The Magic Trap

  Jessie walked once all the way around the box.

  “What are you waiting for?” asked Evan.

  “We need a plan,” said Jessie.

  “What kind of plan? You pick up the box and grab the rabbit.”

  “It’s not that simple,” said Jessie. “What if the rabbit bites?”

  “Rabbits don’t bite!”

  “They might. They have teeth. Two sets of incisors. When they get scared, they sometimes lunge.” And suddenly Jessie thought of the rabbit being scared, which hadn’t occurred to her before. And she thought about being inside that small, closed, dark space, and her skin got shivery. Jessie didn’t like to be closed up in dark spaces.

  “I’m not scared,” said Evan. “It’s just a rabbit. You pick up the box and I’ll grab it.”

  “You need gloves,” said Jessie. “Something that will protect you in case it scratches.”

  “Rabbits don’t scratch.”

  “They have claws.”

  “How do you know so much about rabbits?”

  “I read,” said Jessie. Which was true. She had spent an hour on Sunday night reading about rabbits. And although she hadn’t come across a single story of a rabbit attacking a human being, rabbits had all the necessary body parts: sharp teeth, claws, and powerful kicking legs. You couldn’t be too careful. That was Jessie’s motto. “Get the oven mitts from the kitchen. They’ll protect your hands and arms.”

  A minute later Evan came out with the bright red quilted mitts on his hands. He looked like a gingerbread man. “I’m never going to be able to catch the rabbit wearing these.”

  “You don’t have to catch it. Just keep it from running away. I’ll flip the box over and scoop up the rabbit, like a bulldozer. Then you cover the top of the box with your hands. Okay?”

  “Okay.” He crouched down so that he was right in front of the box, like a baseball catcher in front of home plate.

  “But Evan, you have to be really careful. Don’t grab it, because rabbits have special bones that can break like that.” Jessie snapped her fingers to show him how delicate a rabbit’s skeleton is. “It’s what helps them squeeze into tiny hiding places.”

  Evan stood up. “Maybe we shouldn’t do this, Jess. What if the rabbit’s already hurt under there?” Jessie could see the worried look on Evan’s face. That was an easy look to spot. His eyebrows came down on the insides and he made this squiggly-line smile that wasn’t happy or sad. It was worried.

  But there was no evidence that the rabbit was hurt, so Jessie wasn’t going to let herself get all worried for no reason. The only thing that made sense was to lift the box and find out. That’s what a scientist would do, and Jessie liked science. Much more than animals.

  “We have to look,” she said sternly. “Are you ready?”

  Evan crouched down. “Ready.”

  “One, two, three, lift!” Jessie flipped the box over onto its side and scooped it at the same time that Evan rushed forward, his oven mitts acting as a barricade. Something dark was moving on the grass; then there was a scratching and scrabbling sound in the box, and Jessie finished scooping the box so that it sat on the grass with its opening facing up to the sky.

  “Wow, we got it!” shouted Evan, and they both peered into the box.

  There at the bottom was a small dark brown animal, frantically running along the edge of the box.

  It was not a rabbit.

  “What is that?” asked Evan.

  “It’s a mole,” said Jessie, feeling as if she’d just been given a birthday present and opened it up, only to find out it was socks.

  “A mole?” said Evan. “I didn’t know we had moles in the yard.”

  Jessie looked at Evan. Her plan was ruined. They didn’t have a rabbit, and now Evan wouldn’t let her be his assistant. She would be stuck selling tickets and ushering people to their seats. “I don’t suppose you could use a mole in your magic act?”

  “Nah,” said Evan. “That little guy would just tunnel his way out. Look at him go!” It was true. The mole was already scraping at the side of the box with his two large paws. “But Jess, I don’t think you should try to catch any more rabbits. You know?”

  Jessie nodded. If the rabbit had been hurt—even if the mole had been hurt!—she would have felt terrible. She didn’t like animals, but she didn’t want to hurt them. Last winter she’d even stood up to a couple of boys who were doing mean things to a frog. And the boys had been older! But Jessie had stood her ground and made them stop. Almost single-­handedly. She tilted the box and watched the mole disappear into the woods.

  “But now you don’t have a rabbit for your show,” she said.

