MALLORY

Chapter Two

"Look, Pip." I still don't like her name. "I'm not going to pretend I like you, cos I don't. I can't stand you, actually. But I'm going to have to tolerate you and you're going to have to tolerate me. So I have a plan." I said, and Pip, who also wasn't glad that she had to share my caravan, sighed. "My plan is, you listen. You listen to my rules in my caravan, and you follow them. Do that, and we shouldn't have any problems."

She didn't answer, but I didn't care. "How are we going to get from this caravan to yours?" She eventually asked, and I smiled.

"You're going to caravan hop."

Caravan hopping is basically hopping off one caravan, sprinting to the desired caravan and jumping onto it before it passes. If you miss it, the horses kick at you and get really frustrated. Sometimes they get so annoyed they stop, and then Master finds out and then blimey, you know you're in a load of trouble. So, I was really hoping Pip wouldn't go brain dead and mess it up for the both of us.

"You do it like this!" I said, stepping of the caravan onto the soft grass that luckily happened to be there. I sprinted to my little red and blue caravan, and jumped on, giving the closest horse a pat as I did. "Now drop your mat and blanket on the ground!" I yelled, and Pip did so without arguing. Soon enough my caravan passed it and I picked it up swiftly. Opening my caravan door, I threw it in, and before I knew it, Pip was standing on the caravan step with me.

"I could get used to this." She smirked, and I rolled my eyes. I opened my door, kicked her things in and then walked in myself. She followed. "You'll be sleeping in that corner. You're not allowed to go past my table, unless we're eating inside. Then you can sit on the end." I said, and Pip folded her arms.

"I don't think Old Ma would be pleased to see you treating me like this." She said, in this matter-of-fact tone that really didn't strike my fancy.

"Get used to it. This is a circus, not a castle. You're not always gonna get your way. Also, this is my caravan, and always will be. I've lived in this caravan since I was nine years old, thats more than half my life, and I'm not going to let some little prim princess take my home away from me." I snapped, and Pip shied away.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't realise you'd been here that long. That is quite a long time." All of a sudden she sounded timid.

"You're telling me." I muttered. I pulled my knife out of my pocket and pretended to study the patterns on the handle. "It's not important why I've been here for so long though. More importantly, I've been awake since yesterday afternoon. So I'm gonna catch up on my beauty sleep."

I walked over to my bed, loosened the straps of my overalls and slid them down to my waist. I folded and tucked them in to the lower part so they were just a pair of jeans and unbuttoned my shirt. I hung it on my hatstand and stretched myself out on my bed. I looked over at Pip briefly. She was still standing awkwardly, looking at me.

"Are you all right?" I asked, out of humour rather than kindness.

"I'm fine." She stuttered. "I've just never seen anyone without their shirt on before."

I laughed. She was definitely a rich child.

"Seeing shirtless men here is normal, so you'd better get used to it. If you don't like it, don't look. Please let me sleep now."

I heard her mutter as she was setting up her mat and blanket. What she said was unclear, but I could swear on my life I heard her say 'I never said I didn't like it'.

...

I woke a couple of hours later, from what I could tell. It was darker outside, in the twilight stage. The caravans had stopped moving, so that meant we'd reached our next stop or we were just stopping to eat. I squinted into the corner of the caravan to see if Pip was still there, which she was. That meant I'd have to introduce her and take blame. I don't know if this was what Ed and Demian meant by finding out what was wrong with Ma. I doubt it was. I doubt they wanted a new circus member. I doubt anyone here did.