“Don’t you understand?” Houdini asks. “It’s me! I said if there was a way for me to come back after I died, I would do it. Well, there is a way, and I did it! I am back!”
The woman was not impressed.
“You’re going to drip blood on the counter,” she said. “You should go to a hospital. Do your parents know where you are?”
“Don’t you grasp the enormity of what is right in front of your eyes?” Houdini implores the woman. “I pulled off the greatest Metamorphosis ever!”
“Congrats,” she says sarcastically. “Kid, nuts come in here all the time saying they’re the next Houdini.”
“But I really am Houdini!” Houdini yells at her. “I need your help to get some bookings so I can prove I am who I say I am.”
The other people in the museum turn to see what’s going on. As the woman behind the counter reaches into her pocket for her cell phone, a guy in a football jersey approaches Houdini.
“I’m going to have to ask you to leave, son,” he says. “You’re disturbing the other visitors.”
“If I were not Houdini, would I be able to do this?” he says, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a needle. He proceeds to poke it through his cheek. Everybody in the museum gasps. The woman behind the counter dials 911 on her cell phone.
“Whoa, calm down, kid,” says the guy in the football jersey. “There’s no need to do that. We’ll get you the help you need.”
Not more than a minute later, two cops enter the museum.
“What seems to be the problem?” one of them asks.
“This young man is being disruptive, violent, and self-destructive,” whispers the woman behind the counter.
“Has he got a weapon?” asks the other cop.
“He stuck a needle through his own face,” says the guy in the football jersey.
“Okay, buddy,” the first cop says, grabbing Houdini by the arm. “Come with us.”
“I’m Harry Houdini!” Houdini shouts. “Can’t you see?”
The second cop pulls a pair of handcuffs off his belt and wraps them around Houdini’s wrists.
“Handcuffs?” Houdini says, a smirk on his face. “Really?”
GET A LIFE
When I opened my eyes, I was lying in my bed again, just as I had been before my little straitjacket adventure in Kansas City.
First things first. I checked myself all over. I wasn’t Houdini anymore. I was me. What a relief! My arms and shoulders were sore from struggling to get out of the straitjacket. But other than that, everything was back to normal.
I looked at the clock on my night table. Eleven o’clock. Well, at least Houdini had kept his promise. Metamorphosis had lasted exactly one hour. My mom never knew I was away. Nobody else knew what happened. No harm. It was like I had been in bed the whole time. I went back to sleep and didn’t wake up again until my alarm went off at seven in the morning.
I brushed my teeth and stumbled downstairs for breakfast. My mom was already in the kitchen, getting ready for work.
“Morning,” she said cheerfully. “Sleep good, Harry?”
“Yeah,” I told her. “I had a dream, I think.”
“Oh, what happened?”
I could have told her the whole story of the straitjacket and pretended it was a dream. But I just didn’t want to get into it.
“I don’t remember,” I said. “It slipped away as soon as I woke up.”
When I got to school, Zeke caught up to me outside the media center. The little argument we had at St. John the Divine was in the past. Zeke and I have known each other too long to let things like that bother us.
“You won’t believe what happened to me last night,” he said.
“Do tell.”
“My dad came home from work and he said he had a surprise for me,” Zeke told me excitedly. “So he handed me this box and I opened it up. And you know what was inside?”
“What?”
“A box!” Zeke said. “So I opened up the second box and you know what was inside it?”
“Another box?” I guessed.
“Yes!” Zeke exclaimed. “And there were three more boxes, each one smaller than the one before it. My dad gave me a bunch of boxes!”
“Your dad is weird, dude,” I told him.
“I know, right?” Zeke replied. “So what’s going on with you?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” I said.
“Try me.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to get into it with Zeke. He already thought I was crazy, and what happened to me the night before was even crazier. But Zeke is my best friend. He’d do anything for me, and I’d do anything for him. So I decided to be honest.
“I switched places with Houdini,” I said, checking to see if Zeke was rolling his eyes. “He calls it Metamorphosis. He sent me to Kansas City in 1921and I became him. When I got there, some guys put me in a straitjacket and hung me upside down from a building…”
I told Zeke the whole story of how I got myself free. He just stared at me with his mouth open the whole time.
“Wow,” he finally said. “That was way more interesting than my dad’s boxes.”
“Yeah,” I told him, “your story was a little lame.”
Zeke took a moment to take it all in. I could tell he was trying to process everything I had said. Or maybe he was just wondering whether he should have me checked into a mental institution.
“What was it like?” he finally asked. “Being Houdini, I mean.”
“I was scared to death,” I admitted. “I thought I might pee in my pants. You think I’m nuts, right?”
“No, no,” Zeke assured me. “But let me ask you a question. If you switched places with Houdini and you became Houdini, did he become you?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess so. I had a dream that he was here, wandering around Times Square trying to find a place to do his act.”
The bell rang, and
