The Magic Trap

  “What?”

  “Everything. This whole storm. It’s a lot of work.” And a lot of sadness, she thought.

  “Yeah. I’m tired.”

  “Do we have to stay up all night? Because of the buckets?” asked Jessie.

  “I guess. Unless the storm stops. Do you think it’s slowing down?”

  They both listened to the howling of the wind and the slapping of the rain against the windows. Jessie had almost gotten used to it, the storm had been going on for so long. It felt like days and days. “No,” she said finally. “I don’t think it’s slowing down at all.”

  “I wish we had a radio,” said Evan for about the fourth time that day. “I just want to know what’s going on.”

  Jessie finished her second pickle, thought about taking a third, then put the lid back on the jar. She hadn’t been very hungry all day, but she knew she should eat something to keep up her strength. She reached for the last Lorna Doone in its plastic sleeve. “You want to split it?” she asked.

  “Nah. I already had about ten of them.” Evan leaned back and closed his eyes. Jessie thought he was going to fall asleep right there on the couch. But then he sat up and said, “I better go check the basement. To see if the water’s gotten higher.”

  Jessie hadn’t gone back down to the basement since the morning. She couldn’t bear it. But Evan had checked every hour, counting the number of steps that were still untouched by the water. At last check, the water had risen so high that only ten steps were still above water. What if the water reached the top step and started to spill into the kitchen?

  Jessie took a deep breath. “I’ll come with you,” she said. The thought of going down those stairs, descending into the murky darkness and all that swirling water, made Jessie feel as if she were lowering herself into a deep, dark well.

  Plus, it wasn’t just a basement anymore. It was a graveyard.

  “You don’t have to,” said Evan. “I can go by myself.”

  But Jessie insisted, so they rounded up every flashlight they could find—seven in all—and turned them all on. Evan carried two under his arms and two in his hands, but Jessie carried all three of hers in a bundle. She wanted a good, strong light for whatever lay ahead. Before opening the basement door, Evan stopped.

  “Jess, if the water’s really high, I think we have to go get help.”

  “You mean, we have to tell someone that Dad left us?”

  Evan nodded his head.

  Saying it out loud sounded so awful. Dad left us. Jessie wondered if he would be arrested. Were there laws against leaving kids in a hurricane? There should be!

  “Why did he do that, Evan?” Just because their dad loved his job didn’t mean he couldn’t love them, too. Did it?

  “I don’t know.” Evan sounded really tired. His whole body slumped. Then he straightened up suddenly. “But I hate him! I hate him for leaving us—again! And for the storm—”

  “The storm isn’t his fault,” said Jessie seriously. You couldn’t blame a person for a hurricane. That was an act of nature.

  “It is his fault. He’s a grownup. He should have known. He should have cared!”

  Jessie didn’t know what to say to that. She didn’t like it when Evan got angry at their dad. It made her feel as if somehow she had done something wrong.

  She looked at Evan. “He’s just . . . Dad.”

  He shook his head. Jessie couldn’t tell if she had said the wrong thing. But Evan’s face had lost its angry look. He just looked tired again. “Oh, c’mon,” he said. “Let’s check the basement.”

  Jessie was glad that Evan was going first. If this was a horror movie, now was exactly the moment when a zombie would jump out and attack them. She could almost hear the sound of scary music playing. Jessie stepped carefully on the narrow wooden steps. Her hands were full of flashlights, so she couldn’t hold on to the railing the way she usually did. She was trying to point the flashlight beams down on the stairs so she could see where she was stepping, when all of a sudden Evan yelled, “Look!”

  Jessie’s first thought was zombie!, and she instinctively reached for the railing to turn and run. The flashlights slipped from her hands. She lunged, trying to catch them before they hit the stairs, but her foot slipped and she fell forward, crashing into Evan and then tumbling into the cold, dark water below.

