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Tyler feels most at home when he is thirty feet above the ground. Feet bare, toes curling around air, the bar he sits upon swings. Like a leaf on a tree, like a breeze passing through his hair, Tyler tilts back his head and gazes at the stars. Tiny cameras flashing, Tyler counts fifty-seven before he lets out the exhale in his lungs, before he releases the ropes, before his hands, dry and cracked, let go, go weak, go limp. He tips and falls. Thirty feet above the ground, Tyler does not scream. He never screamed, not even when he was a child clutching to his mom. His heart in his ears, he puffed out his chest and told his mom to stand back, to watch her little boy fly.
And fly Tyler does.
Thirty feet above the ground, Tyler doesn’t fall. When his hands are free from their restraints, his knees take over, and he hangs upside down. Arms above his head, blood rushing to join them, Tyler counts twenty-one stars this time.
“Come down,” Tyler hears thirty feet below him. Hands curve around a mouth to shout this. “It’s late, Tyler. Come down.”
Tyler pulls himself onto the bar. His palms sting. His legs swing. Tyler swings and swings and sails into the net. There’s applause, cheering. Tyler presses his cheek to the net, staining the already stained tendrils with sweat and blood.
“Tyler!”
After being thirty feet above the ground, standing on something stable with two feet is disorientating. Tyler’s head hurts, but he’s greeted with a wet towel and a water bottle. He takes the bottle and lets the towel drop over his head, shivering in the process. “Thank you,” he says, and lets the towel drag down his face as it collects in the crooks of his elbows. “Don’t happen to have any bandages with you?”
Bright red hair still gelled and pinned from his forehead with bobby pins, Josh clicks his tongue and says, “Sorry.” There’s a new blister forming at the corner of his mouth. He wants to lick it. He doesn’t. “Wear gloves,” Josh says.
“Don’t wanna.” Tyler unscrews the lid and drinks. “Chalk just dries out my hands so fast.”
Josh takes Tyler’s wrist, the one holding onto the bottle cap. The end of one of his eyebrows is scorched clean off, replaced with pink and shiny skin from the burn ointment. “I’ll rub some lotion on them for you when we get back to the bunkhouses.”
“Better smell like peppermint,” Tyler teases, and Josh smiles and says, “Always does.”
They begin their nightly walk to the trailers and tents near the end of the fairgrounds. Tyler wears the towel as a shawl around his shoulders and forces more water down his throat. Josh declines every time Tyler offers a sip. “Not hungry. Not thirsty,” he says, like he does every night with a hand to his stomach and a pinch to his face. Tyler gives the space between Josh’s shoulders a gentle stroke with his fingertips, then guzzles more water.
A few stray little kids still run amok, chattering to the friends they made that day and holding onto their stuffed toys by the arms, pushing their insides one way and leaving the two thin pieces of cheap fun fur rubbing together. The children don’t mind. They’re laughing and running away from their parents. It’s past their bedtime, and they are free.
“Well, I’m hungry,” Tyler says, and directs their path into the food joints, where couples sit beneath open parasols and munch on the last of their fries. Josh waits for Tyler at the entrance, rocking on his heels, perking up once Tyler returns with a corndog drizzled with mustard. His face pinches again.
“G’ah, you’re going to get that everywhere.”
“Will not,” Tyler says, and proceeds to get it everywhere.
Josh procures a roll of paper towels from a picnic table left abandoned with half-eaten greasy pizza on limp plates. He wipes Tyler’s mouth, gingerly when it comes to the corners and the curves of Tyler’s top lip—projecting when it comes to his own preferences. Tyler can see the blister under this weak streetlight, and he can see the irritated edges from where Josh has already begun to pick at it.
“Taking these with us.” Josh sticks the roll under an arm. Like Tyler, Josh isn’t wearing a shirt, but unlike Tyler, Josh is cooled down, isn’t sweating. His act ended before Tyler’s started. Tyler tries to catch Josh’s set whenever he can, and Josh tries to do the same. But they never see each other perform, not when Tyler is busy peppering chalk onto his palms and Josh is tending to blisters and singed hairs and getting the taste of gasoline out of his mouth. As they lie down for bed each night, Tyler gets in Josh’s face and tells him he smells. And to that, Josh blows in Tyler’s face, mint and gas, and Tyler laughs and dreams pleasant dreams.
Dropped in the mud by a toddler is a pacifier. Tyler points at it. “Get that.”
“Gonna suck on it?”
“Oh, yeah.”
Josh wraps it in a paper towel, soon to be washed at a later date. He nudges Tyler with his hip. “How tired are you?”
“Pretty tired.”
“Not tonight, then.”
“Could do it tomorrow? Before we go on.”
Josh considers this. “Could. Though, I kind of want to sleep for ten years.”
Tyler smiles. “We can sleep for ten years.”
Here since the beginning, Josh and Tyler shared a tent and later a trailer when their company began to grow and earn more money. Now with a bunkhouse, they’re allowed their own beds and rooms, and yet Tyler and Josh still frequent the little trailer they were given at their makeshift promotion. “We’re fine here,” Tyler said. “Give our rooms to the teenagers running away from home for the summer.”
In their trailer, they stay up later and sleep in until well into the afternoon hours. It’s a luxury now, forced to sleep and wake with the others at sunrise when they were frequenting tents. Tyler and Josh were young, then, too, gravitating to each other because of that, and because Josh told Tyler his shoelace was untied as they were standing in front of the sideshow attractions. “I’ll do it,” Josh said, and got down on his knees and tied Tyler’s shoe as Tyler stared at their company’s version of the Fiji mermaid.
Their tents were cramped and always smelled. During the night, Josh and Tyler would hide their noses in each other’s t-shirts, favoring the odor of sweat and nightmares rather than something vile. Always in some way, shape, or form of mint, their trailer oozes relaxation and a home away from home. A queen-size Murphy bed tucked into the corner of the room, a kitchenette with only a microwave, a bathroom with a shower with just a curtain and a desire to wear flip flops at all times, their trailer is cozy when need be. There’s a TV set on the floor, and a couple sleeping bags serves as their sofa. Sometimes they fall asleep here rather than on their bed. They still wake up clinging to each other despite this.
If someone were to ask Tyler why he lets Josh stay in the trailer with him, and vice versa, they wouldn’t be able to explain it in intelligent terms. “He’s cool,” they would eventually settle on, and that’s that.
Tonight, they fall into their routine as soon as they shut and lock their trailer door. Tyler grabs fresh clothes and his shower caddy, and Josh follows with his toothbrush. While Tyler sings show tunes, Josh scrubs and scrubs until his mouth feels like cotton. He’s still in the process of this once Tyler is dry and dressed in a t-shirt and a loose pair of boxers. Mouthwash searing the blisters in and around his mouth, Josh suffers through the pain as Tyler stands behind him and delicately pulls each bobby pin from Josh’s hair. They drop in a cardboard box Tyler holds, soon to be reapplied the following evening.
“Don’t even think about swallowing,” Tyler says.
Josh narrows his eyes, but he leans over the sink and spits. “I was an idiot and drank a Coke before I performed. Do you know what it’s like to burp up fucking gasoline?”
“No.” Tyler shrugs. “Don’t plan to.” He smiles a shit-eating smile, to which Josh rolls his eyes.
“Go find something mindless on TV so we can fall asleep to it.” Josh scrubs his scalp and fights the urge to pull out his hair. “I’ll be out in a minute.”
“Ten minutes,” Tyler clarifies for Josh. Josh rolls his eyes again.
Tyler switches to a late-night infomercial and lowers the Murphy bed. He gets it ready for them, tossing on pillows, straightening out blankets. Once Josh arrives to sit next to Tyler, he’s ready to fall straight to sleep. Before he climbs in, though, he washes the pacifier in their sink. They each wait with bated breath for the water to run. Josh sniffs. The water drips and pours through a filter. Josh washes the binky and offhandedly asks Tyler, again, if he would like to suck on it. Tyler says yes, but at Josh’s pinched expression, he takes it back with a laugh. Josh laughs with him, then burps, and he doesn’t laugh anymore.
