Dorko the Magnificent Read online

  “It’s time for a joker sandwich,” she said.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  She answered with the Wicked Wobble Eye, which, it turns out, is her favorite answer to almost every question. I stopped talking and sat in the chair next to her. Grandma Melvyn pulled two jokers out of the deck and laid them faceup on the table. Then she shuffled the deck and held it out to me.

  “Cut the deck and take the top card,” she said.

  I lifted the top half of the deck and picked the seven of clubs from the bottom pile of cards. Grandma Melvyn nodded for me to stick my card back in the deck, so I did. After that, Grandma Melvyn put the jokers back in the deck and shuffled it. Then she coughed. (I’m not sure if the cough was important, but with Grandma Melvyn anything is possible. In any case, it was a big cough.)

  Finally, Grandma Melvyn pulled three cards off the top of the deck and held them out to me.

  “Here’s your sandwich,” she said.

  I took the cards and looked at them. They were the two jokers on the outside, like slices of bread, with my seven of clubs squished in between like a slice of bologna.

  “How did you do that?” I asked.

  Wicked Wobble Eye. (See what I mean about that being the answer to everything?)

  “That’s the joker sandwich,” she said. “Now let’s do a tomato-cheese sandwich.”

  “How does it work?” I asked.

  “You get up and make one,” she said.

  “That’s funny,” I said.

  “Why is that funny?” she asked, looking at me suspiciously. “Is the cheese moldy?”

  “Wait,” I said. “You really want me to make you a sandwich?”

  “They don’t make themselves,” Grandma Melvyn said.

  Again … Wicked Wobble Eye.

  I am not a great cook, but I got up to make Grandma Melvyn a cheese-and-tomato sandwich. While I looked for a knife, Grandma Melvyn picked up the cards and began to shuffle. Her hands were a blur as she shuffled over and over, each time moving the cards in a new shuffle. She knew more ways to shuffle cards than I had ever seen. Grandma Melvyn spread the cards into a single fan, then two fans. Then four fans. She waved the fans, and they melted into a single square deck, which she instantly stretched into a long card bridge. With a flick of her thumb, the cards gracefully flipped over one by one, cascading like a run of dominoes. She swept the cards together, shuffled once more, and swept them into a perfect fan arranged by suit: Spades, then hearts. Clubs, then diamonds.

  Grandma Melvyn was showing off exactly like she’d told me not to do. And in case you were wondering, I did not point it out to her. I’m not an idiot. Besides, I was having too much fun watching her in action. I cut one thick slice of tomato (and almost one thick slice of my finger because I was too busy watching Grandma Melvyn to pay attention to making the sandwich), then I stuffed the tomato and a slice of cheese between two pieces of bread, tossed the sandwich onto a saucer, and sat down at the table.

  As I sat down, Grandma Melvyn set the cards on the table and scooted them toward me. She took a bite of her sandwich and nodded toward the cards. The show was over. It was my turn.

  I used to think that my shuffling was impressive, and maybe it is—for a fifth grader. But after watching Grandma Melvyn at work, I felt like my hands were gigantic blobs of rubber that I had no control over. I fumbled my shuffle, and half the cards fell on the floor.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  Grandma Melvyn raised an eyebrow and took another bite of her sandwich. I picked up the cards, squared them into a neat deck, took a deep breath, and began again. The cards slipped together in a clean shuffle. I did it again, then again, faster with each shuffle. Each time, I squared the deck perfectly before splitting it into two halves. Real card experts know exactly how many cards are in a stack just by the thickness of the stack. They do almost everything by feel. That is very important for tricks where you need to know the exact position of a card. I squeezed each half of the deck tightly, trying to tell if they had the same number of cards.

  “Are you trying to squeeze the ink off those cards?” Grandma Melvyn asked.

  I loosened my grip.

  “The audience might be a bunch of Trixies,” Grandma Melvyn said, “but they can tell when you’re tense, and it makes them tense, too. It makes them pay close attention, and then it’s all over.”

  I loosened my grip again and shuffled while Grandma Melvyn ate the last bite of her sandwich. The shuffle was smoother.

