“Jessie! What the heck? You can’t do that! You have to lie still.”
“It’s too dark!” squeaked Jessie, jumping up like a puppet on a string. She wanted to get out of that basket as fast as she could.
“Wait, wait!” said Evan. “It’s not dark. It’s a basket. Look. There’s a lot of light coming through. You could probably read a book in there!”
“It’s too dark! It’s too small! There isn’t any air!”
“It’s a basket! There’s tons of air.” Evan looked frustrated. “Why are you being so weird?”
“I’m not! It’s not safe.”
“Problems?” asked their dad, calling from his place in the audience.
“No!” shouted Evan. He turned to Jessie. “Look. Just try lying down. I won’t put the lid down, okay? Just lie down and get used to it.”
Jessie trusted Evan more than anyone in the world. Even so, her heart was pounding inside her chest as she slowly lowered herself into the basket, holding on to the sides as if she were in a very tippy canoe. As soon as she lay down, her stomach started rising and falling.
Evan squatted down next to her so that his head was just visible over the side. “Okay?” he asked in a quiet voice. “Not so bad, huh?”
Jessie nodded just slightly, afraid that if she did more than that, she might throw up.
“So do you think you can let go of the sides?” he asked, almost whispering. “Just put your hands down inside the basket?”
Jessie used her brain to tell her fingers to uncurl slowly and come to her sides. I’m safe. I’m safe. I’m safe, she kept telling herself.
“You’re doing great, Jess,” said Evan. “Now listen. I’m going to leave the lid open, okay? But I’m going to tilt the box so you can practice slipping out, just like we’ll do during the show. Ya ready?”
Jessie nodded again. It helped having the lid open so she could see the sky—and especially Evan’s face. She knew that as long as Evan was looking right at her, nothing bad could happen. Still, she could feel sweat beading up at her temples and dribbling into her hair. Just stop it! she told her sweat glands angrily. You have no reason to be scared!
Evan tilted the basket forward so that it seemed to fall away from her, and there she was—lying on the porch with nothing around her! Free! She was out of the basket and free! She felt as if she’d just escaped being buried alive.
“I did it!” she shouted. “I did the trick!” She scrambled to her feet, feeling that she could suddenly breathe again.
“You’re not supposed to stand up, Jess! You’re supposed to go through the hole and hide under the porch,” said Evan. “Let’s do it again. And this time, I’m going to close the lid, okay?”
“Do you have to?” asked Jessie, frowning.
“The trick doesn’t work if the audience can see you the whole time.”
Jessie knew he was right. If she wanted to be a magician’s assistant, she would have to be closed up in that basket. That was her job. But the thought of being shut up in the basket—it really was exactly like a coffin!—made every muscle in her body want to get away, just the way the mole they’d caught had tried so frantically to escape the rabbit trap.
Jessie didn’t want to let Evan down. He was counting on her. And she really wanted the audience to applaud for her. She was good at lots of things in school: she always got one hundred percent on her math worksheets, she was the fastest reader in the whole grade, and her desk was always the neatest in her class. But no one applauded those things. Evan got lots of applause and cheers when he played basketball. He even had trophies to display in his room. What would it feel like to have people applaud for her?
Mostly, though, Jessie wanted her dad to see her do something extraordinary—disappear right before his eyes!—and then clap the loudest and the longest of anyone in the audience.
Jessie stepped into the basket. Immediately her heart started to pound and her lungs felt twisted up, so she couldn’t get a good breath in. It’s okay. It’s just a basket. You can get out anytime you want. Her legs began to wobble as she lowered herself down, down, down. It’s just a basket. You can just push it off. It’s okay. She pulled her hands in close to her sides and watched as the lid began to close. Evan’s here. He won’t let anything bad happen to you. It’s okay. You’re safe. You’re safe. You’re safe.