  Chapter 16

  TnR

  TnR (n) abbreviation for Torn and Restored, a special kind of trick in which the magician cuts, rips, or breaks something into pieces (a string, a card, a stick) and then makes it whole again

  “I’m drowning! Evan, I’m drowning!”

  Evan splashed down into the dirty water and grabbed hold of Jessie. “You’re not drowning! Just stand up!” One of Jessie’s flailing arms smacked him across the face, and Evan fell back, dunking himself in the sludgy water. He came up sputtering, not sure where Jessie was. The basement was as dark as night, with just a dribble of daylight coming from the open door at the top of the stairs. Evan could hear Jessie splashing and gasping for air, but he couldn’t see her. Then he felt a sharp kick underwater. He reached in that direction and grabbed something, pulling it up to the surface. “Jessie!” he shouted. “Stop it! The water isn’t that deep. Just stand up!”

  Jessie wrapped both arms around his body, as if letting go of him would mean the end of the world, but he could feel that she had set her feet on the basement floor and was standing on her own. She was coughing hard, but it sounded to Evan as if she was breathing okay.

  “C’mon,” he said. “This water is gross.” He half dragged her to the stairs and helped her walk up and out of the water.

  “Why did you yell ‘Look’?” asked Jessie, still coughing.

  “Because! The water’s lower. It’s gone down two whole steps.” It was good news, but nothing sounded like good news now that he was soaking wet.

  When they reached the top of the stairs, Jessie stopped and sat down. “My socks are squishy wet.” Evan knew that Jessie didn’t like to have wet clothes on, especially wet shoes and socks. She’d been this way ever since she was little.

  He sat down on the step below her and helped her untie the soggy shoelaces and then pull off each shoe and peel the soaking-wet socks off her feet. Jessie carefully tucked each sock inside her shoe and then tied the wet laces together so that they made an easy-to-carry shoe bundle. She looked at Evan. “Professor Hoffmann is dead.”

  Evan nodded. “I know. And the Climbing Tree is gone.”

  Jessie looked at the water below them. “And Dad left us.”

  Evan nodded again. He pushed the bottoms of his pajama pants up past his knees. The wet fabric was sticking to his legs like octopus tentacles. He’d lost both slippers when he’d plunged into the water, and it was too dark to see if they were floating or if they’d sunk.

  And that’s when Evan realized the worst thing of all: they’d lost all the flashlights. Every single last one of them. They were all underwater, and there were no more in the whole house. How would they make it through another night without flashlights?

  “This is the worst day ever,” said Jessie. “And that is not hyperbole.”

  Evan nodded. There was nothing else to say.

  “Do you think it’s over?” asked Jessie.

  Evan pointed to the steps below. “The water’s going down.”

  “But it’s not over yet,” said Jessie.

  “It’s mostly over,” said Evan.

  “But not completely. The rain hasn’t stopped.”

  “Yeah, but the worst is over,” said Evan, starting to feel a little annoyed that Jessie wouldn’t just let it go.

  “The wind is still blowing. Another tree could fall.”

  “But it probably won’t.”

  “I’m just saying . . .” said Jessie.

  “Stop!” said Evan, exasperated. “We survived a Category 1 hurricane all by ourselves, and that makes it one of the best days of our whole lives!”

  Jessie was silent for a split secon
d; then she raised both hands over her head. “We’re Treskis, and we’re tough,” she crowed. “Okay, it’s a good day.” She stood up. “But I swallowed dirty water, and I need to go brush my teeth and gargle.”

  “Good idea,” said Evan, who was eager to get out of his wet T-shirt and pajama pants. “And then, let’s open the freezer and grab the ice cream, really quick. Even if it’s soup, we can still eat it. All of it!”

  “Dibs on peppermint stick!” shouted Jessie as she raced up the stairs and into the kitchen.

  By the end of the afternoon, the storm was definitely winding down. The wind still gusted from time to time, like a child after a temper tantrum who lets out an occasional howl just to remind everyone of the fury that has passed. The rain, too, slowed down until it was nothing more than a steady drizzle. Evan couldn’t believe there was any rain left to fall.

