AbrakaPOW

by Isaiah Campbell

  “Okay, listen everyone,” Major Larousse finally said to the room. “Obviously something has happened to the power. We just need you all to stay put while we get this worked out.”

  As soon as he said that, the power returned. The lights came back up, and the spotlight turned back on. Of course, in the confusion, Eric had turned the spotlight so it was pointed in completely the wrong direction, but he hurried and got it moved back around to focus on Max.

  “Hey, I guess I’ve got a little magic in me, too,” Major Larousse said with a grin. Many in the room chuckled.

  Max tried to shake off the interruption. “Anyway, I suppose that’s the sign that we’ve gone on as long as we can.” More people laughed. “So, let’s bring Felix back and finish the show.”

  She tapped the box twice and nodded to Shoji.

  He opened the door.

  Nobody applauded.

  She turned to look.

  Felix was still gone.

  Max began to sweat, probably from the heat of the spotlight, but possibly because her nerves were beginning to push through again. She motioned for Shoji to close the box and turned back to the audience.

  “Well, I suppose it didn’t quite work that time. Let’s try again.” She waved her wand in the air. “Abrakadabra!” she said.

  Shoji opened the door.

  Felix wasn’t there.

  Shoji shot her a very confused look.

  Somebody in the audience coughed. Another couple whispered to each other.

  Max ran over and tapped the false wall inside the box, which was designed to slide open to the compartment where the person who had “vanished” was stashed away. “Felix,” she whispered inside. “Come on, that’s your cue.” She closed the box door.

  She turned and cleared her throat. She raised the wand over her head.

  And then the camp sirens began to wail.

  Everyone froze where they were.

  The back door flew open and a guard ran in.

  “There’s been a breakout!” he yelled. “The prisoners have escaped!”

  Chapter Thirty

  Everyone was spread out across the rec hall, looking for the escapee.

  That is, they were looking for Houdini.

  It should be noted here that “everyone” in this context was the Gremlins and their parental units. Minus Major Larousse, who was off overseeing the search for the escaped prisoners. Plus Gil, who should have been off looking for the prisoners but had been commissioned by the major to escort Mrs. Larousse and Max home.

  Speaking of Max, she was also not looking for Houdini. She was sitting behind the Vanishing Box, crying. And, although she cared very much who saw her, she didn’t care enough to actually stop crying. There was nearly nothing that could make her stop crying.

  She had decided that was the most appropriate reaction to have when a curse comes to fruition. Even if one does not believe in such things, there is really nothing worse in the world than living as an accursed person. Particularly if you are an accursed person who also has suddenly lost your ferret.

  It was, to be sure, the worst of times.

  “Hey, I found him!” Gil yelled as he scooped Houdini up from between two sandbags. “See, everything’s not so terrible.” He walked over and dropped Houdini in Max’s lap and then patted her on the head. “Cheer up, kiddo. The show was great.”

  As soon as Carl’s dad saw that the ferret had been found, he signaled for Carl to come help him and they, along with the other men and boys who gradually joined their number, lifted the Vanishing Box and loaded it onto their truck. Watching it move out the door had a strange effect on Max. As Houdini feverishly licked away the bunny-bait that had already dripped down her cheeks, she was able to dry up any remaining tears and find the strength to stand.

  “How many escaped?” she asked, addressing the major crisis for the first time since her show had come to such an abrupt conclusion.

  Gil eyed her for a second, suspicious that this reprieve in tears was an illusion. “Eleven from out there, plus Felix, so twelve.”

  She sighed and rubbed noses with Houdini. “I just can’t believe Felix would run off like that.”

  Gil shrugged. “When the lights went out, he probably realized it was his one chance. Heading out the side entrance in all the hullabaloo makes sense to me. It’s what I would have done in the same situation.”

  She looked at him with surprise. “You plan on escaping from prison a lot?”

  “Listen, it’s part and parcel of being a soldier. Doesn’t matter what side you’re on, we’re all trained to find our way out of captivity and back to our battle stations.”

