by Sally Warner
“Yeah,” Corey says. “I was really worried, but I knew you’d do it, dude. Your tricks were awesome. As much as I could tell from the third row, anyway. Sorry I’m gonna miss the show,” he adds, looking sad.
“Thanks,” I croak.
“I couldn’t see your act very well,” Heather complains. “Especially your first trick. And I was in the second row.”
“I couldn’t see either one,” Kevin says. “But magic is cool, and so is EllRay. So it’s good he got in.”
Kevin is probably feeling generous because Jared and Stanley are so happy. I wish he was still my whole-best friend, instead of just being half-best. “Thanks,” I tell him, trying to smile.
Only four more days until the talent show, when almost no one will be able to see my lame illusions. But even though part of me is horrified I got in, another part is feeling tingly and warm, like something truly magical has happened.
I wish there was such a thing as real magic!
If I were a wizard, for example, I could truly astound even the biggest and hairiest sixth-grader on Friday—instead of doing two beginner’s tricks they either already know or won’t be able to see.
They’ll probably all be whispering and texting during my act, even though that’s not allowed.
Who cares? Not me.
And I kind of can’t wait to tell my dad I got in the show.
Maybe he’ll be proud of me!
“We’d better decide about that special book for Ms. Sanchez. You know, the one EllRay thought up,” Emma says during afternoon recess. Most of us are standing around the tetherball corner of the playground, though Jared and Stanley are trying to teach some guys a couple of hip-hop moves near the fence. “The wedding shower is this Friday, after the talent show,” Emma reminds us. “Fiona already said she’d do the cover.”
“I think I’ll draw Ms. Sanchez in her bride costume,” Fiona says, sounding shyer than she should for someone who is so good at art. “And I might glue real lace around the edges of the book.”
“Ooo. Real lace,” Annie Pat says, her voice soft.
“I think our pages should all be the same size, or else our book will look like babies did it,” I say, hitting the tetherball hard enough for it to twirl around the pole three times. One-person tetherball!
“Yeah,” Emma agrees. “Like, notebook-paper size. Okay?”
“Look who’s trying to boss everyone around,” Cynthia tells Heather, but you can tell that she’s not all that into picking a fight with Emma, who is usually her favorite target. Not today. I think she really wanted to get in that talent show.
Wanna trade places with me, Cynthia?
“Emma’s not bossing anyone,” Kry says. “What do you think Ms. Sanchez’s book should be about, Cynthia?” she asks, like she actually wants to know. Maybe she does want to know. Kry’s that nice. Or maybe she’s trying to make Cynthia feel better about the talent show.
“I don’t know,” Cynthia says, shrugging as if she’s too busy to think about it much. “We could write down recipes, only none of us can cook.”
“Except for s’mores on camping trips,” Kry says, taking her turn whacking the tetherball.
Emma looks thoughtful. “What about if we each say something we like about Ms. Sanchez?” she suggests.
“Naw,” Corey says. “Too kiss-uppy.”
“Huh,” Annie Pat says. “There’s a difference between kissing up and being nice, Corey. And if you can’t be nice to someone at their wedding shower, when can you be nice?”
“That’s right,” Emma agrees.
“I think we should say something to Ms. Sanchez about getting married,” I say.
Like “Don’t do it,” I add silently. I like her the way she is.
“What do we know about being married?” Annie Pat asks, blinking her dark blue eyes.
“Lots, really,” I tell her—and everyone. “We all have moms and dads, don’t we? Some kids have even more than two parents,” I add, thinking of the stepmoms and stepdads that a few kids in my class have. Like Emma, whose father lives in some foreign country with a new wife. She told me once.
“Yeah,” everyone standing there mumbles.
“And aren’t we spying on them all the time, basically?” I ask.
“Not snooping spying,” Kry says, frowning.