The lid closed with a soft creak, and Jessie could hear Evan slide the wooden pin through the leather latch. Now she was locked inside, and a wild panic took hold of her and made her shake like a leaf in a storm. Locked in. Can’t get out. No way out. No air. Too dark. Can’t breathe. Can’t breathe!
And then something was fighting and clawing and letting out the most terrible sound she had ever heard. The basket was banging all over the place, hitting her in the arms and legs, and Evan was shouting at the top of his lungs, but she couldn’t tell what he was saying, because everything was muffled and far away except for the horrible screaming of the wild cat, which sounded as if it was right inside her own head.
And then the basket flopped off of her, the false bottom opening up so that she was lying out in the open on the porch, staring up at the wide blue sky, which looked as if nothing had happened at all. She rolled over onto all fours and pushed herself up.
“Jeez, Jessie!” said Evan. For some reason he was sitting on the porch, as if he’d been knocked over. Jessie stood panting, trying to get her breath back. Then her dad was there, looking at her closely with some kind of strange expression on his face. Jessie couldn’t tell if he was angry or sad or worried—or all three.
“Are you okay?” he asked her, but it wasn’t the kind of face that went with those words. It was not the kind of face her mother would have had if she’d been there.
Jessie looked from Evan to her dad and knew that they knew something she didn’t. She hated that feeling. But not as much as she hated the feeling of being locked inside the basket. Nothing was worse than that.
“I want to call Mom,” she said.
Evan stood up slowly and began to set the basket back the way it was supposed to be. “She can’t talk today, remember?”
“I don’t care. I want to talk to her,” said Jessie. The back of her throat felt prickly, which meant she was about to start crying. Jessie hated crying. It was messy and gross and left her with a stuffed-up nose. Plus, she did not want to cry in front of her dad.
“Hey,” said her dad. “How about sending her a text? You can use my phone, all right?” There was still something strange about the way he was looking at her. And his voice sounded weird, too. It was as if he were talking to someone he didn’t even know.
Her dad punched buttons on his phone, then handed it to her. “All set,” he said. “Just type what you want to say.”
Jessie turned her back on Evan and her dad. She was good at typing, and it took her less than three seconds to type what she wanted to say to her mom.
Come home.
Chapter 12
Grand Finale
grand finale (n) the last part of a performance, typically the most exciting spectacle of the show
“Take a break,” Evan said to Jessie on Friday afternoon. They had been running through the show for the past hour, and they were both hot and tired. The outdoor thermometer read ninety-two degrees, but the air was so sticky and thick that it felt like a hundred. To make things more difficult, odd gusts of wind would occasionally blow through, upsetting the prop table, sending the cards flying into the air, then disappearing, leaving the air even heavier than before. Evan knew Jessie was doing her best to keep everything in place, but she only had two hands.
And then Professor Hoffmann started to act strange. He kept hopping around the edges of his large cardboard box. Twice he kicked over his water bowl. And whenever Evan picked him up, he trembled.
“It’s the barometric pressure,” said Jessie. “We measured it today at school. It’s dropping because of the storm.”
“Rabbits don’t have weather stations!” said E
van crossly. He was frustrated because he hadn’t had a chance to practice the grand finale.
“Animals can tell, though. They can sense changes in air pressure, and they can hear infrasound. Professor Hoffmann knows that Annabelle is coming.”
“Well, if he’s so smart, does he know when Dad’s going to get off the phone?”
“No,” said Jessie thoughtfully. “I don’t think so.”
“Jess, that wasn’t a real question!”
“Then why did you ask it?” asked Jessie. She was setting up the cards for the first card trick exactly the way he had taught her, but the wind kept blowing the cards off the table. “We should practice inside,” said Jessie.
“I can’t practice the grand finale inside! I need the hole in the floor, remember?”
“Well, practice everything else inside and then, when Dad gets off the phone, practice the grand finale outside.”
