A light shone suddenly, mercilessly, in her eyes. She put up her hand to protect her eyes, but it was too bright. “The explosion!” she thought.
The light swung suddenly away from her. She could see its long beam as it swung, like the beam from a flashlight. There were little specks of dust in it. It swung around in a big arc, lighting the struts behind her as it went, and she could see they were the underneath part of a grandstand, full of people. Up above the tunnel where she had been standing was a big red-and-gold sign that said “Main Entrance.”
The light swung in front of her and then stopped and shone on a man standing on a round box dressed all in white. Even his boots were white, and his top hat. The light made a circle around him. “La-deez and gentlemen!” he said, really loud. “Kindly direct your attention to the center ring!”
“I like this part the best,” someone said. Maisie turned. A little girl was standing next to her. She had on a white dress and a big blue sash. She was holding a fluffy pink puff of cotton candy on a paper cone. “My name’s Pollyanna,” the little girl said. “What’s yours?”
“Maisie.”
“I love the circus, don’t you, Mary?” Pollyanna said, eating cotton candy.
“Not Mary,” Maisie said. “Maisie.”
“Ladeez and gentlemen!” the ringmaster said, real loud, “we now present, for your entertainment, an act so sensational, so stupendous, so amazing, it has never been attempted anywhere!” He pointed his whip with a flourish, and the spotlight swung again so that its smoky beam shone straight up at a little platform at the top of a narrow ladder. There were people standing on it, dressed in fancy white leotards.
Maisie stood staring up at them, her mouth open. They looked like Barbie dolls, they were such a long way up. Their leotards sparkled in the smoky bluish light of the spotlight. “…those wizards of the tent top,” the ringmaster was saying, “those heroes of the high wire!”
A band struck up a fanfare, and Maisie looked across the ring to see where the band was. They were sitting in a big white bandstand, wearing bright red jackets with gold decorations on their shoulders. One of them had a tuba.
“Look!” Pollyanna said, pointing up with her cotton candy. Maisie looked up again. The people on the platform were bowing and smiling, waving one of their arms in big wide swoops and hanging on to the ladder with the other one.
“We proudly present,” the ringmaster was saying, “the daring, the dazzling, the devil-may-care…” He paused, and the band played another fanfare. “…death-defying… Wallendas!”
“Oh, no,” Maisie said.
The band started playing a slow, pretty song, and one of the girl Wallendas picked up a long white pole and stepped onto the end of the high wire. She had short blond hair like Kit’s. “You have to get down!” Maisie shouted up to her.
The girl Wallenda started out across the high wire, holding her pole in both hands. “There’s going to be a disaster!” Maisie shouted. “Go back! Go back!”
The girl continued to walk, placing her feet in their flat white shoes carefully, carefully. Maisie tilted her head back, trying to see the top of the tent. She could see the Wallendas, waiting for their turns to go out on the high wire, but everything above them was black, like there wasn’t a tent above them at all, just sky.
If it was the sky, there’d be stars, she thought, and just then she saw one. It glittered, a tiny white point of light, high above the Wallendas’ heads. So maybe it’s all right, Maisie thought, looking at the star. It glittered again, and then flared brightly, brighter even than the spotlight, and turned red.
“Fire!” Maisie shouted, but the Wallendas didn’t pay any attention. The girl Wallenda reached the middle of the wire, and a man Wallenda started out toward her.
Maisie ran as hard as she could across the center ring, her feet sinking in the sawdust, over to the bandstand. “The big top’s on fire!” she shouted, but the band didn’t pay any attention to her either.
She ran over to the conductor. “You have to play the duck song!” she cried, “the song that means the circus is in trouble! ‘The Stars and Stripes Forever!’ ” but he didn’t even turn around. “See!” Maisie said, yanking on his sleeve and pointing up at the fire. It was burning a line down the roof of the tent now, making a jagged red tear.
“Get down!” she shouted to the Wallendas, pointing, and one of the Wallendas saw the fire and started climbing down the ladder. The girl Wallenda who looked like Kit was still out in the middle of the wire. One of the men Wallendas threw her a rope, and she dropped her white pole and grabbed it. She wrapped her legs around it, and slid down.
“Fire!” somebody shouted in the grandstand, and all the people looked up, their mouths open like Maisie’s had been, and began to run down off the grandstand.
The fire burned along the high wire, along the rigging, moving lines of flame. Like messages, Maisie thought. Like SOSs. Somebody grabbed Maisie’s arm. She turned around. It was Pollyanna. “We have to get out of here!” Pollyanna said, tugging Maisie back across the ring toward the main entrance.
“We can’t get out that way!” Maisie said, resisting. “The animal run’s in the way.”
“Hurry, Molly!” Pollyanna said.
“Not Molly,” Maisie said. “Maisie!” but the band had started playing “The Stars and Stripes Forever” and Pollyanna couldn’t hear her.
“Look,” Maisie said, reaching inside the neck of her hospital gown. “My name is Maisie. It’s all written right here, on my dog tags.”
They weren’t there. She fumbled wildly at her neck, searching for her dog tags. They must have fallen off, back there while she was standing in the entranceway, looking up at the Wallendas.
“Well, Margie or whatever your name is, we better get out of here,” Pollyanna said. She took Maisie’s hand…
“No!” Maisie said, wrenching it away from her. “I have to find them!” She ran wildly back across the center ring. “I have to,” she shouted over her shoulder as she ran, “or they won’t know who I am when they find my body.”
“I thought you said we can’t get out that way,” Pollyanna called to her. “I thought you said it wasn’t clear.”
“Clear,” her heart doctor said, and the jolt jerked her really hard, but it must not have worked. The heart monitor was still whining.
“All right,” her heart doctor said. “If you’ve got anything, now’s the time to try it,” and Dr. Wright said, “Start the theta-asparcine. Start the acetylcholine.”
“Hang on, honey,” Vielle said. “Don’t leave us,” but she had to find her dog tags. They weren’t in the main entrance. She dropped to her knees and dug in the sawdust, sifting it in her hands.
A lady ran by, kicking sawdust onto Maisie’s hands. “Don’t—” she said, and a big girl ran by, and a man carrying a little boy. “Stop it,” she said. “You’re mashing it! I have to find my dog tags!”
But they didn’t listen. They ran past her into the darkness of the tunnel. “You can’t get out that way!” Maisie said, grabbing at the big girl’s skirt. “The animal run is in the way.”
“It’s on fire!” the big girl said and yanked the tail of her skirt away so hard it tore.
“You have to go out the performers’ entrance!” Maisie said, but the big girl had already disappeared into the darkness, and a whole bunch of people were running after her, kicking the sawdust all over, trampling it, stepping on Maisie’s hands.
“You’re messing it all up,” Maisie said, cradling her bruised fingers in her other hand. She struggled to her feet. “This isn’t the way out!” she shouted, holding up her hands to make the people stop, but they couldn’t hear her. They were screaming and shrieking so loud she couldn’t even hear the band playing “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” They were stumbling against her, shoving her, pushing her into the tunnel.