When Marie stumbled onto the talent show stage, she couldn’t see her father in the auditorium. Dad promised he’d be here, she thought with eyes full of tears. The other knife jugglers in eighth grade had already performed. Hoping to win over the crowd, Marie brought her longest knives.

Months after her mother’s funeral, her father taught her how to juggle. She started with scarves, then golf balls, then bowling pins. She mastered her craft in mere weeks, moving on to pineapples and daggers. Her father didn’t want Marie to practice with heavy or sharp objects, but she reassured him she would be careful. Now she would flaunt her talent in front of her snotty classmates. Joey and the other boys from P.E. always made fun of her buck teeth while Trina and the girls from math class laughed at her freckles—bright orange constellations on the milky sky of her face. 

Her father was always there to comfort her, but he wasn't in the auditorium to watch her dazzle the crowd. Reserved for him, the empty chair in the front row reminded Marie of her mother. They used to bake pineapple upside-down cake every Saturday, taking turns whisking the ingredients. They used to eat their cakes in forts they’d build out of pillows and bed sheets in the living room. At the wake, Marie wept by her mother’s open casket, tasting bitter pineapples on her tongue. Then she felt her father’s tender hand on her shoulder and felt less alone in the world. 

He’s running behind, she thought as the music started. She twirled the knives, aglitter under the lights. The crowd fell silent, watching her intently, as if waiting for her to drop a knife onto the shoe-scuffed stage. She juggled with ease, throwing knife after knife into the air as if she were tossing metallic sparks, bright as the iridescent paillettes stitched haphazardly across her frilly skirt. Her father, an adequate seamster, had made her performance outfit. Working two jobs to pay the bills, her father couldn’t afford fancier clothes. 

“I’ll try my best to get off work early,” he said as he handed her the skirt. At first, Marie scowled at the crude creation, but she loved her father so much that she accepted it. 

The music—a recording of violins, snare drums, and cellos—grew faster and faster over the auditorium’s sound system. She lifted a leg behind her head, and while hopping on the other foot, she juggled the knives higher and higher. The crowd gasped in amazement. Even Joey and Trina, who looked on from the wings, gazed at Marie with awe. Marie was proud to be the best knife juggler in eighth grade, but she found herself trying not to cry when she realized her father’s chair was still empty, shadowy like a dusky gravestone.

Eyeing that chair, Marie thought more about her mother—her curly black hair, her gossamer voice, her wide smile. Things long gone. Buried, though shallow, in Marie’s memory. Thinking about her mother made her lose her concentration. A wayward knife threatened to come crashing down. Her eyes bulged in panic. She jumped out of its way, setting down her raised foot. Before the knife could reach the floor, she bent forward and grabbed it by the handle, barely missing the knife’s heel. No one in the auditorium seemed to notice the mistake. She improvised the next thirty seconds of her routine, kicking like a chorus line to the beat of the music while she flung the knives over her head, up and over, again and again and again.

Sweat streamed down her temples. Her lungs ached with exhaustion. She considered ending the routine early, but she feared her classmates would judge her. She almost dropped three more knives. Everyone’s eyes trained on her like arrows. She felt like a failure.

The music transformed into a drumroll. The big finale. She tossed all the knives she had. A dozen glinting blades somersaulted upward through stage-lit dust motes. She thought about her father and forgot the final part of the routine. Frozen, looking out into the crowd, she stood under the knives as they grazed the raised auditorium curtain. Then like shot birds in flight, the knives careened toward the stage. Several people in the crowd shot up in horror. The knives were less than ten feet from the top of Marie’s head. 

Her mind went blank. Impossibly blank.

Then she heard her name.

She glanced to the back of the auditorium. Dressed in his crinkled work suit and tie, her father stood in the crowded doorway, waving at her. She smiled back at him as he forced his way through the crowd. She wanted to wave, but a panic-stricken gasp from the kids in the front row filled the auditorium. She looked up and saw the knives. Without hesitation, she jumped backward into a crash-landing split. The knives missed her, striking the floor tip-first in quick succession. 

The music ended. The crowd went dead silent. 

When she stood up, her father, now sitting in his chair, clapped and whooped. Then the crowd followed suit, clapping and shouting bravo with gusto. Even the snotty kids from her grade shouted her name with appreciation. But she ignored them as she blew a kiss to her father.

He shed tears of joy. “Your mother would be so proud!”

She bowed to her father. Behind her, the knives still stood upright on the stage. Their handles faced skyward like adoring fans waiting to shake the hand of the best knife juggler in eighth grade.

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Jacob Butlett is a Pushcart Prize-nominated author with an MFA in Poetry. He has been published in many journals, including the Colorado Review, The Hollins Critic, and Into the Void. In 2023 he received an Honorable Mention for the Academy of American Poets Prize (Graduate Prize).