REAL/UNREAL
by Maggie Lehrman
He wasn’t a real magician. That much was obvious.
He used superfine powdered sugar, for one thing. You could get it in a million colors at the specialty baking supply store; Hayden had taken me there once because she’d promised to bless a sorority house at the U and she knew they’d want something bright and poppy. It looked close enough to magic smoke if you didn’t know any better and if the magician kept far enough away so the sticky film didn’t land on your arms or up your nose.
Then there was the way he kind of shrugged when he finished the gesture of his spell, along with a little “what are you going to do” sigh that made it obvious he didn’t expect to be taken seriously. Real magicians are much more confident, which is to say, much bigger assholes.
Case in point: The entire drive out to the woods Hayden made fun of his clothes. The ratty ends of the black hoodie reaching all the way to his knees, the jeans that seemed worn out in an unpurposeful pattern, the boots that were just a little too elvish in the toe. We couldn’t see much of his face under his hood, but a glimpse of his eyes in the Denny’s parking lot showed he’d tried to paint on eyeliner with a shaky hand.
But Hayden making all of those condescending observations didn’t prove that he wasn’t magic; they only proved what a jerk magician Hayden was. I’d seen plenty of her Thorpe cousins looking way worse and trying much harder to make an impression, and they were supposed to be the premier magic family in the state.
No. It was the sugar and the shrug that gave him away. He had even less magical skill than I did, and I was born with nothing at all.
“And what’s that supposed to do?” Hayden asked in her most supremely bored voice.
“It’s—it’s a summoning spell,” the boy said. “It’ll call forth the demon that I need to help me with your request.”
“Oh, goody,” Hayden said.
We came here on behalf of Hayden’s family to scare a little sense into the kid, get him to stop pretending to know anything about their craft. Now I was going to have to save his life.
The Thorpes unofficially adopted me when I was seven. My mother and father were going through what is politely termed an “acrimonious” divorce, the type of soul-consuming drama that meant daily calls to lawyers, multiple ineffective therapists (both parents individually, parents together, all three of us together, two for me on my own because neither trusted the one the other parent suggested), and screaming fights outside of family court.
It’s been nearly ten years, and it still feels like my mom is only just coming out of it. My dad, on the other hand, has a new family and three more kids an hour away. Not that his domestic bliss meant he fought any less.
Anyway, while they fought about money and responsibility and where I should spend my time, I actually spent nearly every day at Hayden’s. The Thorpes fought, too, but it was the type of fighting that used a lot of air but hardly any emotion. If Hayden’s Mom Rebecca called her Mama Vee a cheap controlling bitch, a second later they’d be nuzzling each other’s necks over the kitchen sink instead of brandishing kitchen knives.
I figured out they were magic when Hayden and I were in third grade. Not like they were trying to keep it a secret.
Mom Rebecca, the Thorpe-matriarch-in-training, entered rooms in clouds of sparks. Hayden’s older brother Nutty (Bennett, officially, though no one called him that) had a face that changed slightly every time you saw him. And Hayden’s piles of cousins managed to out-cheat each other at every game we ever played, sometimes in outrageously blatant ways, like the time the Monopoly board turned every other square into Park Place.
I could’ve gone on in a vague state of sort-of-knowing except that Hayden almost killed the class bully.
That was the first time I had to save someone’s life for her.
The not-magician hesitated before stretching his hands out again. I saw Hayden’s fingers twitch. “Please don’t,” I whispered into her ear.
Hayden grinned. As the boy took a deep breath, she whipped her arm in front of her face, slashing the forest air in an arc of bloodred sparks. It smelled like fireworks and sounded like claws scrabbling on a metal roof.
It only took a second—less than that—but I was already running, head tucked, aiming straight for the not-magician’s stomach. By the time the sound of Hayden’s spell echoed its way out of the forest, my head had connected with the boy’s abs and knocked the wind out of him, and the momentum knocked us both to the ground. I landed and stayed on top of him, head on his chest and arms braced on either side of his.
There was a moment of silence as the boy caught his breath and Hayden took stock and the trees around us watched the drama impassively.
Back in third grade, it hadn’t been a demon. Even the phenomenally gifted Hayden Thorpe of the notorious Thorpe clan couldn’t summon a demon at the age of 8.
But unfortunately for Vince Hazani, she could do lots of other things.
What happened was, we were hanging upside down on the jungle gym. Vince came over with his smug little pug-nosed face, hair combed neatly in a side part. His mother dressed him in matching pastel pants-and-shirts combos, and in retrospect I think he had to become a bully in order to reclaim his self-respect.
Before I could fully register Vince and his sea-foam green pants Hayden swung extra hard back and forth on the bar and slashed her arms out at Vince in a V-shape, extending them wide from her chest. I thought it was pretty funny and tried to do the same thing. (That was often—and perhaps still is—my m.o. with Hayden. The magician’s pale echo.)
My slash did nothing, of course. But Hayden’s did.
I watched, still upside down, as Vince’s sneer fell away and his eyes rolled up into his head. He began shivering uncontrollably, and then froze mid-shake and toppled over onto his side.
I swung down from the bar. Hayden kept rocking. From the ground, her smile looked like an intimidating frown.
Something told me I didn’t want to look at Vince, so I scanned the playground for an adult, or even for a fourth or fifth grader to tell me what to do. But everyone had gathered around the tire swing where Mona Shadley had been dared to spin herself a thousand times.
“Did you hurt him?” I asked, skipping the more obvious questions like “what did you do” and “how did you do it” and “can I do it too.”
