A precious package,” she whispers. “Text me as soon as you land.”

  Two weeks will be the longest I’ve ever been away from home.

  “Thanks, Mom. For everything.”

  “Don’t be angry at your dad,” she says into my ear. “You know how hard this is for him.”

  The hug ends, and we’re trying not to cry. Then we both gulp at the same time, which makes us laugh.

  Mom rests her hand on my shoulder. “Get outta here, will ya?”

  * * *

  I’m too excited to pay attention as the flight attendant explains the emergency exits. In about six hours, I, Mandy Campbell, will be at the Montreal Circus College’s Summer Circus Camp. Each year, only twenty-five teenagers from around the world are accepted into this prestigious program. If that sounds like an ad, it’s because I memorized it from the brochure.

  I need to stand out at circus camp. If I do, it’ll improve my chances of being accepted into the Montreal Circus College. If I make it into MCC and stand out there, chances are good I’ll get a job with a real circus, maybe even Cirque de la Lune, the greatest, most famous circus ever.

  Somewhere over the Rocky Mountains, I doze off. I dream I’m climbing the old oak tree in our backyard in North Vancouver. My arms and legs work together like an engine, propelling me up the trunk. When I reach the top, all I can see is blue sky—and the window to the attic, where my dad’s home office is. The screen is open to let in the fresh air. Dad is hunched over his computer. “Daddy!” I call. “Look at me!” But he won’t look up.

  “Are you all right, dear?” the woman sitting next to me asks. I can feel her staring at my legs. I’ve fallen asleep with them up in the air, resting on the back of the seat in front of me.

  “I’m fine. Thanks.” I lower my legs, crossing them at the ankle the way my seat partner probably expects me to.

  The flight attendant comes rattling down the aisle with the beverages cart. I’m reaching for my soda water when I notice a dark-haired girl in the window seat across the aisle. She’s fallen asleep too. Her legs are crossed in her lap, and her head has dropped so low it nearly skims the floor.

  She’s either some kind of double-jointed yogi or she’s headed for circus camp too.

  * * *

  When I exit through the glass doors of Montreal’s Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport, I spot a small woman with blond hair holding up a sign that says MCC Summer Circus Camp. The girl from the airplane is behind me, and we’re both waving to the woman with the sign.

  The woman’s name is Suzanne. I’d guess from her muscular build that she’s done circus too. “Mandy? Genevieve?” she says, looking from one of us to the other as if she is trying to figure out who’s who. “Welcome to Montreal. Have you two already met?”

  Genevieve is from Seattle. She’s wearing a hot-pink crop-top and skintight yoga pants, not to mention way too much makeup for a plane ride. Her black eyeliner sweeps up at the outer corners of her eyes, and she must have on three coats of pink lip gloss.

  I get a small pang in my chest when Genevieve tells me she’s an aerialist too. I could use a friend—so what if she wears too much makeup and I don’t touch the stuff?—but I also know how competitive circus camp is going to be. There will probably only be a spot at the Montreal Circus College for one star aerialist. And it had better be me.

  Genevieve flips her long dark hair back. “I do tissu,” she says.

 
; Most girls who are aerialists do tissu, the circus term for aerial fabric.

  For a second, Genevieve’s eyes stay on my jeans. I can feel her judging me. “I climb rope,” I tell her. If my hair were long enough, I’d flip it the way she keeps flipping hers. I can’t help feeling superior. Sure, tissu is pretty and feminine—like Genevieve—but it’s a cliché in the circus world.

  Rope is so much cooler.

  Two

  My breath catches in my throat when Suzanne exits from the highway onto a street called Iberville. There, right in front of me, taking up nearly the whole front window of the van, is a giant blue-and-yellow-striped tent—the big top—and next to it, the Cirque de la Lune headquarters, the round building where Cirque performers train. I’ve seen this view in the brochure and on the Internet a thousand times, but now I’m here. I’ve arrived. I blink—twice—just to make sure this is really happening.

  “Wow,” Genevieve says, which is how I know she feels the same way.

