“That’s kinda scary.”
He shrugged his bony shoulders. “I am lucky the school doesn’t know about it. They’d probably have me committed.”
“Good point. You’d be guilty of being weird.” I shuddered to think of the amount of time Frankie would have to spend with Ms. Simmons if she found out about his antique weapon collection.
He snorted. “Already guilty of that, I’m afraid. Which reminds me, I keep meaning to ask if you’ve read Under the Pyramids.”
“That’s the story Houdini wrote with H. P. Lovecraft, right? About vacationing in Egypt. I was actually considering analyzing it for my history class.”
Frankie laughed. “I’m not sure how historical it is considering Lovecraft added an army of half-animal mummies to the tale.”
“Nothing wrong with a few embellishments here and there. Some stories deserve to be larger than life. That’s how mythologies are born.”
I pointed to a crossbow with a skeleton of iron and wood. “Wow. Where did you get this?” A few specks of rust had crept onto the mounts, but the polished wood looked like it had been painstakingly cared for. “Early twentieth century?” I guessed.
He nodded. “Handmade in 1908 by a Portuguese craftsman. You can take it down, if you want. It’s not loaded.”
I slid the crossbow off the pegboard and ran my fingertips along the taut string.
“My uncle was a collector, too,” Frankie said. “He bought that in the Azores. That’s where a lot of these pieces came from. I inherited them.”
“Does a lot of your family still live there?”
He nodded. “My mom came here by herself when she was pregnant with my sisters. She lived with a friend of hers for a while before she got a job and could afford a place of her own.”
“Where’s your dad?”
“Still in the Azores. He stayed because my uncle was sick. He comes to visit once or twice a year. They’re still married, but sometimes I think they’re happier living apart.”
“Stella’s parents are like that. They separated when we were in middle school. It was hard for her at first, but I think she’s glad they got it over with and met other people they don’t fight with all the time.”
Frankie nodded again and gazed at his feet. A new topic seemed to be in order.
“So, do you think you’ll apply to Watson U?”
“Yeah, I guess. It’s a really good school.”
“You sound like you’re bursting at the seams with excitement.”
That coaxed a brief smile out of him but it didn’t last. “I know I should be excited about college. They say everyone who hates high school likes college. But I doubt it’ll be like that for me. I’ll still be younger than everyone else. And I’ll still be me.”
I leaned against the squat little desk, still holding the crossbow. “If it makes you feel any better, I don’t think college is all it’s cracked up to be, even if you’ve made it all the way through puberty by the time you get there. For most people, it’s probably a slightly less sucky version of high school. I’m actually beginning to wonder if life, in general, is a progressively less sucky version of high school.”
“I don’t know whether to be comforted or horrified by that,” he said.
“Sorry,” I laughed. “I’m trying to make you feel better, I’m just not doing a good job. I guess . . . It’ll never be a cakewalk for weirdos like us, you know? But that doesn’t mean we’re not allowed to be happy.”
In my mind, the monocled octopus and Ginger the intrepid orphan gave me a round of applause. That’ll do, the octopus said with a wise nod.
Frankie’s eyes dropped to one of the desk drawers. He opened it and pulled out a slim little book with a gold cover. “So, I have something for you.”
“You didn’t get me a present, did you?”
He laughed. “No. At least not one I paid for. And I’m not actually giving this to you. I’m just letting you borrow it. And it comes with conditions.”
When he handed it to me, I realized it wasn’t a novel, but something handwritten, like a journal. I flipped through the first few pages and skimmed a passage about a Japanese schoolgirl trying to score a gig as a magician’s assistant.
Those handwritten words made me choke on my own breath. My mouth went dry and I almost dropped the crossbow I’d tucked under my arm. “Oh my god, Frankie. Akiko’s diary? Where did you get this? Has this just been lying around Miyu’s house since her mom died?”
He shook his head. “Akiko didn’t write it, Miyu did. So, it’s not really a diary. It’s a mock diary. A miary? A mock-oir?”
