The Art of Disappearing by Ivy Pochoda (popular romance novels .txt) 📕

“I think Toby was probably always a little different.”

Eva looked at me again with her cool gaze. And for a moment, I wondered if there was a possibility that we could be friends.

“Toby is indifferent. He never understood what effect his magic might have on other people.”

“That’s why he no longer does magic involving people,” I said. My defense of Toby sounded tired, even to me.

“Toby’s ambition is to be the greatest magician who ever lived. And he could be. But at some point, his audience will insist on tricks using people.”

I shook my head. “He’s resisted before.”

“It’s easy to resist in a forgettable desert town.”

Before I could reply, she pulled off the highway and onto a dusty service road. We passed rotting fences that enclosed vast patches of dust and sand. When I looked over my shoulder, the lights of the highway had vanished.

“Mel,” Eva said. My name dropped from her mouth like a pebble into a lake. “What is the loneliest you’ve ever been?”

I knew. The nearly deserted motel where I’d spent my first night in Nevada. Being lost in a cornfield when I was a kid. Listening to the empty echo of the house after my brother left. Staring at my half-eaten dinner in a restaurant full of happy couples. “Watching my brother slip away downstream,” I said.

“But you weren’t alone,” Eva replied.

I hadn’t mentioned my mother. “It felt like it.”

“You had the river for company. Even a little sound can be comforting.”

Eva finally stopped the car. Leaving the headlights on, she opened her door. I followed. The light illuminated a small mesa. Eva walked around the side of it, until the car was out of view. Then she began to climb.

Despite the dark and her high heels, she walked confidently, but my shoes tangled in the bristly grass, and I often had to grab the brambles for support. It took us almost half an hour to reach the top. When we reached the plateau, I was out of breath, but Eva was as cool as ever.

Neither Las Vegas nor the highway nor anything else was visible. No lights danced in the sand. No sound rose from the desert. I bent over, trying to recover from the climb. Before I could right myself, Eva disappeared around a jutting rock that divided the plateau. I found her standing at the base of an old radio tower that stretched fifty feet into the air. At the top of the tower, a red light was flashing, soundlessly interrupting the solid night.

I wanted to say that I hadn’t noticed the tower as we’d climbed the mesa, but Eva spoke first.

“This is it.”

I placed a hand on the iron base of the tower and felt the rust flake off.

“This is where I wound up.”

I looked over the mesa and across the desert. The silence and the dark were overwhelming.

“Of course, it’s not exactly the same,” Eva continued. “When I arrived, this mesa was a figment of one of Toby’s tricks. I imagine it’s a place he’d noticed once on his way to school in California. I bet he never really thought about it. It just stuck in a corner of his mind. Then he sent me here.”

“The signal, what is it?” I asked.

Eva shook her head. “At first I thought it was a dream, that I had been knocked unconscious at the bottom of the tank. But you can’t bang your head against a dream, and if you scream in a dream, you wake up.” She took a breath. “I was awake. I was underneath the signal tower. I sat there for so long that my pulse fell into sync with the flashing light. The night stretched on forever. Literally. The sun didn’t rise. There was no wind, not even any sound from the desert below.”

“And you didn’t go down?”

“In the dark?” Eva laughed. “I had just been in front of a large audience. I had just felt my boyfriend’s hand on my back, urging me into a tank where lily pads were supposed to bloom. And now…” She stretched out her arms. “As I told you on the boat, over time, the mesa started to change. It was as if it were waking up, leaving Toby’s imagination and rejoining the world. One day, I noticed a car in the distance. Even though the trick—whatever it was—was dissolving, there was one thing I already knew.” Eva paused and looked at the beacon. It flashed three times before she continued. “I could never really go back.” She dragged her foot across the dusty plateau. “It was his doing.”

“But an accident.”

“An accident is still somebody’s fault.”

I started to back away from the radio tower, ready to leave the mesa.

“Toby didn’t think. And he still hasn’t learned that his magic is harmful. It’s painful, and he will hurt someone. You need to convince him. He will listen to you.”

“Convince him of what?”

“That his magic is dangerous.”

I opened my mouth.

“Not always, but sometimes. And that is enough. It is the dangerous tricks that will appeal to him the most. Keep him away from these.”

“Even if that were true, I’m not sure I could.”

“But you will try.”

“I’ve never seen Toby try anything dangerous.” I headed for the large stone that divided the plateau.

“That is because you didn’t know what to look for. The very fact that he doesn’t understand how his magic works is dangerous enough. You could at least tell him that.”

“He’s heard.” I took a few steps before I realized that Eva was no longer following. I whirled around. “Eva.”

No answer.

“Eva,” I called again. But my voice was swept away. “Eva,” I cried, stretching my voice as far as I could. No sound came back to me. There was only the persistent heartbeat of the radio signal above my head.

I sank to the ground beneath the tower. I felt as if the whole desert—the whole world, in fact—were being pulled toward this signal and then transformed into nothing but a repeating red blip.