One Day and One Amazing Morning on Orange Street (12 page)

Harry Houdini dashed under the bed. Robert hung face-down over the side and watched the mouse select a sunflower seed from the shoebox.

“Sure, New Zealand is far away, but that's a lame excuse, right, Harry? Because the Internet is everywhere!”

Robert noticed that his voice sounded deeper and more gravelly when his head was hanging down like that. “The Internet is
everywhere
, man!” he repeated, louder this time.

There was a soft knock at his door. “Are you all right?” his mother asked.

“I'm fine,” said Robert. Just as Harry was making another run for it, Robert grabbed him and placed him under his quilt. The plan had been to introduce the mouse to his mother after a training period. Harry wasn't ready yet.

Mrs. Green opened the door a crack and peeked in. “Are you sure you're all right?”

Maybe he'd stop acting so babyish if his mother stopped
treating him like a baby! Like asking him if he was all right, over and over.

Robert lay across his quilt casually, his right arm on top of the mouse underneath. The quilt had colorful fish on it. Robert's entire bedroom, in fact, was done up in an aquatic theme. He even had splashy aquamarine waves painted on his walls. Harry Houdini's wriggling made the quilt's fish look as if they were swimming upstream.

Mrs. Green didn't seem to notice. “Your father will be here to pick you up soon,” she said.

“I can tell time, Mom,” Robert said. He waved his left arm, the one with his wristwatch, hoping to distract his mother from the job of his other arm. That's what magicians learn to do—distract the audience from the magician's trickery. Then, as a guaranteed distraction, he flashed a modified shark face at her.

His mother took a deep breath. Robert could tell she wanted to tell him he was being snippy, but she decided not to.

“Just wanted to remind you,” was all she said. “Your father doesn't like to wait.”

That was another thing. Life had been going along pretty well until “Dad,” as Robert's mom used to call him, got that new name: “your father.” Talk about disappearing! Sure
his father came to get him every Wednesday evening and alternate weekends. But his shaving stuff and his clothes and his books and his camera and his paintbrushes (it was his dad who had painted the splashy waves on his wall) and Dad himself, with his deep, gravelly voice and big feet had— poof!—vanished from 302 Orange Street, just around the time Robert had started acting like a jerk.

It wasn't as if he were the only jerk doing stuff on Orange Street—making fun of girls, hiding stink bombs in garbage pails, talking snippy to adults . . . for starters. He was just the newest jerk. If Leandra's brothers were bad influences, was that his fault? And hadn't he been a voice of reason, that time A.J. Jackson, wearing a Superman cape, wanted to use a dog leash to swing from his grandparents' ceiling fan? (Although those guys had been acting less jerky lately, for some unknown reason.)

And then, all of a sudden you had a little kid like Edgar disappearing into the hospital and coming out all different: no smiling, no talking, and he was just a little kid, man! It could happen to anyone, of course, but why Edgar, for mackerel's sake? Edgar, who was too tiny, and let's face it, too sweet, to even think about acting like a jerk!

When you came right down to it, that's what Robert loved about magic tricks. It was all about disappearing and reappearing, disappearing and reappearing. And the disappearing and reappearing part happened when
you
, the magician, wanted it to happen!

Now Robert stood in front of his dresser mirror, wearing a towel as a cape, and a sneer. “It's time, ladies and gents, for The Great Rob-o's Incredibly Expensive Magic Show!” His voice was deep and gravelly. He bowed, then sneered some more and faced his audience again, standing on tiptoe.

“Here I stand, floating two inches off the ground, wearing my Incredibly Expensive Floating Shoes (only $249.99 while supplies last). I shall now perform my Incredibly Expensive Drop of Blood Trick ($174.99, knife included). Watch how I pierce my thumb with this blade. Yes, ladies and gents, it's a real knife. Watch me squeeze out a drop of my own blood! I press my thumb with my fingertip. One second, two seconds, release.
Wow!
What do we have here? Ladies and gents, the drop of blood has been transformed into a . . . ladybug!”

The Great Rob-o held up his hand. “Hold your applause, please! What's that, ma'am?” He listened patiently to a
question from the imaginary audience. “Rest assured, ma'am. Neither the ladybug nor the Great Rob-o have been harmed during this Incredibly Expensive Trick.”

Robert opened his top dresser drawer.

“And now, ladies and gents, it's time for the Incredibly Expensive Handkerchief Surprise (only $349.99, with a DVD and hand-woven silk handkerchief included)!”

Robert pulled a pair of his underpants from the drawer, stand-ins for the incredibly expensive hand-woven silk handkerchief. He turned the underpants inside out, then right side out again. “As you can see, there's nothing whatsoever inside this handkerchief,” he assured his audience. “Now, sir, I wave the handkerchief around your head, like so, and, what's that you say, sir? There's a mouse in your lap? It must have magically appeared from inside the handkerchief! And now I will make that mouse disappear again!”

