The Secret Science of Magic

by Melissa Keil

  Joshua ignores my eye roll as he shuffles the cards again. ‘And two,’ he says, so quietly that I have to lean forward to hear, ‘you can tell a story. It’s about guiding your audience’s focus. Which part of the trick they’re paying attention to, which bits slip under their radar. You can do all that, if you’re good enough, just with words; with the tone of your voice, inflection, volume –’

  ‘So you’re saying that the fundamental key to all magic is the ability to bullshit?’

  Joshua gives me a sharp side-eye. ‘Not bullshit. That’s no fun. Besides, most people can read insincerity a mile off. It’s more like … well, the most important thing is that your audience knows you’re on their side, that you’re part of the same game. You’re sharing something, not pulling a con. I read this thing once that said that really good magicians possess an instinct for how people perceive the world. It’s about the ability to get a read on strangers, to know what makes them tick. How you’re gonna bamboozle them while making them glad you did.’ He shrugs. ‘I dunno. I kinda like that.’

  He shuffles the deck again, a simple dovetail shuffle, before fanning the cards out and then folding the pack in the opposite direction. He holds the deck out to me.

  ‘Okay, just because I can’t follow your hands doesn’t mean I don’t know how you’re doing this. Obviously you’re keeping tabs on the card somehow, either by your finger placement or some sort of counting I can’t see –’

  He grins as I take the card from the top of the deck. I have a sneaky suspicion that, were she in possession of a consciousness, the Queen of Hearts would be smirking too.

  ‘Bammo,’ Joshua says with a smile.

  I hand him the Queen and he nestles her into the pack again. ‘But, you know, I wasn’t always awesome at it,’ he says, tapping the pack distractedly on his leg. ‘The talking, I mean.’

  ‘No? Why do I find that hard to believe?’

  ‘Really,’ he says, laughing. ‘I was … awkward when I was a kid. I was pretty much a hermit and, like, horrendously shy. I was convinced the entire world was one big confusing trick that I was never gonna figure out. And, you know, I had the speech thing.’

  ‘You mean the lisp?’ I cross my legs, realising too late that I am mirroring his pose again.

  He stops tapping the cards. ‘Noticed that, huh?’

  ‘Oh. Only a little. Most of the time it’s barely there, but sometimes, I think when you’re nervous or stressed?’

  He leans his head against the couch. The fingers of his hand flutter over the deck; I can see him resisting the urge to shuffle. ‘Sometimes I slip when I’m not concentrating,’ he says with a quick glance at me. ‘It was pretty bad, when I was little. For a while I just gave up, and stopped talking altogether.’ He closes his eyes. ‘“Selective mutism”, my therapist called it. Dunno why it needed a name. I wasn’t unhappy, I just … preferred my own company.’

  ‘But let me guess, that wasn’t acceptable?’

  He smiles wryly. ‘Nope. Got to learn to play with others. Thanks to a couple of years of speech therapy and a billion hours copying close-up magicians on YouTube, I don’t sound like Daffy Duck’s clumsy twin anymore. It still comes back though, sometimes. Sometimes it’s hard to focus.’ He twirls the cards half-heartedly.

  ‘It’s just a tiny flaw – no, forget that, it’s not even a flaw,’ I say as spots of colour appear on his cheeks. ‘You know Isaac Newton had a speech impediment? Charles Darwin could barely talk, he stuttered so bad. But no-one remembers that. Your thing, it’s irrelevant. It would have been irrelevant even when it was at its worst. It’s such a wasted effort, this need to be flawless –’

  I look away with a sharp breath. For the briefest moment he managed to spin a spell that hushed the noise in the room and the clamour in my head. But when I look up, into the suddenly loaded silence between us, it hits me: there are too many people here, too much laughter, too many bodies pressed together like amoeba bumping in an alcohol-infused swamp.

  I wrap my hands around my knees. And I try, desperately, to focus on my breathing. But I feel it coming, fluttering behind my belly button, building behind my lungs. When I dare to glance up, Joshua is looking at me, and I know, somehow, that he knows.

  He stands up in one motion. ‘Come on,’ he says softly.

  I follow him blindly. Joshua touches my elbow and points to the staircase that leads up behind the bar.

