by Ali Berman
A Novel
Seven Stories Press
Triangle Square books for young readers
New York • Oakland
Copyright © 2014 by Ali Berman
A Seven Stories Press First Edition
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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Book design by Jon Gilbert
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Berman, Ali.
Misdirected : a novel / by Ali Berman.
pages cm
Summary: When fifteen-year-old Ben moves to small-town Colorado and a Christian school, his atheism sets him apart and leads to bullying and misunderstandings, and with his brother serving in Iraq and his sister away at college Ben is on his own in the struggle to find his place without compromising who he is.
ISBN 978-1-60980-573-9 (hardback)
[1. Conduct of life--Fiction. 2. Faith--Fiction. 3. Bullies--Fiction. 4. High schools--Fiction. 5. Schools--Fiction. 6. Magic tricks--Fiction. 7. Moving, Household--Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.B45355Mis 2014
[Fic]--dc23
2014010183
For David and Glenda Berman
(the best parents ever).
Chapter 1
Because Your Parents Said So
I live in Massachusetts, about thirty minutes outside of Boston. I’m a Bay Stater. Or a suburban Bostonian. A New Englander.
Yep, I can still say that. I wouldn’t even care if people called me a masshole, if it meant I could stay here.
My parents told me a month ago that we’re moving. My mom got a new job, better pay and all the things adults care about. What don’t they care about? Taking me out of high school the week before my sophomore year and moving me three quarters of the way across the country to a crap town in Colorado called Forest Ridge.
My dad works from home so it doesn’t matter to him where we go. Being a middle-aged man without an office job, it’s not like he has any friends anyway.
They say that I’m not seeing it from their perspective. I say, if they could remember how hard high school is, they’d never ask me to move. But they’re old. So there it is. We’re going.
My mom said, “At least you haven’t started dating yet. Imagine how much harder it would be if you had to leave a girlfriend behind.”
Thanks, Mom. Really. Thanks for the reminder that I’m fifteen and haven’t even kissed a girl. It makes me feel so good to have that fact pointed out by you. Not that I’m so unusual. Most of my friends have yet to make contact. Probably because they (okay, we) aren’t the coolest bunch.
Well, Seth has. Or so he says. He claims it happened at summer camp when he was thirteen. But with summer camp stories, there is always the very real chance that they are total bull. If I had gone to summer camp, I’d have probably had a fake girlfriend too.
I guess I sort of kissed a girl. If we’re being technical. Seth and I hang out with this girl Margaret Fong. She’s not really the person I want to remember being my first kiss. She’s more best-friend material than the girl you imagine making out with. It was in eighth grade, on a dare, and we didn’t use tongue. Even though it was on the mouth it only lasted about as long as I would kiss my dog. Not that she’s a dog. I mean, I like Margaret. She’s even decent looking. I just don’t like her like that. Seth brings it up once in a while to embarrass us both.
Man, I’m going to miss those guys.
Seth and Margaret come over a few minutes before we’re supposed to leave for the airport. Usually we’d all go up to my room, but it’s empty now. My stuff is on a truck on some big long highway. The only things left are the stickers of the solar system I put up on my ceiling ten years ago during my planets-are-cool phase. And they’ve lost their glow anyway. Plus, it’s not even accurate anymore. Not since Pluto got tossed.
We go outside and sit in the backyard. Seth hands me something wrapped in newspaper. A gift. It’s a book on magic.
Now I know what you’re thinking. Magic is kind of lame when you’re past birthday parties for six-year-olds. But I do awesome magic. The kind that gets people to ask you afterward, “How the hell did you do that?” And I say, like a bit of a jerk, “Magic.”
Last year I got beat up because I wouldn’t tell this big kid how to do an illusion. We were in the lunchroom, and I was semi-successfully impressing two girls with some easy card manipulation, when he came over and demanded step-by-step instructions on how to pull it off. I told him to shove it. He responded by punching me in the eye socket and shouting, “Magically fix that, asshole!”
Turns out my older sister, Emily, had a bit of illusion-worthy makeup in her bag. She slopped some beige goo below my eye and you could hardly tell it was all blackened underneath. I wore a hat and looked at people from my right side for a few days and no one noticed. Although my mom kept telling me, “Sweetie, you look so tired.”
Now Emily is in college down in New York. Last week, when she left, I gave her a sappy Belle and Sebastian CD and she gave me a bottle of concealer labeled “wuss cream.”
Seth doesn’t care about magic at all. He likes baseball and soccer and other sports that require hitting, kicking, and chasing things. On the other hand, Margaret is really good at it. Better than me, mostly because she’s been doing it longer. Unlike me, she won’t do it in front of people she doesn’t know well. So her audience consists of me, Seth, her mom, and little brother. I swear she could fool Houdini, but no one will ever know because she’s too goddamn scared. Plus, she can do the tricks in English and Cantonese, which just ups the coolness factor.
