Tricky Nick

by Nicholas J. Johnson

  ‘That was a fair attempt, I suppose,’ he said finally. ‘If not a tad clumsy in the execution.’

  ‘I’m still practising,’ I said, trying not to look too pleased with myself.

  ‘Then what you require,’ he said, ‘is a confederation of conjurers with whom to discuss legerdemain and share the secrets of our enigmatic art form.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘An alliance of illusionists.’

  ‘You mean like a magic club?’ I said, reaching for the Encyclopedia of Amateur Magic in his hands.

  ‘Exactly,’ he said, pulling the book away from my grasp and tucking it under his arm. ‘We are gathering this very evening.’

  Then the old man opened his wallet and it burst into flames.

  This story is filled with moments like this where you will stop, set this book to one side and say to yourself, ‘Well, clearly he’s making that up.’ But, as I’ve already told you, this story is completely true. And it’s only going to get more incredible. So if a simple burning wallet is too unbelievable for you, I’d suggest you just put this book down and go read something from the non-fiction section. I’d suggest something around five three zero point one one.5

  The old man smiled smugly at the shocked expression on my face and then reached into the flaming wallet. Before the fire had a chance to burn him, he plucked out a crisp, white business card. Then he scribbled something on the back of it with a stub of pencil he produced from his jacket pocket and handed the card to me while somehow managing to also hold on to the flaming wallet and the Encyclopedia of Amateur Magic. I looked closely at the card. It was completely unburnt; there wasn’t even a whiff of smoke.

  Printed on the front were the words:

  On the back he’d written:

  I looked at the business card and then at the burning wallet. Thick, oily smoke was rising towards the ceiling. I went to speak but the man interrupted me.

  ‘Mr E,’ he said, giving a theatrical bow while waving the wallet in front of him and almost setting fire to my fringe. ‘At your service.’

  I didn’t say anything. I was distracted by the fact that I was standing in a room filled entirely with paper while this guy waved a ball of fire around like a cheerleader with a pompom. Also, what kind of name was Mr E?

  ‘Maybe you should put that out?’ I said.

  ‘This?’ he said, pushing the wallet towards me, black smoke billowing into my face. ‘It’s just a little chicanery to amuse the hoi polloi.’

  ‘Sure, but don’t you think . . .’

  ‘A library is an excellent place to begin your journey to magicianhood,’ he said, taking the Encyclopedia of Amateur Magic out from under his arm and holding it aloft. ‘But to truly master the art you must become a member of the Brotherhood of United Magicians.’

  ‘And I can just show up?’

  ‘Of course!’ he replied, clapping his hands together, obviously forgetting that he was holding a totally flammable object in one hand and a burning wallet in the other. Before I could react, the Encyclopedia of Amateur Magic caught alight. Mr E didn’t even seem to notice, instead bringing his hands back apart. I watched, frozen, as the tiny yellow flame on the edge of the book’s cover started to creep from page to page until even the old man couldn’t ignore it.

  Startled, Mr E dropped the wallet on the floor. It landed open and face down on the carpet. I thought for a moment the fire had gone out, but I soon saw flames curling out around the worn leather. I took a step forward to try to stamp them out but was stopped by a strange feeling in my stomach. It was almost as if my insides were weightless and had started to rise up into my chest. For a second, I thought that I might faint, but instead I just stood there.

  The old magician’s attention was now fully on the flaming book. He waved it back and forth in the air, trying to extinguish the flames. Instead of putting out the fire, this action just fanned the flames even more, and now the book was well and truly ablaze.

  I looked back down at the wallet. Unfortunately, the fire had spread to the floor and was melting a large hole in the thick green carpet.

  Mr E let out a yelp as the flames reached his fingers and I looked up just as he flung the book across the room, where it hit a bookshelf, wedging itself between two shelves.

  I watched in horror as the fire started to spread to the books above and below. Some of them must have been covered in plastic because black, smelly smoke curled up towards the ceiling where the fire alarm sat waiting.

  BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP

  The sound of the alarm shook me out of whatever trance was keeping me fixed to the spot and I sprang into action.

  I ran away.

  At the end of the aisle I collided with the bald-headed librarian, who was racing towards the flames holding a fire extinguisher in both hands. He knocked me flat on my backside as he shoved past me.

  I scrambled to my feet and turned around to see the librarian covering the wallet, the carpet and the bookshelf in thick white foam from the fire extinguisher.

  Mr E was trying to say something to the librarian but I couldn’t hear him over the alarm. I turned around and there, standing behind me holding a stack of crime novels, was my mum. Both the books and her jaw dropped as she took in the scene in front of her.

  This was not good.

  That said, most magicians would rather perform for strangers than friends or family. If you mess up in front of people you know, you’ll never hear the end of it. If you mess up in front of a stranger, you can disappear in a puff of smoke and leave them saying, ‘Who was that? And why was he so terrible at magic?’

