by Andrea Beaty
When my alarm went off, I wanted to keep sleeping. I had a feeling that I’d dreamed up the whole thing—including the cabinet. Eventually, I dragged myself to the kitchen. Grandma Melvyn was sitting at the table, drinking coffee. I walked past her and opened the door into the garage from the family room. I smiled and closed the door. It was there.
The cabinet was real, and I was going to find a way to get Grandma Melvyn to let me use it in the talent show. I would start by being nice to her. Super nice. I went back to the kitchen and smiled at Grandma Melvyn.
“Do you have gas?” she asked.
I smiled harder.
“Are you going to puke?” she asked.
I stopped smiling and went to plan B: conversation.
“How are you?” I asked.
“Who wants to know?”
Okay, plan C: awkward silence.
Grandma Melvyn looked at me. I looked at the floor.
Grandma Melvyn looked at me again. I looked at the refrigerator. I looked at my fingers. I looked at my shoes. You get the idea.
At last, she coughed, and I looked at her.
“So you want to learn magic?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Well, there’s no such thing as magic. Now go back to bed. I’ve seen mummies who looked more awake than you.”
So much for magic lessons.
I MARCHED BACK TO THE HIDEOUT AND WENT TO SLEEP. WHEN I WOKE UP I WAS hungry, so I went back to the kitchen. Mom was shopping with Ape Boy—probably for ape chow—and Grandma Melvyn was by the sink. Great.
I fixed myself a bowl of cereal and sat down. There was a five-dollar bill on the table.
“Trixie left your allowance,” Grandma Melvyn said.
I reached for the money, but before I could grab it, Grandma Melvyn set a clear glass of water right on top of it.
“Pick that up,” she said, as if I’d put it down on the money in the first place.
I picked up the glass as she put a green tablet in the water. It fizzed and bubbled. Then she reached into her mouth, pulled out a tooth, and plopped it into the fizzy green water. I almost dropped the glass.
“News flash,” she said. “You’d make a lousy Tooth Fairy, too. Better study hard in school. Your career options are dwindling.”
A storm of tiny scrubbing bubbles engulfed the tooth as it sank to the bottom of the glass.
“Ewww,” I said.
“Don’t have a seizure,” she said. “It’s a ceramic tooth. Put down the glass.”
I swept the money off the table with my free hand and stuffed it into my pocket. Then I set the glass on the table. Grandma Melvyn walked to the doorway and turned around.
“It’s a funny thing,” she said. “The closer you look, the less you see. You were so busy freaking out about a fake tooth that you wouldn’t have noticed if an elephant marched in and dropped a load on your shoes.”
She limped down the hall, then yelled back at me.
“Keep the change.”
“Wha … ?”
I pulled the crumpled money from my pocket, smoothed it on the table, and frowned while Mr. George Washington, first president of the United States of America, smiled back at me.
MY CHEEKS BURNED AS IF GRANDMA MELVYN HAD THROWN THE BIGGEST Beanie Bunny of them all and hit me smack in the face. She had just swapped my five dollars for a lousy one-dollar bill. In other words, she had stolen four dollars from me, but that wasn’t the worst part. She’d held out magic lessons like a lollipop to a little kid and then just jerked them away. What had I been thinking, trusting her in the first place? Just like Nate Watkins said, I was a dork.
I sat at the table and got madder and madder. Finally, I marched into the family room. Grandma Melvyn sat in the recliner watching Wheel of Fortune. In case you have a real life and have missed it, Wheel of Fortune is a TV game show where an audience watches people play hangman with prizes. It’s weird. I always thought watching it was boring, but I guess I wasn’t doing it right, because Grandma Melvyn was having a blast.
“Buy a vowel, Trixie!” she yelled at a middle-aged man in a golf shirt.
“Forget the z!” she snapped at a red-headed woman. “This isn’t Czechoslovakia!”
I stood there trying to say one of the million thoughts crashing around in my head, but all that came out was “I … I … I …”
“You’ve got more eyes than a spider,” Grandma Melvyn said without looking at me. “If you want something, spit it out.”
I grabbed one of the million thoughts and spit it out.
