* * *
Late that afternoon Uncle Jonathan and Lewis piled into Jonathan’s big, old-fashioned car, a black 1935 Muggins Simoon. They pulled out into the street in a cloud of exhaust fumes and drove to Mansion Street to pick up a glum and withdrawn Rose Rita. Then they drove downtown, where Jonathan found a parking slot near the Feed & Seed store. With his stomach already feeling queasy from stage fright, Lewis climbed out of the car. Mrs. Zimmermann had driven in earlier to help prepare the refreshments, and Lewis saw her car parked nearby.
They hurried upstairs. As he headed for the stage, Lewis thought that the mask of tragedy painted on the wall looked just about as upset as he felt. He went to the boys’ dressing room and got into his costume. Then he checked all his magic props. Everything was ready. Now if only Timmy would remember to bring the chick, Lewis was all set to go.
Timmy was late, as always. Lewis impatiently paced back and forth backstage, pausing every now and then to part the curtains and peep out at the growing crowd. All the elementary-school kids and their parents were coming in, together with the parents of the performers. Lewis had a big hard lump in his throat that he couldn’t seem to swallow. Just the thought of doing his act in front of nearly five hundred people terrified him. His legs felt rubbery and weak, his head spun, and the breath caught in his lungs.
At last Timmy came hurrying down the aisle, carrying two bags. One was his canvas bag of juggling clubs and balls, and the other was a burlap sack. Lewis rushed to meet him. “Hi,” said Timmy with a grin as soon as he was backstage. “I brought your chicken.” He handed Lewis the burlap bag, which felt surprisingly heavy.
Lewis opened the bag and looked inside. A white hen stared back at him, her head tilted sideways, her little chicken eyes bright. “Timmy!” exploded Lewis. “This is a full-grown chicken!”
Timmy looked confused. “Huh? Didn’t you want a chicken? You kept asking me to bring one.”
“I wanted a baby chick,” wailed Lewis. “Not a grown-up hen!”
With a shrug, Timmy said, “Henrietta will be okay. She’s a good chicken. She’s just like a pet. You can pick her up and everything. Anyway, you’ll have to use her, because I don’t have time to go back and get another one. I gotta practice my juggling.”
Timmy unpacked his clubs and started tossing them through the air. Lewis found a dark corner. He peered down into the burlap bag uncertainly. Henrietta stared back at him. Lewis was not at all sure that this would work. He wished he had brought a bouquet of flowers along, just in case something like this happened. But since he hadn’t, Lewis decided that he’d better practice the trick with Henrietta. Getting one of the sheets of newspaper from the prop table, Lewis hooked the string-and-handkerchief swing around his thumb and then reached into the bag. Henrietta was feathery, soft, and hot. He pulled her out of the bag. She was a very calm chicken. Lewis looped the handkerchief swing around her, so she was sort of lying in it, and tucked her under his robe. It was hard for him to hold her with his elbow, because she was so large and heavy.
Lewis held the newspaper, then spread it. The swing swooped out from his elbow, he crushed the paper into a loose ball that barely covered Henrietta, and then he tore it away. Henrietta cocked her head this way and that and clucked once. Lewis had been holding his breath. He whooshed it out in relief. Maybe, he thought, the trick was going to work after all.
The talent show began when Miss White, the music teacher, played an overture on the piano and announced to everyone that the junior high students were pleased to carry on the tradition here in this wonderful new auditorium. Then the curtain went up and the first talent act started. Lewis stood in the wings, watching, with Henrietta tucked beneath his robes and under his arm. Her body heat made him uncomfortably warm, and he started to sweat. Henrietta must have felt hot too, because soon she began to squirm and complain. Rose Rita came over and stood beside Lewis as Tom and Dave did their comedy routine. They wore goofy-looking old-fashioned baseball uniforms, and they had pasted fake mustaches under their noses. They got lots of laughter and applause. Then Miss White said, “Next we have a real treat—a magic act that will leave you baffled and bewildered!” Mr. Lutz started “Saber Dance” on the phonograph, and Lewis stumbled out onstage, under the hot glare of the lights.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” rasped Lewis. He swallowed and squeaked, “Ladies and gentlemen,” again. Taking a deep breath, Lewis blurted, “I am, uh, the Mystifying Mysto, Master of Illusion!”
