The Unbelievable Oliver and the Four Jokers Read online

  To the Indomitable India and the Notorious Natalia —P.B.

  For the Genuine Jennifer —S.P.

  Dial Books for Young Readers

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York

  Text copyright © 2019 by Pseudonymous Bosch

  Illustrations copyright © 2019 by Shane Pangburn

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

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  Ebook ISBN 9780525552345

  Version_1

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Copyright

  INTRODUCTION (quick opening trick)

  Chapter One: Is This Your Card?

  Chapter Two: The Gig

  Chapter Three: Nothing Bunny About It

  Chapter Four: Maddox’s Birthday “Farty”

  Chapter Five: The Grand Opening

  Chapter Six: Showtime!

  Chapter Seven: Accusations All Around

  INTERMISSION (Bathroom Break)

  Chapter Eight: The Who, the What, and the Where

  Chapter Nine: The Investigation, Part One

  Chapter Ten: The Investigation, Part Two

  Chapter Eleven: Rabbit, Run

  Chapter Twelve: Alibis, Alibis, Alibis

  Chapter Thirteen: The Four Jokers

  Chapter Fourteen: The Middle Name Drop

  Chapter Fifteen: The After Party

  ENCORE (How to Perform Oliver’s Card Trick)

  About the Authors

  Think of a number.

  Is it 285,742,956?

  No?

  I didn’t think so. That would have been quite a coincidence.

  Are you ready for some magic?

  Today, I present a new work of illusion and mystery. It is a magic trick that I have been working on for many months.

  I call it . . .

  All I need is someone to read it.

  Do I have a volunteer?

  Is This Your Card?

  “Is this your card?”

  It was not their card.

  The twins, Bea and Teenie, short for Beatriz and Martina, were not impressed. They were even less impressed when the magician pulled another wrong card from the deck. Then another still . . .

  “Is this your card?”

  “Not that one either.” “Uh-uh.” “Come on!”

  “No.” “Nope.” “Nah.” “No way!”

  “That’s from GO FISH!” “That’s a fish!” *sigh*

  Every card was wrong. Everything was wrong, really.

  Oliver, our boy magician, was no wizard. He had no hat, no gloves, not even a wand. He was too small for his jacket, as well as for his age—eight last April. And he lacked the confidence you’d expect from anyone truly astonishing.

  A magician should at least be astonishing. Wouldn’t you agree?

  He made one last effort to startle and amaze.

  “Okay, is this your card?” he said, holding up the four of diamonds again.

  “Yes!” said Bea.

  “Maybe,” said Teenie, who was having a little trouble paying attention. “See, we forgot our card. So it could be our card.”

  Oliver covered his face with the few remaining cards in the deck.

  “Don’t lie, Teenie!” Bea said with a glare.

  “I’m not lying. I’m telling him the truth,” Teenie insisted. “We forgot his card. You were lying.”

  “I lied to make him feel better. Don’t you feel better, Oliver?”

  Oliver did not feel better, but it seemed unkind to say so. He tried to smile, unsuccessfully.

  “Maybe you’re just not cut out to be a magician,” said Teenie helpfully.

  Oliver had only recently started dabbling in the magical arts, after borrowing a deck of cards from his cousin Spencer, who worked at the local magic shop. Several cards were missing from the deck, but it had “all the main ones,” Spencer had assured him. “Anyway, you don’t need a full deck for most tricks. You’ll see, magic is easy.”

  Oliver was beginning to think his cousin had misled him.

  “Thank you for inviting me to your tea party,” said Oliver. “You said there was going to be cake.”

  If there was one thing that was going to make Oliver feel better, it was cake.

  “You’re welcome, Oliver,” Bea replied. “The cake is right in front of you—it’s imaginary. Like the tea. Do you want to play Genius Fairies?”

  Oliver loved cake. All kinds of cake. Cupcake. Sponge cake. Pancake.

  He even loved imaginary cake. Most days, it was the only sort of cake that his mother, who was a health food nut, would let him have.

  He did not love Bea’s current favorite make-believe game, Genius Fairies: magical fairies who were good at math and science. Not Oliver’s strongest subjects.

  Before he could refuse to play, Teenie chimed in: “Frida doesn’t want to play Genius Fairies. She wants to play Super Fairies.” Super Fairies were good at running, sneaking, and acrobatics. Also not Oliver’s strongest subjects.

  “Her name’s not Frida.” Bea pointed to the cat. “It’s Calico.”

  “Frida!”

  “Calico!”

  As the girls fought, Oliver checked the cat’s collar.

  ACHOO!

  In all the excitement, Oliver forgot that he was allergic to cats.

  “Oliver, did you get an invitation to Maddox’s party?”

  Oliver was relieved that they had changed the topic. But not so relieved when he realized what the new topic was.

  Maddox, the richest kid at Nowonder Elementary, was turning nine that Saturday. His party was the talk of the third-grade class.

  “Um . . . it must have gotten lost in the mail,” Oliver said. “It’s okay, I can’t go anyway.”

