by David Pogue
“Wow, that is wicked,” breathed Ricky. “You could use that as a real magic trick, you know? It’s not like our powers, like, totally pointless. That one, you could do in a show.”
“I do, actually,” said Ben. “I’ve been doing magic shows since I was nine. I do a lot of birthday parties.”
Eliza was studying him carefully. “So you were into magic before you discovered you had a power?”
“No, not really,” Ben replied. “I’ve been able to move the key like that since I was about seven years old.”
Abby noticed how he was choosing his words carefully. Clearly, Ben didn’t want to just come right out and lie, yet he did want the others to keep thinking that his power was real.
“And what’s your trigger, exactly?” asked Eliza, probing.
“It’s that thing with your eye, right?” asked Ricky, proud of himself for noticing. “When you squint your eye, that’s what makes it turn over.”
Ben smiled, but Abby sensed that he was getting uncomfortable with his game of pretending. She stepped in to help.
“Yeah, exactly,” she said, nominating herself to be his official spokesperson. “Ben, you probably have the least weird trigger of anyone here.”
“Yeah, maybe,” he answered with a grateful half smile.
“From whence do you hail, Ben?” chimed in Ferd.
Ben looked at him blankly. Ferd rolled his eyes and then asked a different way: “Where are you from?”
“New Jersey,” he said. “But we’ve moved around a lot for my dad’s job.”
Abby suddenly realized that she didn’t know much about Ben’s background at all. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?” she asked.
“Nope,” he replied. “Only child.”
“Are you gonna be a magician when you grow up?” asked Ricky. He was obviously impressed that Ben was already doing magic shows for money.
“I don’t know,” Ben said. “I like it. I like performing magic, I like watching it, I even like teaching it. I taught beginning magic to little kids at a summer camp near my house last year. But my parents keep telling me it’s too hard to earn money doing magic.”
“Hmph,” Ferd chimed in. “I would advise you not to mention that to David Copperfield, or Lance Burton, or Criss Angel, or David Blaine.”
Abby grinned. Ferd was a hardcore magic nerd.
“How’d you get picked to go to super camp?” Eliza asked, still sounding a little skeptical of Ben’s story.
“Let me guess: Ferd,” offered Abby.
“You are correct, young lady,” Ferd said. “I saw Mr. Wheeler performing his remarkable key effect in the dining hall one day.”
“Yeah,” said Ben, picking up the story. “He asked me how it works, and I told him I didn’t know. Next thing I knew, he asked if I wanted to meet other kids with—unusual abilities, so I said sure! I’m always up for an adventure.”
“Oh, you’ll have one of those, all right.” Ferd nodded, his greasy ponytail bobbing. “And it’s going to start soon. We’re only about one more hour away.”
The kids had long since stopped studying the view out the window. If they had paid more attention, they would have noticed the gradual, slow alternation of cities, suburbs, and countryside—and they would have noticed that for the last hour, it had been all countryside, and even a couple of cornfields.
Night was falling when the van finally slowed to a stop. The kids pressed their faces to the windows to see where they were.
They were at a magnificent, ten-foot, black wrought-iron gate in an impressive stone wall. Abby could see one end of a laser-engraved bronze sign mounted to the wall. The first two letters were CA; the rest of the name was covered by a cloth that some painter had left draped over the wall.
A security guard in a glass booth recognized Ferd, gave him a friendly wave, and pressed a button; the huge black gates swung open on electronic hinges to let the van through.
The view before them was stunning. They were at the top rim of a gently sloped valley, which was so big you couldn’t see the whole thing without turning your head. The grass was brilliant green as far as the eye could see; the setting sun gave the entire scene a golden sheen.
Nestled at the bottom of the valley was what Abby first thought was a little village, or maybe a college campus—ten or twelve clean white buildings connected by walkways and decorated by artistically placed trees, plants, and flowers. In the center of the cluster of buildings was a lavishly gardened courtyard with a fountain that shot out what must have been a thirty-foot-tall spire of water.