“No,” I agree. “Nothing weird. But we see what’s going on with them, and we have ideas about what they do, and the way they are. I’m just saying we should maybe pass those ideas along. You know, to help Ms. Sanchez when she—”
“But she has her own mom and dad to tell her stuff about getting married,” Cynthia interrupts, which is something she often does.
“That’s only two people,” I point out. “Old people. But if all of us told Ms. Sanchez just one important thing about being a married lady, she’d have a ton of good advice.”
“We could do both,” Kry says, coming up with the perfect answer, as usual. “We could each say something we like about her, number one, and number two, give her advice about getting married, the way EllRay said.”
“That sounds hard,” Heather says, copying Cynthia’s complaint from the other day.
“It’s just two sentences on a piece of notebook paper, Heather,” I say. “That’s like nothing. And you have four days to do it.”
“Three days at the most,” Fiona corrects me. “Because I have to put the book together all nice after I get the pages.”
Oh, yeah. I guess Fiona’s in charge of that part because she’s doing the cover.
“Okay, three days,” I say. “That means we have to turn in our pages by Thursday, right? So they’ll be ready in time for the party on Friday? But everyone in class has to do a page, and we have to keep it a secret from Ms. Sanchez—and our parents, or they’ll take over the whole thing.”
Emma and Annie Pat pinch their lips shut, making Xs across them with their pointer fingers like they’ve been practicing this secrecy sign for ages.
“She’ll like our book much better than any vacuum cleaner,” Corey says.
“It’s not a contest between presents,” Cynthia reminds him.
“Yeah, but she will,” Corey insists.
And I think he’s right.
Who likes to vacuum?
Even when they can do it together, like dancing.
12
MAKING THINGS OKAY WITH ALFIE
“Knock, knock,” I say, standing in the doorway of Alfie’s room that night.
“Who’s there?” Alfie asks, sounding wary as she looks up from where she is sitting on her rug. She is combing a pink plastic horse’s tail, a tail that is so long it trails behind it on the ground like a fancy bride cape, or whatever that thing is called. I wonder if Ms. Sanchez will wear one of those at her wedding to that guy?
I know his name, but I’m not gonna say it.
Alfie looks like she’s still scared of MAGIC me. She didn’t talk much during dinner.
It was kind of relaxing, I have to say.
“What do you mean, ‘Who’s there?’” I ask. “It’s me, EllRay. Your brother. I’m standing right here. You’re looking at me,” I say, trying to sound as normal and unmagical as possible.
Making things okay with Alfie has to happen fast, Mom told me after dinner. She says the whole family is a nervous wreck because of Alfie getting freaked out by magic.
1. For the past two nights, she has gone to bed only if all the lights in her room stay on. All night long.
2. She made Mom lock up the bunny hand puppet I gave her—the one that was in my magic set—in the safe in my dad’s office. And that bunny never did a thing to deserve being locked up! I think he needs a bunny lawyer.
3. Nobody is supposed to say the word “magic” around Alfie, either.
4. Even her braids have started to droop.
“Oh,” Alfie says, sounding disappointed. “I thought you were doing a knock-knock joke. What do you want? Don’t come in.”
“Why not?” I ask.
“Because this is pwivate pwoperty,” Alfie says, fluffing up her horse’s tail.
That’s Alfie-speak for “private property.”
“But I want to show you something,” I tell her. “Something secret and cool.”
“What?” she asks.
“How I do my two tricks,” I say, taking one step inside her pink and purple room. My red pencil case is tucked into the back of my pants, which is where TV detectives sometimes hide their guns.
That sounds risky to me.
Calling my magic “tricks” instead of “illusions” will work better with Alfie, I think. They sound less spooky that way.
“I don’t wanna see any more magic,” Alfie mumbles, staring down as she fiddles with the circle of tiny flowers around her horse’s head. “So go away.”
