Tricky Nick

by Nicholas J. Johnson

  Dad’s face went from sleepy to confused to all business. Dad never got angry like Mum. He got down to business. He furrowed his bushy eyebrows and rubbed his bleary eyes and spoke like he was interviewing me for the job of being his son.

  ‘Can you expand on what your mother is saying, Nicholas?’ he said, running his fingers across his stubbly chin.

  ‘I was just out for a ride . . .’

  ‘IT’S TWO IN THE MORNING!’ Mum shouted. ‘WHO GOES OUT FOR A BIKE RIDE AT TWO IN THE MORNING?’

  ‘Nicholas, I’d like you to tell me the truth,’ Dad said before pulling out his favourite threat. ‘Or I will come down on you like a ton of bricks.’

  Mum crossed her arms. ‘Until you give us a reasonable explanation for where you were, then you’re grounded.’

  ‘Grounded?’ I said. My mother had never actually grounded me before. I’d lost television privileges, been sent to my room and given extra chores. Grounding was completely new. I wasn’t a hundred per cent sure what it even meant to be grounded.

  ‘No going out, no spending time with your friends, no television, no parties, no nothing,’ she ranted. ‘INDEFINITELY.’

  Indefinitely. That I understood. For an unlimited or unspecified period of time. To an unlimited or unspecified degree or extent. In perpetuity. Eternally. Forever.

  ‘But—’ I began.

  ‘NO BUTS,’ Mum cut me off. ‘GO TO YOUR ROOM.’

  Hot tip: never start a sentence with ‘but’ when arguing with your parents. It makes them furious. Put it in the middle of a sentence and you’ll sound much more reasonable. For example: ‘I know I shouldn’t have put my little sister in the recycling bin but she was being very annoying and at least I recycled her.’

  But it was too late.

  I needed to get to that fete on Saturday. I needed to see that magic show. I still didn’t understand exactly why, but Beatrix and Trixie seemed to think it was very important to the future of time itself, and if they said it was, then I had to believe it was.

  But there was no way Mum and Dad were going to believe that. So I tried begging. I tried yelling. I tried demanding. I even tried hypnotic suggestion again, but that only made them angrier. By Tuesday I had talked them down from eternity to two weeks.

  Late on Tuesday night, there was a tap at my window. It was Trixie.

  ‘Where have you been?’ I hissed into the dark.

  ‘Where have you been?’ she hissed back. ‘You haven’t been out of your house in days.’

  ‘I got grounded for sneaking out the other night. Why didn’t you just come and see me at school?’

  ‘Your teacher figured out I wasn’t actually in your class. I think Crick dobbed me in. I couldn’t risk getting caught.’

  Trixie pulled herself through the window and tumbled in head first, landing with a thud on my bedroom floor.

  ‘Crick has disappeared too,’ she said, getting to her feet. ‘Now he knows I’m here, Beatrix thinks he’s biding his time until the big fete.’

  ‘Do you think he’ll try to stop the magic show?’ I asked. ‘Cancel whoever the magician is?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, the school could always just book another magician. He’ll try to stop you from seeing the show.’

  ‘So what should I do?’ I asked.

  ‘Leave it with me,’ she said. ‘I’ll think of something. Just keep practising.’

  ‘Practising?’

  ‘Your magic,’ she explained. ‘Remember, everything depends on you being a half-decent magician.’

  I screwed up my nose. ‘Don’t you think there are more important things to worry about than practising magic tricks? No one ever saved the world with sleight of hand.’

  ‘Haven’t you been listening?’ Trixie said. ‘This all depends on you becoming a magician. Besides, you’re grounded, what else are you going to do?’

  She had a point.

  After Trixie had left, I pulled out my copy of the Encyclopedia of Amateur Magic and flicked it open. It landed on the page about stealing watches. I’d been back to that chapter so many times I’m surprised it wasn’t stuck open to that page. I’d resigned myself to never being able to steal someone’s watch without them noticing.

  I flicked through the pages until I landed on a trick called the Mystic Twelve.

  No skill required. Perfect.

  That was my kind of trick.

