The Wonder Brothers, page 12
Everyone seemed to be enjoying Nathan’s party tricks so much, I decided to step things up a little. So I did my extra-special trick without even practising or telling them what I was going to do.
You should never ever do that.
I should have remembered what Karabas the Modest said in the very first chapter of My Secrets Revealed:
There’s a time and a place for magic. If you’re sitting in a theatre and I open a box to reveal a fierce tiger, you might say, ‘Good heavens, a fierce tiger!’
If, on the other hand, you are sitting on a train and I open a box to release a fierce tiger, you would be more likely to shout for help.
Always, always read the room.
Maybe I hadn’t remembered that bit of My Secrets Revealed but I soon found out how true it was.
As soon as I did the trick there was chaos. I probably looked a bit spooky – a girl standing there in the candlelight – and then I made this impossible thing happen. The headscarf lady dropped to her knees shouting, ‘Madre de Dios, ayúdanos!’ and started crossing herself over and over. A couple of people ran away into the night.
CAPTAIN JIMENEZ:
At this point, the boy, Nathan, tried to get the girl, Middy, to show me her trick. I said that wouldn’t be necessary. He said, ‘Maybe later.’ I said, ‘Maybe.’
He said, ‘When we perform that trick on-stage, here in Las Vegas in front of some of the greatest magicians in the world, you’ll see it then.’
I said, ‘I highly doubt that.’
MIDDY:
Then a small nun barged into the group shouting, ‘Why are you scaring Señora Torres! Her heart is very bad. She could be dead any minute. What did you do? I will call the police.’
She pulled a mobile out of her sleeve and held it up to her furious little face, which was peeping out from under this big, flappy veil.
I wasn’t sure how to answer, so I did the trick again. I know I know, you’re not supposed to do the same trick twice. But I actually did it a lot better the second time.
Everything changed.
The nun’s face came out from under the veil. It wasn’t furious any more. She clapped her hands and said, ‘Estupendo, estupendo.’
I didn’t know what the word meant, but we understood the smile. It was the same big happy-baby smile you see whenever a trick goes right. It was the smile that Miss Khoshroo had given Nathan that day in the playground years ago.
The people who were hiding behind the font realized I was just a little English girl.
The nun said, ‘Venid. Venid conmigo. Come.’ And we followed her back through the church, along a dark corridor and into the kitchen. There were four or five nuns sitting around the table playing cards and eating Pop Tarts.. The biggest one was reading to the others by candlelight from some kind of nun book. I think she was Boss Nun. When we came in she looked up and spoke in English.
‘Well what have we here, Sister Boniface?’
‘A miracle,’ said our little nun. Then she asked me to show the others.
I said it wasn’t a miracle, just a trick.
Boss Nun said, ‘You can leave the theology to us.’ So I did it again. Honestly, it got better every time. It went really well.
All the nuns gasped, then laughed, then clapped. Except Boss Nun. She sat there with that nun book in her fist, frowning so deep her veil was nearly touching her eyebrows. ‘There’s something,’ she said, ‘missing.’
‘Like what, Sister?’
Our little nun said Boss Nun wasn’t ‘Sister’. ‘This is Mother,’ she said. ‘Mother Amelia.’
‘It’s just a trick,’ said Mother Amelia. ‘It doesn’t, you know, SAY anything. When David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty vanish, it made you think about what the world would be like without Liberty. Or when David Blaine turned a homeless man’s cup of coffee into a cup of money, that was emotional because the man needed money.’
The other nuns all agreed that that was a really emotional trick.
‘I was in floods of tears at that one,’ said Sister Boniface.
All the nuns seemed to know a lot about magic. But then I suppose they were Las Vegas nuns.
‘When my own saint – Boniface – gave poor children stones and turned them into candy,’ said Sister Boniface, ‘he was saying, You children deserve the good things in life. What is your trick SAYING?’
‘It’s saying, Look at me. I’m clever,’ said Mother Amelia. ‘That’s all.’
‘I didn’t know a trick had to say anything. I thought being magic was enough.’
