by Paul Griffin
“Jeanie, I’m so sorry,” Angelo said, or would have said if Aunt Jeanie didn’t cut him off.
“This young man has a classic look. No no, here.” She grabbed a pair of the thoroughly lamest pants in all of Macy’s, the kind you see in the catalog where the models are all old men who would have like these tufts of frizzly gray hair growing out of their ears if they didn’t trim it. “Perfect,” she said. “Hurry, Ben, go put them on while I get you some proper socks.” I swear she picked the itchiest pair in the store.
• • •
By Sunday night all the people I never met till now but who hugged me like they knew me forever were gone, and it was just Aunt Jeanie, Leo, me and Flip at the kitchen table. Aunt Jeanie kept at it with the face cream but she couldn’t hide the fact she’d been crying pretty much the whole way through the past four days. I heard her at night, through the wall. She and Leo were camped out in Mom’s room. “Don’t let the dog sit in your lap like that, Ben,” Jeanie said. “Not in those nice slacks. The fur. You’ll never get it out.”
“Babe, easy,” Leo said. “You want to end up like your sister?”
“Nice, Leo,” she said.
“Ah honey, I’m sorry,” he said.
“Nice.”
“You know what I mean.”
I put Flip on the floor between my feet. He sat like he’d learned at the training place, front paws up, like give me high ten, and that’s when I realized I missed his last certification class. I had one chance to make it up, or else we had to start all over and pay the whole fee again too.
“So we have to talk about how things will go from here,” Aunt Jeanie said. “Clearly you’ll come live with us. Tess left directions, and that’s what she wanted. She put away some money for you too, enough to get you through the first two years of college, maybe. She left me in charge of the money until you turn eighteen.”
I already knew this stuff. Mom told me and asked if I’d be okay with what she had in mind for me in case she died. I was like, “Sure.” What choice did I have?
“Look, champ, it’s all going to be okay,” Leo said. “I’m even excited about this in a weird way. Not in a weird way. You know what I mean. I can be your coach in Little League or something.”
Leo was huge, but a lot of that was fat. I couldn’t see him throwing a ball without having a stroke. He was probably sixty-something but looked older. “I don’t want to be a problem,” I said.
“Stop talking like that,” Aunt Jeanie said. “We’re happy to have you.”
“Happy to have you,” Leo said too, almost, but Aunt Jeanie cut him off.
“The first order of business is to take whatever you want from the apartment. I have to return the keys to the landlord by the end of the month, and I’m having somebody come in to sell the furniture and such. Whatever you don’t want, goes.”
“Champ, there’s not a lot of room at the house. All those books. You might want to consider thinning out the collection there. I’m gonna get you the e-book versions, much more efficient.”
“It’s okay,” I said.
“No no, I want to do it,” Leo said. “I want to buy you a present, okay? I feel bad for you, being orphaned again and all that.”
“Leo, really?” Aunt Jeanie said.
“No, I’m just saying,” Leo said.
“I can sell them back to Strand,” I said. “The used bookstore. That’s where a lot of them came from anyway.”
“There you go,” Leo said. “Put a few dollars in your pocket. Very enterprising, my kind of guy.”
I looked around the apartment. My eyes settled on the picture of Laura. “Can I bring her?”
“Well, now, that will be fine, Ben,” Aunt Jeanie said. She patted my shoulder from a distance, leaning away as she reached in. “Yes, I suspect Tess would want that.”
Tess. Not Mom. Two years I knew her. I got kind of mad all of a sudden. It hit me: That was the longest I ever knew anybody. I excused myself, and Flip and I went to my room, which was about to be somebody else’s soon. I pulled down my Chewbacca poster, rolled it up and slipped it into a tube of gift-wrapping paper that said CONGRATULATIONS! again and again.
I checked my phone. I had like a dozen texts from Halley. They started Thursday afternoon with Where are you? and ended Saturday morning with I have no idea what I did to make you blow me off, but whatever it is I’m sorry.