“Give me my money,” I said.
Grandma Melvyn laughed.
“Why should I?” she asked.
“Because it’s mine,” I said.
Grandma Melvyn flipped off the television and gave me the Wicked Wobble Eye.
I stared right back at her.
“People take things that don’t belong to them all the time,” said Grandma Melvyn. “Why should I be any different?”
“Because you are,” I said.
That was not what I was going to say, and the words shocked me almost as much as they shocked Grandma Melvyn.
“You don’t know anything about me,” she said.
Grandma Melvyn cleared her throat and narrowed her eyes as she stared at me. For once, her eyes did not wobble behind her thick glasses. They were still and clear, and they cut right into me.
“The fiver pays for lessons,” she said. “If that’s the only price you pay for magic, you’re lucky.”
Grandma Melvyn flipped on the television just as the audience cheered for a blond woman who grabbed the enormous wheel and sent it whirling.
“You spin like a two-year-old!” Grandma Melvyn yelled.
The conversation was over. As I left the family room, the million thoughts crashing around in my mind were replaced by only one thing: the price of magic.
I didn’t know what that meant, but I had the feeling that for Grandma Melvyn, it had nothing to do with money.
THE CONVERSATION LEFT ME MORE CONFUSED THAN EVER. WAS GRANDMA Melvyn just teasing me, or was she actually going to teach me some magic? And what did she know about magic, anyway? What could she know? Probably nothing. But if that was true, why did she have that cabinet? That amazing, perfect magician’s cabinet? It was not a fake-o cabinet like my fake-o cape. That cabinet was the real deal.
I didn’t know the answers to any of these questions, but I decided to get them. And I decided something else, too. If Grandma Melvyn wanted to play tough, so could I. If I was paying for magic lessons, I was getting magic lessons. End of story.
When I got home from school the next day, Grandma Melvyn was at the kitchen table. I sat down next to her and didn’t say a word.
“Got a problem?” she asked.
“Nope,” I said. “Just waiting for my lesson.”
“Here’s a lesson. Never eat chili before bed.”
I glared at her.
“Here’s another lesson,” she said. “Don’t waste your time with whiners or wannabes.”
She got up and went to the family room. She was leaning harder on her cane than usual, and when she sat in the recliner, she gasped softly as she lifted her leg onto the footrest. Her knee hurt. Or maybe …
Maybe Grandma Melvyn was faking it.
She reached for the zapper, but I snatched it first and plopped onto the couch, and before you say anything—yeah, I know. Stealing a zapper from an old lady with a bad knee isn’t cool, but it was Grandma Melvyn and she was only faking … and … Oh, be quiet. I know it wasn’t my finest moment, but I meant business.
Grandma Melvyn leaned back in the recliner and gave me the Wicked Wobble Eye as expected. I glared back at her. The time was 3:30 P.M. I was prepared to sit there glaring at Grandma Melvyn for as long as it took for her to keep her end of the deal and teach me some magic. (If she actually knew any.)
3:31.
3:32.
3:33.
3:40.
3:47. The doorbell
rang. I ignored it.
4:07.
4:08. Mom and Ape Boy came home. I ignored them.
4:11.
4:13. Ape Boy climbed onto the back of the couch and blew a gigantic bubble three inches from my ear. I popped it without taking my eyes off Grandma Melvyn. Ape Boy ran off screaming.
4:17. Grandma Melvyn pulled a pair of clippers from her pocket and clipped her toenails without taking her eyes off me. I wanted to run off screaming.
4:28. I tried not to think about the six gallons of water I drank after running laps in gym class.
4:29. I crossed my legs.
4:29:01. I tried not to think about rivers, streams, creeks, or any other form of running water.
4:29:03. I tried not to think of lakes, ponds, puddles, ice cubes, or any other form of not-running water.
4:29:06. I uncrossed my legs and recrossed them.
4:29:08. Grandma Melvyn’s eyes narrowed behind her thick glasses and she smiled slyly.
4:29:10. She drummed her fingers on the arm of the recliner and sang, “ ‘Raindrops keep fallin’ on my head’ …”
4:29:25. I tried not to think about raindrops.
