15 Disappearance

Chapter 15 Disappearance disappearance (n) a magic trick in which an object, person, or animal seems to disappear Jessie ran upstairs to get her high rain boots, then sloshed through the rising water in the basement, calling out, "Professor Hoffmann! Where are you? It's us. Come out!" She looked on all the shelves, thinking that perhaps he'd jumped up, trying to escape the flood. That would be a natural instinct in an animal: to seek higher ground. But Jessie looked on every shelf in the basement, and there was no sign of the rabbit. Evan, who didn't have rain boots, stayed on the stairs and held the flashlights. But after ten minutes he said, "Jess, we can't stay down here. The water's getting higher, and I think there's yucky stuff in it.

See?" He pointed to the water near the furnace, and Jessie could see that there was an oily slick on the surface. "Come on." At the top of the stairs, Jessie pulled off her boots. "Where do you think he went?" she asked, but in her mind, she knew the answer. Professor Hoffmann had drowned, and when the storm ended and the water emptied out of the basement, they would find his small, limp body, and he would never do a magic trick again. Jessie had never loved an animal before, but she loved Professor Hoffmann. She loved him because he was quiet and predictable and simple and didn't need much. Sometimes he was calm, and sometimes he was nervous. But mostly he just wanted to eat lettuce and occasionally a radish. He needed water and his box cleaned out from time to time, and you could count on him to do his job. He was an easy rabbit to understand. She tried not to think too much about what he had gone through at the end. She told herself that rabbits

don't feel fear the same way humans do. But as the morning stretched on and the storm continued to rage, Jessie grew more and more frightened herself, and she couldn't help thinking that Professor Hoffmann had felt some of the same things she was feeling now. "Evan, the buckets are overflowing!" Jessie shouted, looking in her bedroom for the fifth time that day. It was incredible how fast they filled now that the rain was coming down harder than ever. "Give me a second," Evan called back. "There's another leak in the kitchen!" The ceiling in the kitchen had started to drip in the afternoon, and Evan and Jessie were on steady patrol, checking each room for new leaks. So far there was one in their mother's bedroom, one in the bathroom, and three in the kitchen. The only room that had managed to stay completely dry was the family room, and that's where Evan and Jessie had moved their supplies to and where they would hunker down between patrols.

"This is hard," said Jessie at one point. She was trying to open a jar of pickles. Jessie loved pickles, but her mom never let her have more than two at a time because eating too many gave her a stomachache. "I can do it," said Evan, reaching for the pickle jar. He was eating tortilla chips dipped in cold hot-fudge sauce. "That's disgusting," said Jessie matter-of-factly. "Actually, it's not half bad," said Evan, returning the pickle jar with the lid loosened. "Don't eat more than two." "I know, I know," said Jessie. She didn't like touching food with her hands, particularly wet, cold food, so she used a fork to stab a pickle and fish it out of the jar. As she crunched, she thought of Professor Hoffmann and said again, "This is hard." "What?" "Everything. This whole storm. It's a lot of work." And a lot of sadness, she thought. "Yeah. I'm tired."

"Do we have to stay up all night? Because of the buckets?" asked Jessie. "I guess. Unless the storm stops. Do you think it's slowing down?" They both listened to the howling of the wind and the slapping of the rain against the windows. Jessie had almost gotten used to it, the storm had been going on for so long. It felt like days and days. "No," she said finally. "I don't think it's slowing down at all." "I wish we had a radio," said Evan for about the fourth time that day. "I just want to know what's going on." Jessie finished her second pickle, thought about taking a third, then put the lid back on the jar. She hadn't been very hungry all day, but she knew she should eat something to keep up her strength. She reached for the last Lorna Doone in its plastic sleeve. "You want to split it?" she asked. "Nah. I already had about ten of them." Evan leaned back and closed his eyes. Jessie thought he

was going to fall asleep right there on the couch. But then he sat up and said, "I better go check the basement. To see if the water's gotten higher." Jessie hadn't gone back down to the basement since the morning. She couldn't bear it. But Evan had checked every hour, counting the number of steps that were still untouched by the water. At last check, the water had risen so high that only ten steps were still above water. What if the water reached the top step and started to spill into the kitchen? Jessie took a deep breath. "I'll come with you," she said. The thought of going down those stairs, descending into the murky darkness and all that swirling water, made Jessie feel as if she were lowering herself into a deep, dark well. Plus, it wasn't just a basement anymore. It was a graveyard. "You don't have to," said Evan. "I can go by myself." But Jessie insisted, so they rounded up every flashlight they could find—seven in all—and turned