And standing out here pointing a pitchfork at an empty stall was weird. What if Shirley came in?

She calmed herself, put on Normal, and went back to her own stall to finish it up. “Let’s go surfin’ now, everybody’s learnin’ how, come on a safari with meeee!” The songs didn’t come quite as easily this time, but they came.

When she’d finished the first stall, she took a peek toward the second.

The heap of straw that used to be in front of the stall’s door wasn’t there anymore. The stall wasn’t cleaned out either, not half of it, not any of it.

Hoo, boy. Second verse, same as the first.

Live with it. Roll with it. Get to work.If this was as bad as it got …

But she’d seen it worse than this, and that was what scared her. That whole levitation thing the other night she probably brought on herself, but some of the other stuff, including this, she never asked for, it just came along and happened to her, and what was she supposed to do, act like it didn’t?

Just don’t hurt anybody. Don’t hurt anybody and they won’t lock you up.

She got to work, unable, unwilling to sing anymore. She just pitched the hay out the door …

“The devil made me buy this dress! I said, ‘Devil, cut it owwwt!’” It was a voice that sounded just like her trying to sound like Flip Wilson.

“Everybody … loves somebody … sometime… .” It was coming from the first stall, her voice being silly and singing like Dean Martin.

“Sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me!” She’d heard recordings of her voice, but this was downright, flat-out real. Or wasn’t it? Was it live, or was it Memorex?

Eloise yanked in her pitchfork and it scraped on the ground. The hay swished aside. She flipped the tines upward and the other end hit the ground with a clunk.

The girl in the last stall went silent and still. She was listening, Eloise could just feel it. The straw crunched and squeaked ever so quietly under the girl’s feet as she went to her stall door.

What in the heck am I gonna do? Who is that over there really?

“Hello?” came the voice. It was her. She. Herself.

Get out of sight, that’s what you do, because if you see yourself standing in this stall you’re gonna freak out and you might get stabbed by yourself with a pitchfork and that would be way too freaky, that would be the ultimate implosion of your brain into itself and what are you going to tell Shirley when you’ve stabbed yourself with your own pitchfork, I did it but it wasn’t me?Eloise padded carefully, as silently as she could, to the corner of the stall adjacent to the door, the only place she could hide from anyone looking in. “Hello?”

Oh, God help me, she’s going to come over here, isn’t she?

“Is anybody there? Please?”

What if I did answer?

“Pretty please, with peanut butter on top?”

Here she came. Eloise could hear her stepping through the straw. “Just talk to me.” Her voice was high and quivery. “I won’t hurt you. And if you’re not there, then you don’t have to say anything because you’re not there and it’s all my problem, okay?”

She stopped outside the stall, and Eloise remembered—how totally nuts was this?—that when she was the girl out there she was too afraid to come in and look. Okay, so don’t look. I don’t want to see you either.

She didn’t come in, but she stood there and stood there forever. Get back to work, uh, me.

Finally! The girl who sounded just like her gave it up and headed back to her own stall.

Eloise had to look. She didn’t want to, but she had to. She tiptoed to the stall door, leaned, and stuck one eye and her nose outside.

It was her. She. Herself, in the same clothes with the same pitchfork just slipping out of sight into the other stall. Vivid. Real. Eloise could have touched her.

Would her other self have felt it?

Her other self started singing again, her voice weak and looking for a key, “Let’s go surfin’ now, everybody’s learnin’ how, come on a safari with meeee!”

And then the singing stopped and there was a heap of straw and manure outside that stall and no movement inside. Eloise stepped over and looked, finding what she expected: the stall cleaned out, just the way she left it, and no one there.

Her encounter with herself made it all the more awkward—close to miserable, actually—when Mr. Collins suggested doing the card box routine with Shirley as the volunteer. “You need a live, self-aware, emotional person to work with on this one.”

But Shirley? Her supervisor? Maybe Mr. Collins wanted Eloise to work under stress by working with a fussy volunteer. Wonderful. All Eloise had to do was keep her brain in this universe while poking around in another to do the trick—without having another Eloise show up—and put on a great performance with both Shirley and Mr. Collins watching her every move.

Well, as Daddy would have told her, she could either get back into her hospital scrubs or take this dadgum bull by the horns and wrestle it down.

Shirley came in right after lunch, took off her winter coat, hat, boots, and gloves, and sat at the third table in Mr. Collins’s restaurant. Eloise launched into the routine, putting the deck of cards in Shirley’s hand while Shirley just sat there playing along because her boss asked her to.

What was that Scripture about a prophet being without honor in his own country?

Well, those winning moments do eventually come around. When the cards stood up one after the other and formed a box at Eloise’s finger-wiggling command, Shirley’s stoic face finally broke into a smile, as if she were holding a baby chick.

When Eloise produced the key to the tractor from the box, she had Shirley right in the astonishment zone. “That was clever!”

“Excellent,” said Mr. Collins. “I like you working from both sides, that breaks it up visually, but let’s motivate the moves a little more. Can you manipulate the cards with your other hand as well?”

Eloise could, and did, and Shirley sat there just being the center of focus for Eloise to move around.

“And let’s try a different gesture each time you make one stand up so you aren’t repeating yourself.”

Oh, right.Eloise hadn’t thought of that—among many other things.

“Okay, now, slow down. When each card stands up, give that moment your emotional attention, and your audience will follow you. They need to feel what you’re doing, not just see it.”

Emotional attention?Well, she found it with God’s help and worked it in.

When Shirley got back into her winter coat, hat, boots, and gloves, she cocked her eyebrows at Eloise, nodded to herself, and said, “Huh!”

And then she left.

“That should help,” Dane said.

His student looked relieved. “I’m not sure she likes me.”

“Shirley’s a good gal. I think she’s just looking out for me.”

“Well, she likes how I clean up the stalls.”

“She likes your magic, too, and so do I. Just give her time. So … oh, right! Before we wrap up I wanted to talk about your levitation.”

“Oh, I can’t do that here.” Instant reaction, as if he’d proposed doing a root canal.

“Oh, well, sure, I figured as much. That’s incredible rigging. It’s got me stumped, so give yourself a pat on the back for that.”

“As a matter of fact … I don’t think I ever want to do it again.”

She really was afraid, as if he’d cornered her. “Hey, it’s all right. It’s your illusion, your show. Did you need any kind of help with it?”

She shook her head and he could see a barrier going up. “No.”

“Okay. End of subject. No problem. You look tired.”

It was nearly the same “tired” she displayed after she did the levitation the other night. “I am.”

“And stressed.”

She managed to laugh some of it away. “I am.”

“Well, the stress was planned, as you may have gathered. But you did well, so let’s call it a day. Go home, flop on the couch, and be happy with yourself.”