Abby Carnelia's One and Only Magical Power by David Pogue Page A

resist; she put her finger up to the window anddrew a fancy script
E
in the foggy patch, which was already starting to fade away, from the outside in.
    â€œDoes it work when you don’t use that weird voice?” she asked.
    â€œNope.”
    â€œWhat about counting
not
by twos? What if you just count one, two, three in Spanish?”
    â€œNope,” Ricky said again. “It only works this way.”
    Abby would have found his trigger hilarious—if hers weren’t equally peculiar. Mostly, she was delighted to discover that his power was just as useless and unimportant as her own. She imagined that he’d gone through many of the same experiences and feelings.
    â€œIt’s amazing, Ricky,” she told him, turning from the foggy patch to look back at Ricky. “What does your family think?”
    Ricky turned his head to look out at the passing scenery, which was hilly and green. “My sisters all think it’s just a magic trick. But my parents were really upset. They thought there was something wrong with me. They took me to a psychiatrist.”
    â€œAnd what did he say?”
    â€œShe. She asked a bunch of questions, but couldn’t figure out what my little fogged-glass thing had to do with my personality or whatever. I think she was a little scared.Anyway, she said I should see a doctor. So we went and saw a doctor, and he did about a million tests and finally said there was nothing wrong with me. My parents kept telling him that they had to do something, so he said if they were still worried, they should take me to see a priest.”
    â€œA priest?” Ben chimed in. “They thought it was something religious?”
    â€œThey thought maybe I needed an exorcism,” Ricky said solemnly. “You know, like in the movies. Where evil spirits take over your body, and a priest does a special ceremony to get ’em out.”
    â€œSo did they try that?” asked Eliza.
    â€œWell, they were gonna. My parents took me to see this old priest guy on the Upper West Side. He lived in this little tiny apartment, like you wouldn’t believe how small it was. The bathtub is in the kitchen! Anyway, this guy asked a ton of questions that had nothing to do with me, like did I have visions, did I ever hear voices, did I scream in my sleep, did I ever have blackouts where I just can’t remember what happened in the last few hours, did I ever feel compelled to do something evil, all this stuff. I told him no, not any of those things. Only that I can fog up glass. He made me leave the room so he could talk to my parents, but later on, they told me what he said anyway.”
    â€œWhat?” Abby asked.
    â€œHe said that an exorcism wouldn’t do any good because I’m not actually possessed by any evil spirits. He didn’t know how to explain my trick, but he was positive that there’s nothing in the Bible about people fogging up windows.”
    Eliza snorted. “Surprise, surprise,” she said.
    â€œHow did you get picked for this trip?” Abby said. Of course,
she
had gotten noticed by performing at Camper Show. But she didn’t remember Ricky doing any on-stage performances where the counselors might have noticed him.
    â€œOh, it was kinda weird,” he replied, getting back into storytelling mode. “So this one night? In our cabin? It was after lights-out, and we were just whispering back and forth, me and this kid who’s in the bed across from me? We could see a light shining through one of the windows in our cabin, and I was gonna see if I could make him freak out. I told him there was a ghost who likes to hang around our cabin, a Spanish ghost, who speaks Spanish and stuff, and I told him I could make the ghost appear. I told him to watch the light through the window really closely, and see if he could see the ghost passing in front of it. And so I started making all kinds of weird noises and sounds, like really quietly and