After fighting with his stepdad our narrator runs away and joins the circus.

(Harper’s, May 2007)

You know, that whole running-away-to-join-the-circus thing is such a strange cliche, so unattached to the way the world works these days, that this story employs the conceit unscathed. Of course, we’re not 100% sure this story is set in these days, but, seriously, were there ever days where circus-joining was commonplace for wayward youth?
You have to buy the Harper’s to read this story. (You can’t just steal these mockups of the pages and enlarge them; I tried.) It’s a good magazine, well worth the $6.95 cover price (or $10 subscription rate.).