“That’s what it does,” Maddie said, as they snaked their way through the crowd of cotton candy and sawdust. “Capitalism ruins everything. Who says the circus needed audience participation? They’ve been doing fine for centuries without VIP wristbands.”

Stella looked at her in that wry, amused way adults do, the expression that acknowledged a level of precocity while insisting on superiority over it.

“Well, we can always trade in our VIP wristbands for the regular ones.”

“No, no, that’s not what I mean,” Maddie said. She hated when people brought banal realities into an ideological rant. “It’s just that social media has fried our brains so much that we can’t stand to sit back and observe without demanding some level of participation. It’s sick. It’s covert narcissism.”

Again, that wry grin, like thirteen was still too young an age to be using phrases like covert narcissism. Granted, Maddie couldn’t exactly recite the dictionary definition of the word covert if someone asked, or, fine, use it in another sentence if pressed. But she knew it sat right in the air when used in that order, and that was what people were listening for anyway.

“Why don’t we choose which type of narcissism we want to indulge in for the evening, eh? There’s juggling on the field here, and it looks like there are some clowns up ahead if you’re feeling funny.”

Maddie really did try to hide her grimace.

“No clowns then, kiddo. How about you take a look at the map and tell me what sounds fun?”

Maddie looked around as her stepmother studied the piece of paper in front of her, taking in the press of the crowd, the young kids darting between the different spectacles like bees between flowers, drunk on potential and crippled by choice. There were few people her age here, and no one she recognized from school, mercifully. Still, she eyed the grounds around her for the activity with the least potential for embarrassment.

Her eyes were drawn, suddenly, to a woman flying through the sky in the periphery. Her arms were long and limber, toes pointed, as she was caught by a muscled partner midair. They swung together, two clean arcs through the growing night, before the woman let go and plunged straight to the ground. Maddie only had time to gasp before the woman reappeared, safe, launched back into the air by an unseen net.

“That,” she said, pointing to the woman flying in the distance. “I want to do that.”

***

Stella groaned inwardly, her stepdaughter having found the activity most likely to end with a broken arm or visit to the ER. This wasn’t the first time Steven had left the two of them together alone, but the outing today carried a special weight, and she was determined to rise to the occasion.

Maddie was staying with her father this Christmas for the first time since the divorce, the result of a difficult and contemptuous legal battle Steven had taken great efforts to conceal from his daughter. It was one of the things that first drew Stella to him — the sincerity with which he hid the worst parts of himself from Maddie, his every vice footnoted with this quiet integrity.

The temporary close quarters with her stepdaughter had given their relationship a new air of domesticity. The outcome of this stay would chart the course of the rest of their relationship,

Stella was sure of it. She was going to get it right.

“What about magic?” Stella asked, trying not to let her anxiety seep through her voice. Magic seemed like the sort of activity her stepdaughter would excel at, a game of guaranteed upper hands. But it was too late: Maddie was already striding in the direction of the trapeze with an assurance that Stella, despite her worries, couldn’t help but admire. Maddie always knew what she wanted — youth had never kept her from conviction. It was funny, sometimes, how very old you could be at thirteen.

***

The height restriction at the trapeze station had thinned out much of the younger demographic. Now, in line, Maddie was surrounded mostly by kids her own age or older. She wished she’d taken a second before to duck into a restroom and check her reflection, adjust her makeup, fix her hair. She tried to subtly smear down the frizz she could feel accumulating at the top of her head from the humidity, playing it off like an errant itch, although maybe it was more embarrassing to give the impression of suffering from dandruff, or god, lice.

There it was, again — that bone deep itch within herself she could not scratch, that unshakable discomfort that seemed lodged beneath her skin.

She looked over at Stella waiting with the rest of the adults and marveled at how her hair always seemed to fall perfectly, a product of one of those designer hair tools her father had gifted her. Maddie had asked for one of them last Christmas, but he had insisted it was an absurd amount of money to spend on a hairdryer, the parallel systems of justice for girlfriend and daughter invoked once again.