  “Not bad,” Grandma Melvyn said, standing up and heading for the family room.

  I smiled.

  “But next time, add mayo.”

  WHEN I CAME HOME THE NEXT DAY, GRANDMA MELVYN WAS SLEEPING IN THE recliner beneath a crocheted afghan. I sat on the couch and stared at her, hoping she would wake up so we could work on something, but she snored away. I thought about shaking her arm or running around the room yelling “Zoysia attack!” but I didn’t know what would happen if I woke Grandma Melvyn. It had the potential to be dangerous—like when a startled sleepwalker goes crazy and murders some stranger on the sidewalk. I went to the kitchen table and pulled a pack of cards out of my backpack and practiced shuffling.

  I split the deck into different-sized stacks and counted the cards in each stack. Then I closed my eyes and picked up each one without “squeezing the ink off it.” I concentrated on the thickness of each stack and how it felt in my hands. I tried to imprint the feel of each stack in my mind so I could remember it later. Twenty-seven cards feel like this. Fifteen cards feel like that. After a while, I reversed the process and tried to guess how many cards were in a stack just by feel. I was never right, but sometimes I was close. Once, I was just twelve off. Okay, so that’s not impressive, since there are only fifty-two cards to start with. I needed lots more practice.

  I shuffled and reshuffled and reshuffled the cards. When I was done with that, I shuffled and reshuffled and reshuffled them all over again. And you know what? It was fun. I was focused like a laser and lost track of time until—cough!

  I jumped out of the chair and turned around. Grandma Melvyn was standing there watching me shuffle. I don’t know how long she’d been there, but it might have been a long time. I looked at the clock. I’d been shuffling for almost two hours.

  Without a word, Grandma Melvyn smiled slightly, nodded her head at me, and went back to the recliner. And you know what? Even though we had already been working together for almost a week, that was the moment when my magic lessons really started. I don’t mean that anything changed about what we did in lessons. The lessons were still weird, and I never knew what was going to happen. What was different was Grandma Melvyn. Before that moment, she didn’t seem to care if I got anything out of lessons or not.

  After that moment, she got serious.

  FRIDAY NIGHT, I HELPED MOM SET THE TABLE FOR DINNER.

  “I never thanked you for the tablecloth trick,” she said.

  “It didn’t turn out right.”

  “I know,” she said. “But you worked on it a long time. Thank you.”

  I smiled.

  “Hey, kiddo,” she said. “After I get Harry to bed, do you want to pick out a movie?”

  “Yeah!” I said. “I’ll make the popcorn and you get the candy.”

  I thought about movies all through dinner. I couldn’t decide between Top Hat, which is Mom’s all-time favorite Fred Astaire movie, or Casablanca, which is my all-time favorite old movie. It doesn’t have any dancing, but it has lots of suspense. In the end, I decided to let Mom pick. Of course she would pick Top Hat, and that was okay. I like Fred Astaire. He was like a dancing magician. He never left anything to chance. He practiced and practiced until his act was perfect.

  By nine o’clock, Ape Boy and Grandma Melvyn were both out of the family room. Ape Boy was in bed and Grandma Melvyn was in my old room. Mom sat on the couch with the box of Reese’s Pieces and the movies. While she decided which one to watch, I went to the kitchen and put a bag of popc
orn into the microwave. Two minutes and forty seconds later, it was movie time!

  I opened the steaming bag of popcorn, poured it into the big silver popcorn bowl, and went to the family room.

  “Did you pick Top Hat or Casabla—”

  Mom was fast asleep; the movies and box of candy lay on the floor beside the couch. So much for Movie Night.

  I went back to the kitchen and sat at the table. I picked a piece of popcorn out of the bowl and threw it at the trash can. I missed. I tossed another and another. I missed.

  “Your aim is almost as bad as your bow.”

  Grandma Melvyn was standing in the doorway.

  “If you’re going to waste popcorn,” she said, “you should do it right.”

  She sat down beside me and picked up a piece of popcorn and tossed it right into the basket.

  “Two points,” she said. “Your problem is weak hands.”

