Lunchtime the next day. I was sitting at a concrete table by the canteen with my brother, Jake, eating a salad sandwich that had lost the will to live. Jake had been in Miss Smith’s class, sitting way off to the side by himself, but he hadn’t said anything during my . . . I was gonna say ‘performance’, but that would be wrong. ‘Embarrassment’ is probably the right word. His silence wasn’t support though. Jake rarely says anything at the best of times.

Some kid plopped himself down opposite me. Well, I say kid, but he must’ve been Year Eleven or Twelve. Tall and attractive in a way that’s difficult to explain. Brown eyes, a mouth that was slightly lopsided, nose just a little too broad. If you shifted his features a little, he’d be good-looking, but boring. We stared at each other for a moment. I took a bite of my sandwich and instantly regretted it.

‘Can I help you?’ I asked.

He put his hand across the table, presumably for me to shake it. I didn’t.

‘You don’t know me,’ he said. I thought about telling him I’d worked that out already, but he didn’t give me the chance. ‘My name is Simon, but my friends call me Si.’

‘Pleased to meet you, Simon,’ I lied. ‘I’m Grace, and I don’t have any friends. But if I did, they’d call me Grace.’

He smiled.

‘I heard about your interesting performance in class yesterday,’ he said.

‘Interesting – no. Performance – no. Other than that, you’ve nailed it.’

He scratched behind an ear.

‘What did you think about Miss Smith’s Year Nine class?’

‘If the school was a piece of underwear, they’d be the skidmark on it.’

He laughed and it really suited him. There was silence for a few seconds.

‘Tell me something,’ I said finally. ‘How did you hear about it?’

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘My mother. She’s Miss Smith’s classroom assistant. Told me all about it last night. Couldn’t stop laughing.’

‘Very professional,’ I said. ‘It’s good to know staff can be discreet and not embarrass students by blurting out confidential stuff to other students.’ I picked up the rest of my sandwich and then dropped it back on the table. ‘I can’t tell you how honoured I am to be the subject of ridicule in your house.’

His face went a number of shades of red.

‘Oh no,’ he spluttered. ‘She wasn’t laughing at you. She was laughing at the kids in the class. She thought you were . . . She thought . . . I mean . . .’

I didn’t say anything. To be honest, I was enjoying his discomfort.

‘Will you show me some tricks?’ he said after another long silence.

‘In need of a good laugh?’ I asked.

‘No. Seriously. I’m interested, that’s all. Tricks fascinate me.’

I decided to let him off the hook. ‘I do magic,’ I replied. ‘Tricks are for amateurs.’

He held up his hands in surrender.

‘Okay. Will you show me some magic, Grace?’ He paused for a moment. ‘Please?’

I ran through the possibilities. I had a deck of cards in my schoolbag. Hell, I had three. But, for some reason, I thought a bit of purely visual magic would be better. Why not? And I could do this one with my eyes shut.

‘Have you got a coin?’ I asked. ‘Any coin will do.’

He dug around in his pocket, came up with a fifty-cent piece, and handed it to me. I was surprised. No kids I know carry money around and most adults don’t either. Which is why I have a few in my pocket for emergencies. I turned the coin in my fingers, picked up a tumbler sitting on the table and tapped the fifty-cent piece against its side. If it had been glass it would have given a satisfying clink, but the school only uses plastic. Sometimes you have to go with what’s available.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’m going to make this coin go through the bottom of the tumbler, so it appears inside. Can’t be done, yeah?’

Simon smiled. ‘Of course it can be done,’ he said. ‘You’re going to do it. But you’ll be using a trick.’

I held up my hand.

‘I’ll be using magic,’ I said. ‘Stay with me, Simon.’

‘Okay.’

I flexed my fingers. I didn’t need to, but this was the Pledge, showing the audience something ordinary and then turning it into the extraordinary, the Turn. I rolled the coin between both hands a few times, and ended up with it in my right hand, flat on my palm. I took the tumbler in my left hand and placed it over the coin.

‘Look inside,’ I said. He leaned over. ‘See the coin?’

‘Yeah.’

Of course he did. It was where I’d put it. I lifted the tumbler so he could see it was still resting on my palm.

‘I’ll count to three,’ I said, ‘and when I bring the tumbler down, the coin will go through the bottom and appear inside. Watch carefully.’

I raised the tumbler slowly, brought it down equally slowly.

‘One,’ I said. ‘Count with me.’

‘Two,’ he said. ‘Three.’

I slammed it onto my palm. There was a dull thud as the coin spun in the bottom of the tumbler. I handed it to him. He turned the tumbler around for a few seconds, then put it down.

‘I know how you did that,’ he said. ‘You moved the coin onto your fingertips and when you slammed down it bounced up onto your hand and down into the tumbler.’

‘Ah, an unbeliever,’ I said. ‘Okay. That would be one way of doing it. But that’s not the method I used.’

‘No offence, Grace,’ he said, so I prepared to take offence, ‘but however you did it, it remains pretty basic. Give me something that’ll blow my mind.’

I tipped the tumbler so the coin fell into my palm. I made as if I was washing my hands and then held them up, palms facing. The coin had gone.

‘Nothing up my sleeve,’ I said. ‘I haven’t even got sleeves.’ That much was true.

He smiled.

‘Better,’ he said. ‘But it’s still just sleight of hand.’

‘Just?’ I said. ‘Okay. So how did the coin get back into your pocket?’

He fished about in his trouser pocket, pulled out the fifty-cent piece, held it up to the light. When he looked at me I could see the first signs of respect.

‘I don’t know how you did that,’ he said. ‘You sat opposite me all the time.’

‘There are three stages to most decent magic tricks,’ I said. ‘The Pledge, the Turn and the Prestige, where you return what has gone. Sometimes that’s the most extraordinary part, when the audience doesn’t see the magician do anything.’

He gazed at the coin for a few more seconds.

‘Impressive.’

‘Not really,’ I said. ‘But I think you’ll like this one. Give me your phone.’

He handed it over. I pulled a small red silk scarf from my pocket, brought it to the phone, and wrapped both hands around the case. When I held up the phone, most of the scarf was sticking from the centre of the screen. There was maybe a twenty-centimetre section out the back. I knew that from the audience’s perspective it would seem like the scarf was actually embedded into the phone. I pulled on the twenty centimetres at the back and watched Simon’s face as the scarf fed through the phone and out the other side. I gave him the phone back and he peered at it, his eyes close to the screen. Maybe he was looking for a hole or a slit. It didn’t matter. He wouldn’t find one.

‘That’s amazing,’ he said.

‘That’s easy,’ I replied.

‘Anything else?’ he said.

‘Oh yeah,’ I said. ‘Hundreds. But the bell for next class is going in about a minute and, anyway, I don’t do this for free. You’ve had the trailers. If you want the main show, you’ll have to buy a ticket.’

‘But you must have done Miss Smith’s class for free,’ he pointed out.

‘True. But that was practice for the talent competition at the end of term.’

‘You’re going in for that?’

I put my stuff away in my bag.

‘Nope,’ I said. ‘One humiliation was enough.’

Simon put his elbows on the bench, folded his fingers together and rested his chin on them.

‘I have a business proposition, Grace,’ he said.

‘And I have a class to get to,’ I said.

I left him at the table. Jake trotted at my side. I was going to ask him what he made of my weird fellow student, but in the end I couldn’t be bothered.