EllRay Jakes Is Magic (6 page)

“It’s magic, Alfie,” I say.

“Then why aren’t you rich, if you can make quarters out of dimes?” she asks.

“Come on back here and sit down, love,” Mom says to her. “EllRay the Amazing has one more trick to perform, I think.”

“Illusion,” Dad whispers to her.

“Illusion,” Mom says.

And Alfie trudges back to her seat.

7

I clear my throat, getting my magician voice ready again. “And now,” I say, “I will show you the ‘Cut String Made Whole’ illusion, famous all over the world.”

I made up that last part all by myself.

“I can cut a
stwing
,” Alfie says, refusing to be further astonished. I think she’s confused enough about how I made those quarters appear out of nowhere.

“First,” I tell my audience, “I take a plain drinking straw and push a length of ordinary string all the way through it, until the string pokes out the other end.”

And I do it.

The string just has to be longer than the straw, that’s all. Dad prepared a whole bunch of straws for me. Using an X-Acto knife, which has a pointy
razor blade at the end, which is why a grown-up needs to do it, he cut long, invisible slits down the middle parts of the straws, but only on one side. Not all the way through.

“See?” I say, holding up the drinking straw with string hanging out both ends.

“So what?” Alfie says, and Dad gives her a look.

“Now,” I tell them, “I will bend the straw in half, like
so.
”

I bend the straw in the middle, slit side facing
down. I hold the two straw ends together in one hand, partway down from the top, tugging the loose string ends straighter. As I do this, I am really pulling the looped string down about an inch through the slit in the straw. I hide the pulled-down loop of string with the fingers holding the straw, so nobody can see it.

“Now, I am going to cut this straw in half,” I say, waving the kitchen scissors around in a magical way with my other hand.

And I snip off the top, bent piece of the straw.

“There goes the poor little stwing,” Alfie predicts in a gloomy voice.

“And
abracadabra
, the cut string is whole again! Ta-da!” I say, letting the two straw pieces fall to the table.

I wave the entire uncut length of string back and forth in the air.

It worked!

Mom and Dad clap their hands and cheer, but Alfie’s eyes are wide.

She’s actually
SCARED
!

“Want to see the string, Alfie?” I ask, holding it out to her. “It’s just regular string. Don’t be afraid.”

“No-o-o,” she cries, burying her face against Mom’s sweater. “Get it away fwom me!”

“It’s okay, Alfie. You don’t have to touch it,” I say, trying to calm her down.

“Honey! What on earth’s the matter?” Mom asks, squeezing Alfie tight.

“
EllWay is magic
,” Alfie wails so loud that the neighbors can probably hear. “He’s magic! Don’t let him touch me and cut me in half, or turn me into two quarters!”

My sister the drama queen. Or drama
princess
, I guess. She’s only four.

“No, Alfie,” Mom says. “It was only a trick, darling. EllRay’s not magic. He’s learning to be a
magician.
There’s a big difference.”

“Not to
me-e-e
,” Alfie says, sniffling big time, and Mom holds her away a little before her small nose gets wiped on Mom’s pretty blue sweater, which is almost new.

“Time for somebody’s bath, story, and bedtime,” my dad says, getting to his feet and lifting Alfie—who is now kicking—from my mom’s arms. “Because somebody’s
tired.
”

“Wah-h-h!”
Alfie cries as Dad takes her from the dining room.

“Wah-h-h!”
I hear her voice fade as he carries her upstairs.

And I’m left standing there with a long piece of string in my hand. I should figure out a better way to finish, I guess.

“Don’t pay any attention to your little sister, darling,” Mom tells me. “Those were wonderful illusions. Ms. Sanchez is going to be
thrilled.
”

Oh, yeah, I think, startled. The tryouts! I was so busy trying to learn those two tricks all afternoon—and having fun—that I forgot I was supposed to stink at them.

Well, there’s still time for that.

8

The kids in my class agreed to meet Monday before school starts, to plan the tryouts for the talent show. I’m the first one at the sloping lawn near the picnic tables. That King of the Mountain game we played here seems like it happened a long time ago, even though it was just last Friday. Those were the days.

I have decided not to volunteer first for the tryouts—even though I brought all my stuff.

