When Friendship Followed Me Home (6 page)

16

THE EXPLODED RAINBOW

Mrs. Lorentz wasn't at the front desk, so that was good at least. Halley's notebooks and sparkle pens were spread all over the table like an exploded rainbow. Black beret today. Glaring green eyes for just a second and then no time for me. “This is me not talking to you,” she said.

“I'm sorry.”

“You're an idiot.”

“I know.”

“You don't know anything. My mother and I were like, did he die or something? Gimme your freaking backpack.” She scooped Flip into her lap. “Here I'm doing all this research about the Read to Rufus stuff. Me and Mom are on a video conference with this school where the kids have a hard time reading. Everybody's completely psyched, and we're telling them we're ready as soon as you and Flip are, and you like vanish? What the freak? What did I do? Where were you? And what happened to your face?”

I told her, and then I told her everything else. You know how you can tell when somebody's really listening to you? Like you can almost see the words traveling through the air, into her eyes, and then they sink into her heart? Like she wants to take in the way you feel, even if you're sad, because she wants to be there with you? For you? She hugged me and whispered, “It's okay, it's okay, you can cry.”

“I'm really okay,” I whispered back.

“No, really, you can. I want you to.”

“But I don't want to.”

She leaned back a little to look at me. She looked at me for a while, and then she tilted her head to the side. I swear it was like I went from hardly knowing her to knowing her better than I ever knew anybody, maybe even Mom. No, the other way around. She knew me. She could read my mind. “You feel like you can't breathe, right?” she said. “Let's get out of here.”

• • •

That afternoon was crazy warm for September, and the boardwalk was busy. Somehow her hand was even colder today. “Cypress Hills, by the cemeteries?” she said. That's where Jeanie and Leo lived. “Are you changing schools?”

“No, I'm not being the new kid again.” Everybody kept stopping to pet Flip, and he loved it.

“How long were you in there?” she said.

“Where?”

“Foster care.”

“Until like two years ago.”

She stopped walking. “Why'd it take so long?”

“I was a drop-off,” I said. “At the police station, you know? A few days old, my file says. They do blood tests on you, to see if you're healthy. My blood had drugs in it.”

“From your mom.”

“That scares people away.” I shrugged. “The only thing I'm addicted to is those chocolate chip cookies your mom leaves out on her desk.”

“Ben? I'm sorry.”

“Why? The caretakers were cool, most always.” I held back on the fact that everything was always changing. People coming and going. You'd make a friend one day and she'd be gone the next or maybe you would be. After a while you stopped trying to remember names. “One Christmas we had a grab bag. I ended up with this Chewbacca poster. I never hung it. I figured I'd only have to take it down again.” I was doing it again, saying what I was thinking. “Hey, did you tell your dad I hate magic?”

“He said he'd like to show you a trick or two.”

“I don't think so,” I said.

“You can tell me, you know? About your mom?”

“I did.”

“You told me she died. You didn't tell me about
her.
”

“She's in a better place and all that, right?” I said. “Nothing to be sad about, Traveler.”

“Traveler?”

“Life's a journey. The best part is going uphill. Things come all at once, bad brings good, one door closes, two open, go through both.”

“She used to say that to you, right?”

“Really, Halley, I'm okay. Yeah. It's windy.” I said that in case I started to cry, which I didn't.

“It
is
windy.”

“I wish we had sunglasses,” I said.

“Yeah.” She squeezed my hand really hard and didn't let go and we kept walking fast and didn't look at each other or say anything for a while.

“Like, how are
you
feeling?” I said.

“Shut up, Ben.”

“I'm sorry.”

“No, it's just, I don't know, your mom dies, and you're worried about me?”

“No, not worried—totally not. Just seeing if, like, you're feeling good. You know.”

“Don't worry about me. I don't like to lose.”

“I know.”

“You better. My good numbers are up, the bad numbers are down. I'm awesome. So are you. Flip's more awesome than both of us. We are a trio of terrificness. Yeah.” Suddenly she pulled me off the boardwalk toward the street. “Frick it,” she said. “It's time for you to meet the one and only Mercurious Raines. C'mon Flip!”

17

THE LABORATORY OF MERCURIOUS RAINES

He rented office space in a church basement. The entrance was a red door with black metal hinges. Gothic letters spelled out:

THE LABORATORY OF MERCURIOUS RAINES

ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK . . .

