“So you used to live in the States?” she asked.
The broom froze midsweep.
“Where did you learn this information?”
“My father told me.”
“How did he find this out?”
“I don’t know. I guess I assumed you told him, though he did say you weren’t the talkative type.” She began to back away from him.
“He is correct,” Felix said. He turned back to her, his eyes piercing straight through hers and into her brain.
She coughed. “So, did you? Live in the States, I mean.”
“I did.” His words fell like a fog, densely filling the air between them and making the empty space seem impossible to cross. Yet, of course, Max was undeterred by the smoke and mirrors of his disposition.
“When? How long?”
He exhaled another plume of exasperation and leaned his broom against the wall. “What tricks will you be performing at the show?”
“I . . . don’t really know yet. The usual, I suppose,” she said.
“Have you performed for a large crowd before?”
“Yes.” A lump, sensing at last that someone else in the room shared its suspicion regarding her skills as a magician (or anything else for that matter), rose in her throat. She swallowed to send it back into the depths.
“What sorts of crowds?” he asked.
“Well, just last year I performed for my cousin’s bar mitzvah.”
He chuckled, then leaned to whisper in her ear. “Performing for the Nazis will not be a bar mitzvah, fräulein.”
The disparaging air in his tone, the way his words seemed to dismiss her as just another silly girl, the way he moved as though she stood on land he owned, all of these things acted as the magic spell her mind needed.
“I am aware of that,” she said. “And, believe me, I’m going to blow the audience away.”
He was not yet impressed. “I am sure that you will. Because I am sure that you already have in your possession the sort of apparatus you need for such a venture. Perhaps a vanishing box, a saw table, or a levitating chair. Just as Madame Herrmann would suggest.” He stared into her eyes and let the pause grow to a silent roar. “You do have those, don’t you?”
She wanted to spit in his eye, but she was sure her mother would protest, so instead she decided to let her words spit on his heart. “I’ll check. When I leave this camp without shackles and go to my warm bed, where I don’t have an armed guard watching my every move. When I’m able to go where I want, when I want, and do what I want even though I’m still a child, while you, a grown man, have more rules than a toddler in time out. When I’m doing that, I’ll check, and then I’ll let you know.”
A hint of a smile stroked the edges of his mouth and he retrieved his broom to resume sweeping. “Herzlichen Glückwunsch, fräulein.”
She wasn’t finished. She was merely beginning. “So, Felix, when were you in the States?”
He swept for a full five seconds before he bothered to answer.
“I came to America in 1925. In 1929, I moved to New York City.”
Max barely kept herself from dropping her jaw in amazement. It wasn’t just that he’d lived in the United States for longer than she’d imagined. It was that he’d been to New York. Her New York. And, after having seen the Empire State Building, he still returned to Germany and joined the side of the war that hated every single one of the five boroughs. Such a decision could not be explained by logic, or by reason, or any other mental discipline. Instead, it could only be explained by the one medium that understood human nature explicitly. The movies.
“Did you get your heart broken or something?” she asked. After all, it was only a broken heart that could send someone off to fight for Hitler with the sound of Manhattan still echoing in his ears. Of this she was certain.
The broom slapped the floor out of rhythm and his shoulders tightened. “How did you hear about that?”
“I guessed. Was I right? Did you really run to shoot at red-blooded Americans just because of some girl?”
In one move, he dropped the broom, spun, and grabbed her shoulders. His face was flush and lined by the tears that had spilled down his cheeks. “Josephine was not some girl. She was—” he let go of her and closed his eyes, swallowing back whatever words were threatening to erupt.
“Oh, wow, I’m sorry,” Max said. “I had no idea.”
Felix rushed to pick up his broom and move out the door. “Sincerest apologies,” he said as the door closed behind him.
Max felt a bit like he’d just said her line in a play.
Chapter Eleven
“Read this quote from Houdini (not the ferret) today: ‘What the eyes see and the ears hear, the mind believes.’ Which is why I think some people are idiots.”
—Max’s diary, Tuesday, March 14, 1944
Shielded by her history textbook, Max was so consumed with drawing her rudimentary diagrams that she barely noticed the empty chair next to her. She had also barely noticed when Judy’s name had been called absent, or when Natalie had volunteered to take her “sick friend” that day’s homework. In fact, it had only been her overwhelming curiosity that spurred her to check the back row and see that Lola was the designated attendee for the Gremlins that day, although it hadn’t been strong enough for her to also notice Lola waving her to sit in one of the empty seats in the back row. Max’s mind was on a single track for which there were no stops.
Because Felix was right. She didn’t have any tricks big enough for the Nazis. And she was fairly certain she couldn’t yet count on the Gremlins to serve as an effective team to support her. She had a great deal of work to do.
When the lunch bell rang, Max was the last to walk out into the yard. The speed of her feet was apparently inversely proportional to the speed of her mind. It was a wonder she’d left her seat at all.
It was because of her diminished gait that she did not head straightway to the Gremlin gathering zone, but rather meandered around the yard, her mind planning trap doors and false bottoms and oh so many other delightful illusions that distracted her from noticing the two people she had intended to avoid: Margaret and Natalie.
