The Art of Disappearing by Ivy Pochoda (top non fiction books of all time TXT) 📗

the boys would be turning her way in a couple of years, when they got bored with the clones who are the focus of early teenage affection.” Toby draped an arm over my shoulder and looked at the sky as he talked. “Oddly, Madeline was interested in magic. I showed her only the little things—flowers and vases, silk scarves and card tricks. And she liked them. Every day she’d ask what surprise I had in store for her. Of course, most of my surprises were small gifts in disguise—candy, bracelets, stuff like that. So her interest was partly material.” Toby shook his head. “I never learned when to stop. I still haven’t. The kids in school were really getting on my case. They laughed at me and lumped me in with the math geeks and role-playing game misfits. I had a feeling that Madeline might soon see things their way. Instead of playing it cool, I upped the ante. We were lab partners in biology class, the only class I really enjoyed. At the back of the room, they had all these reptiles in formaldehyde. They must have been twenty or thirty years old. I found them intriguing, but they terrified Madeline. She was the kind of girl who got an excuse note from her parents on the days we were due to dissect something.”

“That sounds familiar.”

“Growing up with a father who was an anatomist, I was the opposite. I couldn’t wait to get inside a piglet or a frog to see how everything worked.”

“I can imagine that.”

“So Madeline and I were in the back of the lab, cataloging fossils. She couldn’t take her eyes off the formaldehyde animals. She said she felt them watching her. She said they were making her sick. So I—”

“You didn’t.”

Toby nodded. “Before I knew what I was doing, I’d transformed one of the small preserved turtles into a live animal. Madeline screamed. Everyone was staring at me with these expressions that were both condescending and terrified. She would not stop screaming. I tried to explain that it was only a trick. No one listened. The whole school rose to her defense, to protect her from a freak like me. As if I had done this to scare her. Within a month, she was on the arm of some baseball player, and I had lost my last friend.”

“But gained a turtle.”

“True. If I’d stuck to my blocks, things would be easier.”

I shook my head. “You’d be dating homecoming queens, and where would I be?”

“That day in the lab, I realized that all I’d ever have is magic. When I got home, I lay in bed, unable to stop my tricks. I conjured until I blocked out the jeering voices. I conjured a whole world to replace the one I was cut off from.” The flashing lights from the carnival danced across Toby’s face. “But then I began to see my magic differently. I mean, I transformed a nasty, preserved turtle into a live creature. What could my classmates do?”

“Nothing like that.”

“Nope. So even if it meant being the ultimate outsider—”

“A dangerous freak.”

Toby laughed. “Yes, almost that. Even if that’s what it took, I was going to keep exploring this world.”

“It’s a great place.”

“Better now,” Toby said, pulling me tighter.

“You never tell me stories,” I said, hoping for another.

“My stories are all the same.”

We had arrived at the foot of an enormous, gaudy Ferris wheel in the middle of the fair. We looked up at the wheel circling through the nighttime sky.

“Shall we?” Toby’s face brightened as he led me toward the ticket taker. A brusque man with fingerless gloves ushered us into one of the compartments and dropped the safety bar. The flashing lights encircling our carriage began to dance as we left the ground. I looked down to see the carnival recede.

“This is better,” Toby said.

“What is better?”

“It feels safer up here.”

We rose toward the pinnacle of the ride. The wheel moved slowly, stopping to let on more passengers. When we reached the top, it shuddered and stood still.

As we fell, Toby began to talk. The words tumbled from his mouth. “It was so quick,” he said, raising his voice over the swirling carnival noise. “I heard the bullet. Then I have only a split second to transform it. It’s not difficult, but the timing must be perfect. My mind must be still.”

My thoughts flashed back to Eva standing in the audience, her presence perhaps clouding Toby’s concentration.

We passed the lowest point of the ride and began to ascend.

“I felt her behind me. How could I have been fooled by that costume? You designed it well, I guess. Conceals people. Isn’t that what is required to work in Vegas? Pretending to be someone else. A different someone to everyone. Well, it worked, and I chose her. And that was my mistake.”

“You should have chosen me,” I said.

Toby looked up as we began to rise. “No. I never mix love with magic.”

We reached the top of the ride. I braced myself for the stomach-lifting fall. “I could feel her behind me. I didn’t want to acknowledge her. A second mistake. I should have presented her to the audience, made a big deal. I guess I was arrogant. And angry. Her tension was distracting. I could feel her eyes boring into me.”

We passed the bottom of the ride once more and heard an exhilarated whoop from another passenger.

“She jumped in front of me.” He paused. “The reverberation was the worst part. It shocked my whole body. A wall had been thrown up in front of my magic. There were no pathways or tunnels through which I could undo what just happened.” Toby closed his eyes. “I could feel her life pouring out onto the table. Everything was spinning, but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even be sick or shout.” He paused again. “It was a sick combination of mortality and failure. And then she was gone.”

We were at the top once more, looking over a maze