“No. It’s not a joke. Remember last month when you showed us all those pictures from the British Museum? Helmets. Guns. Swords. All that stuff?”
“Right. What does that have to do with factories?”
“Other artifacts of war go in museums. Why don’t punch clocks or conveyor belts or fake emergency exits? Why aren’t munitions factories and mill floors and chemical plants preserved the same way, like for tourists to wander around and have perspective on history and stuff?”
Mrs. Shriver looks at me for too long before answering. “No one would pay to go in,” she says finally. “Plus, what would you sell at the gift shop?”
But after class River steals up next to me and whispers, “You want to see the inside of a chemical plant?”
I am about to tell him that wasn’t the point I was making when I realize the point I was making was entirely beside the point. I nod mutely.
He smiles then blushes then smiles a little more widely. “I can totally get us a key.”
* * *
Two days later I am on my way to tutoring after school—Mrs. Radcliffe and Petra and I have compromised on once a week—when River takes my elbow and steers me to an old, disused classroom.
“Pick a hand.” He holds out both in closed fists. I hear Mirabel’s Voice intoning, Hand. Hand. Hand. Hand.
I pick a hand. He turns it over, peels it open. It’s inevitably empty. Obligingly, I tap his other fist. It’s empty too. He grins at me. I grin back. Can’t help it. He reaches behind my ear, comes out with a fist, opens it. Empty. I’m still grinning, waiting patiently for the reveal. He’s patting himself all over, looking confused and increasingly alarmed, but it’s not until he starts cursing under his breath that I realize this isn’t part of the trick. He takes both my shoulders in both his hands, looks into my eyes, and says very seriously, “Can I please turn you to face the wall?”
“Not a chance.”
He waves his arms in the air frantically like he’s walked into a swarm of gnats and, when that yields nothing, undoes his top two buttons, pulls both arms inside his shirt, and wriggles around like the weekend Monday and I spent trying to take off our bras without taking off our tops as if this were a necessary life skill. No luck. River looks at me dolefully. I smile.
And because I do, he smiles back. And because I do, or maybe just because he’s embarrassed already, he doubles down. He yanks off his belt dramatically, lassoes it in the air a few times, and wiggles his hips back and forth, around and around. But that’s as far as he can go.
“Please?” He twirls his finger in a circle and hopes I will follow suit. “The first rule of magic is misdirection.”
“Of the audience.”
“At least close your eyes.”
“If my eyes are closed, how will I see what happens next?”
River blazes red, unbuttons his khakis, starts excavating around down there, first in his pants, then in his underpants. I try to pretend the reason I’m blushing is because I’m laughing so hard.
Finally his hand reemerges from his underwear. “Ta-da!”
“Neat trick.”
“It’s all in the sleight of hand.”
“I can see that.”
“For you.” He holds it out to me gallantly, offering me the key to, well, everything.
“Thank you,” I say. “You carry it.”
So I skip tutoring.
* * *
It seems impossible, but it’s true: I have never before followed anyone on a bike. Petra has a car and even when we were little never had a bicycle. “You know how my mother feels about outside,” she always said when I complained. When I ride with Monday, I go first or at least alongside. When I don’t ride with Monday, I ride alone. So it’s all new to me: the way a person’s shoulders and back flex beneath his shirt as he shifts through gears on his handlebars, the way a person’s calf muscles ball like cookie dough and release, ball and release. I have to pedal hard to keep up.
He slows so I can pull alongside him. “Can I ask you a question?” he says.
My heart speeds, and it’s not from exertion. Are you flirting with me just to make me easier to manipulate? Are you being nice to me because you’re using me? Are you tricking me into taking you into my family’s lair so you and your crazy sisters can destroy us?
“How come no one in this town celebrates Halloween?” he says.
It’s November already today. We’re a week closer to the twenty-second and still have no idea what’s coming.
“We used to. When I was little.” It’s hard to shrug when you’re leaning over handlebars. “Maybe people figured we had enough demons around here already. Maybe there were too many ghosts to make dressing up like one seem fun anymore.”
“Yeah, that makes sense.” But it shouldn’t, not to him anyway. And probably this is the strangest thing of all: we’re not so strange anymore. He’s getting used to how things are around here. “Kind of a bummer for little kids though.”
I try to shrug again. “It’s too far between occupied houses to trick-or-treat anyway.”
He looks so sad about that—about that—that I change the subject. “So are you just super trustworthy or what?”
“Completely,” he answers at once. “I’m completely trustworthy, Mab. I would never betray you.”
Which is not what I meant.
“Your father,” I clarify. “Your father must trust you. He doesn’t lock his phone. He leaves the key to the plant just lying around.”
“The key’s completely hidden. In fact, the key is under lock and key. A second key I mean. Not the same one. That would be stupid.” He grins. “He didn’t leave it lying around. I sleuthed it out.”
“In two days?” I’m impressed.
“One.”
“One?”
“One day to find it. One day to copy it and put it back so he wouldn’t notice—it’s a good thing Mirabel already told me you have to go to church to get a key copied around here. But it only took dinner to trick him into giving up the clue.”
“Are you a magician or a detective?” I ask.
“Both. The plant has dozens of keys. It’s not like he carries them around in his pocket. But there’s one master, and I needed to know where it was. So I lost mine.”
“Your what?”
“My keys. So then he has to make a big production at dinner about how I’m growing up, and a man keeps track of his things, and a man has responsibilities, and now I’m sixteen years old, and it’s reasonable to expect me to be mature enough to keep track of my own house key, and how can he buy me a car if I keep losing my keys.” All this in a mock-deep voice, looking down his nose at me, poking the air with his index finger like he’s scolding a dog, and riding impressively one-handed. “Then Dad’s all, ‘You should do what I do. Devise a system. My house keys and car keys go on a hook by the front door. I hang them back in their spot the minute I get home, and then when I’m ready to leave again, you know where they are? Right where I left them and right where I need them to be. Smart, right? Remember the garden shed in the backyard in Boston? We kept that key at the backyard door. Work keys? Locked in the bottom drawer of my desk in my office. Get it? Backyard, shed. Work, desk. Simple.’ So then my mom in her super-sarcastic voice finally goes, ‘But where do you keep the key to your desk?’ And he’s all, ‘Behind Uncle Hickory. Of course.’”