  When it started to grow dark, Evan and Jessie discussed the idea of lighting candles. Their mother had several decorative candles for special occasions, and Evan knew how to strike a match, although he wasn’t allowed to do it without a grownup present. In the end, though, they decided to just get through the night in the dark.

  “If we burned down the house, on top of everything else,” said Jessie, “Mom would just kill us.”

  Evan agreed. Besides, at this point, walking around the house in the pitch darkness seemed like no big deal. After what they’d been through, it was hardly worth thinking about. Even Jessie didn’t seem to mind the dark as much. “It’s like being backstage in a play, waiting for the curtain to go up,” she said.

  Just before going to bed, they emptied the drip buckets into the bathroom sink one more time, and Evan felt confident that they would make it through the night without the buckets overflowing. The rain had slowed to a gentle patter, the perfect noise to listen to as they fell asleep.

  The next morning, the sun was blinding. It sliced through the window, cutting across Evan’s eyeballs and yanking him awake.

  His first thought was buckets, and he hurried out of bed to make sure there wasn’t a second flood covering Jessie’s bedroom floor. But each bucket had barely an inch of water in it, and all the dripping had stopped. In every room Evan walked into, the sun poured in through the rain-washed windows. The world had never looked so dazzlingly bright and new.

  When Jessie woke up, they ate crackers and peanut butter and apples. Evan peeled the skin off the apples for Jessie and cut them into slices. Jessie carefully spread the peanut butter onto the crackers and pressed them together to make sandwiches.

  “I wish we had pancakes,” said Jessie, carefully eating over a plate to catch the crumbs. Crackers made a lot of crumbs.

  “Eggs and bacon,” said Evan, licking his fingers to catch the oozes of peanut butter.

  “Waffles!”

  “Omelets!”

  “Mom’s coffee cake!”

  They both fell silent for a moment, and then Jessie asked, “Do you think Mom will come home today?”

  “If she can, she will,” said Evan, knowing that this was true. But he also knew that if she didn’t make it home by sundown, they were going to have to get help. Their flashlights were gone and they were almost out of food. They couldn’t go on like this any longer.

  “Do you think the stage fell down?” asked Jessie.

  “I don’t know. Let’s look,” said Evan, grabbing a handful of peanut butter cracker sandwiches.

  It was the first time either one of them had stepped outside in two days, and Evan felt like an alien landing on a strange planet. Some things were familiar, but some things were completely weird.

  The backyard was covered in fallen branches. Not just a few. Dozens of broken tree limbs lay scattered all over the lawn. There was also a big plastic trash can that Evan didn’t recognize, and a patio umbrella. High up in the branches of one of the trees was a yellow tricycle. Dangling from another tree was a man’s raincoat.

  But the strangest sight of all was the Climbing Tree, which looked as if it was growing backwards out of the house. It stuck out of the side of the house and slanted down to the place on the trunk where it had snapped, almost as though the house had grown an arm and were reaching greedily for something in the woods. Evan thought of a trick he could do where he cut a rope into four pieces and then made it whole again. It was called Torn and Restored—or TnR—and really good magicians could do it with just about any object: a card, a piece of cloth, even a stick. Evan wished he could perform a TnR on the Climbing Tree.

  “What a mess!” said Jessie enthusiastically.

  Evan had to agree. The storm had done its job well. No halfway effort. You had to give it credit for that. “This is really going to bum Mom out,” he said. “We should clean up as much as we can.”

  Jessie was already picking up the smaller branches. She liked making things neat, putting things in their place. Evan retrieved the big plastic trash can—might as well make use of it until its owner came to claim it—and they spent the next half hour filling it with sticks and carting them into the woods. It made Evan sad to think that some of these sticks were bits and pieces of the Climbing Tree. Even worse was the picture that came to mind of how workmen would take it away. He imagined a bulldozer and chain saws. Evan hoped he would be at school when the workmen came.

