9
THE TERRIBLE SECRET OF DAVID BLAINE
THE REST of the week went like this: On Tuesday, Esther put a second padlock on her locker in addition to the first, a combination one this time, something that Jonah couldn’t pick. In the afternoon, she discovered three more Fruit Roll-Ups in her locker, along with her grandmother’s stolen bracelet. The locks didn’t appear to have been tampered with.
On Wednesday: her library card, a copy of Romeo and Juliet from said library (which now had two lobsters in Elizabethan clothing on the front cover instead of people), and seven Fruit Roll-Ups.
On Thursday: Eugene helped Esther seal her locker with industrial strength magnets and a new padlock. By this point in time, the legend of Jonah Smallwood, apparent master thief, had spread throughout the school, and a small group of people huddled outside her locker after last period waiting to see if he’d been able to break in today. Esther hated being observed by them, until she realized they weren’t watching her—they were there for the magic show. Inside her locker—a dozen Fruit Roll-Ups and fifty-five dollars in an envelope.
“That guy is good,” said Daisy Eisen.
“I’m getting a David Blaine vibe here,” Eugene said seriously. The twins firmly believed that Blaine was capable of performing genuine magic.
“It’s possible,” Esther conceded with a grin.
On Friday: Thank God she’d shifted her entire haul of illegal baked goods, because now even some of the faculty had come to watch the unlocking of her locker. She’d duct-taped it shut that morning to prevent tampering. The locker still looked untouched, but when she sliced open the tape with a pair of nail scissors borrowed from her English teacher, a small avalanche of Fruit Roll-Ups spilled onto the floor. The crowd cheered. There, wedged in between her biology and math textbooks, was the unopened box that he’d delivered to her house on Monday morning.
“I’m fairly sure this constitutes harassment,” she said as she prized out the newspaper-wrapped box with the stupid inspirational quote written on it.
“Only if you’re not enjoying it,” signed Hephzibah.
“God, Hephzibah, you’re so wise.” Because she was enjoying it. Seeing Jonah’s handiwork was like having her own personal magic show every day.
Esther put the box into her bag and drove home with Eugene and Heph, wondering if Jonah Smallwood was sprinkled with some kind of enchanted dust as a child.
• • •
ONCE she was in her room, she messaged him.
ESTHER:
Did you break into my house?
JONAH:
No! Your mom got the box from your room. I didn’t go snooping or anything.
ESTHER:
How’d you know I hadn’t opened it yet and had just decided to never see you again?
JONAH:
’Cause if you had, you would’ve already sent me a message that said: “I’ll see you on Sunday.”
ESTHER:
So cocky.
JONAH:
Open the box.
ESTHER:
This had better not be Gwyneth Paltrow’s severed head.
Esther unwrapped the newspaper. Inside was a box, inside of which was a thumb drive.
ESTHER:
Are you trying to infect my laptop with a virus?
JONAH:
My dastardly plan has been foiled.
ESTHER:
I can almost promise you this won’t sway me.
JONAH:
Key word: almost. Now watch the damn clip, woman.
So she did. She plugged the thumb drive into her laptop and when the media player opened, she hit play.
The clip was short—two minutes and thirty-seven seconds to be precise—but it was beautiful. Where Jonah acquired the necessary cinematography skills to make GoPro footage look like a movie trailer she wasn’t entirely sure, but he had, and it did. The background was muted and misty, but Esther was bright. She shone like the sun, caked in butter. Her hair was spun sugar. Her eyes were blue candies. He’d edited the footage to create a short story. Like they were intrepid teen explorers, plunging out into the unknown to face their fears.
Jonah filmed Esther mostly in moments when she hadn’t realized she was being filmed. When she’d floated in the water alongside the boat, her hair fanned out around her like a mermaid, looking particularly odd because she was fully clothed and fully shoed, a lobster resting in each of her palms. The goddess of crustaceans, our lady of hard exoskeletons. And then the last shot: her, on her front porch, her hair a damp twist of red sorbet, freckles bright across her cheeks, grinning into the camera.
“What are we, Esther Solar?” came Jonah’s voice from offscreen.
“Fear eaters,” she said. Except it wasn’t her who said it, or at least not how she remembered herself saying the words. She remembered being weirded out by Jonah’s paper eating, but this Esther . . . this Esther on-screen was part wolf, her breath hot and her eyes wide with fire. She’d never seen herself this way before. Sometimes, when she looked in the mirror, she faded at the edges. Not like Eugene, not like how he flickered in and out of existence. Her edges were soft, and her color was dim, and sometimes little particles of her dusted off and bled out into the air. But not in the video. In the video she was whole and solid and the saturation had been turned way up so that the freckles on her skin looked like a flurry of fall leaves.
1/50 said the final frame.
“Every Sunday for the next year,” Jonah had said at the lake. “Fifty fears. Fifty weeks. Fifty videos. Fifty chances to meet Death personally and ask him to break the curse.”
Esther picked up her phone and sent him a message that was only five words long.
I’ll see you on Sunday.