  And all I needed was a deck of cards.

  The first step is to put a tiny pencil dot on the top card of the deck. It has to be big enough for you to see but small enough that no one notices it.

  Next, hand your friend twelve cards. (Make sure the pencil dot card isn’t one of them. That card is still on the top of the deck.) Turn your back and get them to shuffle the twelve cards and sit on some of the cards. That’s right, they have to sit on some of the cards. They can sit on as many as they want. Once those cards are safely under their bum like an egg under a chicken, get them to remember the bottom card of the remaining cards in their hand.

  Once they’ve remembered the card, have them put the cards they are holding on the top of the deck. There is no way you can know how many cards they are sitting on or what card they were thinking of. After all, your back has been turned the whole time.

  Turn around and pick up the deck of cards, dealing out twelve cards in a row face down from left to right. Have a look for your little pencil dot. Their card should be the card immediately to the left of the pencil dot card. You could just stop there. But now you’re going to tell them how many cards they are sitting on. Secretly count how many cards are to the right of their card, including the pencil dot card. This is how many cards your friend is sitting on!

  I like to tell them how many cards they’re sitting on first and, once they have counted and are amazed that I was right, turn over their card. It’s a nice one-two punch. You just have to make sure they don’t see the pencil dot or notice you counting.

  The best part of the trick is that it requires no skill, and if you follow the instructions, the trick just works by itself.

  Of course, you also need someone to do the trick on. And sitting by myself in my room, I didn’t have anyone to sit on the little pile of cards. Mum and Dad were still angry at me and Trixie and Beatrix had left me high and dry.

  Suddenly, I felt very alone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  You are getting sleepy

  By day, I’d go to school and lie low. By night, I’d practise magic. The Miser’s Dream, Ring on Stick, Three-Card Monte, Afghan Bands, Twisting the Aces, Coins Across, the One Ahead Method. I could cut a deck of cards with one hand. I could roll a coin across my knuckles. I could even read minds (even if it was just pretend).

  There was no sign of Trixie or Beatrix. I was starting to worry. What if Mr E had got to them? What if they’d abandoned me? What if I’d imagined the whole thing and I was slowly losing what little sanity I had? I mean seriously, time travellers? It couldn’t be real.

  But then, at midday on Saturday—the day of the fete—there was a knock at the door. I was pacing in my room, wondering if I should try to sneak out. Or just tell Mum I was going to the fete and that was the end of it. What was the worst she could do?

  ‘Hello?’ I heard my mother’s voice say. Even though I was in my room I could hear her slightly confused tone. It was the same voice she used with people she found vaguely familiar but couldn’t quite place. I couldn’t hear what the other person was saying so I stuck my head out of the door.

  ‘Can I come in?’ a voice I recognised was saying. ‘Because I’d really love you to invite me in for a cup of tea. You’d like that too, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Of course,’ my mother said, her voice flat and weird. ‘Please come in for a cup of tea.’

  I went out into the hallway and there was Mum leading Beatrix into the lounge room. They were about t
he same age and height, although Mum’s hair was brown and Beatrix’s was blonde.

  ‘Nicholas,’ Mum said, smiling at me. ‘This is . . .’ Her voice trailed off.

  ‘Beatrix,’ Beatrix chimed in.

  ‘Beatrix. Yes,’ Mum agreed, her voice blank. ‘I’m making Beatrix a cup of tea.’ And she wandered into the kitchen.

  ‘What did you do to my mum?’ I whispered to Beatrix while Mum busied herself with the kettle.

  ‘I hypnotised her,’ Beatrix whispered back. ‘Well, I put her in a highly suggestible state. She’s not going to cluck like a chicken or anything, but I should be able to keep her busy while you get to the school fete. Where’s your dad?’

  ‘Emergency at work,’ I explained. He hadn’t said what the emergency was this time, but there was probably an earthquake in Antarctica or a tsunami in Mongolia that needed his immediate attention.

  Mum reappeared at the lounge-room door. ‘Would you like milk?’ she asked politely. ‘Or sugar?’