The pacifier dries on a paper towel. Josh scratches his arm and gets into bed with Tyler, bottle of peppermint lotion in tow. “Almost empty,” Tyler observes. “Need to get more soon.”
“Think I have another bottle somewhere. I’ll check in the morning.” Josh tilts his head and squeezes a small amount on the juncture where Tyler’s fingers meet his palm. The new blister on the corner of Josh’s mouth is thinly scabbed with dry pus, has been scraped at in the shower. Tyler thinks about flicking Josh in the nose, but doesn’t. “They’re not as cracked as they were last week,” Josh comments. “Does this hurt?” He moves onto Tyler’s other hand.
“No.”
They’re quiet. Outside, the workers are upbeat and shouting at each other, cleaning, demeaning. Tyler and Josh were out there before, up well past midnight to inspect the rides and pick up litter. A year later, well-known as to their talents, they are cherished, and allowed to sleep as soon as they finish performing. Sometimes, if they’re not too exhausted, Tyler and Josh play booth games and visit the sideshows. They sit at picnic tables and pick at fries and stare at the stars. Tyler asks Josh how many stars he can see, and Josh always says one. “One,” he says, eyes on Tyler. “Only one.”
Hands cold and fingers curling and uncurling, Tyler lies down for bed. Josh sets the bottle of lotion on the floor and gets up to turn off the lights, to make sure their phones are plugged into their chargers. “Tyler,” he says.
“Hm?”
“Do I still smell like gas?”
Josh is under the covers with Tyler now. His hair is wet, the curls pushed off his face to no doubt dry in an awkward manner. From this angle, with the moon’s light peeking through their open window, Tyler can see the fine hairs of the end of Josh’s eyebrow already beginning to grow back.
Tyler pushes himself onto his elbows and leans into Josh. Tip of his nose to Josh’s top lip, Tyler is too close for comfort, but neither cares. Josh exhales, Tyler inhales, and Tyler says, “Yeah, but it isn’t bad.” He lies down after this, his cheek to Josh’s chest, damp beneath his cut-off shirt from where he didn’t dry properly after his shower. “Do you still taste the gas?”
“Not really. It’s faint.” Josh presses his palm to the small of Tyler’s back, flirting with the skin peeking from the hem of his t-shirt. “It’s always faint, really, but… sometimes, it’s less faint.”
“Did you take some Tylenol? For your headache.”
Josh never mentioned a headache tonight, but it’s so routine Tyler knows it as if it were his own schedule. “No,” Josh says. “I took that yesterday.”
“Sleep,” Tyler says. “And you’ll get over it.”
Josh laughs. “Dipcrap.”
*
Using the last of the data on his phone, Tyler sat on the bus and clutched a duffel bag full of clothes, his laptop stuffed between his t-shirts as cushioning. It was late at night, tears stuck to his face, and he remembered looking out the window and thinking to himself, I will never amount to anything in life.
The bus ran over bumps and drove a little too close to the edge of the road, but it was a vessel for Tyler, transporting him to another place and time. Hidden beneath the sheen of tears on his cheek were scratches from fingers that were not his own. He touched them and picked at the scabs once they formed. A lot lizard asked him what happened the first night he stood under those twinkling lights. “Acne scars?” she concluded with a flick of her lighter. “Don’t worry, sweet’ums,” she said, caressing the scabs and scars. “You’re still beautiful.”
“My mom hit me,” he corrected, and her cigarette went in her mouth before she walked to another man, one who was taller and broader and much more able than Tyler.
Tyler rode on that bus across Ohio and got off at the address his phone screen said. He found the bright lights and the smell of grease and the sound of laughter, and he felt as safe as any kid fresh out of high school with no plans for the future. He stepped into the enclosure, duffel bag on a shoulder, phone vibrating with an over-your-data-limit text, and wandered. He wandered and wandered until his feet stopped in front of the tents and the lawn chairs occupied with burly men and skimpy women and other teenagers with wide eyes and shivers in their bones.
A man Tyler later knew as Mark greeted him and asked if he was doing okay. “I’m fine,” Tyler answered. “I want to be in Slowtown.”
That night, Tyler was shoved into a tent with the other kids who ran away from home for the summer. He shared a sleeping bag with a boy with pouty lips and a ring through his nostril. He had dark curls and liked to cuddle. “All right with that?” An eyebrow arched at the question, and his lips parted, too. “I can stick my pillow between us if you’re uncomfortable.”
“No,” Tyler said, and shook his head. “I like cuddling.”
Tyler found out the boy’s name was Josh a month into their new job. They ran into each other a lot as they inspected the rides and hosed vomit off the steps. Always waving and smiling, Tyler never bothered to learn Josh’s name. It didn’t seem important at the time, no matter they were falling into their tents well past midnight to curl into each other and sleep with hands stuffed up shirts or down boxers to absently cup an ass cheek. They woke early and groggy and didn’t care what others thought. Everybody else was agitated. It came with the job.
Tyler liked to visit the sideshows during his downtime, particularly the exhibit of entrapped fetuses, creatures, and other oddities floating in jars of formaldehyde. It was as he was inspecting the Fiji mermaid when Josh made his appearance known. He told Tyler, “Your shoelace is untied.” And then, “I’ll do it.” He got on his knees and tied Tyler’s shoe. Upon returning to a standing upright position, he said, “I don’t think I know your name? I’m Josh.”
“Tyler,” Tyler said. “Do you like looking at these… things?”
“Yeah!” Josh smiled. “Hey, I heard some of the carnies talking by the tents. They said these things are called ‘pickled punks.’ Weird, huh?”
Tyler stared at a fetus with three arms. “Oh, yeah. D’ya think these are all real?”
“No.”
“Me neither.” Tyler watched Josh bite at his lip. “D’ya think they can tell the difference between the real ones and the fake ones?”
Josh’s face lit up.
His face is lit up now, the flimsy cloth mask wrapped around his ears stained across the front due to him picking at blisters and being stubborn when it came to Tyler wanting to know if he was doing okay.
“Fine,” he said, snapping on that mask. Blood and pus are under his fingernails. Tyler wonders if Josh can feel the goop drip from his sores.
They’re pouring resin into a jar, watching it spread around the fabricated fetus they made out of whatever they could get their hands on; whether it be something crude like papier-mâché or actual dolls they bought from a secondhand store, Josh and Tyler’s pickled punks are not as high-class as the ones already on display. They’ve stuck the pacifier down in this one, letting their wire-form fetus cradle it as if it were its own spawn. Tyler laughed as he pulled on his own doctor’s mask to help Josh with the resin. That’s when Tyler asked if Josh was doing okay, seeing from the corner of his eye Josh digging and peeling away at the blisters around his mouth.
“Fine,” Josh said, and now the cloth front of his mask is staining in spots. It almost looks like a smile. He’s glowing. Laughter harbors in his chest. The red curls atop his head are swept back, dried that way. They are ringlets, pretty, healthier than it’s been in weeks. Tyler bought him conditioner when they stopped at a Walmart on the way to the next town. Josh rolled his eyes, but he used it that night and for many nights after that. He used it last night. He’ll use it tonight, too.
“Creepy,” Josh says. He holds up the jar, latex gloves on his hands, and turns it from all angles. Eyes squinting, inspecting, he says it might take either a while or an hour for them to realize their latest addition. “Could go either way.”
They agreed on sleeping for ten years, but their bodies itch to move after ten hours. Waking lazily, fuzzy-headed and warm fingertips, Tyler could smell gasoline.
He can smell it even now, after Josh shoved Waffle Crisp in his mouth and drowned himself in two glasses of milk and enough mouthwash to evoke alcohol poisoning if swallowed. The gasoline smell does go away—eventually. At the end of the summer, when they climbed on the bus back to their Ohio hometown, Josh’s body shed the fuel and replaced it with sharp mint and soothing cinnamon. Josh was pure for the following year. Tyler liked winters with Josh the best; he was able to sit next to Josh and breathe in and not feel like suffocating.
