AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“What makes you even think a circus is open at this time of year?” I asked.
She looked at me like I was high and said, “TikTok, duh!”
This girl and her TikTok.
Sometimes, I felt like maybe she was super obsessed with it and needed a psychiatrist to help her figure out that there were other things to life than social media.
“Where is this circus located?” I asked.
I could do ten minutes in a car. I could probably do thirty. What I couldn’t do was anything more than that.
Not that I didn’t love kids. I did. But I couldn’t handle loud sounds without first being prepared for it.
I didn’t know why.
I also didn’t care to find out.
I just prepared myself for it, then did what I needed to do to get myself through situations that I knew were going to trigger me.
And a circus was for sure going to trigger me…
What happened when I was triggered?
I fled.
Like, one second I was there, and the next I was hiding under a damn barn in the middle of a field in Kansas.
And yes, I’d done that before.
Me and surprises? Not a good thing.
Ellenie said that it was a trauma response from my childhood.
I didn’t know and would never delve into that part of my life to find out if it was true.
But whatever it was, I knew what to do to make sure that I didn’t get surprised.
If I went, I’d have to take my freakin’ noise canceling headphones.
Dammit man.
I was going to look like a complete loser.
But when Ellenie poked her bottom lip out at me, I couldn’t stop myself from saying yes.
Which was how I found myself in a car with triplets who were under the age of six.
All of them were very well behaved, but still emitted random cries.
Random cries that sent my heartrate skyrocketing and my headphones on within five minutes of our car ride to the circus. The circus that was luckily only twenty minutes away.
Once we were out of the car and at Singh Circus—I had to give Ellenie credit, she’d chosen the best one to take them to, and lucky for her it was even in town—I removed my headphones and hung them around my neck for ease of access.
“What are you doing on your phone?” Ellenie asked.
I showed it to her, and she rolled her eyes. “I can’t see. You have that protective screen on that hides what you’re doing, remember?”
That was right.