Robert stopped waving the underpants. Harry Houdini, who had been scampering around the room during the trick,
had
disappeared, but into the clothes closet. He found the mouse shivering inside a sneaker.

“Come here, fella,” Robert whispered. He held the struggling mouse against his T-shirt and flopped down on the bed again. He could feel Harry's heart pitter-pattering.
Harry's accusing left eye looked right at him, reminding Robert of someone, but he just couldn't think who it was at that moment. He patted Harry's head until the mouse's long, ridged tail finally stopped twitching.

Green likes mice
. Actually, when you came right down to it, he did. They were sort of like very small friends.

“Stay, little guy,” Robert whispered. But now he could feel Harry's claws really digging in, so he let the mouse go. Harry scurried across his chest and under the bed again.

Robert sighed. He gathered up his tennis balls and tried to juggle again, but lacking the Gravity-Defying Juggling Balls, he failed miserably, as usual.

What a jerk he'd been, thinking he could tame and train his own mouse! And all those ladybugs he'd collected in the empty lot, none of them with any talent. Oh, how he wished he had big bucks so he could send away for those incredibly expensive tricks! Then he'd find out how they were really done.

“Those online videos tell you nothing! They just get you to shop!” he called out to Harry Houdini, whom he could hear scuttling around under the bed.

The truth was, he wasn't even sure Harry was a mouse. There was a chance he was a small rat. Maybe that had been
the problem in the training department. And of course there would be no way to convince his mother to keep a rat.

Performing great magic tricks just wasn't in his future.

Except . . . except for the possibility of real magic.

On a night table by his bed was the book he'd borrowed from Ms. Snoops,
Incredible Magic Tricks for a Rainy Day
. Incredibly babyish tricks, thought Robert.

Except . . . except for that one trick—the one trick which cost $174.75 online, and according to the website had been a closely guarded secret for over one hundred years. But to Robert's amazement, there it was in
Incredible Magic Tricks for a Rainy Day
, for anyone to discover, whether it was raining outside or not—for free!

And Robert had the trick's magic ingredient, the ingredient that would guarantee the trick's success, safely tucked away in his backpack.

A car honked twice beneath his window. Robert grabbed his backpack and opened the window.

“I'll be right down, Dad!” he hollered.

That's when Harry Houdini sprinted across the bed, jumped onto the windowsill, and in an instant, poof!

Disappeared.

t was evening on Orange Street and you could see the sun, like a juicy orange itself, slowly dropping down, down through the palms and the sycamores. As it dropped, you felt the air cooling your skin, at last. You breathed in the sharp supper smells—different smells from different windows: grilled cheese (301), turkey burgers (301½), salmon croquettes (302), scrambled eggs (303), franks and beans (305), teriyaki chicken (308), and more. If you stood smack in the middle of the block, all the smells jumbled together into one big spicy stew.

And you'd hear things you didn't hear during the day—blaring TVs,
a toilet's flush, a tired kid crying about one thing or another, an old bird squawking “All You Need Is Love.”

Minutes before the sun went down completely, it was as if every single thing on Orange Street stopped. No smells, no shouts, no songs—everything as still as a photograph. Just that big old orange ball hanging in the sky, waiting to drop so that night could take over. You were waiting, too; waiting and watching, holding your breath those very last seconds, and then, (so quickly you missed it!) the sun splashed into the ocean and disappeared.

Evenings didn't last long. That particular evening, there was just enough time . . .

Just enough time for Harry Houdini to streak twelve times through the weeds and flowers and vines of the empty lot with his brother and two cousins, then follow his mother up the tree's trunk, hang out for a while, then race down again to gnaw on a fallen orange.

And for another mother to hover in the branches of that tree, making quick figure eights with tiny wings. Enough time to search with tiny diamond eyes, and know that something was missing.

And for Ruff and Mitzi to chow down, and then enjoy an evening game of fetch (Ruff) and one long, meticulous bath (Mitzi).

And just enough time for Bunny/Bonita to chat with her mom by phone, as she watched the sun go down over Orange Street. It was a sunset her mother had already seen, two hours earlier. There was enough time to scribble down a note:
PLANE TOMORR. MORN.,
10:33
A.M.
,
TREE
, and then think about her brave pioneer ancestors, Bunny and Augustus. Sure, they had lots of worries, lots of reasons to quake in their pioneer boots. But at least they didn't have to worry about the plain old sky over their heads.

And there was just enough time for Leandra to tell the truth.

Leandra, Big Mom, and Little Pop were sitting around the table in the Jasmine Pink living room section of her grandparents' home. In the center of the table was a small FedEx box. Inside the box was a dessert bowl lined with a soft nest of tissues, where Bean had been placed.

“Uh-huh,” Big Mom was saying into her cell phone. “Uh-huh . . . Right. Excuse me . . .” Big Mom put her hand over the receiver. “Make a blanket with one of those tissues, too. Go ahead. Cover it up. It needs to be warm.”