“I’ll let you keep the coins after I show you the first trick,” I say, bribing her. And this might work, because money is Alfie’s new hobby, almost. She has been saving up for a Golden Sparkle Corral for her plastic horses for ages. She’ll probably be twenty years old before she has enough money for it, and who would want a Golden Sparkle Corral then?
I take another step toward her.
“Don’t stand on my wug, EllWay, or I’ll call the police,” Alfie warns me. “And who wants magic money that a person can’t even spend?”
“It’s regular money,” I say. “You can spend it just fine. I’ll even give you an extra quarter if you let me show you how I do the trick. See, I can’t really turn a dime into two quarters. I just end the trick by hiding the dime behind one of the quarters.”
“Like how?” she asks, looking suspicious.
“Like this,” I say. And I kneel at the edge of her rug, whisk out my pencil case, arrange the three coins in my hand, and show her every step of the first trick, including dropping the quarters a few times by mistake.
“Abracadabra,” I say, and I hand her the coins.
“So you were just fooling me?” Alfie asks, scowling.
“Yeah,” I say. “But fun-fooling you. That’s what tricks are. I wasn’t being mean.”
“What about that other quarter you said I could have?” she asks, looking less worried than when I first walked into her room, I’m glad to see.
“I don’t have it on me, but I won’t forget to give it to you. I promise,” I say.
“Okay. But cutting the stwing was real, right?” she asks. “And then putting it back together again?”
“No. That was a trick, too. Want to see?”
“I guess,” she says. And I move onto her fluffy rug, get out my supplies, and show them to her—including the straw with the slit in it. And then I do the trick, making sure she sees how I pull the looped string down before I cut the straw.
“Huh,” Alfie says, looking as thoughtful as a four-year-old can. “So you were faking the whole time?”
“That’s what tricks are,” I explain. “The fun part comes from being amazed, and maybe from trying to figure out how the person did the trick.”
“I didn’t know there was a fun part,” Alfie says. “But is that why you were bwagging at dinner? Because you’re gonna fool everyone at the talent show?”
“I wasn’t bragging,” I say. “I was telling Mom and Dad. It was just conversation.”
“And telling me,” Alfie says.
“And telling you. But do you want to know a secret?”
“Sure. What?” Alfie says, and her brown eyes sparkle. She loves secrets almost as much as she loves chocolate.
“I might try getting out of the whole thing tomorrow. It’s making me nervous.”
“How can you get out of it?”
“I’ll talk to the principal,” I say, making my mind up on the spot, right there on Alfie’s rug. And the pastel plastic horses with long goofy tails that drag on the floor are my witnesses.
“But you’re scared of your principal,” Alfie says, her eyes wide. “He’s all hairy, like a wee-wuff.”
She means “werewolf,” but that’s really hard for her to say.
“It’s just his beard that makes him look that way,” I assure her. “And I’m scared of getting in trouble at school, I’m not scared of him,” I add, trying to explain. “He’s not that bad. He knows all our names, even. He must practice them at night. Probably with flash cards,” I add, thinking about it. That’s what I would do.
I have trouble remembering his name—even though there’s only one of him.
Maybe I should just call him “Your Honor”? Like on TV?
Our principal always stands on the school’s front steps in the morning to greet us. That will be my big chance to explain why my two small magic illusions won’t work in our school auditorium.
“You’re bwave,” Alfie tells me, moving in for a snuggle.
“Not really,” I say, letting her give me a sweaty little hug.
“You are,” she says, sounding fierce, like she’s sticking up for me.
“Well, I think you’re brave, too,” I say. “Like, how you usually sleep with the lights out and stuff. And you’re only four. That’s awesome.”
“I used to do that,” she says, as if it were a long time ago, not just last week.
“Maybe you could do it again someday,” I say, shrugging like it’s no big deal either way.
Well, it isn’t. Not to me.
“Maybe I will,” she agrees. “But not tonight.” She gives me another SQUEEZE, though.
“Whenever,” I tell her.
Mom’s going to be so relieved.