The access road wound gently down the hill toward the little village, and Ferd drove slowly so they could appreciate the view. As they approached, Abby could see that it wasn’t a village or even a college campus; the buildings looked a little too sleek and modern.
When she was a little girl, Abby’s dad had once taken her to visit his airline’s headquarters. She’d been very excited. She’d imagined that it would be like some huge Star Wars spaceship dock, a busy place where people were attaching wings onto airplanes, cooking airplane meals, watching huge screens that showed where all the planes in the air were—stuff like that. It had turned out to be nothing like that at all. The airline headquarters was just an office building—a plain, all-glass office mini-skyscraper, with carpeting, fluorescent lights, little cubicles, and hundreds of workers tapping away on computer keyboards. That was it. No wings, no meals, no giant screens.
That’s how she felt when she saw the super camp for the first time. At first glance, it didn’t actually look much like a camp at all. She didn’t see any kids, any parents, any lake except for the fountain pond. There weren’t even any activity areas—soccer fields, tennis courts, a pool, that sort of thing—at least not that she could see. It was beautiful, but it sure wasn’t Camp Cadabra.
“Is that the super camp?” asked Ricky. Bless his heart, Abby thought. He’s having the same reaction I am.
“Super-duper,” replied Ferd.
Abby stole a look at Ben. He was staring hard out the window with a look of concern.
“It doesn’t look like a camp,” blurted Eliza.
“My dear, you’re going to love it,” was all Ferd said.
He pulled the van up to one of the closest buildings. It had a low-slung roof, and the entire front wall was made of glass, so you could see the sleek wood floors and shiny silver furniture of the lobby inside. A skinny blond man with a tidy little mustache was standing by the front door waiting for them. He was wearing a suit and tie, which Abby thought was a little odd for summer camp. He was also wearing a pair of glasses and a big smile.
Ferd climbed out and walked around the van to open the doors for Abby, Ben, Ricky, and Eliza.
“Come on out, my people,” he said. “Welcome to your home away from home. You’re gonna love it here.”
From the looks of the place, Abby wasn’t quite so sure.
CHAPTER
15
Orientation
THE GUY IN THE SUIT was super-friendly, and, Abby thought, also super-weird. He sure didn’t act like the director of the camp. He acted more like their puppy.
“Greetings, greetings all!” he exclaimed. “We’ve been expecting you! So thrilled, so thrilled!”
He was a one-man welcoming committee. He rushed to grab each kid’s hand and shook it like he was pumping water. “Hello there—Phil Shutter. How are you? I’m Phil—nice to meet you. Phil Shutter; I run this place. Great to see you, thanks for coming. Here, let me get that bag for you. No, no, please—call me Phil.”
Abby and Ben happened to glance at each other at exactly the same moment. Clearly, they were both thinking the same thing. Which, if you had to put it into words, was something like: “What the—?!?!”
“So everybody survived? It must have been quite a ride,” Phil was going on. As he spoke, he was trying to prop open the big glass front door with his heel while hauling duffel bags into the lobby. “I’ve made the drive many times myself; I know what you’ve been thr
ough! But you’re in good hands with Ferd. Okay, watch the corner there—good girl.”
Abby had never seen Phil before in her life, and yet she recognized his voice. It was weirdly familiar. A little bit singsongy, a little bit nasal—where had she heard that voice before?
Eventually, they all made it into the lobby. Phil finally stopped talking—at least to them. Instead, he began speaking to a pretty receptionist at the front desk. She made a quick phone call, and within seconds, three guys in matching black work shirts arrived to take the kids’ duffel bags.
Phil invited them to plop down on the big leather chairs. He pulled one of them around so that he could sit on it and face them.
“Okle-dokle,” he began, glancing down at his clipboard. “First, I want to welcome you to the Camp Cadabra advanced-placement program. It’s really a big honor for me to meet you folks—I’ve been waiting for you a long time. You and the other kids.”
Ricky shot his hand straight up like a lightning rod. “What other kids?”
