Abby Carnelia's One and Only Magical Power (16 page)

A
BBY DIDN
'
T SLEEP WELL
her first night at super camp.

She never slept well in new places. Her pillow at home was super-hyper-ultra-mushy, so whenever she had to use a pillow that was sort of hard and tall, she couldn't get comfortable. That night, though, things were even worse because it seemed as though she had nonstop nightmares.

In the worst and last one, she dreamed that she was running around outside, under a big sky, on a huge field, with a herd of wild horses. They were all romping, playing, happy to just be alive and free, and happy that Abby was among them.

But then Abby looked up at that glorious blue sky, and she noticed something odd: a reflection that shouldn't have
been there. It was as though she were looking out through an infinite piece of curved glass. And sure enough, when she looked around, she realized that there was a gigantic glass dome, a huge transparent bubble that was slowly sinking down around the entire field.

She tried to scream, to tell all the horses that they would be trapped, but they couldn't understand her (they were horses, after all). So she ran around them, trying to shoo them away, as the glass dome sank lower and lower. It also started getting smaller and smaller, trapping them all inside.

Now she started yelling out to whoever was controlling the dome. “I'm not a horse! I'm not a horse! I'm a person! Let me go! Let me go!”

But there was no answer . . . and when she looked down at herself, she realized that it wasn't even true. She was a horse, too.

That's when she woke up, breathing hard and feeling desperate and sad.

She pressed her palms into her eyes and rubbed them. “Just a dream, just a dream, just a dream,” she said to herself. She checked the clock; breakfast was only half an hour away, so it was time to get up and get the ball rolling.

The dining hall at this camp, she discovered, wasn't a dining hall—not even a super-fancy, ultra-cushy one like at Camp Cadabra. Instead, it was a straight-ahead cafeteria,
just like the one at school except with better food and no fourth graders' artwork on the walls. It was a pretty big one, bigger than her school cafeteria, but almost everyone there was an adult. The kids all sat at a group of tables at one end of the room, where Ferd and four other helpers took charge.

“We commence at nine, so finish up,” he said. Abby was sitting with Ricky and Eliza, who were both yawning; they'd stayed up even later than she had at the welcome party. Ricky was hyper, chattering nonstop. Eliza, wearing another T-shirt the size of Louisiana, ate silently.

Ben didn't show up at all.

After breakfast, everybody handed their trays through an opening in the wall to a dishwashing crew on the other side.

“Okay, let's go, my people,” Ferd said. “New Hampshire campers, I'll take you to your first activity.”

Funny,
Abby thought.
I don't remember signing up for activities.

Ferd led Abby, Ricky, and Eliza out of the cafeteria and through two long hallways; at the end of the second one, they found Ben waiting with Candi, the pod assistant.

“Looks like you've got yourself a troublemaker,” she said with a smile. “I found this guy stumbling out of his room about ten minutes ago.”

“I overslept,” Ben said sheepishly.

“Thank you, Candi,” replied Ferd. “Ben, would you care for a Pop-Tart or something?”

“I already got him a bagel,” said Candi.

“I'm good,” Ben confirmed.

“All right then—onward to Magic Central!”

Ferd swiped his security card across the little black box by a big set of heavy double doors. They swung open, Ferd plowed ahead, and the four kids scampered to keep up.

They were marching down a long, wide, white hallway. There were doors on both sides—doors with windows so you could see inside. Other kids, led by other camp workers, were flooding into the hallway and going into different doors. It felt like the first day of a new school.

As she marched along, Abby noticed that there was a small sign next to each door that identified what was going on inside—and they blew her mind.

METAMORPHOSIS. ESP. RESTORATION. TELEPORTATION. PREDICTION. DISAPPEARANCE. INVISIBILITY. BODY MORPH.

What is this place?
Abby thought to herself.
Have they really found kids who can do all this stuff?

Ferd stopped suddenly, and Abby almost crashed into Ricky.

“Eliza, m'dear, this is you,” Ferd said. “I'll be back to pick you up at lunchtime.”

The door looked just like all the others, except that it said LEVITATION.
Well, naturally,
thought Abby.