I think high school is going to get harder for them without me here. Then again, they still have it easier than me. I’m going to a brand new school where I have no friends.
Seth says, pointing to the book, “I don’t know if you have this one, but it looked pretty cool.”
“I don’t. Thanks, man.”
“Sure.”
We’re silent and awkward for a minute while I flip through the book.
“I’ve never seen some of these,” I say, mostly lying. There is one toward the back I don’t have.
Seth gives a half-embarrassed nod. I don’t think he’s ever given me something before. Even on birthdays, we’d usually just sneak into an R-rated movie.
Margaret takes a small wrapped rectangle out of her bag. Not a book. Something about the size of her . . . Holy crap. Is that . . .
“Is that your McBride collection?”
“Normally a person opens something before they find out what it is.”
I grab it and rip off the paper. It is. It’s her DVD set of Jeff McBride videos that she’s been learning from for years. The man is the master of cards.
“You can’t give me this. It’s like giving away your mentor.”
“You need it more than me, right? I’ve memorized the DVDs so it’s your turn now.”
I sit there for a minute looking down at McBride’s face and then stand up and give her the biggest hug I know how to give.
Seth says right on cue, “Dude, no kissing. I’m right here.”
And he’s right. The hug goes on a little longer than I expected it to. Just long enough to be slightly weird as we let go. I don’t want to kiss her exactly, although her skin has cleared up since that dare back in middle school. I am going to miss her. I probably could have hugged her for another five minutes, if Seth wasn’t staring at us. Sometimes I think he likes Margaret. Not that he would ever admit it.
I sit back down and stare at both of them. Right now, Seth and Margaret look kind of like my dog Holly when she watched my brother Pete leave for his first tour in Iraq. Or like she did last week, when my sister went off to Sarah Lawrence after packing half her room into the car. They look like they’re being abandoned.
“You think your parents will let you visit?” I ask them.
Margaret says, “Visiting a boy all the way out in Colorado? Not likely.”
“I’m not a boy. I’m Ben. It’s totally different.”
“We’ll see,” she says.
“What about you?” I ask Seth.
“I dunno. Depends on my grades.”
“Maybe you should do your homework for once.”
“Homework sucks.”
“Without me here, what else are you going to do at night?”
He punches me in the calf in the exact place where the muscle feels like it’s got an edge. He might not be that great at math, but he has a good enough understanding of the human body to hit exactly where it will hurt the most.
“At least now you’ll have less competition for Diane Schwartz,” I say.
Margaret rolls her eyes.
“Like you were competition,” he says.
“She would have come around. As girls get older they care less about tall and muscular and more about, you know, other things.”
“Pale and skinny?” asks Margaret with a grin, as she flips through the book Seth gave me.
My mom pokes her head out the door and calls to me.
“Sweetie, we’ve got to get going. Oh, hi, Seth. Hi, Margaret.”
“Hi, Mrs. Pinter,” they say in unison.
My mom waves to me one more time and then heads back out front. I put the book and the DVDs in my backpack along with my other stuff that will keep me occupied on the plane.
“Well.”
“Yeah,” Seth says.
“Wish me luck.”
“Wish you luck? How about us?” asks Seth.
“You don’t need luck. You just need to talk to more people.”
“I don’t like people.”
“Just invite them over to kick a ball around or something. And you,” I say, looking at Margaret, “get up the nerve to do your magic in public. You’re too good to keep performing for your stuffed animals. And, seriously, way too old.”
“Shut up,” she says, smiling before giving me a weird sort of half hug. I guess that last full hug was so strange that she can’t give me another one. Too much confusing male/female body parts touching, even though we’re just friends, so it shouldn’t matter, but it does.
“We’ll be visiting my sister over Thanksgiving. My mom already promised, so I’ll see you. Sarah Lawrence is only a few hours away.”
“Yeah, okay,” says Seth.
“I’ve got to go.”
“Good luck, man,” he says.
“You too.”
Seth and Margaret turn and walk through the backyard and into the woods that connects to the path back to his house. I stand there and wait for them to turn around. They don’t. I can see them laughing and talking. So, by myself, I head out to the front of the house that is no longer my house and get in the back of the car with Holly. She looks happy that we’re taking her with us and not leaving her, like Pete and Emily did. So why do I feel like I’m the one being left behind now?
Chapter 2
Magic is Not for Losers
It’s Saturday morning in the new house. Every room is filled with boxes.
Even though he’s not here, hasn’t been here in months, and won’t be back for many more months, my mom unpacks Pete’s room first. She turns it into a replica of his room back home. In fact, when it came to picking rooms, she chose the one that looked the most like his old room. It’s also the biggest.
