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It was more selfish than that. As I stood there in front of Kite I was suddenly aware that some icky, lurking feeling was about to leap out of my depths like a fish yanked out of the ocean by a hook. Some feeling so icky and so bad-tasting that I’d been keeping it under, keeping it simmering beneath the righteous display of huffiness. But now, now that I was face-to-face with Kite, that feeling was writhing and twisting like it had been dropped in a bucket and it needed to breathe. It was making me pale.
    It was jealousy.
    That’s what it was.
    Writhing and twisting.
    I was jealous.

    See, even worse than the fact that our circus was being replaced by a better one was the fast encroaching and alarming probability that I would be replaced. Me. When it came down to it, the thing that hurt the most was this: someone else, some better, real acrobat would be doing the helicopter with Kite. Okay, let’s be honest, not just some other acrobat but some other girl acrobat. To me that was unbearable.
    â€˜I can’t imagine you’ll be coming back to our circus, Kite.’ I kept pretending that this, this was what mattered most. This, I was allowed to care about, because the circus was important.
    â€˜Yeah, I will, I’ll come back here. I won’t live in Albury.’
    I looked down. The world seemed like an odd, confusing place.
    â€˜I’ll write to you,’ he said.
    I sighed, and then he sighed, and his voice went soft. ‘Don’t be mad, Cedy. I have to do this.’ He turned his face away from me and looked out towards the trees, as if he was seeing into the distance, to the time when he would be in Albury and I would be here, at school. I looked too, and I felt as if I’d been hollowed out, as if a great empty space was about to swallow me. It made me feel lonely. And then I felt sad and I wanted him to take my hand again. But he didn’t. He looked down at me as if he knew that I was hollow enough to break. The look landed so softly that it felt as if he had somehow touched me, even though he hadn’t.
    â€˜When do you go?’ I said.
    â€˜Friday.’
    â€˜That’s in four days.’
    â€˜Yep. It’s soon.’
    â€˜I’ll be sad.’ I said it. I just went and said it. It fell out of me in a pile of small broken up words – the truth. I felt like I’d just busted through a wall and come out in tatters. It didn’t matter, though, because next thing I knew his arm looped out and pulled me in towards him and we hugged, just for an instant, and he looked down and said, ‘I’ll miss you, Cedar.’ Then he turned around and walked up the street, arms swinging in a brilliant way.

Chapter 9
    It wasn’t the last time I saw him, but it was the last time I saw him alone.
    Ruben organised a bit of a dinner party, mainly for the circus, but he also invited Mum and Barnaby and Ricci and Oscar’s parents and Caramella’s too. Aunt Squeezy came along, and so did Stinky, of course. So there were a lot of people, and there was a lot of commotion since Ricci was very excited because she never goes to dinner parties and she was squawking and pulling everyone on the nose.
    Ruben had made a big lasagne, and Ricci brought along some spicy chicken dish with beans. We all squashed into the living room with plates on our knees, and I perched on the arm of a couch between Aunt Squeezy and Caramella’s mother, who hardly speaks but keeps patting your knee and smiling. Kite was sitting on a cushion on the floor, and he spent most of the night speaking to Barnaby. I kept trying to hear what they were saying but could only make out bits, because if Mrs Zito wasn’t passing me some bread or piling more beans on my plate, Ricci was screeching and yelling out and laughing at any old thing and making indelicate observations, like, ‘Oooh Cedar, why the long face?’ I just rolled my eyes and acted like a moody teenager, and Barnaby