The Magic Factory

“Cheap, shoddy thing,” he said gruffly. “The leg’s snapped clean in half!”

From the table, Chris’s gaze fixed on Oliver. Whether Oliver had somehow broken the table leg with his mind or not, Chris clearly blamed him for it.

With his gaze locked on Oliver, Chris rose slowly from his chair. Potatoes and peas rolled from his lap to the floor. His face grew redder and redder. He clenched his hands into fists. Then, like an exploding rocket, he came galumphing toward Oliver.

Oliver gasped and turned quickly to the booby trap. His fingers moved quickly to set it up.

Please work! Please work! he thought over and over again.

The whole thing happened as if in slow motion. Chris loomed up before Oliver. Oliver’s foot stomped onto the lever. Oliver held on to the desire for the machine to work, picturing the soldier flying through the air just as he’d pictured the plates crashing to the ground. And then, sure enough, the mechanism began to whir. The soldier launched into the air, sailed in an arc, and smacked Chris with his plastic, pointy rifle, right between the eyes!

Time sped up back to normal. Oliver gasped, awestruck, not quite believing it had worked.

Chris stood there, perplexed. The soldier fell to the floor. There was a small red mark in the middle of Chris’s forehead, a dent from the hard plastic gun.

“You little jerk!” Chris yelled, rubbing his head in disbelief. “I’ll get you back for that!”

But for the first time ever, he hesitated. He seemed too wary to approach Oliver, to sock him in the ear, or rub his knuckles against his head. Instead, he backed away as if he were scared. Then he stormed out of the room and upstairs. The sound of his slamming door resonated through the house.

Oliver’s mouth dropped open. He couldn’t believe that it had really worked! Not only had he made his invention work at the last second, but he’d literally made Chris’s meal fall to the floor with his mind!

He looked down at his hands. Did he have some kind of power? Was there really such a thing as magic? He couldn’t just suddenly start believing in it because of one little experience. But deep down he knew that he was different in some way, that he had some kind of power.

Mind swimming, he went back to his book and read, for the millionth time, the passage about Armando Illstrom. Thanks to his invention, Oliver had scared Chris away for the first time ever. He wanted to meet Armando Illstrom more than ever. And the factory really wasn’t that far from his new school. Maybe he should visit him after school tomorrow.

But surely he would be a very old man now. Possibly so old that he’d passed on. The thought made Oliver’s heart sink. He’d hate it if his hero had passed before he’d had a chance to meet him, and to thank him for inventing the booby trap!

He read again the passage about Armando’s string of failed inventions. The passage stated—in a rather wry tone, Oliver noted—that Armando Illstrom had been on the cusp of inventing a time machine when World War Two broke out. His factory had ground to a halt. But when the war ended, Armando had never tried to finish his invention. And everyone had ridiculed him for trying in the first place, calling him the “lesser Edison.” Oliver wondered why Armando had stopped. Surely not because of some bully inventors laughing at him?

His interest was piqued. Tomorrow, he decided, he would find the factory. And if Armando Illstrom was still alive, he’d ask him, to his face, what had happened to his time machine.

His parents emerged from around the corner of the kitchen, both covered in food.

“We’re going to bed,” Mom said.

“What about my blankets and things?” Oliver asked, looking at the bare alcove.

Dad sighed. “I suppose you want me to fetch them from the car, do you?”

“It would be nice,” Oliver replied. “I’d like to get a good night’s sleep before school tomorrow.”

The sense of dread he felt about tomorrow was beginning to grow, mirroring the building storm. He could already tell he was going to have the worst day ever. At the very least he’d like to be rested in preparation. He’d had so many horrible first days at new schools he was certain the one tomorrow was going to be another to add to the list.

Dad trudged reluctantly out of the house, a plume of wind roaring through as he opened the front door. He returned a few moments later with a pillow and blanket for Oliver.

“We’ll get a bed in a couple of days,” he said, as he handed the bedding over to Oliver. It was cold from having been in the car all day.

“Thanks,” Oliver replied, grateful for even this level of comfort.

His parents left, turning off the light as they went, plunging Oliver into darkness. Now the only light in the room was from the street lamp outside.

