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“Nah,” he said. “The usual crap.”
“Did you do your history homework?” I asked.
“It doesn’t have to be done until tomorrow, does it?” he asked, getting worried. Steve’s always forgetting about homework.
“The day after tomorrow,” I told him.
“Oh,” he said, relaxing. “Even better. I thought… ” He stopped and frowned. “Hold on,” he said. “Today’s Thursday. The day after tomorrow would be… ”
“Got you!” I yelled, punching him on the shoulder.
“Ow!” he shouted. “That hurt.” He rubbed his arm but I could tell he wasn’t really hurt. “Are you coming out?” he asked then.
“I thought I’d stay in here and admire the view,” I said, leaning back on the toilet seat.
“Quit messing,” he said. “We were five-one down when I came in. We’re probably six or seven down now. We need you.” He was talking about football. We play a game every lunchtime. My team normally wins but we’d lost a lot of our best players. Dave Morgan broke his leg. Sam White transferred to another school when his family moved. And Danny Curtain had stopped playing football in order to spend lunch hanging out with Sheila Leigh, the girl he fancies. Idiot!
I’m our best full-forward. There are better defenders and midfielders, and Tommy Jones is the best goalkeeper in the whole school. But I’m the only one who can stand up front and score four or five times a day without fail.
“OK,” I said, standing. “I’ll save you. I’ve scored a hat trick every day this week. It would be a pity to stop now.”
We passed the older guys – smoking around the sinks as usual – and hurried to my locker so I could change into my trainers. I used to have a great pair, which I won in a writing competition. But the laces snapped a few months ago and the rubber along the sides started to fall off. And then my feet grew! The pair I have now are OK but they’re not the same.
We were eight-three down when I got on the pitch. It wasn’t a real pitch, just a long stretch of yard with painted goal posts at either end. Whoever painted them was a right idiot. He put the crossbar too high at one end and too low at the other!
“Never fear, Hotshot Shan is here!” I shouted as I ran onto the pitch. A lot of players laughed or groaned, but I could see my team mates picking up and our opponents growing worried.
I made a great start and scored two goals inside a minute. It looked like we might come back to draw or win. But time ran out. If I’d arrived earlier we’d have been OK but the bell rang just as I was hitting my stride, so we lost nine-seven.
As we were leaving the pitch, Alan Morris ran into the yard, panting and red-faced. They’re my three best friends: Steve Leopard, Tommy Jones and Alan Morris. We must be the oddest four people in the whole world, because only one of us – Steve – has a nickname.
“Look what I found!” Alan yelled, waving a soggy piece of paper around under our noses.
“What is it?” Tommy asked, trying to grab it.
“It’s—” Alan began, but stopped when Mr Dalton shouted at us.
“You four! Inside!” he roared.
“We’re coming, Mr Dalton!” Steve roared back. Steve is Mr Dalton’s favourite and gets away with stuff that the rest of us couldn’t do. Like when he uses swear words sometimes in his stories. If I put in some of the words Steve has, I’d have been kicked out long ago.
But Mr Dalton has a soft spot for Steve, because he’s special. Sometimes he’s brilliant in class and gets everything right, while other times he can’t even spell his own name. Mr Dalton says he’s a bit of an idiot savant, which mean he’s a stupid genius!
Anyway, even though he’s Mr Dalton’s pet, not even Steve can get away with turning up late for class. So whatever Alan had, it would have to wait. We trudged back to class, sweaty and tired after the game, and began our next lesson.
Little did I know that Alan’s mysterious piece of paper was to change my life forever. For the worse!
CHAPTER TWO
WE HAD Mr Dalton again after lunch, for history. We were studying World War II. I wasn’t too keen on it, but Steve thought it was great. He loved anything to do with killing and war. He often said he wanted to be a mercenary soldier – one who fights for money – when he grew up. And he meant it!
We had maths after history, and – incredibly – Mr Dalton for a third time! Our usual maths teacher was off sick, so others had been filling in for him as best they could all day.
Steve was in seventh heaven. His favourite teacher, three classes in a row! It was the first time we’d had Mr Dalton for maths, so Steve started showing off, telling him where we were in the book, explaining some of the trickier problems as though speaking to a child. Mr Dalton didn’t mind. He was used to Steve and knew exactly how to handle him.