  “It’s okay. I’ll use Peter Rabbit.” Evan had an old stuffed Peter Rabbit toy, complete with a blue jacket and an orange carrot.

  “It’s not as good,” said Jessie, shaking her head. Real magicians didn’t use toys. “A live rabbit would be better.”

  “Yeah, but what are you gonna do? It’ll be okay with the toy. I’ll still make it appear.” Evan picked up the sticks and threw them far into the woods. Jessie started stacking the boxes. With all the rocks taped on, they were really heavy.

  “Hey, Jess,” said Evan. “You were pretty smooth with flipping the box and catching the mole. You were fast, and you did it just right. I don’t think I could have done as good.”

  Jessie smiled. “I kept my head! I didn’t panic.”

  “No, you didn’t.” Evan looked off into the woods for a minute. “So you want to be my assistant?”

  “Really? Can I?” Jessie jumped up and down. “Yes! I’ll be so good, I promise! I’ll practice and practice and be super smooth.”

  “Well, we should start now. The show’s in a week. That’s not long to learn all the tricks.”

  They had gathered up all the boxes and were dragging them onto the porch when their dad came out, looking for better cell reception. He nodded to them and said, “Hey!” but kept his eyes on the screen.

  “I’m going to be in the show!” said Jessie.

  “That’s great,” he said without looking up, and punching buttons with both thumbs. Jessie thought she heard him curse under his breath, but she couldn’t be sure.

  “And we caught a mole!” she said, hoping he would turn his attention to her. She wanted to tell him that she’d been super smooth, but she knew that was bragging, and for some reason she couldn’t understand, bragging was something you were not supposed to do. Maybe Evan would tell her dad how good she had been at catching the mole. But Evan was tearing the duct tape off the boxes and making a pile of the rocks. No doubt she would be the one who would have to carry them back to the woods.

  “It was supposed to be a rabbit!” said Jessie, trying one more time to get her dad to listen.

  “Hmm . . .” said her dad, frowning and reading his screen.

  “A rabbit!” Jessie shouted in frustration. Sometimes her dad was great, and sometimes it was like he wasn’t even there. All of a sudden she felt again the pain of missing her mother’s phone call. Why couldn’t she have been home? Her mother would have asked a million questions about her rabbit traps.

  “Oh, my God! A rabbit!” said her dad all of a sudden, and Jessie thought that she had finally gotten through to him. But instead he turned to Evan and said, “I completely forgot. When I was out getting the wood cut, I stopped by Petco and picked up a rabbit. It’s in the trunk. Here—” He dug into the front pocket of his jeans and fished out the keys to their mother’s Subaru, which he tossed to Evan. Luckily, Evan caught them. There were a lot of cracks in the floorboards of the porch, and if the keys had fallen through one, there would have been no way to get them out.

  “You forgot a rabbit?” asked Evan, holding the keys.

  His dad shrugged and waved his hand absent-mindedly just as his phone rang. He turned his back on them, saying urgently into the phone, “I’ve been trying to get in touch with you for days . . .” And then he did curse. Loud enough for everyone to hear.

  “C
ome on, Jess,” said Evan. They hurried around the side of the house to where the Subaru was parked in the driveway. In the sun.

  “You can’t leave an animal in a hot trunk,” said Jessie nervously. Oh, this was going to be bad.

  Evan tried to open the trunk with the key, but it stuck. Ever since their mom’s car got rear-ended a couple of years before, the trunk would stick. Sometimes jiggling the key worked, and sometimes it didn’t. “Try popping the latch from inside,” said Evan.

  Jessie opened the driver’s side door and pulled up on the latch for the trunk. But even though the latch popped up, the trunk remained shut.

  “What are we gonna do? What are we gonna do?” The black upholstery of the car was soaking up the strong May sun. It was at least ninety degrees outside, which meant it was probably more than a hundred degrees inside the car. What was the temperature inside the trunk? Jessie imagined herself in that tight, dark, hot place and felt her heart start to race.

  “Let’s . . . um . . .” Evan was still trying to get the trunk to pop by jiggling the key.

  “We should ask Dad. He’ll get it open.”

