“Uh, the escape trick?”
“Exactly. Magician is restrained and lowered into a tank of water, and while a curtain falls over the tank, he escapes. Well, the summer before my senior year in high school, I fixed up an old water cell and filled it up in my backyard. Some other guys helped me. It was going fine—I knew how to execute the escape—but the trick lock at the top of the cell was stuck. I panicked and accidentally hit my head on the glass. One of my friends used an ax to break open the tank before I drowned... but I perforated my eardrum. Got a bad infection. And that’s how I lost the hearing in my right ear. It’s also why I’m not allowed to do any magic or escape tricks. Like, ever again. I mean, there are other reasons for that, but...” For a moment, it sounded as if he were going to say more but quickly decided against it. “Anyway, there you go.”
I stared at his face, trying to decide if I believed him. It was an outlandish story, but then again, hehadtold me he wasn’t supposed to be performing magic tricks at Pike Place. “What other reasons?”
He shook his head. “It’s nothing. All in the past. I mean, unless you want to use up another question....”
Did hewantme to ask? I couldn’t decide. The detective in me longed to pry, but a strained uneasiness settled between us, as if I’d stumbled onto private land with a bigKEEP OUTsign.
“What do you think?” he said after several seconds of silence.
“About...?”
“About what I just told you. You asked. I answered,” he said, gesturing to himself and then to me. “Now you have to decide if I was telling the truth.”
Right. Okay. Maybe all of that tenseness was in my imagination. Best to take off my detective hat and focus on what he’d told me—not what he hadn’t. After replaying his entire story in my head, I decided to go with my gut. “I think I believe you.”
He nodded, looking satisfied. “Good. It was the truth. Point for you. My turn. How did your mom die?”
I wasn’t expecting a serious question. It took me a long time to decide if I wanted to tell him the truth. “She died of a weak heart.”
“Wait, what?” Daniel said. “That’s not a thing. You mean she had a heart attack?”
“You tell me,” I said, crossing my arms. Maybe I liked this game now.
“Hmm. You said your mom died when you were ten, and you also said she got pregnant with you when she was about your age. That would have made her, what? Twenty-eight when she died?”
I nodded, expecting the usual tightness in my chest that always seemed to come when I talked too much about her death, but... it didn’t happen. Oddly, I sort ofwantedto talk to him about it. “Yes,” I said. “She was twenty-eight.”
He made a noise and then exhaled heavily. “Okay, I’m going to say your story is... true.”
“Do I have to confirm?”
“You do.”
“Okay, it’s true. Technically.”
“What do you mean? You lied?”
I hesitated. It was easier to talk about things in the dark, out here where it felt as if we were on top of the city, far away from everything.
“Do you know what an ectopic pregnancy is?” I asked.
“I’ve heard of it, maybe?”
“It’s when a fertilized egg implants in the wrong place, like on the inside of a fallopian tube. So the baby starts growing there, and the tube eventually bursts and bleeds, and it’s super painful, and if it’s not removed in time, you can die. But my mom didn’t know she was pregnant. She thought it was food poisoning. But it got worse, and Aunt Mona—she lived with us—was working. And I didn’t know what to do, so I went and got Ms. Patty from the diner, and we called an ambulance. It took them forever to see her in the ER, and once they figured out that she was bleeding and were prepping her for surgery, Mona finally got there. But before they could operate, Mom had a heart attack.”
“Jesus,” Daniel murmured. “That’s awful, Birdie.”
I forced myself to shrug, to keep my emotions in check. “It was just dumb luck. Just one of those things that happens. But it’s why I hate hospitals.”
“I don’t blame you. I’m really sorry.”
“The weird thing is that my grandmother died of a heart attack too. They both had congenital heart defects. So, as I said, weak heart. Which make you technically right when you guessed.”
He reached out, and I felt the gentle weight of his fingers on mine, a whisper of a touch.
I squeezed his hand in answer and then let go. “I’m okay. Let’s keep playing.”