  “I don’t have weak hands,” I said.

  Grandma Melvyn reached her hand out to me with her thumb up and her fingers bent at the knuckles.

  “Wrestle,” she said.

  “Huh?”

  “Put your puny little baby thumb here, and thumb wrestle,” she said.

  “I don’t have a puny baby thumb,” I said.

  “That’s what all the puny babies say,” said Grandma Melvyn. “Count.”

  I locked my fingertips into hers in the classic thumb-wrestling position. Her fingers were bony and cool. I wagged my thumb back and forth and started counting.

  “One. Two. Three. Four. I declare a thumb war. Five. Six. Hey!”

  Grandma Melvyn pinned my thumb. I tried to pull it free, but her grip was like iron.

  “Hey!” I said. “You have to wait until I say ‘Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Try to keep your thumb—’”

  She pinned my thumb again.

  “I wasn’t ready,” I said.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said in a way that meant exactly the opposite. She released my thumb and I started again.

  “One. Two. Hey!”

  She pinned my thumb a third time. And it hurt.

  “Both thumbs,” she said, releasing my thumb and extending her left hand.

  I want to say that what followed was a thumb-wrestling championship in which I was crowned the greatest thumb wrestler of all time. That would be a lie. What actually happened was a thumb-wrestling massacre. No matter how I moved to dodge her attack or pin her thumbs, Grandma Melvyn was faster. Her bony thumbs were fast, furious, and ferocious. The massacre lasted all of one minute before Grandma Melvyn let go of my hands.

  “Puny baby thumbs,” she said.

  I knew when I was defeated.

  “So what,” I said.

  “So,” she said. “You’ll never master cards, coins, or anything with puny baby thumbs. I can fix that.”

  Grandma Melvyn spent the next hour showing me finger exercises. Most people have one hand that is much stronger than the other. And even on that hand, some fingers are strong and some are weak. (I’m looking at you, Ring Finger and Pinky.) That’s fine for most people. But not for magicians. A magician needs to hold coins and cards and all sorts of things without anyone seeing what they are doing. Every finger must be able to work independently. It sounds easy, but it’s really hard.

  Grandma Melvyn showed me how to lock my fingers together and then move them in patterns to build the muscles in each finger. If I practice every night and every morning and every science class and every English class and … you get the idea … my shuffles would get smoother and my sleight of hand would be better.

  Finally, Grandma Melvyn stood up and walked out of the kitchen.

  “Keep practicing, and your puny baby fingers will grow up nice and strong,” she said. “Then we’ll work on the puny baby bow of yours.”

  I threw away the popcorn that had fallen on the floor and went to the family room, where Mom was still asleep on the couch with the movies and candy on the floor beside her. I gently covered her with the crocheted afghan, flipped off the light, and went upstairs to bed.

  HAVE YOU EVER SEEN A MOVIE WHERE A CHARACTER WANTS TO WIN SOME KIND of competition and someone helps them learn everything they need to know and weeks pass by in only three movie minutes? The whole time you watch, an inspirational song plays, and in the end, the character wins the muskrat rodeo/cheese-eating contest/platypus-throwing tournament or whatever they are trying to win and everyone lives happily ever after. If you’ve never seen this, you ought to get out more, because it happens in every movie I watch. They call it a montage. The last part of the word sounds like the end of the word garage, in case you’re wondering how to pronounce it.

  Montages are movie tricks to get past the boring stuff and on to the good stuff. It’s kind of like watching a couple seconds of basketball practice every day for a week so you can see how hard the team works to get ready for the big game.

  I want to get to the exciting part of my story—hint, it’s the talent show—but first I need to tell you more about Grandma Melvyn’s magic lessons.

  I could write about everything we did, but I’d need a thousand pages and that could take all afternoon. Plus, it might reveal some magic secrets, and you already know I’m not going to do that. So I’m going to do something that has never been tried before in a book. I’m going to do a montage!

  Instead of describing every magic lesson to you, I’ll condense them into a few short seconds. But I need your help.