Tyler typically doesn’t feel like suffocating when Josh smells of gas. He gets used to it around the second week. After sharing tents with Josh, after sharing autumn bonfires and winter snowstorms and spring sunshines with Josh, Tyler learned to be patient as he shared summer suffering with Josh.
That first summer was hell. Near the end of August, Tyler and Josh vowed they wouldn’t return. But as the next summer approached, they each drifted back to the company, back to each other, and the night before they were set to climb on the bus and return to Slowtown, they lay on the grass in Josh’s parents’ backyard and talked of their futures. That was when Tyler told Josh he thought he would never amount to anything. To make this better—or, perhaps, worse—Josh told Tyler he also thought the very same of himself. “What can we do?” he asked, and Tyler gave no answer. “What can we do?” he asked again, on the bus, and Tyler gave no answer. “What can we do?” he asked once more, next to the newly erected tents and the familiar faces of the carnies from last year. And once more, Tyler gave no answer.
It was that night Tyler got in a fight with a man missing his bottom teeth and a finger. He slung his battered fist at Tyler’s head, and Tyler bent so far backwards Josh screamed and actually cried.
It was that night Tyler started and finished a fight in under a minute. It was that night Tyler was rewarded instead of scolded for his weird body tricks. “Dude,” Mark said, from his lawn chair. “We always need more contortionists.”
Tyler didn’t need to practice as much as he expected. He was a natural. Being thirty feet above the ground made it better. As a kid, he did acrobatics. As a young adult, he did the very same.
Around this time, Josh began to find his own talent. It just so happened that inclination was fire. “Check this out,” he told Tyler one night, stars in the sky and a lot lizard twirling her lighter in her fingers. “Check this out,” Josh said with encouragement from all sides as the lot lizard lit the torch for him, as the wick caught fire, as Josh lowered the flaming end into his mouth.
In their tents, Josh wouldn’t stop belching gas. He threw up three times that night and woke with blisters on his lips, on the roof of his mouth, in his fucking throat.
He didn’t stop. He couldn’t stop.
Josh cut his hair, dyed it red, painted his eyes to match. It was part of the show. It was all part of the show.
They worked like this for an entire summer. And at the start of the next, despite their bodies shivering and remembering the traumatic conditions, they each echoed, “I want to be in Slowtown.”
Their second summer as performers is better than last year. They’re used to it. Nothing is new. As performers, they have more free time. As performers, they have more free time to make their own pickled punks.
Josh balances this new jar on his palm, the wire fetus curled and haunting. The wire is rusty. The pacifier is pristine. Bits of pus and blood have found their way into the resin. It makes the composition more interesting. “This should go next to the mermaid,” he suggests, and Tyler nods.
Three knocks on their trailer door, and then there’s an inquisitive voice. “Tyler? You up?”
Tyler flicks the mask from his face and stands. Josh covers everything with a blanket and disappears into the bathroom.
Standing on the middle step of their trailer, face caked with white foundation and blue shadow around the eyes, Brendon is too eager to get the day started. “You’re up!” he says, and does this shoulder shimmy that Tyler remembers doing when he was a kid and excited for something stupid. “C’mon, impromptu contortionist act.”
Water hits the sink basin in the bathroom. Tyler clicks the screen door handle and chews on his lip in thought. “Who asked for it?”
“Group of children. Their parents told them to stop bothering us, so I want to prove them wrong.”
“Lemme get dressed, okay?”
Brendon pops a red felt ball onto his nose. “Got it. We’ll be by the Ferris wheel.”
Tyler shuts the door. Josh is back, standing by the heap of blanket protecting their latest assignment. Mask gone, Tyler studies each abrasion on Josh’s face. Runny, inflamed, and shiny with medicine, Josh’s mouth is unattractive and gross. Tyler can’t stop staring at it.
“Heard that,” Josh says. When he speaks, a blister at the corner of his mouth threatens to rip a larger hole and bleed and bleed. “I’ll drop off this little guy and meet you there.”
“You should sleep,” Tyler says. “Don’t have to watch me.”
“You should sleep.” Josh tilts his head. “You look—”
“Fucking beautiful.” Tyler gets on his knees and digs inside his trunk. The fabric he wears for these acts are form-fitting and black. Later on, he dresses in a robe that is see-through and lightly patterned with flowers. Josh bought it for him around the time Tyler purchased the conditioner. They traded. Josh liked it when Tyler draped himself in the robe and stretched out on their bed. Tyler liked it when Josh’s hair was soft.
“I want to watch you.” Josh plucks the blanket from the floor and folds it. Tyler pulls off his pajamas and dresses in leggings and a sleeveless shirt.
“Watch me, then.” Tyler swipes deodorant under his arms. “I’ll be locked into a box. At the end.”
“And carried away? Will I see you again?” Josh is getting into cleaner clothes and slinging a messenger bag over his shoulder. The jar is safe in the bottom of the bag, pillowed with old hand towels.
“Can’t get rid of me that easily.” Tyler packs his own bag. He makes sure to bring along water bottles and bandages, just in case.
“I really want to kiss you right now.”
Tyler stares at Josh. “How long has it been?”
Josh doesn’t hesitate. “Two months.”
It isn’t much, and it isn’t what Josh wants, but Tyler presses a wet kiss to Josh’s forehead. “We’ve gone longer.”
Josh pinches his face. He shakes his head. “Go get locked into a box.”
A few hours before noon, the sun beats down on Tyler’s shoulders. Sunscreen is recommended, but Tyler forgets it more often than not. Out of him and Josh, Josh is the one who need be more concerned with getting burnt—by the sun and otherwise. Tyler has had to spend many a night sitting behind Josh in bed and spreading Aloe Vera over his back, his chest, his stomach. Those nights, Josh cursed the blisters in his throat and gasoline in his mouth.
The Ferris wheel is slowly crawling up toward the sky. Kids scream. Kids laugh. Brendon is on stilts as the kids run between his legs and wait for Tyler to arrive. This isn’t the first, nor will it be the last, impromptu contortionist act. Mainly done at the request of children, they have performed for teenagers who smoked pot and wouldn’t quiet at the sight of Tyler being tossed through the air and shoved into a box too small for an adult male.
Brendon waves Tyler over, bright eyes and wide smile, and Tyler drops his bag to the ground beneath a bench. Along with Brendon, Dallon is here, dressed in an outfit similar to Tyler. An acrobat, too, Dallon accompanies Tyler when he performs for the children in this way. Too tall to fit into the box, Dallon elects to be the one to bend Tyler and smash him inside. At the end of the day, Dallon is a good guy and knows Tyler’s limits.
While Brendon lowers himself to ground level, Dallon stretches out blankets, mats, anything that will protect their bare skin from the heated ground. Tyler helps in any way he can, and then he’s copying Dallon, getting on his stomach, using elbows as a support as their backs bend, as their chests are their stands while their legs hang in front of their face.
The kids shout.
Tyler pushes himself onto his forearms. Dallon does the same, but he is taller, and he walks with strong arms and curling, bare toes in the gentle breeze.
Tyler can’t stand on his hands, so he keeps to his forearms, bending his legs, twisting them around the other.
Dallon walks. Tyler spreads his legs, a complete split. Kids gasp. And Josh cheers.
Standing with the parents too stubborn to appear interested, Josh is clapping and smiling a wide enough smile to break the skin at the corners of his mouth. A man in a suit, obviously on a lunch break with his kid, glances at the blood and slides a few feet away from Josh. Josh doesn’t notice. Josh doesn’t care. Josh is cupping his hands around his mouth and shouting, “Spread ’em for me, baby boy!”
Dallon is on his chest again, somersaulting his way into standing. Tyler presses his legs together, ready to roll with Dallon, but Brendon is here, hands on Tyler’s waist, lifting him up, up, up into the air.