  “Because a performer doesn’t give up until the show is over,” she said.

  He chuckled. “Yeah, that’s what this war is. The Ringling Brothers have it wrong. World War II is the Greatest Show on Earth.” He put his hand on her back. “Now, let’s get you and your mom home so I can start playing my part again, okay?”

  By the time they pulled into the Larousse driveway, Max was already asleep and didn’t notice that Gil carried her in, nor that her mother gently washed her face, took down her hair, and covered her with a blanket. She slept through Major Larousse finally coming home near midnight, through the phone ringing an hour later, and even missed him leaving and returning just a few hours shy of daybreak. She was blissfully unaware of the unfolding drama in the aftermath of the escape, such as the discovery of the tunnel the prisoners had dug under one of their huts with broken plates and bowls, or the realization that the escaped prisoners were all members of The Black Hand.

  She didn’t wake up until dawn, when Houdini finally gave in to the itchies he had been ignoring from the time they left the base. He scratched enough for three ferrets and nearly turned over his cage. She groggily let him out to drag himself on the carpet and then looked outside at the sun peeking over the horizon, right behind the Vanishing Box.

  The surplus of sleep gave her renewed gumption and rejuvenated optimism, and to celebrate this, she found her shoes, went out, and kicked the Vanishing Box, feeling that it was a bit of a symbol of all the problems at hand.

  When she did, the box tipped over and fell with a crash, knocking some of the boards loose. She felt a very real satisfaction at this and returned to her room. She thought how silly she’d been to fear an imaginary curse. And also to believe in an imaginary friend like Felix. Not that his existence was imaginary, but rather his friendship was, and so he might as well have not existed at all. Especially since he was long gone, now.

  Good riddance, she thought and almost convinced herself.

  Later, as she ate breakfast with her mother and a very tired, unshaven, and grumpy Major Larousse, she realized that she was incorrect. When it comes to escaped Nazis, there is no good in their riddance. None whatsoever.

  He muttered a brief summary of the previous night’s developments through his eggs and toast, washing down every sentence with several gulps of black coffee. When he told them about the tunnel, Max stopped drinking her orange juice.

  “So that’s what they were doing under the hut?” she asked.

  Major Larousse narrowed his eyes and glared at her like he would glare at an insubordinate recruit. “You knew they were doing something under the huts?” he growled.

  She gulped. “Uh, I, uh, I might have— Well, actually, Shoji— We saw something but we didn’t know what it was.”

  Major Larousse set his coffee cup down forcefully. “And is there a reason you didn’t tell me?”

  “Larry,” Mrs. Larousse said as she wiped up the spill. “Does it matter now?”

  He closed his eyes and shook his head. “No, it doesn’t. It doesn’t change anything.” He sighed. “But at least we can maybe use some of the information to find these creeps.” He dug into his pocket, pulled out his keys and a napkin and set them on the table, and then finally found a pen. “Okay, give me some details.”

  Max picked up the napkin. It had the map Shoji had drawn on it. “Wh
ere’d you get this?” she asked.

  “We found it in the tunnel. The prisoners must have made it so they’d know how to get around once they got out. But where they got them—”

  “Probably from Felix,” Max said without thinking. “It’s the same map that me and Shoji gave to him, and he’d copied it on a napkin just like this.”

  Major Larousse didn’t say anything. He set his pen down and took a sip of his coffee. Then he took another. After which, he took yet another.

  “Dad? Are you okay?”

  He slammed the cup down and Max jumped. “You gave them a map?”

  “Larry,” Mrs. Larousse said.

  “No,” Max said. “We gave the map to Felix.”

  “Yes, one of the many prisoners who escaped last night,” he said. “And you, my daughter, gave him the map they used in their escape.”

  “Well, yeah,” Max said. “I mean, we didn’t do it so he could escape or anything, though.”

  Major Larousse stood up and leaned on the table. “My gosh, when you said you were going to make a prisoner disappear in your act, I didn’t know you actually meant you were going to be an accomplice.”

