For as long as he could remember, he’d had a mysterious restless energy that kept him in constant motion. It wasn’t just his knees. He twiddled his thumbs… tapped his toes…

“Clay, a pencil is for writing,” called Mr. Bailey from across the room. “Not wiggling!”

… and wiggled his pencils.

“Um… thinking!”

The exception was when he was skateboarding. With wheels moving below, Clay’s body relaxed and his mind was able to focus. Unfortunately, skateboards weren’t allowed in the classroom.

Holding his knee down with one hand, and his pencil down with the other, Clay made himself look at the piece of paper on his desk. The paper was blank, and the essay was due in ten minutes.

“Nine more minutes, everybody,” Mr. Bailey said to the room.

Make that nine minutes.

Clay glanced at the chalkboard:

Discuss the role of magic in THE TEMPEST. Why does Prospero break his staff and drown his magic book at the end? If you had magic powers, would you do the same?

What was it about this question? Why was it so difficult for him to answer?

And why did it make his leg jiggle uncontrollably?

As the rest of the class filed out, Clay walked over to Mr. Bailey’s desk, which was piled so high with books that Clay had to look over them to see his teacher.

Mr. Bailey was a short, plump man with a pink face and a mutton-chop beard. Today, as was not unusual, he was wearing a knit vest and leather sandals with purple socks. If he looked like a magical character, it wasn’t Shakespeare’s fierce wizard Prospero; it was Tolkien’s harmless hobbit Bilbo.

Mutely, Clay held up his empty sheet of paper.

“What’s this?” bellowed Mr. Bailey, standing up but not taking the paper. “Writer’s block?”

Despite his small stature, Mr. Bailey had a loud, booming voice, developed, he had bragged to his students more than once, during his many years on the stage.

“Uh-huh,” said Clay, bouncing on his toes (which is a double-leg jiggle, if you think about it).

Mr. Bailey nodded. “Actually, I’ve always thought block wasn’t the right word. It’s more of a knot, wouldn’t you say?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Or maybe a net,” suggested Mr. Bailey, philosophically. “A net one gets all knotted up inside.”

“Uh-huh.”

“But the point is, young man, you are unable to write.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Why?” asked Mr. Bailey, leaning toward Clay across the piles of books.

“Uh-huh,” said Clay, taking a step back. “Wait, what?”

“Why can’t you write?” asked Mr. Bailey, leaning farther. A few books toppled over, but he took no notice. “Is it the subject?”

Clay squirmed. “I don’t know. I mean, I don’t even believe in magic.”

“Do you have to believe in something to write about it?”

“No, I guess not,” said Clay.

“Well then…?”

Clay hesitated. How to explain? “My older brother, when I was little, he used to do all these tricks—you know, card tricks, coin tricks, hat tricks. I figured them all out eventually. Magicians just say a bunch of stuff to make you think they’re doing something they’re not. They’re liars. Cheese-wizards.”

Mr. Bailey laughed, as if this were a great joke. “Cheese-wizards? I think you’re confusing magic-show magic with magic in Shakespeare’s time. In those days, magic was taken very seriously.”

“What’s the difference? The whole idea of magic is fake. It’s all cheese-wizardry.”

“Well, write that, if you must,” said Mr. Bailey.

“I can’t,” said Clay. “My… brain won’t let me.”

Mr. Bailey regarded Clay over his desk. “I’ve heard teachers complain that you are developing an attitude problem, Clay. Is this what they’re talking about?”

Clay shrugged, forcing himself not to look away. He didn’t think he had an attitude problem; he thought he had an honesty problem. The problem was, he didn’t know how not to be honest.

Clay had exceptionally big eyes as well as wild, furry, half-curly hair. When he stared without blinking—a talent he had developed at a young age to irritate his older brother—the effect was quite startling. He looked like a forest animal.

Discomfited, Mr. Bailey was the first to look down.

“I think I have something that might help—”

From under his desk, Mr. Bailey slid out a large cardboard box. Spilling out of the top was the velvet robe he had worn in The Tempest, and sticking out of the robe was the gnarled piece of wood that had served as his magic staff. For a second, Clay thought his teacher might give him the staff—either that or hit him over the head with it. But Mr. Bailey put the staff aside and started pulling out more props from the play.

“Ah, here we are—”

Smiling, Mr. Bailey handed Clay a smallish book covered with cracked rust-red leather. Inset in the center of the cover was a tiny triangular mirror.

It took a moment for Clay to recognize what he was looking at. Prospero’s magic book. The book Prospero drowns at the end of The Tempest. Clay had never seen it up close before.

“Thanks, but, um, are you sure you won’t need this?” asked Clay. “What if you do the play again?”

Mr. Bailey waved his hand dismissively. “Once I’ve played a role, it’s done. The character becomes part of me.”

Clay opened the book—or tried to. The pages of the book had dried together, and Clay had to pry them apart in order to look inside. Though old and worn, the pages were blank save for a few stains and some yellowing near the edges.

Mr. Bailey told Clay he didn’t have to write about The Tempest. As long as he wrote something—anything—in the journal, he would get class credit.

“Like what?” asked Clay, peering into the tiny mirror. His eye peered back at him. He had the odd sensation that he was spying on himself.

“It doesn’t matter—I don’t even have to read it,” said Mr. Bailey.

“But how can you not read it if you look at it?”

Clay thought his logic was irrefutable, but Mr. Bailey just chuckled. “Believe me, I have a lot of practice ignoring things that students write.”

He sat down and put his sandaled feet up on his desk, satisfied that the problem was solved.

“Did I ever tell you about the time I played King Lear? Now that was a performance!…”

As Mr. Bailey told him about the trials and tribulations of playing Shakespeare’s mad king, Clay kept trying to excuse himself.

To no avail.