  “You have to go—he has a pool!” Bea declared. “Besides, if we don’t go to the party, Maddox will think that we don’t like him.”

  “Wait. We don’t have a present,” said Bea. “If we don’t bring a present, then he’ll really know we don’t like him.”

  “What can we get Maddox?” Teenie asked. “Wait. Does he have a cat?”

  “I’m not giving him Frida!” said Bea.

  “You call her Calico!”

  “Well, I’m not giving him Calico either.”

  “What then?”

  Teenie and Bea looked at each other, then together they yelled at the top of their lungs: “Daddy! Papa! Emergency! We have to go to the pet store!”

  Forgetting about Oliver, they ran upstairs to talk to their fathers.

  Left alone at the table, Oliver turned to Frida/Calico.

  The Gig

  Do you know the expression that begins, If at first you don’t succeed . . . ? As far as Oliver was concerned, it ended . . . do not humiliate yourself again.

  After the tea party fiasco, Oliver decided he was not cut out to be a magician. (Fiasco is a very useful word; it means disaster. I find there can never be enough words for disaster.) He would have to look for a new occupation. Baker maybe? He liked cake, after all. He could see his business card already
:

  Or did “Kid Baker” make it sound as if he were baking kids instead of cakes?

  The next day, Oliver’s mother was working late, so he got a ride home with Bea and Teenie.

  As always, he got the middle seat, but because he had a generous spirit he didn’t complain. Also, it was the only way his booster seat fit.

  Usually, the middle seat put him in the middle of a fight between the twins, with Bea angrily complaining that it was too loud for her to read and Teenie noisily humming and tapping on the window. Today, the twins were in agreement, which was worse.

  “Great news! We got you invited to Maddox’s party,” Teenie said.

  “I wish you hadn’t,” said Oliver, distressed. “Did he know he was inviting me?”

  “Well, no,” Bea admitted. “But don’t worry, you’re not really invited. More like . . . booked.”

  “Booked?”

  “Exactly,” said Teenie. “It’s a paid gig.”

  “It is? Wait. What’s a gig?”

  Bea tapped a drumroll on her book. “You’re the entertainment!”

  “You’ll be doing a magic show!” Teenie sang. “Isn’t that amazing?”

  “But I’m not a magician!” Oliver protested. “Besides, I told you, I have Hebrew school.”

  “Maddox’s birthday is Saturday. You have Hebrew school on Sunday,” said Bea, who knew Oliver’s schedule better than he did. “Anyway, you can’t back out. We promised Maddox. He’s expecting the greatest magician this side of the Mississippi.”

  “M-i-s-s-i-s-s-i-p-p-i,” Teenie whispered. Having just learned to spell Mississippi, she could not think of the name without also spelling it.

  “So you see, this isn’t really about you, Oliver,” Bea added. “It’s about our honor. You can’t besmirch our honor.”

  Oliver didn’t know what besmirch meant, but it sounded very bad.

  What could he do? He wasn’t a real magician. He wasn’t even a real kid magician.

  “I’ve never performed in front of a crowd,” he said. “I’ve never even done an oral report.”

  “It’s easy,” Bea said. “Just imagine they’re all cats.”

  “Or in their underwear,” Teenie added.

  Oliver did his best to imagine cats in underwear.

  “Anyway, you have plenty of time to practice,” said Bea. “The party isn’t till tomorrow.”

  That’s twenty-four hours, thought Oliver. He couldn’t possibly learn magic in twenty-four hours. He couldn’t even learn his multiplication tables in that time. To be honest, he didn’t think he’d ever learn his multiplication tables. He was in a panic.

  Here are some ideas about what to do when you’re in a panic:

  Practice your multiplication tables:

  Make up a mantra. Repeat it until someone makes you stop:

  Hide your head in your shirt and disappear:

  Address the problem:

  In the end, Oliver could think of only one thing to do. And it wasn’t so much a thing to do as a place to go.

  The Great Zoocheeni’s Magic Emporium did not look very magical. It looked cluttered and dirty. The first time he’d visited, Oliver had been very disappointed. This was the second time he’d visited, and he was still disappointed. On the shelves were the same dusty magic sets, the same used how-to DVDs, the same faded rubber chickens.

  “Hey, cuz,” Spencer said without looking up from his phone. “Don’t tell me, you want a plastic poop. I told you nobody falls for those.”

  “I need magic lessons, and a hat, and a wand,” Oliver said in a rush. “And how much do rabbits cost?”

  “Slooooooow down.” Spencer rose from the stool behind the counter. He was tall and slim and had taken to wearing suspenders. “Let’s start with the hat.”

  Oliver surveyed the hats, all well out of his price range, which was the five dollars he’d saved by not buying lunch two days this week, meatloaf Monday (yuck) and vegetable soup Tuesday (gross).

  “What can I get for five dollars?” Oliver asked.

  “Zero hats,” said Spencer. “But tell you what, there’s an old hat in the back that we were going to throw away. A man came from Las Vegas last week. Sold everything, even his cape.”