“But he hasn’t gotten off the phone for the last three hours! He’s never going to get off the phone.” Evan needed his dad because after Jessie’s panic attack yesterday, his dad had offered to be the one to climb into the basket and disappear. At first Evan had thought it wouldn’t work. His dad was a whole lot bigger than Jessie, and Evan didn’t think he could fit inside the basket. But it turned out that if his dad scrunched his legs in a particular way, he could just barely squeeze inside with the lid closed.
Evan had felt so glad—so grateful—that his dad was willing to do the trick in Jessie’s place. The show wouldn’t be ruined! He could still perform the Amazing Disappearing Trick.
But after walking through the illusion once yesterday, their dad had been too busy to rehearse any more. “I’ve got it, Evan,” he had said. “It’s not that complicated. We can practice more tomorrow if you want.”
But when tomorrow became today, his dad had been even busier. Something important was happening somewhere in the world that had their dad’s full attention.
“C’mon,” said Evan. “Let’s take all this stuff inside. Maybe we should take the curtains down, too,” he added, eyeing the long red velvet drapes they had hung over the proscenium arch. Every once in a while the drapes would flap vigorously in the wind before dropping back to their usual droopy positions.
“No,” said Jessie. “The storm isn’t going to get us. It’s tracking west by about two hundred miles.” She sounded disappointed. Jessie liked to see things firsthand.
Evan looked at the curtains. It would be hard to get them down without help. Even though Evan was the second-tallest boy in fourth grade, he still wasn’t tall enough to take down the curtains without a ladder. And their dad? Evan knew better than to ask for his help.
Evan’s mother wasn’t a whole lot taller than he was, but they made a good team. He could hold the ladder and she could climb up—or the other way around. Whenever there was a tough job to do, they figured out how to do it together: installing the air conditioners, moving the refrigerator, digging up the dead lilac bush.
Evan heard the screen door slide open. He looked up, and there stood his father in the doorway with the phone to his ear and a manila folder in his hand. He waved the folder at the two of them. “Take-out,” he said. “You pick the place.”
“I don’t want take-out again!” said Jessie. “I want real food.”
“Sorry, Tootles. I don’t have time to cook dinner.”
“Do you even know how?” Jessie asked. Evan knew she wasn’t being sassy. She just had never seen their dad cook. But Evan was older, and he could remember a time when their dad would cook huge pancake breakfasts on sleep-in Sundays. That’s when their mom got to sleep late and their dad took care of them. It hadn’t happened often, but Evan could remember.
“I’m an amazing cook,” he said, waving the folder again, “but not tonight.” Then his attention turned back to his phone call, and he said, “Yes, I’m waiting. No, that isn’t the reason . . .” and he dropped the folder on the porch and went back inside.
The pizza was heavy and greasy and sat like a lead ball in Evan’s stomach. He’d eaten four slices, which was two more than usual. It wasn’t even about being hungry; it was just about wanting to eat.
“I feel like I’m going to barf,” said Evan.
“That’s because you ate like a pig,” said Jessie. It was her turn to do the dishes, which was lucky for her because there were just two plates and two cups. Their dad had grabbed a slice and a napkin and headed into their mother’s office. Rule number two in the Treski household was absolutely, positively no food in Mom’s office.
“Actually,” said Jessie, “pigs don’t overeat. They eat just until they’re full and then they stop. And a pig can run a seven-minute mile. Also, pigs can’t sweat. That’s why they roll in the mud to keep cool.”
Normally Evan would have argued about the seven-minute mile—a pig couldn’t run that fast!—but he was too busy thinking about his mother coming home tomorrow. She would be home in time for lunch! No more greasy pizza.
He decided to go upstairs and ask his dad if he and Jessie could ride to the airport with him. The door to his mother’s office was open a crack, so Evan pushed on it and went in.
His dad was sitting at his mom’s desk with his back to the door, typing on the computer. Evan looked over his dad’s shoulder and saw a picture of a big jet airplane on the screen. His dad was typing information into a form, and when he heard Evan behind him, he held up one hand as if to say, Hold on a minute. He clicked the mouse one last time, then turned to Evan.