  Suzanne is the camp director. Camp takes place in the Montreal Circus College building. Like everything else on this block in Montreal’s north end, it’s big, shiny and new. Tall tinted windows make it impossible to see what’s happening inside. “That’s because everyone is curious about the circus and what we do in here,” Suzanne tells us.

  Yeah, I think, everyone except my dad.

  There’s a concrete terrace outside the MCC building. Suzanne explains that there’ll be a barbecue there tomorrow night to celebrate the start of camp.

  After we get our security passes, Suzanne takes us up to the third floor, where the dorms are. For the next two weeks, a dozen girls will share one large bright room—and two bathrooms.

  Bunk beds line the walls. “Since you’re both climbers, I’m guessing you’ll want the top bunks,” Suzanne says. “Backpacks and suitcases go under the bottom bunks. We need to be sure there’s room to walk. Let me show you the bathrooms.”

  There’s so much to see—la palestre, the giant training studio where we’ll have some of our classes and where we’ll perform on the last day of circus camp; the smaller studios; the gleaming cafeteria where we’ll have most of our meals. Finally, I realize I’ve forgotten to text my mom.

  Sorry, Mom, I write to her. Landed safe. Amazing here. Love u.

  I nearly add Say hi to Dad for me, but I decide against it. I haven’t completely forgiven him for not coming to the airport to see me off.

  For a second I remember what my mom said when she was hugging me goodbye: You know how hard this is for him. Dad’s father was a stuntman in the movie industry. I never got to meet him, though it sounds like we’d have got along. Dad says Grandpa was a daredevil who wasn’t afraid of anything. Unfortunately, he died on a movie set at the age of forty-two.

  In a climbing accident.

  Suzanne explains that the boys have a room at the other end of the third floor and two bathrooms of their own. Genevieve wants to know whether there’s a plug for her blow-dryer in the girls’ bathroom. “There’s no way I can go around with frizzy hair,” she tells Suzanne.

  Other kids have been arriving all day. Some are delivered by their parents. Some come by bus or train. Suzanne tells us she’ll go back to the airport after supper to collect another group.

  Genevieve and I meet Hana, an acrobat from Korea. She looks like a porcelain doll, and her English isn’t very good. Then there’s Cécile, a tightrope walker from France, and Anastasia, a Russian trapeze artist. “I’m Anastasia Bershov,” she tells us. She has a British accent and a handshake that leaves my fingers aching.

  “Did you just say Bershov?” Genevieve asks.

  “That’s correct.” Anastasia straightens her shoulders. And that’s when I realize which Bershovs she means—the famous Russian circus family. This girl’s great-grandparents were international circus stars.

  We have sandwiches and salad in the cafeteria. Lights are out in the dorms at ten, but I’m still on West Coast time. Somehow I manage to sleep. In the morning there’s a buffet breakfast in the cafeteria. Fresh fruit, all kinds of cheese, yogurt, bran muffins and the most delicious, most buttery croissants I’ve ever tasted.

  “Welcome to circus camp!” Suzanne claps to get our attention. She explains that she wants us to feel at home but also wants us to understand that there are rules—and if we don’t follow them, we’ll be sent home. “No girls in the boys’ dorm. No boys in the girls’ dorm. No smoking, no drugs, no alcohol. No unsupervised practicing that could be considered dangerous in any of the training areas, or anywhere else for that matter, inside or outside the school. If there are any accidents, the camp could be sued. Shoes,” she adds as an afterthought. “No bare feet in this building. Except in the shower.”

  Suzanne says we’ll spend our first day getting to know each other. We’re meeting up in la palestre in half an hour.

  We’re early, so Genevieve and I take our time getting to la palestre. “You smell like cookies,” I tell her.

  Genevieve does her hair-flip thing. “Thanks,” she says. “It’s my vanilla cologne. I guess you don’t wear perfume?”

  “I’m not into smelling like cookies.”

  “I’m not into smelling like sweat,” Genevieve says with a smile.

  “I don’t smell like sweat,” I tell her.

  “What are you getting so worked up about? I never said you did.”

