Absent Friends by S. J. Rozan Page A

pretend they love her, make kissy noises; the girls roll their eyes, push the boys, say they're dumb. The girls are infinitely too grown up and worldly to care about something like this, just some freaky thing that happened to the poor lady, puh-leese. Though they steal glances back at her as they all walk away.)
    But now the kids want to go to the big circus. Barnum and Bailey's. In the city, in three rings, in Madison Square Garden. They want to see a whole ring full of elephants, and tigers jumping through fiery hoops, they want to see the spotlights slicing through the dark and hear the ringmaster's booming voice.
    For each it's different, this thing they all want.
    Marian wants to see the animal parade, baby elephants holding their mother's tails, graceful dancers twirling on the backs of proud prancing horses. Sally wants to laugh while clowns squirt each other from bottomless seltzer bottles, see dozens of them scrambling out of one little tiny car. For Vicky, it's the strongman, the one who lifts two girls, four, six, in his huge arms, holds them all in the air for as long as they want.
    Jimmy wants to see the trapeze artists, soaring, flying, holding nothing, their faith pinned on the patient men hanging high in the air waiting to catch them. Markie's heard there are jugglers, fire-eaters, sword-swallowers, magicians changing red silk to blue, pulling rabbits from hats. Jack can't wait for the frantic sweeping spotlights, the clawing cats, a man exploding out of a cannon. Tom wants to see the ringmaster snapping his whip without looking behind him, because the ringmaster always knows exactly what's happening at each spot at each moment: clowns, acrobats, flyers, and jugglers; tigers, horses, dogs riding on elephants.
    But asking the grown-ups to take them to Manhattan is like asking for a trip to France.
    The kids are in the woods by the nature preserve, sitting on logs in their secret spot. Marian clears dead leaves away from a yellow crocus trying to come up. Jack's squinting up into the trees, like he's trying to find where the birds are, to spot them where they're hiding. Jimmy's wondering what the difference is between the preserved woods and the part where they are, why some trees are inside and some are outside and who decides that, whether the trees are different and that's why, or they're the same but some are lucky.
    Nobody says much, because Tom's thinking.
    After a little while of birds cheeping and tree branches rustling, after a time of smelling the damp air and watching the winking gleams of light that reach all the way down from the treetops to tickle the puddles, Tom finally says, like he's not quite sure, like he's talking to himself, Well . . .
    The kids all look at him, and now Tom's smiling, lifting his head and showing them that slow smile that includes them all. Like he's saying, Yeah, okay, he's pretty sure he just had a smart idea, but he wouldn't have had it if everyone else weren't sitting there, too, if everyone hadn't wanted something that got him thinking. The kids feel like they always feel when Tom smiles this smile: Like Tom's been reading their minds. Like Tom can see what they want and from seeing it can find how to do it. And so Tom's smart idea is everybody's idea, really.
    And they all have to be part of it, and they are, though none of them has to actually start anything or tell any lies. That's important. Marian won't ever tell any, even as much as she wants to help the kids out. And Jimmy, well, Jimmy just thinks the truth is easier. Jimmy doesn't talk much anyway, and when he does, he likes to keep it pretty plain. Lying's confusing, lying gets you all tripped over yourself sooner or later, because the truth, it'll burn through sometime, whatever you do. The kids all know that's how Jimmy thinks.
    So Tom has to make a plan that doesn't need that, because if it needed that, it would never work. All they have to do, if any grown-ups ask—and probably they won't—is say, Yeah,