by Jeff Strand
“I can’t. It’s in my brain now.”
“Let’s get back to the curtain. We’d need to do everything with split-second precision. I throw the curtain over the tank, and somebody immediately releases the hinge while dropping the shark bait. Once the shark goes through, they need to get the hinge back up as soon as possible so I can tug the curtain off again.”
“It all has to happen really fast,” said Kimberly. “How can you be sure the shark will go straight for the bait?”
“Maybe we starve it for a while? No, we can’t be cruel to an animal, not even a killing machine. I don’t know. Honestly, I guess we need to test it and desperately hope for the best.”
“And if it doesn’t work at least—”
“Desperately hope for the best.”
“I should go now,” said Kimberly. “I’m sorry I wrecked our easygoing vibe.”
Marcus wanted to assure her again that he could ignore what’d happened, but every time he did that, a sliver of his self-esteem was shaved off like a slice from a block of cheese. He was in danger of becoming an object of pity and didn’t want a relationship that was based on her thinking, Aw, poor li’l fellow.
“Whatever you need,” he said.
“No, I should stay. No, I should go. No, I should—” Kimberly stood up. “It would be easier if you told me to get out of your room.”
“Not gonna do that.”
“Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to leave, but I’m going to get you a live shark for your trick. I don’t know how, but I’m taking on that responsibility right here right now. I’m not going to reach my hand over the tank to feed it, but I’ll get you a shark. How does that sound?”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“Not legally, but I think I should.”
“It might be impossible.”
“I’ll take that risk.”
“It might be really expensive.”
“I’m not actually volunteering to pay for a shark. But I’ll set you up with the means to get the shark.”
“Ah, okay,” said Marcus. “I appreciate that.”
“I’ll keep you posted.”
“Thank you.”
“Thank you for the Diet Coke. That was very generous.”
“Anytime.”
“I’ll let myself out.”
“Okay.”
Kimberly walked out of his room. Marcus just sat there for a while. Until recently, the weirdest month of his life was when he was seven and got bitten by two different parakeets. Now he felt like he was in this strange alternate reality where everybody had gone insane, including him.
He couldn’t worry about the kiss with Kimberly, even if it was perhaps the greatest thing that had ever happened. As with the bullies, he had more important concerns than this amazing life-changing moment. It would be challenging to win Kimberly’s heart if an evil magician skewered him and roasted him over a campfire.
He looked at his sketches again.
This trick wasn’t going to work.
He was deluding himself. Even with the help of his friends, he didn’t have the resources to get a shark or build a fancy mirrored tank. He might as well do a trick where he leapt off a skyscraper and drifted to the ground using a plastic baggie as a parachute.
He should cancel the bet and call the police.
Seamus couldn’t possibly be that dangerous and clever. The guy wasn’t a vampire. He couldn’t transform into a bat and fly in through an open window. The very idea that Marcus was frightened for his life was kind of silly.
Or was it?
Bernard didn’t seem to be the kind of person to overreact. If he thought that Marcus should be trembling in fear, it was probably accurate.
Marcus wanted to pound his head against his desk, but he decided that acquiring a head injury would not be conducive to solving his problems. Best to keep his brain in top working order.
He decided to compromise. He took the pillow off his bed, placed it on his desk, and then hit his head against it a few times. Then a few more times. Then another dozen. He didn’t feel any better. Not even when he stopped.
Maybe he should take up stress-eating. That had to accomplish something.
What about a good old-fashioned primal scream?
He probably shouldn’t scare the neighbors.
He settled for letting out a muffled primal scream into the pillow, which didn’t do much to ease his anxiety level.
Marcus should’ve fled the fund-raiser when Grandpa Zachary had asked him to do a trick in front of everybody. That’s when all of this started. If only he’d completely chickened out, his life would be normal now.
Or if he’d done a better trick, Bernard might have said, “Hey, kid, nice work,” and none of this would’ve happened either.
It was no good to dwell on the past, except for the brief distraction it gave him from the present. Maybe he’d wait until he knew with 100 percent certainty that he wouldn’t be able to pull off the illusion and then call the police. No reason to do it before that.
“Why is your pillow on your desk?” asked Mom, startling Marcus so badly that for an instant he thought the solution to all of his problems might come if his heart exploded. He grabbed for the edge of his desk as his chair tilted back. The chair legs slid forward, and he crashed to the floor anyway, bonking his head.
“Marcus!” Mom cried, crouching down beside him. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sneak up on you. I assumed that you heard me come home.”
“I was distracted,” he said. Mom helped him to his feet.
“Well, that’s understandable,” she said, though she only knew maybe a third of the story. “You know you can always talk to us, right?”
“I know. Nothing’s new,” he said, lying to his mother as if telling an audience that there was nothing up his sleeve while packing eight bunnies in there.
“Did you want to take a nap?” Mom asked.
“No. Why?”
“You have a pillow on your desk.”