“Hey, Max!” Natalie called as she and Margaret ran, arms linked, to become roadblocks in her path.
Both because of their affiliation with the Mesquite Tree Girls, and because they were interrupting her just as she was plotting the final step to an escape act, Max’s voice dripped with disdain. “Hello.”
Margaret seemed as uncomfortable in her presence as Max was irritated, but Natalie ignored any tension she sensed and was as bubbly and cheery as a cartoon character.
“We just wanted to apologize for what happened the other day,” Natalie said.
“You mean when you gave my ferret a concussion, or when you implied I was a Nazi?” Max asked as she stepped around them.
The girls rushed to block her way again. “To be fair, that was Judy’s doing, not ours,” Natalie said. “She has her own way, and there’s not much you can do to change her direction.”
She had a point. “Well then, I guess it’s Judy that should apologize. Or are you doing that for her?”
“She’s not going to, and somebody has to, so I guess, yeah, I am,” Natalie said, still grinning in a way that would seem quite fake if Max wasn’t certain that it was sincere.
“And, anyway, I wasn’t even there, so I for sure can’t be blamed,” Margaret added. This, of course, finally distracted Max’s curiosity. What was it about that house that had bothered Margaret so much?
“Right, and why weren’t you there?” she asked.
Margaret suddenly seemed rather interested in the flying habits of the gnats that zoomed across the grass. “I don’t know.”
“You ran away and you don’t know why?” Max could smell a poorly executed deception like Houdini could smell a hot dog in a lunch bag. “What, do you have mental problems or something?”
“What?” Margaret abandoned the gnats to their own devices. “
No, I don’t. I just— Your neighborhood really gives me the heebie-jeebies.”
“My neighborhood?”
“I’d rather not talk about it.”
Natalie laughed. “Oh, you’re so stupid, Margy.” She patted her friend, who looked as though she wanted to become a gnat herself now that she was familiar with the flight pattern. “She thinks that there are devil worshippers living on your street.”
“Devil worshippers?” Max tried to confine her laughter. “That’s crazy.”
“No it’s not,” Margaret snapped. “I know you people that come here from big cities think y’all know everything, but I’ve lived here my whole life. And I’m telling you, there’s some crazy folks that live on your street. Crazy, devil-worshipping Jews.”
“Devil-worshipping Jews?” Max asked, certain that her grandma Schauder was already packing a bag to come and crack a menorah over Margaret’s head.
“Okay, maybe not Jews, but—”
“Probably not Jews,” Max said.
“It could be Jews, but maybe not.”
Max shook her head.
Margaret sighed. “Anyway, these people are crazy, and they worship the devil, and they hate, hate that the military has moved in. So now they’re trying to get everyone to move away. So they can have Abilene back.”
Max laughed again. “Although I can’t argue that Abilene is probably the next best thing to hell, I really don’t think we have anything to worry about.”
There was a moment of very tense silence between them, which Natalie quickly disrupted with her giggle.
“Anyway,” Natalie said, “do you want to go with us after school?”
Max glanced over at the Gremlin area. Shoji was watching her, obviously anxious for her to join the group. “What are you guys going to do?”
“You heard me in class, right? I’m taking Judy her homework.” Natalie glanced around, then whispered louder than she’d been talking, “She’s not really sick, you know.”
Of course, Max would normally have found such a revelation far too enticing to leave by the wayside, but an invitation to Judy’s house was practically a slap across the face, and so she immediately declined the invitation and excused herself from the Mesquite Tree Girls. She hurried over to Shoji, apologizing for her tardiness before he even had a chance to talk. She expected him to issue her a pink slip and point her away.
“Oh, I thought you were just working the first part of your plan, whatever it is,” he said. “You know, get in good with the enemy so they don’t suspect you’re about to punch them in the nose?”
“Trust me,” she said, “I am not getting in good with the Monster Society of Evil. Not now, not ever.”
He shrugged and walked with her over to where the others were already sitting, all of their lunches piled in the middle of their circle like a smorgasbord. She set her meatloaf sandwich in the center, next to the bowl of rice she assumed belonged to Shoji. A paper plate with baked beans and chunks of bacon (which Lola had gotten from the lunch lady) was on the other side of that, and then there were two vacuum bottles.
“I brought chili,” Carl said, “which goes great with Shoji’s rice. Mr. Smarty-Pants here brought cream of celery soup. We might be able to give it to some cats or something later.”
“It’s not that bad,” Eric said. “And, besides, I also brought watermelon pickles. Did any of you bring watermelon pickles? Nope. And I brought enough for everybody.”
Max grabbed a piece of the green-and-pink pickle, took a moment to appreciate the tang, and then turned her attention to Shoji. “So you only brought rice?”
“No, he just eats the rest of his lunch by himself,” Eric said. “As a favor to all of us. Tell her what you had today, Shoji.”
Shoji grinned. “Octopus hot dogs.”
Lola scrunched up her nose. “Nasty. No offense, but your mom makes the most disgusting food.”
Shoji shrugged and poured a little chili on some rice. “Anyway, Max, what’s the prank? You said you’d have something by today.”
