Circus Hearts 2: All Fall Down

Chapter One

Diary entry 14

Okay, I screwed up.

Reporting Sorsha Neary to the police was a bad idea, I admit that. Doesn't it mean something, that I'm big enough to admit I was wrong?

I just wish my whole trapeze team hadn't been there during practise. Sorsha didn't have to confront me like that – she could've at least had the decency to have the conversation in private. I didn't know she was going to say all that stuff. I didn't even know she'd been attacked, or what had happened to her.

I wasn't thinking about that when I rang the cops. She was bringing the show down – that's what I was thinking. It wasn't about me. It was about...

I don't know. I don't know anymore.

And then she was one who grabbed me off the net after the trapeze accident.

Shitshitshitshit.

And I can't believe I'm still keeping a diary, like I'm five years old.

Diary entry 21

Judy refused to serve me in the mess today.

I know–fucking Judy. She used to give me hot chocolate after the late shows when I was twelve. Now she can't even give me a shitty slice of lasagne. She just wiped her hands on a dish towel and walked off the serving line. I ended up digging out a portion from the pan myself.

This is such bullshit.

Everything I've worked for, everything I do, it's always been about the show. I screw up one time and suddenly I'm persona non grata.

Bull. Shit.

So, getting off the usual rant, there was another accident today. Nothing as serious as the trapeze, but it was a Thing. They had to shut down the mini Ferris wheel overnight. Mitch Gibson got really angry, but Daddy managed to calm him down. Nobody got hurt.

But there are still a few superstitious people in troupe. It's kind of ridiculous, but now they're all saying, 'Wait for number three'. Like it's some kind of curse. Honestly, I think a) that's just fear-mongering, and b) nobody should be talking like that. Loose lips sink ships.

They're probably the same loose lips that have made my life such a pain in the ass for the last month. Idiots.

But screw 'em. If they think I'm gonna buckle just because of a few lousy snubs, they can think again.

Fleur Klatsch is a tough nut to crack.

Diary entry 29

People have no fucking loyalty. At all.

I just wanted to say that.

Diary entry 41

So yeah, I know I've been writing in here a lot, but sometimes I just need to...what? Talk to someone?

My god, I'm totally losing it. I'm writing here because I miss company. But it's not like these pages can talk back.

Oh, forget it.

There was another accident, so now people can stop whispering behind their hands about the curse of threes. Again, no casualties. But if Gabriella's horses had gotten out onto the roadway in the back of the showground, anything could've happened. She was super stressed, of course. I would've been, too, if they were mine. And she insists that she did the evening lock-up routine like normal, so it was probably just that she pulled the stable gate closed and it didn't latch. No harm, no foul.