The Magic Misfits Read online

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Text and illustrations copyright © 2017 by Neil Patrick Harris.

  Story illustrations by Lissy Marlin. How-To illustrations by Kyle Hilton.

  Cover art by Lissy Marlin. Cover design by Karina Granda.

  Cover art copyright © 2017 by Neil Patrick Harris.

  Cover copyright © 2017 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Little, Brown and Company

  Hachette Book Group

  1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104

  Visit us at LBYR.com

  First Edition: November 2017

  Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Harris, Neil Patrick, 1973– author. | Marlin, Lissy, illustrator. Title: The magic misfits / by Neil Patrick Harris ; artistry by Lissy Marlin. Description: First edition. New York : Little, Brown and Company, 2017. | Series: Magic misfits ; 1 Summary: “Six young magicians and illusionists team up to save their small town from a crooked carnival owner and his goons” Provided by publisher.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017004840| ISBN 9780316391825 (hardcover) ISBN 9780316355582 (ebook) | ISBN 9780316439848 (large-print hardcover) ISBN 9780316355599 (library edition ebook)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Magic tricks—Fiction. | Orphans—Fiction. | Carnivals—Fiction. Robbers and outlaws—Fiction. | Conduct of life—Fiction. | Humorous stories.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.H3747 Mag 2017 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017004840

  ISBNs: 978-0-316-39182-5 (hardcover), 978-0-316-35558-2 (ebook), 978-0-316-43984-8 (large print), 978-0-316-51843-7 (B&N special edition), 978-0-316-47650-8 (Target special edition), 978-0-316-51396-8 (int’l)

  E3-20171012-JV-PC

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  COVER

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  MAP OF MINERAL WELLS

  SALUTATIONS!*

  ONE—the first

  TWO—the second one

  THREE—the third of these

  FOUR—one more than three

  FIVE—one less than six

  SIX—one more than five

  SEVEN—six plus one equals

  EIGHT—rhymes with fate

  NINE—the number between eight and ten

  TEN—the highest number in a deck of cards

  ELEVEN—looks like two lines. Or two lowercase Ls, which could be confusing. For example, this is two lowercase Ls: ll. Looks like this 11, right? Confusing

  TWELVE—also known as a dozen

  THIRTEEN—oddly called “a baker ’s dozen.” Always wondered why bakers get one more…

  FOURTEEN—the fourteenth chapter

  FIFTEEN—ten plus half of ten

  SIXTEEN—this one is sweet

  SIXTEEN BILLION—(gotcha!) I wanted to be sure that you ’re reading closely

  SEVENTEEN—six more than nine, multiplied by ten, plus three, then divided by nine

  EIGHTEEN—one more than seventeen

  NINETEEN—the number missing from this representation of pi 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884__71693

  TWENTY—the second to last (chapter, I mean)

  TWENTY-ONE—the last one

  ONE LAST THING…

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  To Gideon and Harper, who misfit together perfectly

  SALUTATIONS!*

  (* This is just a clever word for “Greetings!”)

  Do you believe in magic? Hi there. Yes, I’m talking to you. Well, do you? Do you believe in magic?

  If you’re anything like the boy in this book, you might say no. But I assure you, there is magic all around you. It’s true. Don’t believe me? Look into my eyes and tell me you don’t see magic!

  iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

  iiimiiiiiiiiiiaiiiiiiiiiiiiiigiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiciiii

  iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

  See what I did there? Eyes… i’s…

  (You can stop laughing. I wasn’t that funny, was I?)

  But let’s be serious for a moment.

  Magic can mean different things to different people. For some, it is pulling a rabbit from a top hat or sawing a person in half and then (hopefully) putting them back together again. For others, magic is a crisp autumn’s day or a tender hug from a loved one. For me, magic can be a story, a game, a puzzle, or a surprise that takes my breath away in a single, furious gulp.

  You see, magic comes in all shapes and sizes and colors and tastes and smells and feelings. Magic may even come in the shape of a book—perhaps the very one you’re holding now. Or not. I don’t want to get ahead of myself.

  But sometimes you might have a hard time remembering to seek out the magic in the world, just like the boy in this book. You might be too busy twirling cotton candy or too distracted by birds sitting on the windowsill or too tired from organizing the attic to notice—but I assure you, magic does exist. You just have to know where to look. (Use your nose! Or your tongue! Or your eyes! Or your brain!) Of course, sometimes you can make it happen yourself.

  Would you like to learn about magic? I thought you might. Very well. Repeat after me: SIM SALA BAM!

  I’m sorry—I don’t think you actually said that out loud. Please. Repeat. After. Me: SIM SALA BAM!

  Louder. SIM SALA BAM!

  Brilliant. You’re proving to be a good student.

  Now turn the page.…

  WAIT, WAIT, WAIT… HOLD ON… STOP!

