The Circus of Stolen Dreams Read online

  PHILOMEL BOOKS

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York

  First published in the United States of America by Philomel,

  an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2020.

  Copyright © 2020 by Lorelei Savaryn.

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Philomel Books is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Visit us online at penguinrandomhouse.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

  Ebook ISBN 9780593202081

  Edited by Liza Kaplan.

  Chapter opener art: Branches illustration by leeyenz, 123Rf.com.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  pid_prh_5.5.0_c0_r0

  To Felicity, August, Mary, and Zelie:

  May you always be dreamers.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  The Girl Without a Shadow

  Forget Your Troubles

  Step Right Up

  The Rules

  Penny

  Umbrellas and Dream Clocks

  Soar

  Pirates, Stars, and Nightmares

  The First Nightmare

  Something Awful

  Ralph’s Thrift Shop

  Root River

  Ripples

  The Sandman’s Private Dream

  A Perfect Wish

  The Boy in Red-And-Blue-Striped Pajamas

  The Frigid Place

  Remember

  The Night You Left Us

  Found

  Locked Gates and Lies

  Twisting Lanes

  What Year Did You Come Here?

  The Dig

  The Old Man on the Dream Clock

  Inception of a Dream

  To Remember

  Unbroken

  “Home”

  The Door of Tears

  Race to the Dream Clock

  The Final Confrontation

  An Umbrella Full of Dreams

  Home

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  THE GIRL WITHOUT A SHADOW

  The dining room window reflected the blurred façade of a happy family at dinner: a mom and dad and their one and only child. Andrea glared through the silent, transparent scene, up at the moon and the way it shone like a spotlight, piercing them with its otherworldly glow.

  Family dinners used to be loud. Francis would tell jokes from his joke book and make ridiculous noises just to get Andrea to laugh. Andrea would cut in, the words pouring out of her like water in a swift current as she told them all every single detail about her day. Their mom and dad would look at each other, their faces a mixture of wide eyes and amused smiles.

  Now no one, not her parents sitting next to her at the table, not the blurred family in the window, not even the man in the moon knew what to do other than steep in the silence.

  Andrea stabbed a piece of chicken.

  Her mother put her fork down and folded her hands as if in prayer, giving a slight nudge of the elbow to her father. “Just tell her,” she whispered, as if Andrea couldn’t hear.

  Her father shuffled carrots around his plate, then cleared his throat. “Your mother and I . . . We know this hasn’t been easy on you.”

  Andrea’s breathing grew shallow. She curled her fingers into a ball, pressing her nails hard into her palms, making mini moon marks against her skin.

  “But we think it’s time to let go,” he continued. “Winter’s coming. Your mother could use the space in the garage.”

  “And we think it would be healthy, Drea.” Her mother stared empty-eyed at the wood grain on the table. “We’d like you to go through his boxes and choose a few things you’d like to keep.”

  Any food Andrea had already eaten formed itself into a knot in her stomach, threatening to make its way back up.

  Her father reached out a hand to touch her shoulder, but Andrea recoiled, pressing her back into her chair. For the past three years, Andrea had blamed him for everything: for the divorce, for showing up on Sunday nights and making them sit through Fake Family Dinner. She had even tried to blame him for what happened to Francis. But, as always, the steady pulsing rhythm of blame grew a little louder from a dark place deep inside.

  Your fault, your fault, your fault.

  Andrea tilted her chair away from the empty seat at the end of the table. “I’m not ready.” She tried the three words that had gotten her out of so much since it happened. Homework, soccer, talking about the night Francis disappeared. She didn’t want to go through her brother’s things, but the thought of the boxes being discarded unseen scrubbed at Andrea’s scabbed-over wounds like an eraser, hot with friction.

  “I can’t keep looking at them every time I walk in the garage,” her mother snapped, her voice cracking on the last word, ripping garage right in half like it was a piece of paper. “Someone is coming to pick them up tomorrow. You don’t have to go through them. We just wanted to let you know. It’s time.”

  Her father drummed his fingers on the tabletop, then sighed. “Thanks for dinner, Sus,” he said, picking up his plate and carrying it to the kitchen.

  Her mother watched Andrea with dark, sad eyes, and her mouth fell open for a moment like she was about to say something else. Instead, she picked up her own plate and followed him, her shoulders curved inward as if the air had been sucked straight out of her chest.

  “Fine, I’ll look,” Andrea said, tossing her crumpled napkin on her plate, though there was no one left to hear her. There was just the silent house, weighted with the words no one had been able to say, for so much longer than the three years Francis had been gone.

