The Fascinators Read online

  (They might have been successful, too, if Sam’s mom hadn’t threatened to rain down the full force of the ACLU upon the school. That had been a trip.)

  All of that was to say, Sam never took the experience for granted when he walked into the gym at three forty-five—it was something special he had going here, with James and Delia. They were practicing magic. It was sanctioned with a practice space by state and school.

  Sam was the first to arrive today, but he wasn’t waiting long on the bleachers before Delia and James came in together, talking amiably—no sign that they were dwelling on the weirdness from lunch. They hardly paused their conversation as they walked up to Sam, and Delia managed to keep talking even as she brought her backpack around to her stomach and unzipped the main pocket, removing a stack of loose papers.

  “ . . . which is when I said that if he wanted me to go on a real date with him, he was going to have to try a little harder,” Delia concluded, earning an admiring laugh from James and a serious eyebrow raise from Sam. “I was just filling in James on what happened at the bowling alley that night, after you two left,” she explained.

  There was that disorienting blip again, in the split second before Sam realized that she couldn’t be referring to what had happened with him and James, because James would hardly need her to fill him in on that, and besides, James seemed totally at ease right now.

  “Ah, right, with Jamal. You told me about that.” Sam took a steadying breath. The only way things would start feeling normal again was if he started acting like they were normal again. He nodded at the papers in her hands. “What are those?”

  “These,” she said, handing one collated stack to James and one to Sam, “are copies of Professor C. January’s freshman-year Applied Magics syllabus. Who is Professor C. January, you ask? Well, she, he, or they are a professor at none other than the Pinnacle School of Magic. You may have heard of it?”

  “How did you get a copy of their syllabus?” Sam asked, leafing through the pages and finding references to all kinds of spells that, according to C. January, could be found in about fifteen different books and on dozens of different websites and apps. Some spells were written directly into the syllabus; most of those were in English, and they were all attributed to C. January themself. Original designs—a fact that seemed to confirm all of Sam’s notions about Pinnacle.

  “Well, Pinnacle has a Friendivist group for prospective students, and I dug around until I found some of the members who joined a while ago and were just starting first semester now. I private-messaged a couple of them, nothing too pushy, saying that I wanted to see whether the syllabus was too challenging for a Georgia nobody like me. You know, appealing to their own sense of how smart and accomplished they are.”

  “Good thinking,” James said.

  “And a little scary of you,” Sam added.

  “You don’t even know,” Delia said. “Turns out they’re too proud of themselves up there; none of them wanted to share with me. But this guy, Vikram, and this other guy, Mark, both mentioned having the same teacher, so I made up an email address as Mark and told Vikram I was locked out of the student portal, so could he please forward the syllabus? It was a longshot, but surprise, it worked. And now that we have these, I can make sure that the coursework isn’t beyond me. If it’s all right with you two, I was thinking this semester we could alternate between practicing our convention categories and then practicing from this syllabus. Come Thanksgiving, convention will be behind us and I’ll know if I got accepted, and then we can figure out what we want to do with our last six months, since we won’t have a convention next year to practice for.”

  “Sounds like a plan to me,” James said.

  “Am I the only one who’s not ready to think about our last six months on the first day of school?”

  “Sorry, Sam. You know living in the moment is a luxury I literally can’t afford.” Delia hugged her copy of the syllabus to her chest.

  “Right, well, before we get too far down the road of planning our Christmas-slash-graduation party: James, what was all that about at lunch?”

  “All what?”

  “At Mike’s party or whatever?” Sam said. “Sounded like I missed a lot. Of course, I’ve had all afternoon to wonder about it, so I’m sure the truth will be totally underwhelming.”

  “Oh, well . . . ,” James paused and looked around, as if someone might be hiding in the wide-open—and very empty—gym. “It’s nothing, really. Nothing worth getting you two mixed up in, anyway.”

  “Mixed up in?” Sam said.

  “You obviously have to tell us whatever it is now,” Delia said.

  James bit his bottom lip, then let out a sigh.

  “All right. But it’s really nothing to worry about. I’ve got it all under control, okay? So. Last week, I went to Mike’s party—”

  “Is this the tryout for the magic club?”

  In unison, they turned to find a boy in a blue plaid shirt, at least six feet tall plus another few inches of sandy blond curls. The boy was frantic and winded, as if he’d just sprinted here. Sam didn’t recognize him, but the boy didn’t look like a freshman, either. He stood a few steps inside the doorway, and he took a few more steps toward them, interpreting their silence to mean that they hadn’t heard him, and not that they’d stopped expecting new potential members so long ago that they were having trouble processing the appearance of a stranger.

  “Is this—”

  “Yup, you’re in the right place,” Sam said. “I mean, assuming you are looking for the magic club yourself, and not just . . . asking . . . for someone else . . .” Sam felt his face go red. Delia gave him a look like she was embarrassed by proxy.

  “Awesome,” the guy said. “Yes, I am looking for the magic club. For myself.”

  Sam blushed even redder, which was apparently very amusing to James, judging by his roguish grin. If he thought he was off the hook for finishing his story later, he was sorely mistaken.