‘Magic,’ said Mother Amelia, ‘is one thing. What you really need is wonder. We make our lives predictable. We forget that life is wonderful – that it’s wonderful that people thought of creating books or phones or food, or building a city in the desert. We forget. The job of magic is to remind us. For instance, why do people come and spend their money in Las Vegas? Because all their lives when they spend one dollar in a shop, they get one dollar’s worth of shopping back. In Las Vegas they are hoping that one dollar will give them a million dollars back. They spend dollar after dollar hoping that one of those dollars will give them a million dollars.’
‘Or thirty-nine million,’ said Brodie.
By now I was really wanting to quiz Mother Amelia about where she had learned so much about magic, but then the lights came on. The electricity was back!
The nuns cheered. And clapped. The fridge-freezer buzzed into life. The washing machine in the corner started up again.
‘You see,’ said Mother Amelia, ‘now we all remember that electricity is wonderful.’
There was a TV on the wall above the store cupboards. That flickered on too. When a TV comes on, you look at it. So everyone looked at the screen. But then, straight away, everyone turned round to look at Brodie. Because Brodie was on the TV. Just a photo of him, looking a bit intense.
The newsreader with eyebrows that went up and down like a fairground ride said:
‘Staff at the Camelot Casino Hotel are searching for this lucky young man. Earlier today his single-dollar stake won him four point five million dollars on the famous ‘GOLDEN OLDIE’ Mega Bucks machine, before he mysteriously ran away without his prize. This is the second time this machine has paid out big. Got to say, if I was the hotel manager, I would unplug it, but . . .’
No one was listening.
Everyone was staring at Brodie.
‘Four,’ said Mother Amelia, ‘point five,’ she went on, ‘million –’ she was finding it hard to keep talking – ‘dollars?’
‘And,’ said Sister Boniface, ‘you ran away?’
‘We’ve talked a lot about wonder,’ said Mother Amelia. ‘But what I’m wondering now is, what’s going on here?’
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
TRUST. THE. DREAM.
BRODIE:
Mother Amelia switched off the TV and told us to help ourselves to Pop Tarts. Sister Boniface blew out all the candles and chivvied everyone back into the street. Out there, the lights were punching the air and shouting their slogans again.
Nathan told the nuns all about his dream of doing magic in Las Vegas with Middy. Middy told them all about our mission to bring back the Tower.
But all I could think was . . . What just happened?
Even the nuns weren’t really listening. Sister Boniface handed Middy her mobile and told her to call her parents. But Middy didn’t know their phone number. I mean who knows anyone’s phone number?
Mother Amelia said not to worry. She’d already phoned the police. She said Las Vegas was a dangerous place at the best of times. ‘And now one of you has hit the jackpot, you’ll be targets for any kind of gnarly villain you care to name – fraudsters, confidence tricksters, kidnappers . . .’
There were lots of others. She seemed to know a lot of different types of villain.
‘But Nathan’s dream . . .’ said Middy.
‘Dreams are just dreams,’ said Mother Amelia. ‘If dreams came true, I would find myself flying up the stairs instead of climbing them.’
‘Oh!’ said Sister Boniface, ‘I have flying-up-the-stairs dreams too.’
Then they began googling the time difference between Las Vegas and Blackpool and having a conversation about whether it would be all right to contact the Blackpool police in the middle of the night.
That was the first time I’d heard anyone mention the time difference. It seemed strange to think that Mum and Dad and everyone at home were already in tomorrow, and we were in yesterday.
‘But this is our last chance to see Perplexion,’ wailed Middy.
‘So sad,’ said Sister Boniface, ‘that he’s leaving show business. All the great magicians will be there.’
‘Those tickets are a fierce price,’ said Mother Amelia.
Then everyone stopped talking. Everyone looked at me. Everyone was thinking the same thought. But I was the one who said it out loud.
‘We have four point five million dollars. So we can afford it.’
‘Exactly,’ said Nathan. ‘We were on the other side of the world. And now here we are, in the right place. We had no way of getting tickets. And now we have. You have to admit, some kind of magic is happening here. TRUST. THE. DREAM. PEOPLE.’ And being honest, I WAS beginning to trust the dream.