“Just working out a trick.”
“It’s not a smothering trick, is it?”
“Everybody involved in the trick has full access to oxygen.”
“It’s going to be tough, but you’ll get through this, Marcus. Dad and I are always here for you.” Mom squeezed his shoulder. “What’s this?” she asked, picking up the poster.
Marcus glanced at the poster as if he were seeing it for the first time. “That’s the trick I’m doing at Pinther Theater for Grandpa’s angry bet.”
“You’re making a shark disappear?”
“Yes. Hey, is it okay if I go over to a friend’s house after dinner?”
“Kimberly’s?”
“No, his name’s Peter. I’m going to drop off a book.”
“Oh, sure. How’s Kimberly doing?”
“She’s confused about some things right now.” Marcus supposed that technically Kimberly wasn’t confused about anything. She was simply regretting her momentary lapse into fiery passion. Marcus felt no need to share this with his mother.
“I’m surprised you two are just friends,” she said. “I’ve seen the way you look at her.”
“How do I look at her? Is it creepy? Please tell me it’s not creepy.”
Mom smiled. “Nothing like that. I just think you two make a cute couple. I’ve seen the way she looks at you too. You should ask her to a movie.”
“We’ve gone to movies.”
“Ask her formally.”
“You mean print up an invitation? Deliver it in a horse-drawn carriage?”
“You don’t have to be sarcastic. You know what I mean. Pay her way in. Bring her flowers. Buy her Raisinets.”
“And what if she sees me as nothing but friend, friend, f
riend, friend, friend, friend on an endless loop?”
“What’s the risk?”
“If she says no, it ruins everything, and suddenly, the only women I ever talk to are my teachers and you.”
“Trust your mother.”
“No offense, Mom, but I’m putting ‘trust your mother’ in the category with the tooth fairy and getting eaten by the refrigerator monster.”
“I never said anything about a refrigerator monster.”
“I guess that was Dad.”
“That’s horrible! I’ll have to talk to him about it.”
“I was six, Mom.”
“Well, I knew it wasn’t last month. But he shouldn’t be saying things like that.”
“It kept me from sneaking pudding cups at night,” Marcus offered.
“Well, if we have another kid, he won’t be telling him or her about the refrigerator monster.”
“You’re having another kid?” asked Marcus, slightly horrified. He really was living in an alternate reality.
“No.”
“You’re thinking about it?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“It was purely hypothetical,” his mother reassured him.
“You promise?”
“You don’t want a little brother or sister?”
“I did ten years ago. That ship has sailed.”
“It’s not something you have to worry about.”
“I wasn’t worried until you started throwing out all this new kid talk!”
“You’re the one who brought up the refrigerator monster.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean you need to have a baby. My heart and mind are fragile. You’ve got to think about what might set me off.”
Then Mom gave him a hug. “I apologize for messing with your fragile mind.”
“I’m going to do my homework now.”
“Okay. I’ll let you know when dinner’s ready.”
Mom left his room. She had given Marcus many, many pieces of good advice over his lifetime, everything from “Treat people with respect” to “Don’t stick that pinwheel up your nose.” But man, she sure had botched her advice about Kimberly.
16
After dinner, Marcus picked out his most basic book, Magic for the Bumbling Incompetent. It had sections on how not to poke yourself with scissors when doing a rope-cutting trick and where to get change for a dollar bill in case you needed coins.
He walked over to Peter’s house and knocked on the front door. Nobody answered. He started to ring the doorbell, but then he noticed that it had a thin layer of translucent yellow sludge on it, so he settled for knocking again.
Finally, the door opened a little, and Peter stuck his head out. “Oh, hey, Marcus.”
“I brought your book.”
“Thanks. That was really cool of you.”
“Did you want me to—” Marcus didn’t think it was a good idea to say “prove my existence to your mother” in case his mother was standing right there.
“Ummmm. Yeah, yeah, that’s a good idea.” Peter opened the door all the way. An extremely thin woman lay on the couch, mouth open, snoring loudly. “Hey, Mom? Mom?” Peter turned back to Marcus, looking fidgety and sheepish. “I don’t think she’s going to wake up right now.”
“That’s okay.”
“I’m going to put a blanket on her and then come out. Give me a second.”
“Sure.”
Peter closed the door. He opened the door again a second later. “Forgot the book.”
Marcus gave him the book. Peter glanced at the cover, ducked back inside, and closed the door after him.
Peter took long enough that Marcus started to wonder if he should just leave, but eventually, Peter opened the door again and stepped outside. “Sorry about that,” he said. “She had a rough day.”
“I understand.”
“Wanna go for a drive?” Peter suggested.
“We don’t want to get our learner’s permits taken away.”
“I’ve got my real license. I’m sixteen.”
“I thought you were a freshman.”
“I am a freshman.”
“Oh, okay. Sure, where do you want to drive?”
