Abby Carnelia's One and Only Magical Power (5 page)

It was brand new, for one thing. Absolutely spotless. It even had that fresh-cut lumber smell that seemed to say, “You're the first people who ever slept here.”

The cabin was air-conditioned, too. The cots weren't cots—they were like hotel beds, deep and comfortable. When you lay down, you felt like you were sinking down halfway to China.

Each cabin had both indoor and outdoor showers, complete with marble tile floors, and a fridge for late-night snacks. There was even a laptop on a desk in the corner, always connected to the Internet—“so you can write to your folks and tell them what a blast you're having,” as Claudia put it.

It's a good thing Dad didn't stay long enough to really see this place,
Abby thought.
He'd have hated all the luxury.

“Tell you what, Witches,” Claudia was saying after the girls had picked out their beds and stashed their suitcases and duffel bags. “Why don't we go around and introduce ourselves? Tell me your name, what grade you're going into, where you're from, and what makes you magic.”

Abby felt a little shiver when she heard that phrase.

One by one, the girls gave their introductions. There was an Allison, a Debbie, a Becky, two Sarahs (actually, one Sarah and one Sara, with no “h”) and, of course, Abby. They were all going into sixth or seventh grade.

Abby began to worry, though, when she heard their magic backgrounds.

“I've been doing magic since I was six,” said Debbie.

“I do magic shows at my street's block party every summer,” said Becky.

“I won second place in our school's talent show. I did the Professor's Nightmare,” said one of the Sarahs.

“And how about you, Abby?” asked Claudia, her sidesaddle ponytail flouncing.

Abby smiled nervously and looked around the room. What was she supposed to say?
Um, I can make an egg spin by itself, but otherwise, I've never done a single trick in my life? And by the way, it has to be hard-boiled, and I have to be pulling on my ears?

“Um,” she began. “Actually, I'm really just—just kind of a beginner. I want to learn more about magic, and I figured this would be the place.” She managed a weak smile.

“Excellent,” said Claudia, beaming. She reached over to give Abby a supportive shoulder squeeze. “This really
is
the place.”

Abby was not so sure.

No-H Sara was a tiny little person, skinny and short—even her blond hair was sort of fuzzy and lightweight. Abby half worried that if the wind ever picked up, No-H Sara would have to be weighted down so she wouldn't blow away.

But as far as Abby was concerned, there were two great things about No-H Sara. First, she was a cheery little chatterbox—and since she felt like she was about a thousand miles from home, that kind of perkiness was just what Abby needed.

Second, without any discussion, No-H Sara had simply adopted Abby. This was Camp Cadabra's very first summer of operation, but No-H Sara acted as though she owned the place.

“Did you notice anything about the buildings?” No-H Sara was saying. She and Abby meandered toward the cafeteria building in the last half hour before dinner. The beautifully groomed path dipped in and out of the woods, which offered cooler air than the grassy hillside itself.

Abby shook her head.

Sara spread her hands wide. “The Dumbledore building? Hermione Cafeteria? Wormtail Game Room? Hello?”

“Ahhhhh,” Abby said, smiling as she picked up a pinecone to study it as they walked. “Harry Potter. Everything's named after Harry Potter?”

“Exactly. I mean, we're not exactly walking around with robes and memorizing spells and flying on brooms and stuff. Although that
would
be kinda cool.”

Abby nodded. “It makes the buildings easy to remember, though.”

“The thing is, if you ask me, this place is really only
half
a magic camp,” No-H Sara continued. “I mean, in the morning, yeah, we have our three magic classes. But after lunch, it's just like a regular summer camp with regular activities. Look at this stuff!”

She held up the shiny, colorful pages of the “red book”—the camper handbook that Claudia had given them. “Tennis, archery, soccer, arts and crafts, horseback riding. Or waterfront. If you sign up for waterfront, you get to do sailing, water-skiing, or parasailing. I love parasailing.”

Abby peered over at the photos. “What's parasailing?”

“Oh,
you
know,” said Sara matter-of-factly. “Where they hook you up to a big giant kite on a rope, and then they pull you along with a motorboat so you fly way up in the air.”

Abby was amazed. “And you've
done
that before?”

“Oh yeah.” Sara cocked her head as she nodded. “I'm from Florida.”

Abby raised her eyebrows, impressed. “And have you done
this
before?”

“What?”

“Magic camp? Summer camp?”

“Well, nobody's done
this
camp. They just opened up,” said No-H Sara the Tour Guide. “But I've been going to summer camps, like, forever. My parents believe in exposing us to the world.”

Sara stepped up onto a gleaming wooden bench, walked along its length like a tightrope walker, then hopped down at the far end to join Abby. “So what are you gonna sign up for? I'm gonna do Stage Magic. You wanna do it with me?”

Already, Abby had heard plenty about Stage Magic. It was the most popular morning class by far, because that's where you got to work with the big flashy illusions, like making people float in the air or chopping them into thirds.

And it's easy to understand why those classes were so popular. After all, when you're at home, you hardly ever get to try that kind of magic, since you need a lot of big, expensive, special equipment to do it. “All the world's a stage,” Shakespeare once wrote, but he forgot the part about how
hard it is to fit those six-foot cabinets into the back of your parents' Toyota Camry.

