The Magic Misfits. Neil Patrick Harris

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ She’s been feeding us all week.”

      “We don’t have friends,” his uncle spat. “Haven’t I taught you anything?!”

      “Nothing good,” Carter whispered.

      “What was that?” Uncle Sly growled. He grabbed Carter’s arm, his nails digging in. But he quickly let go as Ms Zalewski returned with a tin can. “Aww, thanks, sweetheart,” he said to her. “You’re the absolute tops.”

      Uncle Sly put on quite a show for people when he wanted something. His earnest-looking smiles and overstuffed compliments fooled most people. Carter could see through it. Unfortunately, Ms Zalewski ate it up, grinning as she brewed Sly’s coffee.

      It made Carter ill to think how easily his uncle tricked people. Like magic, smiles can warm a person’s heart – but they can also be used to hide something dark and frightening.

      Later that night, squeaking door hinges startled Carter out of sleep, and he woke on the cold wooden floor of their single room. Though it was still dark, he watched his uncle plop down beside him, admiring a small, sparkly diamond at the end of a thin chain necklace. Carter recognised it immediately. It belonged to Ms Zalewski.

      Carter felt sick. A rage in his stomach grew until he could no longer contain it. Before he could stop himself, he was shouting, “Why did you take that? It’s one thing to trick people in shell games, but it’s another to steal something so important from someone who is nice to us. Ms Zalewski doesn’t deserve this. She’s a good person. You don’t care about anyone but yourself !”

      Uncle Sly slipped the necklace into his pocket before flashing across the room and shoving Carter into the wall. “I raised you, took care of you, taught you everything I know, and this is how you repay me?” his uncle seethed through sour breath. “If you think you can do better on your own, go ahead. You think you’re such a good person now – just wait until your belly rumbles and you’re so hungry you can’t see. You’ll be stealing more than necklaces in no time.”

      “No, I won’t,” Carter shouted back. He pushed his uncle away, grabbed his satchel, and ran out of the room. He was halfway down the stairs before he opened his hand to see Ms Zalewski’s diamond necklace. He had lifted it from his uncle’s pocket, the way his uncle had lifted it from Ms Zalewski’s neck.

      Uncle Sly wasn’t the only one who was good at sleight of hand.

      When Carter ran into the kitchen, he found Ms Zalewski awake and frantic. “Oh, Carter!” she said. “I think I lost my family diamond. It must have happened before I went to bed. Could you help me look?”

      “I just found it in the hallway,” Carter lied. “Here it is.”

      Ms Zalewski was so relieved, tears formed at the edges of her eyes. “Let me get you some milk and cookies.”

      “I can’t,” Carter said, choking back a surge of emotion. “I’m kind of in a rush.”

      “A rush to where?” asked Ms Zalewski. “It’s still dark out.”

      Carter ignored the question. “Take care of yourself – and watch my uncle. He has sticky fingers.” He made a bouquet of paper flowers appear out of his sleeve and handed it to the kind old woman, who only stared at him in shock.

      Then Carter pulled off his first solo vanishing act:

      He ran away.

      And that, my friend, is how Carter ended up in a train yard running away from a terrible man and toward a new – and hopefully better – life.

      Many hours after hopping onto the multicoloured train, Carter woke to find that it had already stopped. Panicked, he gathered his belongings. Experience told him that a conductor or a cop would eventually go from carriage to carriage looking for extra passengers. It was best if he wasn’t caught. He didn’t want to end up in an orphanage, or worse – reunited with Uncle Sly.

      He cracked open the metal door to see where fate had taken him. Outside, a lush green forest stretched like a fuzzy rug all the way to a mountain range in the not-far distance. The sun had just fallen behind the horizon, turning the few wispy clouds overhead a lovely fuchsia as the dome of blue sky darkened into evening. He’d been asleep for a long time.

      A sign standing along a nearby road said: WELCOME TO MINERAL WELLS.

      Carter climbed back up the ladder to get a better view of the town. From the top of the train carriage, he could see a quiet community blanketed with twinkling lights that were spread out to the north and east of the tracks. Far beyond the grid of streets, a sprawling set of buildings sat on a hill overlooking the town, a glow coming from within the windows as if they were illuminated by the light of a billion fireflies. Closer to the train yard, across the wide gravel lot and just west of the twinkling town, was an enormous fairground where the bright lights of a travelling circus were just beginning to blink on. Colourful sounds came in waves – even from here, Carter could hear laughter and music and shrieks of excitement.

      He was about to hop down when a small red car pulled into the gravel parking lot. Carter ducked, flattening his body against the roof of the train. It would be bad if anyone reported seeing him.

      For a moment, Carter thought he was imagining things. People dressed as clowns began to hop out of the tiny red car, one after another, until a dozen different-shaped men and women were huddled in a tight group of polka dots and stripes, staring toward a lone black train car parked on its own track. Instead of a smile, each of the clowns wore a painted frown on his or her face. Each had a bag in hand.

      Carter shuddered. He was not a fan of clowns. Whenever he’d seen them in advertisements or books, their fake expressions made him think of his uncle.

      The clowns made their way to a lone train car with a giant man’s face painted on its side. Big and round, as if it might just pop off the wall and roll around like a runaway boulder. The face held a creepy smile; either that or it was smirking a dastardly grin. Over his head were five letters spelling BOSSO.

      The first frown clown unlocked the door of the train car. The rest began to load the bags inside the metal car. From this angle, Carter couldn’t see inside. He wasn’t sure what they were carrying, but he had a feeling it wasn’t something good. He knew the body language of someone who felt guilty. Their shoulders were hunched and they moved jerkily, as if they were about to jump out of their skin.

      “There’s no more room!” one of the clowns whined. “What do we do now?”

      “Up to the boss man,” another clown said. “He’ll probably wanna move most of the goods over to the Grand Oak Resort. Let’s bolt before the coppers show.”

      Carter wondered if the gloriously lit buildings on that far hill were the resort they were talking about. The compound certainly looked grand.

      Before СКАЧАТЬ