Zigzag Effect

by Lili Wilkinson

  ALSO BY LILI WILKINSON

  Love-shy

  A Pocketful of Eyes

  Pink

  Angel Fish

  The (Not Quite) Perfect Boyfriend

  Scatterheart

  Joan of Arc

  First published in 2013

  Copyright © Lili Wilkinson, 2013

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: info@allenandunwin.com

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  A Cataloguing-in-Publication entry is available from

  the National Library of Australia – www.trove.nla.gov.au

  ISBN 978 1 74331 303 9

  Cover design by Kirby Armstrong

  Cover photos by Shutterstock: aragami1 (girl with rabbit), italianestro (hand),

  PashOK (roses), Phase4Photography (marquee lights), dencg (curtain)

  Text design by Lisa White and Kirby Armstrong

  Set in 12/18 Adobe Garamond

  Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For my peeps

  Contents

  1. Production: in which something appears, seemingly from thin air.

  2. Palm: in which an object is concealed in the hand.

  3. Load: to secretly place an object in a location.

  4. Prediction: it is forecast that a particular thing will happen in the future.

  5. Transformation: something is transformed from one state into another.

  6. Permeation: a solid object passes through another.

  7. Vanish: Something is made to disappear.

  8. Exposure: a magician’s secrets are revealed.

  9. Switch: one item is covertly exchanged for another.

  10. Steal: to secretly obtain a required object.

  11. Force: a subject is offered an apparently free choice, but the magician is in control of what will be chosen.

  12. Simulation: to give the impression that something has happened when it has not.

  13. Misdirection: to lead attention away from a secret move.

  14. Ditch: to secretly dispose of an unneeded item.

  15. The Sucker Effect: the spectator is wrongly led to believe they have guessed the secret behind a magic trick.

  16. Escape: the magician or subject is placed in a restraining device, and escapes to safety.

  17. Restoration: an item is destroyed, then restored to its original state.

  Author’s note

  Acknowledgements

  About the author

  1. Production: in which something appears, seemingly from thin air.

  ‘Before you go,’ boomed the magician, ‘I want to show you something a little different. A little … dangerous.’

  Sage felt Zacky lean forward slightly in his seat.

  The magician raised his hand in a dramatic gesture, and his assistant swept onstage, graceful despite her towering strappy heels. The gold sequins on her bodice glittered under the theatre lights. Perfect teeth were revealed in a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. Sage wondered how she came to be a magician’s assistant.

  A young man in black wheeled a tall, narrow wooden cabinet onto the stage, then melted back into the wings. The cabinet looked like polished mahogany. Sage realised it was about the same size as a coffin, and felt the skin on the back of her neck prickle.

  The magician opened the door of the cabinet, revealing a wooden chair tucked inside. The assistant stepped in and sat down, and the magician closed the door behind her. The stagehand came back on, dragging a heavy trunk, which the magician opened, producing a long, glinting sword. He threw a red silk scarf into the air and swept the sword through it, slicing the cloth in half to prove how sharp the blade was. The two silk halves fluttered to the ground and rested there like pools of blood.

  Zacky leaned over and whispered hotly in Sage’s ear, ‘Don’t worry, he isn’t a real wizard. They’re just tricks.’

  Sage nodded. ‘Thanks for letting me know,’ she whispered back.

  Her little brother was obsessed with magic and wizards. When Dad had produced two tickets to Spellbinding Sorcery with The Great Armand, he’d galloped around the kitchen like a wild creature, jumping and twisting in the air. Sage had laughed, then noticed the expression on her mother’s face.

  ‘Can we really afford this?’ Mum had murmured to Dad.

  ‘A client gave them to me,’ he’d said with a reassuring smile.

  Zacky had stopped galloping for a moment, his eyes still wide with excitement. ‘Do you think the magician will have a magic wand?’ he’d asked breathlessly. ‘Will he have a pointy hat and a cape? Will he know expelliarmus? Will he have a pet owl or a toad or a cat? Do you think he can teach me magic?’

  Sage hoped Zacky wasn’t disappointed by The Great Armand. He was no Dumbledore, after all. He looked exactly as Sage had expected he would: black tails and top hat, a pointed beard and curling moustache. His accent sounded vaguely European. He was the epitome of ‘magician’: mysterious, arrogant and just a little camp. His dark eyes glittered as he ran through the standard collection of magic tricks: producing a sleepy rabbit from a hat and silk scarves from his assistant’s mouth, guessing which card an audience member had chosen from a shuffled deck. It all seemed a bit … tacky. Sage had seen this kind of performance before on TV, and she knew it wasn’t really magic. She didn’t know exactly how each trick was achieved, but she did know that that’s all they were, tricks. She decided she’d rather be back at home playing magicians with Zacky. His imagination could produce things far more impressive than rabbits out of top hats.

  On the other hand, the theatre had excellent heating.

  The Great Armand plunged the first sword into the side of the cabinet. Zacky drew a sharp breath, and there were murmurs from the audience as Armand proceeded to insert sword after sword into the cabinet, from the front, the back, and at different angles, so the swords presumably crossed over each other inside. There was no way the assistant could have ducked around them.