  The most important part of any montage is the music. For this to work, you have to sing along while you read. A catchy and inspirational song is best. I can’t hear what you’re singing, so I’m going to trust you to pick a great song. Here’s a hint. Do not use the songs in the following chart. (And in case you’re wondering, they are real songs. Look them up if you don’t believe me.)

  Oh yeah, there’s one more song you cannot use: “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head.” You know why.

  * * *

  DO NOT USE THESE SONGS!

  “You’re the Reason Our Kids Are So Ugly”

  “I’ve Been Flushed from the Bathroom of Your Heart”

  “I Would Have Wrote You a Letter, but I Couldn’t Spell Yuck!”

  “They May Put Me in Prison, but They Can’t Stop My Face from Breakin’ Out”

  “Mama, Get the Hammer (There’s a Fly on Papa’s Head)”

  “Her Teeth Were Stained, but Her Heart Was Pure”

  “If My Nose Were Full of Nickels, I’d Blow It All on You”

  * * *

  Okay. Here’s the montage of Grandma Melvyn’s magic lessons. It starts with Grandma Melvyn and me at the kitchen table. She’s teaching me a new shuffle.

  Okay. Get ready to sing …

  Aaaaaaannnnnndddddd ACTION!

  … You call that a shuffle? … I got it! I got it! … Oops … That stunk … I’ll pick them up … I’ve seen golf clubs with better grips … Oops … Call me when you find them … Thirty-one, thirty-two … Start over! … Oops! … Sixteen, seventeen … Buy a vowel, Trixie!

  … Copy what I’m doing … Like that? … Exactly not like that … But, how … The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to see … I see … No, I don’t … Exactly … Wait … what? …

  … Watch my right hand … How did you … With my left hand … But you said … Which is more important, what I do or what I say? … Ohhhhhh! I got it!... Yes, you do. Take a bow … Oops!... Get the fire extinguisher.

  Aaaaaaannnnnndddddd CUT!

  I left out a lot of stuff, including the bit where I got my hand stuck in a pickle jar and the bit where I got my ankle tied to the birdcage and the bit where … Never mind. You get the idea.

  The point is that Grandma Melvyn and I worked every day after school, and I spent hours and hours and hours (and hours and hours and hours) shuffling cards and palming coins and passing things from one hand to the other over and over again. I also spent a lot of time playing fifty-two-card pickup, which is where you pick up fifty-two cards after you drop them
. Fun, right?

  But you know what? It was fun. And even when it wasn’t fun, it was important. All that stuff is called small magic. And it’s a big part of most magic acts. If you can pull off small magic, the audience will trust you on the big magic. At least that’s how it’s supposed to work. You’ll just have to keep reading to see if it really does.

  Do you like the way I added a teaser there? That’s part of a good magic act, too. Keep them guessing what happens next.

  AFTER ALMOST TWO WEEKS OF MAGIC LESSONS, I DECIDED IT WAS TIME TO make my move and ask Grandma Melvyn if I could use the cabinet in the talent show. She crossed her arms over her rhinestone-bedazzled VIVA LAS VEGAS sweatshirt and looked at me suspiciously.

  “Why should I?” she asked.

  “Because it would give the Trixies down at the booger mines something to talk about,” I said.

  She thought about it for a second.

  “Good reason,” she said.

  If Grandma Melvyn hadn’t been sitting in the lawn chair—and armed with a cane—I would have hugged her! Well, maybe I would have shaken her hand vigorously—except she’d probably crush my hand with her grip of steel. Okay, I’d say thank you and smile like an idiot. Which is exactly what I did.

  “Don’t count your chickens before your final bow,” she said. “Which, as I recall, stinks.”

  She unfolded her arms and smiled in a way I hadn’t seen before, and for the first time, I saw a twinkle in her eye and just a hint of the young woman from the photos.

  “You’ll need an assistant,” Grandma Melvyn said.

  “Cat can do it!” I said. “She’s awesome. You’re going to love her!”

  And just like that, the twinkle in Grandma Melvyn’s eye flickered out. Her smile vanished, and with it, the echo of the young woman in the photo. Grandma Melvyn leaned onto her cane and got out of the lawn chair.