The Magic Trap

by Jacqueline Davies

  “I won’t! I won’t! I promise you. I’ll practice and practice. Just show me how and I’ll do everything right.” Jessie really wanted to be on the stage. She wanted everyone to see how good she was and applaud. And she wanted to trick everyone with the magic—knowing the answer to how something was done when everyone else didn’t.

  But mostly, she wanted to do something with Evan. They used to do all kinds of things together—have lemonade stands and build marble tracks and play games, like Stratego or Yahtzee or Clue. But nowadays he always had other things to do. It seemed as if he’d changed so much. Gotten older and more serious. More like the grownups. Jessie didn’t like it.

  “I don’t know,” said Evan. “This show is . . . important. It’s not just a kid thing.”

  Jessie nodded her head. She knew it was important. First, because they could make a lot of money, and money was important—at least to Jessie. Second, their dad was going to see it, and she wanted to impress him so he’d know that she and Evan were really good at things. They weren’t just babies. They were the kind of kids a dad would want to have.

  “What if I get you a rabbit?” Jessie blurted out. “Then will you let me be your assistant?”

  Evan gave her his smirky look, which meant he thought she was being a silly little kid and he was so much older. Jessie knew that look. Boy, did she know that look! “How’re you gonna do that?” he asked, folding his arms across his chest.

  “I’ve got it all figured out, Mister Blister. Don’t you worry. But is it a deal?”

  Evan waved one hand. “Yeah, sure. You get me a rabbit, and I’ll let you be my assistant.”

  “Shake!” said Jessie, holding out her hand.

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Evan, quickly shaking her hand, then getting back to his prop table. “Good luck, little sister.”

  “I don’t need luck,” said Jessie. “I’m a Treski,” which is something her dad used to say to them when they were little, before he left.

  The Google instructions looked easy. There was even a diagram.

  She needed a box that was big enough to cover a rabbit and heavy enough that a rabbit couldn’t knock it over. Then she needed a stick that was forked on one end so that the edge of the box could rest on it, and a piece of string that would pull the stick away when it was yanked. The last thing she needed was some kind of food for bait. A carrot seemed like the best option, but Jessie thought celery would do as well.

  It all seemed pretty simple. One trap would do the trick, but since she needed a rabbit in a hurry, she decided to set five traps.

  Luckily, the basement was filled with cardboard boxes of all shapes and sizes. Mrs. Treski was a bit of a nut about recycling. They used every box, bag, rubber band, ribbon, and scrap of wrapping paper over and over. Jessie had never even seen a brand-new envelope in the house. “Who needs them!” her mother would say. “They’re killing the planet.”

  The problem with the cardboard boxes was that they were too light. But Jessie solved that problem easily. She taped rocks to the bottom of each box with duct tape. Jessie loved duct tape almost as much as she loved Post-it notes. She once made an entire backpack out of duct tape.

  “What are you doing?” asked Megan, walking into the backyard as Jessie was positioning her five boxes. Megan lived down the street, and she was Jessie’s best friend. Megan had lots of friends in school, but Jessie had just one.

  “Be ve-w-y quiet. I’m hunting wabbit,” said Jessie in her best Elmer Fudd voice. Elmer Fudd was always trying to catch Bugs Bunny, but he never did. Jessie hoped she would have better luck.

  “Huh?” said Megan.

  Jessie shook her head in disgust. “Don’t you ever watch Bugs Bunny?” Even though Megan was her best friend, sometimes Jessie thought there was something wrong with her.

  “How does it work?” asked Megan, ignoring ­Jessie’s question.

  “We need sticks. Sticks with forks in them.” The two girls spread out, scouring the woods behind Jessie’s house. There were hundreds of sticks, but it was hard to find ones that were the right size and were forked on one end. After about twenty minutes, they found five good sticks.

  “What are you going to use for bait?” asked ­Megan as they tied a piece of string to each stick.

  “Whatever we’ve got in the fridge.” Jessie wasn’t about to spend her money buying carrots when she figured a hungry rabbit would eat just about anything from the vegetable bin. In the end, they decided to use radishes because they were easy to tie with the string and because they looked pretty.