Max’s pulse began to race as she envisioned the pink slip yet again. The responsibility of planning the grand pranking gesture had completely slipped Max’s mind. Actually, it hadn’t slipped, but rather it had scooched out of the way so she could devote all her brain’s energy to the magic show.
“Oh, I have something, and it’s a humdinger,” she said. “I just want to wait until after school so I have the time to really flesh it out for you.”
Carl, whose eyes had glossed over when she said humdinger, picked up Max’s pad of paper and started looking through the diagrams. “Whoa, is this the prank? I didn’t know we were going to kill her.”
Max snatched the paper, which had a diagram for sawing a person in half, away from him. “No, that’s for something else. I’m doing a magic show on base.”
“We’re doing a magic show?” Eric asked.
“No, I . . .” Max started, then stopped.
Of course. Instead of getting them united so that they could function as her assistants, she could get them united by making them her assistants. It was a fantastic idea.
No, it was terrible.
But it could work.
Or it could fail miserably.
Either way, you really can’t do this show alone, can you?
Against her better judgment, she decided to try. “Actually, yes, we are doing a magic show. I’ll need all the help I can get for this thing.”
“But we don’t know how to do a magic show,” Lola said.
“I do,” Max said.
“Then maybe you should do it by yourself.”
“I probably should,” Max said, reconsidering her reconsidered idea. Still, even after a third consideration, she couldn’t deny that it did seem almost providential to have found this group right before the biggest show of her life. “But we need to learn how to work together, right? That’s the reason you guys haven’t pulled off any pranks yet. So I think this would be a good exercise.”
The Gremlins exchanged glances and then, after an apparent extrasensory confirmation, Shoji spoke for the group. “Okay, I guess. It could be fun. And, anyway, my mom keeps bugging me to do something for the troops. Putting on a show for them will probably blow her away.”
Max stopped herself from explaining that the show would be for far less savory characters. Much like you don’t jostle a cake when it’s fresh out of the oven, you should never rattle a commitment that has been freshly made. Instead, she decided to add an additional layer of appeal to the image. Seal their loyalties to their new boss, even if they didn’t know she’d just been promoted.
“Plus, I happen to know for a fact that one of Judy’s biggest dreams is to be the first girl from Abilene in the spotlight. So, when we put on this show, we basically—”
“Crush her dreams and throw them in her face,” Eric said. “Okay, yes, I like how that sounds. I can get behind this.”
The bell rang at just the appropriate time, right when Max had moved past simply having eaten more than her fair share of watermelon pickles into the dangerous territory of watermelon-pickle gluttony. She and Lola strolled across the yard, splitting the meatloaf sandwich, which had gone untouched thanks to the rest of the lunch options.
“You don’t have a prank idea at all, do you?” Lola asked once they were out of the male Gremlin earshot.
“What? What makes you think that?”
“It’s my gift,” Lola said. “Some people are good at art or math, I’m good at smelling a lie. You got this magic show and it made you forget all about the pranking. Right?”
Max refused to answer, which was of course an answer in itself. Through the rest of the day, she could feel Lola’s eyes burning through the back of her head, reading her soul like a psychic. When the final bell rang, Max couldn’t wait to hurry home. She left before the bus, a fact she only realized after she’d walked five blocks.
On the sixth block, she was attacked from behind by Natalie and Margaret. “Hey, where ar
e you going?” Natalie asked.
Max glanced at Natalie’s arms, where she was carrying Judy’s homework, and decided a little reconnaissance might not be a bad thing. It was always important to gather as much information as possible about an enemy, and she needed some cards up her sleeve to keep the Gremlins happily following her lead. “I was hoping to catch you guys. I decided to go with you to Judy’s.”
Natalie squealed, and she and Margaret locked arms with Max as they walked down the street.
Chapter Twelve
Max wasn’t entirely sure what she expected Judy’s house to be like. Part of her suspected Judy lived in an ornate, well-to-do estate, fitting for her pious and uppity personality. Another part of her believed that Judy came from lowly dredges, the sort of sad background that would explain her need to build her self-esteem on the fallen confidence of wounded classmates.
Instead, Judy’s home was completely ordinary. The fence had a decent coat of paint, but could probably use another without that fact serving as an insult. The windows were dusty and streaky in exactly the way a gallant mother would permit them to be. The car in the driveway was modest, just new enough to run well, but still old enough that it was most likely purchased used.
But the garden was impeccable.
As they stood at the door, waiting for someone to respond to Natalie’s knock, it was this perfectly trimmed and tuned garden that captured Max’s interest. As though she were seeing a hint of a trap door or a false pocket, the garden implied there was more to the story. After all, who takes care of a garden when there’s a war going on?
Judy opened the door and Max found even more evidence there was a great amount of trickery going on. Judy was wearing heels, which by itself was a blaring siren. She was also in shorts, and her hair was tucked into a turban that matched her top. It was not the attire of one who was sick, unless of course they were destined for a surgery that would be featured in a newsreel.
“Oh, hello darlings,” Judy said, then she noticed Max. “What’s she doing here?”
“She wanted to come along,” Natalie said. “You know, to smooth things over.”
AbrakaPOW Page 7