by David Pogue
She stood there, leaning against the glass sneeze guard over the fancy lettuce bin. How would she explain to her parents why she wanted to leave camp after only one day?
“Abby.” Someone was tapping her shoulder.
It was Ben.
“Abby. What just happened back there?”
She looked up at the dark wooden beams of the high cafeteria ceiling, trying to stop herself from crying. She said nothing.
“Listen,” he said. “The thing you said about an egg. Is that true? Is that for real?”
She gave a tiny nod, still looking away.
There was a pause, and then Ben went on.
“I mean, look, I’ll be honest with you. I’ve never seen a trick that I couldn’t figure out, or at least that I couldn’t think of a way to do it. But, I mean . . .” He stopped and sighed. “I mean—could you show me?”
Abby wiped at her eye and sneaked a look at him for the first time. “What?”
Ben studied her face seriously. “I want to see your egg thing. Would you show me?”
When she hesitated, Ben took charge. He scanned the salad bar and quickly found what he was looking for: a basket of hard-boiled eggs. He grabbed one and pressed it into Abby’s hand.
“Show me. I want to see it.”
It took her a minute to make up her mind. But Abby realized that, at this point, she had nothing to lose. She knew she couldn’t make herself look any sillier.
“Hold out your hand,” she told him.
She grabbed his hand from underneath to steady it. She put the egg on his hand. She let go.
“All right,” she said. “This is my power.”
She tugged on her earlobes. “This is my trigger,” she said, with a hint of a smile.
The egg began to turn on Ben’s palm.
What Abby learned that day is that magicians and normal people react to magic tricks very differently. A big, flashy trick that blows away normal people may not excite a magician very much, because a magician can guess how it’s done.
What really impresses a magician is a trick that can’t be figured out, no matter how small. And Ben knew that was what he was seeing. There was no breeze, no wires, no magnets, no little tiny trained hamsters. It was an egg that he had picked out of the basket, on his palm—and Abby was three feet away.
It was impossible.
She finally took her eyes off the egg to look at Ben. His mind had been blown to smithereens. He simply couldn’t process what he was seeing.
He didn’t say anything for a long time.
He looked at the egg very closely, holding it right up to his eye. Then he looked at Abby, his eyes intense under his floppy bangs. “Abby,” he said. “Either I’ve just seen the greatest magic trick ever invented . . .” He swallowed. “Or you really are a witch.”
CHAPTER
9
Show
IF YOU ASKED HER NOW, Abby could still tell you every single detail of that first day of magic camp. Her emotions were on a roller coaster all day. And in those moments by the salad bar, she went from feeling like the loneliest person on earth to knowing that she had a close friend she could trust.
She remembers playing soccer in the afternoon. All that running around, full out, was just what she needed. By the end of the game, she was exhausted and exhilarated. And hungry. After a quick rinse in the outdoor shower at Witches 3, she headed with her cabin mates over to the dining hall for dinner.
She didn’t wind up sitting with them, however. While she was standing at the pasta bar, ladling pesto sauce onto her angel hair noodles, Ben came directly over to her. He didn’t waste any time telling her what was on his mind.
“I know what you have to do, Abby.”
She put the ladle back in the saucepot and glanced at him. “Oh, hello to you, too, Ben. I’m fine—thanks for asking.”
Either he didn’t get it, or he didn’t hear it.
“I’ve been thinking all afternoon. I know what you have to do. You have to do your egg trick at Camper Show.”
Camper Show was the highlight of each day at Camp Cadabra. After dinner each night, everybody piled into the brand-new, high-tech, outdoor theater, and Camp Cadabra turned into a breathtaking magic festival. First, at 7:00 p.m., the campers watched what they called Magic Show—a performance by a professional magician who’d been flown in for the evening from Las Vegas or New York or wherever.
Then, at 7:30, there was Camper Show; that’s when a few fellow campers got the chance to try out the tricks they’d been working on in front of a live audience.
Abby picked up her tray and turned toward her table. “Camper Show? Thank you. I’m flattered. But seriously—are you crazy?”
“Come on, Abby! Why not?”
“They’ll laugh me off the stage, Ben! It’s not a good trick. It’s not even a trick. It’s small, it’s short, it’s boring, it doesn’t go anywhere, and it’s pointless. It’s lame!”
Three hundred kids all laughing at her—now that would be the perfect wrap-up to her wobbly Camp Cadabra experience.
Ben nodded, slurping his milkshake. “Okay, fine. So we’ll goose it up.”
She cocked an eyebrow. “Goose it up?”
“I’ll admit, it’s a little small for a stage show. So we’ll make it play bigger.”
“Like how? How do you make it big enough to see from the back of the room? Use a dinosaur egg?”
He grinned. “Why? Can you spin those too?”
“I don’t know,” Abby said. “Go get me one from the salad bar, and I’ll give it a shot.”
Ben pretended that he was about to get up from the bench to go get one. But then he stopped short and sat down again. “Seriously, Abby. I think you should perform it. You have nothing to lose and a lot to gain.”
“Like what?”
“Well, at the very least, you’ll meet a lot of people. You’ll get fantastic experience in appearing before a big crowd. And if your trick really is . . . you know, more than just a trick . . .”