  I move past him and take the stairs two at a time. It’s just a little quieter here, the party blocked from view. The stairwell is dark and blissfully empty.

  My feet stop a few steps above him. ‘Can I ask you something?’ I say.

  I turn around. He has paused behind me, his face in shadow. ‘Of course.’

  ‘When we first met – that day at uni – you said you weren’t surprised that I didn’t know what I wanted. You said that it made sense. What did you mean by that?’

  Joshua takes a single step upwards. His face looks thoughtful, and torn. ‘I don’t know if I can explain it,’ he says eventually.

  ‘Well, I’ll just add it to my list of nonsensical things.’ My breathing is shallow, my stomach whirring.

  ‘This is going to come out all wrong. But when I first saw you – way back at the beginning of high school – you were excited about everything. While other guys were, you know, pasting their butt cheeks together or whatever, you were trying to …’ He shakes his head. ‘You were trying to figure out, like, the mysteries of the universe.’ He buries his hands in his pockets. Maybe it’s the lighting in the stairwell, but his eyes seem to glow, more light than dark.

  ‘I guess I wasn’t surprised that you would struggle to find somewhere to place all that … potential. I kept seeing you trying to shape yourself, Sophia, to squeeze yourself into everyone else’s boxes, and all I kept thinking was, what you’re searching for can’t be in any of them. They’re just way too small.’

  ‘Mysteries of the universe. That’s a nice thought. But I’m not sure it was ever true. Are you disappointed I’m not like that anymore?’

  He looks at me quickly. ‘No! How could I possibly be disappointed getting to know you? And, you’re not not like that anymore! You have no idea – when you’re absorbed in something, your face has about a billion different expressions … maybe no-one else can see them, but I can. It’s something to witness, you know, you working through a problem … and you always look so calm when you’re with Elsie, like the tornado that follows you around just settles when you’re near her. You get all glowy when you talk about Doctor Who, which I don’t quite get, but I’ve never met anyone who sees the world the way you do. It was always the thing I liked most about you. It’s the thing I like most about you now.’

  I feel for the banister with one hand. I move forward, down one stair and then another, until we are just about at the same height. I am still a handspan away, but I can look him directly in those weird changeable eyes now.

  He’s looking at me with so many things I can’t read, like I hold the answer to a puzzle that’s been plaguing him. I want to bolt home to my bedroom. I want to punch him in his ridiculous open face and tell him to stop looking at me like that because I have no freaking clue what I’m doing. And most of all, I want to stop everything around me, just for a few seconds, so I don’t have to evaluate or analyse or think.

  He’s not blinking. I’m not even sure that he is breathing. I can’t help but think that it’s going to be inconvenient if both of us pass out on these stairs.

  He reaches out and places a hand on my hip. It’s almost weightless, barely a touch, but his hand is big, and warm, and it envelops the space from my hipbone to the small of my back. His fingers are tentative, moving almost imperceptibly. It doesn’t do anything to help my ragged breathing. It’s not like an accidental brush from a stranger. It’s undisputable, and deliberate, and it makes my entire consciousness feel like it is tunnelling down to the spot that he is touching.

  ‘Sophia,’ he says. He swallows a couple of times.
‘Is this okay? Do you … want me to take you home?’

  I reach through the swirling vortex of rubble and noise that is my brain, but nothing of any logic is forthcoming.

  So I lean forward, over the space between the steps, and I kiss him.

  The beat from the music thumps through the stairwell, and for all of five seconds, Joshua’s lips don’t move. One of my hands is still holding the railing, and the other is resting on his chest because I don’t know where else to put it. His body freezes beneath my hand.

  And just when I’m thinking I’ve caused some sort of psychosomatic paralysis, his body shudders, and he takes the remaining steps between us in a single bound. His hands curve around the nape of my neck, and he is kissing me back.

  And dammit – my stupid, traitorous heart splutters like it’s forgotten how to beat a sensible rhythm. My hands find their way to his face, pulling it down to mine because he is far too tall to kiss when we’re standing on the same level. His hands curve over my face as he kisses me, like he’s trying to touch every part of it at once.

  It is a good kiss.

  If there were some sort of kissing barometer or altimeter, Joshua’s kisses would be, like, instrument-imploding level.

