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.

©2012 by Grace Armstrong

Randomhouse.com/teens

© 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.