Our Hope Chest — Part 1: The Attic

Heather

Come to think of it, Xander was the one who found the hope chest.

We were hiding in the back of my bedroom closet, behind the winter coats and old church clothes nobody wore anymore. Mom and Dad barely used the space, but the previous owners had left junk on the shelves and forgotten it. We only shoved ourselves back there because the clothes muffled Mom and Dad's arguments downstairs. It was credit cards that night, I think. You hear the first argument through the vents and you're terrified. After a while, you just want it to stop.

Xander found the false wall because he couldn't sit still. "Heather!" he screamed at me. I shot him an evil glare and put a finger to my lips. We had never tested what our parents could or could not hear from back there, but he was too excited to keep calm. First he clawed, then kicked, and finally pulled an iron fire poker from one of the storage boxes and jabbed straight through to a tiny cubbyhole barely big enough for the chest.

We tried to pull the chest out, but it was just too heavy for two pipsqueak kids to handle. So we chipped away more of the flimsy false wall until we could slip inside, together, and dig through our hope chest. The stain was weathered down to bare, gray wood on the top, and the corners had been chipped by one too many moves, and despite the chill in that attic the chest was warm to the touch. Honest. Maybe I'd been reading too many pretty-princess stories, but I can tell you this: from the moment we laid eyes on that thing we knew it was magic. Magic.

Downstairs, the argument reached up through the insulation, took our ears, and yanked. Hard. Glass shattered. Feet pounded baseboards. Doors slammed. Two days later they sat us down for the last family meeting. Mommy and Daddy won't live together anymore; here's your new schedule, new families, new responsibilities. You know the drill. It wasn't a great night. But there, with the chest and the costumes under our greedy little fingers, we were enchanted.

Our noses filled with mothballs. We coughed and choked for a while, patted down our pajamas, and fanned the air. Inside were costumes: Zoot suits, sundresses, fedoras, bonnets, animal ears, tails. Xander wanted to give up then and there; he never liked to play make-believe. But we dug deeper anyway.

We settled on the animal costumes after we'd emptied the chest. There were hoods and there were headbands and there were tails meant to go on belts and tails meant to clip to dresses and... well... everything in between really. The thing was full of costumes and props.

"Can't believe they hid this," Xander said. He was fingering a pair of fox ears in one hand, a tail in the other. Then he tossed them both back into the chest. "So we've got clothes and fake ears. Big deal. I should have brought a board game or something."

But I could feel the magic hanging off those costumes. Maybe it was because I was still a little girl obsessed with pretty princess fantasies. Maybe it was the sound of Mom and Dad screaming downstairs keeping us frozen in place. But the chest was magic and I wasn't about to let it go that easily.

I picked up a pair of bunny ears. They were white and had ribbons tied around the tips. I had a thing for bows back then. So I picked up these ears and played with the headband, reveling in the warm sensation that reached all the way into bones. "They're cute," I said. Then I started rooting through the dresses to find something that would match.

"Come on," he said. "They're stupid. Where's the secret? I made ears like this in school last week. Big whoop!" Xander stomped his foot in consternation. "Come on, Heather. I'll go get a game or something."

"Not yet," I told him. Sure enough, there was a nice red sundress in the clothing pile. It matched perfectly. "Let's at least play around a bit. I mean, it was hidden."

He shuffled his feet. "Yeah."

"And I'm the big sister, so I get to make the decision. And right now I need a model."

"What?"

Before he could protest I threw the bow-riddled bunny ears onto his head and then... well, you already know what happened from there. I just figured it'd be best to explain how this whole song-and-dance started if you're going to put this on cable.

Xander

Whatever Heather told you about Coney Beach, don't believe her. It all started on a dare—

Oh. She told you about the first time? Huh. That's not like her. I swear to God I don't remember anything about it. Things just got foggy when I turned into a bunny. One second I'm an eight-year-old kid hiding from an argument downstairs, the next I'm this bunny girl who really had no good reason to exist. And I mean full-out, fur coat and button-nosed bunny; like, reach-into-the-TV-and-pull-out-a-cartoon-character rabbit. You can't fault me for being dazed.

And yes, before you ask she had me play dress up and walk around in these oversized Mary Janes we found at the bottom of the chest. I'm not ashamed of that. The rules changed once we found those costumes. Why be limited when there's magic? Sometimes we were sisters. Sometimes we were brothers. Sometimes we switched before dinner and never talked about it again. It was private, mostly. That was just how we were.