  Silly me. I think I must have mesmerized myself with all those i’s earlier. I almost forgot one last vital thing before we get into the meat and potatoes of our magical story. (Drumroll, please!) First, I must explain.…

  HOW TO…

  Read This Book!

  i cannot tell you wHen or where to read this book. after all, you might rEad it on a bus or in a plane or in the back of a haY cart. you mighT read it while brushing your teetH, or brushing your hair, or brushing the fur of your angora rabbit. (you havE one of those, right?) you might Read it in a bed, under a bed, or possibly while levitating several feet above a bed. if you’re so inclined, you might rEad it in a bathroom mirror backward or upside down, or down side up.

  no, i can’t tell you when or where—and i certainly can’t tell you how. you may read it with your eyes open, or you may read it with your eyes closed (there is a way to do that, you know). you might read it backward or in a mirror, or you might have someone read it aloud to you. you might even find it helpful to read the last letters of certain words in a phrase. there is at least one part where you’ll want to find all the capital le
tters in a section to see what they say. (nice to have options, isn’t it?)

  mosT important, you sHould understand that withIn thiS Book are lessOns on magic (sOmetimes spelled magicK with a k). readIng the chapterS will give you a tale of adventure and woe and excitement and Fun (not necessarily In that order). reading the magic moments (or those sections hidden here and there) wiLL aid you in uncovering the secrets of stage performance.

  if you read both types of chapters in ordEr, you may finD yourself saying “woW!” as you discover an adventure and learn magic. for the most fun, mIght i suggesT reading the book botH ways?

  now, magicianS’ sECrets must be shared if they are to be passed on so futuRe genEraTionS cAn accomplish eveN more amazing feats and Dares. this is why i am sharing them with you! but i have A request: keep the secrets secret. no sHaring wIth your frienDs or friends of frienDs. no using them to cheat your neighbors. no shouting them from the rooftops of your town. trust me whEn i say that turNing a frown into a smile mighT be tHe most rewardING magic trick of them all. much mOre Rewarding than the opposite!

  bah—listen to me blaTHering on.… let’s dive in.

  are you REady?

  brilliant.

  turn the pagE.…

  ONE

  In the darkness of a train yard, somewhere on the far edge of town, a shadowy figure emerged from a thick curtain of fog. The person looked back once before dashing alongside several rows of empty train tracks.

  Now, if you’re anything like me, you might flinch when imagining a shadowy figure emerging from a nighttime fog in a nearly abandoned train yard lit only by distant streetlights. But you needn’t worry here. It was merely a skinny boy named Carter Locke.

  If you were to worry about anyone at this moment, it should be the man who was not far behind—the man who was chasing Carter through the train yard, bellowing: “Carter! Get back here! Don’t you run from me, boy! I ain’t going to hurt you!” This was a lie. The man very much intended to hurt Carter.

  Thankfully, Carter knew it. So he pumped his legs and clutched his satchel and strained through the murk to see which line of cars was chug-chug-chugging down the tracks and out of the yard. The wail of a horn blasted Carter’s eardrums, and he stumbled across a rail.

  Several rows away, there came a familiar metal clanking. A rusty but colorful chain of cars clacked by, catching speed and whisking away the mist. Carter could see clearly now. He jumped over the tracks and raced to keep up with the moving train. From down the yard, the cars kept coming and coming and coming. Red, blue, green, yellow, purple, redder, black, orange, redder still.

  The colorful train reminded Carter of the first magic trick he’d ever seen: a gentle hand coming close to his face and pulling a red silk handkerchief from his ear, which was tied to a yellow one, which was tied to a blue one, which was tied to a green one, and so on, and so on, and on and on. It was one of the few memories Carter had of his own father.

  Instinctively, Carter touched his satchel, as if to make sure the small wooden box was still inside. It was.

  Carter ran alongside the train, eyeing each passing car for a place to board. Behind him, footsteps sounded in the gravel. Then a gruff, cruel voice rang out. “Carter! Don’t you dare hop on that train!” The clanging and banging did not drown out the man, who sounded closer now than before—almost directly behind him. “I’ve got eyes and ears in every town between here and Timbuktu! You’ll never escape! Hear me? Never!”

  Carter tried not to think about what would happen if the man caught him. Instead, he focused on the locomotive. Light glinted off the heavy wheels below as they rolled upon the tracks. The problem with trains is that they are made of metal and each car weighs a literal ton, if not more. Once they’re moving, they move quickly. If Carter got too close—if he tripped—it would all be over.

  A bright yellow train car was now edging past him. Yellow reminded Carter of a bird he once saw locked up in a cage in the window of a pet store. Weren’t birds designed to fly free? Carter took it as a sign that this was the one to reach for, the one that would take him far away from here. Its ladder was just out of reach.

  Jumping a train in motion may have been hard or even scary for some—but Carter had done it so many times, it came as naturally as plucking a coin from behind someone’s ear or shuffling a deck of cards with only one hand.

  Unfortunately, the man who was chasing Carter found it easy too. As Carter was about to clasp the ladder, the man grabbed Carter’s satchel and dragged him to the ground.