Normally Mr Dalton runs a tight ship – his classes are fun but we always come out of them having learned something – but he wasn’t very good at maths. He tried hard but we could tell he was in over his head, and while he was busy trying to come to grips with things – his head buried in the maths book, Steve by his side making “helpful” suggestions – the rest of us began to fidget and talk softly to each other and pass notes around.
I sent a note to Alan, asking to see the mysterious piece of paper he’d brought in. He refused at first to pass it around, but I kept sending notes and finally he gave in. Tommy sits just two seats over from him, so he got it first. He opened it up and began studying it. His face lit up while he was reading and his jaw slowly dropped. When he passed it on to me – having read it three times – I soon saw why.
It was a flyer, an advertising pamphlet for some sort of travelling circus. There was a picture of a wolf’s head at the top. The wolf had its mouth open and saliva was dripping from its teeth. At the bottom were pictures of a spider and a snake, and they looked vicious too.
Just beneath the wolf, in big red capital letters, were the words:
CIRQUE DU FREAK
Underneath that, in smaller writing:
FOR ONE WEEK ONLY – CIRQUE DU FREAK!!
SEE:
SIVE AND SEERSA – THE TWISTING TWINS!
THE SNAKE-BOY! THE WOLF MAN! GERTHA TEETH!
LARTEN CREPSLEY AND HIS PERFORMING SPIDER – MADAM OCTA!
ALEXANDER RIBS! THE BEARDED LADY! HANS HANDS!
RHAMUS TWOBELLIES – WORLD’S FATTEST MAN!
Beneath all that was an address where you could buy tickets and find out where the show was playing. And right at the bottom, just above the pictures of the snake and spider:
NOT FOR THE FAINT-HEARTED!
CERTAIN RESERVATIONS APPLY!
“Cirque Du Freak?” I muttered softly to myself. Cirque was French for circus… Circus of Freaks! Was this a freak show?! It looked like it.
I began reading the flyer again, immersed in the drawings and descriptions of the performers. In fact, I was so immersed, I forgot about Mr Dalton. I only remembered him when I realised the room was silent. I looked up, and saw Steve standing alone at the head of the class. He stuck out his tongue at me and grinned. Feeling the hairs on the back of my neck prickle, I stared over my shoulder and there was Mr Dalton, standing behind me, reading the flyer, lips tight.
“What is this?” he snapped, snatching the paper from my hands.
“It’s an advert, sir,” I answered.
“Where’d you get it?” he asked. He looked really angry. I’d never seen him this worked up. “Where’d you get it?” he asked again.
I licked my lips nervously. I didn’t know how to answer. I wasn’t going to drop Alan in the soup – and I knew he wouldn’t own up by himself: even Alan’s best friends know he’s not the bravest in the world – but my mind was stuck in low gear and I couldn’t think of a reasonable lie. Luckily, Steve stepped in.
“Sir, it’s mine,” he said.
“Yours?” Mr Dalton blinked slowly.
“I found it near the bus stop, sir,” Steve said. “Some old guy threw it away. I thought it looked interesting, so I picked it up. I was going to ask you about it later, at the end of class.”
“Oh.” Mr Dalton tried not to look flattered but I could tell he was. “That’s different. Nothing wrong with an inquisitive mind. Sit down, Steve.” Steve sat. Mr Dalton stuck a bit of BluTack on the flyer and pinned it to the blackboard.
“Long ago,” he said, tapping the flyer, “there used to be real freak shows. Greedy con men crammed malformed people in cages and—”
“Sir, what’s malformed mean?” somebody asked.
“Someone who doesn’t look ordinary,” Mr Dalton said. “A person with three arms or two noses; somebody with no legs; somebody very short or very tall. The con men put these poor people – who were no different to you or me, except in looks – on display and called them freaks. They charged the public to stare at them, and invited them to laugh and tease. They treated the so-called “freaks” like animals. Paid them little, beat them, dressed them in rags, never allowed them to wash.”
“That’s cruel, sir,” Delaina Price – a girl near the front – said.
