“Sorry,” Thomas said, without sounding at all sorry. “But it’s worth it. Trust me.” He started to disappear down the air vent again.
“I’ll take the stairs, thanks,” Sam muttered. But Thomas’s head had already vanished, so Sam wasn’t sure he’d heard.
Sam was always very careful on the stairs, especially the performers’ spiral staircase that ran up and down the back of the building. It was much steeper than the big central stairway used by the public. Once, several years ago, he’d been annoyed about his costume and had gone stomping to his room, and accidentally put a gaping hole in four different stairs. Dumfrey had been decent about it, which made Sam feel even guiltier.
“I know you’re very strong, Sam,” he had said, sighing, while polishing his wire-framed glasses. “And I know you don’t mean to break things. But you must try and be more careful. The museum really can’t afford the repairs.”
It was true that Sam never intended to break, smash, crush, shatter, or destroy anything; and yet break, smash, crush, shatter, and destroy things he did. Chairs and countertops, glass vases and picture frames—they splintered under his weight and in his hands.
Years earlier, a small bird had flown into one of the museum windows just after they were washed. Sam found it on the front steps, gasping for breath. He had wanted to save it. He had wanted to take it upstairs and repair its wings with tiny splints, and feed it from an eyedropper. He would never forget the expression on Mr. Dumfrey’s face as he burst from the front doors.
“For heaven’s sake, my boy, don’t touch it! You’ll pulverize the poor thing. Let Danny do it, or Goldini.”
He was skinny for his age and he knew he didn’t look strong. But it didn’t matter. The strength wasn’t in his muscles. It was in his skin, his fingertips, his blood. He could feel it flexing at the core of him, in who he was.
It had been with him forever. He carried it with him in his earliest memories.
In the earliest memory . . .
He pushed the thought away quickly. He would not think about what couldn’t be changed—that’s what Mr. Dumfrey had told him. He tried as hard as possible to ignore the fact that he was different, even in a place where different was normal and normal was odd. Thomas had once approached him about it. “You’re like me and Pippa,” he’d said. “A freak among freaks.” Sam had glared so hard Thomas had muttered an apology. For nearly a month afterward, Sam had ignored Thomas completely.
As he corkscrewed past each successive floor, the drumming noise got louder. By the time he’d reached the ground floor, and the main hall of exhibits, the sound had swollen to a dull roar.
He entered the lobby and stood, dumbstruck, staring.
His ears hadn’t deceived him. The noise that had sounded to him like dozens of fists was, in fact, dozens of fists—pounding on the glass doors, rattling the handle.
“Isn’t it amazing?” Thomas once again popped up next to him, seemingly from nowhere. This time, however, Sam was too dazed to react. “Isn’t it improbable?”
Even as Sam watched, he saw that people were pressing their faces to the doors, smudging the glass with their breath, hollering to be let in. And Dumfrey was standing on the other side of the glass, still dressed in slippers and his tattered scarlet robe, trying to mollify them.
“Very soon, very soon,” he was saying extra loudly so he could be heard through the glass and above the roar of the crowd. “Ten o’clock is opening hour. You’ll see it on the posted sign. Don’t worry, don’t worry, there’s room enough for all of you.” He squeaked and leaped backward as a very determined-looking man gave another rattle of the handle.
“Vultures,” the alligator boy muttered, scratching the tip of his scaly nose. He, too, had come downstairs to investigate, along with the magician.
“Dear me,” Goldini said. “That’s quite a crowd, isn’t it?” Goldini fumbled in his bathrobe for his glasses but produced nothing but a plastic flower and a series of multicolored handkerchiefs.
“Need help, Mr. D.?” Thomas asked.