Revenge of the Invisible Boy Read online

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  SLAPPY HERE, EVERYONE.

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  SLAPPY HERE, EVERYONE.

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  SLAPPY HERE, EVERYONE.

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  EPILOGUE FROM SLAPPY

  SNEAK PEEK!

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ALSO AVAILABLE

  COPYRIGHT

  Welcome to My World.

  Yes, it’s SlappyWorld—you’re only screaming in it! Hahaha!

  It’s such a shame people don’t have words to describe me. I mean, words like brilliant and talented and good-looking don’t really do it, do they? But go ahead. Feel free to use them anyway! Hahaha.

  Do you know how smart I am?

  Of course you don’t.

  I’m so smart, the dictionary asked me to define it. Ha.

  Some people say I’m evil. That’s ridiculous. Does it mean I’m evil just because I do horrible things day and night? No way!

  Actually, I’m a nice guy. Know how nice I am? Last week, I rescued a bird that had fallen out of a tree. I carefully picked it up and carried it home.

  It was delicious! Hahaha!

  Well, I have a story for you, and naturally, it’s a scary story. The story is told by a boy named Frankie Miller. Frankie and his friends are really into magic. They love to watch magicians and perform tricks.

  Frankie is about to learn just how dangerous some magic tricks can be.

  Want to get a head start on the story? Start screaming now! Hahaha!

  I call the story Revenge of the Invisible Boy.

  It’s just one more terrifying tale from SlappyWorld.

  Have I mentioned that I hate Ari Goodwyn?

  I guess I haven’t mentioned it since I’m just starting my story.

  But I hate Ari, and you’ll soon see why.

  My name is Frankie Miller. I’m twelve. My magician name is Magic Miller. My story starts while I’m onstage in the auditorium in front of everyone at Han Solo Middle School in Barberton, Ohio.

  As you can probably tell, I like to be serious and careful and accurate and correct. Those are all important for a magician—especially for a magician who is just learning how to do dangerous tricks.

  I’m in a magic club with my friends Melody Richmond and Eduardo Martinez. And Ari. One reason I hate Ari Goodwyn is that he is not serious and careful. And there are two other things. Ari is a goof. And he’s a flake. And there’s no place for a goof or a flake when you are performing magic.

  Our magic club meets every Wednesday after school. We study the history of magic. We read about all the great magicians of the past. And we learn how to perform new tricks.

  We don’t really want Ari in our club. He makes fun of us. He messes up our tricks. He has no interest in the history of magic. He has a bad attitude. And that’s the best thing I can say about him.

  The problem is, the rec room in Ari’s basement is the only place we can meet. It’s the only place that’s big enough for us to spread out and try new tricks.

  Also, Ari’s mom makes the best chocolate chip cookies and the sweetest lemonade. She brings them downstairs for us every week and then goes back upstairs and leaves us alone.

  So, what choice do we have?

  We have to keep Ari in the club—even though we wish he’d go upstairs with his mother and leave us alone, too.

  Anyway …

  As my story starts, I’m onstage in the auditorium. Mrs. Hazy, our principal, has introduced me as Magic Miller. And I am about to perform the most difficult illusion I know.

  I am about to levitate myself off the floor.

  I’m going to appear to float and hang suspended six feet in the air.

  Of course, it’s an illusion. I can’t really float off the floor. I admit I have tried it several times when no one was watching. But I quickly learned the hard truth. I don’t have any special powers.

  Everything I do has to be a trick, an illusion.

  Some nights I dream that I can fly. In the dream, Melody, Eduardo, and I are performing a magic act onstage. We are wearing long red capes and holding magic wands. And as we end the act, our capes rise up behind us. We raise our wands in front of us. And we fly off the stage and out of the auditorium.

  The dream is so real, I think I can feel the cool wind on my face. The three of us fly—like superheroes—across the starry night sky.

  I’m always so disappointed when I wake up.