  * * *

  * * *

  Andrea ran up to her room as soon as her father’s engine faded down the street, which had followed the stiff hugs and the see you laters and the love you, kiddos—her father’s faltering attempts to bridge the gap that had formed between them. She sat on the floor, her back to the bottom bunk, hugging a gray pillow shaped like a star against her chest and staring at the bookshelf against the opposite wall. Gathering her strength. Her parents made it sound so easy. Like sending Francis’s belongings away on a donation truck would somehow fix things. Like erasing the evidence her brother had existed would take away the pain of how he disappeared.

  Andrea wished every single day that she could erase the terrible thing that had happened and the relentless, silent guilt she carried on her shoulders, but never once had she wanted to erase Francis. He had been her little shadow. Andrea smiled now at all the times he had annoyed her, like when he followed her on a bike ride, his tiny little legs pedaling so hard to keep up as she fell to a painfully slow pace so she wouldn’t leave him behind. She had read Peter Pan once and couldn’t understand why the boy was so desperate to have Wendy sew his annoying shadow back onto his feet.

  She un
derstood now.

  No matter what other people did, Andrea would never forget her brother, even though so many others had chosen that as their way to navigate the strangeness of a boy who had disappeared from his room in the middle of the night. The kids who changed the subject when Andrea mentioned Francis’s name, the neighbor who once stupidly said how lucky Andrea was to not have to share. And now, this—her parents giving away all his things. She would hold him inside the hollow space in her heart created by the Great Missing. Her heart would shout: He was here. He was here.

  Andrea’s mom shuffled by in the hall a few moments later, poking her head inside the door. “I’m going to watch TV for a bit in my room,” she said, resting her fingers along the doorframe. “Let me know if you need anything, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “I love you.”

  Her mom’s I love yous came too fast and too often. They tilted up at the end like a question, an unspoken pleading for reassurance that somehow, even after all that had happened, she hadn’t let Andrea down.

  Andrea hugged the pillow a little tighter. Of course she loved her mom, but sometimes, saying so was hard for her now.

  “I love you, too,” Andrea said, just loud enough to be heard.

  Her mom exhaled, the kind of exhale that was saturated in relief. She walked away, clicking Andrea’s bedroom door shut behind her.

  Andrea stayed until she heard the familiar muffled sound of her mother surfing through TV channels before dropping the pillow and padding down the stairs and to the garage. She might as well get this over with, so at least she could say that she tried.

  She flipped on the switch, giving her eyes a moment to adjust to the unforgiving yellow light. An electric hum buzzed from the bulb above her head and she walked, slow and tentative, like the floor might break away underneath her, toward the pile in the corner she had ignored for three whole years.

  Seven stacked, unlabeled cardboard boxes contained nearly all of Francis’s belongings. Unlike some parents when their kid goes missing, Andrea’s mother had packed everything up in a flurry the day after snow dusted the earth and the trails had all run cold and the police told them they were calling off the local search. They concluded that someone had climbed up their trellis, slipped in through their open bedroom window, and taken Francis away in the night.

  In response to the news, her mom had blazed through their house, unable to stand the thought of sitting still and desperate to keep her hands moving as she tried to add a hint of order to the chaos. Since then, Andrea had caught her mom glimpsing at the boxes with regret each time they got into the car, but no one ever touched them.

  Andrea ran her hand along one of the tops, leaving a path through the dust. The logical side of her knew none of this was the boxes’ fault, but she hated them just the same. Hated what they stood for. That there was a reason they were here, full of her brother’s stuff while his half of their room sat empty.

  Empty because of her.

  A tentative finger slid under one of the box’s folded flaps, popping it open. Inside rested dozens of objects: Francis’s favorite framed pictures, a stray blue sock, a miniature slinky.

  Andrea reached down and pressed her pale hand firmly against the pocket of her jeans, reassured at the outline of the small item resting carefully inside it. Her parents didn’t know that she had already kept something precious of her brother’s. That she kept it with her at all times.

  It was such a ridiculous little thing to keep, but Andrea didn’t care that it didn’t make sense. Her parents had done all sorts of things that didn’t make sense in the months after Francis disappeared. Her mother had slept with his blanket tucked tight around her. Her father had sat in the living room watching football, unblinking, like a zombie, like he still lived in their house.

  It was her very last connection to her brother. The day he disappeared, Andrea had tucked the trinket away in her pocket, hoping against hope that Francis had left her some sort of secret clue, something that would help her find him.

  It had turned out to be useless. But it was still the last thing he had left behind.

  In the box, the ghosts of who they all used to be stared up at Andrea with frozen smiles on their faces in brightly colored frames, a brazen reminder of how much they had lost. In one picture, taken at a photo studio inside a department store on a mild spring day, the family posed in coordinating outfits of blue jeans and white T-shirts, a similar outfit to the one Andrea wore now. They had gone out for milkshakes after to celebrate, and both Andrea and Francis ordered a large, promising their parents they’d finish the whole thing. But little stomachs fill quickly, and instead of letting the shakes go to waste, their dad insisted on finishing them off. They watched in awe as he braced himself, refusing to stand until he had swallowed the last drop. He was the dad with three full milkshakes rolling around in his belly and he definitely played up the part, making them all laugh with loud gurgling noises and exaggerated warnings that if they didn’t hold his trembling stomach together, he might explode in front of their very eyes.