Doing magic for your family is one thing, but performing for strangers sounds awful. Especially if you have to fake doing a bad job so you won’t get in the show.

I kind of liked pulling off those two tricks!

I didn’t like scaring Alfie, though. She’s still acting shy around me.

“Hi, EllRay,” Emma and Annie Pat say together
as they start up the slope. Emma has curly, tangled-looking hair, and like I’ve said before, Annie Pat wears her red hair in pigtails that look like orange highway cones.

“Is the grass wet?” Annie Pat asks. She catches cold a lot, I have noticed.

“Nah. It’s mostly dry,” I say.

“I have news,” Emma tells Annie Pat and me as the other kids in our class start to arrive for our meeting. “Ms. Sanchez’s wedding shower present from all the parents
is
going to be the fancy vacuum cleaner that was on their wish list. Somebody’s mom got a good deal on one, so they finally all agreed.”

“That’s
tragic
,” Annie Pat says, her dark blue eyes serious and sad. “They could have bought Ms. Sanchez the best aquarium in the world for that much money. Or even a saltwater aquarium.”

Annie Pat wants to be a fish scientist when she grows up.

“But maybe vacuuming is something married people do together,” Fiona says, a mushy look on her face. “Like dancing.”

I can’t picture it, but what do I know?

“Well, the deciding is over,” Emma says, shaking her head. “Mom told me. All that’s left is for us kids to make a card to go with it.”

“Fiona can do that,” Annie Pat says. “She’s the best artist.”

“No,” I surprise myself by saying. “Everyone should write something for Ms. Sanchez. But maybe Fiona can draw the cover.”

“You mean we should make a whole book?” Cynthia says. She has arrived quietly, for once, and has been listening in. “That sounds too hard.”

“Maybe just one page from each of us?” I say, making it a question. “Something about getting married?”

Because I want to be part of this, even though I can’t explain why. It just makes me sad to think of Ms. Sanchez getting married—and not being Ms. Sanchez anymore. The least I can do is help make her a wedding shower book.

“Good idea, EllRay,” Emma says, smiling.

“We’re here,” Jared and Stanley shout, racing up the hill.

“Oh, good,” Cynthia says, being sarcastic, which is her big thing. “That means we can start.”

And her friend Heather snickers her approval of this put-down.

Fiona is inching up the sloping lawn as if each blade of grass is a hazard and her weak ankles might give way any second. She showed up! So her juggling raw eggs is out. Too bad.

“Who’s gonna do what for the tryouts today?” I ask, getting straight to the point. “Everybody has to say one thing, whether you think it’s any good or not. And then we can pick five acts.”

“DOINK, DOINK,”
Stanley murmurs, fiddling with the imaginary crown on his floppy-haired head.

He’s the one pretending to be bossy to me this time, in case you didn’t get it.

“Quit doinking,” Emma says.

“Me and Emma are taking ballet together,” Annie Pat says. “We just started, but we can already do
pliés
and
tendus.
And
sautés
, because we’re really good jumpers.”

“We brought pretty music to play while we dance,” Emma chimes in. “But our act only lasts one minute.”

Cynthia does this huge pretend yawn, patting at her open mouth in a fake-ladylike way.

“Oh, yeah? Then what’s your great talent?” Annie Pat challenges her.

“I’ll sing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner,’ like superstars do before football and baseball games,” Cynthia tells us. “And Heather will stand behind me holding an American flag, because that’s not against her religion. We checked. And even if some people don’t
love
it, they won’t boo, because—it’s ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’”

“I didn’t know you could sing that well,” Kry says, sounding interested.

“Me and Stanley are gonna dance, too,” Jared informs everyone. “Hip-hop. That’s our talent. We brought music.”

Jared and Stanley dancing? They’re so big and clumsy that it would be like watching Frankenstein’s Monster and the Mummy trying to “bust a move,” as my dad still says. I would actually pay money to see that! If I had any money left, that is.

“Okay, good,” I say, writing it down. “Who’s next?”

“I can recite a poem for everyone,” Fiona says, peeping out the surprising words. “I write them myself. Mama likes me to say my poems when we have company. Only sometimes I cry, if it’s a sad
poem like the one I brought today,” she confesses.