  On our way to la palestre, we spot two guys in one of the smaller, glassed-in studios. Both are short with dirty-blond hair. One is dressed in clothes that are way too big: a loose-fitting shirt and pants that look dangerously close to falling off. The other’s clothes are way too small: a tight-fitting tank top and pants that stop six inches from the ground. The guys have their arms around each other’s shoulders and are performing for a silver-haired gentleman sitting in a folding chair at the front of the studio.

  We peer through the glass to see what they’re doing. The guy in the too-big clothes must feel us watching, because he spins around to look at us. Genevieve and I both giggle when we see his red clown nose.

  Genevieve nudges me. “Check out the old guy. It’s Hugo Lebrun. From Cirque de la Lune.”

  “Oh my god, you’re right.”

  One thing Genevieve and I have in common, besides climbing, is an obsession with Cirque de la Lune. My mom and I have been to eight Cirque de la Lune shows, mostly in Vancouver, and once when she took me to Las Vegas for my birthday.

  Genevieve’s never seen the Cirque live, but she’s watched all its DVDs—and memorized every aerial act.

  I can’t believe I didn’t recognize Hugo Lebrun. He’s been in some of Cirque de la Lune’s biggest productions. We’re standing just a few feet away from the most famous clown on earth.

  Both boys are looking at us now. The one dressed in baggy clothes is much better-looking than the one in the too-tight clothes—he has clear blue eyes and hair that curls at the nape of his neck. The other one’s face is chubby and pockmarked.

  The handsome one slides his hand down his side, reaches into his pocket and pretends to take out a cell phone. Now he points to the window where we’re standing, then at the imaginary phone. He flips the phone open and begins tapping one fingertip on an invisible keypad. He glances back at the window, lifting one eyebrow as he holds the phone to his ear.

  He’s pretending to call me. Or Genevieve.

  I hope it’s me.

  We both crack up. Hugo Lebrun laughs too.

  Genevieve and I wave to the boys and to Hugo and head back down the hallway. Genevieve tucks her arm through mine. “I totally love circus camp,” she says.

  Even if we end up competing for the same spot, even if we disagree when it comes to makeup and perfume, it feels good to have a friend.

  Genevieve leans in toward me. “You know that cute clown?” she says. “He’s mine.”

  And because I don’t know what to say to that, I don’t say anything.

  Three

  All twenty-five of us are sitting in a circle on the
floor of la palestre. A stranger who walked in now would know we’re acrobats.

  Rather than sitting on their heels or with one leg crossed over the other the way regular kids sit, Genevieve and Anastasia are doing the splits, their hands casually resting on their thighs. The handsome clown has one leg bent in front of him, the other stretched out behind him, and is holding his back toes with one hand. His partner has planted his palms by his sides and is supporting his weight on his arms.

  They aren’t performing—it’s just how they sit.

  Watching them confirms that circus camp is the right place for me. All my life, and especially before I got into gymnastics in grade three, I’ve felt different from other kids. None of them liked climbing stuff the way I did. Even back in kindergarten, I was the only one who slept with my feet propped up against the wall at naptime.

  Suzanne leads the orientation. She wants us to say our names, where we’re from and what our circus specialty is. The handsome clown is named Leo; his sidekick is Guillaume. They are from Belgium and have been training together as a pair for two years.

  The first exercise, Suzanne explains, will help us get comfortable with each other. “I’ll call out a body part—for example, elbow—and you’re going to touch nine people’s elbows. Got that?” She looks around the group. “Elbow!”

  I feel bad for Hana, who doesn’t seem to know what elbow means. I tap her elbow.

  “Ahh.” She nods. “Pal-kkum-chi.”

  Soon all of us are racing around the room, tapping elbows and getting tapped. Leo winks when his fingers graze my elbow. Did he wink at Genevieve too?

  “Knee!” Suzanne calls out, then “Ankle!”

  When I tap Cécile’s ankle, I notice her calves are rock hard. It must come from doing the tightrope.

  I may not have learned everyone’s name yet, but after a few rounds of this exercise, I’ve touched everyone in the room. Suzanne was right—it’s a good way of getting comfortable with each other. Especially for people like us, who communicate better with our bodies than with words.