"What are you doing up there?" Patrick yelled with laughter while looking up at me stretching on the roof of my trailer. The sun was hiding behind thick clouds since it rose an hour ago but the yard was buzzing with people already. And with Patrick who so naturally wandered around the trailers as if he had always belonged here.
"What do you think I´m doing?" I barked, barely able to talk while dragging my legs up to a handstand, then letting my toes slowly touch the roof on the other side. Yes, I should practice more often. Mom always lectured me about looking too pressed, too exhausted by my routine. But the day only had so many hours and I wouldn't get up earlier than five just for a little more stamina.
After chuckling Patrick resumed: "Does May still need water? I don´t have anything to do right now and I thought..."
Throwing him a confused look, I lost my balance and crashed on the metal roofing, closely avoiding falling on my neck by doing half a roll before collapsing into myself.
Instantly, my brother rushed out of the trailer but instead of asking if I was okay or inquiring what happened, he jumped Patrick. They tussled as if they had never done differently. A few weeks of Patrick's presence and he had managed to make Danny his best friend, regardless of the three years age gap between them and the sparse memory my little brother must have of him. Maybe that's what aided their quick friendship. No disappointments to taint the companionship.
"Yes, I´m okay thanks." I said sarcastic when the two wouldn't acknowledge me or the reason why Danny stormed out the trailer.
"Stop pouting and get down here!", Danny said, laughing at a story Patrick told him. "Did you know that the store in town belongs to an old lady who hands out free stuff?"
"Only if you say the right things." Patrick winked at Danny with a bright grin on his face.
"Catch, Danny." I ordered only seconds before throwing myself off the roof and into my brother's arms. He casually set me on the ground in front of Patrick, completely overlooking the fact that I ignored the once again bad influence Patrick had on my little brother.
"Are you ready?" Patrick asked. The intent look on his face made my heart drop.
"Ready for what?" Danny intervened, his lips pursed in jealousy.
"We wanted to go get some water for May." I explained and took a step back from both of them. This whole situation was entirely too much. You could think, after weeks of seeing his face, I'd be used to Patrick. But his unending, never resting attempts to get on my good side were wearing me out. It almost felt like he desperately had to make up for something, even though he never admitted to anything.
Danny's eyes wandered from Patrick to me and with a big grin on his face back at him. "Sure." He answered finally in an excruciating tone that made me think he was about to wink at his friend beside me.
"Mind your own business." Patrick added to it and jokingly shoved him while I wanted to disappear into the ground. I watched them grapple for a bit, waiting for Patrick to overpower Danny which he purposely didn't, before I laid my hand on Patrick's shoulder.
"Let´s go, Paddy." I muttered and like a magic spell, he instantly let go of my brother and followed me.
We walked through a field of high grass that almost reached my hips. The air was vibrating with heat and the first rays of this late summer´s day, colouring everything in silky tones of yellow and orange.
"You´re practising a new routine?" Patrick broke the stirring silence.
"Great deduction, genius psychic." I joked, hoping he would drop the subject if I just made it uncomfortable enough.
I didn't care to explain that we had problems but lately my parents seemed more and more strange and the tough times didn't seem to pass as easily as they used to. They barely talked any more and when they did they kept yelling at each other because of business.
After laughing to himself, he continued his attempt for conversation unbothered by my rudeness. "You know what else I can read in your mind?"
For a moment my heart stopped. There were so many answers to this questions and no matter which one he deduced, I'd die of embarrassment if they were so easily elicited.
Shoving aside the heat that was about to rise in my cheeks I muttered. "Oh and what is that?"
He tried to imitate my voice by speaking in a much higher tone than I thought was possible for an adult man and I couldn't help but laugh at his attempt. "Why am I practising a new routine when we only have four cities in two months left. I have the whole winter to practise."
"I don´t sound like that!" I managed to utter, playfully pouting after I could finally form audible words apart from laughter.
His smile faded fast after mine and when he dared to ask what was really going on, I tried to shrug off the heaviness.
"Oh you know.. It´s the 80s. I guess people just have better things to do in their spare time than going to a boring circus show in a small carnival." I tried to contain my bitterness and conceal it with a sarcastic tone and smile.
He tried to remain neutral, so much so that the worried look in his eyes barely reached his face. I couldn't suppress the urge to explain myself more to him. A stupid remnant of long past days when we talked about everything and the worst stuff was how we got the wrong gifts for christmas.