  “I’m Denver, by the way.” The boy reached out to shake hands with all of them, starting with Delia.

  “I’m assuming you just moved here?” Delia said.

  The boy stretched to his full height and smiled. Which, goodness. He had literal dimples.

  “What gave it away?”

  “It’s a small school. We’re the only three members of the club, and have been since we started it.”

  “Mostly because of how religious everybody is here,” Sam explained, not wanting Denver to think that they were the weird ones or something. “People in Friedman think magic should only be used in worship. Anything more than that and you’re trying to rival His power.”

  “I did get that sense around town this summer,” Denver said. “One simple levitation spell to reach the top shelf at Publix, and suddenly everyone’s looking at me like I summoned a lesser demon.”

  “You know how to summon a demon?” Delia said, with what Sam considered an alarming degree of excitement.

  Denver laughed. He had a good laugh, warm and inclusive.

  “No, no. Are those even a real thing? Either way, no. But I’ll tell you what, it’s a good thing Ms. Berry mentioned this group when I came in to register for classes last week. Even if Friedman is a Shirley Jackson story waiting to happen, I’ll bet the main reason y’all don’t get more members is that you hold your tryouts on the first day of school, with no announcements or anything.”

  Delia and James turned to Sam.

  “Hey—I don’t know why y’all are looking at me. I put up the posters, as you know.”

  Denver smirked. “Would those be the posters that said, ‘Down with the patriarchy, up with magic, join the Fascinators’?”

  The holding of a tryout was a necessary formality, following school and state magic club bylaws, and the bylaws said that tryouts had to be open and advertised to the whole school. But since they truly didn’t believe anyone else at this school cared, Sam, as treasurer-slash-secretary, got to interpret “advertised” however he wished
, which over the years had meant fliers containing PG innuendo, obscure anti-humor, and subtle liberalism.

  “Clearly, they worked well enough,” Sam countered.

  “Ms. Berry stopped me on my way out to my car and gave me the heads-up,” Denver said. Sam avoided eye contact with all of them, letting the beat that might have been filled with his apology be filled with the humming of the gym lights instead.

  “Why are y’all called the Fascinators, by the way?” Denver finally continued. “Ms. Berry tried to explain it, but it didn’t make any sense. At my old school, we were just ‘the Magic Club,’ and I thought that was a standardized thing, like Beta Club or Key Club. Lets people know what they’re joining.”

  “It’s just a word James found,” Sam said, earning a mild look of betrayal from James. “We all liked it, though,” he quickly clarified. “It’s taken on new meaning in the years since.”

  “And who wants to be standardized?” James said, throwing down a smile like it was a challenge.

  Which was Delia’s cue to swerve. “So where was your old school?”

  “Nashville. You been there?”

  “Once,” Delia said. Sam shook his head.

  “It’s a mixed bag. My mom and I did use magic in worship, but we’re not zealots—we’re Episcopalian. And my school’s magic club was pretty diverse.”

  “Was your club any good?” James said.

  “We were all right. I only joined it last year, as a sophomore, but we came in eighth overall at our state convention. Why? Are you three really good?”

  Sam started to reply that if Denver had placed in the top ten in his state, he’d need to leave his hopes, dreams, and expectations at the door of the Friedman gym, but James spoke first.

  “Honestly? Yeah, kind of,” he said. “We don’t have enough members to field a full team, but Delia’s never met an incantation she couldn’t do exactly right, and Sam always gets the touchy-feely parts when Delia and I don’t.”

  “He means the associations,” Sam mumbled.

  “Plus,” James went on, “Ms. Berry never comes to practices. We’ve basically taught ourselves everything we know.”

  That was true, strictly speaking, although Sam was tempted to point out that their lack of a teacher could also be the reason for his own deficiencies. Whatever James thought of his figurative strengths, Sam wasn’t a quick study like James and Delia.

  “I respect that,” Denver said. “Does that mean you judge your own tryout, too?”

  “Yes,” James said, before Sam could interject that there was no tryout—the only requirement was to show up. That was the whole joke.

  “It’s actually pretty simple,” James continued, deliberately avoiding eye contact with Sam and Delia. “We’ve all done it before. You just have to tell us how much cash Sam has in his wallet, without touching him in any way. You can use whatever magic you want, as long as you don’t hurt Sam and as long as you give back any money you take.”

  Delia and Sam exchanged an uneasy look. Neither of them knew what James was playing at here, and what he was asking was hard. Unless Denver had X-Ray vision—and Sam hoped he didn’t, under the circumstances—he would either have to levitate an object he couldn’t see and had never seen, or else he would have to read Sam’s mind.

  “Oh,” Denver said, daunted but determined. “Okay, then, sure. Straightforward but tricky. I like it. I think.”

  He squared his feet with his shoulders and stared into Sam’s eyes, like maybe he really was going the mind-reading route. He seemed so sincere, with his hands down by his sides. Sam’s aggressive anti-awkwardness reflex manifested in the form of a powerful urge to look away.

  More than that, though, he felt an urge to help. Denver might not need to pass this tryout to make the club, but he didn’t know that, and Sam found that he didn’t like being on this side of a joke at someone else’s expense, however lighthearted it was intended to be.

