“I think it’s a great idea,” Sadie said. “Let’s do it.”
We looked at Isabel, who nodded. “I’m in,” she said.
“Great.” I let my feet hit the ground and drag like brakes to stop the swing. My friends did the same. “We only have two days to practice, but I think it’s enough time,” I said.
“We’ll learn one trick each, but learn them really well,” Sadie said. “It doesn’t have to be a long show, just a good one. Right, Anna?”
“Right,” I said.
“I want to do a coin trick,” Isabel said. “Maybe make one disappear. My book has a few tricks like that.”
“Cool,” Sadie said. “I’m gonna do a card trick—one that’s even better than Justin’s. I actually tried some with my mom last night, and they’re really fun.”
“Perfect,” I said. I knew what I wanted my trick to be, too: one that was so amazing and impressive, everyone at the party would be talking about it all week. “I’m going to pull a rabbit out of a hat!” I said.
Isabel’s eyebrows shot up. “You are?” she said.
“You can do that?” Sadie asked.
“Not yet, but I’ll learn how. It’s Mrs. Shirley’s favorite magic trick,” I explained. The bell rang, so we jumped off the swings and picked up our backpacks. “My book says the rabbit-in-a-hat trick is all about diversion. If I practice really hard, I know I can do it.” I loved the idea of a trick that included an animal. I wished I could pull Banana out of a hat, but she was too big to fit in one.
We ran to line up with the rest of our class. “I bet we can find videos of how to do it online,” Sadie said. “We’ll help you practice. And you can help us practice our tricks, too.”
“Great idea! My book says it’s also good to practice magic in front of a mirror, so you can see what the audience will see,” I said. “It says ‘Magic is a performance’ and ‘Practice makes perfect.’ ”
“Well, I love to perform,” Sadie said. She twirled in a circle with her hands above her head, then bobbed in a dramatic curtsy. Isabel and I clapped.
We followed the line of kids into the school and toward our classroom. “My dad has a top hat I bet he’d let us use for your trick,” Isabel said.
“Ooh, perfect. Now I just have to find a rabbit,” I said.
“Oh.” Sadie scrunched up her face. “Where will we get a rabbit?”
I pressed my lips together. She was right. Finding a rabbit would be much harder than finding a hat. There were wild rabbits in my backyard sometimes, on very lucky days, but I wasn’t supposed to touch them. Mom says wild animals like to stay wild. Whenever one saw Banana or me, it always hopped away.
“I have a bunny rabbit,” a voice behind us said.
My heart filled up with hope. I turned around to see who had spoken.
The hope whooshed back out like air from a popped balloon.
Chapter Eleven The Bunny Bargain
We stared at Justin. “You have a rabbit?” I said.
“Yeah. Miss Fluffybutt. She’s a mini lop,” he said.
“Miss Fluffybutt?” Sadie echoed. Isabel giggled.
Justin shrugged. “I named her when I was four. And her butt is super fluffy,” he explained.
“What’s a mini lop?” Isabel asked.
We entered the classroom. “It means she has long, floppy ears that kind of droop off her head. That’s the lop part. And I guess ‘mini’ means she’s smaller than other rabbits? I dunno. She likes to eat,” he said.
“Awww,” Sadie cooed.
Mini sounded perfect! A smaller rabbit would be easier to fit in the hat. “Do you think I could borrow her?” I asked as we walked toward the cubbies. “Just for a couple days?” I didn’t love asking Justin for a favor, but it seemed like my only option.
Justin looked suspicious. “What for?” he asked.
“Uh…” My brain scrambled for an answer. If I told Justin about our magic show, he might think we were copying him by learning magic tricks of our own. But he wasn’t going to lend us his rabbit if we didn’t tell him why we needed her.
“We’re putting on a magic show! Anna’s going to pull the rabbit out of a hat. It’s our grand finale. That means ‘exciting, impressive ending,’ ” Isabel said.
“She is? No way!” Justin said.
“Way,” Sadie confirmed. “Saturday night. It’s a birthday surprise for Anna’s neighbor.”
