Stranger Things Have Happened

by Jeff Strand

  Bernard sighed. “This is going to ruin me. I wish I’d never said that you only had a career as a birthday party magician.”

  “I wish that too,” said Marcus. “But we’re here, and we have to accept the hand we’re dealt.”

  “Is that a card trick reference?”

  “No, poker. But you’re right. My life needs to be all magic all the time for the next two weeks, so I shouldn’t be making poker references. What I meant was that we have to accept the card that our volunteer selected from the deck.”

  “Unless it’s a fake volunteer,” said Peter.

  “Right.”

  “And unless you forced the card the person chose,” said Peter.

  “Right,” said Marcus. “What I’m saying is that we can’t reverse the chain of events that landed us in this position, and right now I’m happy about it because we’re going to win!”

  “I wish we’d been playing some patriotic music during that,” said Peter.

  “That would’ve been overkill.”

  “I could probably download something on my phone if you want to give the speech again.”

  “Nope. The moment has passed. And we’ve got work to do!”

  23

  As they walked home, Marcus alternated between feelings of intense confidence and feelings of wanting to throw up. If Peter had been playing “America the Beautiful” on his phone, it would’ve gone, “O beautiful for spacious skies [Retch!], for amber waves of grain [Bleargh!], for purple mountain majesties [Hurl hurl hurl!] above [Retch!] the [Retch!] fruited [Retch!] plain [Bleargh!].”

  Still, the feelings of intense confidence made Marcus think that he could really do this. And if it ended up being a crushing defeat, at least he’d go down swinging.

  Hmmmm. That was a baseball reference.

  Or was that a boxing reference? Marcus wasn’t sure. Oh well, it didn’t matter. It was supposed to be all magic references from now on.

  If it ended up being a crushing defeat, at least the rabbit was out of his hat.

  That didn’t make any sense, and the entire concept of “at least he’d tried” was flawed. After all, failing at this trick meant his gruesome demise, but still, he was glad to have a more positive outlook on his chances.

  They reached Peter’s street. “Do you want me to come over and help you?” Peter asked.

  “No, but you said you could get me the materials for the tank, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you’re not stealing them from any crime lords, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Nobody is going to come after us?”

  Peter hesitated.

  “Nobody is going to come after us?” Marcus asked again.

  “I’ll make sure nobody comes after us.”

  “Do you promise that this glass wasn’t meant for hospitals or orphanages or anything?”

  “I’m not stealing the glass,” said Peter.

  “How are you getting it?”

  “Maybe you should have plausible deniability.”

  “This sounds bad.”

  “It’s not bad.”

  “Is anybody getting hurt?”

  “I promise you that if we drew an imaginary line in the air and one side of the line said, ‘Moral,’ and the other side said, ‘Immoral,’ we’d stay completely on the ‘Moral’ side.”

  “I’m trusting you,” said Marcus.

  “Your trust isn’t misplaced.”

  “Don’t make me regret trusting you.”

  “You won’t.”

  “I’m already regretting it a little, and you haven’t done anything yet.”

  “You’re making the right decision.”

  “I’m wavering.”

  “Don’t waver.”

  “And now I’m starting to freak out a little.”

  “Relax,” said Peter.

  “I expect zero gangsters to shoot down my door. Zero.”

  “There will be no gangsters.”

  “All right,” said Marcus. He took out his notebook and opened to the page with the tank diagram. “Take a picture of this so you know exactly what we need.”

  Peter took a picture with his cell phone. “Got it.”

  “We’ll talk tomorrow.”

  Peter saluted. “Aye-aye, sir.”

  Marcus resumed walking home, wondering if he’d just made a terrible, horrible, ghastly, disastrous, apocalypse-starting mistake.

  Probably.

  Oh well. He had no choice, especially since he only had one good hand right now. It was hard to set up a shark tank if you were screaming in agony every time you picked up a pane of glass.

  Now all he needed was the shark. Unfortunately, that had always been the most challenging element of the illusion. Given the tension between him and Kimberly, he couldn’t rely on her to get him a shark anymore.

  His phone vibrated. It was a text message from Kimberly.

  FYI, I have not taken back my promise to help you find a shark.

  Really?

  I’m waiting to hear back from some people. No guarantees.

  That’s fantastic! I really appreciate this, Kimberly.

  Can I come over after practice?

  Of course!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  Don’t get cute with punctuation. I’m still annoyed you lied to me.

  Sorry.

  See you after practice.

  When Marcus got home, he went up to his room and decided to get his homework out of the way first. If he lost the bet, his grades wouldn’t matter, but he wanted to behave as if he had a future in life.

  He tried to read a chapter in his history book, but the words looked like they were slamming each other in a mosh pit. He was having equal difficulty focusing on his other assignments until he realized that if he squeezed his injured hand, the jolt of pain removed all other thoughts from his mind. If he told anybody about this technique, he suspected that he’d end up in therapy, but for now it seemed to be working.

