Magic School was a scam. It was also my last resort. If things didn’t turn around, I’d have to come up with a new last resort. Or else, become both disciple and tutor.
Before I enrolled, I hadn’t heard of anyone besides Houdini, but in him, I saw all I needed to see. How else can I put it? It was magic.
I didn’t care so much for reality anyway—at least the one that was my life—and I was prepared to be profoundly irrational in my approach to fixing it.
When are we going to get our female Houdini? I demanded, justifying my enrollment to my ex-boyfriend over the phone.
I knew I didn’t need a reason. I was rich from my last career. I could do whatever I wanted except talk to him without an excuse. His advice about my situation: Stop calling.
After that, I had nobody to turn to. I owned a small home outside the city—outside of the world, it felt. My neighbor and I used to get along alright. Then she got struck by lightening and changed completely. She started rolling out her trash bins at two in the morning with no clothes on. She kept insinuating the neighborhood Safeway was run by extraterrestrials.
I could’ve let it all slide if she hadn’t stolen my package. It was a very important, very classified package, and she took it straight from my doorstep.
I’d gotten a notification about its delivery while I was in class. That day, the teacher had locked one of us aspiring magicians in a glass box of rising water, but the trick exit wasn’t working. The teacher draped a cloth over the glass and after she unveiled it, he was still in there, neck-deep in water and sliding his foot back and forth along the emergency button at the bottom of the box.
The teacher yelled for the student to duck and threw a chair at the top of the glass. The box shattered and cut a long wound across the student’s face. The stage flooded and I walked home with soggy feet, resolving to quit the school. When I got back, my package was missing.
In a way, it worked out. Without school, I had extra time to spy on my neighbor. Once I was sure she was the culprit, I carried out my plan.
The first step was to wait until she got to her garage, where she went every night for reasons unknown to me, and then I struck. I crawled in through the doggy door at the side of the house and stalked quietly toward the guest room in the back, where I’d deduced my package was hidden.
I wore a sleek, black, full-cover bodysuit and my lucky socks. I wore a black bandit mask and carried a rope, just in case.
The room smelled like old people and artificial honey. I slid the closet doors open and started digging. Several minutes came and went before I saw my package at the top of her closet.
I knocked the box down with a coat hanger and checked the contents to be sure. It was there. The interior wrapping hadn’t even been opened. I figured as much—she wouldn’t have known what to do with it anyway.
By the time I’d resealed the box, it was too late. The guest door flew open and there she stood, my luckless neighbor, wearing nothing but an aluminum underwear set.
She pointed at me and screamed, YOU’RE ONE OF THEM!
Like any good magician, I created a diversion. I dragged the comforter from the guest bed and threw it up at the ceiling with all my strength. In the air, the quilted florals hung expansive and yellow like the backyard of my childhood home. Before it dropped, I darted across the room, shimmied the window open, slid out into a bush, and ran toward my house.
It took only ten minutes to collect the essentials, and then I was off.
I called my ex-boyfriend from the road. He didn’t pick up so I left a voicemail. I told him Magic School had worked out after all, and that he’d see me again someday. Sometime soon.
