at recess, before a throng of candy-blooded classmates. i put on a fruit loop necklace & clap purple chalk on my palms & mumble “abracadabra” to fashion the illusion.
it’s all smoke & mirrors, of course. the real trick is spelling. “like a spell?” my friend asks. “no, like actual spelling,” i tell her. here’s how we’ll bamboozle everybody: she’ll pick a word from the crowd, any word (while i cover my ears). then we’ll stand on opposite ends of the hopscotch. “to add mystique,” i say. that’s when she’ll secretly transfer it to me.
“how?”
“easy-peasy,” i explain. the first letter of every sentence she says unlocks the message. like L-O-V-E U:
“Listen.” = L
“Once upon a time.” = O
“Voilà!” = V
“Error message.” = E
“Upside-down.” = U
all the kids gather for the conjuring & i rub my temples, hmming & ahhing to make it seem real. we take turns: i spell out L-O-S-E-R & my friend does a marvelous rendition of B-O-O-B-S: “Big deal…Oh dear…Oh my…Bingo!…Sweet Jesus.” 2
for a moment, our classmates are bewildered. we tax their imaginations, build them castles in the sky. then they get smart to the trick & ask my friend to send me “xylophone” over the ether. (“there are no good x words,” she says. “x-ray? xerox? x-rated?”) the illusion collapses & i eat the fruit loops on my necklace in shame.
“tough customers,” i mutter.
years later, when i say goodbye to my first love & learn a new species of “ex,” i remember the mind reading ruse. “Listen…Once upon a time…Voilà!…Error message…Upside-down,” i say when he turns his back. “Listen…Once upon a time…Voilà!…Error message…Upside-down,” i repeat. but it’s too late: he’s already out the door, out of earshot, beyond the range of my false magic.
Nadia Born writes peculiar fiction, both literary and speculative. She won LitMag’s Anton Chekhov Award for Flash Fiction and New Letters’ Editor’s Choice Award. Her stories are featured in The Cincinnati Review, Water~Stone Review, New Orleans Review, Mississippi Review and elsewhere. Find her online at www.nadiaborn.com.