  “Like little pink hearts!” said Megan.

  Jessie frowned. “Rabbits can’t see red.” But she hoped they would smell the radishes and come hop-hop-hopping up to them. She really wanted a rabbit. Just one.

  Jessie stood back and examined the cluster of rabbit traps. They looked a little rickety. She knelt down on the grass, bending over so that her cheek rested against the spiky grass and she could peer into the shady space under the box. It looked peaceful in there.

  Megan lay down on her stomach and looked inside the box, too. “Do you think they mind being caught?” she asked.

  “Rabbits don’t think like that,” said Jessie. “Their brains are the size of a walnut.”

  “But that doesn’t mean they don’t feel,” said Megan. “Animals can feel scared or happy, even if they don’t know why.”

  “I’ll be nice to it,” said Jessie. “I’ll feed it every day and take it for walks. Or hops.” Jessie giggled.

  “But maybe it won’t like that. Maybe it just wants to go hopping on its own and play with its friends.”

  “This rabbit is going to be a star on the stage. It’ll be on the front page of the newspaper! People will clap for it.” But even Jessie knew that a rabbit wouldn’t care about that. Why did Megan always ask questions with answers that Jessie didn’t like? To change the subject, she said, “Put your hand down. On the grass. Like this. I want to test something.”

  Megan placed her hand under the box where Jessie told her to. Then Jessie karate-chopped the stick so that the box came crashing down.

  “Ow!” shouted Megan, pulling her hand out from under the box.

  “Did that hurt?” asked Jessie, her eyebrows wrinkling her forehead.

  “Well, it didn’t feel great!” said Megan.

  “But it didn’t hurt, right? I mean, your hand isn’t broken or anything?”

  Megan was rubbing her wrist where the sharp edge of the box had landed. “Why’d you do that?”

  “I don’t want to hurt the rabbit. By accident. Of course, the rabbit will be under the box, so it won’t get whacked at all.”

  Jessie set up the stick and the box so that it was ready to go—but she had a prickly, uncomfortable feeling. To calm herself, she whispered, “Be ve-w-y quiet. I’m hunting wabbit.”

  Chapter 8

  Gimmick

  gimmick (n) a specially prepared object or device that makes an illusion work; one example is a rabbit box

  Evan checked the clock on the wall in the basement: quarter to three. His mother had said she would call at four. They’d missed her phone call yesterday because of the difference in the time zones. But now they had the time difference figured out, and Evan wanted to hear her voice. He wanted to know for sure that she was “safe and sound,” as she would say, and he wanted to tell her that they were putting on a magic show. But he didn’t want to tell her what he was doing in the basement at that very moment, so he was hurrying to finish up.

  Evan was sawing wood using the hacksaw that his mother kept on the tool shelf. It was not going well. He’d already snapped the thin blade on the coping saw—the scrap wood he was trying to cut was too thick for that—and now the bigger hacksaw was making a messy, jagged cut in the wood. Plus, his arm felt as if it was about to fall off, and he hadn’t finished even one side of the rabbit box. He figured it would take him about three days just to cut the six pieces he needed. But he was going to stick with it. If you wanted to be a real ma
gician, you had to know how to build your gimmicks.

  In addition to listening for the phone, Evan had his ears open for the garage door. His dad was out, and Evan wanted to be sure to stop sawing and run upstairs as soon as his dad pulled into the garage. He could just imagine the lecture he would get about how he was too young to be using a saw and how dangerous tools could be and did he want to end up losing a finger? Or two?

  Which is why Evan was particularly surprised when he heard his father’s voice. “Hey, what’s up?”

  Evan jumped, the saw in his hand buckled, and the piece of wood he’d been holding skittered forward and fell off the edge of the chopping block he’d been using as a tabletop.

  “Hey, Dad,” Evan said, as he retrieved the piece of wood and then casually put it aside. His heart was thudding in his chest. What kind of punishment would he get?

