You know it’s a weird afternoon when you have to lower your sister down a laundry chute.
“I’ll go first,” Ashley said matter-of-factly. She opened the metal, dalmatian-sized door, and a cloud of dust poofed in our faces.
Heart thumping, I clicked on my flashlight and peered into the darkness. Dust shimmered in the air, and a spiderweb gleamed. It felt like we were looking down the throat of a giant, metal boa constrictor waiting to swallow us whole.
“You know,” I said, trying for the hundredth time to change Ashley’s mind. “We could just ask mom for the key to the wood-shop—”
“As if! She’d never say yes!”
That was true. But seeing the hurt in mom’s eyes was better than being swallowed up by the laundry chute monster. Tick tick tick went the grandfather clock down the hall. Six very long more hours till mom came home from second-shift.
“This is the only way to find dad’s magic,” Ashley urged. “You triple pinky promised.”
I sighed and handed her the flashlight. Being a big sister mostly meant trying to keep Ashley alive while mom was away. But I’d made the promise out of desperation. If we didn’t find any magic down there—and we wouldn’t—Ashley would finally stop talking about dad’s Wonderfuls. And then I could stop thinking about them too.
She tucked her elbows under her belly, and wiggled her head and shoulders into the chute while I held her overall straps. Her flashlight’s beam bounced off the walls, and the neon stripes of her sweater turned an eerie green and purple. “Oooh! Heather, this is so cool! I feel like an astronaut going into outer space!”
I gripped her straps, my legs shaking. “Are you…sure…it doesn’t feel more like…death?”
She snorted, thinking I was joking. The chute creaked as she wiggled forward. “I can almost feel the magic down there—” POP! One of her overall buckles snapped. She shrieked and slid forward.
“ASHLEY!” I yelled, catching her by the ankles.
Horrible images flashed through my mind—Ashley breaking every bone in her body. Ashley being eaten by a real boa constrictor that’s been hibernating in dad’s wood-shop all year. Me telling mom that Ashley is dead just like dad and it’s all my fault—
“I’m fine!” Her voice echoed up to me as she kicked her legs. “You can let go!”
“NO!” I shouted. “I’m pulling you back up NOW!”
She kicked frantically, and one shoe popped off. I lost my balance and slammed my back against the wall. And just like that—she was gone.
“ASHLEY!” I screamed.
Heart throbbing, I took a deep breath and pushed away the thought that I was three years bigger than her. No. I wasn’t big. I was tiny, like a mouse. Head first, Heather. Then shoulders, arms, stomach, legs. Wiggle. Breathe. Wiggle. My breath came out in warm huffs, and the darkness pressed up against me as thick as smoke. The seconds ticked ticked ticked by even slower than the grandfather clock in the hall—suddenly, my stomach dropped. Air rushed at my face. The smell of dusty wood chips. THUD!
A sing-song voice drifted above me. “Heather, weather, treasure…what else rhymes with Heather?”
Stars danced in front of my eyes as Ashley’s face glowed in the darkness, the flashlight under her chin like she was telling ghost stories. Then a bone popped out of her sleeve.
I screamed.
Her shoulders quaked with laughter. “It’s just Bud’s old dog bone, see?” She waved it in my face. “Made an awful sound when I landed on it. Broke in half!”
I rolled my eyes and grimaced. “Well, that explains why everything stinks like dog.” I shone my flashlight around the enormous laundry pile we were sitting on. Then I remembered the December morning when mom had dumped several huge boxes of clothes down the chute. The same day she had locked dad’s wood-shop door for good. After he died, mom hadn’t wanted to keep anything that reminded her of him.
My pulse raced as my light hit dad’s workbench. His table-saw glistened like monster teeth, and the shelves above flashed drills, screws, and all kinds of strange, crooked hanging things. A place where gremlins would hide.
Ashley squeezed my arm. “I’m scared.”
Of course she was, and that meant I couldn’t be too. “Well,” I said, summoning my bravest, most-unimpressed, big sister voice. “Just do everything I say and you’ll be fine, okay? Stay there.” I stepped up the stool beside the workbench and reached for the string to the hanging lamp. Click!
Warm light flooded the room. For a second, I could see the dust from the wood chips rising up and twinkling like fairy dust. Like magic. Dad’s magic.
“Heather, look!” Ashley breathed.
I turned to where she was pointing—Dad’s wall of unfinished, wooden toys.
“His Wonderfuls,” she said softly.
Dad had always called them Wonderfuls—even when they still looked like lumps of wood, or they were missing arms or legs or screws. Everyone and everything has a little magic inside, he had told us once. If you look hard enough, and you’re really patient, you’ll find it. Even in a block of wood.
Well, dad had found the magic inside him too, that was for sure. He made the best things. Like my doll-bed on wheels that shouldn’t have won the Girl Scout’s derby car race. We made that together, actually. I just helped with the sanding and painting.