  “Jess! He’s the one who ditched the rabbit in the first place!”

  “But the rabbit’s going to die!” Jessie had heard about things like this happening. Dogs left in closed-up cars for even a few minutes on cool spring days. But on a day like this! She knew that furry animals had a really hard time controlling their temperature, because they couldn’t sweat. They would overheat and then die.

  “Look, get in the back,” said Evan. “I’ll see if I can get the seat to fold down and then you can crawl into the trunk from there.”

  Jessie and Evan jumped into the back seat, and Evan inserted the key into the lock that held the seats in place. It took a lot of wiggling and pulling, but they finally got one seat to fold forward, leaving a small rectangular opening into the trunk.

  “Climb in and grab the rabbit!” said Evan. He was too big to fit through the narrow space, but Jessie was just the right size.

  “But it’s dark in there! And it’s . . .” Jessie started to panic. What if she crawled in and couldn’t get back out? What if the rabbit was loose and tried to attack her? What if it bit her face? What if she couldn’t breathe?

  “It’ll be fine,” said Evan. “I’ll hold on to your leg the whole time. If anything happens, I’ll just pull you out.”

  Jessie stuck her head into the trunk but backed right out. “I can’t see anything. It’s pitch-black.”

  “Just feel around. There’s got to be a box in there.” He put his hands on her shoulders. “Jessie, you have to do this. You have to be brave. I’ll be here the whole time. I promise.”

  Jessie ducked her head inside and then eased her shoulders through the hole. There was just a little bit of light leaking through, but the far corner of the trunk was completely dark. She couldn’t see a thing.

  She scooted her hips through and then both knees and started inching her way forward in the dark. The air inside the trunk was heavy and hot. It made her lungs feel clogged up. The top of the trunk pressed down from above, so she couldn’t crawl properly. She lay down on her stomach and reached forward with both hands. She tried to breathe normally, but it was like trying to breathe wet cotton balls.

  Her hand inched forward. She felt something about the size of a shoebox. She grabbed it and pulled it toward her. As she started to back out, her foot seemed to get caught on the edge of the opening. She tried kicking, but she couldn’t feel her way out.

  “Evan! Evan! I’m stuck.” She kicked harder with her foot. Her hands holding the box started to shake, and she worried that she would rattle the frightened rabbit to death.

  “Stop kicking! I’ll pull you out. Ow!” shouted Evan. Jessie could feel his strong hands grabbing her ankles and yanking. In less than three seconds she was out of the trunk, draped over the back seat, with the cardboard box in her hands.

  “I don’t think it’s alive,” whispered Jessie. She was close to tears. All the edginess of being stuck inside the trunk mixed with her worry about the poor, hot rabbit. Why had her dad left the rabbit in the trunk? How could he have left it there?

  “Come on,” said Evan. “We gotta look.”

  Evan unhooked the cardboard tabs on the sides of the box, and together they looked inside.

  Chapter 10

  Proscenium Arch

  proscenium arch (n) the arch in a theater that separates the stage from the audience; it is often where the curtains hang

  The rabbit seemed to be okay—although Evan couldn’t help thinking that if Jessie hadn’t said the word rabbit to their dad, the poor animal would have roasted alive in the hot trunk.

  Jessie promptly named him Professor Hoffmann. He had snow-white fur, with streaks of gray, and a serious face, which made him look like a professor. The inside of his short, upright ears was the color of bubblegum. When Jessie and Evan ran to the back porch to tell their dad that the rabbit was okay, he looked at them strangely. “Of course it’s okay. Why wouldn’t it be? Why do you two always worry about everything? Your mother, too! It’s like you want bad things to happen.”

  Sometimes bad things do happen, Evan thought, but he didn’t say it out loud. He didn’t want to sound as if he wasn’t tough, like his dad, who had been to war and seen really horrible things.

  Their dad hadn’t bought any of the things you need to keep a rabbit, so Evan and Jessie did the best they could with what they had in the house. They lined a clean, large cardboard box with shredded newspaper and filled Evan’s old Scooby-Doo cereal bowl with water. Jessie wanted to decorate the box, but Evan said decorations wouldn’t be safe. Professor Hoffmann might eat them.