He trailed off for a moment. His face told Abby all she needed to know: that he was still having trouble getting used to the fact that she had an actual power, that he wasn’t sure he should believe it. That’s okay, she thought. I’m still not sure I should believe it myself.
“You mean, if I’m not making this up about my power,” she prodded him.
He looked down, but he nodded. “Right. If it’s for real—if it’s for real, then at least you’ll be showing the entire camp at once. And if anybody here knows anything about it—you know, about sort of—unexplainable powers—then you’ll hear about it.”
Abby considered this point as she twirled the pasta on her fork. If her little stunt could impress the other magicians as much as it had impressed Ben, then maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. And it would be a great opportunity for the camp’s counselors to see it—real magicians. Maybe one of them might know, at last, something about unexplained phenomena.
She closed her eyes for a brief moment, and then shook her head. “It’s just too small, Ben,” she said finally.
“Well, if that’s what you’re worried about, don’t. Plenty of kids are planning to do close-up tricks in Camper Show—little tiny tricks with dice, or cards, or coins. That’s why they have a cameraman!”
“They what?”
“There’s a guy with a video camera, and the trick is projected on big screens on either side of the stage,” he said. “Everybody can see it. You don’t have to worry.”
“But it’s just not any good as a trick. After all these people get up there with mind-reading and card routines and sawing people in half, I can’t just get up there, spin an egg, and walk off.”
“I know,” Ben replied. “But I’ve been working on this part, and I think I know how to make it work. Look, Camper Show isn’t some birthday party or some talent show. You’re not performing for normal people; you’re performing to an audience of magicians. Magicians have a different amazement threshold. We’ve got to play up the imposs
ibility of it. Your trick isn’t especially dazzling, but it does violate the laws of physics, and we have to make sure the kids know that.”
“Okay, how?” she asked.
His leg was bouncing up and down, something it seemed to do by itself when Ben’s mind was racing. “We’re gonna need a dozen spools of thread. A couple of Nerf balls. And a ruler, and a terrarium from the Nature Station.”
She had no idea what he was talking about. So she said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“And a dozen hard-boiled eggs.”
She still didn’t get it. “Why a dozen? Why do we need all that stuff?”
“I’ll explain on the way. Finish up; we’ve got a scavenger hunt ahead of us.”
The fourth night of Camp Cadabra’s first two-seek session was cool and breezy, a welcome break from the heat of the first few days. The audience of campers and counselors wore sweaters and sweatshirts for that night’s Camper Show.
There was no audition process for each evening’s show. You signed up at lunch with a little description of your act. Truth is, the camp didn’t really need auditions to ensure the quality of the show. The terror of looking like a bumbling idiot in front of three hundred fellow magicians was enough pressure to scare away the really lame acts. Usually, Camper Show included very good tricks presented by very talented campers.
Abby was quite sure that she would be the exception.
After dinner that night, it took No-H Sara ten minutes to persuade Abby to leave the Witches 3 cabin.
“Come on, girl!” Sara said, pounding the open doorway in frustration. “If we don’t go right now, we’re not gonna get good seats!”
Abby had been working with Ben on a presentation of the egg trick for two days, feverishly trying to come up with something that wouldn’t seem too pathetic. She’d learned her patter, rehearsed the setup. She could practically do it in her sleep. And yet—
“I feel like I’m gonna throw up,” Abby moaned, flopping back onto her bed. No-H Sara walked back into the cabin and kneeled down next to Abby.
“Abby, come on,” she implored. “You said yourself you’ve got it down cold! It’s going to be fine! We’re all gonna be screaming for you. And besides, everyone’s here to learn and get better, right? Everyone roots for everyone. What are you worried about?”
“Auuuugh!” Abby covered her face with her hands. What was she worried about? Everything. Nobody except Ben knew that, in fact, Abby had never done a single trick in front of an audience. The egg thing was all she could do. And the thought of three hundred kids seeing right through her was almost more than she could bear.
And that’s if the trick worked. And if they could see it. And if they didn’t think it was lame. And if she didn’t freeze, faint, or puke—or all three at once.
Sara stepped forward and used the only remaining persuasion tactic she could think of: she started tickling Abby under the armpits.
“Okay—okay stop!” Abby cried out, shivering and giggling. She squirmed off of the bed, stood up, and backed away. “Okay, fine. I’m going. But if I pass out, you’re calling 911.”
“It’s a deal,” said Sara. “Now let’s get going.”
When they arrived at the Weasley Theater, Abby checked the bulletin board in the lobby. That’s where the show committee posted, each night, the lineup of performers for that evening. Her name appeared as the fifth performer out of nine. That suited her fine; she didn’t want to be either the first or the last magician in the show. That would be much more pressure than she could bear.
Abby took her seat in the front row of soft, reclining chairs, along with the other campers who’d be performing. As the lights went down, she caught a glimpse of Ben a few rows back. He gave her a double thumbs-up, but Abby wondered if he was as confident in her as he said he was.