  Spencer tossed Oliver an old, moth-eaten top hat. It was so heavy that he fell to the ground catching it. The hat was velvet, and was once maybe blue or possibly purple. What it had lost in color it had gained in smell.

  “Did somebody puke in this?”

  “Not lately.”

  The hat fit like a glove. A glove that was much too large.

  “It looks great on you,” Spencer said as he took a picture of his cousin.

  “What about magic lessons?” asked Oliver.

  Oliver took off the hat and placed it on the counter. The hat appeared to move ever so slightly toward the candy dish near the cash register.

  That’s impossible, Oliver thought. Even a magician’s hat doesn’t move on its own.

  “Zoocheeni stopped giving lessons,” Spencer said. “Not enough money in it.”

  “But I need to learn magic for a birthday party tomorrow! It’s a paid gig—”

  At the sound of “paid gig” a flash of smoke filled the room, followed by a coughing dove and the Great Zoocheeni himself.

  “Magic can’t just be taught, my boy.” Zoocheeni spoke with his wand in the air as if he were conducting an orchestra. “It has to be lived. Believe, and your audience will follow.”

  Oliver could not follow. He was distracted by the dove, who had perched on Oliver’s new hat and was pecking at the brim. The hat appeared to peck back.

  “And how much are they paying for this ‘gig,’ as you call it?” Zoocheeni continued. “This ‘burrrthday partay.’”

  The great magician said “birthday party” as if it were something quite smelly, like a sock worn a second day or a used magician’s hat. The dove pinched her beak in revulsion.

  “I’m not sure,” Oliver replied. “They have a lot of money, though. He’s got a pool.”

  “A pool, you say?” Zoocheeni rubbed his chin in thought. “How very interesting. Aboveground or . . . Never mind. Such trifles are beneath me. As are birthday parties. You asked for a magic lesson. How much are you willing to pay?”

  “Five dollars.”

  Oliver was proud of his five-dollar bill and held it in the air. The dove snatched it and dropped it into the open cash register.

  Zoocheeni nodded to the dove. “Thank you, Paloma,” he said in a voice full of adoration.

  The magician turned back to Oliver. “For five dollars, I couldn’t teach you a single trick.”

  “But Mr. Zucchini! The dove—”

  The magician rose to his full height. “How dare you call me that! It’s Zoo-cheeni. Like zoo-cheesy. But with an n!”

  “I’m sorry,” said Oliver desperately. “But the dove took my money. Can’t you at least teach me one trick?”

  Zoocheeni considered. “Well, maybe just one. . . .”

  Oliver was excited to learn a new trick, but before he could take out his notepad and pencil, he was picked up by the scruff of his neck and thrown out the door.

  “What about the trick?” he called out.

  “That was it,” came the answer. “I taught you to disappear!”

  Oliver’s new hat came sailing after . . .

  with a

  a ,

  two hops, and a

  Nothing Bunny About It

  Oliver sat in the alley behind the magic store, wishing he could disappear altogether. What was he going to do? He was supposed to do a magic show, and all he had was a smelly hat and no tricks.

  “Psst.”

  Oliver looked around.

  “Anybody out there?” asked a gruff voice.


  Oliver looked around again. He couldn’t see anybody.

  “Just me,” he said. “And . . . you?”

  “Oh, I’m here all right. Why else would my tush hurt so much?”

  Oliver nodded uneasily. “Are you sure you’re not just in my head?”

  “Well, I was on your head a moment ago. But now I seem to be out on the street. Not that it’s the first time, mind you.”

  Oliver looked around yet again, until his eyes fixed on the top hat. It moved a little.

  Slowly, recognition dawned. “You’re a . . . hat?”

  “What? Ha! Now that would be a first!”

  A head popped out of the hat. “No, this here is just my crib, my pad, my castle, mi casa.”

  Oliver stared.

  It was the head of a rabbit. The head of a rabbit wearing sunglasses.

  “Thanks for busting me out, kid. You did me a solid.”

  “You’re welcome,” said Oliver, more than a little bit confused.

  The rabbit looked around suspiciously, sniffed. “And here I thought I knew every back alley in Vegas.” He shrugged. “So can you tell me how to get to the Luxor?”

  “Isn’t Luxor a city in Egypt?” asked Oliver.

  “No, kid. It’s a hotel in Vegas. Why, does Egypt have pyramids too?”

  Oliver nodded his head. “But we’re not in Egypt. Or Vegas.”

  “This isn’t Vegas? Is it Reno? I can’t go back to Reno! Not without a disguise.” The rabbit eyed the back door of the magic shop as if his enemies were about to walk out of it. “Can you spare me a disguise? On second thought, can you loan me a Hamilton?”

  “A Hamilton?”

  “A ten, kid. No? Okay, make it a Lincoln. A fiver. Any green at all?” The rabbit’s eyes narrowed. “And no, I don’t mean carrot tops, wise guy. Trust me, I’ve heard all those jokes before.”