by Jon Herrera
and coins. She took some of the money and put it in her empty pocket.
Emma left the house and she was greeted by birds that were singing their morning songs. It was a cheery, sunny day.
She walked to the end of the street and then to the bus stop on the other side of Glendale Avenue. There was a girl standing inside the bus shelter. She looked older than Emma and she was wearing pink headphones on her head.
Emma went inside the shelter and sat down on the bench. The older girl watched her from the moment she arrived until she sat down. Emma waved.
The girl lowered the headphones to her neck. “Hey, don’t I know you?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Are you sure? My name is Lucy. What’s yours?”
“Emma,” Emma said.
“Emma,” the girl said. “You really do seem familiar, Emma. Emma what?”
“Emma who,” said Emma.
“What?”
“Never mind. My name is Emma Wilkins.”
“You’re Professor Wilkins’s daughter. That’s where I’ve seen you. Must’ve been at his office.”
“Yeah, that’s my dad.”
“I’m in his physics class,” Lucy said. “Nice to meet you, Emma.”
Emma stood up and walked over to the girl. “Nice to meet you, Lucy,” she said and stuck her hand out toward her. Lucy shook it and Emma winced. When she took her hand back, the older girl noticed her scrapes.
“What happened to your hand?” she said.
“I was attacked by a deer.”
Emma’s bus arrived and she got on it. Lucy followed and they sat down together. They continued to talk and Emma found out that Lucy was seventeen years old and that she was in her first year studying biology. It turned out that she was also going to the mall.
“Hey, aren’t you supposed to be in school?”
“Nope,” Emma said. “Are you?”
“No,” Lucy said. “I don’t have class until later. Physics class, actually, with your dad.”
“What a coincidence,” Emma said.
They arrived at the Penhurst Mall and Emma walked with Lucy from store to store. There weren’t many people there and the girls wandered around without any real purpose at first. Emma was surprised to find that for Lucy the fun of going to the mall was all in walking around and looking.
“Well,” Lucy explained. “I like the mall. Gets me out of my house and away from school.”
“You don’t like your house?”
“Not all the time,” she said. “Why are you here?”
“I’m looking for bait,” Emma said. She paused to have a look around. There was a store directory nearby. She went to it and read through the listings to find the store that she was looking for.
“Here,” she said, pointing at it on the map.
“Luggage?”
Emma nodded. She led the way to the store and they went inside. When she had completed her purchase, they left the mall and walked to the bus stop out in front of it. Lucy had to take a bus to the university but Emma had somewhere else to go. They waited together until Lucy’s bus pulled up.
When the older girl had gone, Emma sat alone and swung her feet back and forth in the air, enjoying the sun on her face. She clutched the bait to her chest and smiled as she waited for her own bus to arrive.
Wizard Falls was bright with sunshine. The light glinted off the slick, wet rocks that were scattered about inside the creek. There were faint rainbows floating in the air where a trickle of water hit a protruding rock on its way down and became a spray.
Now that she’d had more time to look around, Emma saw that the “falls” were in reality no more than a few trickles of water that came out of the rocks above. She decided that she liked the name “Wizard Falls” much better than “Wizard Trickles” despite its inaccuracy.
Emma was hiding behind a tree. She was on the bank across the water from the rock that Jake had been sitting on the day before. She had placed the bait on the rock and was lying in wait, ready to spring her trap.
It wasn’t long before she spied Jake coming over the hill. She slunk down and made herself even smaller so that he wouldn’t see her.
She watched the boy walk down the slope and approach the rock. When he saw the bait, he stopped where he was and looked around. It took a few moments for him to appear satisfied that he was alone. Emma was sure that he hadn’t seen her.
The boy moved on and stood in front of the rock. A brand new backpack rested upon it. It was black and blue and just about the right size for a boy of eleven.
Jake stared at the backpack for a moment before he picked up the envelope that Emma had placed on top of it. On the envelope she had written the words, “For Jake.” He turned it this way and that and looked around once again before he opened it and took out the card that was inside it.
