The Houdini Effect (10 page)

‘
Stupid straitjacket!’ he
said after I finally had him out of it. (Well, he didn’t actually
say ‘stupid’ but I figure you’d already worked that out for
yourself.)

‘
A bad worker blames his,
or her, tools,’ I said, equally testily. It was a phrase we said to
Dad when things didn’t go according to plan. Dad knew he wasn’t a
bad artisan so he never took a rise out of it but Harry,
surprisingly, given how often he had joined us in accusing Dad of
the same thing, went ape.

Once again, I won’t repeat what he said to
me. A writer should use bad language only sparingly

and for maximum effect. Harry’s bad
language

was simply gratuitous and ill-considered. If
I tell you that his every second or third word began with

the letter ‘f’ you will get the idea. I will
admit that maybe I shouldn’t have risked upsetting his highness’
magical composure in the first place by making my comment, or that
I should have lowered my own standards by calling him, immediately
after he had finished his tirade, a name that also began with ‘f’
and ended with ‘wit’ but, much to my shame, I did.

We parted on a hostile footing.

Communication breakdown

I escaped to my room where
I must have dozed off. The first I knew of it was waking up to the
sound of the phones. Em had texted my mobile and then Rach rang our
portable landline, which happened to have ended up in my room (it’s
a well-travelled phone.) They were both trying to find out why I
hadn’t turned up at the pool.

To Rach I said, ‘I’m so, sooo sorry,’
despising myself for sounding so sycophantic (don’t you just so
love words? Look this one up if you want to know what it means) but
knowing she was the sort of person who needed soft-soap placating.
‘I just couldn’t make it because I had to help Harry with one of
his magic tricks.’

During our conversation I texted Em back
(I’m quite good at multi-tasking), ‘Sorry, I was all tied up
helping Harry with one of his magic tricks. He’s entering a talent
quest.’

On both occasions there
was a prolonged delay at the other end of the phone while this
infor-

mation was being
processed.

Rach eventually said, ‘You think a magic
trick is more important than hanging out at the pool

with us and the all the cool-looking dudes?’
For a Luddite, Rach is surprisingly non-traditional and
non-conservative when it comes to boys.

‘
The talent quest is a
pretty big thing,’ I mumbled. ‘Even you must have seen the ads for
it on TV.’

‘
I think
I have,’ she admitted, ‘but the talent at the pool is
far
more
interesting.’

‘
But
blood
is
thicker
than water.’ (I can italicize with the best of
them.)

‘
And
you
must be thicker than either of them,’ Rach said tartly, which
really hurt even if she said it as a friend and I happened to agree
with her. But what could I have done? It was too late by then to
turn back the tide. (Or, to paraphrase our maudlin clock: Soon, in
passing on, you’ll find time gone).

In the middle of this conversation Em sent a
second message that read, ‘Magic? Wot planet r u on?’

Immediately followed by a third. ‘Troy was
asking after u.’

‘
Was he?’ I asked Rach who,
of course, had no idea what I meant but must have guessed I was
texting Em while also talking to her. She hung up.

Not, I hasten to say, because I hadn’t done
what I had promised and gone to the pool. No, she just couldn’t
stand it when the person she was trying to talk to was distracted
by texts arriving at the same time and getting muddled about who
she was speaking to or texting. So much for multi-tasking. Anyway,
at least her going meant I could focus on Em’s texts. They needed
focusing on. They were

often hard to interpret.

‘
You mean he noticed I
wasn’t there?!’ I texted back.

Emma replied somewhat
enigmatically, ‘B thr nxt tme. K?’

I went off into a brief romantic daze. With
the revelation that Troy had noted my absence even the mirrors were
fleetingly forgotten.

And then Em went silent as well. She can’t
stand not getting instant replies.

Strange things happen

As well as missing the company of my best
friends two days in a row (I wished I could have told them about
the mirrors but how could I?) I suddenly began to pine for a sight
or sound of Troy. Had he really asked about me or had Em just
concocted a story to make sure I’d didn’t stand them up next
time?

If it were true, then what did it mean? Was
Troy really interested in me or was this just Em’s fancy? Maybe he
had been asking after me but only out of polite interest. He would
have seen us together - our trio was often together - unless he had
a vision impairment as well as a speech impediment (speaking some
words backwards, I mean,

although I understood this
was by choice, not design.) On the other hand maybe he’d asked
about my absence (
if
he’d asked) because he was keen on Em and was using me as an
excuse to talk to her. After all, she was far better looking than
me.

This was getting way too complicated so I
told myself to forget about it. For now at least. I had a

far more complicated, and
at least equally com-pelling, thing to think about - the pictures
I’d seen in the mirrors (remember them?). They had
created

more than enough complexity in my life to be
going on with.

After a while, my mobile rang again. Who was
it this time?

Greeks bearing gifts

‘Hello?’ I said.

‘
Snehta taht si,
yeh?’

‘
What!’

‘
Snehta taht si, dias
I.’

‘
Pervert,’ I screamed into
the phone before hanging up. That was the last straw. I
contem-plated telling Dad what had just happened. Perhaps he’d ring
the police and get them to track the call. Then the phone rang
again.

‘
Don’t hang up again. It’s
only me, Troy.’

My first thought was that the weirdness
of

this - Troy ringing me - was almost enough
to prove that séances and magic mirrors were for real.

Be calm, I told myself. Rationalise. ‘Oh,
Troy, hi!’

My second thought . . .
how the hell did Troy know I’d hung up on the previous caller?
Unless Troy had been said previous caller!

‘
Was that you
before?’

‘
Yeah, sorry.’

‘
What on earth were you
saying? It sounded . . . well . . . it sounded Greek to
me.’