4:29:26. I tried not to think about water fountains. Water slides. Water bottles. Water parks.
4:29:27. Trying not to think about water parks reminded me of swimming pools. Swimming holes. Swimming whales spewing water into the air in a watery fountain of watery water.
4:29:31. Grandma Melvyn said, “Do you know what I love, Robbie? I love waterfalls. Big splashy, splashy waterfalls with all that splashing wet water that splashes around. Don’t you?”
4:29:32. Grandma Melvyn imitated the sound of a waterfall. I did not love it.
4:29:33. I thought about the Gobi Desert. The Mohave Desert. Desert islands … which are basically small deserts … surrounded by … Yep, you guessed it. Water.
4:29:35. Grandma Melvyn said, “You know what else I love, Robbie? I love the sound of a leaky faucet. Don’t you?”
4:29:36. I sighed.
4:29:37. Grandma Melvyn smiled.
4:29:38. “Drip … Drip … Dri—”
4:29:38:01. I ran to the bathroom as Grandma Melvyn yelled after me, “Never start anything you can’t finish.”
THE NEXT DAY, I SKIPPED THE DRINKING FOUNTAIN AFTER GYM AND MADE A pit stop before I left school—if you know what I mean, and I think you do. This time, I was absolutely ready to march into the house, sit right down, and stare at Grandma Melvyn for as long as it took for her to live up to her part of the bargain. But when I got home, the garage door was open and Grandma Melvyn was sitting inside on a lawn chair next to the mahogany box.
“Took you long enough,” she said. “A person could die from birdseed poisoning in this junk shop you call a garage.”
She pointed at the magician’s box.
“Figure it out,” she said.
“Wait,” I said suspiciously. “Are you really going to teach me something?”
“What do you think I’ve been doing?” she asked.
“Taking my money,” I said.
“Shows what you know,” she said, pointing toward the cabinet again. “I’m not getting any younger.”
I dropped my backpack and twirled the cabinet until I found the twisted knot on the mahogany panel. I pushed on the knot, and the panel opened with a slow creaking sound. I wanted to say “Ha!” but I just smiled. She did not. She was not impressed.
“You want a Nobel Prize?” she asked.
“No … I just …”
“Well,” she said, “what’s next?”
“I get inside?” I said, only half sure that was the right answer.
Grandma Melvyn shrugged.
I stepped inside the magician’s cabinet. It smelled like a stale closet no one had touched in a century. I ran my hand over the smooth black velvet walls. The trampled velvet on the floor shimmered in the light.
“Shut the door,” I said.
“If you say so,” she said.
Grandma Melvyn pushed the panel shut with her cane. I expected the inside of the cabinet to be totally dark, but slivers of light streamed in from the oval-shaped holes running up and down the sides of the cabinet. More light came through the soda-can-size holes in the ceiling. The holes would be invisible to the audience, but they would let in air and enough light for the assistant to see during the trick. That was a smart design.
I hadn’t noticed the ceiling holes the other night, but it was dark in the garage then and I hadn’t looked up. Not looking up was the kind of thing a moron in a horror movie would do—or not do. Have you ever noticed that? If people in horror movies ever looked up, they’d see half the things that are about to kill them and they’d just run away. I made a note to myself to look up more often.
Even with the holes in the top, the cabinet was stuffy, so I got busy trying to get out. I ran my hands along the velvet walls searching for a mechanism to reopen the panel. No luck. I pushed on two sides at once. Then the other two sides. I stamped on the floor. I poked my finger into each of the tiny holes in the sides hoping to flip a trigger or something. Nothing. Then I had a thought. A very important thought. A thought I wish I had considered before I asked Grandma Melvyn to shut the panel. Maybe the trick required an assistant to open it from the outside.
Oh.
I could just hear Grandma Melvyn busting a gut outside the locked cabinet. Wait a minute. No, I couldn’t. I pressed my ear against the velvet wall and listened. I couldn’t hear anything. I peeked out one of the holes on the cabinet’s sides, but I couldn’t see her.
“Grandma Melvyn?” I said.
Silence.
“Hello?” I said louder.