It was a square, blue card and it had a single word written in the middle of it. “Magic,” it said.
The boy frowned at the card and turned it over and around just as he had done with the envelope. He put the card down on the rock and then climbed on top of it himself. He took out his lunch from his old backpack and started to eat, looking at the new backpack the entire time, seeming to consider it.
Emma watched and waited.
When Jake finished his lunch, he emptied the contents of his old backpack. He stuck his hand through the hole and wiggled his fingers before tossing it aside. The boy took one last look around and then put his things into the new backpack.
Emma imagined a giant box on top of the boy and a big stick holding it up. She pulled the imaginary string and imagined the box falling on him and trapping him.
“Okay, crazy girl,” Jake said. “You can come out now.”
“What!” Emma yelled from behind her hiding place. She stepped out from around the tree. “You knew I was here?”
“I saw you,” Jake said. “Anyway, who else would leave this here?”
“Yeah, I guess,” Emma said. She made her way back across the creek. Jake watched her hop from rock to rock, holding her arms out to the sides to keep her balance.
“This isn’t how the plan was supposed to go,” she said.
“How was it supposed to go?”
“You weren’t supposed to know it was me,” she said. “You were supposed to think it was from a magic school or something. Wizardry.”
“That’s completely insane,” he said. “And then what?”
Emma blinked. “And then… I don’t know. That was as far as I got.”
“You really are crazy,” he said. “But why?”
“I want to be your friend,” Emma said.
“That’s it?”
She nodded.
“Okay, but really. Why?”
“No reason.”
Jake looked from Emma to the backpack and paused as if he was considering her words. He looked back at her and frowned.
“Okay,” he said finally, “I’ll be your friend.”
For the remainder of the lunch period they sat on the big rock together. Emma had a lot of questions for the boy but she tried not to interrogate him. Nevertheless, she found that the boy was eager to talk once his hard exterior had been cracked.
“Then my dad went missing,” he was saying. “I don’t know anyone and my dad is gone. I didn’t want to talk to anyone.”
Emma told him about Bill and how he and Joel had come around to their house. She told him about searching in the forest and even about the music that she thought she had heard, the music of the tree.
“But I think I must have imagined it, right?” she said. “My dad says I have an imagination. Yesterday, I thought I saw a man with horns. Got scared but it was probably just a deer.”
Jake jumped off the rock and went to the edge of the water. He picked up a few stones and tried to skip them. Most of his throws went straight in and sank to the bottom. After several attempts, he flung the rest of the stones at the falling trickles. He came back to the rock wiping his hands on his jeans.
> “You think you could find that tree again?” Jake said.
Emma thought about it. She knew the general direction in which they had gone, and she decided that she could probably get close, at least.
“Maybe,” she said. “But why? I mean, it’s kind of silly to think that there was music coming from the tree. I’m probably just going crazy.”
“I think you’re already crazy,” he said. “But can’t we just go look? What do we have to lose? Maybe it’s a mystery or a puzzle.”
“Maybe it’s magic!” she said, eyes lighting up.
“Yeah, probably is,” he said. “So help me find it?”
“Okay, yeah, I think it’s a good idea!”
The time came for Jake to head back to the school. He asked her why she hadn’t been there that morning and she told him that she hadn’t been feeling well.
“But I’ll see you on Monday,” she said.
“Good,” he said. “Oh, I can’t really keep the backpack.”
“You put your stuff in it already.”
“Yeah, I was just… I don’t know, trying it on or something.”
“You have to keep it now,” she said. “You can’t give presents back.”
“Fine,” he said, “but I’ll get you back.”
He turned to the hill and nodded toward it. They set out on their way and clambered up and back onto the path on the other side, beyond the creek.
“Wait a minute,” Emma said. “But why isn’t your name called during attendance?”
“Oh,” Jake said. “The teacher said I’m not on the attendance sheet yet because I’m new. They print them each week, see, so I’ll be on it starting next week.”
They left the park and Emma waved goodbye as Jake turned back toward the school. She walked in the opposite direction, toward the bus stop at the end of the