The ridiculousness of the word “miary” didn’t even register. “Miyu wrote it? But . . . why . . . I mean . . . she kinda hates her mom, right?”
Frankie squirmed and scrunched up his button nose. “Miyu and I converse about Lovecraft. Psychoanalyzing her mommy-issues is way, way out of my wheelhouse.”
“Frankie, help me out here. I have to know why, and if I ask her she’ll never give me a straight answer.” A wave of adrenaline coursed through me, almost as sharp as the rush I got from performing. “Holy frig. I just realized this is the perfect text for my history project.”
“What about Lovecraft?”
“Screw Lovecraft.”
Frankie’s mouth puckered like he’d just smelled a rotten egg, and he slipped the journal out of my trembling hands. “I’m going to chalk that last statement up to excitement and forgive you. But you may want to reconsider Lovecraft. Like I said, the miary comes with conditions.”
“Like what?”
“Miyu said I could let you borrow it only if you promise not to ask her about what you read. Technically, you’re not allowed to quote-unquote ‘bug her with questions about her mom again.’ Ever.”
I took a deep breath to keep myself from having a knock-down, drag-out tantrum. I felt like a kid being tempted with a silky smooth premium chocolate bar—the kind sprinkled with delicately toasted almonds and oozing with caramel filling—only to be told that if she eats it she can never have another piece of candy again.
“Frankie, that is insane.”
He laughed. “Of course it is. We’re talking about Miyu here. Have you made a decision?”
“Ugh.” Unable to resist the mouth-watering deliciousness of the historical morsels potentially hidden inside, I took the journal.
“You’re welcome,” Frankie said with a grin.
I gave him a friendly punch in the arm before shuffling back to the pegboard to hang the crossbow in its place. “You know, a few escapologists have used crossbows in their routines. They chain themselves to targets and escape before being impaled with arrows.”
Frankie’s dark eyebrows flicked upward. “You think you’re ready for that?”
I imagined arrows piercing my skin, gliding between my ribs, making mincemeat out of my internal organs. Drowning was certainly preferable to death by impalement, but maybe it was time to put up or shut up. I had, after all, just crossed that arbitrary line between kid-dom and adulthood. And the salon-goers would go nuts over the genuine possibility of blood-drenched gore, especially on Halloween night.
I whipped out my phone and texted Miyu to let her know I had an idea for my next act.
***
For the rest of the month, I pulled triple duty as a young escapologist practicing for her next performance, a (mostly) diligent student, and an eager college applicant. Will and I submitted our applications to Bristol College on the same day. Ms. Simmons encouraged me to apply to a safety school, so I said I would, then procrastinated until the early acceptance deadline passed.
At least I had a good excuse. The “miary,” as Frankie had dubbed it, called to me on a nightly basis. I’d tuck myself in bed, crack open that gold cover, and get lost in those handwritten pages. I didn’t know why Miyu had written it or how much of it was true, but that
didn’t make it any less engaging. I’d seen a few interviews with Akiko, though they never probed this deeply. This was the unabridged version of her story, told in her own voice.
Except it wasn’t really her voice. It was her voice filtered through Miyu, which only made it more fascinating.
Two weeks after submitting my application to Bristol, I sat in Liam’s class, trying to come up with some sort of unifying theme for my history project. Prickly young woman struggles to come to terms with her mother’s death? Agoraphobe hides in her crumbling villa and relives her mother’s life on paper? I knew those obvious clichés would never fly with Liam.
My phone danced in my back pocket—a text from Will.
>Did you get an interview?
Before I had chance to text back, Ms. Simmons popped her rosy-cheeked face into the doorway.
“Can I borrow Mattie for a minute?” she chirped. Her blue eyes glistened in my direction.
Liam happened to be in the middle of an intense lecture on cultural bias and waved me toward the door without giving Ms. Simmons a second glance.
