2 Sleight of Hand

Chapter 2 Sleight of Hand sleight of hand (n) a trick performed with the hands, requiring quickness and skill, such as making a coin appear or disappear; also called legerdemain or prestidigitation Evan heard Jessie clomp downstairs to answer the door. If it was Peggy, he would just stay in his room. It wasn't that he didn't like Peggy; it's just that he felt as if he was getting a little old to have a babysitter. In three months he was going to be eleven. That was old enough to be a babysitter. In fact, sometimes Mrs. Nevya, who lived on their street, paid Evan to play with her two little boys while she did housework and made important phone calls. She knew Evan could be counted on to keep the boys safe.

手的戏法（名词）用手表演的需要快速和技巧的戏法，如使硬币出现或消失；也叫legerdemain或presdigitation埃文听到杰西噔噔地下楼去应门。 如果是佩吉，他会待在房间里。 这并不是说他不喜欢佩吉；只是他觉得自己有点老了，不适合请保姆了。 再过三个月，他就要十一岁了。 她已经大到可以当保姆了。 事实上，住在这条街上的内维亚夫人有时会付钱让埃文在她做家务和打重要电话的时候陪她的两个小男孩玩。 她知道埃文能保证孩子们的安全。

Evan flipped to the section of the book that explained how to do sleight-of-hand tricks. There were seven basic techniques for sleight of hand, and Evan wanted to master them all: the palm, the ditch, the steal, the load, the simulation, the misdirection, and the switch. Today he was working on the palm. It was a technique that fooled the audience into thinking that your hand was empty when really you were holding something. There were two ways to palm something: the finger palm and the classic palm. Evan examined the pictures carefully. He could do the finger palm, no problem, but it was the classic palm that gave a better show. With

埃文翻到书中解释如何耍小把戏的那部分。 骗术有七种基本技巧，埃文想要全部掌握：手掌、壕沟、偷取、装载、模拟、误导和转换。 今天他在做手掌。 这是一种欺骗观众的技巧，让他们以为你的手是空的，而实际上你拿着东西。 手掌有两种方式：手指手掌和传统手掌。 埃文仔细地检查了这些照片。 他可以做指掌，没有问题，但经典的手掌表现得更好。 与

the classic palm, you had to squeeze the muscles in your hand in just the right way—so that your palm held the coin or ball or whatever you were hiding— while making your hand look completely relaxed. It was hard. Evan spit on his hands, then rubbed them together. He pulled out the quarter from his pocket and held it in his left palm. He waved his hand in a flourish. The quarter fell out and onto the floor. He picked it up and tried again. He didn't mind practicing. You had to practice if you wanted to be good. Evan had always loved watching magic acts, but until his grandmother gave him a magic kit for Christmas, he had never thought about performing magic himself. As soon as he learned a few tricks— and discovered that he was pretty good, a natural— he'd been hooked. Every time he mastered one skill, he couldn't wait to jump to the next. Each skill was harder than the last, and pretty soon he was performing tricks that left Jessie and his mom asking, "How'd you do that?

在传统的掌心游戏中，你必须以正确的方式挤压你手上的肌肉，这样你的手掌才能握住硬币或球或任何你藏起来的东西，同时让你的手看起来完全放松。 这很难。埃文往手上吐了口唾沫，然后搓了搓。 他从口袋里掏出那枚25美分的硬币，放在左手掌里。 他挥挥手。 硬币掉了出来，掉在地板上。 他把它捡起来，又试了一次。 他不介意练习。 如果你想做得好，你必须练习。 埃文一直很喜欢看魔术表演，但在祖母送给他一个魔术工具箱作为圣诞礼物之前，他从未想过自己会表演魔术。 一旦他学会了一些技巧——并且发现自己做得很好，很有天赋——他就被迷住了。 每当他掌握了一项技能，他就迫不及待地跳到下一项。 一项比一项难，很快他就表演出了一些让杰西和他妈妈问：“你是怎么做到的？”