  “Whatcha makin’?” asked his dad.

  “Just that thing I showed you yesterday. That drawing. Of the rabbit box.” Evan had made a careful scale drawing of the box and all the pieces of wood and hardware he would need to build it.

  His dad hadn’t seemed particularly interested yesterday, but today he said, “Hmm. I don’t think you have the right tools to cut this kind of wood. It’s too thick. You’re going to end up with some pretty rough edges.”

  Evan couldn’t believe his dad wasn’t yelling at him for using the saw without adult supervision. In fact, he was acting as if it was the most normal thing in the world for Evan to be sawing wood by himself. Evan wished his mom could be that cool and not treat him like he was a baby all the time.

  Evan looked at his dad. “Maybe you could cut it straight?” he asked.

  His dad shook his head. “Nobody can cut wood that thick with this kind of a saw. You need a power tool to do the job. Which is why . . . I went to the lumberyard and had them cut the pieces for us.”

  Evan stared at his dad without saying a word. He couldn’t figure out if this was a joke. “Are you kidding?” he finally asked.

  “Nope. I made a photocopy of your drawing and took it to Diehl’s. The guy there said you’d done a great job with your measurements. Very accurate. He said he likes that in a builder. I told him, ‘What do you expect? He’s a Treski!’” Then he winked at Evan and headed for the car.

  The pieces of wood were cut perfectly, each one square and neat. Just like Pete would have done. No sloppy edges. No mis-cuts. No splinters. Evan and his dad set to work joining them, first using wood glue and then carefully hammering in a row of finishing nails. Evan explained that you needed to spread the wood glue on both sides of the wood to be joined; it made a better bond. Pete had taught him that, and his dad seemed impressed.

  “It needs to dry overnight before we can sand it,” said Evan. “We’ll use a coarse sandpaper to start, maybe ninety or a hundred grit, and then we’ll finish up with a fine grit, like maybe one-eighty.”

  “You really know your stuff, Evan. Where’d you learn all this?” His dad was running his fingers over the hinges that they’d attached to the top of the box. The hinges were shiny brass—the expensive kind, Evan knew. He had measured and chiseled out spaces in the wood so that the hinges would sit flush. It’s the little things—the details—that make a project beautiful, Pete had said to him last New Year’s when they were repairing Grandma’s farmhouse.

  “I don’t know. Guess I just sort of picked it up. You know, from people.” Evan carefully put the hammer and chisel back on the tool shelf. He didn’t want to talk about Pete with his dad.

  The phone rang and Evan froze, staring at his dad. Then he raced for the stairs to try to get to the kitchen before the fourth ring, when the call would automatically be pushed to voice mail.

  “I don’t know why your mom still has a land line. No one has a land line anymore.” His dad followed behind.

  Evan didn’t stop. “Well, I don’t have a cell phone, and neither does Jessie.” He felt kind of annoyed at his dad for not knowing this.

  “That’s ridiculous that you don’t have a cell phone. I’m going to talk to your mother about that.”

  Evan reached the phone just before the fourth ring. As he grabbed it and punched the Talk button, he thought, A cell phone! That would be so cool. Some of his friends had them, and he’d been begging his mom ever since Christmas. But she said he was too young.

  “Hello?” Evan said.

  “Hey! How are you? I miss you so much!” His mom sounded happy and a little out of breath.

  “I’m fine! How about you? Was the plane ride okay?” He knew his mom had been a little worried about the plane ride. She didn’t ride on planes much. Evan had never been on a plane in his life, so he didn’t know what there was to be worried about.

  “It was great, actually. Kind of fun. I had a nice person sitting next to me, and we talked the whole way.”

  A nice person? What did that mean? Evan decided he didn’t want to know.

  “How was school today?” asked his mother. “Did the butterflies hatch?”

  “Not yet,” said Evan. “But Mrs. Overton says it will probably be tomorrow.”

  “Good. You didn’t miss it. I was worried they’d pop out over the weekend. Is Ryan back in school?”

  “Yeah. But he went home early. He said he still didn’t feel good.”