  As I said, I’m a serious, sensible guy. So I’m always surprised when my dreams are so wild, so unrealistic.

  Anyway …

  I’m about to amaze everyone in my school by levitating above the stage.

  It took a long time to set up the illusion properly.

  I have a harness strapped to my back that no one can see. The curtain behind me is black. And I have a strong black cord that stretches up from my harness. No one can see the cord because it matches the curtain.

  There is a catwalk above the stage. It’s like a metal scaffold with a wide walkway. The catwalk is hidden by the curtain.

  So no one in the audience can see that Ari is high above me. He is kneeling at the top of the catwalk.

  The black cord stretches from my harness up to the catwalk. Up there, it is coiled around a big metal wheel. You know, the kind of wheel you wrap a garden hose around.

  When Ari turns the wheel, the cord will go tight. And then, as he turns it more, the cord will lift me off the floor. It will look as if I am floating up on my own.

  Ari will pull me up at least six feet off the floor. All he has to do is hold on to the wheel. Hold it steady so I appear to float. Then he will lower me slowly to the floor as the audience claps and cheers and goes wild.

  It was hard to set up. But an easy illusion to perform.

  Melody and Eduardo were watching me from the side of the stage. Melody flashed me a thumbs-up.

  I stepped into place. I could feel the cord tugging at the harness hidden on my back. I made my announcement to the audience:

  “I will now perform the levitation trick known to only a few magicians in history,” I shouted. “Watch carefully. Without any props or devices, I will rise up from the stage and float in midair. Don’t try this at home, kids!”

  I thought that was a pretty good joke. But only a few kids laughed.

  I took a deep breath and raised my right hand. That was the signal for Ari to start pulling me up.

  I felt the cord jerk. Then a hard tug.

  And yes. Yes. The cord pulled me up. I stood straight with my hands out to my sides.

  I heard a few kids gasp as my shoes left the stage floor.

  Higher. A few inches off the floor.

  I heard shouts in the audience. A few more gasps. Some kids started to clap.

  The cord tugged hard as I rose. Two feet off the floor now. Slowly floating higher. Higher. Three feet. More.

  A hush fell over the auditorium. I glimpsed Melody and Eduardo smiling at me from the wings.

  I raised my right hand again. Ari followed my signal. He held tight, allowing me to float in place for a moment. I was at least four or five feet off the floor. One or two more feet to go.

  The audience started to clap.
I took a short bow with my head. My shoes dangled in midair.

  And then …

  I felt something go wrong.

  Was the cord loosening?

  Yes.

  My breath caught in my throat as I felt myself start to go down. Fast.

  And I opened my mouth in a frightened scream: “NOOOOOO! HELLLLLP!”

  My scream cut off as I landed hard on my belly. My breath whooshed out of my open mouth. I sprawled there, choking, struggling to breathe.

  On the catwalk above me, I heard Ari. “Ooops. My bad.”

  I knew what had happened. The wheel handle had slipped out of his hands. Or else he had just let it go.

  “My bad!” he shouted. “Sorry, Frankie. Seriously. I’m sorry.”

  Still gasping for breath, I glanced up. Ari had a grin on his face. He wasn’t sorry. Who makes an apology with a grin on his face?

  Melody and Eduardo hurried across the stage. They took my arms and helped me to my feet. Then they guided me to the wings.

  The audience was silent. I heard a few boos.

  “He ruined the trick. He made me look like a loser,” I muttered, shaking my head.

  “Ari strikes again,” Melody said.

  “He embarrassed me in front of the whole school.” I finally started to breathe normally. I gazed at Eduardo and Melody. “Do you think it was an accident?”

  “It had to be,” Eduardo said. “Ari is a creep. But he wouldn’t try to hurt you.”

  Eduardo is a nice guy, and he always wants to think nice things about people. Sometimes he’s so cheerful and kind, it gets on my nerves.

