Amanda Jones
AMANDA JONES often sets her short stories and flash fiction on the Kent coast where she lives. ‘Ponytail and Smoky Eyes’ and ‘One Night in Margate’ formed part of collaborative works programmed by the 2019 and 2020 Margate Bookie. ‘The Aces High Killer’ is included in SNAP! (2021).
Twitter @Whitgirrl
Running Away to the Circus
The band is playing Colonel Bogey as the girl gets nearer to the edge of the cliff, prancing down the path like she’s on a highwire, shimmying to the music.
‘Watch Out!’ I shout above the windswept notes hurtling past me. ‘Hey! Stop!’ My painted smile gets wider as I yell. I try to run but my cartoon shoes threaten to upend me. The people watching clap and laugh.
The girl turns and waves, and now we’re in slow motion. She steps back, and there is the rattle of chalk crumbling under her heel as she takes another half-step into space. Her mouth opens, she spreads her arms and her hair fans out, red rays against the yellow sun. For a moment, she hangs magnificent, and now we’re up to speed again as she falls backwards and her scream follows her over the cliff.
I’m still trying to run towards her when the director shouts ‘Cut!’ and she reappears and comes over. ‘Man, that mat is springy,’ she says. ‘For a moment, I thought I was going to bounce right back up at you guys.’
*
That evening, we sit outside the Great Break hotel, sharing a smoke, watching the lights of the Big Top, smelling hot dogs and candyfloss through the scented weed. I want to tell her about the time I ran away to the circus and stayed for a night before my parents came and took me back, and how it’s still the best night of my life, but how tonight might come close. I want to tell her, but the words won’t come.
We’ll finish my scenes tomorrow and that’s it, we won’t see each other again. In real life we’re in different worlds. She’s a star and I’m small-time, working crowd scenes and bit parts, grateful for spoken lines when they come. She’s giving off starlight, I’m crawling through mud.
I hadn’t known that my world would be turned upside down, that I’d be bowled for a duck, uprooted by a tempest, stopped in my tracks midway on the level crossing. I hadn’t known I could still feel the joy I felt when I was nine and the circus held me close for that one night.
What I want to say: I know we’ve only known each other for a few days, but I love you, Lily-May Rose. I’ve never been so happy or so scared, so thrilled or so numb, and I don’t care. I love you, Lily-May Rose, I love you. At a wave of your hand,
I would die for you.
What I say: ‘Hey, Lily. Do you fancy another smoke?’
‘Nah,’ she says. ‘Nah, you’re alright. I’m off to bed.’
*
The day after my parents took me back from the circus, it packed up its tents and left town, taking my heart with it. Three days ago, I met Lily. I don’t know when my heart came back, but now it has gone again.