Justin didn’t look mad that we’d copied him. He looked excited. “Can I be in it too?” he said. Sadie’s eyes widened.
I hesitated. This was supposed to be our show—Sadie’s, Isabel’s, and mine. Including Justin wasn’t part of Banana’s and my plan.
“If you let me be in the show, I’ll let you borrow Miss Fluffybutt,” Justin said. “But only for Saturday. I would miss her too much if you had her for longer.”
I knew what he meant. I couldn’t imagine going the rest of the week without seeing Banana.
Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to include Justin in the magic show. The better the tricks were, the better a surprise it would be for Mrs. Shirley. And his card trick was amazing. Plus, where else was I going to find a rabbit?
I glanced at Isabel and Sadie to see what they thought. Sadie gave a small shrug and Isabel nodded. It was okay with them if it was okay with me.
I took a deep breath. “Okay. You’re in,” I said. I stuck out my hand and we shook on it.
Chapter Twelve A Magic Solution
“This is perfect,” Sadie said once Justin had walked away. “Anna, you’re a genius!”
I blinked. “I am?”
“Yes!” Sadie said. But before she could explain what she meant, Ms. Burland clapped twice and we ran to our seats. It was time to start the day.
I took out my pencils and lined them up on my desk, and wondered what Sadie could be talking about. She swiveled in her chair two rows over and one row up from mine, and gave me a thumbs-up. I widened my eyes and shrugged to show I didn’t get it.
Sadie thinks Justin is more funny than annoying, but there was no reason for her to be so pleased about including him in the show. At least, no reason I could think of. Maybe she was just glad we’d found a rabbit.
I looked over at Isabel. She was drawing a fluffy-tailed bunny in her notebook. The bunny was eating a four-leaf clover.
Ms. Burland asked Amanda and Timothy to hand out our geography worksheets. While they were walking up and down the aisles, Sadie turned again and handed a note to Isabel. Isabel passed it to me.
I dropped the note into my lap before our teacher could see it, and unfolded it inside my desk. I cupped my hand over the words in case Justin was peeking over my shoulder.
Sadie had written a line of exclamation points, followed by: Now we get to see the trick again. You did it! Just like the word of the day says.
I looked up at the whiteboard and felt confused: The word of the day was “resolve.” But that was yesterday’s word! Had Ms. Burland forgotten to change it?
I was about to raise my hand and tell her, when I looked closer and realized she had changed it. It was the same word, but with a different definition. It turns out “resolve” has more than one meaning.
Resolve, it said. To find a solution to a problem or fight. Sadie was right. I had resolved our problem of how to find a rabbit, and at the same time, I accidentally resolved the challenge of how to see Justin’s trick again, too. I guessed he’d gotten so excited about performing it for a real audience, he’d forgotten that meant we would see it again. Or maybe we’d really fooled him into thinking we didn’t care how it was done.
I’d tricked the trickster without even trying. Ha!
I grabbed my supersparkly rainbow pencil from its spot at the top of my desk. Being careful to keep the note hidden from Ms. Burland and Justin, I drew a smiley face below Sadie’s “P.S.” The “P.S.” said, I’m making a list. Discuss at recess!
I refolded the note and passed it to Isabel so she could see too.
At recess, we ran t
o claim the swings again but some other kids got there before us. We walked to the reading rock instead, and sat on the ground beside it, since the rock isn’t large enough for three. Sadie opened her notebook. “What’s the list of?” Isabel asked.
Sadie clicked her pen. “I wrote down all the ways my book says card tricks can work,” she said.
“Good thinking,” I said. “If we know how other magic tricks work, we might know what to look for when Justin does his.”
“Exactly,” Sadie said. “This will help us figure out the secret to the magic.”
Chapter Thirteen Magic or Math?
“What’s on the list?” Isabel asked. She scooted closer to Sadie and peered at the notebook. I did too.