The wind began to roar again and the window panes rattled. Oliver could tell the weather was building, that something odd was in the air. He’d heard on the radio that the storm of a lifetime was coming. He couldn’t help but be excited about it. Most kids would dread a storm but Oliver was only dreading his first day at his new school.

He went over to the window, leaning his elbows against the ledge as he had before. The sky was almost completely dark. A spindly tree blew in the wind, angled sharply to one side. Oliver wondered if it might snap off. He could just picture it now, the thin bark snapping, the tree launching into the air, carried away by the fierce winds.

And that’s when he saw them. Just as he was transitioning into his daydreaming state, he noticed two people standing by the tree. A woman and a man who looked remarkably like him, like they could easily be mistaken for his parents. They had kind faces and they smiled at him as they held one another’s hands.

Oliver jumped back from the window, startled. For the first time, he realized that neither of his parents looked anything like him. They both had dark hair and blue eyes, as did Chris. Oliver, on the other hand, was the rarer combination of blond hair and brown eyes.

Oliver wondered, suddenly, if perhaps his parents weren’t his parents at all. Perhaps that was why they seemed to hate him so much? He looked out the window but the two people were now gone. Just figments of his imagination. But they’d looked so real. And so familiar.

Wishful thinking, Oliver concluded.

Oliver sat back against the cold wall, tucking himself into the alcove that was his new bedroom, pulling the covers up over him. He brought his knees up to his chest and clasped them tightly, and was struck by a sudden strange sensation, a moment of realization, of clarity—that everything was about to change.

CHAPTER TWO

Oliver woke with a sense of trepidation. His whole body ached from sleeping on the hard floor. The blankets hadn’t been thick enough to keep the cold from getting right into his bones. He was surprised he’d slept at all, considering how anxious he was feeling about his first day at school.

The house was very quiet. No one else was awake. Oliver realized he’d actually woken earlier than he needed to thanks to the dull sunrise seeping through the window.

He heaved himself up and peered out the window. The wind had wreaked havoc through the night, blowing down fences and mailboxes, and throwing trash all over the sidewalks. Oliver looked over at the spindly, crooked tree where he’d seen a vision of the friendly couple last night, the ones who had looked like him and made him wonder if perhaps he wasn’t related to the Blues at all. He shook his head. It was just wishful thinking on his part, he reasoned. Anyone with Chris Blue as their older brother would dream they weren’t actually related!

Knowing he had a little bit of time before his family woke up, Oliver turned from the window and went to his suitcase. He opened it up and looked inside at all the cogs and wires and levers and buttons he’d collected for his inventions. He smiled to himself as he looked at the slingshot booby trap that he’d used on Chris yesterday. But it was just one of Oliver’s many inventions and it wasn’t the most important one, not by a long shot. Oliver’s ultimate invention was something a little more complex, and a whole lot more important—because Oliver was attempting to invent a way to make himself invisible.

Theoretically, it was possible. He’d read all about it. There were actually only two necessary components to make an object invisible. The first was bending light around the object so it couldn’t cast a shadow, similar to the way swimming pool water bent light and made the swimmers inside look strangely squat. The second necessary component to invisibility involved eliminating the object’s reflection.

It sounded simple enough on paper, but Oliver knew there was a reason no one had achieved it yet. Still, that wasn’t going to stop him from trying. He needed this in order to escape his miserable life, and it didn’t matter how long it took him to get there.

He reached into his case now and took out all the bits of fabric he’d collected in search of something with negative refractive properties. Unfortunately, he hadn’t found the right fabric yet. Then he took out all the coils of thin wire he’d need to make electromagnetic microwaves to bend the light unnaturally. Unfortunately, none of them were thin enough. In order to work, the coils would need to be less than forty nanometers in size, which was an unfeasibly small size for the human mind to comprehend. But Oliver knew that someone, somewhere, someday, would have a machine to make the coils thin enough, and the fabric refractive enough.

Just then, from upstairs, Oliver heard his parents’ alarm clock jingle. He quickly packed away his items, knowing all too well that they’d go and wake Chris up next, and if Chris ever got wind of what he was trying to make, he would destroy all his hard work.

Oliver’s stomach groaned then, reminding him that Chris’s bullying and torment were about to begin anew, and that he’d better get some food in him before they did.