No difficulty, muscles well-defined, Brendon holds Tyler, and Dallon pushes Tyler’s appendages in that see-through robe from his bag.
Tyler is limp, a doll, and Brendon is tough. Makeup faintly sweated off his face, the red ball off his nose, Brendon maneuvers Tyler onto his back. He pokes at his legs, his arms, and Dallon does the very same in a more dramatic and violent nature. They’re twisting Tyler, dislocating arms and legs, and Tyler keeps his eyes open and thinks of nothing, focuses on nothing, except for the two men grabbing him with sweaty palms, inching his thighs apart, touching the robe over his body, touching the skin the robe’s sleeves fall away to reveal.
Tyler is a rag doll, carefully stored away in its box, only let out once the kids are gone and dragging their parents to the next best sideshow.
Brendon lets Tyler out, hands steady on Tyler’s waist. “You okay?” Brendon asks, straightening the robe, fingers flowing along the fabric. “Look a little pale.”
“He’s fine,” Dallon says, and claps a hand on Tyler’s back. “He’s always a little shaken up after getting out of the box.” He hands Tyler his backpack and a water bottle. Tyler takes a drink.
“Claustrophobic,” he adds, and smiles at Josh approaching. “Hey.”
“You guys did good.” Josh does two thumbs up.
Brendon sticks the ball on his nose. “Anything for the children.” He’s trying not to look at the sores around Josh’s mouth. Dallon does a better job. Brendon clears his throat. “Dallon, do you want to make balloon animals with me before you go on tonight?”
Dallon agrees, and after Brendon hops onto his stilts and Dallon packs up the blankets into the box and hoists the box that once held Tyler onto a shoulder, they leave the Ferris wheel. It continues to slowly rotate in the air. The sky is a pretty blue.
Josh asks, “Do you want a piggyback ride?”
Tyler smiles.
They stop by the pickled punks and stifle their laughter in the crooks of elbows and necks. People point and speculate. Josh rubs Tyler’s knees and wants to know if he’d like to go back to their trailer to sleep before showtime. Tyler says yes, and they fall into their Murphy bed, Tyler naked and Josh stripped to his boxer briefs. They sleep, and they dream of the kids in front of the Ferris wheel whistling and whistling until their lips fall off and their spines break in four places.
*
They had sex for the first time the fall after their initial tour. Josh’s hair was still dark, Tyler’s mom still hit him, and Tyler still felt as though he didn’t completely know what he was doing.
When Tyler returned home in August, his mom was confused to see him. “I thought you left,” she said, following Tyler once he shouldered past and walked upstairs to his bedroom. “You didn’t call. Why didn’t you call?”
Tyler avoided his mom. He talked to his dad, told him he worked at a traveling carnival and really hated it. Despite this confession, Tyler’s dad was the only one out of Tyler’s parents to accept him going back the following summer. “Did you get any pictures while on the road?” he asked Tyler one evening after a dinner of everything Tyler didn’t know he missed until now.
Blush on his cheeks, Tyler said, “Yes,” and showed his dad the pictures on his phone, almost all of which had a hint of Josh in the frame. Tyler didn’t bring him up, and neither did Tyler’s dad—not at that moment anyway. It was the next week Tyler’s dad brought Josh up, and it wasn’t bad, and it wasn’t in earshot of Tyler’s mom, who would have made it bad.
“Why haven’t you invited that boy over yet?” he asked.
“He’s busy,” Tyler said, not exactly a lie. Tyler hadn’t talked to Josh, so he assumed Josh was busy.
Tyler texted Josh later that night, and a day later, Josh sat in Tyler’s backyard comfortably close for Tyler, but uncomfortably close for Tyler’s mom. “I missed you,” Josh said, under his breath, and Tyler leaned in and whispered, “I missed you, too.” Josh kissed him, then, a light pressure on the back of his neck from Josh’s palm, and they didn’t break. They never wanted to break. Tyler’s mom called for them to come inside—“You’ll get eaten by mosquitoes,” she said, but Josh pulled Tyler into his lap and kissed some more.
They waited a month before peeling off clothes and getting underneath blankets. Tyler sat on Josh’s lap even then and slid up and down on Josh’s cock until they both were muffling their gasps behind sweaty palms and chewed-up fingernails.
Their trailer was accustomed to the very same, though it didn’t last long. Josh began his affair with fire, and he had no time to kiss Tyler and shiver underneath blankets. Tyler spends as much time with Josh’s mouth as he can, but it’s hard to do when the fumes from the gasoline make Tyler’s head dizzy and eyes water and stomach churn. “How did you get used to the taste?” Tyler asked Josh while Josh brushed his teeth before bed.
Mouth full of toothpaste, Josh said, “I didn’t,” and Tyler hugged him.
Tyler hugs Josh. “Wish me luck,” he says, and Josh gives him a pat on the back as he guzzles down a Coke.
“Good luck, babe.” His mouth isn’t bleeding. Tyler kisses him, a delicate peck, and the noise of surprise from Josh brings Tyler’s heart up to his throat. “Strawberries,” Josh says, and raises an eyebrow. “Feels good to taste something else for a change.”
“Can’t even wear lip balm?” Tyler pouts.
Josh pouts with him. “Scared.”
Tyler twirls a curl and tucks it behind Josh’s ear. “It’s okay to be afraid.”
Tyler is afraid every night. More than once, he catches himself launching into the air without thinking of grabbing onto hands or a bar or the net. He thinks of flying through the air, thirty feet above the ground, and not letting any obstacle stop him as he soars and soars.
“Listo!” Tyler listens for and shouts.
“Listo, listo!”
Dallon says it to him now, hanging from his knees with arms above his head. Upside down, he yells, “Listo!” and Tyler jumps and flies and catches Dallon’s hands. Tyler swings and flips and flies. Tyler lets go of Dallon’s hands and flies.
“Listo! Listo!”
Tonight, Tyler ends the show on aerial silks and allows them to cocoon him at the audience’s departure, at the other performers’ departure. The silks are a hammock for him, cradling him almost. He sinks in those silks and feels the breeze sway him, rock him, and Tyler’s body hums. Faintly, in the background, Tyler hears cheering and laughter—and whistling.
“Hey, hey,” Tyler whispers, and fiddles with the vape pen in his fingers, thumb running down the button. He inhales, holds it.
He can still hear the whistling.
He tilts his head back and steadily puffs out his exhale, watching it disappear amongst the thirty or so stars he managed to count with the powerful show lights in his eyes. The smoke from his lips looks ominous, like a fog, once it floats up. He tastes of mint, and it reminds him of Josh, of kissing Josh, of quiet falls and cozy winters and peaceful springs with Josh.
Tyler inhales and exhales, and this time, his exhale is longer than the last. The smoke is a ring, vanishing quickly. “Hey, hey,” he mumbles, resting the tip of the pen against his bottom lip. “Wouldn’t it be great…? Great—”
“Come down.” Palms curled around blisters, “It’s late, Tyler. Come down.”
They repeat this every night. This is life for three months.
“Tyler!”
Tyler tucks the pen in the waistband of his leggings and climbs the silks to the ground. Like gym class, Tyler learns to breathe through his nose and not pant and show weakness. He is safe thirty feet above the ground and frightened on stable ground, no matter the disheveled Josh skipping over to him with a smile on his face, hair pinned back, and gasoline all around him. Josh has a wet towel and a water bottle again. The wet towel drapes Tyler, and the water bottle goes in Tyler’s hand.
Briefly incapacitated, Tyler doesn’t stop Josh from taking a step forward and swiping the pen. His thumb hovers, and his eyes narrow in focus, but they can each smell the gas, and Josh doesn’t want to take any more risks tonight. “I could teach you, you know,” Josh says, and hands the pen to Tyler at his grabby fingers. “It isn’t that hard after the third or fourth try.”
“Hm.” Tyler twists on the water bottle lid and hands it to Josh, water dribbling down his chin. He lets the towel lay over his shoulders. “And after how many blisters?”