  A few minutes after his homework was done, the doorbell rang. He went downstairs and let Kimberly inside.

  “How was practice?” he asked.

  “Let’s pretend we don’t need small talk,” said Kimberly.

  “Okay, so I should immediately start talking about sharks? Do we have a shark yet? Who’d you call?”

  “Sharks are second on the list. We’re going to talk about our personal issues first.”

  “Oh, goody.”

  “The difference between a punch to the face and a punch to the stomach may not seem like all that big of a deal, but I still feel as if I hungered for you under false pretenses.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “What this means, though, is that I can stop feeling like a manipulative hag for kissing somebody I see only as a friend. Your lie and my lack of self-control balance each other out.”

  “It wasn’t really a lie.”

  “Do you want to work through our differences or not?”

  “I guess technically it was a lie,” Marcus admitted.

  “What I’m saying is that we’ve each got a black mark on our record, and we can scrub them off the board and start from scratch. I don’t mean from when we first met a couple of years ago. I mean from when you started telling me the story of your bully encounter.”

  “Sounds good to me,” said Marcus. “Here’s what happened. I started doing a card trick, and when Ken was distracted, I punched him in the stomach.”

  “That’s an excellent story,” said Kimberly. “I admire your courage, and yet I don’t feel like kissing you.”

  “You’re not going to keep saying that, right?”

  “Nope. That was the last time. So are we even?”

  “Yep.”

  “I’m not saying it won’t still be a little awkward,
but I won’t have to get all flustered and leave.”

  “I’m glad we sorted this out,” said Marcus. This conversation seemed to be a pretty definitive end to any possible romantic relationship between them, but maybe it was for the best.

  No, it wasn’t for the best, but he’d get over it. At least they were still friends. Friends were good. Everybody needed friends. Why bother with the complications of a girlfriend when she could be a good old-fashioned friend? Right? Right? Right?

  “Ready to talk about sharks?” asked Kimberly.

  “Absolutely.”

  “I got you a shark. For free.”

  Marcus couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Are you serious?”

  “Completely. Now this next part is going to be kind of ironic, considering that we were just talking about stretching the truth. But I’m going to need you to stretch the truth.”

  “How so?”

  “When I was calling around, it’s possible that I might have exaggerated the importance that a certain Zachary the Stupendous had upon the world of magic.”

  “By how much?”

  “A lot.”

  “By, say, 30 percent?”

  “I may have said that he was one of the most famous magicians of all time, and that sponsoring his great-grandson’s stage debut would generate good publicity that far exceeded the value of transporting the shark.”

  “Sounds like a lie,” Marcus noted.

  “I’m calling it an exaggeration for the greater good.”

  “I can accept that and still sleep at night.”

  “So when you talk to the very kind gentleman who’s going to call you this evening, your job is to not indicate that Grandpa Zachary may not have been one of the most famous magicians of all time. And if he mentions anything about Grandpa Zachary’s Wikipedia page, which I may or may not have updated, don’t correct him.”

  “Is this guy going to be mad when it’s over?” asked Marcus. “Should we be worried about enraging somebody with access to sharks?”

  “A little. But that’s a problem for another time.”

  “What kind of shark?”

  “I asked for his scariest one.”

  “Well, thank you! This is incredible!” Marcus felt like Godzilla had stepped off his shoulders and gone off to destroy a different city. He was so grateful that he wanted to give Kimberly a big kiss, but fortunately, his temporary insanity had worn off enough so that he knew that would be a poor choice.

  “So you’re in good shape,” said Kimberly. “You’ve got a shark and a few weeks to prepare the trick.”

  “Only two weeks now,” said Marcus.

  “Did I sleep through something?”

  “Circumstances changed. The show got moved up.”

  “I thought it was going to be almost impossible with the original deadline.”

  “It was.”

  “Then why did you let them change it?”

  “I didn’t have a choice.”

  “How does that work? Bernard can’t just revise the terms of the bet.”

  “There are other parties involved. That’s all I can say.”

  Kimberly stared at him for a while.

  “Did you make a side bet?” she asked.

  “Maybe.” That wasn’t a fib, was it?

  “With whom?”

  “I can’t talk about it.” Still the truth.

  “How much is the bet for?”

  “A significant amount.” His life counted as a significant amount, right?

  “How much?”

  “It’s not money. I don’t have any of that stuff.”

  “Please tell me that it’s not for your left eye or something like that.”

  “It’s not for my left eye,” said Marcus. “When the show is over, I’ll tell you everything. For now, I just need you to trust me.”

  “If I see you after the show and you’re missing an eye, I’m going to be really upset.”

  “My eyeballs are in no danger,” said Marcus, desperately hoping that it wasn’t a lie.

  “All right, I won’t pry into your business,” said Kimberly. “I’m going to head off now, but if you need help, you know where to find me. Let me know when the shark guy calls.”