As soon as we were safely in the hall, she dropped the act, her typically cheery guidance-counselor expression melting into a grimace. “I don’t know what you put on your application, but Bristol wants to set up an interview with an alum.”
My insides shriveled into a tight little knot, and I was vaguely aware that I couldn’t feel my hands. “That’s . . . um . . .”
“It’s excellent, assuming you don’t blow the interview.”
“Yeah. Okay, great. When?”
“This Friday.”
But it’s already Wednesday! “Does it have to be so soon?” I asked.
“Believe me, you don’t want to keep them waiting.”
“Fine. Friday works. What about Will?”
“I’m not permitted to disclose any information regarding his application to you.” She bit her lip and squinted at me. “I will say that when it comes to Will, I’m not worried. You, my dear, are another story.”
To keep my mind off my pre-interview jitters, I spent the afternoon at Miyu’s training for my next act. Miyu and Frankie sat by the pool, soaking in some early-autumn sunshine and taking turns reading passages from The Shadow over Innsmouth to each other as I practiced picking locks while chained to a dining room chair Miyu had dragged out onto the patio.
As I stabbed at a weighty padlock resting on my hip, I boldly ignored the conditions of the miary. “Did she really pull out her own hair when she was nervous?” I asked. “Even when she was a kid? I thought you just told me that to make me feel better. And I always heard that she went into that magic shop in Shinjuku and wouldn’t take no for an answer. In your version, she seems so timid. Is that how she told the story or did you write it that way because you . . . you know . . . still have beef with her?”
Miyu ignored me but Frankie stopped reading and shook his head. “You’re making me look bad.”
“Don’t be silly,” I argued. “She knew I’d never follow the rules.”
Miyu grunted and told Frankie to continue The Shadow over Innsmouth.
“Fine, fine, fine,” I said. “Can’t you at least tell me the magician’s name? I want to see if I can track him down. You know, for my project. Technically, that question doesn’t break the rules. I’m not asking you about the journal or your mom, I’m just asking for a small piece of info that’s missing.”
“Don’t split hairs,” she barked, arms crossed against her chest. “Cub Scout, shut her up.”
Frankie got up from his lawn chaise and grabbed the back of the chair I was chained to. “Please don’t be mad at me. You did this to yourself.”
With a single push, he knocked me and the chair into the frigid pool. The chains pulled me right to the concrete bottom. Despite the shock, I had the wherewithal to keep my grip on the bobby pin. I picked the remaining lock, fought my way through the chains, and kicked my way to the surface.
“You bitch.”
Miyu laughed. “She wasn’t infallible, you know. At the end of the day, she was still just a person.”
“Wait, what?” I coughed as Frankie ran out of the house with a towel. “Of course she was a person. That’s why I want to know more about her. Was your dad really a deadbeat? How could she fall for such an obvious asshole?”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. No more questions or I’ll make Cub Scout withhold that towel. You’ll have to climb out and air dry your ass.”
A brisk fall breeze coated my arms with goose bumps as I beached myself like a fully-dressed whale on the poolside patio.
“Whatever,” I said as I took the towel from Frankie. And then I had an idea.
“Hey, Miyu. Do you have a favorite memory from when you were a kid?”
Her eyes flashed with rage. “Do I need to have Cub Scout push you back in the pool?”
“But I’m not breaking the rules. I promised not to ask any questions about your mom, and I didn’t. That question was about you.”
One of her eyes twitched as she stared at me.
Frankie took the towel from my hands. “Uhm. I’m just gonna go toss this down the laundry chute.”
“Follow me,” Miyu said as he scampered off.
Still shivering, I trailed after her, inside the house and up the stairs to the second floor. I’d been up to the attic a few times, but the bedrooms on the second floor had been off-limits to me, their doors always shut. When we passed the bathroom where I’d practiced breath training, I knew where we were headed.
I suppose I expected Miyu’s bedroom to look like the rest of the house—a dusty shrine. What I found was something that looked more like my brother’s bedroom. Messy. Colorful. Lived-in.