Josh doesn’t answer. He watches Tyler inhale and exhale. Tyler’s watched Josh practice with the torch with the smallest wick imaginable way past midnight. Josh was tired, bags under his eyes, and he slurred his words and told Tyler, “Watch this. Watch this.”
They’re twenty-one now and able to drink whenever they want. They don’t on the road, even though the road would be a perfect time to do so. Not working, just going from town to town, they can have fun in their trailer with a bottle of wine or a case of beer. But Josh wakes up from nightmares some nights of one of his friends trying to swallow fire after two or three shots of vodka. “Her face,” Josh cried, and Tyler pet his hair. “Oh, God, her face.” They don’t drink.
“Are you hungry?” Tyler asks, starting their nightly walk back to their trailer.
“Could go for a corndog,” Josh says, and Tyler nods and puffs out another plume of rings.
“Me, too.”
Drizzled in mustard this time, as well, they grab a handful of napkins and walk past booths and streetlights and kids skipping and singing. They pass Brendon on stilts and twisting balloons in complex shapes. His makeup is sweated off by now, pathetic and sad. Dallon is beneath Brendon, a red felt ball on his nose and hastily drawn black eyebrows, teardrops, and smile on oily skin. He’s contorted into a neat little heap, clear exhaustion on his face. Tyler wouldn’t be surprised if Dallon fell asleep there. They had a busy night.
Before escaping to their trailer, they stop by the pickled punks and other oddities. They say hello to the woman trapped behind glass with a shitty excuse for a tail fin wrapped around her legs. Tyler doesn’t envy her. Mark told Tyler he had the physique to be a mermaid, but Tyler turned it down. He didn’t feel right staying on the ground, enjoyed the sky for some reason. Needless to say, it felt like fate had a helping hand in lifting him to acrobat status the next summer. There was a reason his mom enrolled her children in those classes. Someone must have been looking out for Tyler.
Josh, on the other hand, couldn’t possibly have known he’d be swallowing fire in his early adult years. But even with blisters on his mouth and bright red hair, he looks remarkable, so the planets must have aligned somewhere down the line.
Along with a mermaid, they have Bigfoot. A tall man wrapped in a suit of fake fur, he spends his days sitting in a rocking chair, drinking tea, and reading whatever books the local shopping malls have for them. Mustard and pus on the corner of his lip, Josh laughs at the Bigfoot and how he’s currently reading Fifty Shades of Grey.
After that, they have an elaborately tattooed man who says he cannot feel pain. This is the second man who has said that in this exhibition. The first died of a broken neck. They say it was an accident. This one chugs pain pills and other illegal substances to numb the world. Tyler’s seen him wince at breaking a fingernail. He showed Josh, but Josh already saw. They didn’t tell Mark.
Mark is the so-called ringleader of Slowtown. He takes pride in his work and laughs whenever a kid begins to cry at the sight of either the mermaid, Bigfoot, or even the small gray alien they have off in a side room. Josh likes the alien the most, was even the one to bring the idea to Mark. “Why do we need an alien?” Mark asked, and Josh said, “Uh, dude, aliens are cool,” despite pitching the idea to Tyler as they were putting the finishing touches to their alien fetus soon to be featured in the same room as the other pickled punks. So, they got an alien—actually a boy on the shorter side, who binds and paints his body in gray body paint and wears an authentic-looking prosthetic mask that takes an hour to apply. They have this joke that the alien can materialize inside and outside the room, when really it’s so the actor can take off his chest binder for a few hours and grab a bite to eat.
Tyler and Josh visit the alien now, shutting the door behind them after tossing the sticks from their corndogs in a trash can by the entrance. “Hello,” Josh says. “Meet anyone interesting today?”
The alien also ran away from home. His mom liked to hit, too. Tyler held him the first night in the tents and told him things would get better soon. The next summer, the boy returned and told Tyler he was right. “I’m better now,” he said, and Josh found out two weeks later the boy’s mother had been arrested for child abuse.
“The kid’s sister broke her arm,” Josh said. “It was a blessing in disguise, I guess.”
“Why’d he return to Slowtown?” Tyler sucked on his vape pen even then. Given to him by Dallon, Tyler would stand on the platform, clutching the net, thirty feet above the ground, and look off into the distance at the smoke rising from the fire-performers, from Josh. “I want to do that,” he said, “but not, like, like that.”
“Why’d we return to Slowtown?” Josh countered, and Tyler blew his first perfect ring in Josh’s face.
The alien spends his days playing with numerous earthly objects. It’s a Nintendo DS when Tyler and Josh arrive. “Didn’t meet anyone interesting,” he says, eyes black with colored contacts Tyler ordered for him.
“Any cute boys?” Josh teases.
If aliens could blush, he would be now. “Okay, maybe.”
In their trailer, Josh scrubs his mouth, and Tyler showers and sings show tunes.
After Josh is as dry as he likes to be from his shower, he sits on the floor with Tyler and begins to form another fetus to shove into another jar. Tyler cracks open peanuts and watches Josh. “Wait,” he says, “we should just put an empty jar up there.”
Josh smiles. “Tyler, you’re a genius.”
*
The summers before he decided to travel were filled with sports and the rush of wanting to forget school existed. Zack would drag Tyler around the neighborhood, bikes clicking like traffic, as they sped along crosswalks and avoided getting hit by cars. They would stop at parks and gas stations and pig out on whatever spare change their allowances added up to all those years ago. “What are you going to do?” Zack asked Tyler the summer leading into Tyler’s senior year. “Basketball?”
Tyler sucked Doritos dust from his thumb. “What can I do?” he pondered aloud, and Zack hugged him and bought them the whole box of Kit Kats on the counter below the register.
Zack knew Tyler loved basketball, but he also knew it didn’t captivate Tyler enough to consume his entire world. He understood that, and he didn’t pressure Tyler. He always supported his big brother, and was the second person in their family—after their father—who craved to hear stories from Tyler’s time on the road.
“What’s the place called?” Zack was already on his phone, opened to a search engine.
“It’s a small company,” Tyler said. “Just getting started. Slowtown.”
Zack found the website and sat on Tyler’s bed to read. “Seems fun.”
“It’s… the place to be,” Tyler mused. That must be why he keeps returning. A spell was over it, casted by Mark, to trance any wayward teens into a false sense of security for a few months out of the year. Tyler always felt safe there, surrounded by outcasts and losers, like himself. Even with the large teenage population and the overworked carnies with missing teeth and fingernails, Tyler felt safe. He felt protected. And with Josh next to him, nothing could hurt him.
They wake to coughing. Only after Josh stirs and grabs a pillow does Tyler realize the wet sounds rattling from a chest are escaping from Josh. He’s using the pillow to muffle, trying to be considerate of his partner. Tyler is up, though, legs crossed and picking at a dry-rotted spot on their sheets. “Water?” Tyler asks, and Josh’s nod is weak and kept to the confinements of the drool-stained pillowcase.
Tyler pulls out a plastic cup from a cabinet and waits for the sink to stutter to life. The water runs clear once it passes through the filter and turns rusty once it reaches Josh’s lips.
Blood is on the pillowcase, as well as around Josh’s bottom lip. Not a lot, but seeing blood this early in the morning can only cause alarm. The sun is barely a pink smudge in the sky right now, the carnies vacant from their tents and bunkhouses. Tyler perches on the edge of the bed and scratches the back of his neck. “Um.”
“Think a blister in my, uh, t-throat popped. Woke to a bad taste in my mouth.”
Tyler fetches a washcloth and dampens it. Josh is patient while Tyler washes his face and inspects the sores at the corners of his mouth and areas around it. When Josh coughed, he ripped open the blisters on their way to healing. Inflamed, pus coming from a few, Josh is tired, drained, and the grip on the plastic cup is as weak as the nod he gave to get the water. “I didn’t put lotion on your hands last night,” Josh says, never thinking of himself.