“See you, dudes,” said Eliza with a shrug. She went inside.

Ferd moved forward about twenty feet to stop at the very next door. “Ricky, this would be you.”

Ricky read the sign on the door out loud. “WEATHER PHENOMENA?” he said.

Ferd shrugged. “Well, we couldn't figure out how fogging up a window really fit into Levitation or Invisibility. Okay, young man, in you go. I'll see you at noon.”

Ricky stayed right where he was in the hallway. He looked around with an unhappy face. “But can't I stay with my friends?”

“You'll see them at lunch,” Ferd reassured him. “Go on inside. They won't bite. Trust me—fun and pleasure await.” He pulled the door open for Ricky, who looked inside, looked back at Abby and Ben, and then muttered, “Well, okay, I'll see you guys.” He turned and went inside.

Ferd let the door close gently, then turned to Ben and Abby. “And you youngsters are right over here.”

He marched them to the end of the hallway and stopped in front of a door labeled TELEKINESIS.

“What's that?” asked Abby. “Tele-kine-sis? It sounds like a disease.”

“No, it's cool,” Ben reassured her. “It's called telekin-ee-sis. Moving things with your mind.”

“And that's pretty much your specialty, no?” said Ferd. He opened the door for them. “This is you. Have a blast.”

Abby stood in the doorway, peering into the room. It looked like a science fair, a kitchen, a magic shop, and somebody's basement playroom, all in one.

She could see broad tables surrounded by stools. Blackboards and whiteboards on the walls. Video cameras in all four corners of the ceiling. Sinks and cabinets everywhere. Cardboard boxes and plastic milk crates full of stuff. Tripods holding cameras, tubes, and stuff she couldn't even identify.

“You must be Abigail and Benjamin,” said a little bald guy in a white button-down shirt. As he trundled up to them, Abby could see that he was actually shorter than Ben. “Now the question is, which one of you is Abigail, and which is Benjamin?”

He looked from Abby's face to Ben's, the light reflecting off his glasses.

“That's a joke, folks. A little humor to lighten up the moment. No harm done. I'm Monty. I run this lab. Come on in and meet everyone.”

Lab?

Abby shot a glance at Ben. He was wearing an expression that said, “Is he for real?”

Monty the oddball was leading them to the center of the room, where two other kids were waiting with three other counselors, or teachers, or zookeepers, or whatever they were.

“The troops have arrived,” Monty told his adult pals.

He introduced Abby and Ben to the others. Abby was happy to see that one of the other two kids in her group was Tabor, the kid from Hungary who could make a piece of paper fall off the edge of a table.
Of course he's in Telekinesis,
she thought.
He can't really move stuff with his mind—he moves stuff by bending his thumb—but close enough.

The other kid was Reggie, a scrawny kid from Oklahoma who said he could make apple juice flow uphill.

“Really? That's so cool!” Ben said when he heard.

“It's actually not that cool,” Reggie replied with a shrug. “It only goes up a tiny bit, and only if the angle isn't very big. Like if you tip up a cafeteria tray by putting a gummy bear under one end. Much steeper than that, and I can't get it to do anything.”

At that moment, the door opened and a familiar blond head popped in. It was Phil Shutter, clutching, as always, a clipboard. He opened his mouth, and Kermit the Frog's voice came out.

“Okeydoke, folks! Sorry if I'm tardy; I've got a lot of rooms to visit,” he began, approaching the group in the middle of the room. 174

“I just wanted to drop in and, you know, help you kick off the day's activities. And I hope you don't mind if I get just a tad bit serious for a moment.” He took off his glasses, breathed on each lens to fog it up, and then wiped them with a white handkerchief.

“As you know, very few campers were selected to join us at this facility. Yes, it's an honor for you to be chosen, and you should be proud; but the greater honor is ours. Because the shepherds in this room—you might call them counselors, but we call them shepherds—have devoted their lives to exploring the boundaries of magic and science. I don't believe there's anyone else in the country who's better qualified to help you find out more about your abilities. What makes them tick, how to make them grow, how to help them become more powerful. And that's something we'd all like, right?”

A couple of the kids made polite “uh-huh” noises.

