The Magic Trap

  It was toward the end of the last card trick that Jessie started to feel a little flippy-floppy in her stomach. She had made a promise to Evan, and he was counting on her. Her dad had broken his promise to Evan, and Jessie was determined not to be like her dad. But would she be able to do it? Or would she ruin the whole show?

  “And now, ladies and gentlemen,” Evan said in his booming stage voice, “for my second-to-last trick, I will make a rabbit appear in this empty box!”

  Jessie carefully placed the rabbit box on the prop table, just as Evan had taught her, so that the front of the box faced directly out to the audience. She had already hidden Peter Rabbit inside the box behind the secret wooden panel. As she put the box on the table, she felt a pang of sadness. Peter Rabbit was made of soft material, but his fur wasn’t silky or warm like Professor Hoffmann’s.

  Evan did a great job building up the crowd’s excitement. First he knocked loudly on all four sides of the box. Then he lifted the tablecloth on the prop table to show that there was nothing underneath. Then he opened the lid of the box and waved his hand around inside to show that the box was indeed empty.

  “And now, I will simply place this scarf over the box and lightly tap it once with my magic wand”—Evan tapped the box and then whisked away the scarf—“and there is the rabbit!”

  The stuffed toy Peter Rabbit was in the box, lying on its side, still wearing its blue coat and holding a carrot. Jessie reached into the box and held up the rabbit for everyone to see.

  “Hey! That’s not a real rabbit!” shouted Scott Spencer from the audience.

  “It’s a toy!” called out one of the younger kids from the neighborhood.

  “Well, he still made it appear out of thin air!” shouted Jessie, annoyed that the audience wasn’t applauding. It was a good trick!

  “Where’s Professor Hoffmann?” asked Megan. Everyone in 4-O knew that Evan and Jessie had a real rabbit named Professor Hoffmann.

  “He’s on vacation!” said Jessie. “You should all applaud now.”

  The audience applauded, but they weren’t particularly enthusiastic. They had expected to see a real rabbit, and all they got was a toy.

  That was when Jessie realized that the final trick had to be the best of the show. Everything depended on her.

  “And now, ladies and gentlemen, for my grand finale, I will . . . make my very own assistant . . . disappear!”

  “Yeah, right!” shouted Scott Spencer. “Are you going to use a toy again?”

  “Quiet!” yelled Jessie. Her dad had been right. You needed to be prepared for hecklers. Being onstage wasn’t as easy as it seemed.

  Evan and Jessie carried the Indian basket out onto the stage, placing it directly in front of the small rug that covered the hole in the porch. Jessie could feel her heart start to speed up. Her chest felt tight, and it was hard to draw in a deep breath.

  “You see before you an ordinary basket—four sides, a top, and a bottom.”

  “Is there a toy rabbit inside?” called out Scott Spencer.

  “Be quiet, Scott,” said Megan, and several people in the audience added, “Yeah, be quiet.”

  Evan stared at Scott. “Why don’t you come onstage and look for yourself? If you dare.”

  Everyone in the audience turned to look at Scott, who looked as though he didn’t quite know what to do. Evan stood casually on the stage, as if he didn’t have a care in the world, but Jessie was nervous. If Scott came up and discovered the fake bottom, the trick would be ruined.

  “Huh! Why would I be afraid to go up there?” said Scott. He walked up to the front, full of swagger. Jessie knew this was Scott’s way: he always tried to look bigger than he was.

  “Go ahead,” said Evan, gesturing to the basket. Jessie couldn’t believe what a cool customer Evan was. He acted as if there was nothing in the world to be worried about.

  Scott slapped at all four sides of the basket, then raised the lid and looked inside. Please don’t let him lift it. Please don’t let him lift it, Jessie repeated in her head. She was thinking it so loudly, she worried that her brain might broadcast her thoughts to the whole audience. Stop thinking that! she told her brain.

  Scott walked around the entire basket once more, as if he was trying to think of another way to test it. Then he stopped and gave it a swift, hard kick—but the basket just slid a few inches across the porch. It held together.