  “Poor guy! How about you? What have you been up to? I can’t believe I haven’t seen you in two whole days!”

  “Nothing,” said Evan.

  “Nothing? Come on! You must have done something since I left.”

  Evan left the kitchen and walked upstairs. He definitely didn’t want to tell his mom that he’d been sawing wood in the basement or that they’d knocked down the railing on the porch. But he also didn’t want to tell her about building the rabbit box or even about the show. Why was that? And for some reason, he didn’t want his dad hearing him talk to his mom. Usually it was the other way around—his mom was home when he talked on the phone with his dad. It felt weird having his mom be the one who was away.

  Suddenly he didn’t want to be on the phone at all. He wanted to work some more on the rabbit box with his dad.

  “No, nothing. Just school. The usual stuff,” said Evan. “Hey. I gotta go. I’ve got homework. Okay?”

  “Wait! Hold on!” said his mom. Evan could tell she was surprised. “Is everything okay there? Are you having fun with your dad?”

  Evan hesitated. How much should he tell her? What if he said, I’m having tons of fun with him. We spent all afternoon building together, and he showed me a juggling trick, and he’s helping me build a stage for my magic show. Would that make her happy or sad? Evan remembered how sad his mom had been right after their dad left. She had cried for weeks. Whenever Evan walked by the closed bathroom door, he could hear the water running and his mom sobbing. That had been awful. Jessie didn’t remember. She was too young.

  “Oh, you know. It’s okay,” said Evan.

  “Really? I’m worried . . .”

  “No, it’s fine, Mom. Don’t worry. Have fun in California. Eat a grape! Remember my state report in third grade? Grapes are California’s number one crop. But I gotta go.”

  “Okay, okay. Busy, busy. Can I talk to Jessie?”

  “She’s at Megan’s house.”

  “Oh. Okay. Well, I’ll call again tomorrow.”

  “Great! Bye!”

  As he hung up the phone, he thought he heard his mom say “Love you!” but he couldn’t be sure.

  Evan heard crashing on the stairs that could mean only one thing: Jessie.

  She burst into his room. “Is that Mom? Can I talk?”

  “You missed her,” said Evan, holding up the phone and waving it to show that no one was there.

  “I forgot!” wailed Jessie. “I was at Megan’s, and then I suddenly remembered and ran all the way home. I want to call her back.”

  “Can’t. She’s at a conference, you know. She’ll call again tomorrow.”

  “I don’t want to wait until tomorrow.” Jess
ie threw herself on Evan’s bed.

  Evan shrugged. He was old enough to know that sometimes you don’t get what you want. Still, he felt bad for Jessie. He would have felt lousy, too, if he’d missed the phone call.

  “Hey, did you get a rabbit yet?” asked Evan, smiling. Maybe he would let her assist him with one of the simpler card tricks, like Around the World. She couldn’t mess that one up too badly.

  “I don’t know,” said Jessie, jumping up from the bed. “I set five traps.” She ran over to the window and stared out at the backyard.

  “You set traps? What kind of traps?” Evan ran over to the window to look. He had a horrible picture in his head of those giant bear traps with the big iron teeth that could crush an animal’s leg when they snapped shut. But when he looked out at the yard, all he saw were cardboard boxes tilting up like hats pushed way back on someone’s head.

  “Evan,” whispered Jessie. “Look! One of them is closed up. I caught a rabbit!”

  Chapter 9

  Ditch

  ditch (v) to abandon, get rid of, give up; in sleight of hand, to get rid of an object secretly

  Jessie managed to get downstairs first, but just barely. Evan was right behind her, pushing and bumping in his effort to get to the rabbit trap before she did. They actually knocked the screen door off its track as they rushed onto the porch.

  But when they finally made it to the traps, Jessie shouted, “Wait! Don’t touch anything!” and they both stared at the boxes.

  Two of them were knocked on their sides, the sticks fallen over and the radishes gone. Two of them were still set up with their bait intact. But one of them was collapsed closed, just the way it was supposed to when it caught a rabbit.