She had beautiful teeth, too. Maddie never noticed things like that until she met Stella, who wielded her smile easily and freely. Her teeth weren’t perfect, even slightly crooked, and Maddie was convinced it was all in the coloring; she had begged her father to let her out of her braces early to get them professionally whitened instead. When he refused, she pointed out that Stella’s weren’t perfectly aligned, but comparisons to his girlfriends were usually the end of a discussion with her father. He didn’t seem to like the idea of them coexisting even in the same sentence of comparison.

She’d have to ask her stepmother for help later, when they were alone. There was a short window of time with partners. A narrow period in which they were eager to please through proxy, before they realized that gaining the approval of the daughter did little in the way of securing approval from the parent. Maddie had to strike before this period elapsed, ask all her questions about hair and teeth and skin before then. She glanced over — maybe asking Stella to get on the exhibit with her would soften her up; she was certainly beneath the weight limitation for the trapeze.

But when she looked over she saw, of course, that her stepmother had been pulled into a conversation with an eager father standing nearby. Stella was leaning back, all polite interest, offering nothing. Perhaps that was the secret after all. Perhaps it was detachment — and not the hair or the teeth — that was the determining factor. She had so little time to figure it out.

***

There was a cute boy a little ahead of Maddie in line, not more than fourteen or fifteen, and her stepdaughter was failing spectacularly in the game of subtlety, smoothing down her hair and pulling up her shorts as she snuck not so covert glances at him. (Stella did wonder if she was using the word covert correctly; she had heard Maddie use it earlier and it seemed to fit in context, but she reminded herself to check, later, on her phone.)

It was endearing, really, how obvious she was being. Unfortunately for her stepdaughter, though, not the kind that attracts teenage boys, who prefer an illusion of effortlessness around an appearance that they must know, deep down, is highly effortful. Her stepdaughter would have to wait a while to achieve that kind of effect, until at the very least the braces had been shed, the teenage acne had cleared and the hair had learned to sit straight. Only five or six years left to wait, Stella guessed, a precious time during which Maddie would learn important lessons about how the world treats effortful women.

It was better this way — to be made rather than born beautiful, Stella knew. If beauty was a thing to be held and then lost, then it was important to know what waited on the other side of the loss. A landing is always softer when you know what is coming.

As if this line of thinking had summoned him, the next second a middle-aged parent – khaki shorts, button down shirt – sat down next to Stella with an appreciative glance. His eyes did not linger on her hands, or the ring. She granted him the reciprocal grace. Plausible deniability: a game that had once seemed so alluring and exciting now another object of cynicism.

They talked about the weather and the beautiful night that was apparently too humid for comfort. He gestured to their wristbands, remarked how little status the VIP classification actually offered. He asked why Stella wasn’t in line with the rest of the kids, assuring her she would meet any weight restrictions imposed.

Stella couldn’t believe there was ever a time when she thought this was a scarce resource, that she had ever envied and competed with friends for it. How foolish they had been, to let the notion of scarcity fool them into assuming value; none of them had thought to check, as girls, what male attention really had to offer.

He was staring at her, waiting for a response to his question, perhaps a glib joke about how she was much heavier than she looked, to which he could scoff and protest and insist on verifying. In the distance, Maddie was still sneaking glances at the boy ahead of her.

She stood up, suddenly. “Maybe you’re right,” she said simply and walked towards her stepdaughter, falling in line. Maybe she didn’t belong with the rest of the adults.

***

Maddie would never admit it, but she was grateful to have Stella up there with her on the podium. The instructions that had seemed so simple on the ground now appeared impossible. She had to stop herself from asking about the mechanics of the swing again, to clarify how exactly her legs were expected to hold her full body weight as she swung upside down. She’d never so much as hung from monkey bars as a kid, and now she was graduating to circus tricks thirty feet above the ground. She could feel her heart pounding through her chest and was sure the man securing her into her harness could hear it, too.