  For the next two days Evan worked intensely with Professor Hoffmann and Jessie to perfect the appearing-­rabbit trick. At first Professor Hoffmann didn’t like going into the wooden box at all. He would kick his legs and paw the air with his forelimbs, as if he were trying to swim up and out of the box.

  “He’s remembering when he was stuck in the trunk,” said Jessie, trying to calm Professor Hoffmann by feeding him some lettuce. She still wouldn’t touch or hold him, but she liked giving him food.

  “Don’t feed him. He’s supposed to be working,” said Evan, trying once again to get the rabbit to sit still. After a few minutes they noticed that he had pooped. Jessie ran screaming from the room, but Evan just cleaned it up with a paper towel, and after that Professor Hoffmann didn’t mind sitting in the rabbit box anymore.

  On Wednesday, Jessie showed Evan the latest edition of The 4-O Forum, and Evan had to admit it was terrific.

  The front-page article was all about the magic show, and it explained that this was a show with a real live rabbit and an actual stage. The stage was almost finished being built. Their dad had bought enough two-by-fours to build a proscenium arch, and he’d also bought yards of red velvet, which they draped over the top of the arch to form curtains. Evan couldn’t help wondering where his dad got so much money. And if he had that much money, why didn’t he send more of it to them?

  * * *

  The 4-O Forum

  Special Magic Issue All the News That’s Fit to Print

  Now You See It!

  By Jessie Treski

  This coming Monday, Memorial Day, should be renamed Magic Day, because that is the day that a magic show is coming to town. Prepare to be mystified by the Amazing Magician Evan and his Spectacular Assistant Jessie as they dazzle you with their illusions. They will do card tricks, rope tricks, and sleight of hand. Amazing Magician Evan will make a live rabbit appear out of nowhere. The rabbit’s name is Professor Hoffmann. How does he do it? No one knows! But one thing is for sure: You won’t want to miss this Mystifying and Magnificent Medley of Magic! Buy your tickets now!

  * * *

  “I’m going to pass them out tomorrow,” said Jessie as Evan handed back the newspaper.

  “Are you sure Mrs. Overton will let you?” asked Evan. Mrs. Overton had not allowed Jessie
to hand out her Valentine’s Day issue of The 4-O Forum. Too much love stuff. “Maybe she won’t because we’re charging money for the show. It’s like advertising.”

  “She won’t mind. Besides, it’s not just about the magic show. I’ve got an interview with Mr. Franks, and a word puzzle, and a huge article on the weather station data and the storm. See? The whole back page. Did you know they named it? It’s called Tropical Storm Annabelle.”

  “Hmm.” Evan didn’t care much about the weather. He just hoped someone would come to the magic show. He had almost perfected the appearing-rabbit trick. It would be lousy if no one came to see it. In fact, he could use an audience right now. “You want to see me do the trick?”

  “Yes!” shouted Jessie, immediately jumping onto the bed.

  “Can I watch, too?”

  Evan turned to see his dad, who’d been gone for the last hour, in the doorway. When had he gotten back? How long had he been standing there? It made Evan feel nervous. His dad had always been good at sneaking in and out of places, but Evan had never quite been able to understand how he did it. “One of my professional secrets,” his dad always said.

  Evan swallowed. He felt ready to have Jessie watch him perform—but his dad? What if he messed up? What if Professor Hoffmann tried to kick his way out of the rabbit box when he was supposed to be “gone”?

  But his dad didn’t wait for an answer. He walked right in and lounged on the bed, resting his head against the wall.

  Evan straightened the prop table so that it was facing his new audience; he took a deep breath.

  “And now, ladies and gentlemen,” he said in a booming voice, “for my final illusion, I will make a rabbit—a live rabbit!—appear out of thin air before your very eyes.” He waved his hand at the rabbit box on the top of the prop table. “As you can see, I have an ordinary wooden box. The box is empty.” Evan opened the top of the box and waved his hand around inside to show that the box was empty. “Now, I will take this silk handkerchief”—Evan had borrowed one of his mother’s scarfs, which he draped over the box so that the front was covered—“and, voilà!” He lifted the silk scarf and there was Professor Hoffmann, sitting in the box, his pink nose twitching.