CHAPTER TWO

I've been disappearing things since I was twelve.

Peter was fourteen at the time; he was the one who figured it out. It wasn't just because he was older, or because he was more creative, it was because he was obsessed. He was the one most preoccupied with the how and why of it all. Spending all weekend shut in his room, lying to mom about being on the computer, sitting around trying to make things.

And then, of course, if you could make things, certainly you could unmake things.

"Making"and "unmaking" were simple shorthand. We weren't really putting something into space or taking it out. We weren't violating the laws of physics, we were violating human perception. It was less grand, more intimate, more intrusive.

Something was always either there or not there, but we could make you think otherwise. And that's what's really important, isn't it?

(If you're really thinking through this, you'll say "no.")

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(If you're really thinking through this, you'll say "yes.")

It was a subtle and difficult art, vanishing. It wasn't magic, I wasn't a sorceror; I had a skill, a skill that had to be honed like any other. It took building an intuition for the way light moved and bounced, for the way air flowed, for the way shadows fell across curves and corners, for the way heat made surfaces fuzzy. I felt it in some part of my brain, like the part that tells you if a piano is in tune or if a joke is funny. Somehow, you just felt it.

Like... magic?

Aunt Stella hated when I called it magic. She preferred to call it natural charm. She mostly used her 'natural charm' to compel people to honor expired coupons or pour her more alcohol than the legal limit.

My Mom also hated when I called it magic, but she hated when I called it anything.

Peter and I hadn't started to get creative until middle school. I think that was when things started going downhill. For Peter, creativity meant pushing a few too many boundaries. When those boundaries were inside of people's minds, it usually wasn't a good idea to push them.

He practiced constantly until his mind ached. He practiced in school, walking outside my classroom window and sending spiders crawling across my desk. He was sloppy. He missed details: a light source, a thin coat of hair on their creepy little legs.

I was better. And I had gotten better since he'd left.

But everything else had gotten worse since he'd left.