The Magic Trap

by Jacqueline Davies

  “But, Mom?” asked Jessie in her matter-of-fact voice. “Why does Dad always leave us?”

  Their mom sat down on the porch, as if her legs couldn’t hold her weight any longer. Evan and Jessie sat down right next to her, one on each side. Evan held his breath, waiting to hear what she would say. He had been waiting a long time to hear the answer to this question.

  “Your dad loves you very much, and he’s a good man. He’s smart and generous and fun—and tough.” Mrs. Treski looked beyond the porch and into the woods, as if the words she was searching for were hidden among the trees. “But some people—some very good people—just aren’t meant to be parents. They’re not so good at it. That doesn’t make them bad, and you can still love them. But it’s something you need to know and understand. So you can protect yourselves. Just like you did during the storm. You took good care of yourselves and each other. You’re the best kids in the whole world, and I’m the luckiest mom on the planet.”

  Evan let his mother’s words sink in. Then he smiled for what felt like the first time all week. He’d been hoping that things were going to be different this time. But they weren’t. His dad was—Dad. The sooner he accepted that, the better off he would be. Still, he didn’t want to hate his father. His dad was a part of him, and hating him was like hating a part of himself.

  Jessie shook her head solemnly. “I wouldn’t say you’re the luckiest mom on the planet. Not until you look inside the house.”

  Her mom groaned. “How bad is it? Wait, don’t tell me. Let’s just go look.”

  Jessie and their mother went inside, but Evan stayed in the yard. He wandered over to the Climbing Tree and rested his hand on its trunk. Then, he bowed his head until his forehead was touching the rough, damp bark and whispered, “Goodbye.”

  Later that afternoon, after Mrs. Treski had seen all the damage and then double-checked their insurance policy to make sure that they really were covered for hurricanes and flooding, Evan and Jessie had a meeting in Evan’s room. When they went downstairs, they found their mother sitting at the kitchen table trying to figure out how to fix the porch. Insurance wasn’t going to pay for that. She had a notepad full of scribbled numbers.

  “How much will it cost?” asked Jessie. She was standing next to her mother with both hands behind her back. Her stomach felt excited but in a good way.

  “A lot,” said Mrs. Treski grimly.

  “But how much? Exactly?”

  Mrs. Treski shook her head. “I don’t know. Pete said he’d drive down and take a look at it.”

  “Pete!” shouted Evan. It had been five months since he’d seen Pete. “We can do it! Me and Pete together! You won’t have to hire anyone.” A huge grin broke out on Evan’s face.

  “It’s still going to cost a lot . . .”

  “But how much?” asked Jessie, looking at Evan. He looked back at her, and his grin grew even wider.

  “I don’t know . . .”

  “More than one hundred and twenty-seven dollars?”

  Mrs. Treski looked at her, raising one eyebrow. “Why do you ask that?”

  Jessie pulled both hands from behind her back and held them out for her mother to see. They were filled with dollar bills.

  “We made one hundred and twenty-seven dollars at the magic show today, and we want you to have it . . . all.” That last word was hard for Jessie. It had been Evan’s idea to give the magic show money to their mother, but Jessie had agreed. Still, it was a struggle for her to give up every last penny.

  Mrs. Treski smiled. “This is really nice of you, but . . .”

  “We think there should have been one hundred and twenty-eight dollars, since the tickets were two dollars apiece, which means the total shouldn’t be an odd number, but maybe someone paid just one dollar instead.” Jessie scowled. She didn’t like it when there were math errors. Or when someone didn’t follow the rules and pay the right price. “Probably Scott Spencer. I bet . . .” She crossed her arms. “Well. We don’t have any evidence, so I guess we don’t know. For sure.”

  “Anyway,” said Evan, “we want you to have the money. We know it’s not enough, but it’s something, right?”

  “Are you kidding? It’s huge,” said Mrs. Treski. “But I don’t want to take your money. You worked so hard.”

  “But we’re Treskis, and Treskis—” Jessie stopped. Somehow she couldn’t quite bring herself to say what her dad always said. It didn’t feel right. Instead she said, “Treskis stick together.”

  “Yeah,” said Evan. “Like you always say. Family comes first.”

  “Thank you both,” said Mrs. Treski. She gave Evan a big hug and put her hand on Jessie’s head, then took the money and put it in an envelope with her pages of calculations. “This makes a big difference,” she said before going upstairs.

  That made Jessie feel better, but it was still hard to lose all that money. She wondered if she would ever be able to open her own bank account.

  She turned to look at Evan, who had pulled a quarter from his pocket and was making it dance across his knuckles. The flashing coin made Jessie think of something.

  “Hey, Evan,” she said. “I’ve got an idea.”

  Evan looked at his sister.

