The Magic Misfits - Neil Patrick Harris Page 0,3
toward Ridley. Her lips were moving, but Ridley couldn’t make out what she was saying. Her steps were deliberate, one foot before the other, so that her hips swayed back and forth, back and forth, hypnotically.
The librarian grabbed the shovel from the table across from Ridley’s project, then slowly turned around.
“What are you doing?” Ridley asked sharply. “Put that down!”
The woman’s glassy eyes bulged, bloodshot and watery, full of fear and also… determination?
Ridley could finally hear what she was whispering to herself. It sent chills across her scalp.
“What have I done? What have I done?”
The librarian raised the shovel. Ridley flipped a trigger in the arm of her chair.
“What have I done?”
Ridley’s wheels spun, and she shot backward, just as Mrs. Maloney lumbered toward the table holding her staircase project.
“Stop!” Ridley shouted, seeing what was about to happen. “Nooooo!”
The woman swung the shovel down. Ridley’s wooden model splintered.
TWO
Mrs. Maloney slammed the shovel down again. Cog works, springs, and gears crumpled.
Ridley held up her hands as pieces of her project exploded outward, hitting her like shrapnel from a bomb.
All around, people turned to see what was happening. A hubbub rose up as the young inventors and their patrons shouted and scattered.
The night of the talent show appeared in Ridley’s mind, the events playing out simultaneously as the librarian continued to whack away at the remnants of her model.
Wham!
The magic shop’s windows exploded outward in a sparkling flash.
Wham!
The walls crumbled. Dust enveloped Main Street.
Wham!
Carter, Leila, and Theo took off toward the shop, leaving Ridley in the park with Emily Meridian, the Golden twins, and the animals.
Wham!
The mesmerist appeared from the shadows, surrounded by smoke, his collar pulled high, obscuring his face.
Kalagan…
The man who had terrorized Ridley and her friends since the beginning of the summer, who had placed the dynamite in the bootlegger tunnels below Vernon’s Magic Shop, who had flipped the switch, who had changed everything.
The woman was yelling now. “What have I done? What have I done?” But her voice sounded robotic, like an empty mantra, or a chorus to a nonsensical song.
Those were the words that Kalagan had said on the night of the blast, just before he’d come after Theo with the magic wand that had turned into a blade.
The librarian finally dropped the shovel and began to wrestle with Ridley’s poster.
Ridley saw red. How dare this woman ruin her hard work? And worse: How dare she invoke the man who had been haunting Ridley’s dreams? Was she working for him?
Ridley flipped the switch on the arm of her chair again. This time, the chair flew forward. Its footrests slammed into the librarian’s shins. Mrs. Maloney cried out, dropping the poster board and falling backward, landing hard on the tile floor. She let out a bleat when she glanced up at Ridley, whose finger was ready to hit the trigger again.
But Ridley could see now that something had changed in the woman’s eyes. Mrs. Maloney winced and then rubbed at the spot on her leg where Ridley had smashed her. She looked horrified at the mess she’d made. Releasing a harsh gasp, she said to herself, more softly this time, “What have I done?”
“Ridley!” Ms. Parkly was racing up the aisle, carrying two paper cups. “What’s going on?” She tripped as she got close, and ice water flew from the cups, instantly soaking the librarian and sending her into a rigid shock.
Ridley pressed her spine against the back of her chair and glanced around, as if someone else might suddenly lunge at her, but then Ms. Parkly placed herself squarely between Ridley and the woman on the floor.
People in stiff blue uniforms approached. From the patches on their shoulders, Ridley knew they were security guards. One stopped next to Mrs. Maloney, one by Ms. Parkly. Another approached Ridley. When the guard touched her arm, she yelped.
“Are you all right?” he asked. Ridley took in the ruins of her project—all the work, all the anticipation, all the imagination—and felt like she was looking at the inside of her mind.
“No. No, I don’t think I am,” she admitted.
The security guards led Mrs. Maloney away, but not before she reached out to Ridley, her voice wobbly with emotion. “I don’t know what came over me. Please. I didn’t mean to—”
But Ms. Parkly stepped forward and said, “And while I didn’t mean to dump water all over you, ma’am, I’m not sorry I did!”
Ridley almost laughed. Her teacher’s clumsiness had been an asset, for once.
A woman with an immense beehive updo and