Magic City

by Paula Guran

  “Nothing ‘wizardy’ could be done here anyway. Not here, in the presence of metal. Not by any wizard now living.” Kendall leaned forward, his hands on his knees. “Magic is very old, Jared, much older than even the most primitive civilization. It governs only the things found in nature, and it cannot operate near to the things that are not. The only reason you could summon those stones at all is because your skateboard went flying, you weren’t carrying a cell phone, and you had on pull-on running shorts with no zipper.”

  “You leave my shorts out of this,” Jared said. “How come I never did any magic before, huh? You tell me that?”

  “That’s easy. Your accident. The ability to do magic, among those who possess it at all, is only released in the presence of pain.”

  “Pain?”

  “Yes, Jared,” Kendall said quietly. “Everything in life costs, even magic. The price is pain.”

  This was the first thing the old man had said that made any sense to Jared. He knew things cost. He knew about pain.

  But the rest of it was pure psycho bull. And bull with a reason. He said, “So now you tell me I’m going to one of those wizard schools, huh? Like in that book? Only guess what—it’ll really turn out to be just another lock-down, like Juvie.”

  “There is no such thing as a wizard school. All we have is the Brotherhood, and that all too inadequate to its task.”

  “Listen, this sucks. I’m outta here, man. What do I gotta sign?”

  “You’re a minor. A parent must sign your release forms.”

  “Like that’s gonna happen. My mom’s strung out most of the time and my dad’s long gone. You wait on a parent, I’ll be here forever. Where’s my clothes?”

  “You can’t—”

  “Watch me. I ain’t waiting here for Child Services to stick me in a foster home. And I ain’t listening to no more of your bull, neither.”

  “You can talk better than that when you want to,” Kendall said. “I’ve heard you do so. Here, if you’re really going—no, your shoes are in that cupboard over there—take this. It’s my home address. You can come see me anytime you want, Jared. For any reason.”

  “Don’t hold your breath.” He found the shoes, finished dressing, and walked out of the medical center. He had to lean twice against walls to do it, breathing deeply and fighting his own stomach, but he did it.

  “Welcome to the Brotherhood, Jared,” Kendall said sadly.

  “Forget you,” Jared said.

  It was a week before he could make it out of the house. He lay in his bedroom, fighting the pain, distracting himself with the songs on the radio and with the Game Boy he’d stolen three months ago. Ma had sold the Xbox, but he’d hidden the Game Boy and the radio behind the broken dishwasher, and she hadn’t found them. He should have gotten painkillers before he left the clinic. The old doc would probably have given him some, but Jared hadn’t thought of it. Fortunately, it was one of the times when there was food in the house. Ma’s new guy, whom Jared encountered in the kitchen in his underwear, liked to eat well.

  After a week the bedclothes, not too clean to begin with, stank, but Jared felt better. He knew he was better because he was bored. The day after that he dressed and went out. He didn’t find anybody on the street. Then he remembered that school had started.

  He walked to Benjamin Franklin Middle School, scowled at the security guard, and passed through the metal detector. When classes changed, kids flooded into the halls.

  “Hey! Shawn!”

  Shawn Delancey glanced up from the girl he was talking to, and a strange expression crossed his face. He nodded coolly. Jared hobbled over to him.

  “I’m back, man.”

  “Yeah, I see.”

  “So what you doing here? In school?”

  Shawn didn’t answer. He turned back to the girl, without introducing her. Jared felt his face grow hot.

  “Hey, you dissing me, Shawn?”

  “I’m busy right now. Can’t you see that?”

  This had never happened before. He and Shawn were tight, had always been tight. The girl snickered. Jared limped away.

  The prick, the bastard . . .

  But he couldn’t let it go. He caught Shawn later, leaving school after fourth period, carrying his deck. Jared stepped out from an alley and said, “Shawn. What’s wrong, man?”

  “Nothing. I gotta go.”

  Anger and hurt made him desperate. “Dude, it’s me! Me!”