  “It’s good,” said Scott grudgingly. And right then, Jessie realized that Scott had sold the trick for them. He had made the basket more real, more believable than anything Evan or Jessie could have done.

  “And now, my assistant will step inside the basket!” announced Evan. He waved both arms as if he were signaling a plane to land, and then he looked at Jessie.

  Jessie had been in a lot of tight spots with Evan. Last summer they’d fought a war over lemonade. Last fall they’d put Scott Spencer on trial. Last winter they’d had to find their grandmother who was lost in a snowstorm and fight two bullies who were doing mean things to a helpless frog. And there were all the times before the divorce, when she and Evan had sat in the Climbing Tree, waiting for their parents to stop arguing.

  Jessie looked at Evan’s face. It seemed as if he was trying to say something to her with just his eyes. But what? Jessie could never figure out what people meant by the looks on their faces. She needed words, and sometimes even those didn’t make sense to her.

  But Jessie could replay everything that Evan had said to her in the past, and she did that now, hearing inside her head, You can do this! You’re doing great! Don’t worry, I’m here.

  Jessie stepped inside the basket. She felt her insides turn to liquid and drip down into her feet. There was a strange whooshing sound in her ears, and at first she didn’t realize that Evan was saying, “And now, my assistant will lie down in the basket.”

  Jessie lowered herself into the basket, laying both hands over her chest, as if she were dead. The sky was blue. She could hear a chain saw buzzing somewhere. A bird flew overhead.

  And then the lid closed on her. The basket became dark. Her vision narrowed, corkscrewing in on itself until she couldn’t see anything except two small circles directly in front of her. A large hand pressed on her chest, squeezing all the air out of her lungs, and the whooshing sound got so loud that she couldn’t hear anything else. It was like the time she’d been playing in the high surf at the beach and somehow had gotten trapped under a raft that was riding a wave. She’d been pushed underwater, unable to breathe, unable to see, unable to hear anything except the pounding sound of the water as it swallowed her up.

  Her legs wanted to kick, kick her up to the surface. No! she told herself. You’re not underwater. You’re in a basket. She tried to breathe, to prove to herself that she could. A ribbon-thin drizzle of air squeaked into her lungs.

  You can do this! she told herself. You survived a ­Category 1 hurricane without any help from a grownup. You’re doing great! Don’t worry, Evan’s here. She kept her legs still. She waited to be able to breathe again.

  And then the basket lifted away, and she was left lying on the porch in the open air, staring up at the blue sky that seemed to surround her. No one in the audience could see her, though, because the tricky false bottom of the basket was hiding her from view.

  She was about to shout I did it! when she remembered that they were right in the middle of the trick. That thought got her brain going again, and Jessie remembered that she needed to be quick. She needed to be smooth. She couldn’t just lie there.

  She rolled quickly onto her side, tucking her legs in so that she was as small as possible. Lifting one corner of the small rug, she flipped it over so that the hole in the porch was exposed. Then she quietly dropped herself down into the hole. Evan was talking very loudly to the audience, building excitement for the next part of the illusion. As he circled the basket, he neatly flipped the rug back in place with his foot so that the hole was covered again.

  Jessie, meanwhile, was under the
porch, and it was gross down there! She had to crawl on her hands and knees, which was nasty because the ground was muddy and there were slimy wet leaves and all kinds of bugs, not to mention sharp rocks that bit into her skin. She tried to be quiet, but it was difficult. Luckily, she didn’t have far to go. The part of the trestle that her dad had cut away and then covered again (a secret door!) was just ten feet from the hole Jessie had dropped through. She had to get through the secret door and then sneak around to the side yard and into the woods so that she could reappear at the back of the audience just as Evan waved his magic wand. She didn’t have much time.

  But when she got to the cutaway trestle, she saw something that made her heart stop.

