Dorko the Magnificent Read online

  One day, the guy said that if she was going to come to the office all the time, she should just work there already, and he gave her a job as a secretary. Now she’s an assistant loan officer and she works really hard so other families don’t have to worry about losing their houses. So they never have to stand there holding out a twenty, saying please.

  When Dad got the job at the paper company and started traveling, I got my room back and that was a good thing. Rooming with Ape Boy was awful. He climbed and chewed in his sleep. I took the bottom bunk to keep him from climbing up and chewing on my pillow. I was safe from that danger on the bottom bunk, but there was another peril that was even worse. Ape Boy liked to drink a lot of water and he was a deep sleeper, if you know what I’m getting at … think about it … yeah … you got it. Let me just say I’m glad someone invented plastic sheets.

  Now Ape Boy is forbidden from drinking anything after eight o’clock at night, but it doesn’t matter. There are some things a person doesn’t want to risk. Let’s just say that the prospect of sharing a room again was not a good one. But that didn’t matter. Here I was again. My blankets and pillows were already on the lower bunk. My posters of magicians were taped to the wall above Houdi’s cage, which sat on the dresser.

  Houdi is my rabbit, in case I failed to mention that. He looks like an ordinary rabbit, but he’s not. He was just a baby when I found him in our garage last summer. He’d escaped from Mrs. Chang’s cat, who I call Mittzilla but Mrs. Chang calls Sweetums or Sugar Baby or something pukey that makes him sound like the most adorable little kitty cat ever, which is such a lie. Mittzilla is a hardened criminal who kills everything he catches and leaves parts of his victims on our porch to impress us. Very classy.

  Houdi escaped with just a tiny rip on the tip of his ear, which shows how extraordinary he is. Getting away from Mittzilla was a great escape, so I named him Houdi after Harry Houdini, the greatest escape artist in the history of the world. By the way, in case you didn’t know, Harry Houdini gave himself that stage name in honor of Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin, one of the greatest magicians in the history of the whole universe. I know all kinds of facts like that. I think it’s important to know the history of magic. It gives a magician a little perspective.

  Houdi is smart, and he’s a very good listener. And I’m not just saying that because he doesn’t talk back—which is more than I can say about most people I know. I can tell Houdi listens by the way he looks at me. You’re probably thinking that’s the dumbest thing you ever heard, but I don’t care. If you saw him, you’d know what I mean.

  I took Houdi out of his cage and sat on the bottom bunk petting him. He looked around the room and blinked and twitched his nose. I could tell he hated the room. Just like me.

  We were counting the wads of bubble gum stuck to the ceiling when Ape Boy ran in and swung onto the top bunk like an orangutan. He landed on the top mattress with half his body hanging upside down and his face six inches from mine.

  “Yay!” he said between chomps of bubble gum. “Watch this.”

  Ape Boy blew a bubble as big as his face.

  I popped it with my finger and it collapsed into a thin pink mask from his eyebrows to his chin.

  “Mom!” he yelled as he flipped down from the bunk and ran out of the room.

  I know it was mean and I shouldn’t have done it, but I couldn’t help myself. Besides, getting the gum out of his eyebrows would give him something to do for the next ten minutes that didn’t involve annoying me. I got up and put Houdi back in his cage and went to the hallway closet. I found an old navy blue sheet filled with holes (probably from Ape Boy chewing on it in his sleep). Then I went to the garage and dug out some white Christmas lights and some heavy silver tape from Dad’s toolbox.

  I went back to the room and taped the edge of the sheet along the rail of the upper bunk so that it made a curtain for my bed. It was just like those train sleeper cars in old movies. At least it would have been except for the holes. Thanks, Ape Boy.

  Setting the stage is the most important part of a magic act. Details matter. I try to remember that and train myself to pay attention to details in everything I do. I’m not very good at it yet, but I keep trying. That’s what separates the wannabes from the real magicians. Not quitting.