‘
Sorry,’ he said again.
‘I’m not a pervert, honestly.’

My face went as red as Harry’s had done
during

his struggle with the straitjacket. ‘I
didn’t know it was you . . . tell me what were you saying? . . .
and

why are you ringing me? How did you get
my

number?’

‘
I said, “Hey, is that
Athens?” And then I said, “I said, is that Athens?” I said it
backwards. I sometimes do that.’

‘
So I heard,’ I admitted.
‘Why?’

‘
Just for fun,’ Troy said.
(Definitely not an impairment, then.) ‘And because I can. It’s not
very easy for most people you know.’

‘
Isn’t it?’

‘
No, usually you have to
stop and think about it. Write it down, even. I don’t have to do
either. It seems to come naturally.’

‘
Right,’ I said, thinking
that this conversation was getting more surreal by the
second.

‘
Yadot pu wohs t’ndid
uoy?’

‘
Huh?’ It was most unlike
me to be lost for words. Conversing in reverse??? How bizarre was
that?

‘
See, it’s not easy.
Otherwise you’d already have worked out what I said.’

‘
Please, just tell
me?’

Troy sighed, sounding
hurt. I wished I could have taken him seriously (I mean, not only
had my dream phone call come true - Troy had
rung
me;
Troy
had rung me - and now I had his
number captive on my phone) but, honestly, I had far more serious
things on my mind than the pros and cons of backwards
conversation.

‘
You didn’t show up today.
At the pool. Em and Rach didn’t know, weren’t sure, you know . . .
they felt a bit deirrow . . . I mean, worried. Thought if I gave
you a call, you might say what

was really . . . I mean . . .’

‘
You mean they thought I
was holding out on

them. Lying to them about why I wasn’t
there.’

‘
Like I said, they were
deir . . . worried. Said it wasn’t like you not to turn up as
agreed.’

‘
Who are the liars?' I
said, more to myself than to Troy.

‘
Tahw?’

I didn’t wait for a translation. ‘Did you
ask after me or not?’ I said.

‘
When?’

‘
At the pool?’

‘
No,’ said Troy. ‘Why
should I have?’

‘
Em said you
did.’

‘
I didn’t. Why would she
have said that?’

‘
You’re either extremely
duplicitous or very stupid,’ I said. ‘Obviously so I’d spill the
beans to you when you rang. When they got you to ring. So you could
pass on whatever was supposedly wrong with me to my friends who
think I’m a liar.’

While I was working up a
sweat about the situation another part of me - the rationalising
part - was reminding me, well, you didn’t exactly tell your bestest
friends the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, did
you Athens? Can you blame them for roping in an innocent bystander
(named Troy) into trying to find out the truth for them? On the
other hand, Em had lied through her teeth to me, homing in on my
greatest vulnerability. My romantic dream-life shattered, much as I
would have liked to shatter all of Laurie and Iris’s damnable
mirrors! And my name, my unfortunate name Athens, had just received
another battering. In backwards language it had become
Snehta
!

My brain must have gone into overdrive.
‘Fossip!’ I said to Troy, before pressing the off

button.

The Houdini Effect

(It’s about time I ‘explained’ the title of
my story.)

My phone in idle mode once more, I lay back
down. But this time I didn’t sleep. No way could I sleep. All sorts
of confused and confusing thoughts - not least my disappointment in
Troy (what a pea-brain I had been about that boy!) - tangled around
in my head, keeping me wide awake. I wanted to, but I couldn’t
escape from my thoughts.

My need to escape.
Yes,
exactly
. I
gave what some writers would have called a ‘wry smile.’ I decided
to call this need I was feeling The Houdini Effect. (It turned out
to be exactly the same phrase Harry later gave to the name of his
talent quest illusion. Coincidence, or what?) My need to escape had
suddenly become as great as Harry’s - whichever Harry you choose to
choose.

I picked up Harry’s (our Harry’s) Houdini
book, which I had so far neglected. I blew off the dust, flicked
through the first few pages and then some more. I was surprised. It
was actually interesting. I turned back to the start of the book
and for a while I read, losing myself in the story.

I’d almost forgotten how wonderful an escape
a good book could be.

And I had Harry to thank for it.

Assistant

Upon waking I felt hungry (food is essential
to clear thinking) so I got up and went to the kitchen.

As I returned from the kitchen past Harry’s
room, sandwich in hand, back to my own safe space I

saw the object of his past affection, viz.
the straitjacket. It looked as if he had squashed the thing up (as
much as it could be squashed) and hurled it into a corner. Clear
evidence that Harry had finally given up on it.

Harry himself was sitting
in a tight knot on the edge of his bed almost as if he was still
con-strained in the straitjacket. I paused. At that moment I felt
sorry for Harry even though I couldn’t work out exactly why.
Sympathy for my little brother was not an emotion I experienced
very often but at that point I felt a little differently towards
him. More kindly. Undoubtedly because of how unsettled I myself was
feeling. My sympathetic response turned out to be a big
mistake.

‘
Sorry about what I said
before,’ I stopped to say to him. ‘I’m sure it wasn’t your fault.
You can still do it, the thing with the straitjacket.’

‘
No I can’t,’ said Harry.
‘You were right, I am a loser.’

‘
I never called you a
loser.’

‘
Might as well have,’ he
muttered. ‘The fact is, I should never have entered the
competition.’

This sounded a much too serious reaction to
what was basically a simple problem (with a simple solution). If
Harry had any idea of the things that had suddenly begun bugging me
right now . . . well, anyway, I thought I would call his

bluff. ‘If you really mean that, then it’s
not too late to pull out, is it?’

Harry shook his head. ‘I wish I could but it
is way too late for that. I’ve got my entry number and