  “No!” Carter yelled.

  They both tumbled across the gravel, rolling beside the wheels of the yellow car that went bump-bump, bump-bump-bump, bump-bump, bump-bump-bump over the rickety tracks, echoing the flutter of Carter’s panicked heartbeat. He didn’t want to imagine what would happen if the train left without him.

  So Carter didn’t stop moving. He twisted his body until the rolling turned into a somersault. As he pitched himself forward, head over heels, Carter yanked his bag away from the man’s grip, planted his feet on the shifting gravel, then leapt toward the train’s last car. A ladder hung down from the rear, next to an open door. Carter’s fast hands grabbed the bottom rung, his taut tendons holding him tight. Climbing up and onto the ladder, he pulled his feet up and clung to the back of the now-racing train.

  After catching his breath, he moved all the way to the top, taking a seat on the car’s roof. The wind whipped his hair around. The train’s horn cried out again from up ahead.

  Looking back, he saw the man kneeling by the tracks, arms raised in anger, screaming into the night and quickly shrinking into a dot that eventually disappeared in the murky distance. Carter waved good-bye. To the town. To Ms. Zalewski. And to the man who was chasing him—though if it had been possible to wish the man a bad-bye, Carter would certainly have done that instead.

  The sky turned a beautiful blue as the sun came up. After some time, the familiar rocking and loud metal-churning of the train calmed Carter’s heart and brought a yawn to his jaw. So he climbed down and into the train car. Inside, hundreds of boxes were stacked on wooden pallets. Plopping himself on the floor beside one such stack, Carter placed his satchel underneath his head like a pillow, then drifted off to sleep, dreaming about hope and fate and destiny and adventure, as well as a fleeting thought or two about the possibility of magic.

  TWO

  Surprise! It’s time for a little flashback!

  I understand how frustrating it is to pause a story right in the middle of the action, but there are a few things you should know about Carter before I tell you what happens next. Things like: Who is this kid? And why was he running? And who is the man he was running from? I promise we’ll get back to Carter’s escape soon enough. And if we don’t, I’ll let you lock me up in a tight straitjacket with no key. Oh, the horror!

  But anyway… onward!

  Carter learned how to do magic tricks from his uncle. And they were just that: tricks. There was no magic involved. How could there be? Everyone knows there is no such thing as magic—or so Carter believed.

  At a very early age, Carter stopped trusting in wonderful, happy, fantastic things. It wasn’t his fault. Sometimes bad things happen to good people.

  You see, Carter was born to two lovely people. His mom had a smile that shone like the sun on a perfect day at the beach. And his dad could pull coins out of ears and make a deck of playing cards vanish into thin air. They all lived in a tiny red cottage with white trim on a wooded and winding road outside a small northern city. One afternoon when Carter was only a few years old, both of his parents failed to come home.

  They also failed to come home the next day. Or the day after that. When the babysitter called the police, Carter hoped it was only one of his father’s tricks. But after another day passed with no word, Carter had to face the cold hard truth: His parents were not coming back. It was their final vanishing act.

  Young Carter was taken in by a distant relative named Sylvester “Sly” Beaton.
For the sake of convenience, we will call him Carter’s uncle.

  Uncle Sly was a wiry little man who always dressed in a brown tweed suit with frayed seams and patches that covered moth-eaten holes. He wore his long, greasy hair tied back in a messy ponytail, and the whiskers of his patchy beard barely covered his pointy chin. Uncle Sly told people he got his nickname because he was like a fox, but Carter always thought that his uncle looked more like a weasel, which made sense because Uncle Sly often acted like a weasel too.

  The man was not thrilled to have to look after Carter. And Carter was not thrilled to live with this weasel. But that’s what the circumstances were, and so Carter made the best of them.

  Like Carter’s father, Uncle Sly knew magic tricks. He could hold a tissue up to Carter’s nose and make him sneeze a waterfall of coins into a glass. Then, one by one, Uncle Sly would make the coins disappear again. This blew Carter’s mind—well, his mind and his nose.

  Carter begged his uncle to show him how to do magic. Eventually, Uncle Sly saw that there might be a benefit in having an assistant, and so he taught Carter everything he knew. It turned out Carter was a natural-born magician.

  Soon enough, Carter was doing all of Uncle Sly’s tricks—only better. Carter had a special talent. His fingers were long and his tendons were taut, which gave him fast hands and expert card-shuffling skills. He could make coins vanish and reappear across the room. He could materialize playing cards out of thin air. He even revised Uncle Sly’s sneeze trick, using ice cubes instead of coins (which was rather impressive, given the size of the average human nostril).

  Now, Uncle Sly wasn’t the type of man to celebrate his young nephew’s ability to change up his oldest and best illusion, but he was smart enough to notice an opportunity when it was sneezing ice cubes right in front of him. So on Carter’s birthday, instead of throwing him a party, Uncle Sly decided to test him. He sent the boy up to a random couple on the street to perform his very first show.