  Jessie planted her feet and put her hands on her hips. “It’s hot outside, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So we could have . . .”

  Evan flipped the quarter into the air and Jessie caught it as it fell.

  “. . . a lemonade stand!” they both shouted.

  How to Perform: The Mixed-Up Kings

  You must perform this trick seated behind a table or a desk so that no one can see your lap.

  Before you begin the trick, make sure you have four cards in your lap that no one can see. It doesn’t matter what these cards are as long as they’re not kings.

  Fan out the cards in the deck to show your audience that there’s nothing special about the deck. Say, “This is a story of four kings who were brothers.” Search through the deck and remove the four kings. You are now holding four kings in your right hand and the rest of the deck in your left hand.

  Then say, “I’m going to put the kings in my lap so I know where they are.” As you lower the king cards, drop both hands behind the table and do the following: place the four king cards at the bottom of the deck facing in the opposite direction of all the other cards.

  Saying, “Once again, notice that there’s nothing unusual about this deck of cards,” hold the deck up and fan the cards out in your hand so that the audience sees the backs of the cards, but do not reveal that the four kings are facing in the opposite direction at the bottom of the deck.

  Say, “Now the kings are going to travel to the four corners of the earth. The first king will go to the North.” Pick up one of the cards from your lap and hold it up for the audience so that they see the back of the card. They will assume it’s a king card, but it’s actually not. Place the card somewhere in the deck.

  Say, “The second king will go to the South.” Pick up one of the cards from your lap and hold it up. Place the card somewhere in the deck.

  Say, “The third king will go to the East.” Pick up one of the cards from your lap and hold it up. Place the card somewhere in the deck.

  Say, “And the fourth king will go to the West.” Pick up the last card from your lap and place it somewhere in the deck.

  Say, “But the kings’ troubles are just beginning. An evil sorcerer has decided to create chaos by mixing Up with Down, In with Out, Right with Wrong! Watch as I shuffle the cards with half the deck face-up and half the deck face-down.”

  Cut the cards so that you are holding the top half of the deck in your right hand and the bottom half of the deck (with the four king cards hidden at the bottom) in your left hand. At the same time, as if preparing to shuffle, flip both halves of the decks over. Now the kings are on the top of the cards in your left hand. It will appear that you are about to shuffle half the deck face-down and half the deck face-up—but you are
really shuffling all the cards face-up except for the four king cards.

  Shuffle the cards again and again, explaining how confused and lost the kings will be.

  Say, “How will the kings ever find their way home? Can you help them?”

  Invite the audience to say the magic spell: “Kings: Come home, come home, you will no longer roam.” Then spread out the cards face-up on the table and extract the only four face-down cards: they will be the four king cards.

  Acknowledgments

  So many people helped put the magic in this book: thanks to my editor, Ann Rider; my agent, Tracey Adams; and the whole team at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt who’ve been on this journey from the first: Cara Llewellyn, Christine Krones, Ann-Marie Pucillo, Mary Huot, Karen Walsh, and Lisa DiSarro. It’s a pleasure to work alongside people who have such a deep and abiding commitment to bringing good books to young readers.

  I’d like to thank my handwriting guys: Ryle Sammut, who provided Evan’s handwriting, and my brother, Tom Davies, who provided the perfectly careless handwriting for Mr. Treski.

  I am indebted to a trio of top-notch meteorologists who explained the intricacies of early-season hurricanes to me: Harvey Leonard, chief meteorologist, and Mike Wankum, meteorologist, of WCVB-TV in Boston; and Dan Skeldon, chief meteorologist of NBC40 in New Jersey.

  Also, thanks to the amazing magical team of Penn & Teller, who patiently demonstrated the Seven Basic Principles of Magic on their YouTube video. I watched it twenty times and still couldn’t catch the ditch. The Mixed-Up Kings card trick is inspired by a card trick of the same name in Joshua Jay’s excellent book, Magic: The Complete Course. And to the magician who was one of the first to lift the curtain for us mere mortals and explain how it’s all done: Professor Hoffman, I offer my thanks and admiration.

  My writers group is never outside my circle of gratitude. I’d like to thank Carol Peacock, Sarah Lamstein, Tracey Fern, and Mary Atkinson. They’re always there.

  I began this book with a thank-you to my father, and I’d like to end with one to my whole family of origin: my mother, Ann Davies; my sisters, Leslie and Kim Davies; and, again, my brother, Tom. Also, heartfelt thanks and endless amounts of love to my own three children, who are more miraculous to me than any magic trick: Mae, Henry, and Sam. Now you see ’em, now you don’t.

  The Real Profressor Hoffman

  Professor Hoffmann was a real person, but his actual name was Angelo John Lewis. Born in London on July 23, 1839, Lewis learned his first magic from his French teacher, who taught him tricks as a reward for doing good schoolwork.

