Besides, it was cold in the sepulcher. The pain throbbed in his foot. It was the ankle of the same foot he had sprained the time he fell off the trapeze at YC, or Youth Circus. A Protestant boy named Timmy Banks is the anchor. He is holding the rope attached to Liam’s safety harness. Timmy stumbles and loses his grip. The rope races through the pulley. Liam, still twelve feet above the ring floor, drops like a bomb and twists his ankle. The pain is excruciating. Timmy is eleven. He cries. Nicole Easterbrook, another Protestant, carefully, tenderly removes Liam’s shoe while her friend Grace Newton runs for the director. Rory is there. He helps Nicole peel off Liam’s sock. Liam and Rory became members of the Belfast Community Youth Circus after being on their waiting list for a whole year. Catholic and Protestant kids work and train together on Saturdays, and sometimes Sundays. The circus school is under the directorship of the severe Madame Dubois and has a hundred young members with a waiting list of as many more.