  Shawn stopped, turning from embarrassment to anger. Maybe, Jared suddenly thought, they were the same thing. “Just leave me alone, Jared, okay? I don’t need you and your lame crap!”

  His crap. He didn’t have any crap except . . . it was weird and stupid, but he couldn’t think of anything else. He said quietly, testing, “The stones?”

  “I don’t know how you did that, but . . . just leave me alone!” Shawn hurried off.

  So it had been the stones. And the stones had happened. They really had. Only it had been some kind of freak accident, wind devil or something, not any freaking magic.

  “Forget you!” he yelled after Shawn, but Shawn was already on his board, skimming lightly out of Jared’s sight.

  With Kendall’s two hundred dollars, Jared bought a new deck, a deluxe Hawk, plus awesome trucks and wheels. He spent every day alone, in another neighborhood, painfully regaining his mobility and skill. After what happened with Shawn, he didn’t want to approach his other friends, and anyway he didn’t have too many other friends. Mostly it had been him and Shawn.

  Ma’s boyfriend broke up with her, and Jared didn’t want to be home with her much; she was always wailing, or else out scoring. When the boyfriend’s food was gone, she barely bought more. Sometimes Jared’s stomach growled while he practiced, over and over, ollies and kickflips and fifty-fifty grinds and even a few hardflips. He sped around the neighborhood, a better one than his own, past trees turning from green to red and gold, past little kids on trikes, past bright flowers in beds edged with stones.

  All the stones stayed where they were supposed to.

  It was hunger and cold that finally made him pull out the card Dr. Kendall had given him at the clinic. Hunger, cold, and maybe loneliness, although he didn’t like to admit that. The address was not far away, on Carter Street. Jared skated over, preparing an excuse in his mind.

  Kendall’s house wasn’t much, a small two-story—weren’t doctors supposed to make a lot of money? Neat bushes surrounded it, and the porch light shone cheerfully in the October dusk. Jared rang the bell and scowled.

  “Hi, Doc, something’s wrong with my hand. You must not’ve fixed it right.”

  “Come in, Jared,” Kendall said. Why did the guy always look so sad to see him? What a crock. But the house was warm and smelled of meat roasting. Jared’s mouth filled with sweet water. “Let me see your hand . . . you had slight damage to your left transverse ligament from the stones, but it looks all right now. Would you like to stay to dinner?”

  “I already ate,” Jared said, scowling more deeply. His stomach growled.

  “Then have a second dinner just to keep me company. My housekeeper just left, and she cooks a lot on Mondays so she doesn’t have to do much the rest of the week.” Kendall led the way to the tiny dining room without giving Jared a chance to answer, so he followed. The room had a big table, real curtains, a china chest filled with dishes. Kendall set a second place.

  Roast beef and mashed potatoes and peas and a pudding that tasted of apples. Jared tried not to gobble too hard. When he finished, he glanced out the window. A cold rain fell. That sucked—it was too easy to snap a board in the rain, and, anyway, the wood got all soggy.

  Kendall, who had been silent throughout dinner, said, “How about a game of Street Fighter?”

  “You play Street Fighter? You? I know it’s an old game and everything, but . . . you?”

  Kendall had a new Nintendo for the vintage game. He wielded the controllers pretty well for an old guy. Jared beat him, but only barely. As they pla
yed, Kendall said casually, “So how’s everything going?”

  “Like what . . . got you!”

  “Like, have you attempted any wizardry?”

  “Cut the crap, man.”

  “All right. How’s school?”

  He said it in such a fake, prissy tone that Jared had to laugh. Then he didn’t. Throwing down the controller in midgame, abruptly he stood. “I gotta go.”

  “School’s not going well?”

  “Nothing’s going well, thanks to you guys,” Jared shouted, before he knew he was going to say anything at all. “Shawn won’t hang with me and the rest is just crap and—”

  “Shawn is avoiding you?” Kendall said. “What about the other kids?”

  “None of your business! Now let me outta here!”

  “The door is that way,” Kendall said calmly. “And you’re welcome for dinner,” but Jared was already halfway out the front door, yanking up his collar against the rain, furious at . . . something.