“But you still owe me a quarter, EllWay,” Alfie says. “You pwomised.”
“Okay,” I say, springing to my feet. “I’ll go get it right now.”
Anything to escape all this mush!
13
TELLING DAD
Telling Dad that I decided I want to drop out of Oak Glen’s talent show is going to be hard. He and my mom are probably still celebrating because they’re so amazed I got in!
They like to hang out in the family room after dinner, even though they don’t watch much TV. In fact, they do different things. Usually Dad reads, because college geology professors have lots of stuff “to wade through,” as he puts it. Mom likes to watch TV shows and movies on her tablet. But she wears ear buds so the noise won’t bother my dad.
At least they’re together in the same room, my mom says when I ask why they don’t just do the stuff they like in different places.
I hate ear buds. They make my ear holes hot and sore. I want really cool headphones.
See, that’s what I should say on my page of Ms. Sanchez’s wedding shower book:
Watch out, because getting married means you will never get to do exactly what you want, the way you want, ever again!
Instead, I’ll have to make up something nice. I don’t want to make Ms. Sanchez sad on her wedding shower day.
I am never getting married. What if the lady I married didn’t like Die, Creature, Die, my favorite video game? What then?
I won’t give up my game just for you, whoever-you-are!
“Hi, honey,” Mom says, spotting me standing in the doorway, watching them. “Did you manage to talk some sense into your sister?”
“Mm-hmm,” I say, nodding. “She’s better, I think. I showed her how the tricks work, so she doesn’t think I have magical powers anymore.”
I leave out the part about paying her off with the coins, because Mom and Dad would not approve of that. But I still think it was a good idea.
“Good,” Dad says, smiling as he looks up from his book. “Maybe things will get back to what passes for normal around here.”
“Alfie’s going to sleep in the dark again,” I tell them. “Only not tonight.”
“Well, baby steps are better than no steps at all,” my dad says, shrugging.
“But speaking of magic,” I say before he can dive back into his book, “can I talk to you about something important, Dad? I mean, may I?”
Because my dad is gonna hear about it, if the principal lets
me drop out of the show. He and Mom might even have been planning to come watch! So I’d better tell him now, and get it over with. He’s the one who taught me the illusions.
“In my office?” Dad asks, tilting his head.
“Sure,” I say.
At least Mom will be able to listen to her show for a while without those ear buds ruining the whole thing.
“What’s up, son?” Dad asks after we sit down.
“It’s about the talent show,” I say, staring down at my bony knees. “I think I have to drop out. My tricks are too SMALL for a whole assembly to see. I’m going to tell the principal tomorrow morning. I just wanted to let you know.”
“Hmm. Stage fright?” my dad asks, frowning.
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “And those illusions were good. But like I said, they were meant for just a few people at a time, not a whole auditorium full.”
“I was wondering about that,” Dad admits. “I knew they’d get you through the tryouts, but . . .”
“But they won’t work for the real show,” I finish, since he has stopped talking. “I would look like a fool, and all the big kids would laugh at me—or boo me off the stage. My reputation would be ruined—and I have three more years at Oak Glen.”
“You’re exaggerating,” Dad says, using the calm, reasonable voice that usually means I’ve already lost the argument.
“I’m not exaggerating,” I tell him. “It would be like—like I was some weirdo meteorite from outer space that didn’t fit in,” I say, trying to explain in a way he can understand. “You know,” I add. “When all the other kids were normal earth rocks. And I just barely fit in now.”
“Wait. What? You feel like you don’t fit in at Oak Glen?” my dad asks, a concerned look on his face. There is a new, sharp note in his voice.
He thinks I’m talking about being one of the few kids with brown skin at my school! He can get real touchy about stuff like that.
This is exactly the kind of thing he worries about. We’re going way past magic tricks here. I have to get us back on track, and fast.
“I fit in okay,” I assure him. “But I won’t, if I’m forced to make a fool out of myself.”