  Although Sage knew it was a trick, and that the girl had probably already escaped from the box through a false panel, she still felt slightly squeamish. Images of swords slicing into the assistant’s bare arms, legs and stomach kept appearing in her mind. She imagined the assistant crouched in the box, in the dark, wooden sides pressing up against her, and the swords pushing deep into her flesh. She shuddered.

  Sage’s family had moved to Melbourne a fortnight ago. The house was still full of unpacked boxes and screwed-up newspaper used to wrap plates and glasses. Sage’s dad was at his new job in the city most of the time, and he came home brimming with excitement and stories. He’d promised Sage he’d take her into town so she could photograph the old laneways, and explore the galleries, but when the weekend came around, he and Sage’s mum spent it talking in quiet, angry voices and looking worriedly at spreadsheets full of numbers. There was no more Saturday-night Japanese takeaway, and although Sage’s mum hadn’t said anything, she’d switched to buying no-name-brand groceries: coffee that tasted like dirt and biscuits that did
n’t taste like much at all. Whenever Mum spoke to Sage or Zacky, she wore this tight, making-the-most-of-it smile, a smile that fell off whenever she looked at the unpacked boxes, and when she spent hours clicking around employment websites. Sage tried to help with housework and unpacking, but more often than not she found herself slinking off to her room and tinkering with filters in Photoshop, dreaming about the photography course with Yoshi Lear that her parents had promised she could attend.

  Of course, Zacky was blissfully unaware of any tension in the family. He loved the draughty old terrace house that was their new home. He loved the weird gargoyles carved into the banister, the overgrown, tangled backyard, and the secret attic, accessed by a pull-down ladder. Zacky thought it was a house of magic. Sage tried to match Zacky’s enthusiasm – the house was beautiful and old in a crumbly, worn sort of way. She’d taken some great photos. But despite endless games of make-believe and hide-and-seek, Sage couldn’t help seeing the house through her mum’s eyes: a house of rising damp, rusted pipes and peeling wallpaper.

  And the cold. Back home in Queensland, Sage had owned barely any clothes with sleeves. She was used to warm days and balmy evenings. But Melbourne was freezing. The house had no heating, just ancient cast-iron fireplaces and chimneys full of birds’ nests. The cold seeped into everything, and the woolliest of socks couldn’t keep Sage warm. The only time she wasn’t cold was when she was in the shower, but as soon as she stepped onto the icy tiles on the bathroom floor, the heat from the water was sucked out of her. Her shoulder muscles ached from hunching over, and even though she slept in pyjamas, socks, a heavy knitted cardigan and two doonas, Sage’s dreams were filled with bitter winds and bleak, swirling fog.

  Then there was the calendar. Sage’s friends from her old school had given it to her for Christmas, marking in their birthdays in sparkly glitter-pen. Each month featured photos of them together – at the pool, on Year Nine camp, in pyjamas at a sleepover. July was a picture of them all together at the beach: Nina and Eleanor wearing giant floppy hats, and Parama buried under the sand, with only her head poking out. Sage had taken the photo, of course. It used to make her smile, but now she couldn’t even see it. All she could see was the giant red circle around July 16. The first day at her new school. The family had arrived in Melbourne three weeks before school holidays started, and it had been decided that it would be less disruptive if Sage and Zacky waited to start school at the beginning of third term.

  It felt like the giant red circle was around Sage’s neck, squeezing. Who moved schools halfway through Year Ten? Everyone would already have established friendship groups. How would Sage ever fit in? She’d always be the New Kid, all the way to the end of Year Twelve.

  The Great Armand pushed the last sword straight through the front of the cabinet to where the assistant’s head had been. He paused dramatically, then threw the door of the cabinet wide open. To Sage’s relief, the assistant was gone, the swords criss-crossing each other in the dark, empty space.

  ‘Of course I would never let the lovely Bianca come to harm,’ said Armand grandly. ‘I have whisked her away to safety – to somewhere where she can’t be hurt.’

  He stood back and raised his arms. A blue stage light came on, illuminating the dark space above the cabinet to reveal the assistant, still sitting on the wooden chair, floating about a metre above the cabinet. As the audience gasped and whispered to one another, Armand waved his wand, and the assistant vanished in a shower of what looked like rose petals. The chair fell to the stage as if the strings holding it had been cut. The dull wooden thunk made Sage start.

  Armand pulled the swords from the cabinet, one by one, and finally opened the cabinet door to reveal the smiling assistant, the white rabbit cradled in her arms. The Great Armand took a bow.

  Sage looked around. Everyone was applauding wildly. She clapped too, because that was what you were supposed to do, but she didn’t really feel impressed. She could see the assistant right there, without a scratch on her. It had just been a trick. But it had felt … icky.

  Armand and his assistant left the stage, and the house lights came up. Sage felt oddly relieved to see the theatre’s worn carpet, peeling plaster and threadbare red velvet curtains. Zacky was frowning as they shuffled up the aisle. ‘Are you okay?’ asked Sage, still feeling uneasy. ‘I thought you were enjoying the show.’