‘Hmmm,’ said Mother Amelia, raising one eyebrow.
Down the corridor a bell was ringing.
‘Time,’ she said, ‘for evening prayer. Then we’ll find some phone chargers so you can look up your parents’ phone numbers. Help yourselves to the Pop Tarts.’
All the nuns filed out. Nathan got up and took a big, colourful box from the shelf.
I said to him, ‘What are you doing?’
He said, ‘I’m helping myself to Pop Tarts, like she said. I’ve always wanted to try Pop Tarts.’
I said, ‘Give your head a shake, Nathan. We can’t hang around eating Pop Tarts. The police are going to be here any second. And I’ve got millions of pounds to collect.’
‘Yeah but we can’t just stroll back into the hotel. Like Mother Amelia said, your face has been on TV. Everyone knows you’re rich. You could be robbed or taken hostage or anything.’
‘We’ve got to get back in there somehow,’ said Middy. ‘The show starts soon. But how? We can’t just stroll back in.’
I said, ‘I’m the oldest. I’m in charge. I say we ARE going the Camelot. Because I have a plan.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
NO ONE MESSES WITH A NUN
NATHAN:
Going back to the Camelot Casino Hotel disguised as nuns was a cracking notion.
The safest I’ve felt in my life was walking along the
Strip in Las Vegas that evening dressed as a nun.
We did leave the nuns a thank-you note, for looking after us, also for the Pop Tarts. Then we slipped on the nun clothes and slipped out of the back door.
CAPTAIN JIMENEZ:
The girl, Middy, apologised for adding to Las Vegas’ crime statistics. ‘I’m sure you do your best Captain Jimenez,’ she said. ‘We realise that stealing nun clothes is also a crime, so we were actually adding to the crime statistics while we were trying to keep ourselves safe. Sorry about that.’
MIDDY:
It’s true. The nun disguises really worked.
No one beats up nuns. No one tries to steal stuff from nuns. Or kidnaps nuns.
No one even tries to stop nuns.
We breezed into the Camelot Casino Hotel. People said, ‘Good evening, Sisters,’ in a right friendly way. As we hurried through the casino keeping our hoods pulled down over our faces, we looked like Jedi nuns. Someone even asked us to say a prayer for them before they threw their dice.
‘I just need a five,’ he said.
I said, ‘Dear God, let this man throw a five with these dice, Amen.’
But Nathan obviously had to nun things up a bit.
‘My dear child,’ he said – to the old guy. ‘My dear child, let us pray that the Lord makes your dice land on number five and that you win loads of money and use that money to do good in the world . . .’
‘Amen,’ said the old man, but Nathan wasn’t finished.
‘That your servant . . . What’s your name? God needs to know your name?’
‘Dwayne.’
‘That your servant Dwayne’s dice come up three and two or four and one, doesn’t matter which, and that he then goes forth to help the poor people with his winnings so that—’
‘I don’t want to do that. I just want money. For a motorbike.’
‘Well, OK,’ said Nathan. ‘Amen then.’
I said, ‘Can we get moving now, Sister?’
It seemed mad to me that these people were just getting on with their cards and dice and slot machines while the very last chance to see the greatest living magician was about to start just a few yards away.
The man rolled the dice. He threw two twos, so he lost his money. Then he stepped in front of Brodie, and I thought, This is it. The End. They know who we are. But he said, ‘That didn’t work. Can I tickle this here rabbit’s paw for luck, Sister?’
He stroked Queenie’s furry paw. Threw his dice again and won most of his money back.
We got out of the casino bit, and through an archway with stone lions, and then there it was . . . the portcullis that lets you into the theatre. And on the big screen above the portcullis a sign flashed:
Perplexion . . . The Master’s Final Mystery . . . POSTPONED.
DUE TO EARTH TREMOR
Postponed. No. Postponed? After all this. Then the sign flashed again . . .
Until the Magic Hour – MIDNIGHT.