He passed the still broken dining table and went to the kitchen. Most of the cupboards were empty. The family hadn’t yet had the chance to go grocery shopping for the new house. But Oliver found a box of cereal that had come over in the move, and there was fresh milk in the fridge, so he quickly made up a bowl and scarfed it down. Just in time, too. A few moments later, his parents emerged into the kitchen.

“Coffee?” Mom asked Dad, bleary-eyed, her hair a mess.

Dad just grunted his yes. He looked at the broken table and with a heavy sigh, fetched some packing tape. He got to work mending the table leg, wincing as he did so.

“It’s that bed,” he muttered as he worked. “It’s wonky. And the mattress is too lumpy.” He rubbed his back to emphasize the point.

Oliver felt a swell of anger. At least his dad had slept on a bed! He’d had to sleep on blankets in an alcove! The injustice stung him.

“I have no idea how I’m going to get through an entire day at the call center,” Oliver’s mother added, coming over with the coffee. She placed it on the now tentatively fixed table.

“You have a new job, Mom?” Oliver asked.

Moving house all the time made it impossible for his parents to keep full-time work. Things at home were always harder when they were unemployed. But if Mom was working that meant nicer food, better clothes, and pocket money to buy more gizmos for his inventions.

“Yes,” she said, letting out a strained smile. “Dad and I both. The hours are long, though. Today’s a training day, but after that we’ll be doing the late shift. So we won’t be around after school. But Chris will keep an eye on you, so there’s nothing to worry about.”

Oliver felt his stomach sink. He’d prefer Chris to not be in the equation at all. He was perfectly able to look after himself.

As if summoned by the mention of his name, Chris suddenly bounded into the kitchen. He was the only Blue who looked refreshed this morning. He stretched and let out a theatrical yawn, his shirt riding up over his round, pink belly as he did.

“Good morning, my wonderful family,” he said with his sarcastic grin. He flung an arm around Oliver, pulling him into a headlock cleverly masked as brotherly affection. “How are you, squirt? Looking forward to school?”

Oliver could hardly breathe, Chris was holding on so tight. As always, his parents seemed oblivious to the bullying.

“Can’t… wait…” he managed to say.

Chris let Oliver go and took a seat at the table opposite Dad.

Mom came over from the counter with a plate of buttered toast. She placed it in the center of the table. Dad took a slice. Then Chris leaned forward and snatched up the rest, leaving nothing for Oliver.

“HEY!” Oliver cried. “Did you see that?”

Mom looked at the empty plate and let out one of her exasperated sighs. She looked at Dad as if expecting him to step in and say something. But Dad just shrugged.

Oliver clenched his fists. It was so unfair. If he’d not preempted such an event he’d have missed another meal thanks to Chris. It infuriated him that neither of his parents ever stood up for him, or ever seemed to notice how often he had to go without because of Chris.

“Will you two be walking to school together?” Mom asked, clearly trying to sidestep the whole issue.

“Can’t,” Chris said through his mouthful. Butter dribbled down his chin. “If I’m seen with a nerd I’ll never make friends.”

Dad raised his head. For a second, it seemed as if he was about to say something to Chris, to chastise him for calling Oliver names. But then he clearly decided against it, because he just sighed wearily and let his gaze drop back down to the tabletop.

Oliver ground his teeth, trying to keep his growing fury at bay.

“Doesn’t bother me,” he hissed, glaring at Chris. “I’d prefer not to be within a hundred feet of you anyway.”

Chris let out a spiteful bark-laugh.

“Boys…” Mom warned in the meekest voice ever.

Chris shook his fist at Oliver, indicating quite clearly that he’d get him back for it later.

With breakfast over, the family quickly got ready, and left the house to start their respective days.

Oliver watched as his parents got into their battered car and drove off. Then Chris stalked away without another word, hands in his pockets, a scowl on his face. Oliver knew how important it was for Chris to establish immediately that he was not to be messed with. It was his armor, the way he coped with turning up at a new school six weeks into the school year. Unfortunately for Oliver, he was too skinny and too short to even attempt to cultivate such an image. His appearance only ever added to how conspicuous he was.

Chris stormed ahead until he had disappeared from Oliver’s sight, leaving him to walk the unfamiliar streets alone. It was not the most pleasant walk of Oliver’s life. The neighborhood was tough, with lots of angry dogs barking behind chain-link fences, and loud, beat-up cars swerving along the potholed roads with no regard for the children crossing.