I just didn’t know how to get back to her. What, I’m going to tell her my mom died when I barely know her? I don’t know, I just didn’t want her feeling bad for me or bad at all, even though I knew I was making her feel bad not getting back to her.
“Ben?”
I practically jumped off the bed when Aunt Jeanie came in. Mom always knocked, even if the door was open, which it wasn’t.
“Your principal left messages for Tess. Three. Apparently you’ve been fighting?”
I knew freaking Chucky would cave.
15
NO SMOKING IN MRS. PINTO’S
The next day after school we had a big meeting in Mrs. Pinto’s office: Rayburn and his mom, Angelina and Ronda and theirs, Chucky and Mrs. Mold, and me and Leo, because Aunt Jeanie had to work. Turns out it wasn’t Chucky who ratted out Rayburn. It was Ronda.
Rayburn’s mom put one of those electronic cigarette things to her lips.
“Uh, excuse me, no,” Mrs. Pinto said.
“It’s not real smoke,” Rayburn’s mom said. “It’s water.”
“It’s not happening anywhere near school property,” Mrs. Pinto said. “Okay, so Damon, you have something for Ben.”
He gave me the headphones. I didn’t even want them now that he’d worn them.
“And?”
Rayburn rolled his eyes. His mom yelled, “Damon, you want to get locked up? Shake those boys’ hands. Mean it too.”
He was shaking as he shook our hands. He was this close to killing somebody or crying. Angelina was huffing and Ronda rolled her eyes.
“Now sign that contract,” his mom said. It said he promised to meet with the guidance counselor twice a week. He signed.
“That’s it?” Chucky said. “He’s not going to jail? Not even a freaking suspension? He punched me in the mouth!”
“Charles,” Mrs. Mold said.
“I kind of have to agree with Chuck here,” Leo said. “Look, I’m not saying we gotta hook Dennis to the ball and chain—boys will be boys and all—but don’t you think he’s getting off a little light? I mean, going to the guidance counselor? Do we really think that’s going to work?”
“And what do you want Damon to do instead?” Rayburn’s mom said, like she was ready to stick her non-smoky cigarette into Leo’s eye.
“Let Chuck smack him back?” Leo said. “Hey, relax, I was just kidding.”
Everybody stared at Leo.
• • •
Mrs. Pinto sent us kids out while she talked to the parents and Leo. Rayburn and Angelina stormed off, glaring at me like everything was my fault.
“Thanks,” I said to Ronda.
“I only did it because your mom died,” she said. “You’re still not allowed to say hi to me in the hall.” She gave me a halfhearted shove and went off the other way. I plunked down on the bench outside Mrs. Pinto’s office. Chucky plunked next to me. “Me too, Coffin,” he said. “Sorry about your mom.” He put his arm over my shoulder, but I shrugged it off. “I’m fine, Mold, okay? Seriously.”
“Okay,” he said. Chucky’s fingertip traced what somebody scratched into the bench: THE OTHER WAY TO SPELL FAILURE? Y-O-U.
• • •
When we got home, or what used to be home, Flip was already by the door with one of my dirty socks and my collector’s edition Wolverine action figure. Leo almost tripped over Flip. “We might have to start making him wear a blinking light,” he said. “I’ve seen rats bigger than him. I gu
ess we better get you packed up now, champ.”
“I’m ready.” I nodded to where I’d put a bag of clothes and a box of books with the picture of Laura and my Chewie poster.
“That’s it?” Leo said.
I’d already packed the other books and brought the boxes down to the mailroom that morning.
Leo clapped my shoulder. “Jeanie won’t be back from work till eight. Let’s play a video game or something. I’ll order a couple of pizzas.”
“I have to walk Flip,” I said.
“When you get back.”
“Actually, I have to meet a friend.”
“Gotcha,” he said.
“What time do you want me home for dinner?”
“I mean, whenever Tess used to say, I guess, right?”
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 il
lusion.” 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.