Tightrope

I ~ Mac and Cheese

The buildings whizzing past her were dark and ominous causing a chill to slowly rake down her spine. She reached to turn the heat up. She'd never liked Gotham. All the years they had to come through the violent city made Penny want to curl up under her blankets and hide, but she pushed herself up anyway, knowing the consequences of laziness in the circus.

    They had been driving all day, taking shifts so that neither of them fell asleep at the wheel. Penny had switched off around two hours ago, but couldn't sleep like she was sure their mother had been all day.

    Jerome took a turn behind the caravan onto an old dirt road that wound into the dark forest. Penny sighed in relief. The trees covering her in a shroud of comfort.

    She unbuckled her seatbelt before Jerome even put the car into park beside all the other trailers, knowing that they were already a little behind schedule. She jumped out of the old truck and jogged over to where the rest of the group was gathered with Jerome's sweater in her hands and as they reached the group, she tossed it to him.

    Haly had a system for every town: the performers would help set up the big top, carnies were sent to set up their rides and games and when people finished, they were sent to set up their trailers. He pointed to where everything would go with the Big Top in the center, games and rides surrounding it and trailers in the field to the left.

    Penny looked to Jerome, having a quick silent discussion as to who would move their trailer for them. Jerome nodded: he would do it. She smiled in thanks and ran off to begin helping with the Big Top.

    Seeing as Penny was one of the stronger people who worked on setting up the scaffolding, she was handed a hamer and her and her crew were off. Their job had to be done before anyone else could begin as the scaffolding held up the entire big top. Mary Lloyd was running around with the bag of pins and safeties to the people who were putting the pieces together. With a shout from Liza Lloyd, Penny ran to her and slammed her hammer into the leg of one of the pieces, making it fit together. Then, together with Grace Grayson who started on the opposite end, They began to hit the pins into place as the other girls working with them scrambled to place the safeties on them.

The two girls met in the middle and then continued, double checking the others' work to make sure not a single pin or safety was missed. They looked up and nodded to the other before running off to Tell Alphonse and John Grayson that they could start their job of bringing the scaffolding up into place.

Once Penny was dismissed, she quickly ran off to the field to help Jerome with the trailer. He always finished setting up his small booth before she was done, so it wasn't a surprise when he was unhooking the rusted trailer from the back of the truck. He had parked them near the back of the space they had, between the Graysons group and where the bathrooms would be located. Being closer to the bathrooms meant you didn't have to leave to make sure they were available.

Jerome tossed her the keys as she walked over. Penny pulled the stairs down and unlocked the door and pulled it open. She immediately grabbed the folded table that they set Sheiba's tank on and set it up outside the door. Everything they owned had to have more than one purpose and that was to help keep the door propped open when there was wind as the trailer didn't have AC. Summers in the south could be hell.

Penny tossed Jerome a ball of string which he caught and began attaching to the small loop attached to the side of their trailer. The pole was driven into the ground with a couple of jumps on the peggs in the side of it and soon they had a clothes line.

    While Jerome set up the line outside, Penny was trying to put everything back into the right spots. They always had to move stuff before they began to tow their trailer so that nothing broke. The small space barley had enough room for a small straight kitchen with a table and a couple of chairs and an area for a loveseat and a crate they used for a coffee table. On the right wall, directly beside the front door was the door to their mothers room which they never went into, and on the opposite side, through the kitchen was the door to their small room.

She opened the door to their room and began to stack the crates of their clothes up against the back wall into an open shelf style dresser. The crates with Jerome's books were placed as well, organized into genres. The lamp was set back up to where they could both reach it from their respective bunks and she placed the tray of her makeup back onto the back corner of the small desk by the window. The last thing she did was take her costume and hang it up on the hook on the back of the door so the wrinkles could fall out.

Jerome called out from the main room and Penny opened the door to talk with him, "she said she'd be back late so looks like we're on our own."

Penny smiled with relief and turned to grab a pot for noodles as Jerome walked to the fridge for the cheese. She reached into the cupboard above her and handed him the cheese grater and he tossed her the box of noodles and flicked on the faucet. It sputtered a little before a steady stream of water began to fill the pot. She placed the pot on the two burner stove as Jerome stood behind her at the table and began to grate the two types of cheeses.

In a few minutes the noodles were in the pot and getting a stir as they finished cooking. He placed a fry pan on the other burner and she put a bit of butter in to let it melt. The two then turned to grab the cheeses and different spices. Jerome added the cheeses as Penny sort of tossed the spice in, judging the amounts by eye. He then put the bread crumbs in the pan and Penny began to stir the macaroni and cheese. She ducked as Jerome reached above her head to grab two bowls.

The bread crumbs sizzled and she paused her stirring to flip them. He grabbed a fork from the drawer by the sink  and placed the bowls and it onto the small dining table, just in time as Penny turned and dished equal amounts of the noodles into the bowls and stuck the fork that she was using to stir into one of them. Jerome then swapped places with her as he shook the bread crumbs out of the pan and on to the mounds of noodles and handed her the pan as she was closer to the sink.

The siblings sat down across from each other and stuck their forks into their food, clinking them together and digging in. They only did this when they knew that their mother wouldn't be there. It was their form of celebration to breathe a sigh of relief and eat a real meal with the person they cared for the most and even though they had done the same thing together all day, they still found things to talk about. Whether it was reminiscing about that time Jerome had to be inside the dunk tank or him mocking her for burning her tongue, they could find comfort in the fact that it was just the two of them and no one was going to hurt them. At least not tonight.