  “Larry, please,” Mrs. Larousse said.

  “What’s on the docket for your next trick?” Major Larousse asked. “Are you going to help Hitler disappear right before we drop a bomb on his butt?”

  “Major Larousse!” Max’s mother said and moved over to shield her daughter from his words. “You should save your bullets for the enemy.”

  He seemed prime to reload and resume firing, but then he saw Max’s lip trembling. Every day that he’d been on the front lines in Africa, he had looked at a picture of his daughter and remembered how hard she’d fought the tears when he had kissed her good-bye back in Brooklyn. The image of her trembling lip had kept him alive every day. And now it made him want to die.

  He quickly excused himself and hurried off to work. He had Nazis to recapture. And a daughter’s heart to mend, eventually.

  He had a feeling that finding the Nazis was going to be the easier of those tasks.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  “Of course it’s not my fault. But it doesn’t mean I feel good about it.”

  —Max’s Diary, Wednesday, March 29, 1944

  Max had tried every excuse she could imagine to stay home from school, but they’d each failed miserably. Her mother made it very clear that, barring loss of limb or severe bloodletting, Max would be in school that day as scheduled. Grandma Schauder had not fled the Kaiser, braved the ocean on a rickety boat, and very nearly starved to death in the worst April snowstorm in Philadelphia history to then have her granddaughter chicken out of school just because she was under the weather and had possibly aided in the biggest prison-camp escape of the war.

  “It’s not like she’d know,” Max grumbled from the passenger seat of their car.

  “Oh, she’d know,” Mrs. Larousse said. “She always knows. Trust me.”

  Max didn’t argue. Motherly Magic grows more powerful with age and with each additional prefix that is added to the title, from Grand, to Great, and so on. When Max eventually had her own children, she would not be surprised if Grandma Schauder was changing the alignment of the planets or redirecting hurricanes to water her garden.

  When Max got out of the car in front of the school, her mother turned the car off and got out as well.

  “What are you doing?” Max asked. Mrs. Larousse did not reply.

  Together, they walked through the halls and into Mrs. Conrad’s room. Max took her seat, still perplexed, and Mrs. Larousse took Mrs. Conrad to the side and had a brief conference with her. After they were done, Mrs. Larousse turned to address the class.

  “Boys and girls,” she started, because it is a long-honored tradition among grown-ups that children must be reminded that they are children before they are dealt any kind of grown-up news, after which they will be expected to handle the news like grown-ups. “I am not sure if you all have heard, but some prisoners escaped from Camp Barkeley last night.”

  The other students in the room began to whisper to each other. Which was a perfect opportunity for Judy to whisper to Max. “Well, golly, I wonder how that happened.” Max did her best to ignore her adversary. It was much easier under her mother’s watchful eye.

  Mrs. Conrad hushed the room and Mrs. Larousse continued. “I wanted to make sure you all knew that my husband, Major Larousse, and the rest of the army are doing everything they have to do to make sure they recapture the prisoners and return them to the camp.”

  “Weren’t you on base last night?” Judy whispered. “Doing your show that you were bragging about?”

  Max nodded but held her tongue.

  “So there is no need to worry,” Mrs. Larousse concluded. “The prisoners will be captured, probably before sundown today, and nobody is in any sort of danger.” She turned to leave and then, perhaps due to her upbringing in the city of journalists, turned back to the class. “Does anybody have any questions?” Students all across the room raised their hands. She began calling them, one by one, starting with the back row.

  “Oh, wait,” Judy whispered into Max’s ear. “You weren’t performing for the GIs, were you? You were entertaining Hitler’s henchmen. Hmmm, I wonder what sort of Nazi magic could make a whole group of prisoners disappear into the night.”

  Max stood. “I have to go to the restroom.”

  Mrs. Larousse glared at her. “No you don’t.”

  “Yes I do,” Max said. “Between the two of us, I think I would know.”

  “You went before we came,” Mrs. Larousse said. “You don’t.”