  “After he dropped you, I saw him grinning,” Melody said. “Like it was a big joke.”

  “That’s because he was embarrassed,” Eduardo insisted. “He knew he messed up. What did you expect Ari to do, Melody? Burst into tears?”

  “He didn’t have to grin,” she replied. “He grins every time he messes up. How about last week when we performed for our first kids’ birthday party? He forgot to load the flowers into our magic wands, and we stood there waving them like idiots.”

  “He just forgot,” Eduardo said.

  “But then Ari wrapped his cape around that little boy’s head and scared him to death. And the birthday boy’s mother asked us to leave.”

  “She overreacted,” Eduardo said.

  “How can you stick up for him?” Melody demanded, giving Eduardo a hard shove. “He messes up everything.”

  Eduardo shrugged. He didn’t answer.

  I rubbed my chest. My ribs were sore from the fall. “Did I ever mention that I hate him?” I said. “I wish there was some way to pay him back.”

  Melody nodded. “Yeah. I wish.”

  Melody set a tall glass pitcher filled with water down on the coffee table. “I’m going to show you an awesome new trick,” she said. “My uncle Clyde taught it to me.”

  “I thought your uncle Clyde is a barber,” I said.

  She nodded. “He is. But he does magic tricks on the side. You know. It’s his hobby.”

  Ari laughed. “Like he cuts off your ear, then magically puts it back.”

  Eduardo grinned. “I’d like to see that trick.”

  The four of us were in Ari’s basement for our weekly Magic Club meeting. Mrs. Goodwyn had already served the cookies and lemonade. Now we were sitting around the low coffee table in the middle of the rec room, settling down to business.

  Buster, Ari’s big dog, was nosing around under the food table, searching for cookie crumbs that might have dropped to the floor. I’m not a dog person. To be totally honest, I’m a little afraid of them.

  Buster must sense that. Which explains why he spends most of his time pestering me. He likes to leap on me and poke me with his huge head and lick me till my skin drips with his sticky saliva.

  Dogs know when you’re not a dog person. And then they always pick you out for special treatment.

  I’ve begged Ari several times to shut his dog upstairs. But he says that will hurt Buster’s feelings. My feelings, of course, don’t count.

  Melody likes to throw her arms around Buster’s chest and give him long hugs. But the big creature pretty much ignores her. He only has eyes for me.

  I leaned forward on the green leather couch and watched Melody arrange the tall water pitcher. Ari stood behind the couch.

  Eduardo slid off his chair and dropped to his knees at the side of the table. He ran a hand back through his straight black hair. “Are you going to pour this on somebody?”

  “Of course not,” Melody said. “It’s a really good trick.” She raised her eyes to me. “I need your baseball cap. Get it for me.”

  “Huh?” I gasped. “What are you going to do? That’s my best Yankees cap. Dad got it for me last time my family visited New York.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Just go get it,” Melody snapped. When she’s showing off a new trick, she can get pretty intense.

  Melody has red hair. And she’s tiny. I think she’s the smallest person in our class. But she’s also definitely the boldest.

  I’ve never seen her back down from an argument. And she usually wins. And she’s a terror on the soccer field. At least, that’s what other kids on the team tell me.

  I crossed the rec room and pulled my Yankees cap from my jacket pocket. Then Melody took it from me. She placed it upside down next to the pitcher of water.

  I dropped back onto the couch. “What are you going to do? Are you going to pour the water into my cap?”

  Melody nodded. “You’ve seen this trick?”

  “I’ve never seen it,” Eduardo said.

  “Can’t wait to see Frankie’s cap get soaked,” Ari chimed in.

  Melody frowned at him. “That’s not going to happen. I’m going to pour the pitcher of water into Frankie’s cap. And when I lift the cap into the air, it will be perfectly dry.”

  Ari rolled his eyes. “I’m laughing already.” He slapped the back of my head from behind. “Good luck getting a new Yankees cap, dude.”