I stared at Nathan. He shrugged. ‘Trust the dream,’ he said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
POP TARTS!
MIDDY:
As soon as I knew we still had time to see Perplexion before his show, my brain started to fizz. Everything I looked at seemed to give me an idea about how to make my new trick better. And by the way, nun clothes. Nun clothes are ideal for magic. They’ve got big sleeves. Long skirts. Proper pockets. A veil. I said to Nathan, ‘We should do our act dressed up as nuns. We could call ourselves the Wonder Sisters.’
‘I can’t be a Sister,’ he said, ‘I’m a boy.’
‘Well, I’m a girl, but I’m a Wonder Brother.’
‘Can we please,’ said Brodie, ‘go to reception now and claim my four point five million dollars.’
Reception was crowded like the Blackpool Prom on the Big Switch-On night. People were pushing and shoving and shouting all around the desk.
Brodie said maybe a coach party had just arrived and they were all trying to book in. But it wasn’t that. There was something strange about the crowd. Something not very Las Vegas.
‘Kids,’ said Nathan. ‘We’ve barely seen any children since we got here, and now there’s all these kids.’
‘Boys,’ I said. ‘They’re all boys.’
This wasn’t a queue of people waiting to check in. This was a queue of mums and dads, each one of them trying to claim that their child was the one who’d put the lucky dollar in the slot, won four and a half million dollars and run away.
‘What,’ said Nathan, ‘a crowd of liars. At least we don’t have to queue with them.’
‘How come?’
‘Trust me.’
It was true. Nathan strolled right up to the desk, and people stood back to let us past. He kept saying, ‘Bless you’ to them and sometimes, quietly, ‘God forgive you.’
Behind the desk there was another woman in a Maid Marian outfit. Only this one looked more like a Maid Marian who’d had a fight with Friar Tuck in a ditch with a quarterstaff in a high wind.
‘Prithee!’ she bawled. ‘All calm thyselves right down, else I will have thee all ejected. By Sir Galahad. With a lance. You won’t like it.’
People stepped back a bit. None of their kids looked even a bit like Brodie, by the way.
Maid Marian looked at us and snarled, ‘There’s a queue, Sisters.’
‘But, child,’ said Nathan in his nun voice. He really seemed to love being a nun. ‘Know ye not who we are?’
Maid Marian looked puzzled. ‘Are you,’ she whispered, ‘staff? Are you the nuns who look after King Arthur when he’s wounded or something? Because if you are, I could use some help here. Real quick. There’s going to be a brawl.’
‘We,’ said Nathan, his voice muffled by his veil, ‘know the whereabouts of the boy who won the money.’
Maid Marian rolled her eyes. ‘There’s a hundred angry adults with a hundred kids ahead of you in the queue. Get to the back.’
‘We know something they don’t,’ said Nathan. ‘This wasn’t mentioned or shown on the TV . . .’
‘Go on.’
‘The boy. He was carrying a large rabbit, was he not?’
At last, Maid Marian looked interested.
‘Could it be,’ said Nathan, ‘this rabbit?’
He nodded at Brodie. Brodie lifted Queenie up for her to see.
‘Wait,’ said Maid Marian. She bawled at the crowd again, ‘All ye who are pushing,’ she shouted, ‘shall be defenestrated. If ye don’t know what it means, sir, I’ll happily demonstrate. You won’t like it.’
Then she said quietly. ‘See the Staff Only door over there? Go and wait in there. Help yourself to drinks and nibbles. Someone will come to confirm your identity and give you the money. Don’t run now. Don’t make a fuss. This crowd is in an ugly mood.’
So we strolled over to the Staff Only door. There was a couch, a toaster, a mini fridge and . . .
‘Pop Tarts!’ said Nathan. ‘We get to try them after all.’
‘I’ll take off my nun disguise,’ said Brodie, ‘so they can see it’s me.’
‘No, no,’ said Nathan. ‘Be careful. Let’s take no chances. We’ll just say we’ve got the boy safe somewhere. Until we’re sure we can trust them.’