“My hands are fine,” Tyler says with a shake of his head. He ignores the small cracks in his palms and the way it hurts to curl his fingers. “Try to sleep some more. It’s Jump Day. They shouldn’t bother us.”
Josh sips at the water. Tyler disappears into the bathroom to come back with a headband. He carefully puts it on Josh, working the black band onto his hairline, keeping the red curls from the sweat on his face. Josh forgot to use the conditioner last night.
“Want to eat some ice?” Tyler touches Josh’s neck. “Talk to me, my little fireball.”
Josh rolls his eyes. Tyler smiles. “Yeah,” he says, “gimme some ice.”
In another plastic cup, Tyler works out ice cubes and drops them inside. Josh is appreciative of this, suckling on the cubes so they freeze his mouth and soothe his throat. Nurses travel with them, but their skill sets are for minor scrapes and splinting finger bones. Sure, they can dab Neosporin on a blister on a hand or a foot, but they are ignorant when it comes to a fire-breather and the way the flame kisses their mouth.
Tyler kisses Josh. It’s as he’s finishing up the last of the ice, the smallest bit remaining in his mouth when Tyler scoots across the mattress and presses his lips to Josh’s. Tyler tastes only water and the faintest hint of iron from any blood he may have missed while cleaning. They don’t kiss for long. They hug for longer, lying curled into each other, hands stuck up shirts and down boxers, holding, holding so close.
Josh turns Tyler onto his back and pushes his hand into Tyler’s boxers again. This time, he’s diligent. This time, his main purpose isn’t to hold and keep close; it’s to stroke and stroke and stroke.
He watches as Tyler crumbles. All limp limbs and whites of eyes, Tyler fucks Josh’s fist and forgets they’re in a trailer, on a Murphy bed, a part of a traveling carnival. He forgets about the blisters on and in Josh’s mouth, and he forgets what it feels like to fly through the air thirty feet above the ground. He forgets how sore he is after working, how he doesn’t think he can go on, how he wants to use the last of his strength to dig himself a hole and tack a grave marker in the shape of a middle finger above it.
Tyler forgets about going home and seeing his mom. He forgets about pain and scratches and the Pokémon cards Zack and he would place in the spokes of their bikes.
Tyler is with Josh, and he thinks of Josh. He remembers Josh pulling out orgasms such as this one all year if they weren’t on the road. He remembers coming and tasting come and feeling come on his hands, his face, inside him. He remembers Josh laughing because he missed Tyler’s cheek and got it in Tyler’s hair. He remembers Josh smiling and his mouth not ripping open. He remembers Josh smiling. He remembers Josh smiling.
“Shit,” Tyler sighs. “I love you.”
Josh’s hand is slow on Tyler’s cock, coated with spunk and using it as a lubricant to continue working the spent thing. Tyler is fuzzy, vibrating, and he tilts his head at Josh’s broken lips tapping kiss after kiss on his neck. Josh lowers his head, nuzzles his nose into Tyler’s neck, and says, “I don’t want to move.”
Hand still on Tyler’s cock, hand still covered in come, Josh says, “I want to lay here with you.” He says, “It’s too fast out there.”
Tyler says, “Yeah, it is,” and lets Josh stay there, hand on his flaccid cock.
*
Late nights spent in the tents were always accompanied by the sounds of snoring, whistling, and bodily functions that woke everybody within the vicinity of that small tent. If Tyler was up, then so was Josh. They talked most nights, and other nights, they held hands and played with hair.
“I think I like someone,” Josh whispered after lying in the dark and quiet for ten minutes. He squeezed Tyler’s hand and raised that very same hand to absently scratch at Tyler’s scalp. “But I don’t know if they like me.”
“You’re extremely likable, Josh.” Tyler’s cheeks grew red, but Josh wouldn’t be able to see the shift. “I, um… if it helps any… I think I know someone who likes you.”
Josh propped up his head with his palm, eyes half-lidded with the desire to fall back to sleep but the smile on his face eager for Tyler to share this secret. “Yeah? Do I know them?”
“I mean…” Tyler swallowed, bit his lips. “I would hope you did.”
Someone kicked Tyler in their sleep. Tyler kicked them right back.
“Are they in this tent with me right now?” Josh arched an eyebrow. “How much time do I spend with them on a day-to-day basis?”
Tyler’s blush deepened. “You’re… It’s like… you’re connected at the hip…”
Josh didn’t say anything. He returned to his side and ran his fingers through Tyler’s hair again. Tyler slept with Josh’s chest as his pillow.
Mornings after nights like that, the carnies who shared their tent told them to shut the fuck up. “We couldn’t hear what you guys were talking about, but stop it.”
They didn’t.
They stop once they get a trailer, too worn out from performing, too worn out to do anything. Even when the carnies and other workers were done for the night and gathered around campfires to gossip and talk shit, they still found it difficult to let the words flow.
They are so tired. They are so, so tired.
Josh nudges Tyler awake that morning with more blood on his lips and pills in his hand. “Here,” he says, “we’re getting ready to move.”
“Do they need help?” Tyler takes one of the small, round, yellow pills. He turns it with his fingers.
“No. Mark came around to check if we were in here, and… I guess one look at my face told him enough. He said we can sleep.” Josh points at the pill in Tyler’s palm. “It’s the original formula. We should be out for the trip.” Josh sits on the bed with Tyler, passing over a cup of applesauce and a spoon next. “Do you want the wristbands, too?”
Tyler hides the Dramamine in the applesauce. “No, I’ll be okay with this and if I sleep.”
They take their pills together, Tyler shivering, Josh wincing. Josh shoves two more pills in his mouth, says they’re Tylenol. “I have a headache.”
“You haven’t been taking anything for them for the past few days. You should be okay.” Tyler eats the rest of the applesauce, sticking a leg underneath him. “Wipe your mouth, pookie. Got some blood.”
Josh frowns. “Coughed again. Bad taste.”
Tyler says, “You’re allowed to be weak in front of me.”
Josh doesn’t say anything. He answers the door when someone knocks. “Yeah,” he says, running the back of his hand over his mouth. “Go. We’re ready.”
Jump Days were hell for the workers, and at the end of each day, either after reaching their destination or setting up the rides for the public, they light campfires and talk well into the night. Tyler and Josh used to love those nights. It’s how they got close to Brendon. Brendon used to have a partner, then—a guy who was super into the mime thing, who got Brendon into entertaining kids, who promised he’d always return to Slowtown. Josh and Tyler’s second summer here, the guy didn’t return, but Dallon was there, and he quickly proved to be a worthy acrobat and contortionist. Dallon held Tyler the first night they were thirty feet above the ground, and Tyler never thought he would feel more alive than he did in that moment.
Dark outside, Tyler and Josh rise to the smell of s’mores. They pull on clothes and drag a blanket with them. Josh is all dark eyes and disgruntled expressions. Headband still on, Josh’s skin is peeling in places from where he forgot sunscreen some days. Other than that, and the obvious sores on his mouth, Josh’s complexion is clear and made to evoke jealousy. Despite this accomplishment, Josh looks like he would rather die than breathe another breath. They lay the blanket on the grass, taking their seats and letting their bare toes wiggle in the pleasant atmosphere.
In lawn chairs or on blankets like Tyler and Josh, the carnies and performers talk of the new town. “What is there to do here?” someone asks, while another wonders if they’re going to get a lot of newcomers. With each new location, there are always a handful of people who show up and want work. Most leave after a couple days. The ones who stay are stronger because of it.
Tyler loops his arm through Josh’s, trying to grab for his hand and coming up empty. Josh is digging at the blisters on his mouth. If it wasn’t bad enough, Tyler watches him stick finger and thumb into his mouth and begin peeling at one on the inside of his cheek. Josh doesn’t seem coherent, isn’t even on this plane of existence. Tyler pokes Josh in the side. “Please,” he whispers.
Josh leans his head against Tyler’s shoulder, closes his eyes.
Brendon is telling a story about falling off his stilts and breaking a toe. Dallon listens intently. A lot lizard pulls a woman into a tent. Josh snores. Tyler drags his vape pen from his pocket and puffs.