Miyu pointed at something in the corner, by the closet. My breath caught for a sec when I saw it. A Houdini-themed vintage pinball machine.
“Wow,” I whispered.
“Every time my mom performed at the Black Cat Cabaret in Chicago,” Miyu said, “I would sneak off to a little pizza place a few blocks away to play this. I figured she had no idea what I was up to. Then, when I turned ten, she surprised me with this. And it’s not just a replica. She literally went into that pizza place and bought the machine from them.”
Miyu and I played a few rounds, which didn’t take long because I couldn’t hang onto a ball for more than a minute or two. I thought I might like pinball more than all the flashy games my brother played, but the clanging and banging rattled my nerves. Frankie eventually made his way upstairs, freaked out over the pinball machine, and threatened to beat Miyu’s high score. I hung back and then took the chance to look around Miyu’s private sanctuary, figuring I’d probably never be allowed in again.
She hadn’t made her bed and random piles of clothing—some folded, some not—dotted the hardwood floor. Three of the four walls were lined with ceiling-high bookshelves. The woman owned enough trade paperbacks to open a small library. Next to her dresser was a small oak desk, clearly meant for a school kid, but it was obvious she still used it. The typewriter sitting on top had a fresh piece of paper already dialed in and behind it sat a veritable wall of typed and handwritten pages, all stacked on top of each other with a few random journals thrown in here and there.
“Did you write all this?” I asked. “Have you written things besides the miary?”
She looked up from the pinball machine. “Did you think that I just sat around all day, waiting for you to show up?”
“Honestly? Kind of.”
***
On Friday morning, as I waited for the Bristol alum in the conference room by Ms. Simmons’s office, I couldn’t keep my palms from sweating. No matter how many times I wiped them on my skirt, a salty flood would rise up out of my skin.
I jumped when the door sprang open.
“You must be Mattie. I’m Katrina.” Katrina looked only a few years older th
an me, with jet-black hair, Betty Paige bangs, and deep red lipstick. The left leg hem of her dark gray pantsuit had frayed, and her scuffed heels had seen better days.
She flung her jacket over her chair and collapsed into her seat. “Promise me, whatever you do, you won’t let anyone talk you into going to law school.”
“Okay. I don’t really have any interest in being a lawyer.”
“Fantastic. Then you’ve already got that going for you.” She reached into her shoulder bag and pulled out a messy stack of papers. “So, your essay was quite entertaining,” she said with a grin. “You’re either bound for the creative writing program, or you’re an exceptionally talented young lady.”
“Does that mean you thought it was BS?”
She shook her head and fished a pen out of her bag. “It doesn’t really matter. Applicants say all sorts of crazy things in their essays, believe me. The point is that it was well-written. And creative.”
I leaned back in my chair. “It matters to me. I’ve worked pretty hard. Would you like to see me pick a lock?”
She laughed. “That’s a joke, right? That’s good. A sense of humor is always a point in your favor.”
I put on the most serious face I could muster. “It’s not a joke.” I leaned down and dug through my backpack for a Westin four-pin. Katrina let out a tiny whimper when I dropped it on the table with a metallic clank! I pulled a bobby pin from my pocket, snapped it in half without batting an eye, and tackled the padlock. She let out another barely audible whimper when it popped open.
“I would have brought a straitjacket,” I said, “but I thought that might be a little melodramatic for an interview.”
Katrina peered at me, her deep red lips curling into a smile. “It’s really true?” she whispered. “You’re, like, a teenage Houdini or something?”
“Or something. Houdini performed most of his escapes hidden behind curtains or facades. I don’t hide. All of my escapes are in full view.”
She clicked her pen as she squinted at me, then scribbled a few notes on the messy stack of paper. “Let’s presume you’re telling the truth. You don’t need a college degree to pursue . . . uh . . .”
The Art of Escaping Page 17