“In the next few days, we're going to lavish love and attention on you, in a way that I'll bet nobody's ever done before. We want you to feel as special as I'm certain you are. And in return, all I ask is that you give our shepherds your complete cooperation. We're all in this together, gang. Any questions?”

Yeah, a million,
Abby thought.
I just don't know where to begin.

“All-righty, then,” Phil concluded. “Have a great morning.” He turned on his heel and rushed out.

“All right, let's dig in,” announced Monty, taking charge. “Benjamin, you'll be with Dr. Lansinger. She'll be your shepherd. Shake hands and say hello.” Ben walked over to the lady with her hair in a bun and shook hands.

“Tabor, meet Dr. Davis—Dr. Davis, this is Tabor. Reggie, your shepherd is Dr. Wright here. And Abigail, you lucky girl, you're going to be stuck with me. Put 'er there.”

He stuck out his bony hand. Abby shook it weakly.

“I understand you've got a certain affinity for
eggs,
am I right?”

Monty grinned his tight little grin and walked Abby over to a table at the side of the room. Her jaw dropped.

“What's all this?” she said. Of course, she could see perfectly well what it was: a little farmer's market of eggs. But not just white, regular, chicken eggs. Little blue robin's eggs. Big brown eggs. Smaller tan eggs. Tiny speckled ones. Even two huge eggs—ostrich, maybe.

“Well, our first job is to find the limits of your power,” Monty began. “To find out just how far your skills can be expanded. I shall be by your side—the lucky shepherd who gets to see your special abilities blossom and grow!”

It was all Abby could do to understand what was happening; there was no time to figure out how she felt about it.

Monty sat down on one of the stools and opened a tiny
laptop, no larger than a paperback book. “We have two sets of everything here: your raw eggs, in the left-hand collection, and your hard-boiled, on the right. What do you say we begin with something that we know works well—the chicken's egg, hard-boiled?”

He reached over, plucked one out of its box, and set it on the table in front of her. And all of a sudden, he grew weirdly shy. “I, ah—I have to admit, Abigail, that I have not actually witnessed this power of yours myself. So it would be a great honor if you could, you know, ah . . . demonstrate.”

“I actually prefer Abby,” she said.

“I'm sorry?”

“Nobody calls me Abigail unless it's my mom and she's mad.”

“Oh-ho! Yes, yes of course. Abby it is, and Abby it shall be. Forgive me. Abby. Yes. All right, then. Shall we begin?” And he gestured toward the hard-boiled egg on the table.

Abby sighed, reached up to her earlobes, and tugged them just enough to make the egg spin a few times.

“That's it,” she said. “That's all it is.”

“Correction,” said Monty, tapping away on his computer. “That's all it is
so far.
Now we try . . .
this!”

He snatched the egg away with his hand, then grabbed
a new one from the left-side pile. “And now: the uncooked chicken's egg. Again, if you please.”

“It won't work,” Abby said. “I've tried it.”

“Please—would you?” Monty gestured toward the egg.

Abby looked at the new egg and tugged her ears again. The egg did nothing.

“Fascinating,” Monty said, typing. “It appears that cooking the egg affects its density and mass in such a way as to facilitate your influence. Yes. Yes.”

He looked up. “All right then, moving on.” He put the raw egg back in its box and put a tiny speckled one on the table. “Quail's egg.” He tapped away on his keyboard.

Abby glanced around. She could see Ben sitting across the room, showing his key-flipping trick to his “shepherd,” over and over again. By the window, Tabor was occupied the same way. His shepherd, a man with a wide face and bumpy skin, would balance a piece of paper or a card on the edge of the table, and Tabor would try to make it fall to the floor. And Reggie from Oklahoma was busily trying to make apple juice run uphill.

Monty cleared his throat. “Quail's egg. Shall we begin?”

Abby nodded and tried to make it spin. She couldn't.

She couldn't make the robin's egg spin, either. Or the finch egg. Or the sparrow egg. And definitely not the ostrich egg.

And that's how the morning went. Monty was always polite, always respectful, but Abby first grew bored and then impatient. Monty and the other shepherds seemed to be a lot more interested in the kids' dumb little powers than the kids were themselves.