“First is ‘marked cards,’ ” Sadie said. “That’s when the backs of the cards are marked with secret symbols, so you know what’s on the front without looking. I don’t think that’s what Justin did, since he didn’t even see us choose our card.But I put it on the list anyway.”
Isabel and I nodded. It was smart of Sadie to list every possibility, just in case.
“Next is ‘sign from a helper.’ That’s if you have a magician’s assistant or a spy in the audience who knows what the card is and gives you a secret hint, like a hand signal or code word,” Sadie said. She narrowed her eyes and pointed a finger at Isabel and me. “Heeeeey, did you tell Justin our card?” she said. Her voice was like a cartoon detective figuring out the case.
I played along. “Oh no! You caught me!” I said. We all giggled. That clearly wasn’t the answer. And no one else had been nearby when Justin did the trick.
Isabel read the next thing on the list. “ ‘Prearranged deck.’ My book has some tricks like that too, where the cards are arranged in a certain order before you start. There’s one where you put all the red cards together and all the black cards together. The trick is, you split the deck into two piles and have someone take a card from one pile and put it in the other pile. Then you pretend to do all kinds of magical things to help you figure it out. But you’ll know immediately which card it is because it will be the only red card or only black card in that half of the deck.”
“That’s sneaky,” I said. “But Justin let us shuffle before the trick started. He couldn’t have had the cards in order. I mixed them really well!”
“We know you did,” Sadie said.
I leaned over to look at the last thing on the list. “ ‘Pattern or math.’ What’s that?” I said.
“Those tricks are my favorites,” Sadie said. I wasn’t surprised. Sadie loves math. Her brain is really good at it. “You lay down the cards in a pattern, and the pattern helps you figure out what the card is. I tried one from my book last night that works really well. It seems like magic but it’s actually math. I wish I had cards so I could show you.”
“Wait! I bet I can make some appear.” I reached into the pocket of my sweatshirt and pulled out Mrs. Shirley’s giraffe cards. I was glad I had them with me. “Ta-da!” I said.
Isabel clapped at my “magic trick.” Sadie reached for the cards. “Perfect!” she said. She slid off the rubber band that was holding the deck together. “Okay, so for this trick I only need twenty-one cards. I’m going to put them in three rows of seven.”
Isabel and I watched as Sadie laid the cards down, face up. When they were all in position, she looked at me. “Anna, pick a card and memorize what it is, but don’t say it out loud.”
“Can she whisper it to me?” Isabel asked.
“Okay, but do it softly so I can’t hear what it is. I’ll plug my ears and hum,” Sadie said. She stuck her fingers in her ears and hummed “Old MacDonald Had a Farm.”
I moved over next to Isabel and whispered, “Queen of spades.”
Sadie unplugged her ears. “Got it?” We nodded. “Good. Now tell me which row—one, two, or three—the card is in.”
“Two,” Isabel and I said together.
Sadie picked up the cards one by one and put them down again in three new rows. “What row is the card in now?” she asked.
I looked for it. “The first one,” I told her.
Sadie picked up the cards again, made another three rows, and asked which one my card was in. “Row three,” I said.
“Hmm,” she said. She waved her hands over the cards as if she could feel through her palms which one might be mine. “Abracadabra, hocus-pocus, jazaam, jazoom! Is this your card?” She picked up the queen of spades.
I stared at her. “It is! How did you know that?”
“Magic!” she said, and grinned. “Just kidding. Whatever row you said your card was in, I picked that row up second each time. That put the cards into an order that meant, at the end, your card would be the center card in its row. It works that way every time. It’s not magic, it’s a pattern.”
“Wow!” Isabel said at the same time I said, “Cool!”
Sadie beamed. “I’m thinking I’ll do that one at our magic show. I just have to practice it a bunch of times, so no one can see that I’m counting where the cards go. And so it doesn’t look obvious that I’m picking them up in a certain order.”
“I’ll start practicing my coin trick tonight, too,” Isabel said. “I bet at least one of my sisters would be willing to be the audience.”
