Houdini’s Great Escape
From the Newbery Honor Author Grace Armstrong
To Sarah, Rachel, and Jake: to whom more pet memories are yet to come.
Š2012 by Grace Armstrong Randomhouse.com/teens Š Cover art design by Grace Armstrong
Houdini was a turtle. Well, actually, she was probably the only female escape artist turtle in the world. She spent her days sitting on the rock in her tank, sleeping, dreaming and plotting of a way to escape. Often she’d bang her little green head on the glass of the tank, desperate to break out. Whenever we put her in a plastic bowl with pebbles to play with her, she’d stack the pebbles up and climb on top of them and out of the bowl. So we, the Armstrongs, decided to name our first pet Houdini, after the famous escape artist. We had wanted a pet for SO LONG, and my mom finally gave in. Luckily, my dad’s aunt, who lived in Tampico, was moving and had a turtle that needed someone to adopt it. We were happy to oblige. Houdini was perfect. We all had responsibility for taking care of her. Jake would clean the tank, I would feed her, Rachel would always play with Houdini and give her exercise (she got extremely attached to her), and Sarah would bathe Houdini. We adored her, Sarah and Rachel especially. Now, Houdini didn’t have a tank lamp to give her vitamin D, so every day while my mom did the dishes she would put Houdini out in our tiny excuse of a backyard and look out the kitchen window to make sure Houdini didn’t run away. One particularly sizzling day in June, I bounded home, spirits high. It was only 3 days until summer vacation! “How was your day?” my mom inquired glumly, without her usual happy attitude, when we walked into the entryway through the door. Her regularly smiling face was replaced with a stressed-out expression. That rarely happened. Instantly an ear-splitting alarm went off in my head. Jake asked, “Everything okay, mom?” He noticed the guilt in her tone as well. “Um—no. It’s about Houdini.” What?! I thought, the mental alarm still blaring, this time louder, if that’s even possible. Clearly we were all thinking the same thing. For a few seconds the Armstrong siblings exchanged worried looks. “Well, what about her?” Sarah yelled impatiently, throwing her backpack onto the floor with a frustrated expression. Being the 7-year-old animal lover, Sarah never took these things well. She cried even when she had to release a frog she had kept in a jar for a day. “I was washing dishes and she was outside and I looked up and she was gone,” Mom explained. We dashed to the turtle tank, where, sure enough, Houdini wasn’t present. My heart sank as Rachel started to cry. “Let’s at least look for her!” Sarah yelled, close to tears. “I already did,” Mom said, and pulled her into a tight hug. Sarah wrenched herself from my mom’s arms. “I’m looking again!” And she stormed out the sliding glass doors.
I hope we find her and she didn’t run too far, I thought. While Sarah ran around in a desperate hunt for our turtle, I sat on the couch with my older brother Jake and my sister Rachel. Rachel bawled. Out of all of us, she treasured Houdini the most and was closest to her, and Rachel was also the most emotional. I hugged her. It was then that the situation dawned on me. There was no pet to play with, to care for, to love. But I couldn’t cry. I was the oldest girl in the family. However, when Jake’s eyes got very watery, slowly, one by one, tears trickled down my 9-year-old cheeks too. It finally sunk in. Houdini was gone--probably forever. We weren’t going to find her anywhere. She was destined to die somewhere from the heat or dehydration or lack of food or run over by a rusty old truck with a Mexican driver. “Well, if you live an adventurous life like she did, it’s kinda risky.” Jake observed when he got a hold of himself. “Yeah,” Rachel and I agreed, sniffing. Tired of the heat, Sarah came back inside 3 minutes later. Her sadness turned to anger. “How could you let this happen?” she demanded of my mother. “Yes, I know, I’m sorry,” my mom replied calmly, attempting to hug Sarah again for comfort. Sarah narrowly avoided the hug again and ran to her room, furious tears streaming down her face. Rachel, Jake and I returned to our rooms silently, only the disappointed shouts coming from Sarah’s room and the sound of our own sobbing audible. Houdini had escaped again. But it wasn’t like getting out of a plastic bowl. This time she wasn’t coming back. Time passed. Summer came and went and it was hotter than ever outside-and that’s saying a lot for being in Mexico. There was no rain at all. Then in late September, there was an enormous downpour. My mom was doing the dishes, as usual, looking outside at the rain puddles that made our backyard look like a small pond. She looked at the kitchen which needed a major clean-up. She returned her eyes to the window and dropped a plate in amazement. As it clattered to the floor, Mom ran to the backyard doors to make sure she wasn’t just seeing things. Then she yelled, “Houdini, Houdini!!! Sarah, Grace, Rachel, Jake—She’s BACK!” I remember all of the Armstrong siblings running to the sliding doors, barefoot, leaping out into the cool rain, getting soaked, and seeing the mess of a turtle that lay reclining in a puddle, stretching it’s neck out in luxury as it cherished the rain. I had scooped her up and carried her inside where we observed her injuries. She was still alive, nothing broken, but a thin layer of skin and a net of dirt covered her eyes, and her shell was caked with dirt. Her
reptilian skin looked like a snake’s, when the snake is ready to shed. But we didn’t care. We all rejoiced and joked about where she had been. The happiness I felt in the miraculous turn of events was amazing. She was still alive. After all this time. What were the chances? A million to one. After a few months, Houdini was back to normal, eating regularly and looking perfectly healthy. To this day, the whereabouts of Houdini during her 4 months in the wild and how she survived remain a mystery. From this experience I learned that miracles can happen, and when they do, they are at the most unexpected times, when all hope is lost. Then the hope is found again, and everything is okay once more. And that in itself is a miracle.
About The Author:
Grace Armstrong is an award-winning author and journalist at just 12 years old whose articles have appeared in numerous publications, including Seventeen and Cosmopolitan. Her upcoming novel, The Chatroom, will be published in 2014. She lives in Warsaw, Poland with her family and a hamster named Smoky.
Houdini had escaped again. But it wasn’t like getting out of a plastic bowl. This time she wasn’t coming back.