“Yes,” he agreed. “Freak shows were cruel, monstrous creations. That’s why I got angry when I saw this.” He tore down the flyer. “They were banned years ago, but every so often you’ll hear a rumour that they’re still going strong.”
“Do you think the Cirque Du Freak is a real freak show?” I asked.
Mr Dalton studied the flyer again, then shook his head. “I doubt it,” he said. “Probably just a cruel hoax. Still,” he added, “if it was real, I hope nobody here would dream of going.”
“Oh, no, sir,” we all said quickly.
“Because freak shows were terrible,” he said. “They pretended to be like proper circuses but they were cesspits of evil. Anybody who went to one would be just as bad as the people running it.”
“You’d have to be really twisted to want to go to one of those, sir,” Steve agreed. And then he looked at me, winked, and mouthed the words: “We’re going!”
CHAPTER THREE
STEVE PERSUADED Mr Dalton to let him keep the flyer. He said he wanted it for his bedroom wall. Mr Dalton wasn’t going to give it to him but then changed his mind. He cut off the address at the bottom before handing it over.
After school, the four of us – me, Steve, Alan Morris and Tommy Jones – gathered in the yard and studied the glossy flyer.
“It’s got to be a fake,” I said.
“Why?” Alan asked.
“They don’t allow freak shows any more,” I told him. “Wolf-men and snake-boys were outlawed years ago. Mr Dalton said so.”
“It’s not a fake!” Alan insisted.
“Where’d you get it?” Tommy asked.
“I stole it,” Alan said softly. “It belongs to my big brother.” Alan’s big brother was Tony Morris, who used to be the school’s biggest bully until he got thrown out. He’s huge and mean and ugly.
“You stole from Tony?!?” I gasped. “Have you got a death wish?”
“He won’t know it was me,” Alan said. “He had it in a pair of trousers that Mum threw in the washing machine. I stuck a blank piece of paper in when I took this out. He’ll think the ink got washed off.”
“Smart,” Steve nodded.
“Where did Tony get it?” I asked.
“There was a guy passing them out in an alley,” Alan said. “One of the circus performers, a Mr Crepsley.”
“The one with the spider?” Tommy asked.
“Yeah,” Alan answered, “only he didn’t have the spider with him. It was night and Tony was on his way back from the pub.” Tony’s not old enough to get served in a pub, but hangs around with older guys who buy drinks for him. “Mr Crepsley handed the paper to Tony and told him they’re a travelling freak show who put on secret performances in towns and cities across the world. He said you had to have a flyer to buy tickets and they only give them to people they trust. You’re not supposed to tell anyone else about the show. I only found out because Tony was in high spirits – the way he gets when he drinks – and couldn’t keep his mouth shut.”
“How much are the tickets?” Steve asked.
“Fifteen pounds each,” Alan said.
“Fifteen pounds!” we all shouted.
“Nobody’s going to pay fifteen pounds to see a bunch of freaks!” Steve snorted.
“I would,” I said.
“Me too,” Tommy agreed.
“And me,” Alan added.
“Sure,” Steve said, “but we don’t have fifteen pounds to throw away. So it’s academic, isn’t it?”
“What does academic mean?” Alan asked.
“It means we can’t afford the tickets, so it doesn’t matter if we would buy them or not,” Steve explained. “It’s easy to say you would buy something if you know you can’t.”
“How much do we have?” Alan asked.
“Tuppence ha’penny,” I laughed. It was something my dad often said.
“I’d love to go,” Tommy said sadly. “It sounds great.” He studied the picture again.
“Mr Dalton didn’t think too much of it,” Alan said.
“That’s what I mean,” Tommy said. “If Sir doesn’t like it, it must be super. Anything that adults hate is normally brilliant.”
“Are we sure we don’t have enough?” I asked. “Maybe they have discounts for children.”
“I don’t think children are allowed in,” Alan said, but he told me how much he had anyway. “Five pounds seventy.”
“I’ve got twelve pounds exactly,” Steve said.
“I have six pounds eighty-five pence,” Tommy said.
“And I have eight pounds twenty-five,” I told them. “That’s more than thirty pounds in all,” I said, adding it up in my head. “We get our pocket money tomorrow. If we pool our—”