  Chapter 18

  Conjuring

  conjuring (v) making something appear unexpectedly, as if out of nowhere; (n) the performance of magic tricks

  Evan was good at stage patter, but he couldn’t keep talking like this forever. He had already walked three times around the basket, pointing out that it was truly empty and that Jessie had disappeared into thin air. Then he had turned the basket upright again and refastened the lid. Then he had lifted the basket off the ground, carefully holding the false bottom in place, to show that there was nothing under the basket.

  “My assistant is gone! Disappeared! Vanished! Who knows if we will ever see her again?” The audience was completely silent, staring in wonder at the stage. Evan felt as though he had cast a spell over them. But it was a spell that wouldn’t last forever. Where was Jessie? Why didn’t she appear at the back of the audience as they had planned?

  Maybe she was stuck under the porch? Could she have hurt herself when she fell through the hole? Maybe she’d gotten so scared in the basket that she’d fainted after escaping. Evan scanned the back of the audience, trying to see if there was any movement in the woods. She should have appeared by now. Something must have gone horribly wrong.

  He was just about to announce that the show was over, pull the curtains closed, and go through the hole in search of Jessie, when he saw her sneaking through the trees behind the audience. What a relief! She was probably just being her usual klutzy self, taking twice as long to crawl out from under the porch as anyone else. That was Jessie!

  “Yes, she’s gone!” he called out to the audience. “Gone! But I have the power to bring her back! With a wave of my magic wand—one, two, three!”—Evan swished his wand in giant circles, as if he were scooping up the air and gathering it into a powerful cyclone—“I will make her reappear! As you can see!” As Evan pointed his wand to the back of the audience, everyone in the backyard turned. When they saw Jessie standing there, they burst into wild applause.

  “And look what I can make reappear!” yelled Jessie over the loud applause as she walked to the stage. “Professor Hoffmann!” She raised both hands over her head so that everyone could see the small white rabbit she held.

  Evan shouted, “Woohoo! That’s all, folks!” and jumped down off the stage. He rushed up to Jessie and put both his hands on Professor Hoffmann, just to be sure he was real. He’d learned enough about smoke and mirrors to know that you couldn’t always trust your eyes, but touching the rabbit’s soft fur and feeling his familiar twitch convinced him that the rabbit was back from the dead. “He was in the woods?” asked Evan.

  “No!” whispered Jessie. “He was under the porch. There’s a tiny hole in the foundation. Tiny!” She held up her hand and made a circle about the size of a half-dollar. “He must have squeezed through it! And he’s been hiding under the porch ever since.”

  “Wow! He’s the escape artist! We should call him Houdini,” said Evan.

  “Nope. He’s Professor Hoffmann, and he’s never going anywhere again.” Jessie lifted the rabbit to her face and laid her cheek against his soft fur. She loved Professor Hoffmann. He had survived a Category 1 hurricane, too, just like them.

  “Take a bow!” said Megan. So Evan and Jessie jumped back up onstage and bowed over and over again as the audience applauded and whistled and shouted “Bravo!” Evan had the feeling that Jessie would stay up there all day, but he could tell that Professor Hoffmann was getting jumpy, so he called out, “Show’s over!” and people started trailing away. Jessie put Professor Hoffmann safely in his rabbit box with a whole lettuce leaf. Evan knew that if the rabbit pooped, he’d be the one who had to clean it, but that was okay. Jessie had done such a great job with the Amazing Disappearing Trick that he didn’t mind taking care of doody duty.

  They were hauling a large branch over to the side yard when Evan saw something that made him forget everything else.

  “Mom!” he shouted, dropping the branch and running full speed at his mother. By the time he wrapped his arms around her and breathed in her familiar smell (green tea shampoo and powdered laundry detergent), Jessie was pulling on their mother’s arm. Evan wasn’t sure why, but he suddenly started crying, and then his mother started crying, too!

  “We got a rabbit!” announced Jessie.

  “What?” asked their mother, disentangling herself from Evan’s full-body hug. Evan glared at Jessie. He didn’t think that was the best beginning to their mom’s return.

  “His name is Professor Hoffmann. He was supposed to be part of our magic show. That’s why Dad got him. But then he couldn’t be in the show because we thought he had died because . . . because . . . he . . .” Jessie’s voice stumbled and faltered and then simply collapsed into silence.