  “Thank you. I can’t tell you how much that means to me. Much better than using a shark puppet.”

  “Were you really at the point where you were going to use a shark puppet?”

  “No, but I would’ve gotten there soon.”

  “Let me know how the call goes.”

  As soon as she left, a call from an unknown number came through. He pressed “Accept Call,” hoping that this would be the call that saved his life.

  24

  “Hello?” he said.

  “I’m calling for Marcus Millian III.”

  “That’s me.”

  “Name’s Larry from Larry’s Bait and Tackle. I talked to your assistant, Kimberly.”

  “How are you doing?”

  “Can’t complain, can’t complain. So it’s my understanding that you’re in the market for a fierce underwater predator?”

  “A shark, yes.”

  “I believe I can accommodate this request, but I need to interrogate you first. First of all, do you plan for any harm to come to the shark?”

  “Absolutely not,” said Marcus.

  “Glad to hear it. That would’ve been a deal-breaker right off the bat. Many people think that sharks are the devil in fish form, but that’s not the case. Your average shark wishes you no ill will. Can you say the same about your average human?”

  “I guess not.”

  “You’re darn right you guess not. If you’re happily floating in the ocean, a shark isn’t going to swim up and try to pop your inflatable raft. It’s just not the way they operate. If you get bit by a shark, it’s because you were bleeding in their water or because you looked like a seal.”

  “I have no plans to look like a seal.”

  “Sharks don’t have good vision. Their sense of smell is so much better than ours that we might as well not even have noses, but their eyesight is weak. So if they think you’re a seal and eat you, it’s an honest mistake.”

  “Noted,” said Marcus. “I’m not sure how much Kimberly explained about what we’re going to do, but it won’t actually involve anybody getting into the tank where they could be mistaken for a seal.”

  “I’m told that you’ll be using strategic mirror placement to make the shark look as if it has disappeared from our plane of existence.”

  “Yes.”

  “Will there be any anti-shark messages in your performance? I can’t be part of something that makes the audience see them in an unfavorable light.”

  “No,” said Marcus. “The shark will be held up as a noble, majestic beast.”

  “Good,” said Larry. “Sharks get a bad rap. How many people do you think die every year from shark attacks compared to automobile accidents?”

  “I’d guess that a lot more die from car crashes.”

  “Ding ding ding! Give the man a stuffed bear from the wall of prizes! When I share that statistic with some people, they say, ‘But Larry, that’s only because there are more automobiles in the world than there are sharks,’ but that isn’t true at all. Obviously, nobody has swum around and counted every shark, but some experts estimate that there could be more than a billion sharks in the world.”

  “How many cars are there?”

  “Just over a billion. So it’s about equal.”

  “I never knew that.”

  “The thing is that tens of thousands of people die in car accidents every year. Yet an above-average year for shark attacks, you’re talking maybe five people dead. Average is four-point-two, but obviously a shark isn’t killing a fifth of a person.”

  “I suppose it cou
ld bite off a fifth of a person,” said Marcus.

  “That’s the kind of comment that might cause me to rethink lending you a shark,” said Larry.

  “I apologize.”

  “I’m just kidding. Gotta have some fun, right?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “So the number of sharks and the number of cars in the world are just about equal, but did you know that as many as one hundred million sharks are killed every year? That’s a lot of dead sharks. That’s more sharks than you could pile on the Brooklyn Bridge, I assume. Can you imagine if one hundred million cars were destroyed every year? Consumers would be outraged!”

  “What kind of sharks do you have available?” asked Marcus, hoping to change the subject.

  “Selection varies. I’m told you’re looking for something scary.”

  “Scary would be great.”

  “Hammerhead sharks are scary. Not only do they have razor-sharp teeth, but those eyes are strange and unnerving. It’s like they’re looking at both sides of you at once.”

  “I’d love to use a hammerhead shark. As long as it doesn’t hammer my hand.”

  “What?”

  “Sorry. Inside joke.”

  “Is somebody listening in on this conversation that would appreciate the inside joke?”

  “No. A real hammer fell on my hand, so that’s what I was referencing. I didn’t expect you to understand it. It’s something I should have thought instead of saying out loud.”

  “Happens to me all the time,” said Larry. “I’ve got a great big scar on my chin that’s from saying something I should have just thought.”

  “Anyway,” said Marcus, “I can’t even describe how great this is. You’re doing me a huge favor.”

  “Don’t mention it. It’s an honor to be working with you, and I’m proud of you for continuing your great-grandfather’s legacy. He was one of the greatest who ever lived. I remember my father taking me to see him when I was a young boy. We’d go every year on my birthday. Some of my favorite memories.”

  “He’s part of some of my favorite memories too,” said Marcus.

  “I’m just making that up,” said Larry. “I didn’t believe your assistant for a second. But making one of my sharks disappear sounds pretty cool, and I assume it’ll be okay to hand out some fliers for my business before and after the performance?”