Abby couldn't help smiling at the thought of tiny Sara, the human hummingbird, flittering about the stage among the gigantic Cabinets of Mystery.

But Abby had no interest in striding across the stage, gesturing grandly at assistants wearing sparkly leotards. In fact, although she didn't dare let anybody at Cadabra know it, she didn't have much interest in performing
at all.
She just wanted to discover the secrets of her magical power.

“I—I haven't decided yet,” Abby replied.

She
had
flipped through the red book, looking over all the available classes. Yet amazingly enough, Abby hadn't found anything called “Earlobe Power: The Rotational Characteristics of Poultry Products.”

Instead, she planned to sign up for what looked like the next best things. “I was thinking of maybe Card Magic, Coin Manipulation, and Dinner Table Magic,” she said.

“Huh!” said Sara.
Swing!
Sara had picked up a stick and was swatting at branches like they were baseballs. “So you're into the close-up magic, then.”
Swing!

“Well, if you're so into close-up, then why don't you sign up for Impromptu? That's the best kind of close-up anyway,
I
think. You know, it's all, like, spur-of-the-moment
stuff, where you don't have to set up the trick beforehand.”

My egg thing certainly seems to fit that category,
thought Abby. “Sure! I'll try that one! Unless, I mean—”

“Unless what?”

Abby took a breath. “Well, let me ask you. Do you think they might have any kind of classes where you can learn about, like . . .
real
magic?”

No-H Sara stopped on the path and rested the bat-stick on her shoulder. She looked at Abby with a cocked eyebrow.

“What do you mean,
real
magic?”

“You know, like—weird stuff you can't explain. I saw a newspaper ad that talked about, you know, unexplained phenomena. Like moving stuff with your mind and stuff. What should I sign up for if I'm interested in that kind of magic?”

No-H Sara studied Abby for what seemed like a very long time.

“What you should sign up for is
Crazy
Class,” she said finally. “Only nut cases believe in stuff like that. My grandma always says, ‘The only people who believe in the invisible are people with nothing visible to believe in.' ”

Sara pounded her bat-stick on the freshly paved pathway. “Now come on. They're gonna open the doors for
dinner in like six seconds, and I don't want to have to sit at the losers' table!” She turned and trotted ahead.

Maybe that's where I belong,
thought Abby miserably.
At the losers' table.

She picked up the pace and followed her new friend out of the woods.

“C
'
MON, ABBY
!
TRY IT AGAIN
.
You'll get it.”

No-H Sara and Abby sat side by side at the long, pine tables in the Snape building, practicing what they'd learned the first day in Coin Manipulation class.

“I don't know, Sara. It looks so easy when
you
do it, but I . . .” She picked up her quarter and tried the Thumb Palm again—and messed it up again.

She looked around at the fifteen other kids in the class. The Snape building wasn't really a building; it was actually more of an open-air pavilion. It had a roof and a floor, but no walls, so it kept some of that breezy, summer camp atmosphere.

The counselor in charge, who identified himself as
Chaz, was a complete and total magic nerd. He knew the name and history of every coin move, said he owned over 200 magic DVDs, and insisted that his dad had once met David Copperfield's lawyer. He was also blindingly good at coin tricks; it was pretty clear to Abby how Chaz had spent his free time growing up.

Abby, however, was having trouble with the coin stuff.

“Is it all sleight of hand?” she asked Sara as her quarter clanked to the table yet again. “I'm gonna have to spend the rest of my summer in front of the camcorder practicing!”

(Abby had learned that all decent magicians nowadays do their practicing in front of a camcorder. “Nobody practices in front of a mirror anymore,” No-H Sara had said matter-of-factly. “If you're looking at yourself in the mirror, you can't be looking at your hands or your trick. So you can't use misdirection with your eyes. Get it?”)

The only thing that made Coin Manipulation bearable was hanging out with Sara.

“Listen, tell you what,” she was saying. “Forget the Thumb Palm—you're never gonna need that anyway. I know some really easy ones that look a lot better anyway. Check this out.”

She showed Abby how to flip a coin, catch it in midair, and figure out whether it was heads or tails before she even looked at it. “Right before you slap it down, you feel
it with your thumb, see?” she said. “Really fast. The back of the quarter is all rough; the front, the heads side, has a big smooth president on it. So you can tell which way it's facing.”

Abby felt a flood of gratitude for Sara's kindness. Overall, though, she was getting discouraged. This whole operation seemed to be all about
tricks.
A trick was not real magic. It was something that was supposed to
look
like magic, but actually stayed 100 percent within the laws of physics.

Chaz said he knew a great way to make a coin disappear, for example, but what he really meant was he knew a great way to hide it so the audience
thought
it had disappeared. In Abby's next class, Cards, the counselor said she'd show the kids how to make a card rise from the deck, but actually she showed them how to push the card up in a way the audience couldn't see.

Abby wasn't having a terrible time. She was making friends, and she was inspired to see how seriously all the other kids were taking this hobby. She even picked out a couple of favorite tricks and decided she'd work on them until they looked smooth and polished.