“Are you all right?” Glory said.
Lilly bit her lip and nodded. The last thing she wanted to do was draw attention. She took a deep, trembling breath, held it for a second, then let it out, trying to calm down.
“Listen,” Glory said. She picked up her knife and began cutting the sausage on her plate. “I know you’re scared. I would be too. But most everyone here is friendly, and I’ll let you know who isn’t.” She gestured toward the back of the cookhouse with her knife. “Like Josephine over there. It’s best to stay away from her.”
The woman Glory called Josephine sipped coffee alone at a table and surveyed the room, her lips and fingernails painted red, gemstones sparkling from every finger, a rainbow of bracelets lining both wrists. She was dressed in a flowered robe, with glittery barrettes in her thin gray ringlets. Her large, hooked nose and close-set eyes reminded Lilly of a story she’d read about a giant rat. A thin man with black hair approached her table, set a plate of food in front of her, then stood off to one side like a servant, his hands behind his back.
Glory noticed Lilly staring at Josephine. “Just stick with me, okay?”
Lilly nodded, her chin trembling. She thought about asking why she needed to stay away from Josephine but couldn’t find the right words. There were so many things to get used to, so many things to learn and fear. She was having a hard enough time sitting up straight and breathing.
Just then, two girls in yellow dresses approached and sat across the table from her and Glory. They looked exactly the same, with high cheekbones, matching black dots above their lips, and red hair parted down the middle and combed over one side, half obscuring one blue eye.
“Who’s this?” the girls asked Glory at the same time. They picked up their forks and started eating identical piles of hash browns, bacon, and scrambled eggs.
“This is Lilly,” Glory said. She addressed Lilly. “Ruby and Rosy are my friends. You can trust them.”
The twins set down their forks and reached across the table to shake Lilly’s hand. “Pleased to meetcha,” they said in unison.
Lilly tried to smile, but kept her hands in her lap.
The twins withdrew and gave each other a confused glance. Then one of them said, “We’re with the sideshow too. Sometimes with the freaks, sometimes with the cooch show.”
Glory’s brows shot up. “Ruby!” she said.
Ruby shrugged. “The lot lice know about the cooch show.” She leaned forward and grinned at Lilly. “That’s the girlie show, in case you were wonderin’.”
“Jesus, Ruby,” Glory said. “The circus kids know what the cooch show is, but Lilly didn’t grow up in the circus. I don’t think she’s ever even been to one, have you?” She looked at Lilly.
Lilly shook her head.
“That’s what I thought,” Glory said. She frowned at Ruby and Rosy. “Merrick picked her up at the last stop. And it wasn’t her decision.”
The twins’ faces fell in unison. “Oh,” they said.
“Right,” Glory said. “So take it easy, will you?”
“Sorry,” Ruby said. She started eating again.
“So, kid, what do you think of this spread?” Rosy said. “Pretty amazing, huh? We don’t get paid a lot, but we’re guaranteed three squares a day.”
“Well, from what I hear,” Ruby said, “this spot is wide open, so things might get a little wild later. Guess the patch men greased the rails of the local officials good last night, so this isn’t going to be no Sunday school show. But Josephine isn’t happy ’cause Mr. Barlow promised two of her girls to the sheriff without asking.”
“Josephine isn’t happy unless she’s running the show,” Glory said. “It’s her way or the highway.”
Rosy addressed Lilly. “You stay away from that one, you hear? First she’ll reel you in like she’s your best friend, then before you know it, she’ll have something over you and turn you into one of her—”
Glory shot Rosy a hard look. “Too soon,” she said.
“Oh,” Rosy said. “Sorry.”
“Do you know what your act will be?” Ruby asked Lilly.
Across the way, the man and boy Lilly had seen with the elephants waited in the food line, trays in hand. They gave their tickets to Bob, then made their way to the other side of the tent, toward the tables with saltshakers and tablecloths. Lilly couldn’t help staring. The boy had touched and played with a baby elephant. He had to be someone special. So why in the world did he wave at her? Did he think she was a normal girl?
“Lilly?” Rosy and Ruby said at the same time.
Lilly blinked and looked at the twins. “What?”
“I was wondering if you know what you’ll be doing,” Ruby said. “What’s your act?” She shoved a piece of bacon in her mouth and chewed, the black dot above her red lips moving ’round and ’round in tiny circles.
Lilly shrugged and gazed at Glory, a question on her face.
“We don’t know yet,” Glory said. “Merrick hasn’t decided. After breakfast he wants to show her to Mr. Barlow.”
Lilly thought Glory sounded worried, or maybe it was sad.
Then the thin black-haired man who gave Josephine a plate of food appeared at their table and jerked his chin at Glory. “Josephine wants to know about the girl.” The skin on his face was stretched tight over his cheeks and his eyes looked bigger than normal, like they were about to pop out of his head.
“She’s with Merrick,” Glory said.
“Where’d she come from?” the man said.
“If Josephine wants to know,” Glory said, “she can ask Merrick.”
The man grinned but said nothing. Then he winked at Lilly and walked away.
Lilly stared at her food again, growing more and more nauseous. She thought about saying she couldn’t eat, then picked up her toast and nibbled on the crust, trying not to be sick.
*
After breakfast, Glory took Lilly back to the train so Merrick could show her to Mr. Barlow. On the way there, they passed a tent surrounded by hay bales and water buckets, and a group of men with an elephant in the mouth of an open-sided barn. Three of the men held ropes that went up to a pulley attached to a pole above the elephant’s head, then came down and tied around the elephant’s front feet and the top of its trunk near its mouth. A fourth man with a stick commanded the elephant to sit up and the three men pulled on the ropes, yanking the elephant’s front feet and head in the air. Two other men shoved a round stand under the elephant’s rear end, forcing it to sit down.
Lilly came to a halt and put a hand over her stomach. The walled-in feeling of being locked up and the heavy, horrible ache of missing home twisted in her chest again. But this time there was something else too, something that felt like terror and pain.
Glory stopped and looked back at her. “What’s wrong?”
“What are they doing to that elephant?” she said.
“Trying to teach it new tricks,” Glory said. “They’ve been having trouble with that one.”
“It looks like . . . like they’re torturing it.”
“It doesn’t hurt her.”