  ‘Yes to both, please,’ Beatrix replied. ‘Nicholas here is going to go to the school fete now, isn’t he?’

  ‘He is?’ Mum said, her face expressionless. ‘Wasn’t he grounded?’ She looked like she was trying to recall something that had happened a long time ago.

  ‘Yes,’ Beatrix confirmed. ‘But you want him to go to the fete, don’t you? Because that would be the right thing to do, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘It would. Have a lovely time, dear,’ Mum mumbled before disappearing back into the kitchen.

  ‘The show starts in an hour,’ Beatrix said. ‘You have to be in the audience when it begins or all this will be for nothing. I’ll stay here and keep your mum busy.’

  ‘Where’s Trixie?’

  ‘She’ll meet you there. She’s scoping out the school for any sign of Dr Crick. Now go!’

  I hesitated for a second. Should I take something with me? A weapon? An invention? Some kind of plan? They’d told me so little about what I actually needed to do.

  ‘GO!’ Beatrix hissed and I ran out the back door.

  I’d never ridden my bike to school so fast. I’d raced Gary, the winner taking the loser’s pocket money. I’d raced the clock when running late for school. I’d even raced the toilet, busting to get there before the unthinkable happened. But that day, I must have broken a world record for the fastest ever BMX ride to a school fete.

  When I pulled up outside the school, it was packed. A giant jumping castle and Ferris wheel were visible on the oval. A line of tents filled with sideshow games circled the rides. Guess how many jelly beans are in the jar? Guess the teacher from their baby photo? Guess where the time-travelling lunatic with a grudge might be hiding?

  There were balloons and streamers hanging from the trees. Homemade signs pointed out where the cake stall and toilets were. You could buy fairy floss and toffee apples and weird carob cakes that no one was touching.

  I pushed through the crowd of kids and parents, looking for Trixie. The show was in the hall in twenty minutes. It looked like I was going to make it after all.

  I took off towards the hall. As I rounded a corner at full speed I ran straight into the back of a giant man. There was a thud as he dropped the enormous case he was holding and I fell back on the ground.

  ‘Haaarrry,’ a woman shouted. ‘What are ya doin’?’

  I looked up to see the man turn around, his face furious. He was big and stocky with a tiny pointy beard. He was dressed in a long black tail coat with a white ruffled shirt and fat blue velvet bow tie. Next to him stood a woman with black curly hair in a short blue sequinned skirt that sparkled in the daylight. The large case, an old-fashioned steamer trunk, sat on the ground between them.

  ‘Watch where yar goin’, will ya?’ the man barked at me.

  ‘You’re the magician,’ I said. He didn’t look like a magician. He looked like a football player going to a fancy dress party.

  ‘Give the kid a prize!’ the magician sneered. ‘Can’t pull the wool over this one’s eyes.’ He looked down at me with the same look of smug superiority that the magicians at BUM had, and I felt a sudden feeling of déjà vu.18

  ‘Haaarryy,’ the woman whined, tapping her foot. ‘I wanna get a hot dog.’

  ‘Yeah, all right,’ he said, picking up his case. ‘We gotta bit of time before the gig kicks off. Reckon I’ll get one too.’

  And they stalked off into the crowd, bickering as they went.

  That was him? The magician who was supposed to change my life? Whose performance this whole thing hinged on? He looked like a jerk, not someone who was going to inspire me to seek out a life of magic.

  ‘And so it is that our most valiant of protagonists comes face to face with his destiny,’ a voice behind me said. I froze on the spot, too afraid to turn around.

  It was Crick.

  18Déjà vu is French for ‘I feel like I’ve seen this before.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Stubbins Crick and the butter warmer of certain death

  ‘Just keep on walking and you will be fine,’ Crick said. ‘I have no intention of harming you.’

  I felt something stick into my back. A gun? A knife? A disintegrating device from the future that would turn me into a pile of dust with a single flick of a switch? Crick frogmarched me through the crowds to the front of the school. No one gave him a second look. He was just an old man wandering through the school, politely asking people to move out of his way. I remember my grandmother telling me once that the older you get, the more people just ignore you. She was right.

