fussing with the bread box and tinkering under the sink and she wished he would stop.
I couldn’t make him stop, but I took her handkerchief, and folded it in half. In half again, and once more. I folded until I couldn’t fold anymore, until the fabric had no more to give. And then I pinched the fabric between my fingers and it vanished. Isabel’s eyes flew wide and the entire audience applauded and roared.
She expected me to pull the fabric from my sleeve. They always do. But I could only lift my hands and tumble away toward the next thing to vanish. She would find her handkerchief, folded between the kitchen table leg and the golden but scarred wood flooring. The table would have stopped its rocking, but it wouldn’t occur to her to look for two months.
The little girl watched the entire show through the legs of an enormously fat man. She was pressed under the bleachers, and though she could have had a much better seat, she didn’t seem to want one. I could understand the need to hide; coming to Jackson’s had been a way of hiding. Couldn’t live with Sherri Lynn anymore. Just couldn’t.
Her mind was like Mrs. Tompkins, so clear I could see every thought and know them as if they were my own. I could see Sherri Lynn’s past, could know how she felt about her daddy and how she wished he would vanish. And it was all too easy after knowing that darkness.
All too easy to pluck him from the hardware store where he worked and bury him in the worm-rich mud beneath the shed of a house he had lived in twenty years before. Sherri Lynn hated that shed, but knew every corner of it. I took that memory, made it my own, and sent him there. The disappearance of Ralph Moody was never explained, though no one seemed to mourn him.
Still, it was that kind of thing that bothered me. I pictured that man, slowly suffocating in that dirt, and just couldn’t live with the fact that I’d done it. Didn’t matter that he’d touched Sherri Lynn wrong. Didn’t matter that he hit his wife and called her names you wouldn’t call a dog.
I couldn’t pull him back out of the ground; once he was gone, he was gone. I tried, but couldn’t budge him. Once a thing vanished, it was gone to me. Someone else could come upon him. He could be a found thing then, but to me he was a lost thing. Vanished. Except the quarters, I reminded myself. I was getting better. Maybe in time, things wouldn’t have to be so lost.
“Rabi,” the little girl said after the show. She slipped her long fingers into mine and handed me a stone. She had picked it from beneath the bleachers; I could feel the very depression it had made in the ground. Shallow and as cool as the night air.
In her mind, she showed me where she wanted the rock to go. The desert plain was lit by only starlight; the brush and cactus made strange shadows over the ground. In the ground, buried beneath rock and mud, was a piece of a lost thing. Metallic and not something I could fully understand. I tried to, but I felt the same murk I did when I tried to look into the little girl. She was giving me this, allowing me to see, but I couldn’t understand.
The rock vanished from my palm and the breath went out of her. It was like wind moving through trees, that soft whooshing sound the leaves make. She made this sound, her hand relaxed in mine, and we continued on toward my train car, without another word spoken between us.
Come morning, Jackson was more excited than I’d seen him in days. He interrupted everyone’s practice and called us all to the main tent. Pasha Doshenko stayed on her trapeze, swaying above us as Jackson talked.
“It’s a good deal,” he kept saying while he rubbed his hands together and paced before the crowd of us. It’s like he was trying to convince us, something he’d never done. He’d always told us where we were going and those who wanted to follow did. A few had been lost along the way, but what better show was there than Jackson and his unreal circus and
I couldn’t make him stop, but I took her handkerchief, and folded it in half. In half again, and once more. I folded until I couldn’t fold anymore, until the fabric had no more to give. And then I pinched the fabric between my fingers and it vanished. Isabel’s eyes flew wide and the entire audience applauded and roared.
She expected me to pull the fabric from my sleeve. They always do. But I could only lift my hands and tumble away toward the next thing to vanish. She would find her handkerchief, folded between the kitchen table leg and the golden but scarred wood flooring. The table would have stopped its rocking, but it wouldn’t occur to her to look for two months.
The little girl watched the entire show through the legs of an enormously fat man. She was pressed under the bleachers, and though she could have had a much better seat, she didn’t seem to want one. I could understand the need to hide; coming to Jackson’s had been a way of hiding. Couldn’t live with Sherri Lynn anymore. Just couldn’t.
Her mind was like Mrs. Tompkins, so clear I could see every thought and know them as if they were my own. I could see Sherri Lynn’s past, could know how she felt about her daddy and how she wished he would vanish. And it was all too easy after knowing that darkness.
All too easy to pluck him from the hardware store where he worked and bury him in the worm-rich mud beneath the shed of a house he had lived in twenty years before. Sherri Lynn hated that shed, but knew every corner of it. I took that memory, made it my own, and sent him there. The disappearance of Ralph Moody was never explained, though no one seemed to mourn him.
Still, it was that kind of thing that bothered me. I pictured that man, slowly suffocating in that dirt, and just couldn’t live with the fact that I’d done it. Didn’t matter that he’d touched Sherri Lynn wrong. Didn’t matter that he hit his wife and called her names you wouldn’t call a dog.
I couldn’t pull him back out of the ground; once he was gone, he was gone. I tried, but couldn’t budge him. Once a thing vanished, it was gone to me. Someone else could come upon him. He could be a found thing then, but to me he was a lost thing. Vanished. Except the quarters, I reminded myself. I was getting better. Maybe in time, things wouldn’t have to be so lost.
“Rabi,” the little girl said after the show. She slipped her long fingers into mine and handed me a stone. She had picked it from beneath the bleachers; I could feel the very depression it had made in the ground. Shallow and as cool as the night air.
In her mind, she showed me where she wanted the rock to go. The desert plain was lit by only starlight; the brush and cactus made strange shadows over the ground. In the ground, buried beneath rock and mud, was a piece of a lost thing. Metallic and not something I could fully understand. I tried to, but I felt the same murk I did when I tried to look into the little girl. She was giving me this, allowing me to see, but I couldn’t understand.
The rock vanished from my palm and the breath went out of her. It was like wind moving through trees, that soft whooshing sound the leaves make. She made this sound, her hand relaxed in mine, and we continued on toward my train car, without another word spoken between us.
Come morning, Jackson was more excited than I’d seen him in days. He interrupted everyone’s practice and called us all to the main tent. Pasha Doshenko stayed on her trapeze, swaying above us as Jackson talked.
“It’s a good deal,” he kept saying while he rubbed his hands together and paced before the crowd of us. It’s like he was trying to convince us, something he’d never done. He’d always told us where we were going and those who wanted to follow did. A few had been lost along the way, but what better show was there than Jackson and his unreal circus and
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