When Friendship Followed Me Home by Paul Griffin Page B

it’s just, I don’t know, your mom dies, and you’re worried about me?”
    â€œNo, not worried—totally not. Just seeing if, like, you’re feeling good. You know.”
    â€œDon’t worry about me. I don’t like to lose.”
    â€œI know.”
    â€œYou better. My good numbers are up, the bad numbers are down. I’m awesome. So are you. Flip’s more awesome than both of us. We are a trio of terrificness. Yeah.” Suddenly she pulled me off the boardwalk toward the street. “Frick it,” she said. “It’s time for you to meet the one and only Mercurious Raines. C’mon Flip!”

17
    THE LABORATORY OF MERCURIOUS RAINES
    He rented office space in a church basement. The entrance was a red door with black metal hinges. Gothic letters spelled out:
    THE LABORATORY OF MERCURIOUS RAINES
    ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK . . .
    (MAGIC LESSONS BY APPOINTMENT)
    â€œYou’ve really never heard of him?” Halley said. “He’s like the king of the bar mitzvah circuit. He does stuff in Manhattan too.” She pushed on the door and it
creeeeaked
. Flip pawed at my leg to be picked up.
    The music was blaring,
Fantasia, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.
The walls were like the ones at the library, silkscreened with giant pictures. There were Saturn and the moon, and then the Halo Galaxy, and burning bright across the ceiling, Halley’s Comet.
    A few parents watched from the back. Three little kidssat in folding chairs and watched a fourth learn a trick from a man in a sparkly purple sweat suit and a white cape. He looked maybe forty. He wore a silver sombrero. His hair was long and pulled back in a ponytail. His goatee was a little long too. Mercurious Raines wore gold basketball sneakers that were so shiny I felt like I was looking into the sun. He knelt on one knee next to the kid onstage and patted the kid’s back.
    â€œGo ahead,” he said.
    The kid frowned. He snapped his fingers, and a world globe the size of a basketball materialized, spinning on his fingertip. “No way,” the kid said. “I did that?”
    â€œ
You
did,” Mercurious Raines said.
    â€œI
did
it, Mom,” the kid said.
    Halley elbowed me.
    â€œYou have sharp elbows,” I whispered.
    â€œYou have fantastically sensitive ribs,” she said.
    After the class Halley introduced me and Flip to her dad. “Not a big magic fan, I hear, Ben?”
    â€œHow’d you do that thing with the globe?” I said. “Or is this one of those ‘A great magician never reveals his secrets’?”
    â€œOh, I think a true magician shares all the magic he can,” he said. “Give me a minute to make a phone call, and then I’ll show you the globe illusion.” He stepped into a smaller room where he had his desk and closed the door most of the way.
    â€œSee?” Halley said. “He’s not some evil warlock, right?”
    â€œHe’s nice.”
    â€œHalley, Ben, can you guys help me for a sec?” Mr. Lorentz called from behind his office door. “I can’t find my phone. I swear, if my head wasn’t attached to my shoulders, I’d lose that too.”
    I pushed through the door. Mr. Lorentz was standing on the far side of the room, or most of him was. His head was gone.
    It was on the other side of the room, on his desk. It said, “Oh wait, there it is.” And then back on the far side of the room, his headless body pulled the phone from his back pocket. The headless body crossed to the desk and held the phone to Mr. Lorentz’s bodiless head. The head said to the body, “Would you mind dialing for me?”
    Halley was cracking up and Flip sprinted circles around the headless body. I pulled out my inhaler and sucked in a double shot.
    The headless body stepped toward me, and Mr. Lorentz’s head was back on his shoulders. “Ben, it’s just mirrors and video projection, son,”