The Gift of Illusion: A Thriller (3 page)

With the second and third stops now in the
past, the atmosphere on the bus shifted. Twelve kids had exited
into the bowels of homework leaving the bus half full and half
quiet, and even though Tommy was still loud and seemingly unaware,
Lori slouched down in her seat just a little more.

The ride home was halfway over. The next two
stops would dispose of another four kids leaving just nine
remaining for the last four stops. Among those nine: Jennifer
Wells, Peepee, and Tommy Williams.

When the bus reached number six, Lori felt
her heart take cover in her stomach. Number six was, of course,
Peepee's stop, which meant the end of Tommy’s preoccupation and the
beginning of boredom, and Tommy didn’t like to be bored. With
Peepee gone, and the bus now quiet, God only knows what Tommy could
be up to. Lori wasn’t about to turn her back to check though, she
had gone unnoticed this long, no point in ruining it by doing
something stupid so late in the game.

Fate would have it another way.

Just seconds after the bus pulled away from
stop six, Lori heard scuffling in the seat behind her. She hadn’t
dared to look back but assumed the seat was empty for some time
now. Her fear of Tommy had become so acute she could almost smell
him.

Was that his breath upon her neck?

The very thought made her skin crawl.
Perhaps it was all just her imagination getting the best of
her.

Sure, just her imagination.

Lori tried to take a deep breath, but before
she could completely expel the air from her lungs, someone tugged
on her hair from behind. She jerked her head up and turned around.
Tommy laughed and pointed his fat finger in her face.

“Leave me alone, Tommy.”

A crowd began to gather around wondering
what was so funny. Mr. Davis looked in the rear view mirror and
shook his head.

“What’s the matter?” Tommy asked. “You
didn’t think that was funny?”

“No, now leave me alone!”

Lori turned back around.

The bus came to a stop at number seven and
much of the crowd dismantled. Jennifer Wells also left and gave a
short glance back at Lori through the bus window before
disappearing into her house.

Lori tried desperately to ignore Tommy who
was now flicking her ear lobes and slapping the back of her head.
Her stop was next, and she counted the seconds.

Tommy sat up, done with the flick and slap
fest, and peered over her shoulder. “Hey, what’s that?” he asked,
pointing at the painting Lori had made in class.

“None of your business.”

“C’mon, lemme see it.”

“No, Tommy,” Lori said, tightening her grasp
on the portrait.

The bus turned on to Maria Avenue.

“Fine,” Tommy yelled. “I’ll just take it
then!”

As the words left his mouth, the paper left
Lori’s hands. Well, all of it but a tiny scrap from the corner. Now
only half of the bright yellow sun lay between her fingertips.

Lori turned around and screamed,
“Give it
back, Tommy! Give it back!”

Tommy waved the painting around in the air,
out of her reach.

“Awe, what do we have here?” he remarked in
a childish voice. “Is that your Mommy and Daddy?”

Lori continued to scream at him, but it
wasn’t doing any good.

“Oh, and look,” he continued, pointing to
the picture Lori drew of herself. “Is that the family pet?”

“Please, Tommy,” she begged. “Give it
back!”

The bus slowed down at the corner of Maria
and Mockingbird. Stop number eight had finally come.

“Okay,” Tommy said. “I’ll give it back.” The
fat kid ripped the construction paper into five pieces and threw it
in her face.

Lori rushed to pick up the pieces that fell
on the seat. Although she tried to fight them off, the tears
came.

“Oh, what’s wrong?” Tommy asked, laughing.
“Got something in your eye?”

“Shut up!”
Lori screamed.

She grabbed her book bag and ran off the bus
with a stream of tears running down her face and the last remains
of her family portrait folded in her trembling hands. The last
thing she heard before the door of the bus closed was Tommy’s
laughter; it stayed with her even after the bus was long out of
sight.

She stood on the sidewalk at the corner of
Maria and Mockingbird and stared at her house. The driveway was
empty. Her mom and dad weren’t home yet.

She wiped the tears from her eyes with her
shirtsleeve and flipped through the torn pieces of her painting.
How could something she had worked so hard to create be destroyed
so easily? Her mom and dad would never get to see what she had
made. No reason to be proud. Sure, she could tape it up and still
give it to them, but the feeling wouldn’t be the same. Something
died with that painting, something irreplaceable.

4

The sky darkened.

A sprinkle of rain fell.

Thunder.

Lori dropped the torn pieces of construction
paper on the sidewalk and walked down Maria Avenue toward Fairway.
Along the way she thought about how mad her parents would be if
they knew where she was going. On the days her mother volunteered
at the library, Lori would stay with Mrs. Mills next door until her
mother came home.

Not this time,
Lori thought.

She didn’t care anymore about the
consequences. Any punishment her parents could dish out would never
make her feel sorry for it.

By the time she reached the small park at
the corner of Fairway, the light rain had stopped completely, or
had perhaps decided not to follow her down the street. Florida
could be like that sometimes, raining on your neighbor’s lawn but
not yours. It was one of the strangest things to witness if you
happened to be around at just the right moment.

The traffic was heavy down Fairway. Rush
hour approached as hundreds of eager people retreated from their
job life back to their home life. This was the time of day that was
the most dangerous to play near the road. Lori knew her parents
would be furious if they caught her, and in an odd way, it made her
smile. Negative attention is better than no attention after all,
and she had been getting a lot of the latter lately.

The park was a half-acre in size, though
most of the land was just thin flat grass. There was, however, a
small slide, two cement barrels, a set of monkey bars, and every
young girl’s favorite, a swing set.

Lori sat down on the only usable swing. The
other swing had been wrapped over the top bar numerous times and
dangled from a single chain like a dead man hanging from a noose,
rocking back and forth. The neighborhood boys had obviously
manhandled the swing. Young boys always seemed to have a unique
fascination with destroying things. It didn’t matter what, whatever
was in sight, and if nothing were around, they would usually turn
on each other.