When Campbell Junior High loomed up ahead of him, Oliver felt a shiver run through him. It was a horrible-looking place made of gray brick, completely square, and with a weather-beaten facade. There wasn’t even any grass to sit on, just a large asphalt playground with broken basketball hoops on either side. Kids jostled each other, wrestling for the ball. And the noise! It was deafening, from arguments and singing, to shouting and chatter.

Oliver wanted to turn around and run back the way he’d come. But he swallowed his fear and walked, head down, hands in pockets, across the playground and in through the large glass doors.

The corridors of Campbell Junior High were dark. They smelled of bleach, despite looking like they hadn’t been cleaned in a decade. Oliver saw a sign for the reception area and followed it, knowing he’d have to announce himself to someone. When he found it, there was a very bored, angry-looking woman inside, her long red fingernails typing away into a computer.

“Excuse me,” Oliver said.

She didn’t respond. He cleared his throat and tried again, a little louder.

“Excuse me. I’m a new student, enrolling today.”

Finally, she turned her eyes from the computer to Oliver. She squinted. “New student?” she asked, a look of suspicion on her face. “It’s October.”

“I know,” Oliver replied. He didn’t need reminding. “My family just moved here. I’m Oliver Blue.”

She regarded him silently for a long moment. Then, without uttering another word, she turned her attention back to the computer and started typing. Her long fingernails clacked against the keys.

“Blue?” she said. “Blue. Blue. Blue. Ah, here. Christopher John Blue. Eighth grade.”

“Oh no, that’s my brother,” Oliver replied. “I’m Oliver. Oliver Blue.”

“Can’t see a Oliver,” she replied, blandly.

“Well… here I am,” Oliver said, smiling weakly. “I should be on the list. Somewhere.”

The receptionist looked extremely unimpressed. The whole debacle was not helping with his nerves one bit. She typed again, then let out a long sigh.

“Okay. There. Oliver Blue. Sixth grade.” She turned in her swivel chair and dumped a folder of paperwork on the table. “You’ve got your schedule, map, useful contacts, et cetera, all in here.” She tapped it lazily with one of her shiny red nails. “Your first class is English.”

“That’s good,” Oliver said, taking the folder and tucking it under his arm. “I’m fluent.”

He grinned to indicate that he’d made a joke. The side of the receptionist’s lip twitched up, just barely, into an expression that might have resembled amusement. Realizing there was nothing more to be said between them, and sensing that the receptionist would very much like him to leave, Oliver backed out of the room, clutching his folder.

Once in the corridor, he opened it up and began to study the map, searching for the English room and his first class. It was on the third floor, so Oliver headed in the direction of the staircase.

Here, the jostling kids seemed to be even more jostly. Oliver found himself swept up into a sea of bodies, being pushed up the staircase with the crowd rather than of his own volition. He had to fight his way through the swarm to get out at the third floor.

He popped out onto the third-floor corridor, panting. That was not an experience he was looking forward to repeating several times a day!

Using his map to guide him, Oliver soon found the English classroom. He peered through the little square window in the door. It was already half full of students. He felt his stomach swirl with anguish at the thought of meeting new people, of being seen and judged and evaluated. He pushed down the door handle and walked inside.

He was right to be scared, of course. He’d done this enough times to know that everyone would look over, curious about the new kid. Oliver had felt this sensation now more times than he cared to remember. He tried not to meet anyone’s eyes.

“Who are you?” a gruff voice said.

Oliver swirled to see the teacher, an old man with shockingly white hair, looking up at him from his desk.

“I’m Oliver. Oliver Blue. I’m new here.”

The teacher frowned. His beady eyes were black and suspicious. He regarded Oliver for an uncomfortably long time. Of course, this just added to Oliver’s stress, because now even more of his classmates were paying attention to him, and still more were streaming in through the door. A greater and greater audience watched him with curiosity, like he was some kind of spectacle at the circus.

“Didn’t know I was getting another one,” the teacher said, finally, with an air of disdain. “Would’ve been nice to have been informed.” He sighed wearily, reminding Oliver of his father. “Take a seat then. I suppose.”