  “No worries,” Melody said. “This trick never fails.”

  I gritted my teeth. Was my cap really going to end up perfectly dry?

  Melody reached for the handle of the water pitcher.

  But before she could lift the pitcher off the table, I heard the thud of heavy footsteps. I looked up in time to see Buster rear back on his hind legs—and leap onto the table.

  He banged the pitcher hard with his big head. It toppled over and shattered. Shards of glass flew off the tabletop. And the water splashed in a tall wave into my baseball cap.

  My cap was soaked through. I made a grab for it. But Buster shoved it to the floor with a big paw.

  “Noooooo.” I pulled the drenched cap from the floor and brushed off shards of broken glass.

  Buster dove for it. I tried to jump to my feet. But before I could move, he leaped into my lap. His fat tongue came out and he began ferociously licking my face.

  “Get him off! Get him off!” I cried. I tried to push him away with both hands. But he weighed two tons, and he was enjoying the taste of my face too much to budge.

  “Don’t push him away,” Ari said. “He’ll feel rejected.”

  Rejected?

  Finally, Eduardo tempted Buster with a dog biscuit, and the hulking beast climbed down from my lap.

  Ari slapped the back of my head again. “Buster likes you, Frankie. Weird, huh?”

  I spun around, ready to punch out Ari’s lights.

  But I’m not a violent person. I think a lot about what I’d like to do to Ari. But I would never do any of it. Partly because it would be wrong. And partly because I’m a bit of a coward. I mean, I’m not a fighter. I’m a sensible, civilized guy.

  Buster enjoyed his cookie. He sat down in the corner, probably to celebrate his total victory over me.

  We cleaned up the broken glass. Then we sat around the table and tried to restart our meeting. “I don’t want to go over the whole thing again,” I said. “But the levitation per
formance was a horrible disaster.”

  “I already apologized,” Ari said. “Can I help it if my hand slipped?”

  “Yes, you can,” I snapped.

  “I lost focus for a second,” he said. “It could happen to anyone.”

  Should I hit him now?

  “Did you see Morgan Traub’s Instagram of me on the stage floor?” I asked. “She called me Frankie Fall-Down.”

  “Derek Otis posted one, too,” Ari said. “He called you Frankie Face-First! Haha.”

  I sighed. “I’m a joke. Thanks to you, Ari, I’m a joke. Seriously. Kids look at me in the halls, and they burst out laughing.”

  “Those kids are just being mean,” Melody said, adjusting her single braid from one side to the other. “Everyone knows accidents happen. You’re not a joke, Frankie.”

  “Kids will forget,” Ari said. “You’ll only be a joke for a few more months at the most. Maybe till the end of the semester.”

  I squinted at him. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

  “Not really,” he said, and grinned that hateful grin again.

  “We have to stop talking about it,” Eduardo said. “We have to do another show to prove we’re not failures.”

  “We should stick to card tricks,” Melody said. “They’re a lot easier. And you can’t break any bones doing card tricks.”

  “You could snap your wrist,” Ari said.

  Everyone ignored him.

  “Card tricks aren’t good onstage,” I said. “The audience is too far away to see anything.”

  Ari poked me in the side. “Get up. I’ll show you a good trick we can do.”

  “Huh?” I gazed at him. “What kind of trick?”

  “Come here. I’ll show you,” he said. He pulled me to my feet. Then he led me across the room to his dad’s exercise equipment. “Frankie, grab the bar up there.”

  I hesitated. “That bar? Why?”

  “My dad does fifty chin-ups on it every morning,” Ari said. “But you don’t have to do any lifts. I’m going to show you a good trick. Grab the bar.”

  I glanced back. Melody and Eduardo hadn’t moved. They were watching from across the room.

  I decided to play along. Maybe Ari really did have a good trick.

  I stood on tiptoes, reached high, and grabbed the metal bar with both hands. “Now what?”