  Fact: Joshua Bailey kisses me like he’s been waiting to kiss me his whole life.

  My lips move against his. But I can’t get my brain to stop spinning. I’m hyper aware of our bodies pressed together, and I can feel every place where we are touching – my hands on his chest and his palms on my face. It’s so much heat and contact, so much of another human being in my untraversed space, and it’s this, more than anything, that makes me falter.

  I pull away with a sharp intake of breath. He looks like he’s struggling just as badly for air.

  My hands reach up and take his. They seem to be operating on autopilot as I disconnect his gentle hold on my face.

  His entire expression is a question mark, full of expectations that I have no chance of meeting.

  Say something say something say something, my brain chants.

  Say anything at all to make this less terrifying.

  ‘Sophia,’ he says breathlessly. His eyes are so full and hopeful. ‘I think I might be in love with you.’

  Yep. That should do it.

  I feel it coming, like the rumble of a train across a faraway track, the compression of my chest and lungs. My face is instantly sweaty but my hands are freezing, so icy that my knuckles lock in place. I can’t breathe. I know that what I am experiencing is just a misplaced fight-or-flight response. But knowing that doesn’t make the visceral response any less real. All I know is that I am going to die, right now, on this beer-stained stairwell, if I don’t get away this instant.

  I shove past him and all but tumble down the stairs. I push through the crowd, past the startled face of Joshua’s friend Sam, before bolting out the blue door. Distantly, I clock that it is drizzling again, my feet skidding on the cobblestones before I stumble onto the road. There are people everywhere, so many people, all loud and happy and so freaking normal. I dash across the street and somehow find my way into a mercifully passing taxi. I recognise, distantly, that my actions are so theatrical they would probably gain me a resounding A in Drama, if Ms Heller had the misfortune of observing me.

  I give the driver an address, hearing my robot-voice as if through a vast void.

  I can still feel the lingering press of Joshua’s lips. I could swear, though I know it is impossible, that the warmth of them still lingers.

  I can’t kiss a boy who looks at me like I’m the only thing that matters in the world. I know, for a fact, that nothing I am or will become could be momentous enough to warrant that.

  I can’t kiss a boy who makes my heart stutter; my heart should know what the hell it is doing. I cannot sort out my flawed, failing brain if my basic autonomic functions start letting me down too.

  I can’t. I am not that girl.

  Surely he has to know that? If this continued, sooner or later, I know he would figure out that the person he thinks he wants is only theoretical.

  I can’t do this.

  Even if part of me wants to rewind time and replay that kiss over and over and over again.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The exclusion principle

  Colin opens the door to the Nayers’ house. Warmth radiates from inside, almost painful against my skin; I left my jacket on the bar-house stairwell, and the icy drizzle feels like needles on my bare arms.

  Colin uses his feet to corral Chuck behind us as I squeeze inside. A one-eyed ginger tabby I haven’t seen before also tries to make a break for freedom. The cat sniffs my foot suspiciously as Colin manages to shut the door.

  Colin leads me into the living room, where he, Ryan and Rajesh are playing Trivial Pursuit. Raj looks up at me, yelps, and immediately covers his head. Elsie and I haven’t been allowed to play Trivial Pursuit since we were eleven, when I won because I knew that a pluviometer measures rainfall. Ryan accused me of cheating, and Elsie got so mad she chucked one of her mum’s dog figurines at him, fracturing his nose with a porcelain Irish Setter. I had nothing to do with the nose-breaking incident, but the Nayer brothers seem to find it infinitely more amusing to feign fear of me instead of their sister.

  Ryan gives me a curt ‘hey’. Colin flops onto the couch, Chuck jumping into his lap.

  ‘Whatup, Pinky?’ Raj craws. ‘Hey, excellent timing – where are a snail’s reproductive organs?’

  ‘On its head,’ I answer on autopilot. My voice sounds strange, like my ears are filled with water. Raj whoops amid a chorus of protests from Colin and Ryan.

  ‘Nice one, thanks,’ Raj says, dropping a green wedge into his wheel with a megalomaniac’s chuckle. He glances at me standing there, dripping on their foyer carpet, and does a bit of a double take.