  “Hey! Hi!” Evan turned to see Megan Moriarty coming around the house and into the backyard. She was smiling and waving, then stopped suddenly. “Whoa! There’s a tree sticking out of your house!”

  “Actually,” said Jessie, “it’s sticking into the house.”

  “Well, you’ve got us beat. All we have is two missing shutters and some bricks that fell off our chimney. Plus, my dad’s leaf blower is up in a tree!”

  Evan pointed out the tricycle and raincoat hanging from the trees in their backyard. Then Megan noticed the stage and asked, “Are you still going to do the show?”

  Evan looked at Jessie, who looked down at her feet. “There are some problems,” he said. “I don’t think we can do it.” He felt his heart sink.

  On top of everything else, there would be no magic show. He saw Jessie’s eyes start to fill up.

  “But you have to,” said Megan. “I already sold tickets.”

  “What?” asked Evan.

  “Jessie gave me the tickets she printed up, and some kids asked if they could buy them on Friday so they wouldn’t have to wait in line. And I said yes. So they gave me their money and I gave them tickets.”

  Evan noticed that Jessie had stopped crying. Anytime money was the subject, Jessie perked up. “Oh, I don’t think anyone would come, anyway,” said Evan. “They’re probably cleaning up and stuff.”

  Megan frowned. “Salley’s coming. I saw her riding by my house this morning, and she said she’s definitely coming. And the little kids who live next door to me are coming. I told their mom I’d walk them over.”

  Evan shrugged. “I guess we’ll just have to tell them there’s no show and give them their money back. Right?”

  “What a shame,” said Megan. “All that money! I got two dollars a ticket, you know.”

  “Two dollars a ticket!” shouted Jessie. She looked at Evan.

  Wow. Two dollars a ticket. He wondered how many people would come. Maybe there’d be even more people because of the storm. Especially if no one had electricity. What else was there to do?

  Evan pointed at the porch. “We don’t even have the stage set up . . .”

  “I’ll help,” said Megan. “And Salley will, too. I think everyone just wants to get out of the house! It’s been, like, two days!”

  Evan turned to Jessie and tilted his head to one side. Could they really do it? Put on a magic show just hours after a Category 1 hurricane? He knew that Jessie’s brain was running through five different possible scenarios and coming up with the right answer.

  “We should do it,” she said solemnly. “And we’ll dedicate the show to Professor Hoffmann.”

  Chapter 17

  “The Show Must Go On”


  “The show must go on” (expression) An old phrase in show business that declares that no matter what troubles or obstacles exist, the show must be performed for the waiting audience

  Each trick was better than the last. Jessie couldn’t believe how good Evan was. He started with some sleight-of-hand tricks—making a coin disappear from his hand and then making it reappear behind Jessie’s ear. And even though Jessie knew exactly how the trick was done, it still fooled her. Evan was that good.

  After that, he did his TnR, where he cut a rope into four pieces and made them come together into one piece. Then he did his Cups and Balls routine, placing a red rubber ball underneath one of three cups and making it appear under a different one. Next he made three balls appear, and then all three disappeared!

  The audience applauded wildly, even though they had to stand because the ground was wet. There had to be at least fifty people watching the show. Almost half of the kids from 4-O had shown up, and there were lots of littler kids from the neighborhood and school. Jessie spotted a whole group of fifth-graders. And there were even a few sixth-graders. Sixth-graders!

  Jessie took a bow after each trick. Evan may have been the magician, but she was the one responsible for setting up the props, and so far, she hadn’t made one mistake. Twice Evan had whispered to her, “Good job!” and she knew she was as good an assistant as he had hoped for.

  Next Evan began his card tricks. He started with Out of This World, then Finding Four Aces, then Order from Chaos, and finally the Mixed-Up Kings, which was still Jessie’s favorite. For each one, she set up the deck of cards just the way it needed to be done, and each trick worked perfectly. It’s true what Evan had said: the assistant was the most important part of the show. Well, maybe he hadn’t said exactly that, but something close.