Phoebe, the fat lady, had retreated to her bedroom. Smalls, the giant, was working on his latest poem and had spent the whole morning repeating “the swallows fly like shadows across the sky” and “like shadows the swallows fly across the sky” and “across the sky, like shadows, swallows fly” and shaking his head.
Danny, the dwarf, had gone next door for a drink. Hugo, the elephant man, was working on a crossword puzzle in the corner. Betty, the bearded lady, was carefully combing and braiding her beard. Goldini, the magician, had been puzzling all afternoon over a new trick but so far had succeeded only in vanishing three quarters somewhere under the sofa cushions. Rain lashed against the large windows, and the glass seemed to be slowly melting into liquid.
The radio was reporting news of another washed-out baseball game. Then the advertisements came on.
“Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls . . . step right up and don’t be shy! Down at Dumfrey’s Dime Museum is a world of wonder, of wondrous weirdness . . .”
“Turn it down, please,” Philippa said primly. “I’m reading.”
Just to spite her, Thomas stood and turned the radio up a few notches, even though he’d heard the ad a million times at least.
“. . . our brand-new exhibit, guaranteed to knock your socks off and spin your head around in its socket! New York’s only shrunken head! Straight from the Amazon! Delivered only yesterday!”
“Pippa’s right, Thomas,” Betty trilled in her sweet voice. “I’ve had enough talk of that silly head. Uglier than sin, if you ask me!” She swept her long brown beard over one shoulder serenely, stood, and switched off the radio.
In quick succession, like an echo, bells on every floor of the museum began to ding. That meant someone was at the doors.
“I’ll get it!” Thomas said. He didn’t bother with the stairs but threw himself into the air duct, whose cover he kept loose for this reason.
Unlike some of the other performers—Danny, Betty, Andrew—Thomas looked completely normal. He was a little short for his age and a little skinny, too. He had a smattering of freckles across his nose, which was stubby, and straw-colored hair that never managed to lie flat. He had vivid green eyes that were, more often than not, trained on a book about mathematics, science, or engineering.
But he wasn’t normal—far from it. Thomas could bend his nose to his toes. He could flex his spine like an anaconda. He could squeeze himself into a space no larger than a child’s suitcase. His bones and joints seemed to be formed of putty.
Now Thomas shimmied down the narrow duct, counting the floors, and sprang free of the grate in the lobby, completely unconscious of the fact that he was sporting a small mass of lint on his head.
Mr. Dumfrey was already opening the doors, saying, “No need for all that fuss, Thomas. I have it.”
Just then, Thomas had the strangest sensation that reality had hit a snag, as though he were watching a play and one of the actors had skipped several lines. Afterward, he was to remember that moment for a very long time: the thin girl standing on the stoop in the rain, with the narrow face and wild curtain of dark hair, and the scar that stretched from her right eyebrow to her right ear, dressed in clothes three times too big for her and clutching a rucksack in one hand; and Mr. Dumfrey, his large, kind face so pale, it looked as though his head had been replaced with a pile of bread dough.
“It can’t be,” he gasped.
The girl frowned. “I heard an ad on the radio. You got a head here, don’t you?”
Dumfrey recovered somewhat. He swallowed loudly. “We have the only shrunken head in all of New York City,” he said grandly. “And the finest collection of freaks, wonders, and curiosities in the world.”
The girl sniffed and looked around the dingy lobby, where Andrew, the alligator boy (who was actually pushing seventy-five and walked with a cane), was playing solitaire behind the admissions desk, and several buckets had been set up to catch the rain where it was dribbling through a leaky window. “You looking for another act?”
“That depends,” Dumfrey said. Thomas noticed he was still gripping the doors, as though worried he might fall over. “What sort of act?”
Thomas did not see the girl reach into her pocket. He saw only the glint of metal in her hand, before, with quick, fluid grace, she rounded on him. He felt a wind whip past him, heard the thud of something on the plaster wall behind him.
Two high points of color had appeared in Dumfrey’s cheeks. He stood, eyes glittering, staring at a spot directly behind Thomas’s head.
Thomas turned.
Embedded in the wall, practically to its hilt, was an evil-looking knife, staked directly in the middle of a small ball of lint.
“You’re hired,” Mr. Dumfrey rasped.
The girl smiled.
The new girl’s name was Mackenzie but she insisted everybody call her Max.