  ‘Oh, I liked it,’ said Zacky. ‘He was very clever, doing all those tricks. But I think …’ He shook his head, letting his shaggy brown hair fall into his eyes. ‘I think maybe that last trick – not the thing with the box and the swords, but that very last bit where he made her float above the stage and then disappear? I think that was real magic.’

  Sage took his hand. ‘I think so too,’ she said, pushing images of dark boxes and swords from her mind.

  They stepped out onto the street, and Sage paused to look up at the theatre’s façade. It had definitely seen better days. The theatre was on the threshold of the city, in a shabby, forgotten area consisting largely of industrial buildings and boarded-up shopfronts. The parade of flashing lights on the theatre’s awning only had about six working globes left – someone had installed a few energy-efficient fluorescent bulbs which refused to flash on and off, and just glowed with a cold, bluish stubbornness. Sage shivered and tugged Zacky down the street, hunching against the cold.

  They got as far as the bus stop before Zacky realised he’d left his wand in the theatre.

  ‘It was poking into my tummy,’ he said. ‘So I put it on the floor.’

  The bus pulled up with a hiss of hydraulic brakes. Sage pulled her phone out of her bag to check the time. It was Sunday, so there probably wouldn’t be another bus for an hour. She took a deep breath. There was no point in yelling at him. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Let’s go back.’

  The theatre foyer was totally empty when they returned, but the doors to the auditorium weren’t locked. Sage could hear voices coming from inside. ‘Wait here,’ she said to Zacky. ‘I’ll be right back.’

  She slipped into the theatre. Two people were searching the seats and floor for rubbish, which they were angrily stuffing into garbage bags as they yelled at each other. The girl was tall and thin, with her blonde hair hanging in loose curls past her shoulders. She wore a long cotton dress with a paisley print, and several strings of beads and jewels that clinked as she moved. The guy looked younger, maybe a year or two older than Sage. He had slightly-too-long dark hair that curled around his ears, and wore black jeans, a black T-shirt and a brown tweed blazer that looked like it had come from an op shop. His brows were angled down in a scowl over brown eyes. He was in the middle of delivering a patronising lecture to the girl.

  ‘All I’m saying is that if you clomp around backstage, it makes it very hard for the audience to believe that you’re still in the sword cabinet.’

  ‘I’m not clomping,’ the girl said, her voice cold. ‘The floorboards squeak. It’s a crappy old theatre, and it’s hard to tiptoe around in six-inch stilettos. If you want the chair reset with ninja stealth, then I suggest you do it.’

  The guy shoved an empty popcorn bucket into his bag with vicious force. ‘You know I can’t. I have to be at the back of the auditorium, ready to open the doors and let all the nice people go home. That’s why we need to hire someone to help.’

  The girl’s lips tightened. ‘There’s barely any money coming in anyway,’ she said. ‘We don’t need to waste what little there is on unnecessary new staff.’

  ‘Armand said we could hire someone to usher and do the bookings. Unless you want to volunteer for those jobs?’

  The girl’s expression grew even more frosty. ‘You think I don’t already have enough to do? I work harder than you and Armand!’

  ‘You work hard onstage,’ said the guy. ‘After the show you slack off.’

  ‘I do not slack off!’

  ‘I’m just saying, there’s a lot of cleaning up after each show, and you disappear off to your dressing-room every time.’

>   The tall girl tossed her head and the blonde curls bounced around her shoulders. ‘Would you rather I came out here in my glittery leotard?’ she asked, then looked disgusted. ‘No, wait. Don’t answer that.’

  Sage realised that the blonde girl was The Great Armand’s beautiful assistant. She looked different in her floaty dress and loose hair, with no makeup on. Even more beautiful, because now it was effortless instead of spangled glamour. Sage looked again at the guy, and recognised him as the stagehand who’d wheeled the box onstage for the final illusion.

  ‘Excuse me?’ Sage raised her voice to be heard across the theatre.

  The two theatre employees turned to look at her. Sage explained about Zacky’s magic wand, and after a few minutes of hunting, it was produced.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘And, um … we have squeaky floorboards in our new house. I mean, our old house. It’s new to us, but it’s ancient. If you sprinkle talcum powder on them and then walk over it to get it into the cracks, it lubricates the boards and they don’t squeak anymore.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said the guy, and elbowed the blonde girl in the ribs.

  ‘Ow!’ she said. ‘What was that for?’

  ‘We should ask her,’ said the guy in a whisper that Sage could hear perfectly well.

  ‘Ask her what?’

  The guy rolled his eyes and jerked his head towards Sage. ‘About the thing.’

  The girl glanced at Sage, confused. Then her forehead crinkled in a frown. ‘Are you crazy?’ she whispered back. ‘We don’t even know her.’

  ‘So? She’s smart and she knows about floorboards. I bet she knows about computers too.’

  ‘I know a bit,’ said Sage, trying to be modest.

  The pair started and looked guiltily over at her, as if they hadn’t realised she’d been able to hear their whole conversation.

  ‘I just don’t think we should rush into anything,’ hissed the girl.

  The guy adopted a long-suffering expression. ‘Maybe she was sent here,’ he said, with heavy irony. ‘Maybe it’s fate.’