Oliver hurried to a spare seat, feeling everyone’s eyes following him. He tried to make himself as small as possible, as unobservable as possible. But of course he stood out like a sore thumb no matter how much he tried to hide. He was the new kid, after all.

With all the seats now filled, the teacher began his class.

“We’re carrying on with where we left off last class,” he said. “About grammar rules. Can someone please explain to Oscar what we were talking about?”

Everyone started to laugh at his mistake.

Oliver felt his throat get tighter. “Um, sorry to interrupt, but my name is Oliver, not Oscar”

The teacher’s expression turned instantly cross. Oliver knew immediately that he wasn’t the kind of man who appreciated being corrected.

“When you’ve lived sixty-six years with a name like Mr. Portendorfer,” the teacher said, glowering, “you get over people pronouncing your name wrong. Profendoffer. Portenworten. I’ve heard it all. So I suggest you, Oscar, ought to be less concerned about the correct pronunciation of your name!”

Oliver raised his eyebrows, stunned into silence. Even the rest of his classmates seemed shocked by the outburst, because they weren’t even tittering with laughter. Mr. Portendorfer’s reaction was over the top by anyone’s standards, and for it to be directed at a new kid made it even worse. From the grumpy receptionist to the volatile English teacher, Oliver wondered if there was even a single nice person in this whole school!

Mr. Portendorfer began droning on about pronouns. Oliver hunkered down even further in his seat, feeling tense and unhappy. Luckily Mr. Portendorfer didn’t pick on him anymore, but when the bell rang an hour later, his chastisement was still ringing in Oliver’s ears.

Oliver trudged through the halls in search of his math classroom. When he found it, he made sure to beeline straight for the back row. If Mr. Portendorfer didn’t know he had a new student, maybe the math teacher wouldn’t either. Perhaps he could be invisible for the next hour.

To Oliver’s relief it worked. He sat, silent and anonymous, throughout the whole class, like an algebra-obsessed ghost. But even that didn’t feel like the best solution to his problems, Oliver thought. Being unnoticed was just as bad as being publicly humiliated. It made him feel insignificant.

The bell rang again. It was lunch, so Oliver followed his map down to the hall. If the playground had been intimidating it was nothing compared to the lunchroom. Here, the kids were like wild animals. Their raucous voices echoed off the walls, making the noise even more unbearable. Oliver bowed his head and hurried toward the queue.

Smack. Suddenly, he slammed into a large, foreboding body. Slowly, Oliver raised his gaze.

To his surprise, it was Chris’s face he was staring into. On either side of him, in a sort of arrow formation, were three boys and one girl all scowling the same scowl. Cronies was the word that sprang to Oliver’s mind.

“You’ve made friends already?” Oliver said, trying not to sound surprised.

Chris narrowed his eyes. “Not all of us are antisocial loser freaks,” he said.

Oliver realized then that this wasn’t going to be a pleasant interaction with his brother. But then, it never was.

Chris looked over at his new cronies. “This is my pipsqueak brother, Oliver,” he announced. Then he let out a belly laugh. “He sleeps in the alcove.”

His new bully friends started to laugh too.

“He’s available for swirlies, wedgies, headlocks, and my personal favorite,” Chris continued. He grabbed Oliver, and pressed his knuckles into his head. “Noogies.”

Oliver wriggled and thrashed in Chris’s grasp. Locked in the horrible, painful headlock, Oliver remembered his powers from yesterday, the moment he’d broken the table leg and sent potatoes into Chris’s lap. If he only knew how he’d summoned those powers he could do it now and break free. But he had no idea how he’d done it. All he’d done was visualize in his mind’s eye the table breaking, the plastic soldier flying through the air. Was that all it took? His imagination?

He attempted it now, picturing himself wrestling free from Chris. But it was no good. With Chris’s new friends all watching on, laughing with glee, he was just too tuned into the reality of his humiliation to shift his mind to his imagination.

Finally, Chris let him go. Oliver staggered back, rubbing his sore head. He patted down his hair, which had become frizzy with static. But more than the humiliation of Chris’s bullying, Oliver felt the sting of disappointment from failing to summon his powers. Maybe the whole kitchen table thing was just a coincidence. Maybe he didn’t have any special powers at all.