Phil smiled. “Good question—Ben? Are you Ben? Oh, no—Ricky. Ricky. Well, as you may know, there’s more than one Camp Cadabra. In fact, we’ve opened up summer camps for young magicians all around the country. Five of them in all. We like to think that they’re the finest magic camps in America. And at each camp, we’re looking for youngsters like you who have . . . special abilities. Something beyond plain old magic tricks; I think you all know what I mean. All four of you have come from our New Hampshire camp. But tonight at the social, you’ll meet the kids we’ve invited from the other camps. It’s a very special group. Very, very, very, very special.” His glasses had slipped down on his nose; he took this moment to push them back up with one finger and peer at the kids through them.
“Now, I know you’ve probably got a lot of questions, so I want you all to think of me as your answer man. I’m absolutely full of answers! I’d better be—I run this place!” He paused and looked eagerly from face to face, hoping for laughter. There wasn’t any.
“In the meantime,” he went on, “Ferd will be staying with you at this facility, so he’ll always be on hand if you need anything in particular. But for now, I know you’re all probably very tired after that long ride. Why don’t we show you to the guest rooms, and then we’ll all meet in the restaurant for a bedtime snack in half an hour?”
Guest rooms? Restaurant? It was starting to sound more like a hotel than a summer camp.
Phil stood up, pushed his chair back where it had come from, and motioned for them to follow. “Okay—enough chit-chat. Come-come! I can’t wait for you to see the place.”
“Hey!” shouted Eliza as she stood up. She’d been quiet quite long enough, and now the brassy New Yorker in her was bubbling to the surface. “How come there’s no lake or cabins or anything? What kind of camp is this?”
But Phil was already walking briskly away. “It’s a wonderful place, wonderful. We built it just for you! You’re going to love it.”
Ben wasn’t quite getting it, either. He trotted to catch up. “Well, if there are only a few kids here, how come there are so many buildings?”
Phil didn’t even bother to look back at him; he kept right on striding along. “Running a chain of camps all across the country is a big project,” he replied with a shrug. “Gotta have headquarters somewhere, right?”
As he took them out the back of the lobby and into a long, carpeted hallway, the group thinned out to fit the narrower space. Abby was getting squished against a wall. “Excuse me! Mr. Shutter?”
“Phil! Call me Phil. Always Phil, okay? That’s how we roll here.” He gave her a wink. Or tried to; Phil couldn’t actually wink, so he wound up blinking both eyes at her and just looking really strange.
“Okay, Phil?” Abby said, trotting to keep up. “Can I call my parents? I haven’t talked to them in, like, forever.”
“There’ll be plenty of time for that,” Phil replied. “In the meantime, there’s a brand-new laptop right in every guest room, so feel free to drop them an e-mail or what have you.”
Hmmmph! Abby thought. For a guy who says he’s here to give us answers, he sure doesn’t have a lot of them.
They rounded a corner and came to a doorway. Next to it was a small black box. Phil unclipped a little plastic security card from his belt and waved it in front of the box; instantly, a little green light turned on, and the door unlocked with a loud click.
“My dad has that at his bank where he works,” Eliza said to nobody in particular. “It’s for security.”
“You are quite correct, little lady,” Phil replied. “Your parents have entrusted you to our care, and so your safety is our absolute priority. Nobody gets into the camper area without one of these security cards. In fact, after hours, we turn on motion detectors in this hallway, and even pressure sensors in the floor. You may find that excessive, but hey: you folks are special, and we intend to keep you safe and sound. You never know who else might think you’re special. We don’t want anyone coming in here except the good guys.”
He made another attempt at winking, but just wound up looking like he’d gotten dust in his eyes.
They made their way through yet another vestibule into yet another lobby with yet another receptionist sitting at yet another front desk. “This is Candi,” Phil said. “You four are staying right here in this pod, and she’ll be on duty right here at the desk if you need anything at all.”
Candi handed Phil a set of four card keys, which he handed out to the four kids.