Back in Mass, I helped her pack up Pete’s room and had a really awkward moment when she found some magazines under his mattress.
“Think I should put these in a care package?” she asked.
“Um. I think he’s probably set,” I said, trying not to stare at the girl on the cover.
When she unpacks his stuff in the new room, she even puts those “nighttime magazines”—that’s what she called them—back under his mattress. Seriously.
I guess that’s okay. We all miss Pete. But my mom misses him on a whole other level. It’s a good thing his tour ends soon. He’ll meet us in the new house in December. Mom wants his room to be comfortable for him.
Meanwhile, I can’t find a damn thing in this new house. Even though I look everywhere, I can’t find my magic stuff. School starts on Monday and I have no friends. I’d like to fix that before I show up and have zero people to sit with at lunch. Mark, this transfer student kid back home, told me that sitting alone when you’re new turns you into a big social black hole. Making even one friend before school starts will make me way less loser-y. Doing magic is the only icebreaker I know.
I take Margaret’s DVDs out of my bag and put them next to the bed. Without knowing which box my supplies are in, I grab a coin and some paper for the disappearing coin trick. It’s not flashy but it’s a crowd pleaser. I put on my I’m cool enough to talk to even though I’m doing magic tricks clothes and head outside.
Sure, I should be helping my parents unpack an entire house full of stuff, but making friends seems way more important right now.
At my old school, I was smart enough to get better grades than most kids, but not athletic enough to be popular. At my age, people want you to be good at everything. Math, science, art, English, football, baseball. From the age of five right through eighteen, we need to be renaissance kids. As soon as we show that we’re bad at something, you can almost hear the grown-ups thinking, Well, I guess he’ll never be an Olympic athlete or a neurosurgeon or whatever else we suck at.
Notice I didn’t put magic on that list of talents people care about. It’s because they don’t.
The new house is on a street with a bunch of other similar houses. Kind of 1970s. The neighborhood is clean, near the two-street-light town, and there are basketball hoops in front of a few houses. There are lots of SUVs and trucks in driveways. And that means that families live here.
There are no kids outside yet. It’s only 10 a.m. so I set up. I even have a back-up card trick in case anything goes wrong with the coin.
I hang out for a while and practice my fanning. A few cars drive by. They wave but they don’t stop.
A girl in the house across the street, about my age, looks out the window. I smile and hold up the coin dramatically and mouth the word, “magic?”
She smiles back and disappears. She’s gone for so long that I think she only smiled to be polite or she had no idea what I said.
A few minutes later the door opens and she walks out with an older girl and two younger boys.
The girl from the window walks right up to me, holds out her hand, and says, “I’m Tess. This is my sister Angela. And these are my little brothers, Dan and Paul.”
Tess is cute, but her sister Angela is downright hot.
“I’m Ben,” I say. “We just moved in yesterday.”
“Welcome,” says Tess. “Are you going to Christian Heritage Academy?”
“I am, yeah. I’ll be a sophomore.”
“Me too!” she says. “Angela’s going to be a senior. And these two are in third and fourth grade.”
Angela nods but she looks kind of bored. I must entertain. So I
say to one of the kids, “Do you like magic?”
He nods his head as fast as he can.
“Do any of you have a coin?” I ask. “A nickel or a quarter would be perfect.”
Tess takes a quarter out of her jean shorts pocket. She might not be as good- looking as her sister, but she’s as nice as nice gets. She’s smiling encouragingly at me, kind of like someone’s mom would. Like someone who genuinely wants to like you. It’s a little weird, but way better than Angela who alternates between picking at her nails and looking back toward her house.
The kids are into it though, so I take Tess’s coin and start the trick by folding the coin into the paper. While folding, I press it against my hand, fast enough so that it just looks like part of the fold. When the coin disappears, the outline of the coin on the paper will make it look like it’s still there. This is the first illusion I learned back when my brother took me to my first magic show. I hung around at the end for so long that the magician, back in his street clothes, showed me how to do it. Pete helped me practice for a week until no one could see the coin drop into my pocket.
And now I do it again, like I’ve done hundreds of times. The coin is gone.
The kids all clap. So does Tess. Angela gives a few half smacks against her jeans with one hand. In her other hand is her phone. She was texting. So she’s good- looking and totally rude.
Dan says, “You should do that at our church talent show. What church is your family going to?”
“Oh. We don’t actually go to church.”
“Why not?” he asks.
“We’re not really religious.”
Dan is silent. Angela looks up from her phone. Paul is still focused on the paper in my hand so I pass it to him. Tess smiles at me, but she looks kind of worried.
“Are you Jewish?” Angela asks.
“No. We’re not really anything.”
“So you’re an atheist,” she says accusingly.
“I guess, I don’t know.”
“Why are you going to a Christian school?”