Pennybaker School Is Revolting, стр. 8
Rudy was my grandpa, and he was a magician. When he died, Grandma Jo gave his magic trunk to me because she knew how much I liked watching him perform. In the bottom of his trunk, I’d found a bunch of chemicals and instructions on how to use those chemicals to perform science tricks. Sort of like Philadelphus Philadelphia and his alchemy.
Grandpa Rudy’s magic trunk was what had landed me at Pennybaker School, after I turned some pennies silver. It was just a reaction between copper, zinc, and sodium hydroxide, but Mom was convinced I was a genius and sent me off to be with other geniuses. So when it came down to it, this whole dancing situation was Grandpa Rudy’s fault.
“It’s just time for me to focus on being a granny, Thomas,” Grandma Jo said. She started pulling the TV tray back in front of her. Two cards fell off. I bent down to pick them up for her. “Besides, there are some really great shows on TV nowadays. Today I learned how to bake pumpkin pull-apart bread and get bloodstains out of carpet. Of course, only one of those will be handy for me to know.” She smiled, patted me on the head, and went back to her game.
It wasn’t until I was all the way upstairs and hanging up my costume that I realized she had never specified which one.
TRICK #5
LOADED LEVITATION
I still wasn’t sure if I was on Team Mom or Team Grandma Jo, but my conversation with Grandma Jo had reminded me of something. After I hung up my clothes, I dropped to my knees and pulled Grandpa Rudy’s old trunk out from under my bed.
I opened it and found Bill’s food dish. Bill was Grandpa Rudy’s rabbit. One day, Grandpa Rudy put Bill in a hat, and he never came out again. We suspected he had hopped away during the show, but Grandpa Rudy could never let his dish go, just in case Bill was in another dimension and would return wanting dinner. I guess traveling between dimensions could make a rabbit pretty hungry.
I pawed through the trunk, carefully setting aside the carnival bottles and linking rings and the coin you could bite right through, and finally found the tiny reporter’s notebook that Grandpa Rudy had filled with lists of tricks. I remembered all of them, down to the very last breakaway fan. I ran my finger down the list until I found what I was looking for.
“Levitation,” I whispered, tapping the paper.
According to Grandpa Rudy’s chicken scratch, levitation was one of his easiest tricks, and he could do it a bunch of ways. He could make his assistant, Irene, float above a table. He could make a pencil lift out of someone’s pocket and drift to his hand. And he could even make himself levitate while standing up.
In other words, he could make it look like he was hovering in the air, like a leaf. Or a feather. Or … a dancer.
It was a long shot. Sissy wasn’t a genius, but she was probably close enough to know the difference between hovering and dancing.
Still, it was worth a try. If Chip and I could pull off the greatest disappearing-head trick of all time, like we’d done with the Heirmauser head, I could pull off a floating-dance trick.
Besides, whenever Grandpa Rudy did the levitation thing, it seriously weirded people out. And if I couldn’t get people to believe I was dancing, I could distract them long enough not to have to do it. Maybe if I rolled my eyes around in my head and let my tongue hang out and a little bit of drool drop down, people would get scared enough that Coach Abel would have to cancel the dancing unit altogether.
Yep. Definitely worth a try.
I worked on levitating until Mom called me down for dinner.
“What on earth were you doing up there?” she asked when I got to the kitchen.
“Hey, pal,” Dad said at the same time. He’d just gotten home from work and hadn’t changed out of his work clothes yet.
“Hey, Dad,” I said, rubbing my elbow. “Sorry, Mom, I was working on something.”
“You were crashing around like a scared buffalo,” Erma said, scooting in her chair. “Crash, boom, mooo.”
“Sounds exciting,” Grandma Jo said. She scooped a big spoonful of corn onto her plate.
Erma giggled. “Scared buffalos aren’t exciting.”
“They are if you’re in their way,” Grandma Jo said. I avoided her eyes. I was the only one in the family who knew that Grandma Jo had a hobby that involved being in the way of big animals.
Mom pointed at Grandma Jo with a spatula. “Aha! I knew it! You’ve been scaring buffalo!”
“Are you even listening to yourself right now?” Grandma Jo said. “Where would I get a buffalo around here?”
Mom thought about it, chewing her lip, then lowered the spatula back down onto the platter of burgers. “I suppose,” she murmured. “But if anyone could …”
“What were you working on, pal?” Dad asked, trying to change the subject.
“Oh, just doing some magic.” I said it lightly, the way you would say Oh, just watching TV or Oh, just taking a shower or Oh, just having a snack.
“What kind of magic?” Dad asked.
“Blowing things up, probably,” Erma said.
“Eat your burger, Erma,” I said.
“Make me.”
“Stop it, you two,” Mom said. “Blowing things up isn’t magic.”
Sometimes it is, I wanted to say, but I figured saying that to Mom wouldn’t be in my best interest. As it was, Mom was always worrying about things that could possibly happen.
Things That Could Possibly Happen, by Thomas Fallgrout’s Mom
You could break your leg.
You could break your neck.
You could break your leg and your neck if you don’t get off that thing right now, and I mean it, young man.
You could knock your eyeball out with pretty much anything.
You could make the whole family a laughingstock with a stunt like that.
You could regret that you even