  When we got to the hallway where the school office was, it was deserted. Everyone was either outside on the rides or in the hall, waiting for the show to start.

  Crick opened a door and shoved me down a short corridor towards the sick bay, pushing me inside. He shut the door behind him and locked it. The sick bay was supposed to be a quiet space for kids to rest after they’d eaten glue or been hit in the head with a basketball. In other words, it was soundproof. No one could hear us.

  I looked down at his hand to see what he’d been threatening me with. It looked like a torch with a large square light bulb at one end that pulsated with a blue light.

  ‘Relax, my dear boy,’ Crick said with a sly grin. ‘It’s not a weapon. It’s a device I invented to soften butter that’s been in the fridge for too long. Of course, I have supercharged it somewhat.’

  He pointed the device at the doorknob and pushed the button on the side. The doorknob glowed for a second before melting into a silver puddle on the floor. No one was getting in or out. I was trapped.

  ‘What are you going to do to me?’ I said, looking around the room. The sick bay was bare aside from a small bed, a sink and a first-aid box bolted to the white-painted brick wall. It felt more like a prison cell than a sick bay.

  I thought about what I had in my pocket. A few coins, my bus pass and my house keys. I thought I had my thumb tip, for all the good it would do me, but I’d dropped it somewhere.

  ‘Do to you? Nothing, my dear boy. I’m not evil,’ Crick exclaimed. ‘Besides, I don’t have to do anything. All the pieces are in place. I just need to wait.’

  He spun the heat ray in his fingers as he talked.

  ‘You know this isn’t going to change anything, don’t you?’ I said. ‘You can’t change the past.’

  ‘Is that what you think?’ said Mr Crick. ‘You think my grand evil plan is to actually stop you becoming a magician? And then what? Young Trixie doesn’t become an inventor? And I’m free from her adult meddling? A butterfly flaps its wings in Japan and there is a hurricane in France?’

  ‘It isn’t?’ He’d lost me with the butterfly talk. Why were time travellers so obsessed with butterflies?

  ‘Of course not,’ Crick scoffed. ‘I’m not an idiot. If I make too large a change in the past it could destroy the whole city. Remo
ve it from space-time. I’m an inventor, not a monster.’

  I didn’t understand. If he wasn’t trying to change the future, why was he doing any of this? Why was he making my life so difficult? He must have known that Beatrix would notice all the little changes he was making in the future. Unless . . .

  ‘You wanted Beatrix to find you,’ I realised.

  ‘Well done.’ He smiled. ‘I clearly underestimated your cognitive abilities. I was so close to completing my time machine when the CPA showed up on my doorstep. I had no choice but to use it, untested. The resulting explosion sent me ricocheting here into the past, leaving me entirely stranded.

  ‘I could have simply waited for the CPA to deduce my location but I did not fancy spending my remaining years in prison. Instead, I thought it much more prudent to manipulate my traitorous assistant’s timeline just enough to send some very noticeable gravitational waves her way. I knew she was reckless enough to come searching for me, and then I would have my own time machine.’

  ‘So this actually has nothing to do with me?’

  ‘Of course not, my dear boy. You are spectacularly unimportant. Think of yourself as bait. You have all the importance of a worm.’ He looked at his watch. ‘And now, if you’ll excuse the pun, it’s only a matter of time.’

  Crick heard the sound before I did. His ears pricked up like a dog hearing the sound of an electric can-opener. As the sound got louder he stuck his fingers in his ears, his mouth spreading into a wide, thin grin.

  There was a flash of light and then Trixie was in the room, the silver watch glowing on her wrist. She looked at Crick and at the heat ray in his hand and leapt straight at it. But before she could even get close to the weapon, he shoved her back and pointed the device at her. She turned and looked at me, half confused, half terrified.

  ‘Sit down next to him,’ Crick demanded, and she sat next to me on the bed. ‘And take off the machine.’

  ‘It was a trap,’ I explained as Trixie removed the device from her wrist. ‘He wasn’t trying to change the future. He was trying to get his hands on Beatrix’s time machine.’