  ‘Hey there, Pinky. Everything okay?’

  I pick up the random ginger cat. ‘No. I don’t think so. Is Elsie home?’

  The three Nayer brothers point, wordlessly, up the stairs. I cuddle the protesting tabby and float up to Elsie’s room.

  Elsie’s bedroom hasn’t changed much since we were kids, except for the new posters that keep appearing on her walls. She never bothers removing the old ones, just Blu-Tacks new pictures on top of one another. By now the layer of paper is so thick I think it has actually reduced the space inside, like an embodiment of a Gabriel’s horn paradox. Peeling away Elsie’s posters would be like excavating layers of sediment, or the heartwood of a tree trunk – her Powerpuff Girls buried layers beneath the shirtless guys from Magic Mike, the Rihanna-in-an-orange-bra hidden deep under an Emory University poster her uncle sent all the way from Atlanta.

  Her collection of popular science books has doubled over the years, as has the range of multi-coloured bras that lie permanently scattered over her floor. Felipe, Elsie’s life-sized human skeleton, is propped in a chair near her window. He’s wearing a knitted bobble hat and has one of Colin’s Hawthorn football scarves draped around his clavicle. Elsie’s bedroom is probably my second most comfortable place on earth, always familiar despite the ever-changing ephemera.

  ‘There are seventy sextillion stars in the known universe,’ I say after hovering unnoticed in the doorway. ‘If intelligent life exists elsewhere, why do we think it’d bother to buzz us here on earth?’ Elsie practically falls out of her chair as she spins around from her computer. ‘We are a small, ridiculous species, Elsie. Forget about the probability of aliens in the universe. Why would anyone bother to come looking for us?’

  Elsie clutches her heart. ‘Jesus, Sophia. Give a person some warning!’ She pushes her chair backwards. ‘What are you doing here? I thought you had family stuff?’

  I tear my eyes away from her screen. The extra reading for Physics – an article on Fermi’s paradox, with Mrs Angstrom’s little green alien drawing – is open on Elsie’s monitor. Another window in the corner of her screen is playing a clip from what I think is Sleepless in Seattle.

  I nu
dge a basket of shoes out of the way and sit ungracefully on the floor, the purring lump of ginger cat still in my arms.

  ‘Colin let me in,’ I answer. My stomach is starting to feel a little less like it’s being wrung from the inside. But I have no idea what I want to say.

  Elsie follows my gaze to Felipe’s scarf. ‘Yeah, Colin’s crashing for a couple of days. Apparently “my hot water is on the blink” is boy code for “my housemates have spent this month’s gas money on gourmet pizza”. I mean, I love my brother. But when it comes to money, Colin can be a real dick bag.’

  ‘Right. Poor Colin.’

  Elsie sits on the floor beside me. She is in her plaid pyjama pants and an ancient Doc McStuffins T-shirt that I think belonged to one of her cousins. She takes the cat from my hands, then gathers a towel from a pile on her floor and hands it to me.

  ‘This is Pumpkin, by the way. Number four or five – no-one can remember how many gingers we’ve had.’ Elsie chuckles, her eyes trained on Pumpkin’s head. ‘So. What’s going on, Rey? If I had to guess, judging by the look on your face, I’d assume Toby has finally snapped and express-posted Viljami’s decapitated head home to Finland?’

  Elsie smiles, but it’s small and strange. She deposits the cat on her bed and sweeps an armful of clothes off before dragging herself up to sit on her doona. Her hair is just washed, flowing in fat, loose waves. Her eyes flash yellow and purple from the string of butterfly lights on the wall above her bed.

  I lean my cold face against her quilt cover and close my eyes. Alarmingly, they feel a little damp behind my eyelids, but of course, nothing resembling tears is forthcoming.

  Elsie drums her fingers lightly on my head, just hard enough to coerce my eyes open. Reflexively, I shift away, then feel yet another swoop of guilt and shame.

  ‘Okay. So you’re upset?’ She fidgets with her blankets. ‘Sophia … are you going to tell me what’s been going on? Because for the last few weeks it’s sort of felt like you’ve been visiting another planet.’ She clears her throat. ‘Maybe I’m just paranoid, but it feels like lately … like you haven’t wanted me around as much or something?’