  Right now, the holes in this sheet were details that mattered, so I got busy. I cut stars out of silver tape and stuck them over the holes on the inside of the sheet and—presto chango!—my crummy navy sheet became a night sky! When I plugged in the string of lights and taped them onto the underside of the top bunk, the effect was complete. From the outside, it looked like a crummy blue sheet taped to a bed, but from my bunk, it became a magical nightscape. Okay, it was still a crummy blue sheet with some silver tape and Christmas lights, but at night it would look cool, and at least I had some privacy. Sometimes you have to use what you’ve got.

  I took Houdi out of his cage again and climbed into my new hideout and scratched him behind his ears the way he likes.

  “It won’t be that bad,” I whispered.

  Houdi leaned his ears back just a little and gave me a look. That’s the thing about rabbits. They always know when you’re lying. Especially to yourself.

  THAT NIGHT, AUNT TRUDY CAME BY WITH A SMALL BAG OF PILLS AND STUFF that Grandma Melvyn had left in her car earlier. I think Aunt Trudy was afraid Mom would change her mind about taking in Grandma Melvyn, because she beat it out of here as fast as she could. She rang the doorbell with one hand, knocked with the other, and yelled, “YOO-hoo!” just in case we were in comas and didn’t hear all the banging.

  When I opened the door, she practically threw the bag at me, waved good-bye, and then, with a puff of smoke and the squeal of tires, Aunt Trudy was gone. It was a vanishing act that would make any magician proud.

  I carried the bag to “Grandma Melvyn’s room.” The door was wide open, and Grandma Melvyn stood there poking the bed with her cane.

  “It has bedbugs,” she said.

  “It doesn’t have bedbugs,” I said.

  “What are you, an exterminator?” she asked. “It has bedbugs. First the zoysia grass and now bedbugs. Are you out to kill me?”

  Whatever.

  I set the bag on the dresser. Then I gave my old room one last look, went upstairs to the Hideout, and went to sleep.

  The next morning, I had one goal: To get out of the house without seeing Grandma Melvyn. Fat chance. Mom heard me at the front door and made me come to the kitchen to say good morning and to get my lunch. Grandma Melvyn was sitting at the table with her arms crossed while Mom tried to get her to take her morning pills.

  “If you don’t take your meds, your knee will swell,” Mom said, holding two red pills on her palm.

  “What are you, a fortune teller?” asked Grandma Melvyn.

  Mom sighed but Grandma Melvyn grabbed the pills and tossed them into her mouth and swallowed.

  “Happy?” she asked.

  I grabbed my lunch from the fridge with hopes of sprinting to the door before Grandma Melvyn had a chance to cast her Wicked Wobble Eye on me. I was too slow.

  “Where do you think you’re going, Trixie?” she asked.

  “School,” I said.

  “Oh boy,” she said. “Off to the booger mines to spend the day with a bunch of nose pickers! That will be fun.”

  Ouch. That was mean. But it was kind of true. There is at least one kid in my class—who shall remain nameless and who is not me—who is a regular spelunker when it comes to his nose. And if you don’t know what a spelunker is, look it up.

  Mucus in all its forms is an unavoidable part of fifth grade. Of course, I wasn’t about to tell Grandma Melvyn that.

  “They’re not a bunch of nose pickers,” I said.

  “Well, you would know.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  Wait a minute. What? Was she calling me a nose picker? I looked at Grandma Melvyn to get a clue, but she wasn’t smiling. But then again, she wasn’t frowning, either. Whatever.r />
  “Gotta go,” I said.

  “Hold it, Robbie,” said Grandma Melvyn.

  She blew her nose into a Kleenex, then held it out to me.

  “Throw this away,” she said.

  I must have looked like Luke Skywalker when he falls into that nasty trash pit in Star Wars, because Grandma Melvyn snorted.

  “Career alert. Don’t go into medicine,” she said. “You don’t have the guts for it.”

  She got up with the Kleenex in her fist as I made a dash for the door. I passed the trash can just as Grandma Melvyn tossed the Kleenex. The crumpled white tissue ricocheted off the inside wall of the can, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw—or did I just imagine?—two tiny red pills drop into the mountain of banana peels and bubble gum wrappers below.