The show opened with a ninth-grade camper performing his version of the Zombie. It’s a standard stage illusion where, as music plays, a shiny silver sphere appears to float with a mind of its own, balancing delicately on the edge of a silk scarf before ducking behind the magician’s back. The campers, who all knew how hard the Zombie is to perform properly, went wild.
Next came a card-manipulation trick involving two-handed fans of cards; alas, it went terribly wrong that night. The magician, a thirteen-year-old from Pennsylvania, was sweating too much in the stage lights and wound up dropping cards all over the stage.
That’s going to be me right there, Abby told herself.
A tiny nine-year-old girl was up next, performing to music. It was an unusual routine, involving white-to-rainbow color changes, first of silk scarves, then paper flowers, then finally confetti. The crowd loved it.
While the fourth act went on—a mind-reading trick—Abby walked over to the stairs at the side of the stage, where a teenaged stage hand clipped a wireless microphone to Abby’s blouse. “You’re gonna do great,” he said helpfully. “Knock ’em dead.”
And then it was time.
Abby walked up the four stairs to the stage and somehow made it to the center.
“Hi guys,” she said, her voice a little shaky. She wasn’t used to hearing her voice amplified a hundred times, booming across the outdoor theater, under the stars.
The lights were shining directly into her eyes, making it almost impossible to see all those hundreds of people watching her, waiting for her to do something impressive. She took a breath and dove in.
“I’m going to do something that’s probably never been done on this stage before. It may not look like much. But the more you think about what I’m doing here, even in the days and weeks to come, the more it’s going to bug you.”
Ben had written that line. It had sounded stuck-up to her, but the supportive camper crowd loved it. A couple of people whooped, and there was a smattering of applause.
“Part of what will make this demonstration so annoying is that I’m not going to be involved. I won’t touch anything, choose anything, or handle anything. I’m going to rule out every possibility that anything is rigged, gimmicked, or prepared in advance.”
To make her point, she walked to the side of the stage, about fifteen feet away from the table that the stagehands had wheeled out.
She looked out across the crowd of strangers. Her mouth was dry as dust. She’d always wondered what real magicians loved about performing onstage—and now, with her knees barely holding her up, she was more mystified than ever.
“I’m going to need a couple of helpers for this little experiment,” she went on. “But it’s important that it’s somebody completely random. It can’t be somebody I know. So here’s how we’re going to choose the volunteers: Catch!”
With that, she pulled two foam Nerf balls out of her skirt pockets and threw them out into the audience.
After a scramble, two kids wound up clutching bright-orange foam-rubber balls.
“Pretty random, right? But not random enough. I want the selection of these volunteers to have nothing to do with me. You two with the Nerf balls—throw them into the crowd again!”
There was a laugh, as the crowd caught on to her little game. By having two strangers throw the balls to two other strangers, there was no chance that Abby would wind up choosing volunteers that she’d secretly trained beforehand.
“Okay, great! You two with the Nerf balls—please join me on stage. Oh—and nice catch.” She smiled, and there was a little bit of clapping.
To Abby, it looked like the two volunteers were moving at the speed of slugs; in the time it seemed to take them to come onto the stage, she thought, she could have run off the stage, hailed a taxi, and driven all the way home to Eastport.
Finally, they were with her, awaiting instructions.
Abby asked for their names—they were Joshua and Carly—and introduced them to the crowd.
“All right. First you, Joshua. On the table to your left, you’ll see a carton of a dozen hard-boiled eggs. We only need one of them. Your job is to prove to this audience that there is a
bsolutely nothing tricky going on with any of these eggs. Go ahead: pick up a couple of them. Crack ’em with your fist. Peel off the shell. Throw a couple out to people in the audience. All I ask is that we wind up with one egg to use for the trick.”
As the crowd giggled, Joshua picked up three eggs, hefted them, examined them—and then began to juggle them, showing off.
This is what I get for doing the trick at a magic camp, Abby thought.
“That’s great, Joshua,” she said aloud. “You get to perform in tomorrow’s Camper Show.”
The crowd cracked up. Abby felt the tiniest flutter of pride and excitement; that line Ben hadn’t written.
Joshua cracked a few eggs on the edge of the table, split them, showed them, tossed a couple more into the crowd. The cameraman followed all of the action.
“Okay, Joshua,” Abby said finally. “Are you pretty satisfied that this was a dozen ordinary eggs, and that you’ve wound up with one of them that you, and you alone, picked out?”
“Yes I am,” said Joshua, waggling his eyebrows into the camera.
“All right. Carly, you’re up next. For you, I have a little arts-and-crafts project. Also on that table, I’ve brought you a dozen spools of thread, all different colors. You’re going to pick one—I’m not going to pick one, or even touch one. Pick out any color you like, and break off a four-foot piece of thread.”
“Okay,” Carly said. She bent over to examine the thread and finally picked out a spool of dark blue.
“How’s that thread look to you? Any trapdoors, mirrors, or secret assistants?”
Carly smiled at her and shook her head no. “It’s just thread,” she said.
“Great,” Abby went on. “Can you tie one end of that thread around the middle of the ruler there? And then use the tape to fasten the other end to Joshua’s egg. I’d love to help out, but I made a promise that I wouldn’t get involved.”