(MAGIC LESSONS BY APPOINTMENT)

“You've really never heard of him?” Halley said. “He's like the king of the bar mitzvah circuit. He does stuff in Manhattan too.” She pushed on the door and it
creeeeaked
. Flip pawed at my leg to be picked up.

The music was blaring,
Fantasia, The Sorcerer's Apprentice.
The walls were like the ones at the library, silkscreened with giant pictures. There were Saturn and the moon, and then the Halo Galaxy, and burning bright across the ceiling, Halley's Comet.

A few parents watched from the back. Three little kids
sat in folding chairs and watched a fourth learn a trick from a man in a sparkly purple sweat suit and a white cape. He looked maybe forty. He wore a silver sombrero. His hair was long and pulled back in a ponytail. His goatee was a little long too. Mercurious Raines wore gold basketball sneakers that were so shiny I felt like I was looking into the sun. He knelt on one knee next to the kid onstage and patted the kid's back.

“Go ahead,” he said.

The kid frowned. He snapped his fingers, and a world globe the size of a basketball materialized, spinning on his fingertip. “No way,” the kid said. “I did that?”

“
You
did,” Mercurious Raines said.

“I
did
it, Mom,” the kid said.

Halley elbowed me.

“You have sharp elbows,” I whispered.

“You have fantastically sensitive ribs,” she said.

After the class Halley introduced me and Flip to her dad. “Not a big magic fan, I hear, Ben?”

“How'd you do that thing with the globe?” I said. “Or is this one of those ‘A great magician never reveals his secrets'?”

“Oh, I think a true magician shares all the magic he can,” he said. “Give me a minute to make a phone call, and then I'll show you the globe illusion.” He stepped into a smaller room where he had his desk and closed the door most of the way.

“See?” Halley said. “He's not some evil warlock, right?”

“He's nice.”

“Halley, Ben, can you guys help me for a sec?” Mr. Lorentz called from behind his office door. “I can't find my phone. I swear, if my head wasn't attached to my shoulders, I'd lose that too.”

I pushed through the door. Mr. Lorentz was standing on the far side of the room, or most of him was. His head was gone.

It was on the other side of the room, on his desk. It said, “Oh wait, there it is.” And then back on the far side of the room, his headless body pulled the phone from his back pocket. The headless body crossed to the desk and held the phone to Mr. Lorentz's bodiless head. The head said to the body, “Would you mind dialing for me?”

Halley was cracking up and Flip sprinted circles around the headless body. I pulled out my inhaler and sucked in a double shot.

The headless body stepped toward me, and Mr. Lorentz's head was back on his shoulders. “Ben, it's just mirrors and video projection, son,” he said.

“No, I know, it's just I have to get home for dinner.” I scooped up Flip and got out of there. I didn't get more than a block away before I had to sit on the steps of an apartment building. Flip nudged my hand to pet him.

Halley showed up out of breath. “Okay, need I remind you I finished a round of chemotherapy not long ago? A
little getting out and about and moving around is good for me, but I'm not ready for an all-out sprint. You're actually not as slow as I thought you'd be.”

“I truly appreciate that.”

She rubbed my back and after a while we'd caught our breath. “Let's have it,” she said. “Where's the magician trauma come from?”

“Tell me about your novella. What happens next?”

“I'll tell you after you tell me. Clearly this is something awesome we have shaping up here, this friendship. We click.” She winked at me. “So?”

So I told it to her, the story of the magic box.

18

THE MAGIC BOX

Kayla was her name. She was five, I was almost ten. She was my shadow. I was the oldest in the group home and I read to the little kids a lot. She had asthma too. We'd be in the kitchen together, on the nebulizers. They're these machines that help you breathe better. Lots of kids had asthma in that neighborhood. We were just downwind of the power plant.

Anyway, this one time, between puffs of medicine, Kayla and I were gabbing away, which you're not supposed to do when you're hooked up to the machine, but Kayla was all psyched because Christmas was coming. Santa appeared to her in a dream and said he was bringing her a box filled with magic. I was like, “What kind of magic?”

“The real kind,” she said. “He told me it's the greatest treasure.”