Hayden shrugged. “Mom Rebecca says justice comes for everyone and we help it along.”
“Yeah, but…” I had heard Rebecca say that very thing many times, but it sounded different coming from the mouth of my best friend, in reference to the disturbingly still body of Vince Hazani.
“He’ll probably be fine if he goes to the doctor,” Hayden said.
She only said it because she loved me, not because she cared about Vince Hazani. It didn’t matter, though. I ran for our teacher, who called 911, who showed up within minutes and took him to the hospital where they revived him.
By the time we were in high school Vince had been shipped off to military school, and rumor has it he’d given himself brain damage doing auto-erotic asphyxiation. Hayden still teases me for saving his life. “Obviously he was destined for greatness. You’re a saint.”
Vince Hazani had been making fun of me—that was the thing. Every day since the beginning of second grade he’d called me Walrus, which I think was meant to be a joke on my last name but had morphed into calling me an actual walrus. He left drawings of walruses on my desk every time I stepped away to go to the bathroom. He pretended to cough and said “walrus” every time the teacher called on me. He looked up walrus facts to present to me in notes left in my cubby and comments shouted during show and tell.
“Did you know walruses can weigh over 4000 pounds? How much do you weigh?”
“Walrus babies stay in their mom’s stomachs for 15 months. That’s sick. I bet you were huge and red and broke your mom’s bones when you came out.”
“Walrus skin is four inches thick. So I don’t understand why you’re crying.”
“Hey, if I held your head underwater for 30 minutes I’d bet you’d survive, because that’s how long walruses can go without breathing. Can we try it?”
So I can’t be too mad at Hayden. I can’t be scared of her, either.
She’s dangerous and unstable and possibly a psychopath, but she loves me.
In the forest Hayden had at least only summoned a minor demon, but even minor demons are terrifying pains in the ass. They smell bad and have ridiculous high-and-mighty manners and could kill you by blinking, so suffice to say they’re not some of my favorite creatures in the world (or, technically, underneath it).
“Don’t. Say. Anything,” I breathed directly into the non-magician boy’s ear.
That had been one of Hayden’s tossed-off warnings, the type of thing sometimes I think she says because she wants to protect me, and sometimes because she doesn’t notice I’m around or doesn’t remember that I didn’t grow up with the same nursery knowledge that she did.
“Demons only know you’re there if you say something to them,” she said over dim sum one weekend. She gestured with chopsticks holding a pork bun. “We’re all like little squirmy single-celled organisms to them, just a sea of identical viruses. It’s only when one of us jumps out and introduces itself that we catch their attention. Pass the chicken’s feet and hot sauce, will you?”
I remembered that now and kept my mouth firmly closed.
“Hey,” Hayden said casually. “Hey, your most exalted self. Thine bringer of doom and judgment or whatever.” The demon swiveled its giant horned head in her direction, red eyes glowing fiercer with the fire of ten suns. (Demons love that type of talk. Hayden is very bad at it. She makes me practice with her, but I’m not much better.)
“Yes, mortal. I see thee.”
“What’s your policy on doing favors for humans? I mean, what is thine will regarding the, uh, desires and hopes and dreams of our piddling puny mewling race?”
There was a pause, full of the swirling of rapids and the howling winds of a desert storm.
“That is not a request that requires a policy. Humans do not ask favors of one so superior as I.” The demon leaned closer to Hayden, his skin rolling with fire that singed the ends of her blond hair. “Does thee ask a favor?”
He almost said it as if he were daring her.
I’ve never wished harder in my life that she would shut up. Plenty of times she’s pushed the limits, practically insisting that cops write us tickets and teachers give us detention and her cousins spell us blind for a couple hours. But this would go beyond any of that. This dude could decide to wipe the whole world out of existence because he found her impertinent.
I saw her open her mouth.
Damn you, Hayden. I mean seriously.
“Sorry,” I breathed into the not-magician’s ear, a not-quite word that I hoped the demon wouldn’t hear.
Then I reached into the pockets of his black hoodie, digging for the container of colorful powdered sugar I knew had to be there.
He was too stunned to resist, and there it was in his right pocket: a paper bag, half-empty, that squeezed like sand in my hand.
Before I stood up he grabbed my wrist. Surprisingly strong, though perhaps being face-to-face with eternity and the abyss and your almost certain destruction will pump you up beyond your normal capabilities.
He didn’t say anything—smart boy—but he looked at me for a long moment. His eyes, up close, were blue and clear. Pretty, almost. Big and expressive. I could picture him writing poetry instead of pretending to be a magician and provoking the jealous attention of the Thorpes, and I found myself wishing he’d kept his goth tendencies contained to the written word. He didn’t seem so bad—not nearly as bad as Vince. I really hoped he didn’t die.
Right now his big nice eyes were expressing that I shouldn’t be an idiot and should instead stay put and let Hayden’s arrogance and pride and inability to let things go (as I well knew, the hallmarks of a real magician) end her, finally.
But then again there was Vince Hazani. She’d stopped his heart to protect mine.
I shrugged at the not-magician and smiled, waving the bag of powdered sugar in what I hoped was a demon-may-care attitude.
He couldn’t stop me from saving my best friend, from turning around and creating a diversion or getting myself killed or destroying the world with his little packet of sugar.
I wasn’t a magician, either.
We had to make our own magic.
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Maggie Lehrman is the author of the novel THE COST OF ALL THINGS (Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins). She has an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts, where she never saw any actual magic but found plenty of magical inspiration.