And magic was a lot like basketball. In basketball you had to move fast, you had to think fast, you had to drill over and over so that your muscles knew what to do before your brain even gave a command. And you had to know how to fake, to misdirect your opponent so that you could perform magic on the court. In Evan's mind, basketball and magic were almost the same thing. There was a feeling he got when he sank a shot, the way the ball left his fingertips, sailed through the air, then fell through the basket with barely a whisper. It made him feel as if everything was in its proper place, everything in the whole world was right where it belonged. Performing a magic trick—perfectly—made him feel the same way. Evan heard the doorbell ring a second time and then the loud screech of the front door opening. Jessie shouted something, but Evan couldn't hear what. A minute later, his mom knocked on his door and came in. "That must be Peggy," said Mrs. Treski. "I don't

魔术和篮球很像。 打篮球时，你必须快速移动，快速思考，反复训练，这样你的肌肉才能在大脑下达指令之前就知道该怎么做。 你必须知道如何伪装，误导你的对手，这样你才能在球场上表演魔术。 在埃文的心目中，篮球和魔术几乎是一回事。 当他投进一球的时候，他有一种感觉，球离开他的指尖，在空中飘过，然后轻轻地落进篮筐。 这使他觉得好像每样东西都在它该在的地方，世界上每样东西都在它该在的地方。 完美的魔术表演让他也有同样的感觉。 埃文听到门铃第二次响了，然后是前门打开的尖叫声。 杰西喊了什么，但埃文听不见。 一分钟后，他妈妈敲了敲他的门，走了进来。 “那一定是佩吉，”特雷斯基太太说。 “我不

know what she's doing here so early. Maybe she thought there was going to be traffic on the drive. Can you help me close my suitcase?" "Sure," said Evan, putting the quarter back in his pocket and following his mom. "Wow," he said when he walked into her bedroom. "I didn't hear the bomb go off!" The drawers of her dresser were hanging open, and clothes were draped all over the bed, the chair, and even on the floor. There was a pile of books and magazines on her night table that looked as if it was ready to topple over, and at the foot of the bed was a small mountain of shoes. "I had trouble deciding what to take. And I still can't close my suitcase." There was something in her voice that made Evan nervous. That made him put on his grown-up voice. "Relax, Mom. It's not like you're going to the moon." "Try to zip while I squeeze," she said, pushing down on the scratched purple suitcase. "It feels like I

我知道她这么早来干什么。 也许她以为路上会堵车。 你能帮我合上手提箱吗？”“当然，”埃文说着，把硬币放回口袋，跟着妈妈走了。 “哇，”他走进她的卧室时说。 “我没听到炸弹爆炸！”她梳妆台的抽屉敞开着，床上、椅子上、甚至地板上到处都是衣服。 她的床头柜上有一堆书和杂志，看起来好像随时都会翻倒，床脚上有一小堆鞋子。 “我不知道该带什么。 我还是关不上我的手提箱。” 她的声音里有些东西让埃文感到紧张。 这使他装出了大人的声音。 “放松点,妈妈。你又不是要去月球。” “我挤的时候，你试着拉上拉链，”她说着，把那只有划痕的紫色手提箱往下压。 “感觉我

am. It feels like I'm going all the way to the moon." One of Mrs. Treski's clients had asked her to attend an important conference in California so that she could write the promotional materials for a new product they were introducing. Evan didn't even know what the product was. Some kind of software. Mrs. Treski had lots of clients, and Evan couldn't keep them all straight. But this client was very big and very important. At first she'd said no, explaining that she couldn't possibly leave her children for three whole days. "Family comes first," she had said to Evan and Jessie, which was pretty much her number one motto in life. But the client had offered to pay her big money to do the job. And there were some serious repairs that needed to be made to their old house. So after a lot of thinking, she had finally agreed to go. It was Evan who convinced his mom that she should stay an extra two days and have a little vacation. See the sites. Meet up with her old college

点。感觉就像我要去月球一样。” 特雷斯基夫人的一位客户邀请她参加在加利福尼亚举行的一个重要会议，以便她可以为他们即将推出的一种新产品撰写宣传材料。 埃文甚至不知道那是什么产品。 某种软件。特雷斯基太太有很多客户，埃文无法把他们都安排好。 但这个客户非常大，非常重要。 起初她拒绝了，解释说她不可能离开她的孩子整整三天。 “家庭是第一位的，”她对埃文和杰西说，这几乎是她生活中的第一条座右铭。 但客户提出要付给她一大笔钱来做这项工作。 他们的老房子需要进行一些重大的维修。 因此，经过一番考虑，她终于同意去了。 是埃文说服了他妈妈，让她多待两天，放个小假。 看看网站。和她以前的大学见面