“Change of plans,” he announced. “Did you know there’s a storm coming up the coast?”
“Yeah, Dad. We’ve been studying it in school all week. Jessie showed you the article she wrote.”
“That’s right! Good article. Okay, so you know, and Jessie knows. That’s good. So look, I need to head out tomorrow as soon as your mom gets home. I’m going to be lucky if I can catch a flight out before the airports start to close. Atlanta’s already closed, and they’ll close JFK by morning, which means I might need to go west to fly east . . .” Evan’s dad turned back to the computer screen. He began to scroll through the long list of flights. “Or if I can get an earlier flight to London . . . squeak out before the storm hits, and then . . . I can connect in Dubai, and from there—well, I’ll figure that part out later. There are ways . . .” His voice trailed off as he stared at the screen. Evan felt as if his dad had forgotten that he was even in the room. The silence between them opened wide like a canyon.
“So, you’re going to miss the magic show,” Evan finally said.
There was another moment of silence. Evan could hear the rain beginning to fall on the roof above their heads, and he thought about the red curtains hanging on the stage. They would get soaked. He hoped they wouldn’t be ruined.
Evan’s dad turned around to face him. “I’m really sorry. I am, believe me. I was looking forward to it. But hey, you don’t really need me for that disappearing trick. You can do it with the rabbit, or how about one of your friends? I bet one of them would love to be in your show.”
“But you said you would.” His dad had promised. Evan looked around the room. This was his mother’s room. Everything in it felt as if it was a part of her. The books on the bookshelf, the stacks of papers, the desk, the chair, even the tiny attic window tucked under the eave of the roof felt like her window. How many times had he come into this room, and there she was—sitting at her desk, working. It was one of those things you could count on.
“Sorry, man. Something’s come up. Something big. I can’t tell you what, but a lot of lives are at stake, and I, well, I just have to be there. Trust me on that. I don’t have a choice.”
“You’re not the only reporter in the world.” Evan kicked the toe of his sneaker against his mother’s file cabinet. It made a dull thud, punctuating the silence.
Evan’s dad leaned forward, as if he was going to share a secret. “No, but I’m the best.” He flashed his million-dollar smile at Evan. Evan didn’t smile back.
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Evan remembered the day his dad left. Evan was just seven years old—almost eight, and Jessie was six and a half. It was in May, the same month as now, except that the day had been cold. Evan remembered because he’d run outside when he realized what was happening and hidden himself high in the branches of the Climbing Tree, and then he’d wished he had a sweatshirt because the air was cold against his skin.
His dad had come out in the backyard looking for him, but Evan had kept quiet. He was up high enough that you would need to stand right under the tree to see him. Evan pulled his legs up and wrapped his arms around the trunk of the tree, hoping to be invisible.
His dad kept looking for him until he finally spotted him, and then he climbed right up the tree. His father, slow and heavy, didn’t know all the good branches where he could put his feet. Evan could climb up that tree even with his eyes closed. But his dad lumbered up, finally sitting on the branch just below Evan’s.
He’d started a long speech about how sad he felt and how leaving was something he had to do.
“You’re too young to understand this now,” he said. “But when you’re older, it’ll make sense, I promise. Every one of us has a purpose, a reason we’re put on earth. There’s a path for each of us, and you have to follow your path. Otherwise, your life is just wasted.”
Evan didn’t understand what these words meant or why his dad had to leave.
“I love you and Jessie and your mother very much, but this”—he raised his chin slightly in the direction of the house—“this isn’t the life I was meant for. This isn’t my path. This is your mother’s way. It’s just not right for me.”
“But can’t you go and then come back?” asked Evan. “And we’ll still be a family?”
“Hey,” said his dad, “we’ll always be a family. I just won’t live here anymore.”
“But why?” asked Evan. It didn’t make sense to him. It was home. Why wouldn’t you want to live at home?