  But Lewis had no thoughts of being a professional magician. At that time, magicians were an odd group. They wore pointy hats and dressed in long robes with enormous sleeves that were covered with strange, mystical symbols. Many of them had long, flowing beards. In fact, they looked a lot like Dumbledore, the character in the Harry Potter books who is styled after the ancient mythical wizard Merlin of King Arthur’s court.

  So Lewis went on to study at Oxford (a very prestigious university in England) and became a lawyer—a much more respectable profession than being a magician.

  But even as he practiced law, he continued to be interested in magic. He collected books on magic and magical apparatuses that helped magicians perform tricks. He even put on a few amateur shows of his own.

  In 1874, he sent a letter to the publishers of Boy’s Magazine and asked them if they’d like to publish some of his articles on magic. They agreed to publish a whole series of articles and then publish those articles as a book after they appeared in the magazine. The book was titled Modern Magic, and it was published in 1876. The publishers didn’t pay Lewis much money for his writing. In fact, they paid more than three times as much for the illustrations!

  But why didn’t Lewis use his own name? At the time, he was still a practicing lawyer, and he didn’t want his colleagues to think that he was a trickster. “I did not think that being known to dabble in magic would increase my professional prestige,” he said. So he created the persona of Professor Hoffmann, and that is how he is known to this day.

  His book has been described as “a bombshell among conjurers at the time” because it championed the “new style” of magic performed by Jean Eugene Robert-Houdin. Robert-Houdin was a French magician who gave up the flowing robes and pointy hats of earlier times and dressed like an “ordinary gentleman,” which in the late 1800s meant a necktie, a formal dress coat with tails, and a top hat. Like Robert-Houdin, Lewis encouraged magicians to give up the trappings of the old ways and perform magic as an ordinary person doing extraordinary things.

  Also, Modern Magic was the first book in English that described how tricks were done using simple, clear, step-by-step language. Lewis wrote like a lawyer: logically and with an eye for details. Many people had been waiting for just such a book because it taught them how to perform magic tricks.

  Not surprisingly, Modern Magic was an instant success. The first printing of 2,000 copies sold out in just seven weeks. More than a century later, the book is still in print and is considered a classic on the art of conjuring. Harry Houdini (birth name Eric Weisz, who chose his new name to sound like Robert-Houdin’s) called Lewis “The Brightest Star in the Firmament of Magical Literature.”

  Lewis wrote dozens of books and articles on magic and even wrote a novel for young children that had magic as a theme. He never performed magic professionally, but every once in a while he would put on a show and give all the proceeds to charity. In 1903, Lewis retired to the quiet seaside town of Hastings, and in 1919, at the age of eighty, he died.

  On the title page of the American edition of Modern Magic are the Latin words Populus vult decipi: decipiatur. This phrase means “People want to be deceived.” At its root, that’s how magic works. People want to be tricked, and magicians oblige. Over the years, Professor Hoffmann has brought the world of happy deception to millions of readers.

  Book 1: The Lemonade War

  Evan Treski is people-smart. He is good at talking with people, even grownups. His younger sister, Jessie, on the other hand, is math-smart—but not especially good at understanding people. She knows that feelings are her weakest subject. So when their lemonade war begins, there really is no telling who will win—and even more important, if their fight will ever end.

  Here is a clever blend of humor and math fun. As it captures the one-of-a-kind bond between brother and sister, this poignant novel subtly explores how arguments can escalate beyond anyone’s intent.

  Book 2: The Lemonade Crime

  In the much-anticipated sequel to bestseller The Lemonade War, brother and sister duo Evan and Jessie turn the playground into a full-blown courtroom and attempt to take the law into their own hands. This engaging chapter book entertains and explores the issue of fairness.

  Book 3: The Bell Bandit

  Unforgettable brother-sister duo Evan and Jessie are back in the third installment of the best-selling Lemonade War series. Can they solve the mystery of who stole the New Year’s Bell?

  Book 4: The Candy Smash

  Poignant and funny, this fourth book in the best-selling Lemonade War series is a Valentine mystery full of sweet (and sour) surprises.

  Imagine if every family in your school read The Lemonade War.

  Together.

  At home.

  At the same time.

  That’s

  One School, One Book.

  The reading program that’s also a community building program

  Find out all about it at www.readtothem.org.

  Join more than 500 member schools and turn yours into a Community of Readers.

  “When a whole school reads a book, there’s a lot to talk about.”

  About the Author

  JACQUELINE DAVIES is the talented, award-winning writer of several novels and picture books. She lives in Needham, Massachusetts, with her family. Visit her website at www.jacquelinedavies.net.

  queline Davies, The Magic Trap