The Houdini Effect by Bill Nagelkerke Page B

bearing gifts
     
    ‘Hello?’ I said.
    ‘ Snehta taht si,
yeh?’
    ‘ What!’
    ‘ Snehta taht si, dias
I.’
    ‘ Pervert,’ I screamed into
the phone before hanging up. That was the last straw. I
contem-plated telling Dad what had just happened. Perhaps he’d ring
the police and get them to track the call. Then the phone rang
again.
    ‘ Don’t hang up again. It’s
only me, Troy.’
    My first thought was that the weirdness
of
    this - Troy ringing me - was almost enough
to prove that séances and magic mirrors were for real.
    Be calm, I told myself. Rationalise. ‘Oh,
Troy, hi!’
    My second thought . . .
how the hell did Troy know I’d hung up on the previous caller?
Unless Troy had been said previous caller!
    ‘ Was that you
before?’
    ‘ Yeah, sorry.’
    ‘ What on earth were you
saying? It sounded . . . well . . . it sounded Greek to
me.’
    ‘ Sorry,’ he said again.
‘I’m not a pervert, honestly.’
    My face went as red as Harry’s had done
during
    his struggle with the straitjacket. ‘I
didn’t know it was you . . . tell me what were you saying? . . .
and
    why are you ringing me? How did you get
my
    number?’
    ‘ I said, “Hey, is that
Athens?” And then I said, “I said, is that Athens?” I said it
backwards. I sometimes do that.’
    ‘ So I heard,’ I admitted.
‘Why?’
    ‘ Just for fun,’ Troy said.
(Definitely not an impairment, then.) ‘And because I can. It’s not
very easy for most people you know.’
    ‘ Isn’t it?’
    ‘ No, usually you have to
stop and think about it. Write it down, even. I don’t have to do
either. It seems to come naturally.’
    ‘ Right,’ I said, thinking
that this conversation was getting more surreal by the
second.
    ‘ Yadot pu wohs t’ndid
uoy?’
    ‘ Huh?’ It was most unlike
me to be lost for words. Conversing in reverse??? How bizarre was
that?
    ‘ See, it’s not easy.
Otherwise you’d already have worked out what I said.’
    ‘ Please, just tell
me?’
    Troy sighed, sounding
hurt. I wished I could have taken him seriously (I mean, not only
had my dream phone call come true - Troy had rung me; Troy had rung me - and now I had his
number captive on my phone) but, honestly, I had far more serious
things on my mind than the pros and cons of backwards
conversation.
    ‘ You didn’t show up today.
At the pool. Em and Rach didn’t know, weren’t sure, you know . . .
they felt a bit deirrow . . . I mean, worried. Thought if I gave
you a call, you might say what
    was really . . . I mean . . .’
    ‘ You mean they thought I
was holding out on
    them. Lying to them about why I wasn’t
there.’
    ‘ Like I said, they were
deir . . . worried. Said it wasn’t like you not to turn up as
agreed.’
    ‘ Who are the liars?' I
said, more to myself than to Troy.
    ‘ Tahw?’
    I didn’t wait for a translation. ‘Did you
ask after me or not?’ I said.
    ‘ When?’
    ‘ At the pool?’
    ‘ No,’ said Troy. ‘Why
should I have?’
    ‘ Em said you
did.’
    ‘ I didn’t. Why would she
have said that?’
    ‘ You’re either extremely
duplicitous or very stupid,’ I said. ‘Obviously so I’d spill the
beans to you when you rang. When they got you to ring. So you could
pass on whatever was supposedly wrong with me to my friends who
think I’m a liar.’
    While I was working up a
sweat about the situation another part of me - the rationalising
part - was reminding me, well, you didn’t exactly tell your bestest
friends the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, did
you Athens? Can you blame them for roping in an innocent bystander
(named Troy) into trying to find out the truth for them? On the
other hand, Em had lied through her teeth to me, homing in on my
greatest vulnerability. My romantic dream-life shattered, much as I
would have liked to shatter all of Laurie and Iris’s damnable
mirrors! And my name, my unfortunate name Athens, had just received
another battering. In backwards language it had become Snehta !
    My brain