“Annnnnnnd, here we are,” Phil finally announced, sweeping his arm. “Find your place!”
The “pod,” as Phil called it, consisted of four rooms, all connecting to Candi’s little lobby. One camper’s name appeared on a little plaque next to each door.
Abby walked up to hers, but before she slid her key card into it, she took a cautious look back at Ben. He was already at his own door across the lobby, trying to figure out which way to slide his key into the slot.
She turned back to her own door, swiped her key card, and stepped inside.
It wasn’t a camp cabin, that’s for sure. It was—well, it looked like a really, really expensive hotel room. The bed was big enough for six people to sleep on. Enormous glass picture windows formed the back wall, with a view out to the courtyard and the gigantic fountain. Next to the headboard of the bed, Abby found a panel full of buttons that you could push without even getting up. One of these buttons opened and closed the curtains. Another one turned off all the lights in the room.
The first time Abby pressed the third button, she just about jumped out of her skin. An electronic whirring noise started coming from the bureau opposite the bed—and then, from a hidden slot, up came a flat-panel TV the size of Kansas. It rose up as though it were riding an invisible elevator.
“Whoooooaaa,” she said out loud.
There was a super-thin, shiny new laptop on the desk, and an iPod in a mini-stereo, and a leather desk chair that had a remote control of its own; not only could it adjust in about sixty-four different ways, but it could also massage your back. That degree of overkill, Abby soon learned, was just about everywhere—like in the bathroom, which had a hot tub, a regular bathtub, and a shower. And the shower had, no kidding, eight different sprayers, to make sure there wasn’t one single inch of your body that didn’t get squirted. She wanted to call over to Ben’s room, so they could say “Whooooooooaaaa” together.
But even though her room had more high-tech gadgetry than the space shuttle, she was surprised to find one obvious item missing: there was no phone.
CHAPTER
16
Social
IN ALL OF HER TV INTERVIEWS, Abby seems to remember a million details of her adventure at the super camp. But the part she remembers best is the meet-and-greet social—the party to welcome everybody to the super camp.
It was outdoors in the courtyard, the one with the huge fountain. Phil Shutter had ordered the whole place to be decorated with these eight-foot-tall
torches, accompanied by good music, and outfitted with huge tables of kid-friendly food. The sun was setting, filling the whole place with a golden light, and the air was just warm enough that you could wear a short-sleeved shirt.
Abby, who had once felt so alone with her weird useless power, was amazed to find out that there were, in fact, twenty-three kids here—teenagers, middle-schoolers, even a couple of elementary-schoolers. And every one of them had some pointless special power that they’d never asked for.
It didn’t take long for Abby to find Ben, Ricky, and Eliza. They were hanging out by the fountain, munching chocolate-covered nuts that they had sneaked from a bowl on a table. And it wasn’t long after that when she realized that all of the kids were hanging out in clusters—according to the camps they’d come from. You’d be amazed at how quickly you can bond with other kids when you spend nine hours with them in a van.
Or on a plane. Some of the other kids had come from Cadabra camps as far away as California.
“Hey there, ho there!”
Abby looked up to see that Phil Shutter had stepped into the light with a microphone.
“Could we dial that music down a bit? Thank you ever so kindly!”
He pushed his glasses up his nose. For the big party, Abby noticed, he had taken off his tie. He no longer looked like a businessman at a summer camp; now he looked like a businessman with his tie off.
“Greetings to you all,” he began, as corny as ever. Abby and Ben exchanged eye-rolling glances.
“It’s good to see all of you folks together in one place. I hope you’ve all had a chance to settle in, get your stuff unpacked, and learn how the shower works. If you have any questions at all, please let me know, or just tell the receptionist in your pod lobby, and she’ll get whatever you need.”
Kermit the Frog! That’s who Phil sounded exactly like—Kermit the Frog.
“He sounds like Kermit!” Abby whispered directly into Ben’s ear. He listened for a moment, and then nodded, grinning, as he recognized the voice, too.