Mind over matter, she repeated to herself. Maddie had faced worse; she’d take this in stride, too. Get through it with as much grace as she could muster and reevaluate her impulse to jump off tall objects later.

Stella smiled at her encouragingly as she double checked the harness around her waist, no sign of panic, and Maddie wondered if her stepmother had done this before. She didn’t seem like the type to leap off tall podiums; strong winds didn’t tend to enhance blowouts. Perhaps it was just the confidence of knowing that even mussed up hair couldn’t shake her appeal, that she could fall straight into the net and still be the most alluring woman at the circus.

Maddie pulled her hair back hurriedly at this thought as the circus performer quickly repeated the instructions. Tuck your legs securely around the bar. Don’t jump towards the catcher, let him reach for you. She nodded, internally repeating the mantra to herself: jump, swing, turn, hook, reach, drop. She’d get through this.

***

Maddie was so focused, even thirty feet above the ground. Stella wasn’t sure any of the other kids had asked half as many questions, and they were a curious bunch. She’d been uncertain, when Steven first mentioned he had a kid; how could she relate to someone sixteen years her junior? Her own childhood had seemed so far away, too far to draw any semblance of common ground. But up here with Maddie, she realized how much she’d missed it, being around kids — their sense of wonder, the relentless pull of a mystery they could never completely hide behind irony and sarcasm. As her stepdaughter steeled herself to jump, Stella was suddenly intensely grateful she’d chosen the podium.

***

The ground lurched ever closer as Maddie repeated the instructions to herself. One swing, turn your body towards the bar. Hook your knees over, grip tight.

So far, so good. Now to let go of her arms. A second passed.

Let go, she told herself.

Another second.

Let go, she could hear the instructor and Stella yelling from the podium.

Let go, she could hear the catcher scream from behind her.

A better version of her would. That version would ignore the drop in her stomach and the childish impulse to cling to safety. She would reach her arms out gracefully, like she had seen

that woman do earlier. She had looked so sure of herself, so sophisticated, armed with the maturity of knowing what would come next. That woman had let go, reaching for something known, something sure.

And so Maddie let go, let her arms reach towards the ground as her body traced a clean arc through the air. For a second she hung, upside down and hands outstretched, gazing at arms that looked so much longer from this angle, so much more lean and graceful, so much older.

***

Don’t think, Stella told herself after she jumped. She’d done something like this as a kid, not more than nine or ten, as her own mother watched nervously in the distance. She knew, instinctively, that her body had preserved the memory, remembered the exact sequence of movements for the stunt. And she felt herself execute them, marveling at the precision of muscle memory, so much more honest than those of the mind. No revisions, no spin, no trickery: just the series of steps needed to get her from one swing to another.

For a second, as she let go of the bar and swung upside down, she could see nothing but the dark ground and her arms outstretched towards it, hands dancing in the wind. It was like a wave back from the past, a carefree gesture that did not know what was coming next and did not care to know, content merely to be airborne.

***

And then Maddie was caught, swinging from the arms of the catcher as her stepmother cheered heartily in the distance. He dropped her cleanly onto the net, the sequence executed perfectly, embarrassment successfully avoided.

But this was more than that, Maddie knew, breathless and excited. It was a glimpse into the future, one filled with confidence and grace and poise. A future that did not itch. All she had to do was stand in place and reach, she was sure, and time would do the rest.

***

And then Stella was caught, swinging from the arms of the catcher as her stepdaughter cheered heartily in the distance. She dropped to the net, finally, the sequence completed exactly as remembered.

She lay on her back, momentum gently bouncing the net, as the last vestiges of familiarity left her. Slowly, gazing up, she returned to her body. The night sky above her was hazy with smog, although it must have been clear once.

She knew she ought to get off. She would, in a second. Already she missed the ladder, the podium, the swing. It was so much heavier on the ground than in the sky.

– Sarika Mahbubani