  SCHOOL. CAN WE TALK ABOUT IT FOR A MINUTE? AS WE’VE ALREADY DISCUSSED, I’m in fifth grade, where mucus in all its forms is a part of everyday life. But I’m not going to talk about that. Also, I’m not going to talk about the corner of the classroom that always smells like a mysterious biology experiment gone horribly wrong. I am going to tell you about school and me.

  I’m a good student, no matter what my report card says. My grades just “don’t show my potential.” A lot of kids get better grades, but so what? That’s not a good reason for them to think they’re smarter than me.

  I try my best to pay attention during class, but sometimes I start thinking about interesting things like… well… anything else. So I miss out on instructions and deadlines and things like that. You get the picture. But on the good side, school gives me lots of time to think about magic tricks. That’s a form of learning, isn’t it?

  I doodle, which is art. I also think about constructing trapdoors and escape boxes, which is engineering. I used to practice my coin tricks, which was physical education for my fingers, until Mrs. M made me stop. She got tired of Nate Watkins diving on the floor every time I dropped a quarter. I told her it wasn’t my fault that Nate was greedy, but she didn’t care. She’s like that. She isn’t mean, but she doesn’t like anything that she hasn’t planned for. You’ll see what I’m talking about. Being a magician has taught me that things always go differently than you expect. Something always goes wrong, so you have to plan for things you don’t plan on. Expect the unexpected. When you do that, you can eliminate it. Sometimes.

  While we’re talking about my teacher, this is a good time to tell you that we call her Mrs. M because her name is Mrs. Mortzchinski and she’s tired of correcting kids who can’t pronounce it. The funny thing about Mrs. M is that she has a terrific Russian name and she hates magic. Sometimes life is not fair.

  Most of the kids at school are okay (including the spelunker). Cat is great, and there are a couple of other kids I hang out with. They seem to get the whole magic thing, but then there are people who don’t. Nate Watkins, for example. I don’t think I’m giving away any state secrets when I tell you that he is not the sharpest crayon in the box. Brain-wise, he’s more like the crayon someone left in a hot car until it melted.

  In case you forgot, Nate is the genius who gave me the nickname Dorko. If I was the kind of person who had a nemesis, he would be mine. Of course, I’m not that kind of person. If I was, I’d do it right and have a hidden underwater lair, an army of minions to do my bidding, and a master plan for world domination that would include exiling Nate Watkins to a moon base with no video games. I don’t have those things. (Though between you and me, I have made sketches in my notebook for a terrific prisoner transport rocket in case I ever get them.)

  Anyway, when I got to class Tuesday morning, I set my books on my desk and turned around to talk to Cat, who sits behind me. My elbow hit my math book and—bam!—I knocked it right off my desk and onto the floor.

  “What’s the matter, Dorko?” said Nate Watkins, who sits behind Cat. “Can’t make your books fly? Is your wand broken?”

  Cat rolled her eyes and made a goofball face to show what she thought of Nate. I just ignored him.

  Nate thinks he’s the coolest thing ever because he gets whatever he wants and always has every video game in the universe. You know the kind of guy. You probably have one in your class, too. Nate has mousy brown hair and really square teeth, but the guy in your class might have dark hair or be blond and might have pointy vampire-shaped teeth. It doesn’t matter how they look. It’s how they act that makes them annoying.

  Nate is clueless about magic. The sad thing is that he’s not the only one. Sometimes I think Mom and Dad don’t even get it. Sometimes when I want to do a trick, Mom and Dad look like I’m going to turn them into wombats or something, which could never happen because we don’t even have wombats in this part of the world, except at the zoo, and they don’t loan them out to fifth graders. Don’t ask me how I know that. I just do.

  Like I said, people just don’t get it. I blame Harry Potter. Don’t get me wrong. I love Harry Potter, I do! But because of Harry Potter, everybody thinks magicians are wizards, which is not the case. I know that you can tell the difference, but I created the following chart for you to share with clueless people you meet who don’t.

  * * *

  WIZARDS

  MAGICIANS

  Are fictional characters.

  Are real people. We are also called illusionists.

  Wear robes and have long white beards and pointy hats or scars shaped like lightning bolts.

  Look like normal people. Only better.

  Make things disappear.

  Use illusions to make things seem like they disappear.

  Go to special schools where they learn magic.

