I am looking for a book that I would have read probably in the mid to late 1980s.
A teen girl feels like a misfit. She somehow gets a job taking care of animals (snakes, maybe?) for a magician. I think she might have been skipping school to hang out at his house while he was gone? Eventually she ends up becoming his assistant for some big show and learns how to do some impressive trick. I remember the book describing the outfit she wore during the magic show, maybe that it looked like green shimmering scales. At one point she says something about how she can’t reveal the secrets of tricks but that it was pretty uncomfortable being squished into half a box for the “saw a lady in half” trick.
It is definitely NOT the Magician’s Assistant by Anne Patchett. Tarantulas on the Brain By Marilyn Singer identified by Lost Classics reader KD
Lost Classics of Teen Lit: Name That Book! 