  I’m not going to tell you where that number leads because it will totally spoil the ending of this book.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  My dad is a complete Wally

  ‘There is absolutely no way you are going to a magic club with That Man,’ Mum said. My mum had the amazing ability to speak with capital letters if she wanted. Mr E wasn’t ‘that man’, he was ‘That Man’, which was short for ‘That Man Who Almost Burned Down Our Local Library’.

  Apart from damaging the copy of the Encyclopedia of Amateur Magic that he’d flung across the room and the spot of carpet he’d melted when he dropped his wallet, Mr E had been responsible for destroying four books on sign language, three books on competitive cat grooming and an encyclopedia of cheese. The old man had been useless, just staring at the fire as the bald librarian had tried to extinguish it.

  The librarian had shouted at us both in a very unlibrarian-like way while Mum stood there, half furious and half mortified. I like to think that he was trying to be heard over the sound of the fire alarm but I think he would have been yelling anyway. He followed us outside and was still shouting when two fire trucks arrived to check the damage and make sure the fire was completely out.

  In the trees beyond the library I saw a young boy about my age standing in the shade with an older woman. The boy waved at me and without thinking, I waved back. I didn’t recognise either of them from this far away, but that floating feeling in my stomach suddenly got worse. I swallowed hard.6

  Why had I frozen like that?

  The moment that wallet had burst into flames I had just turned into a statue.

  A flaming wallet isn’t even really that clever a trick. You can buy them from any good magic shop.

  The bit where Mr E had made a business card appear was much more interesting. I figured out later that he must have used what magicians call a back palm. The card is hidden behind the back of your hand the whole time. When you want to make it appear, you pull it into place between your index and middle finger with your thumb.

  There’s a really easy way to pull off the move without too much practice. Take a playing card and place a strip of double-sided tape along one of the short edges of the card. If a playing card is too big, try a business card like Mr E di
d. Then you’re going to need to stick it on the back of your hand so that the tape runs just below your fingernails.

  If you hold your hand flat, the card is hidden. If you close your hand quickly into a fist, the card will appear out of nowhere. Open your hand back up, and the card will vanish again. You’re better off making the card appear from a particular place, like from behind someone’s ear, rather than just out of nowhere. Just not out of a flaming wallet. Otherwise you’ll find yourself with a scorched library and, in my case, a very angry mum.

  ‘I wouldn’t be going to the magic club with that man,’ I said. ‘I’d be going to the magic club and he would just happen to be there.’

  ‘So you’d be going alone? Well, that’s not going to happen.’

  I couldn’t win with reason. I would have to use trickery.

  ‘Your whole body is relaxed,’ I said, raising one eyebrow and waving my finger in front of my mum’s face. ‘Your mind is at peace. On the count of three you are going to fall into a trance state, and by extension, under my control. One . . . two . . . THREE!’

  My mother sat bolt upright at that, her eyes wide open.

  I’d only read half a page on hypnosis in the Encyclopedia of Amateur Magic before Mr E had interrupted me. Even so, I’d somehow managed to pick up enough to hypnotise my mother.

  She was in a trance!

  She was under my control!

  She was . . . looking kind of annoyed.

  ‘What. Did. You. Say?’

  You could hear the full stops. She clenched her jaw and her eyes flashed. Maybe she wasn’t quite as hypnotised as I thought.

  ‘Um . . . under my control?’ I stuttered. ‘One . . . two . . . three?’

  ‘Don’t talk to me like that!’ she said. ‘Wally! Are you listening to this?’

  It’s probably important that you know that my father’s name is Wally. My mother’s name is Jill which is a perfectly fine name for a mum. But Wally? What sort of person would choose the name Wally? It turns out my father is the sort of person who would choose the name Wally. His parents actually called him Robert but he used to get teased about his name so he changed it to Wally. That makes absolutely no sense. Why would he change his name to Wally if he didn’t want people to pick on him? That’s like me changing my name from Nick to Fartnugget or Catpoop or Sir Reginald Buttcrumpet.

  ‘If you speak to your mother like that again,’ my father said, putting down whatever serious report on rocks he was reading, ‘I will come down on you like a ton of bricks.’

  My father liked to say he’d come down on me like a ton of bricks when I was in trouble. I don’t know why it had to be bricks. Having a ton of anything dropped on you would suck. He could have said ‘I will come down on you like a ton of marshmallows’ and it would have the same effect. It’d be worse, actually. Because you’d be remembered as the guy who got killed by a ton of marshmallows. Even so, when my dad said he was going to come down on me like a ton of bricks if I didn’t pull my head in, I knew he meant business.

  ‘I’m going to count to three?’ my mother muttered, shaking her head. And she wandered off into the lounge room.

  ‘Look, Nick,’ my father said, ‘your mother and I have been supportive of your hobbies.’

  I hung my head. It was true.

  ‘Do you remember your toilet paper roll collection?’

  A couple of years earlier I’d started collecting the cardboard tubes from the middle of rolls of toilet paper. I had hundreds of the things, stuffed into plastic bags under my bed and in my sock drawer. The trouble was, I couldn’t collect them fast enough so I started pulling toilet paper off the roll metres at a time. I ended up clogging the toilet and my parents had to call the plumber.