Let's see... anything else from that time, you say? Truth be told it's all hazy to me. I mean, I remember things, sure. Disconnected flashbulbs of moments. Vacations to different states, school assemblies, new family members I was supposed to love after seeing them one time. The only other event that sticks out is the night we packed up the chest. We carefully slid the ears and tails into boxes of toys and insisted that we unpack them ourselves. Then we'd hide the ears in attics, in plastic bags in the woods, everywhere our parents couldn't find them.

I can tell you every hiding spot we used for the costumes, but ask me details about my tenth birthday and I've got nothing. I had to celebrate it twice, I think. That was back when my parents were competing for "best family."

We had a whole chest full of other selves and pretend worlds to escape into: stalking cats in the forest, playful dogs at home, silent foxes in the city, bunnies that picked wildflowers on spring evenings. (There's a story behind that one, 'course, but you'll have to drag it from Heather.)

It's just weird. I know that time existed. It's there like some lump in my throat, but I can't say it out loud. You'd think having access to magical artifacts would lend me some fantastic memories, but all that's there are the Big Moments we're talking about here.

Which brings me back to Coney Beach, actually. What a horrible, horrible idea that was!

To start with, Coney Beach happened long after the family's dust had settled. Things were stable, if not uneasy. (Things are always uneasy when you call two houses home.) We'd been costuming for a good eight years by that time. God. Eight years. We'd moved to a bigger apartment years back, so Jake and our stepmother Claire could move in. The only reason we brought him along is that we felt sorry for him, sitting home while we took off for the weekend. Heather insisted, even though I said no way. He made me uncomfortable. He had a way of looking abandoned that made adults soften and children check their pockets.

Don't tell Heather that, though. She'd never let me live it down.

Heather

We spent our last week as a family holed up in that attic, breathing R-49 flavored air, careful to be present from time to time so Mom and Dad didn't think we had run off. They didn't seem to notice anyway. Too many lawyers, contracts, and negotiations for that to register our absence.

The second week after the hope chest I remember crying a lot. We sat on dusty boxes in the attic and made small talk about what kind of people lived in the house before us. Witches, maybe. Or perhaps there was some secret society that dealt in magic items. We tried on every costume and tried to play make-believe but neither of us were feeling it.

Downstairs our parents were quiet. Too quiet. Mom cried a lot and Dad flipped through papers. It was nice not to hear a shouting match for once. We felt like we were dying. Xander and I discussed secret little plans to stay together, just in case Dad moved across country or something. Eight years old, and planning on our survival. Weird to think about now.

One minute stretched into five, into ten, into thirty. We sat on boxes and looked at each other, trying our best not to cry.

"We can't tell anybody," Xander said. He pointed to the ears in the chest. "They'll take it away for experiments."

"I know." So we made plans to pack up the hope chest. Every night we'd try on a new outfit; if it wasn't magic it stayed in the chest, and if it was magic we'd stuff it into a dollhouse, an old binder, sock drawers, you name it.

Dad sold the house within the month, and we had our own portable magic show spread between two houses. Every time I think about the place, my mind goes right back to that attic and the chipped false wall, costumes littering insulation rolls like dirty laundry.

Xander

I don't know why we thought costuming in public was a good idea.

We'd taken the costumes out on vacation before: mostly on the beaches, since it meant we could use the swim goggles that turned us into dolphins. Sure, we got caught a few times coming in and out of the water, but there were so many people around that by the time someone noticed we could duck into a wave and disappear. What Heather had planned was something different entirely: a public performance.

I don't know why I said yes. Maybe I missed doing it. Maybe I just wanted to be caught.

We packed separately, drove separately, and arrived separately. Not that Coney Beach was that far off (we only lived a half-hour away), but we didn't want to set off any alarm bells. Animal ears aren't exactly standard fare at a park like that, after all.

Jake was there too. I remember he had the camera. That was supposed to be his job: take pictures, hold our stuff. Nothing more. Honest. He kept wandering off to make calls, and I figured he was just bored.

So we found some locker rooms, changed, and paraded around the midway. I was a cat. She was a rabbit. In the noontime sun our fur shimmered; cameras clicked and whirred around us and we posed, smiling, holding up peace signs and putting our arms around strangers.

"This is what these costumes were made for," she told me. In our peripheral vision loomed security personnel and an ever-growing group of photographers. We were putting on a better show than their mascots and they knew it.

What were they going to do, though? We hadn't broken any rules. Sure, we were bending the rules of reality, but what could they do about that? Heck, even when the tabloid photographers started crowding in for questions they could only do so much to stop them.

Then the crowd started getting grabby, and things really went to pot.