So I already had the box, this old wooden jewelry case I found on the street on garbage night, which is where I found a lot of my books too. This box was perfect, Halley,
I swear—dark blue velvet inside. So what if the top was a little cracked? I could glue it back together, right? But I was like totally freaked for the next two weeks, trying to figure out what I was going to put in that box. I mean, what can be the greatest treasure? The only thing you'll ever need to be happy? It doesn't exist.

Then, two days before Christmas, I figured it out, and of course it was a book.
The Little Prince.
That was the book that got me into sci-fi, this kid flying around the solar system, trying to find out what makes life so beautiful, right? And you learn that your eyes aren't really the things that let you see. That you can only truly see with your heart. Anyway, I figured it was as close as I could get to real magic, reading that book to Kayla. So my foster caregiver took me to the bookstore. I had just enough allowance saved up to get the book, and it fit perfectly in the box.

Christmas Eve came. Every year we had a Santa, and this time it was a Santa magician, and he was flat-out terrific. I mean he turned candle smoke into a goblin head. He made coins spark and vanish and reappear in the kids' hands. I was beginning to think this guy was for real, that magic was real. I was beginning to believe. Then he made a book flap its covers and flutter like a dove, and that's when I got the idea that maybe he could do the same thing with
The Little Prince,
so Kayla really would think it was the greatest treasure.

All the kids were oohing and ahhing, except I was
beginning to get the idea Magic Santa kind of didn't want to be with us, a bunch of rejects, because he kept looking at his watch. Pretty soon he was rushing through the show, one trick into the next, no break for applause. He made me his assistant, simple stuff, hold this, get me that. I was standing next to him the whole time, and his phone kept buzzing. Finally he said he had to step out for a sec, Mrs. Claus was calling, he'd be right back.

Our caretaker could tell the guy was stressed, and she told me to bring him a cup of hot cider. So I did, and he's in this huge fight with his girlfriend, practically yelling into the phone, “What do you want me to do? It's a hundred bucks. I just have to give them the stupid presents, then I'm out of here.” Then it was, “Fine, good, spend Christmas by yourself.” He stuffed the phone into his pocket and noticed me. He sighed. “Sorry you heard that. Let's get back in there and finish up.”

“Can I ask you a favor?” I said, and then I asked him if he could make
The Little Prince
fly.

“No way,” he said. He told me the other book wasn't really a book at all but a bunch of cardboard rigged special with super-thin wires.

I was a little heartbroken, I have to admit. It made me realize everything else he did was fake too. I mean, that awesome trick with the coins? Who doesn't want to believe
things can vanish and then come back? “It all looked so real,” I said.

He rolled his eyes. “Why do you need the book to fly?” he said.

So I told him about Kayla and the magic box and how she's expecting this thing inside it to be a surprise that takes your breath away. Those were the exact words I used too. He repeated them, “A surprise that takes your breath away. Okay,” he said. “I'll make it a big deal. She'll flip.”

“What are you going to do?” I said.

“Just trust me,” he said. “It'll leave her breathless.”

So I went back in and rounded up the kids for the grab bag. Everybody got something they loved, except Kayla. You could tell she was about to cry, until Magic Santa said, “Now wait, I almost forgot, I have one last present here, a most special present, a magic box for Kayla.” He reached under his big red cape and presented it like with a flourish, you know? Kayla was so flipped out her eyes went from almonds to circles. He held the box in front of her and told her to lift the lid, and before she did, she said, “See Ben? Magic is real.”

She lifted the lid and this burst of crackly red smoke shot out, all the way up to the ceiling, in like half a second. Everybody jumped back, but then we're clapping, because it was such a cool surprise, right? And we're all covered in this red glitter. And then everybody stopped clapping.

Kayla was on the floor. She rolled up like a pill bug, and she was breathless all right. She couldn't breathe. Everybody was yelling call the ambulance, she has asthma, and the magician was like, “But it's not real smoke. It's just glitter. It's harmless.”

But it was the fright that triggered the attack, and it was a really bad one. She was so shocked and panicked her throat started to close up. I was trying to make her breathe off of my inhaler, but she couldn't do it. The nebulizer was no good either. By the time the paramedics got there her chest was all puffed up because she couldn't get the air out of her lungs, and she's passing out and there's this shriek. Her wheezing. Like somebody's screaming, far away. Like you can't see them but you know they're being murdered.