She swung back and forth on the swing and
watched the cars idle by on the road honking their horns at each
other, letting out some of the balled up frustration from another
lousy day at work. It felt good to run away from her troubles and
let the wind fly wildly through her hair.

After a few minutes, she built up enough
speed and height to attempt her first jump. Her mother would never
let her jump, she said it was too dangerous, and oftentimes told a
story of some kid who used to live in the area that had supposedly
died years ago from jumping off a swing. Poor boy had broken his
neck, the story went, or cracked his skull, or something of the
sort. The story changed slightly with each telling, reworded, much
like a preacher might inscribe new meaning into the Bible to better
convert a new age of skeptics. She often wondered if there was a
book, or volume of books, all parents were required to read filled
with these little horror stories; stories likely compiled by many
scared parents in an effort to scare other parents from allowing
their kids to be kids. If so, the scare tactics weren’t working,
not at all, and Lori would sneak a jump in when her mother’s back
was turned.

See, mom, I’ve never broken my neck. I’ve
never cracked my skull. I’ve never even broken a bone, so there!
I’m not going to die either—nope, no way I say. I’m going to live
forever and ever and ever.

Two conditions made for a successful jump:
length and landing. Length was most important though, the farther
the jump the better. No honest judge ever deducted points for a
twelve-foot fall on your ass. In fact, falling could be fun
sometimes, all the other kids had a good laugh, and except for the
unfortunate scrape here and there, you would most likely be
laughing too.

Lori swung a few more times for good measure
then pulled back on the chains and leapt off the swing. When she
landed, her feet slid into the sand causing her to lose her balance
and fall backwards. She laughed, stood up, and brushed the sand off
her jeans.

If only mom could have been here to see
it.

She walked back over to the swing, counting
the steps along the way. She had jumped about eight feet off the
swing, not bad, one of her better jumps, especially considering she
had almost landed on her feet.

Now it was time for a second jump, time to
achieve her best jump ever.

5

Over an hour had passed since Lori stepped
off the bus. She knew it was probably about time to head back, her
mother would be finishing up at the library, but there was just
enough time left for one final jump.

For this jump, she spent extra energy
building up plenty of height and speed, and by the time she let go
of the chains, she was already out of control.

In the mid air plunge, her body drifted
forward and to the right causing her to land face first in the
grass at the edge of the swing set. A rush of pain hit her all at
once, but surprisingly, her head didn’t hurt. She had managed to
block most of the impact with her hands, but her right knee hurt a
little.

She turned over and sat up to look at her
knee. There was a ragged cut in her jeans about an inch long on the
top of the kneecap. A little blood began to trickle through. Then
she cried like every young kid does when they find out they’re
bleeding.

Lori stood up and looked around the ground
searching for what had cut her. A gray object stuck out of the sand
near the edge of the grass. She picked it up and wiped away the
yellow specs from the cracks.

The object looked like a miniature statue, a
figure of someone carved out of dark stone about three inches tall.
A large cloak draped over the body from the head to what was left
of the feet. The hidden figure's arms were perched out in front of
it with its palms facing upward, as though it were carrying
something invisible.

Once she had all the sand brushed away, Lori
had stopped crying completely. She forgot about her knee and the
pain and gazed madly at the odd figure lying in her hands. Her eyes
were transfixed upon it. One could easily begin to believe she,
too, had turned to stone. From somewhere far off in the distance,
she heard a voice. A voice she thought she recognized, screaming
her name, begging her to come back home.

6

“Lori!” Carol yelled. “Answer me! What is
the matter with you? You know you’re not allowed to go to the park
alone!”

She stopped yelling for a moment and just
stared in bewilderment at her daughter. For a brief second, she
could see right through her, as though Lori had disappeared.

When she blinked her eyes, her daughter
returned.

7

Lori couldn’t feel her mother pulling her to
the car, or her legs dragging loosely upon the ground. She could
see everything around her, the grass at her feet, the cars at the
light, the rainbow in the sky, but felt as though she were just a
visitor in someone else’s body.

8

Carol opened the passenger door for Lori and
then headed around to start the car. The time for yelling was over.
Her normally perfect little girl’s recent actions had her at a loss
for words. She turned into the driveway and parked the car, leaving
just enough room so James could squeeze by into the garage. She
didn’t have to tell her daughter to go to her room, Lori went on
her own.

Carol walked down to the mailbox at the
corner of the driveway and shuffled through an array of junk mail
and bills. When finished, she closed the mailbox and headed inside
the house. She placed the mail on the kitchen counter and walked
over to the phone on the wall. She dialed the number to the used
car lot where her husband, James, was working. The clock on the
microwave said it was almost 5:00 p.m.

“Economy Cars. Don speaking.”

“Hi, Don. Is my husband around?”

“I’ll go check. Hold on.”

Fifteen seconds later.

“Ugh, Carol, he’s with a customer right now.
Is it an emergency?”

“Not really. But can you tell him to call me
when he gets a chance?”

“I sure can.”

“Okay, thanks Don.”

An hour passed before the phone finally
rang.

“When do you think you’re gonna get home?”
she asked, disgusted. “I need to get dinner ready.”

“I know,” James said. “But it’s really busy
right now and we’re kind of short on help tonight.”

“What do you mean short on help?”

“I mean it’s just me and two other salesmen
working the lot, and one of them is new. I’m in the middle of
training him right now.”

“Are you telling me that idiot Frank didn’t
schedule a full load for the sale?”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m telling you.”

“I can’t believe that.”

There was a brief pause on the other end of
the line.

“Honey, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“You sure?”

“Well…”

“What happened?”