Silence.
“HELLOOOO?”
Deafening silence.
My face burned, but this time it wasn’t from anger. It was embarrassment. Grandma Melvyn was testing me, and I’d failed. A real magician should think before acting. Magic is about the brain, and a magician who doesn’t use his brain is just a wannabe. I deserved to be stuck inside the cabinet. I should have known what was going to happen before I ever asked her to close the door in the first place.
The floor was big enough for me to sit cross-legged, so I sat down to wait until Mom sent out a search party for me or I starved to death—whichever came first.
After a few minutes, the panel swung open. Grandma Melvyn leaned on her cane and looked down at me sitting on the crushed-velvet floor. She didn’t say a word, and neither did I. After all, what could I say?
Grandma Melvyn sat down on the lawn chair, and I climbed out of the cabinet. She tapped her cane impatiently on the concrete garage floor.
“Here’s the deal, Mr. Robbie Darko,” she said. “I don’t waste my time on lazy people. There are no shortcuts. If you want my time, pay attention.”
She pulled a quarter out of thin air, held it out to me, then pulled it back.
“And if you cry like you did at your fifth birthday party,” she said, “we’re done.”
“Did you give me the coin trick at my party?” I asked.
“What do you think, Einstein?” she said. “Do you know anyone else with a clue?”
She tossed me the quarter.
“Impress me,” she said.
I rolled the quarter over my knuckles in one direction and then back again, and then flipped it into my palm, closed my fist around it, and blew a puff of air onto my fist. When I opened my hand, the quarter was gone. (Remember how I said I used to practice coin tricks in class? I wasn’t kidding.)
“Whoop-dee-doo,” Grandma Melvyn said. “You just alerted the audience to the fact that you can handle a coin. Now when it appears somewhere, they’ll know you used skill to do it and not magic.”
“But people like fancy finger work,” I said.
“So what,” said Grandma Melvyn. “People like triple cheeseburgers with double bacon. Doesn’t mean you have to give it to them. Your job is to make them believe impossible things. If they know you can handle a coin, the
impossible becomes possible. Skill kills magic. Showing off is for jugglers. Got it?”
“Got it,” I said.
“I doubt it,” she said.
She pulled a second quarter out of thin air and handed it to me.
“Now show me what you can do with your left hand,” she said.
“But wouldn’t that be showing off my skill?” I asked.
“It would be if you had any,” she said.
“But you just said—”
Grandma Melvyn gave me the Wicked Wobble Eye. I put the first quarter onto my left knuckle and rolled it back and forth almost as smoothly as I had done with my right hand. I grinned ear to ear.
“Now do both,” Grandma Melvyn said.
Easy.
“In opposite directions,” she said.
Oh.
I put the first quarter on my right knuckles like before. I put the second quarter on my left knuckles and started. The quarters flew into the air and bounced off the concrete floor into a heap of junk by the birdseed aquarium.
“Impressive,” said Grandma Melvyn, as she opened the door to the family room.
I spent the next two hours practicing and hunting for the quarters. Well, mostly hunting for quarters. While I dug through the garage junk, I thought about Grandma Melvyn and my birthday presents. She had given me the coin trick. She must have given me the top hat on my ninth birthday, too.
Who was Grandma Melvyn?
THE NEXT DAY OF MAGIC LESSONS WAS PRETTY MUCH THE SAME, EXCEPT THAT Grandma Melvyn sat in the recliner in the family room watching another Wheel of Fortune marathon while I worked on quarter rolling in the garage. I could hear her yelling at the TV through the door that led from the garage to the family room. All I can say is that it’s a good thing Grandma Melvyn was watching from home instead of the studio audience. Who knew game shows could be so violent?
Rolling quarters over my knuckles was not exciting, and doing it for hours made my hands sore. But it helped. The second day, I only spent one-third of my time hunting for quarters in the junk pile. The next day, only a fourth. After each day of practice, I improved. Maybe someday I could roll quarters without digging through junk at all. It seemed like I would be rolling quarters forever, but one day, when I got home from school, Grandma Melvyn was sitting at the kitchen table with a deck of cards.