“I’m going to practice for Banana and in front of a mirror,” I said. “I’ll use a stuffed animal since I can’t practice with Miss Fluffybutt.”
“Good idea,” Sadie said. “And you guys should come over tomorrow after school so we can practice the whole show together.”
“Yeah! I’ll ask my parents tonight,” I said.
“Me too,” Isabel said.
I grinned at my friends. “This is going to be the best magic show ever.”
Chapter Fourteen Set It Up
When Chuck and I got home from school, I walked Banana around the block, ate a snack in the kitchen with Dad, then went to my room to practice the rabbit trick. Banana followed me up the stairs, bouncing with as much excitement as I felt. We were going to make magic!
During snack time, Dad and I had followed Sadie’s suggestion and watched a video about how to pull a rabbit out of a hat. The video showed the same steps I had found in the magic book, but it was helpful to see them performed. I knew the magic stunt would be tricky to pull off, and I was eager to start practicing. If I could do it right, my trick would be even more impressive than Justin’s. It would make Mrs. Shirley’s birthday her best one yet.
I opened my library book to the correct page and placed it on the bed. “All right, first we need our magician’s table,” I said.
I cleared off my desk and pushed it toward the center of the room. Banana flattened her ears. She didn’t like the noise of the desk’s legs scraping the floor. I stopped pushing. “All done,” I said to reassure her.
I stood behind the desk and checked that I could see myself in the mirror next to my dresser. I wanted to practice the trick while seeing how it would look to an audience, like the book had suggested. “We’ll cover the desk with a tablecloth during the show, so no one can see under or behind it. But for now, just pretend the cloth is there,” I said. Banana blinked and I knew she was picturing it.
I went to my closet and took out a bucket that used to be a beach pail. Now it held some of Banana’s and my toys. I emptied it. “Isabel’s going to bring me her dad’s top hat tomorrow, but I can practice using this for now,” I explained. Banana sniffed at the bucket and wagged her approval.
I spotted something shiny out of the corner of my eye, and went up on tiptoe to pull my glitter baton down from the closet shelf. Sadie and I had gotten matching batons a couple of years ago, before we met Isabel. I had never learned to twirl mine without dropping it, but now I had an even better use for it. It made a perfect magic wand.
I waved it through the air and the glitter inside it swirled and sparkled. Banana danced with excitement.
I put the bucket and magic wand on the table next to the black cloth Dad had helped me prepar
e for the rabbit. “The book says magicians pull rabbits out of hats instead of kittens or other small animals because rabbits are good at holding still.
They don’t mind being in a pouch,” I told Banana. “We’ll have to handle Miss Fluffybutt very carefully, but I think she’ll be cozy in this cloth.”
I looked around my bedroom. “Now, what should we use for the practice bunny?”
Chapter Fifteen Practice Makes Perfect
Banana’s ears went straight up at the word “bunny.” She ran out of the room. A few seconds later, she returned with her favorite squeaky toy, a yellow plastic rabbit, in her mouth. She bit down once to make the toy squeak, and dropped it at my feet.
I laughed. “Sure! We can use your bunny toy. Good idea,” I said. I picked up the rabbit and placed it in the center of the black cloth. I wasn’t sure how big Miss Fluffybutt would be, but since Justin had said she was a mini lop, I guessed the toy was probably only a bit smaller.
Banana watched as I lifted the four corners of the cloth together, so the rabbit was inside a little pouch. Dad had helped me cut holes in each of the corners, and I used those to hang the pouch from the knob on my desk drawer.
“We’ll do this part of the trick when the audience isn’t watching, of course,” I said. “The setup happens before the performance. No one will know there’s a rabbit behind the desk because the front of the desk will be covered.”
Banana stared at the rabbit pouch. She knew it was there, and what was inside it, too.
“Okay, here we go,” I said. Banana sat. I stood behind the table and spread my arms wide. The Anna in the mirror did the same. “Welcome to the magic show! As you can see, there is absolutely nothing up my sleeves.”
Anna, Banana, and the Magic Show Mix-Up Page 3