  Go to boring schools where they wish they could learn magic.

  Fight dragons, trolls, evil wizards, and other freaky imaginary creatures.

  Fight the urge to flee on goulash day in the school cafeteria. School goulash is much scarier than fighting trolls, because it’s made by trolls, and possibly with them. It’s hard to tell without eating it. And who wants to do that?

  Avoid talking about a certain wizard who shall not be named.

  Avoid talking to girls.

  Well, that’s not really true. I talk to Cat all the time and she’s a girl. And some girls are magicians. I would love to talk to them. So I’ll change that to “Avoid talking to non-magician girls who aren’t named Cat.” For now. Though Mom says I’ll change my mind about that in middle school. Shows what she knows.

  * * *

  I learned a long time ago that there wasn’t any point in trying to educate Nate Watkins, fifth-grade loser. Of course, clueless people aren’t going to listen to you, either. But it might make you feel better knowing some of the facts.

  Anyway, I feel like I just told you a lot of important things, but I didn’t tell you anything important that happened at school on Tuesday. Looking back, there was only one really important thing. It happened at the end of the day, when Mrs. M gave us an assignment. Luckily, I was actually paying attention. (Hey, sometimes that happens.)

  This was my favorite kind of assignment. A speech. And not some boring speech about some boring famous person or some boring topic like whether school uniforms are good or bad. This was a three-minute how-to speech. Due on Thursday.

  I knew immediately what I would do. And it didn’t bother me when Mrs. M went through the long list of things we could not use in our speeches. Saws … amphibians … fire … peanut butter and socks—don’t ask! … ropes … pudding …

  I’ll spare you the entire list. It went on for a while and everyone watched me the whole time she read it, but I didn’t care. I knew exactly what I was going to do, and it wouldn’t involve any of those things. I was going old-school. Classic.

  I was going to pull a rabbit out of my hat.

  THIS MIGHT BE A GOOD TIME TO MENTION THAT I DON’T HAVE A TOP HAT. I KNOW what you’re thinking: How could I be a magician without a top hat? I ask myself that every day, and I am saving up to buy one. The truth is that I used to have a top hat. Somebody gave me one for my ninth birth
day, but I don’t remember who. It wasn’t an expensive one or anything, but it was an honest-to-goodness magician’s top hat. I felt really bad when it got eaten.

  That wasn’t the only magic present I ever got for my birthday. I got a magic kit on my fifth birthday. I don’t remember who gave me that one, either, but I loved it. It had a cheesy black cape with red satin trim, a plastic wand, and a little cardboard box that made a coin disappear and magically reappear. The coin trick worked twice and the adults at my party clapped and cheered. After that, the quarters got stuck inside and I cried and the adults gave me more quarters to shut me up. That was the day I got hooked on magic.

  Since then, I’ve learned lots of tricks. The traditional kind: pulling silk hankies out of my fist, cutting a dollar bill in half and magically putting it back together, pulling a coin out of someone’s ear—that kind of stuff. Though let me give you some advice: Never pull a quarter out of my uncle Pete’s ear. He has more hair in there than an Ewok and more wax than the Crayola factory. It’s a bad combination.

  Since I don’t have a top hat, I’m going to cheat and use one of Dad’s old fedoras. He won’t mind. Well, he might, but he’ll be in Shanghai for work, which is almost the same as not minding.

  Remember when I said I wouldn’t tell you how my magic works? Well, I’m about to make an exception. Since I can’t do this trick the traditional way, I won’t be revealing any trade secrets, so I think that’s okay. I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, but you have to promise not to tell anyone. Since I can’t see you, I’ll assume you agree. If you don’t agree, shame on you. Put down my book right now.

  STILL HERE? I KNEW YOU WOULD BE.

  So here’s what I’m going to do: I’m going to very carefully use an X-acto knife to cut an X in the top of Dad’s hat. Felt is soft but firm, so it will spring back to its original shape and make the X invisible to anyone who is not holding it. I’m also going to cut a matching X through a thick plastic tablecloth glued to the top of a box. I found the perfect tablecloth. It’s really ugly and covered with flowers. It’s great camouflage.