  I don’t carry cash. I don’t carry cash. I don’t carry cash.

  “James—” Delia started.

  “Wait—don’t mess up his concentration,” James said, enjoying this far too much for Sam’s liking.

  Denver had broken a sweat.

  I don’t carry cash. I don’t carry cash. I don’t carry—

  “None,” Denver said, as if it had come to him suddenly. “He doesn’t have any cash in his wallet.”

  Sam sighed, too relieved to be impressed, although there would be plenty of time to realize how impressed he was later.

  “How did you do that?” James said in disbelief, and Sam could swear he was looking at him, too, like he knew that Sam had contributed somehow.

  “A good magicker never reveals all his secrets,” Denver said. Then he winked at Sam—actually winked, like a black-and-white movie star, instead of a person.

  “Well, Denver,” Delia said, “however you did it, as club president, it is my executive privilege to speak for all of us and say welcome to the Fascinators.” She shot James a matching executive look. “I imagine we all have a lot we can learn from you.”

  If the addition of a fourth member into their tight-knit group made their first practice feel a little stiff and stilted, forcing the three of them to articulate things that had long since become routine, it was all lost on Denver, who seemed at ease right away. He even already had lots of ideas for the rest of the year, which he was more than happy to share, one after the other, as they all walked out to the parking lot at the end.

  “Maybe we can keep a shared drive going with all the spells we’re working on, so we can help each other between practices? Oh, and do y’all do a fundraiser before convention? We did at my old school, and we were able to completely cover our hotel rooms and meals.”

  “We don’t,” James said.

  “Though that is a great idea, actually,” Delia said. “Don’t you think so, Sam? Sam’s our treasurer. Last year we stayed at James’s distant cousin’s place during convention. We had to sleep on a couch and an air mattress while Ms. Berry stayed in an Airbnb on her own dime.”

  “It was a very comfortable air mattress,” James said.

  “What do you think, Sam?” Denver said. “How much money would we need to raise?”

  “Well, let’s see . . . every year, I take the hundred dollars the school gives us, then use it to pay for our entry fee to convention. With the five dollars that’s left over, I reimburse myself for the tryout posters and, if I’m lucky, the markers. But now that you mention it, I was thinking this year I could push Ms. Berry for an extra ten bucks to help buy us some T-shirts. Seeing as how it’s our last year and all.”

  Denver didn’t know Sam well enough to tell if he was kidding, so he offered a smile that could pass either way. To be fair, Sam wasn’t kidding, he just couldn’t stop his voice from defaulting in that direction.

  Finally, they got to the row where their cars were waiting. All except Denver’s—he’d have to keep walking the twenty yards to reach his.

  “Well, I’ll see y’all next time, I guess?” Denver said.

  “See you then,” Delia said, while James and Sam waved.

  Sam turned to say goodbye to his friends, but for some reason, without discussing it, Delia and James were both climbing into the back seat of his car, not even waiting for Denver to get ten steps away before gossiping so loudly, Denver probably could have heard them from the football field. Sam jumped into the driver’s seat and rushed to roll up his windows all the way, the least he could do.

  “—and then making him try out?” Delia was saying.

  “Oh, come on, that was totally harmless. Not to mention it didn’t work, thanks to an assist from that one.” Sam caught James nodding his way in the rearview mirror. He didn’t think he liked being referred to as “that one.”

  “We could really use some new blood,” Delia said. “I think he’s going to be an asset to the group.”

  “I’m sure you do,” James said suggestively. “Quite the asset.”

  “Oh, ple
ase, James. My type is a little less bright-eyed. Besides, I got the distinct impression that he plays for Sam’s team. Didn’t you think so, Sam?”

  “Um, I don’t know what to think, having just met the guy. But what I do know is that y’all better wait until he’s at least out of earshot before you draft him onto any team, or we’re going to scare him away before our next practice, and possibly find ourselves in Ms. Berry’s office.”

  “So, you’re also happy he’s joining,” James said. It sounded like a trick question, if it was a question at all.

  “I mean, sure,” Sam said. “Why not?”

  “Nothing, it’s just . . . I mean . . . I just . . .”

  James’s voice became faint until he fully trailed off, and at first Sam thought he was looking for the right words to express his disappointment. But when the silence stretched on and Sam turned in his seat, he found James staring blankly ahead, his eyes glazed over. His mouth hung slightly open; he didn’t blink. Sam snapped his fingers, but no response.

  “James?” Delia said, shaking him gently by the shoulder, which only had the effect of making him slump forward against the passenger seat, his whole body limp.

  “What the hell?” Sam said, unsettled but still clinging to the hope that this was another prank, like the tryout—that James was just in a joking mood.

  Delia clearly didn’t think so. She began muttering the words to an incantation Sam didn’t recognize—something rough and guttural. Urgent. Circular. Sam wasn’t sure what it was doing exactly, but finally, in the exact moment that he felt his own stomach fly toward his spine, a visceral revulsion, James rocked suddenly back against his seat, and when he regained his balance, he was himself again.