“Wherever.”
“It’s a school night. We can’t be gone that long.”
“We won’t be.”
Peter unlocked the car, and Marcus got into the passenger seat after he brushed some candy bar wrappers onto the floor. The car smelled a bit like gasoline, though for his own comfort, Marcus decided to pretend that it was because of a gasoline-scented air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror.
Peter started the engine, backed out of the driveway, and drove off.
“Nice car,” said Marcus.
“Thanks. If my mom gets a new car, she’s going to give me this one.” He stopped at a stop sign, carefully looked both ways, and then turned right.
“When’s she getting a new one?”
“Probably not until this one’s completely dead. So it’s not really much of a deal for me.”
“That sucks.”
“Yeah. I’m saving up for one though.”
“Are you close?”
“Nah.”
“That sucks.”
“Yeah.” Peter sighed. “I don’t really feel like talking that much. Can we just listen to music?”
“Sure.”
“What’ve you got?”
Marcus took out his phone. “I’ll be honest. I haven’t got much of anything but Weird Al.”
“Weird Al’s cool.”
“Okay.”
Marcus plugged his phone into the stereo and set his Weird Al music library on shuffle. The polka medley seemed to make Peter more cheerful, and after a couple of minutes, Marcus thought he might be able to temporarily forget about his own problems too.
After about twenty minutes, Marcus asked, “Should we head back?”
“Not yet.”
They listened to two more songs before Marcus said, “Now I feel like we should head back.”
“We’re not there yet.”
“I thought you said we were just driving.”
“We are…mostly.”
“Are you kidnapping me?”
Peter laughed. Fortunately, it was a “ha-ha, that was funny” laugh and not a “he-he, now you understand the true nature of this little drive” laugh.
“No,” he said, “you’re not being kidnapped.”
“Then if I still have free will, I’m requesting that we go back home.”
Peter scratched his chin. “I trust you, Marcus. You’ve been a good friend so far. I’m ready to talk about why I didn’t fight back.”
“Okay,” said Marcus, intrigued. “Let’s hear it.”
“Not here. Five more minutes.”
Marcus decided not to protest and added “riding with Peter” to the list of his recent poor life choices.
He wasn’t familiar with where they were driving. It wasn’t necessarily the kind of neighborhood he would choose to travel through when it was dark. In fact, when Peter finally stopped the car in front of a long-abandoned convenience store with boarded up windows and broken glass all over the ground, it was pretty much the last place Marcus would have said, “Hey, I know. Let’s park here!”
Peter shut off the engine.
“So, uh, this is our destination, huh?” Marcus asked.
Peter nodded.
“I can’t think of any positive reason we might be here…unless you have bars of gold hidden inside. Is that why we’re here? Even then deadly people could be after the gold, so that wouldn’t be a positive reason either.”
“We’ll be okay.”
“I’m sure we will because even the criminals don’t seem to wa
nt to be here when the sun goes down. Seriously, Peter, my parents would have a stroke if they knew we were here. Just tell me what we’re doing so I can stop thinking that you’re offering me up as a sacrifice.”
Peter cracked his knuckles but didn’t say anything.
Marcus sighed. “I wish I’d have brought a mugger’s wallet.”
“What’s a mugger’s wallet?” Peter asked.
“It’s a second wallet that you carry around in case you get mugged. Like a decoy. I don’t have any money in my real wallet, so they’re going to demand flesh.”
“I won’t let anybody mug you,” Peter promised.
“Are you going to jump in front of a bullet?”
“If I have to.”
Peter seemed 100 percent serious when he said that, which made Marcus even more nervous.
“Fine,” said Marcus. “I’m going to stop having a panic attack and let you say what you brought me here to say.”
“Do you promise not to laugh at me? I can’t have you laughing at me.”
“I won’t laugh.”
“Most people would laugh at me.”
“I will try not to be like most people.”
“Promise me.”
“Why didn’t you ask for the promises before we left? Now I’m invested. If you’ve got restrictions on my behavior, set them before I ride with you for half an hour into a post-apocalyptic wasteland.”
“You’re right,” said Peter. “That was unfair. How about this? You can laugh, but I need you to promise that you won’t make fun of me either to my face or to anybody else.”
“I promise I won’t make fun of you.”
Peter stared into Marcus’s eyes for a very long time. Finally, he blinked, apparently satisfied. “I couldn’t fight back against those bullies because I needed to protect my secret identity.”
Marcus was silent for even longer than Peter had stared into his eyes. “What?”
“If I defeated them, they’d know what I was capable of, and I can’t allow that.”
Marcus was puzzled. “What?”
Peter unfastened his seat belt, turned around, and leaned into the backseat of the car. He picked up a brown paper sack, set it on his lap, and unrolled the top. He took out a rubber witch mask and put it over his head.
“When I wear this mask,” he said, slightly muffled, “I defend those who cannot defend themselves.”