From beneath his right arm Henrietta commented, “Bu-u-u-u-ck!”
Lewis squeezed the hen a little more securely. He said, “Let me introduce you to my beautiful assistant, the Fantastic Fatima!”
Rose Rita, looking as if she were in a trance, came out from the wings holding the newspaper. Lewis said, “I will ask the Fantastic Fatima to show you, uh, this perfectly, uh, ordinary—” He was really squirming, because Henrietta was trying to escape. He could feel her writhing and kicking, and he held on to her desperately. “This, uh, ordinary newspaper, and then I’ll ask her to give it to me right now!” he finished in a rush.
Rose Rita took her time, just as they had rehearsed. Meanwhile, Henrietta was making determined efforts to find a way out from under those hot robes. Lewis felt his face get hot and red as he wriggled and squirmed, trying to control the hen. At last Rose Rita gave him the newspaper. He reached for it with a feeling of relief.
And everyone started to laugh. In a flurry of feathers, Henrietta dropped out from beneath Lewis’s robe. She flapped and squawked. Lewis hadn’t even started the trick. He stared at Rose Rita, wondering what to do. She just stared back at him. Out in the audience some kid yelled, “Fake!” Other people started to jeer.
Lewis felt panicky. The chicken stood in the spotlight, jerking her head left and right. People were laughing and calling out things like “Why did the chicken cross the road?” and “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?”
Rose Rita gave Lewis a sharp nudge. “Uh, a live chicken, produced by magic,” Lewis said lamely. “Now my assistant will lie down on this magic sofa, and we will perform for you the ancient art of levitation.” He took Rose Rita’s hand and escorted her to the sofa. Everyone was still laughing. Henrietta was pacing back and forth near the front of the stage, emitting long, contented clucks.
Rose Rita lay down, and Lewis picked up the sheet that would cover her. He spread it out, and as he did, Rose Rita moved her own feet down to either side of the low sofa and picked up the fake feet. Trying hard to ignore the chicken, which was sitting in the middle of the stage, Lewis covered Rose Rita and turned to the audience. “Now with the mystic words—”
Henrietta was right beside Lewis. She suddenly stood up, cackling, “Bu-buck! Bu-buck! Bu-buck!” A gleaming white egg rested on the stage. Then people really began to hoot and cheer. More kids were shouting, “Lewis is a fake! Boo-ooo!”
A humiliated Lewis thought he was going to die. He held up his hands, forgot the magic words he was supposed to say, and yelled, “Rise up! Rise up!”
With her back bent and the fake legs held out beneath the sheet, Rose Rita raised herself off the sofa. Usually the illusion looked really good—just as if Rose Rita had mysteriously begun to float a few feet in the air under the sheet. But this time Lewis was distracted, and he did not notice he was standing on a corner of the sheet. When Rose Rita lifted herself up, the sheet fell away, revealing her holding those stupid-looking fake legs.
“It’s a trick!” yelled someone in the audience. “Get off the stage! Boo!” Other kids joined in the catcalls. “You’re no magician!” “Go back to the farm!” “Take your chicken home and cook it!”
Rose Rita dropped the legs and stood up, her face still burning red. She scowled out at the audience. Now all the elementary-school kids were shrieking, “Boo! Boo!”
Henrietta flapped her wings and cackled again. A single white feather floated in the air, twirling and twisting.
Lewis wanted to shrivel up and creep into a hole som
ewhere.
And then, to his shock, he heard Rose Rita shout above all the noise, “Shut up! I hate you all! I’m going to make you pay!”
Mercifully, the curtain dropped. Rose Rita turned and glared at Lewis, then stalked away. Lewis thought his heart had stopped.
In that terrifying moment Rose Rita hadn’t looked like herself at all. Her eyes had been completely black and glittery, as if they were made up of thousands of facets, like the eyes of a spider. A spider in human form.
CHAPTER SIX
Rose Rita huddled in the smelly dark, seething with anger. She hated Lewis for making her look ridiculous. She hated the school for having the stupid talent contest in the first place. Most of all, she hated the kids and even the grown-ups in the audience who had made fun of her. “I’ll make them pay,” she growled to herself. She sat in a hunched-up position, hugging her knees. Her hiding place was cramped and hot, but she didn’t care. She didn’t even care that it smelled bad—mildew and disinfectant and sweeping compound all mixed together. Rose Rita was trying hard to think up ways of getting back at everyone who had made her a laughingstock.