  ‘And the time you decided you wanted to learn karate and judo and taekwondo all at the same time?’

  I figured if I did all the classes at once it would turn me into a well-rounded killing machine. I’d be the Swiss army knife of martial arts. I only stopped going because you were supposed to wear bare feet to class and one of my toenails had this weird fungal infection that made it all yellow and lumpy and I didn’t want anyone to see it.

  ‘And every time, your mother and I were there to support you right up until the point that you inevitably gave up,’ my father said. ‘But this is where we’re going to have to draw the line. We’re not going to let you go off to a magic club run by a man who sets fire to libraries.’

  ‘It was his wallet.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He set fire to his wallet and his wallet set fire to a book and then he threw the book and that’s what set fire to the library and . . . I’m not going to the club, am I?’

  ‘No,’ my father said, like a ton of bricks. ‘No, you are not.’

  That last paragraph is what they call ‘foreshadowing’. It doesn’t seem very important now, but later on it’ll be super important. Writers like to put foreshadowing in their books so that they seem clever and like they totally know what they’re doing and aren’t just making it up as they go. Which I’m not doing anyway because everything that happens in this book is true.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Escapology for beginners

  ‘Well,’ I said after dinner, as casually as I could. ‘I’m off to bed.’

  ‘Bed?’ my mother said, narrowing her eyes. ‘It’s only ten to seven.’

  According to the business card Mr E had given me, the magicians were meeting at 7.30 pm that night at a scout hall about half an hour’s bike ride from my house. If I was going to get there without my parents finding out, I would need to be in my bedroom with the door shut and the lights out by seven at the absolute latest.

  My original plan was to get into trouble so they would send me to my room. But that would mean I’d need to do something bad enough to get them to punish me but not so bad that they’d want to have a Long Serious Talk about my behaviour. Flick peas at the cat during dinner: not bad enough. Shave the cat during dinner: too far, Nick, way too far.

  So instead, I was going to go with the old tired routine.

  ‘Just feeling a little sleepy,’ I said, doing my best fake yawn which, conveniently, turned into a real one. ‘Today really took it out of me.’

  ‘Don’t you want any dessert?’ my father said.

  ‘Dessert?’

  If I turned down dessert, I was going to make them suspicious. I do not skip dessert. Never have and never will. If you came to me and said, ‘Nick, for dinner tonight we’re having lime jelly wrapped in chocolate cake dipped in strawberry mousse and deep-fried in doughnut batter,’ I would say to you, ‘Well, that sounds great. What’s for dessert?’

  I snuck a peek at my watch. It was 6.53 pm.

  ‘What are we having?’ I asked.

  ‘Fruit salad and yoghurt.’ My mother sighed. ‘Your father is making dessert.’

  Phew. My dad’s idea of dessert was plain fruit topped with plain yoghurt. Not even good fruits like watermelon or peaches or mangoes either. It’d be the boring ones like apple and pear and banana. I’ve got nothing against a good banana, but a banana is not dessert.

  ‘No thanks!’ I yawned again, actually starting to feel a little sleepy for real, and closed my bedroom door.

  I counted to a hundred to make sure they weren’t going to check on me. I looked at my watch again. 6.56 pm.

  I needed to get to work.

  Escapology is the art of escaping in the most entertaining way you can. You might be tied up in a straitjacket suspended upside down from a crane or locked in a wooden crate and thrown into a river. I once saw a guy wrapped in fifty metres of sandwich wrap escape in under a minute.

  Here’s a simple escape you can do right now. Get a friend to tie a metre-long piece of rope around one of your wrists and then the other so you have a nice long piece of rope between your hands. Now, do the same to your friend wit
h another piece of rope, threading their rope through yours as you do. Once you’re finished, it should look like this.

  It looks like the two of you are trapped, right? Destined to spend the rest of your lives bound together. But to escape, all you need to do is take a loop of your friend’s rope and thread it through the back of the rope that is tied around your left wrist, like this:

  If you pull that loop over your left hand and then pull the rope tight, you’ll find that the two of you are separated.

  Is it a magic trick? No, not really. But, for some reason, magicians love escaping from tricky situations. Maybe that’s the reason I considered myself a master of escaping from my bedroom.

  Obviously it would be pretty irresponsible of me to teach you how to sneak out of your bedroom at night. So for any responsible adults who might be reading this over your shoulder I will instead share with you my recipe for organic vegan chocolate cookies.

  Have the responsible adults gone?

  Good.

  Forget that revolting mess of recipe. That was just a decoy. Carob is the root of most, if not all, of the problems in the world today. Here’s the real deal on escaping from your room at night.

  The main thing you need to do is make sure that there is noise coming from your room. Parents are really suspicious of silence. If you’re being quiet, they’ll know you are up to no good.

  In my room, I made a list of possible ways to make enough noise to make sure my parents didn’t come to check on me.

  Paint cat food on a piano. The cat will spend all night trying to lick the food off the keys, making it sound like I’m practising.

  Fill a blender with belly button lint, sock fuzz or any assorted fluff that might be lying around. The muffled whirring noise will sound like I’m vacuuming my room.