EllRay Jakes Is Magic (12 page)

“They might laugh,” I say, thinking more about the talent show than the wedding shower book. “But it’s too late now to do anything else. So just forget about it, dude.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Jared says, making himself look big, which isn’t hard.

“Maybe I wasn’t talking to you,” I tell him.

And P.S., I wasn’t.

I was talking to myself.

16

“Daddy’s home!” Alfie shouts a few hours later.

I have been practicing my two
TEENY-TINY
magic illusions in my room. I’m sick of them, and I know I’m gonna flop tomorrow. But if I have to perform those illusions at the talent show, I might as well do them right.

It’s not
their
fault they’re small.

Maybe their father tells them that they’ll grow bigger any day now.

“Go give him a big hug,” Mom tells my little sister. “Why don’t you go too, EllRay?” she adds, smiling as if she knows a secret. “Give him a hand with his briefcase, maybe. Or whatever he needs help with. Dinner will be ready in an hour.”

So I wander out the kitchen door after Alfie to greet my dad.

He’s carrying a white FedEx box under one
arm, which probably means he had something delivered to his office at the college. He claims that things get to San Diego faster than they do to Oak Glen, and he’s probably right. San Diego is a big city, and it has an airport.

I like FedEx. Their packages always make things look important.

“EllRay,” Dad says, smiling. “Help me out here, would you, son?”

Alfie has wrapped her pudgy golden arms around his legs as part of her big hug. But I think he wants me to take the box he’s carrying, not unwrap Alfie from his legs.

I just hope that box isn’t full of rocks!

It’s not. It’s pretty light, in fact.

“Want me to put this in your office?” I ask as Dad hobble-walks to the kitchen door, Alfie still attached to him like a starfish. She likes to walk—and sometimes dance—while standing on his feet.

Being a dad can be hard. On shoes, anyway.

“Good idea,” Dad says. “And you can stay in there with it, if you would, while I say hi to your mom and wash my hands,” he adds. “I’ll be with you
in a minute.
It’s a secret
,” he mouths, so Alfie can’t hear this last part.

A secret?
What’s
a secret?

“First things first,” Dad says after he and I have sat down on the small sofa in his office. “Did you talk to Mr. James?”

“Who’s Mr. James?” I ask, my heart thudding, because—
UH-OH
. Did I forget some important assignment Mom or Dad gave me?

Oh, my poor aching brain!

“He’s been your principal for the past couple of years, EllRay,” Dad says in his too-patient voice. “Honestly. I think you have a mental block about some things.”

One
mental block? I have a whole toy box full of them, Dad!

I nod my head. “I saw him,” I report, sighing. “And I told him why I should drop out of the show. And he said he understood, but no way. He said the program was already being printed up with my name on it. And that’s just dumb. Like some copy machine is the boss,” I say, these last words tumbling out. “Because he could have made an announcement. You know, about how I wasn’t going to be in the show.”

“I suppose he thinks it’s no big deal,” Dad says as if he’s trying to put himself inside the principal’s probably hairy brain. “He must figure that you’ll just be onstage for a few minutes, and then it will be over.”

“Then
everything
will be over,” I say in my gloomiest voice. “Because I’ll be a flop, and then my reputation will be ruined forever. Or at least for the next three years. ‘EllRay the Magnificent.’ Hah!”

“I think that saying your reputation would be ruined is something of an exaggeration, EllRay,” my dad says. “But I thought that’s what your principal might say. And yet your mother tells me you’ve been practicing your two illusions all afternoon,” he says, looking thoughtful.

“Well, yeah,” I say. “I want to try as hard as I can, at least.”

Uh-oh. I said “yeah” instead of “yes.” But for once, Dad ignores my so-called lazy tongue. “That’s excellent,” he says, smiling as he brushes the palm of his big hand across the top of my head, the closest he gets to being mushy with me. “But I have a surprise for you, son.”

“In the box?” I ask, peeking over at his desk.

“That’s right,” my dad says. “I did some pretty major research online Tuesday night, after you and I talked, and I found three really good illusions I think you can do. Ones that will work well in a big auditorium. My research took some time, but I hope you’ll think the results are worth it.”

“You bought me three brand-new magic tricks? Tricks that we didn’t make at home, out of string and straws?” I say, forgetting to use the word “illusions” for a second, I’m so excited—and surprised.

Because like I’ve said before, my dad is thrifty, and that’s putting it mildly. “Thrifty” means he doesn’t like spending money if he doesn’t have to. He likes to
save
—for college for Alfie and me, for retirement, for Christmas.

You name it, he saves for it.

Yet he studied the magic store sites online, when he could have been thinking about his radio isotopes, whatever they are, and then he bought me three probably expensive illusions? Not to mention the extra money he spent for super-fast delivery!

They print the postage cost on the box, and it was so high it made me blink.

This whole thing is just so—so
un-Dad.

He nods. “I did,” he tells me, smiling some more. “I could see how important it was to you, EllRay. And your mother and I thought you should at least have a
chance
at making the splash you want to at the talent show.”

“It’s not so much about making a splash,” I try to explain. “It’ll be the big kids who do that, and maybe even Jared and Stanley dancing hip hop. I just want to be able to hold my head up high when it’s over. But—but—I can’t believe it,” I sputter, staring at the white box sitting on Dad’s desk. “Three new illusions? What are they?”

There could be anything in that box!

I hope not a magician’s live white rabbit, though. There aren’t any airholes in FedEx boxes.

“Well, let’s open it up and see,” Dad says with a laugh. “Because you are now the proud owner of ‘The Magic Flower Pot,’ son, and ‘Color-Changing Scarves,’ and ‘The Jumbo Change Bag’ illusions. And I’ll help you figure them all out after dinner. Then you can decide which two of the three you want to perform tomorrow, and I’ll help you practice until you’re good to go. And I’m going to be in
the audience tomorrow afternoon, too—whatever it takes. We’re a team, son.”

“A team?” I ask, trying out the word as if I’ve never heard it before.

I kind of like it!

But—me, EllRay Jakes? Forgetter of permission slips, principals’ names, seven-times-anything, and library books? And my dad, the brainiac rock scientist college teacher who has never lost a thing in his life except some of his hair? A
team
?

“Never doubt it,” my father tells me, his voice suddenly serious. “So go on, EllRay. Bring that bad boy over here, and let’s open it up and take a look.”

“Together,” I say.

I like that word, too!

17

It’s talent show day!

When a day like your birthday is coming, it comes slow. But when a scary day like today comes, it comes fast. Why is that?

I decided to perform “The Magic Flower Pot” and “The Jumbo Change Bag” illusions, and Dad helped me practice each of them for a long time last night. He was calm but serious, as if he had just discovered some amazing new crystal.

I think it’s the longest time my dad and I ever spent together doing a me-thing.

It was so cool.

Still, the thought of doing my new illusions in front of the whole school makes me want to fall over like a tree that just got cut down in the forest. Timber-r-r!
CLUNK
.

But big illusions are sometimes easier than the
smaller ones, we discovered. At least I won’t have to try to balance two quarters sideways between my still-very-short fingers.

Should I tell the principal that I’m doing different illusions from the ones I did at the tryouts? I don’t think so.