Someone knocked at the door, making her jump. She bumped her head but bit her lip to keep from yelling and giving herself away. Then she heard Mrs. Zimmermann’s kindly voice: “Are you in there, Rose Rita?”
“No!” snapped Rose Rita, though she knew how dumb that would sound. “Go away.”
“I don’t think I should. May I come in?”
Rose Rita didn’t say anything. She shrugged in the dark. She should have realized there was no way to hide from Mrs. Zimmermann. Mrs. Zimmermann had all sorts of spells she could use to find anything lost or in hiding. The doorknob rattled, and Mrs. Zimmermann swung open the door of the janitor’s closet. She looked down at Rose Rita, who was crouched in the corner under a thick plywood shelf stacked with cans of Old Dutch cleanser, boxes of lightbulbs and steel wool, and wadded cleaning rags. Mrs. Zimmermann wrinkled her nose as she peered into the darkness. “I might have expected to find you just about anywhere but here. Good heavens, but you picked a smelly place to hide!”
“I don’t care,” replied Rose Rita grumpily. She was still wearing her costume, though the talent show had ended half an hour earlier. She pulled her legs a little closer, scrunching as far back into her corner as she could.
“Well, if you don’t care, then I don’t either,” said Mrs. Zimmermann brightly. She crouched down slowly until she was sitting in the doorway, her legs bent to the side. “What happened up on the stage isn’t the end of the world, you know.”
“It might as well be for me,” grumbled Rose Rita. She punched her glasses back into place on her nose and sniffled a little. After a little while she quietly asked, “Is everyone gone now?”
“Just about,” said Mrs. Zimmermann. The janitor’s closet was at the end of a short hall, where only one dim bulb gave any illumination. The faint light made Mrs. Zimmermann’s white hair glow, and it reflected in the lenses of her spectacles, making them little white circles. She squirmed, trying to make herself more comfortable. “I told your mother and father that I’d bring you home,” she said. “I thought you might like some time to cool off.”
Rose Rita took a deep breath, and it caught in her throat. She fought back a sob. “Why does everyone have to be so mean?” she asked in a forlorn voice.
Mrs. Zimmermann looked down. She pinched the material of her purple dress and started to pleat it absent-mindedly. “I don’t believe they think of themselves as mean,” she said slowly. “It’s more a case of thank-heavens-it-isn’t-me. Everyone has embarrassing moments, Rose Rita. When something especially horrible and embarrassing happens, sometimes people forget how others feel. They see the whole event not as a catastrophe, but as a show meant to entertain them. They also feel relieved that they are not the one who is the center of attention, so they laugh. I don’t think anyone really meant you to take it personally.”
“Well, I did.” Rose Rita could feel her lower lip trembling. Tears blurred her eyes. “Th-they made f-fun of me!”
Mrs. Zimmermann held her arms open, and Rose Rita crept forward and hugged her. Mrs. Zimmermann’s dress smelled faintly of peppermint. “There, there,” said Mrs. Zimmermann gently, patting her shoulder. “They made fun of you, but they didn’t really hurt you.”
Rose Rita straightened up. Her glasses had fogged up from her hot tears. “Y-yes they did!”
Mrs. Zimmermann smiled in a sad kind of way. “Oh, I know they hurt your feelings. I know that when they were yelling and booing, they made you feel about six inches tall. And I know that you don’t think you can face anyone at school on Monday. Still, people forget, Rose Rita. This reminds me of the time I went to a dance when I was sixteen years old. A handsome fellow named Ben Quackenbush asked me to dance. Well, he was rugged but clumsy, and he stepped on the hem of my long skirt with his big black brogans. My skirt fell right down to my ankles. There I was, waltzing with my petticoat showing, for all the world to see. That was really scandalous back then!”
With a weak smile Rose Rita said, “It’d be pretty bad even today.”
“Well, I don’t know,” replied Mrs. Zimmermann thoughtfully, a glint in her eye. “It might not attract as much attention nowadays. My legs aren’t as shapely as they used to be!”