But making things with dad was even more special for Ashley. She never felt bad about her ADHD around him, because he was that way too. When they were in the wood shop together, the ADHD part of her and dad became the best part. They made zany, brilliant things together, like a zipline-obstacle course for squirrels (none were harmed in the making or the testing of such an endeavor). And when dad wasn’t making things, he was fixing them—fishing mom’s wedding ring up from the drain, or listening to me mope about how the popular girls called my hair bad-frizzy. He never made me feel bad for caring about petty things like that. Now it seemed dumb that mom thought she could hide all dad’s things down here when he built our whole house.
I sighed. I had believed in magic back then. But now this was just a basement wood-shop.
“Look!” Ashley squealed and grabbed my hand. “Samara! She’s still there!”
She pointed to the very top shelf, where her toy bunny—the last Wonderful they’d been working on before December 11th, 1997—sat, covered in dust. The toy she’d never stopped talking about, the toy that had forced me into a triple pinky promise.
“Careful!” I called as Ashley climbed onto the workbench. “Look out for—”
A box of nails clattered at her feet. She jumped, the workbench wobbled, but then she caught herself and grinned. She stood on toe tips and swiped the bunny from the top shelf, along with a screwdriver that thankfully pinged against a stack of 2x4s beside me instead of my head.
“Samara,” Ashley whispered, cupping the little unfinished bunny in her hands. Ashley had wanted the bunny’s ears to spin like a helicopter seed, a Samara fruit. A flying bunny. Dad said it would be difficult to do, but they could make it work. Because he had magic hands.
Ashley held her breath as she spun Samara’s ears. “Fly, girl, fly!”
One ear popped off—fluttering to the ground. I picked it up and held it up for Ashley. “It’s okay,” I said as her lower lip trembled. “We can glue it back on.”
“No, no,” she shook her head, blinking back tears. “I remember now. Dad wanted to make her ears much bigger, and her body is too heavy. It’ll never work.”
“Well, maybe–” I began, suddenly feeling desperate to stop her from crying. “Maybe we can still fix it.” I rummaged through some drawers, tossing aside scratch paper and measuring tape. Where had dad kept the extra wood scraps? The cardboard?
Then I heard a rattling sound. I turned to see Ashley at the door. Mom had locked it from the outside, but here on the inside, it just took the right finagling to open again.
“Ashley?” I jumped up. “Where are you going?”
She glared at me through shiny eyes. “No.”
“No what?” I couldn’t believe she was leaving after we’d worked so hard to get here.
“I never actually…” Ashley sniffed and wiped her nose.“…was good at making things like dad. He did almost everything. He just gave me more credit because he was nice like that.”
“No,” I protested. “You have magic hands like him—”
“We never should’ve come here for this stupid rabbit!” she snapped. “You were right all along!”
She threw Samara at my feet. The bunny rolled and rolled, its one ear swinging back and forth until it rested against my scuffed-up sneaker.
Ashley yanked the handle open and ran out, leaving the door swinging on its hinges.
Sunlight and the smell of fresh cut grass drifted into the wood-shop, and I could see the dust twinkling around my shoes. Almost like fairy dust. I picked up Samara, still holding her broken ear in my other hand. Then I stood in the silence of the wood-shop waiting for something. But I wasn’t sure what.
Knock, knock.
“No big sisters allowed!” came Ashley’s muffled voice.
“Just for one minute?” I pleaded. “Pretty, pretty please?”
A long pause. “Fine. But I don’t want to talk about you-know-what.” Ashley crossed her arms as I entered and leaned up against her pillows. “What do you want, Heather-leather-weather-treasure?”
The bed creaked as I sat down beside her. “I’m sorry.”
Her nose wrinkled. “For what?”
“For saying she was a dumb idea,” I said, pulling Samara out of my pocket.
Ashley’s whole body went stiff.
“I was going to leave her in the wood shop, but that seemed wrong. Then I started thinking…maybe she’s still a good toy, not because she’s perfect, but because she was dad’s and yours. So don’t get mad at me, but I fixed her ear with gorilla glue. That way it won’t come off again.”
Ashley’s forehead softened as she studied the rabbit. “Samara is still one of dad’s Wonderfuls.”
I nodded.
“Can I tell you a secret?” she whispered.
“Sure.”
“I thought that if we found dad’s wood-shop again and I fixed Samara, everything would get better again. We’d stop feeling sad. And maybe…maybe the magic would bring dad back.”
“I know.”
“But I guess…well, I guess having her with me does make me feel better.” She took the bunny and set her on the nightstand next to a picture of dad.
I smiled. “Good. It makes me feel better too.”
“But you’re wrong about one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“You have magic hands. Not me. You.”
I rolled my eyes. “Sure I do.”
Ashley took something small from under her pillow and pressed it into my palm. “I grabbed it in the wood shop when you weren’t looking. I was going to give it to you then, but I forgot.”
I went to my room and pulled the big, black case out from under my bed. I hadn’t played my guitar for over a year, ever since dad’s car accident.
I turned the wooden guitar pick in my hands. Dad had written a shameless dad-pun on one side: Pick me. Love, Dad.“Okay, dad,” I whispered, propping the guitar in my lap. Here’s to not-so-perfect magic. Then I took a deep breath, like I was about to dive down the laundry chute again. But this time I wasn’t afraid.