  The air in the garage pressed heavy against Andrea’s chest, growing tighter by the second.

  “I’m sorry,” she said to the boxes, pushing down the lump in her throat. “I can’t look anymore.” Her one item would have to be enough. She couldn’t bear the weight of carrying any more pieces of her missing brother inside her pockets.

  Andrea backed away and grabbed hold of her bike where it stood propped against the garage wall. She strapped on her helmet and pushed down, sinking the heels of her shoes heavily on the pedals. She rode past the house of nosy Ms. Penelope, the lady who brought them tins of cookies and too often peeked outside at the world through her large window. She passed a game of kickball being played on a side street by a bunch of neighbor kids, most of whom had little siblings sitting on the curb chewing on ropes of taffy candy. Someone shouted out to her, but Andrea pretended she didn’t hear. She rode past row after row of houses settling into the silence of night, pedaling farther and farther down the street and away from her house until her thighs and calves burned. Then she pushed some more.

  Going through Francis’s boxes wouldn’t fix any of the things that had broken. But she could feel the crisp fall breeze on her face, and she could fly like the wind on her bike. She could imagine she was somewhere far, far away. Somewhere bad things didn’t happen. Somewhere brothers didn’t disappear.

  It was a game she played with herself. If she rode fast enough, maybe she could outrun the sadness, the guilt, the pain of a cracked heart. If she rode fast enough, maybe she wouldn’t break.

  FORGET YOUR TROUBLES

  Andrea biked past where the road ended and onto a trail that ran over a small bridge and through a park before finally giving way to a dark, thick wood. Memories lurked everywhere in this place, especially now with the trees tinted orange. She and Francis had spent many afternoons playing in the park when they were smaller, going down slides, sharing Goldfish crackers, and getting their parents to give them underdogs on the swings.

  There were also the nightmares Francis used to have about this place. Nightmares about a river and an evil tree determined to turn him into stone. Francis dealt with more nightmares than she ever had, and this had been a recurring one. It clung to Andrea, made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end as if the nightmare had been hers, too.

  Once she crossed into the forest, the moonlight shone brightly enough to light Andrea’s way, but even if it hadn’t, she knew the path by heart. Eventually it would curve around and spit her out back near her home, but not before it wound through groves of trees and shallow ravines and a quiet, empty field where deer would rest in the sun during the day.

  The air around Andrea buzzed, almost electric, like lightning might strike at any moment, though above her hovered a cloudless sky. The leaves left on the trees took on a silvery shine, washed in the moon’s light. The woods wo
re the scent of velvety secrets and sadness blanketed by something sweet, like a box of her mother’s dark chocolate.

  Andrea drew in one long, deep breath, letting the calm of the forest at nightfall weave its way through her. Her heart, mind, and pace slowed, until she became as still and quiet as the stars that hung above her head.

  She hopped off her bike and propped the kickstand, then cast her gaze around the woods, landing on a soft column of glow. The moon had shifted its unforgiving spotlight off her and onto a gnarled old tree near the path, rough and widened with age. Its knobby limbs twisted upward like fingers, bending to the sky. On its wrist-like trunk hung a single piece of parchment, fluttering as if desperate to break free.

  Fresh-fallen leaves crunched under Andrea’s sneakers as she moved toward the tree. Her mind flashed back to the flyers for her brother they had plastered up all around town within hours of finding him gone, stapling his picture to poles and taping it to shopwindows. His face flashed nightly on the news, and in online searches beneath the word Missing and a phone number for the police. Andrea half expected this to be another one. A poster of Francis that had somehow survived three years of winters and spring rains, that had lasted long past when the neighbors stopped dropping casseroles off at the door and the news vans found other stories to tell. She paused, her shoes sinking into the soft, damp earth.

  If it was Francis’s face, faded and mottled with age, she didn’t want to see it.

  A sudden, cool breeze kicked up around her, sending branches bowing sideways. The poster tore free from the tree and flew, looping over and over in the air before sticking itself to Andrea’s face, unwilling to be ignored. Andrea clawed at the paper, pulling it from her nose and cheeks. The wind died down to nothing and the woods hushed as Andrea took a reluctant peek at what she now held in her hands.

  Thick and yellowed and curled in at the edges, the paper had the appearance of age, as if it had hung there for a hundred years or more. It shimmered gold, then silver, depending on which way the moonlight hit. Elaborate scrolling words framed the top and bottom of an image of sweeping striped circus tents surrounded by a sky full of twinkling stars.