True to past events, a few stragglers find their way to the campfire. Mark is the first to greet them, to ask if they’re doing okay. The answer is always the same: “I want to be in Slowtown.”
A girl sits next to Josh. She tries to get his attention, obviously thinks he’s cute. He’s awake at this time, sleepy eyes and his hand covering his mouth as he yawns. She tells him hi, and he lowers his hand and tells her hi. She looks at his mouth. She says she wants to eat fire. Josh laughs. “Are you sure about that?”
His mouth is bleeding. She can’t stop staring at his mouth.
She’s quiet. Tyler grabs the front of Josh’s shirt and yanks him forward, kisses his mouth, and tastes blood. Josh complains of a headache. “I need to sleep,” he says. “I need it to stop.” He goes into their trailer and lets the screen door slam.
“Can you eat fire?” she asks Tyler, and Tyler snorts and sticks his pen in his mouth.
It doesn’t matter. She can already eat fire. She shows Mark the next day with Josh and Tyler watching. Evening, a light nip in the air, Tyler is dressed in his acrobat tights and gingerly patting chalk onto his palms. Josh is next to him, red hair pinned back and lips pouty and a bag with two more empty jars on his shoulder. Once the fire vanishes, Josh inspects her mouth and finds she has barely any blisters. “Okay,” he says. “You can perform with us.”
*
It’s a mistake.
“Her face,” Josh cries after his nightmares. “Oh, God, her face.”
*
Josh sips on water and says, “I’ll open that new bottle of lotion tonight, rub it all over you.”
Tyler steps into his leggings, throwing water and vape pen into his backpack. “Don’t talk like that.”
“You deserve it.”
“Don’t talk like that,” Tyler repeats, and gives Josh a narrowed, playful look. “Too hard to hide my excitement right now.”
“Hard,” Josh mumbles, chuckling, and Tyler rolls his eyes.
“Gonna gimme a hug before I go?”
Refusing to set down the cheap plastic bottle in his hand, Josh slings an arm around Tyler’s torso, twirling him close and holding him. Josh’s fingers are barely there and coaxing. They pet the space between Tyler’s shoulders and tremble. Josh is shaking. Tyler cups the back of Josh’s neck, brings it to the crook of his own neck. Josh sniffs. It’s wet. Tyler’s neck is wet, his shoulder. Josh isn’t ashamed to hide it now. Josh is weak, allowed to be weak, and he cries. “I feel so bad, Tyler,” he says, hand running down the length of Tyler’s back to grab at Tyler’s hip. “It can’t just be exhaustion.”
“Take a night off. Mark will let you.” Tyler pulls away, captures Josh’s head in his hands. “I’ll take a night off, too. We’ll find a ride to a clinic, get you checked out.”
Josh’s eyes are painted red to match his hair, to match the fire soon to be entering his mouth. It’s a show. It’s all for the show. Runny blisters and peeling skin surround Josh’s mouth. Tyler is used to the sight. He thinks Josh is beautiful even like this, especially like this. “We can go right now,” Tyler says.
“No.” Josh shakes his head. “First night with the new girl. Have to step up our game in case she gets performance anxiety.”
Tyler lightly pecks Josh’s mouth, then Josh’s forehead. “I’ll see you later. Let you rub lotion all over me.”
“Don’t talk like that,” Josh teases, and drinks another gulp from the water bottle. “Go on. Make them scream.”
“That’s your job.” Tyler shrugs on his bag. “I love you, Josh.”
“Love you, too.” Josh smiles.
“Listo,” Tyler sighs, stepping from their trailer.
“Listo!” Tyler shouts, stepping from the platform and flying. Tyler holds hands and swings them. Women flip and flip him. Tyler is light enough for them to carry, to hold up as their knees hug the bar and hang upside down. Their routine is secondhand to Tyler and to the other acrobats. Performed every night, no break except for Jump Day, there is no thought as they slip fingers in fingers and watch each other soar.
Tyler tosses a girl, and Dallon tosses him. He feels free.
Tonight, Dallon and he climb aerial silks and wrap them around their bodies. They are a blanket, sheltering Tyler, swaddling Tyler. He rocks and spins. Dallon tangles them around his legs, around his arms, and he hangs. Once he unravels, the crowd gasps, but the silks catch on his thigh and send him spinning and spinning. The crowd cheers, claps, coos.
Tyler feels most at home when he is thirty feet above the ground. Nothing can touch him while he is up here. Nothing can touch him. Nothing can hurt him. Even with the harsh lights in his eyes, Tyler can tilt his head back and count the stars and listen to the roar of the crowd below. If he turns this way, he can hear laughter. If he turns this way, he can see ants. If he turns this way, he can hear screaming. If he turns this way, he can see smoke.
He can see smoke.
Like a thick fog, smoke rises in the distance, inching toward the sky and becoming one with the clouds. Smoke is a common occurrence—it shouldn’t alarm Tyler, but it’s the amount of it that frightens him, that shakes him to his core. In the distance, craning his neck, Tyler can see a group of spectators scattering from the arena. He watches them, listens to them scream. Why are they screaming?
“Why are they screaming?” Tyler says aloud, but no one hears. Dallon is below him, climbing up his silks to wrap himself and fall, fall, fall.
Tyler swings. He curls his toes and squints his eyes. The crowd is running, screaming so loudly, and Tyler sees smoke. “Where, where, where?” he whispers, but he knows where the cloud of smoke is originating. When the crowd leaves, they are replaced by people dressed in dark colors climbing out of trucks. When the crowd stops screaming, they are replaced by sirens.
“Tyler?” Dallon is to Tyler’s level now. “You haven’t—” But he spots the smoke and the sirens, and he whistles. “Looks like an accident happened with the fire-performers. Hope everyone is—Tyler.”
He’s falling. Tyler is falling, unraveling, coming undone. If he closes his eyes and holds his breath, he can pretend he’ll smack the ground and cause his brain to swell. He’s safe, though. Tyler is careful, and he’s taken the correct precautions to ensure his safety. He falls, yet he doesn’t smack the ground and cause his brain to swell. He is suspended. He spins. The crowd cheers, claps, coos.
Every night since he started performing, Tyler would stay in the air and unwind. He’ll sing to himself, taste mint from his vape pen, and swing and feel the wind in his hair, against his cheeks. He’ll count the stars and listen for the “Come down, it’s late, Tyler, come down, Tyler.”
“Tyler. Tyler, Tyler.”
They’re on the ground. Tyler is stumbling. Dallon is holding him up. “Tyler.”
Every night since he started performing, Tyler would get a wet towel tossed on his head and a water bottle pushed into his cracked palm. Tyler’s body expects it to happen tonight. It isn’t going to happen tonight.
“Tyler,” Dallon tries again, his own cracked palms on Tyler’s stomach, Tyler’s sides. “Tyler, breathe. Maybe nothing happened.”
“Find me a shirt.”
“What?”
“Find me a shirt! And shoes!”
Tyler is in his own world, Dallon departing and returning at his own accord. A plain blue t-shirt is in his fist, which he shoves at Tyler. “Tyler, Josh is okay.” The shoes he brought for Tyler are not made for running. “It’s okay.”
After tugging the shirt over his head and stepping into the shoes, Tyler sprints. Dallon tells him to stop, to hydrate, that everything is okay, that everything will be all right, and Tyler doesn’t stop running.
*
His house was more welcoming when he came home at the end of his second summer on tour. They wouldn’t let him leave the entryway. Zack wanted pictures. His dad wondered about the food. And his mom was the one to ask about Josh.
Tyler said, “If you guys actually let me step into the house, you’d know that Josh—”
“—is right here!” Josh’s hair was red, his eyes brown, and his mouth already a maze of blisters. They disappeared over the year, as did the red in his hair. Josh let it fade, let his roots take over, and as it neared springtime, they lay in backyards on blankets with grasshoppers and talked of nothing. Josh’s hair was made of soft dark curls soon to be crunchy and bright red, and his mouth was made of faint scars that never hurt.