  There were stifled giggles popping up from various locations and they inspired the most panicked, desperate, please-not-here look Max could muster. Her mother, unfortunately, didn’t see it, but Mrs. Conrad did.

  “Oh, go on to the restroom, then,” Mrs. Conrad said. “But don’t you dillydally.”

  Of course, dillydallying was the sole purpose for this restroom visit, so Max did not allow her ears to hear the last part of Mrs. Conrad’s command. Instead, she rushed out the door and ran down to the restroom. She locked herself in a stall, sat on the toilet, and picked her feet up to hide them from view. And then she waited for someone to come and get her, because there would be no other way she would be forced to return to the classroom. Even a fire drill wouldn’t budge her. Death in engulfing flames would be a welcome reprieve.

  And so she stayed in that position—that rather uncomfortable, limb-numbing position—for well over an hour. She began to believe that she would need a double amputation of her feet by the time somebody knocked on the stall door on a mission from Mrs. Conrad to retrieve her.

  Of course, the person who had volunteered for the task was the person who most wanted to continue talking to Max, and the person Max least wanted to see.

  “Come on,” Judy said. “They’re going to start thinking you’ve died in here.”

  “Maybe I have,” Max said. “What’s it to you?”

  “There’re only two stalls,” Judy said. “And the second-grade girls are going to line up for their bathroom break in ten minutes. With only one stall to use, they’ll be in here for forever. And, trust me, nobody wants the second graders in the bathroom for forever. That’s a recipe for disaster.”

  Max sighed, unlocked the stall door, and stood. The standing didn’t work the way she’d planned, as all the blood finally began rushing to her poor feet again, and she nearly fell over from the pins and needles. She clutched the wall to steady herself. Judy offered her no assistance.

  “I didn’t help the Nazis,” Max said as she stumbled toward the sink to wash her hands.

  Judy laughed. “Oh, come on, is that what this is all about? Jeez, don’t you know how to take a joke?”

  “Don’t you know how to tell one?”

  Judy offered her arm as support. “Here, let me help you back to class.”

  “I’ll manage,” Max said and began her slow hobble to the
door. “Anyway, I’m surprised you aren’t more upset about the escape, considering your boyfriend is one of the guys that got out.”

  Judy took back her arm and returned her look of disdain. “My boyfriend? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Blaz,” Max said as she opened the door. “He’s an escaped prisoner.” Max turned on the most smug look she had in her repertoire. “I told you he was a Nazi.”

  That seemed to be the silver bullet that was needed to silence Judy, because she didn’t say another word, to anybody, all the way up to lunch. When the lunch bell rang, she went off on her own without the Mesquite Tree Girls. The looks of confusion on Margaret’s and Natalie’s faces would have been grand entertainment for the Gremlins if not for the fact that there was so much else to arrest their focus.

  And also if any of them had been there.

  When Max went to their lunch spot, she was alone.

  Alone when she needed loneliness the least.

  And so, fifteen minutes into lunch, when Eric snuck around the maintenance shed, she almost hugged him like a man in the desert would hug a camel carrying jugs of water. Almost, but then she remembered that it was Eric, so instead she nodded and said, “Hey.”

  “Hey,” he said. “Where is everybody?”

  “I don’t know. I guess all your parents love you more than mine love me. My mom insisted I come to school.”

  He dropped to the ground next to her and offered her a sip from his thermos, which was full of turkey noodle soup. She drank some and handed it back. “Yeah, my mom was pretty shaken up about the ordeal from last night, so she didn’t want me going out. She thinks I’m in the tree house right now.”

  “You have a tree house?” she asked.

  “I never go in it. It’s the worst tree house in the world. There’s no place to sit down. But it makes for a great cover so I can run off and do things.” He grinned. “Kind of like my very own Vanishing Box.”

  She groaned. “Let’s not talk about that, please. Last night was the worst experience of my life.”

  He was genuinely shocked. “What? It was great. The whole show was amazing.”