Despite herself Rose Rita giggled. “What happened next?”
Mrs. Zimmermann shrugged. “Everyone laughed at me. At school the girls started calling me ‘Little Egypt.’ Do you know who Little Egypt was?” When Rose Rita shook her head, Mrs. Zimmermann smiled. “She was what people used to call a hootchie-kootchie dancer. Her specialty was dancing onstage while wearing very little clothing. You can imagine how that made me feel. Still, I got over it, and now I even think that what happened with Ben Quackenbush had its funny side. I think in time you’ll get over what happened tonight too.”
Rose Rita looked down at the dirty floor. In her secret heart she doubted that she would ever get over being laughed at and booed. She didn’t want to say that to Mrs. Zimmermann, who was only trying to be kind. “Where’s Lewis?” she asked in a small voice.
Mrs. Zimmermann smiled. “Jonathan drove him home not long after the two of you came offstage. Lewis is going to have a hard time living this down too, you know.”
Rose Rita nodded, though privately she felt as if Lewis were to blame for the whole mess.
“Come on,” said Mrs. Zimmermann, getting slowly to her feet. “You need to change, and we have to get out of here so they can lock this place up for the night.” She held out her hand, and Rose Rita let Mrs. Zimmermann help her up. Rose Rita had been hiding in the closet so long that her legs were cramped and stiff. Glumly, she went to the girls’ dressing room and changed back into her jeans and sweatshirt. Then she and Mrs. Zimmermann went down to Mrs. Zimmermann’s purple 1950 Plymouth Cranbrook. Rose Rita carried her costume balled up, and she tossed it into the backseat.
Mrs. Zimmermann was quiet on the short drive to Mansion Street. She stopped in front of Rose Rita’s house. The porch light was on, its yellow glare making harsh shadows on the lawn. “Don’t take your anger out on Lewis,” said Mrs. Zimmermann softly. “Remember, they were laughing at him too. He feels just as bad as you do. The two of you are friends, and friends have to stick together when bad times come along.”
Rose Rita just grunted. She opened the passenger door and got out of the car. For a second she thought about getting her costume, but then she decided she never wanted to see it again. Without even thanking Mrs. Zimmermann, Rose Rita slammed the car door and ran across the lawn. The front door was unlocked, and she burst through. From the parlor her mother called, “Rose Rita? Is that you?”
“I’m home,” Rose Rita called back, and then she ran upstairs to her room. She locked the door and stood with her back against it. Closing her eyes, Rose Rita imagined seeing the darkened theater, the white chicken, the white gleaming egg. She thought she could almost hear the sniggers and the cruel laughter. She felt t
he dull heat of anger rising inside her again. “I’ll make them pay,” she whispered. She began to plan what she could do to humiliate everyone who had laughed at her.
Rose Rita’s mother came to her door and asked if she was all right. “I’m fine,” Rose Rita called back. “I’m going to bed.”
She changed into pajamas and turned out the light. Lying in the dark, she thought of the weeks she had spent at Camp Kitchi-Itti-Kippi last summer. Rose Rita despised camp, and she had gone only because Lewis was away at Boy Scout camp. She had felt homesick much of the time. In Rose Rita’s opinion the other girls at the camp were silly and irritating, but some activities had been fun. At night as they had sat around the campfire, they had sung all sorts of funny camp songs. Then it didn’t matter if her voice was on key or so far off that she couldn’t have found the right note with a flashlight. Sometimes Rose Rita thought of the songs when she was feeling blue, and they usually helped cheer her up. One came to her as she lay in the darkness. It was sung to the tune of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”:
Oh, I wear my pink pajamas in the summer when it’s hot,
And I wear my flannel nightie in the winter when it’s not,
But when it’s warm in springtime, and when it’s cool in fall,
I jump right in between the sheets with nothing on at all!
Glory, glory, hallelujah,
Glory, glory, what’s it to ya?
Glory, glory, hallelujah,
I jump right in between the sheets with nothing on at all!
The silly song usually made her smile. But after what she had been through, it seemed to have lost its power. Rose Rita lay awake and angry for hours.
The Specter from the Magician's Museum Page 5