"We aren't earning enough money any more. I mean it's not only us. You probably noticed already that everyone is running low at the moment. And my dad is blaming us being the main attraction. He says everyone is but I can hardly believe that. Anyways. I was... advised to come up with some new more exciting shows that would lure people to the carnival."
Without hesitating, he answered in an unusually serious tone. "I get what you mean. This summer seems to go worse than the ones before but I can definitely say that it's not your show's fault. Everyone noticed that there were continually less visitors. Even Mariah has barely earned any money this week. And you know her hot dogs are the best."
He tried to make me smile and I appreciated that. But the seriousness he suddenly seemed capable of made him look so much more grown up. It reminded me of all the years that were lost to me.
This time I could read his face like an open book: He hoped I would laugh or at least flash him a grin but all I did was sigh.
Every time I saw him, I recognized something unfamiliar in his face. As if I discovered his face all over again every day. A tedious task that ripped at old heartache and forced me to reconnect the past to his present. A feeling I so desperately tried to avoid because griefing for all of him that I missed would ruin me.
We had walked past May's wagon when I freed myself from his spell. Seemingly without noticing the mistake Patrick sat down at the river bank, facing the small waves nearly touching his run-down shoes.
"We forgot the buckets." I remarked and hesitantly sat down next to him.
I remembered the tingling in my chest. Carelessness and adventure. All the things that had left my life when he abandoned me came crashing back and it was overwhelmingly intoxicating.
"No." He said, not taking his eyes off the water.
"What do you mean no?" I looked at him confused and tried to call back all the reason that so desperately tried to escape me. I didn't succeed.
His hair shimmered golden in the awakening morning sun and when he finally looked at me with a smirk on his lips, I could feel it again. "I got May water already. Honestly, I just wanted to talk to you when I saw you like that."
"Like what?" He wasn't oblivious to my sudden nervousness, so he tried a gentler approach.
"Do you remember the time before I was gone for a bit?"
"A bit? It was four years, Paddy. We were almost children." I reasoned and reasoned and still couldn't get a grip on myself.
"I know it was a long time and things changed since then. I just wished that we could talk like that again."
I pursed my lips at the ease with which he spoke those words. As if it wasn't his fault. As if he hadn't hurt me with every moment he was gone. Showing me every day that I wasn't enough for a simple excuse. It wouldn't even matter if it was true or not. Just anything. Any recognition that I had been part of his life at one point. But there was nothing but his demand to be taken back as if nothing had happened.
When I didn't answer, he continued and I felt that he tried his best to sound as casual as it was humanly possible to him. "It just feels wrong to see you suffer and not knowing what is going on in your mind."
I chuckled bitterly and finally looked at him. Some unknown anger crept up inside of me and I this close to screaming at him but I kept the little dignity I had left.
"You can't just disappear and come back out of the blue without any explanation and expect us to treat you like you never left us." His features didn't change one bit and it drove me mad.
"You can't just come and go as you please and think you´re still part of my life, Patrick. That's not how it works. You've been gone for years. I don't even know who you are!"
I breathed heavily, watching for any kind of emotion crossing behind his blue eyes but there was nothing. Just big emptiness and complete lack of understanding.
Brief doubt crossed my mind. Maybe I should have been gentler. Maybe tell him that I was griefing for all of the moments of his life I had missed. But who was he that he demanded it of me after all he put me through. I just couldn't. And the indifference made me furious.
The moment I realised he would just remain silent, was the moment I stood and made my way back to the camp. Once, I dared to look back, hoping to see any kind of emotion, maybe catch him looking at me. But he had just pulled his legs closer, still staring at the lake.
This picture stayed with me my whole way back. The whole range of anger that I had suppressed for four years came back to hit me again, making me realize that I had never truly gotten over the fact that he hadn't cared about me enough.
Flashbacks of the evening still haunted me every now and then. Like bleached photographs, it barely showed a real picture anymore but the overwhelming emotions were still the same. I'd gone to Alex's trailer to show Patrick something. I didn't remember what. It was a ridiculous excuse to talk to him after hours. I had knocked and then my memory flashed to Alex telling me Patrick wasn't coming back before shutting the door in my face. I could still taste the smell of smoke that the thrown door blew in my face, the disbelief that had the same staleness. And after that it was like he had never existed. No one used his name after a week of his absence. I never heard someone ask Alex about his son. As if he had died with his mother, never to be spoken of again.
I was forced to forget him, I forced myself to let go and now he had the audacity to demand I opened this abyss again. He had made me suffer for all I cared for him and I endured enough. I finally managed to let no one have that much power over me but myself and I was not yet ready to invite that kind of danger back again.