Tyler kissed Josh and tasted cinnamon and mint, and Josh kissed Tyler and tasted love and more love.
Josh never smelled of gas in the fall, winter, or spring. He was pure. Josh was so pure.
Everything smells of gas and antiseptic.
Mark stands behind Tyler, hands wringing together and his gaze turned to Tyler’s shoes. “Are loafers your thing now?”
“Can he hear me?” Tyler’s voice cracks.
“He’s sleeping.”
“He’s sleeping,” Tyler repeats.
Josh is cloaked in white. He is pure.
“Is now a bad time to bring up I know it was you and Josh who keep adding to our pickled punks collection?”
Tyler closes his eyes.
“They’re fucking hilarious.”
Josh doesn’t snore.
*
Pristine, stethoscope poised at equal lengths on each side of his thick neck, the doctor clicks the pen in his hand three times. Done absently, he runs the tip of his tongue across his lips. “You’re lucky,” he concludes, and clicks the pen again. “Count your blessings because the man who came in with you—”
“Jack,” Josh croaks.
“—needed a skin graft. And the girl—”
“Debby.”
“—needs plastic surgery.”
“Her face caught on fire.” Josh’s eyes are trained on the small television in the corner. Turned to an infomercial, it’s as if they’re in their trailer, trying to fall asleep. “Oh, God, her face caught fire.”
The doctor ignores this. He clicks his pen. “Lucky in the burn department, that is—second degree on your chest, neck, and face; first degree on your hands and arms. And… the blisters…”
A beat of silence. Tyler scoots his chair across the tile floor, knees pressing to the metal railings on the bed. Josh wiggles his fingers, and Tyler wraps his pinky around Josh’s pinky.
“They’re infected,” the doctor continues.
Tyler rolls his eyes.
Josh is still.
Two more pen clicks, “So, you say you’re a fire-eater?”
Josh whispers, “Yes.”
Clinical, no emotion, the doctor goes, “Fire-breather’s pneumonia,” and exits the room with too-shined shoes and his crisp white coat.
Quietly, Josh begins to cry and smear the red paint around his eyes.
Tyler watches his pink skin turn pinker, the pinks of his eyes turn bloodshot, the pink sores on his mouth turn wet and runny. Snot creeps from Josh’s nostrils. Tears stick to his cheeks. He’s shaking.
Tyler plucks tissues from the nightstand and sits beside Josh. He dabs it all away, smiling gently. “You are so brave,” Tyler says, because he needs to be strong. “Look at me, Josh.”
An eyebrow is gone, the one whose end began to regrow days before. Tyler thinks he could help Josh draw it back on, if he wants to, in the meantime. Tyler thinks he might even be able to fix Josh’s hair; drier than it’s ever been, it’s scorched, brittle, no matter he had bobby pins holding it in place. Josh is damaged. And Tyler lightly wipes away the pus and blood and snot and tears with a smile on his face. “You’re so beautiful.”
Josh’s bottom lip trembles.
Tyler leans forward, the bed groaning, and touches his dark forehead to Josh’s pink forehead. “Oh, you’re so beautiful. You’re so brave, so capable. You make me so proud.”
Josh twists away from Tyler. Cheek to his pillow, face pinched, Josh glares daggers at the white brick wall. His chest rises and falls. Frustrated, Josh’s hands curl into fists.
“It’s true,” Tyler says. “It’s so fucking true.”
Josh sniffs.
“Hey. Hey, my little fireball.”
The corner of Josh’s mouth twitches.
“Do you want some ice?”
“Please.”
*
Dallon visits and brings chocolate. Brendon visits and brings balloons. Mark visits and brings empty jars and baby doll parts.
“For when you… come back.”
It’s a bribe. Josh says, “Oh, yeah,” but it’s weak. Josh says, “When I come back,” but there are tears in his eyes.
Tyler sits on Josh’s bed and plays with the baby doll parts. He traps them in a jar and makes it a maraca.
Tyler sits on Josh’s bed and draws on the balloons. Most of them turn into cats, though there’s a mouse here and there.
Tyler sits on Josh’s bed and eats the chocolate. He breaks out.
Before Tyler is escorted from the room, he leans over Josh and kisses his forehead. Josh tells him to keep eating the chocolate. “Your mouth can have sores like mine.” He smiles. Tyler smiles, too.
Mark doesn’t force Tyler to perform. He lets Tyler sit in his trailer, clean, do nothing.
Tyler sleeps.
He thinks about walking into the hospital with papers in hand and an ordained priest at his heels. He doesn’t. This idea comes on the day Josh is discharged. Chest still pink, eyebrow still gone, blisters not picked at for the first time in days, Josh’s chest doesn’t rattle when he coughs, and he doesn’t spit blood when he coughs.
“I feel good,” Josh says. He grins to no popped blisters. “Better than I have in months. Actually.”
“Really?”
They’re outside the hospital, birds chirping, sun hidden behind clouds. Tyler rubs Josh’s arm, soft palm, soft skin.
“Really.” Josh can’t stop smiling.
Tyler hugs Josh. He doesn’t smell like gas.
*
He doesn’t taste gas anymore.
*
For the reminder of the summer, they’re allowed a break. Playing booth games, munching on fries, counting the stars, Tyler and Josh are the most relaxed they’ve been ever since they got on the road months ago. Their sleeping patterns are healthier. They rise with the carnies and sleep with them, too, helping with the rides and Jump Days.
No one eats fire. Mark says he might retire it. Josh says no. Josh says, “It was a mistake. It was an accident.”
Josh’s first night in the trailer after the hospital was spent in their small bathroom. “How much conditioner will I need to fix this?” he asked, and Tyler told him, “None,” and he showed Josh an electronic razor.
There was no hesitation. Josh sat patiently on the toilet and let Tyler shave away all the dead hair. “It’ll grow back healthier now,” Tyler said, and kissed the top of Josh’s head.
TV humming low, Josh sleeps with his hand up Tyler’s shirt. Tyler watches Josh, Josh’s lips parted and lightly snoring. Very fine hairs form his eyebrow, and it’s a wonder as to how his eyelashes stayed intact. Tyler leans forward. Tip of his nose to Josh’s top lip, Tyler inhales and doesn’t smell smoke. He smells sharp mint and soothing cinnamon, and it’s a pleasant smell. It’s a good smell.
*
Their last pickled punk of the summer contains Josh’s burnt hair and trapped smoke from Tyler’s vape pen. Symbolic, they conclude, as they climb onto the bus and ride to their Ohio hometown.
*
Like every spring since going on tour, Tyler and Josh lie in Josh’s parents’ backyard and ask each other, “What can we do?”
“Do you still think you won’t amount to anything?” Josh stares at Tyler, hair more curls than scalp now.
Tyler shrugs sheepishly. “Maybe I will.”
Both of their voices are hoarse. Both of them had taken advantage of Josh’s blister-free mouth the night prior.
“I want to be in Slowtown,” Josh says, arm behind his head, “but without the pain and the blood… I want the idea of it.”
Tyler can already feel the bar in his hands, the silks in his fingers, the chill of the air on his face as he flies.
“Hey, hey.” Tyler sets his hand on Josh’s stomach. Concave and scratched up with fingernails, Tyler rubs in circles. “Do you remember that tune the kids used to whistle around Brendon as he made them balloon animals?”
“Think so. Why?” Josh cocks an eyebrow. It’s perfectly arched, almost as if it hadn’t been snatched by a blowback from a fire-performer.
“Sing it with me.”
It’s Slowtown without the danger. It’s Slowtown through rose-tinted glasses.
It’s body aches and show tunes in showers. It’s gasoline and peppermint lotion. It’s screaming and flying. It’s being trapped in boxes and children laughing. It’s smoke and counting stars. It’s damp towels and water bottles. It’s corndogs and pickled punks.
And it’s enough for them.