We step onto the island, cloaked in several inches of snow. Someone has shoveled a path wide enough for one person from the pier all the way to the front gate. Frozen earth and dead grass crunch beneath our feet as we bustle up the path single file, Sanderson in front and Gordon in back. Once again, I sense his eyes crawling over me.
When we reach the gate, Sanderson punches a code into the security system. The doors open. Cheryl, Chloe, and Sanderson dash through. I spin a slow circle. At the pier, the Hourglass flails on the water. I can’t see another blot of land from here.
That’s all Wisewood is: a crumb in the middle of a savage ocean.
“Let’s go, Ms. Collins,” Gordon says.
I run to join the others as the gate closes behind me.
The front yard is a modernist garden, snow-covered topiary in the shapes of cones, cubes, and spheres. Every shrub is just so. The wind shrieks like a woman being stabbed over and over, shoving us up the path. I tighten my scarf around my neck, reminded of nooses and snares. I squint at the lair of grotesque angles ahead.
We rush toward the house. Sanderson yells to be heard over the wind. “Let’s jet straight to the cafeteria and get you out of this weather.”
I stop at the house’s front steps. The person who threatened me might sleep within these four walls. The windows rattle in their frames, but there’s no movement behind any of them. I could be standing in front of a painting. It’s impossible to imagine people healing, growing, loving, here.
Everyone inside is dead.
“Ms. Collins,” Gordon says behind me.
I blink away the bizarre thought and see the others are walking toward the side of the house. Just before the hedge wall they turn left, disappearing out of sight. I take a deep, smothering breath of pine and hurry to catch up.
The path between the house and wall is narrow enough that I could touch both if I extend my arms. I turn back to Gordon.
“I’ll skip orientation,” I say. “Tell me where Kit’s room is and I’ll be out of your hair—”
The five of us freeze on the path. I’m cut short by a scream so long and loud and bloodcurdling I think my knees might give out.
It comes from the other side of the wall.
6
I PULLED THE cream-colored paperback from our bookshelf and sat on my twin bed. Illustrations of long chains wrapped the front and back of the book. houdini was printed in bold black letters across the cover. Under his name was a drawing of the man himself in an olden-day straitjacket and full-body restraints. The spine was cracked. Gingerly I flipped to the chapter about handcuff escapes. Some of the pages were close to falling out.
“How many times are you going to read that dumb book?” Jack asked from her bed a few feet away. She was doodling in a notebook, probably drawing hearts around the names of boys she’d never tell me about.
“As many times as it takes to master every one of his tricks,” I said without glancing up. “And it’s not dumb.”
“I don’t get what’s so great about the guy.”
This time I looked up. “He performed in front of thousands of people, pulling off stunts no one ever had before.” I closed the book. “He wasn’t afraid to do them either. Imagine not being scared of anything.”
My sister didn’t seem impressed.
“He made ten-thousand-pound elephants disappear like that.” I snapped my fingers.
That got her attention. “How?”
I waved the book in her face.
“No, thanks.” She scrunched her nose. “You’ve read that thing every day for a year.”
“And two months.”
“You must have memorized every paragraph by now.”
“Memorizing instructions and being a great magician are not the same thing.” I grabbed my deck of cards off the bookshelf. “Harry Houdini made people believe magic is real.”
When Alan lent me his copy after swim class, I tore through the book in three days. I read it a second and third time before Alan said his dad wanted the book back. I convinced Mother to buy me my own copy, saying I needed it for school.
I shuffled my deck. “Want to see my latest trick?”
“Not really.” Jack returned to her doodles.
Apathetic: not interested, even when someone is trying to show you something super cool.
“Point check,” Sir called from downstairs.
I stilled and peeked at my sister.
“Already did mine,” she said.
“Coming,” I called back.
I scooped my small black notebook off the floor, shoved the deck of cards into my back pocket, and took the stairs two at a time. I stopped next to Sir’s recliner in the living room and waited. The sooner I wrapped this up, the sooner I could get started on rope practice, if I ever found the thing.
Sir didn’t acknowledge me as I stood by his side with perfect posture. He kept right on reading some old Western, holding the book in one hand and balancing a bag of frozen peas on the other. He’d brought a hammer down on his thumb again while working on a customer’s house. I didn’t dare clear my throat to get his attention.
I could hear Mother opening cupboards and wiping down counters in the kitchen. We’d had pot roast again, the meat dry and rubbery. Mother served the same handful of flavorless meals over and over; Sir wouldn’t let her waste money on spices or condiments. He said only the weak live to eat, that eating to live instead built moral fiber.
When he reached the end of the chapter he was reading, Sir closed the novel. “Think you’ve got fifteen?”
I consulted my notebook, though I’d already quadruple-checked the math. You lost two points for an inaccurate tally.
“I do, Sir.” I rattled them off. “Two points for making my bed this morning, two for going to school, three for bringing home an ‘Excellent’ on my Charlotte’s Web book report.” I showed the pristine white pages to him. “One for setting the table before dinner, one for clearing my plate after dinner, two for mastering the three-card prediction trick, three for graduating to level five in swim class, and one for folding laundry.”
I handed the notebook to him so he could check my math. He stared at it awhile, so long that I began getting nervous I had, in fact, messed up the count. Mother shuffled into the living room, settled in the other recliner, and picked up her cross-stitch with a tired sigh.
Sir looked up. “Let’s see the three-card trick, then.”