  “A rabbit? Huh.” Their mother shook her head, and Evan could see a trace of annoyance on her face. “Let me talk to your dad about that.” She started to walk around the side of the house and into the backyard, but she stopped dead when she saw the Climbing Tree.

  “Oh, my God!” she said.

  Jessie started to jump up and down. “It landed on my bed! Right on my bed! Evan saved my life because he told me to sleep in your bed. When we woke up, there was a sound like a cannon going off! Kapow!”

  “Why didn’t Dad call me? When did this happen?” Then Evan saw that their mother was staring at the porch. The railing was missing, but not in jagged pieces. It was cleanly removed. “Evan, did the storm take off the porch railing?”

  “No . . .” said Evan. “Dad took it down because he said it wasn’t safe. He already called someone to repair it, but I don’t remember the name . . .”

  “He took it down?” said their mother, repeating the words as if they couldn’t possibly be right. “He took down my porch railing? Where is your father?” As she talked, she climbed onto the porch and headed for the kitchen door.

  “Don’t step there!” Evan shouted as his mother was about to cross the rug.

  “My rug!” said their mother. “Evan! Jessie! You know you’re not allowed to take anything from my office.” She bent over and picked up the wet rug, revealing the hole underneath.

  No one said a word. Their mother looked at the hole, and now Evan could see that she was furious. Was she mad at him? He had wanted her to come home, but not so she would be mad at him. Suddenly he felt so tired, as if he’d been holding up the whole house for two days. He had tried to keep every­thing together—but the house was in ruins. And his mom hadn’t even seen the leaks in the ceilings or the flooded basement. How angry was she going to get?

  “I need to talk with Dad,” she said, her voice strangely quiet. “Where is he?”

  Evan and Jessie just stared at her. Evan was petrified that Jessie was going to say something and just as scared that she wouldn’t say anything and leave it all up to him to explain.

  Their mother looked at them, one, then the other, then back again. “Where is he?” she repeated, but this time her voice was so taut that Evan knew she was even more scared than they were.

  “He left,” said Jessie.

  “What do you mean?” asked their mother, her voice as small as a pinprick.

  “He just left,” said Evan. It was awful to say out loud. What kind of father leaves his kids? “He went back to the war.”

  Their mothe
r took a step back, as if she’d been hit. Evan worried that she would retreat to the edge of the porch and maybe fall off. There was no railing to protect her.

  “When did he leave?” she asked slowly, as if these words were foreign and she wasn’t quite sure of their pronunciation.

  Jessie started to whine. “Mommy . . .”

  Evan took three steps toward his mom. If she was going to fall, he wanted to be close enough to grab her and hold on. “He left Saturday morning, before the storm. He needed to catch a flight out. That’s why you couldn’t reach his cell phone. He was flying.”

  “You’ve been alone?” Their mother started to cry. “You’ve been alone for two days? You were alone during the storm? When the tree fell?”

  Tears fell down her cheeks, a slow, steady drip that made Evan think of the leaking ceiling during the storm.

  “Come here,” said their mother, her voice a little stronger. “Come here.” They ran up to her, careful to avoid the jagged hole in the porch floor, and even Jessie let herself be held by the arm. “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I never should have left you. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  This made Evan mad. It wasn’t his mom’s fault. Why did she have to feel bad just for doing her job? “No, you should have gone,” he said. “You had to go. We know that. It’s not your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “And besides,” said Jessie. “We did great! We did everything right. Evan and me. We patched up the hole in the wall, and we didn’t open the refrigerator, and we emptied the buckets, and we kept the rain off the floor, and we did the magic show perfectly, and we even found Professor Hoffmann. Well, I found Professor Hoffmann. That was just me.”

  Evan shook his head. Jessie always liked to get extra credit. But she made their mom laugh, so inside his head Evan said, Good job, Jess!

  And then he thought that she was right: They did do a good job. With all the worry and chaos and destruction, he’d lost sight of that accomplishment.