  Everything.

  “Come back whenever you like,” Kendall called after him. “I’ve got Super Smash Brothers, too.”

  He went back. The first time back, he planned on breaking in and stealing the Nintendo. But Kendall was there, so he didn’t, and they had dinner again, and played the Nintendo, and after that Jared didn’t pretend there was still something wrong with his hand. Pretty soon he was there nearly every night. During the day he skated if the weather was sunny, hung out aimlessly at the mall if it wasn’t, or watched TV at home if Ma wasn’t there. Kendall never mentioned wizard stuff again. The food was always good. After a few weeks, Jared started doing the dishes. Sometimes they played Nintendo; sometimes Jared watched TV while Kendall read. Jared wasn’t much of a reader. The house was warm.

  At six thirty, they always had to stop and watch the news on TV. If there was an earthquake or a flood or a story about some farming problem, Kendall leaned forward intently, his hands on his knees.

  On a cold night in November, when Jared knew the heat was off at home, he stayed the night in the guest room. At four a.m., with Kendall asleep, Jared prowled the house. Not to steal anything, just to look for . . . something.

  In a drawer of the dining room china cabinet, under a pile of tablecloths, he found the picture. It was totally weird: a group of seventeen people who didn’t look like they belonged together. A heavy, middle-aged woman in brown stretch pants and a pink top. A man in a blue uniform with a square badge like a security guard. Two kids, seven or eight, who looked like twins, in miniature gang clothing. An old woman in some kind of long gown. A black man in a gray suit, holding a briefcase. A guy in one of those lame Hawaiian shirts, grinning like an idiot. An Asian kid holding an armful of books.

  And Shawn.

  Jared stared at the picture. It really was Shawn. But what was this group? It sure as hell wasn’t Shawn’s family.

  “Would you like some coffee?”

  Jared whirled around. Kendall stood in the doorway in some old-guy pajamas. He didn’t look mad, just that sad-thing, which was getting really old.

  “Who are these guys? Why is Shawn here?”

  “I just put the water on, Jared. Come into the kitchen.”

  Jared stood beside the kitchen table, refusing to sit down, while Kendall puttered with teakettle and instant coffee. “I asked you a question—who are those people? Is that your dumb-ass ‘Brotherhood’?”

  “You remembered that I mentioned them,” Kendall said with pleasure. “I didn’t know if you would. You were still on painkillers.”

  “I’m not stupid, man!”

  “I know you’re not. And no, that’s not the Brotherhood. That’s the Other Side.”

  “Other side of what? Make sense!”

  Kendall poured hot water into his cup, stirred it, and sat across the table. “Jared, didn’t you think it odd that Shawn avoided you after your accident? Instead of thinking it rather cool that you could command rocks?”

  “ ‘Rather cool,’ ” Jared mocked viciously. “ ‘Command rocks.’ C’mon, give me an answer! What’s Shawn doing with those people?”

  “He’s one of them. And he had no idea you were a wizard, too, until the car hit you. And now he’s staying away from you so you won’t inadvertently discover what he is. You see, that’s our main advantage over the Other Side. We know a lot more about them than they know about us.”

  “ ‘Us’? I thought you said you wasn’t a wizard!”

  “I’m not. But I work with them. Pain releases the power, remember. I’m a doctor. I see a lot of pain. Sometimes it brings us one of our own, sometimes one from the Other Side. My position at the Medical Center is how we’ve been able to identify so many of them.”

  “I don’t believe any of this crap.”

  “Fortunately, your believing or not believing does not change the reality.” Kendall sipped his coffee. “I wish belief was all it took to make the Other Side disappear.”

  “ ‘The Other Side.’ Give me a break. And what are they supposed to be doing that’s so bad? What you got against Shawn? You think he’s going to set off a bomb or something?”

  “I already told you, magic doesn’t operate in the presence of metal, which bombs require. Magic is considerably older than that. It belongs to the sphere of nature, of grass and wind and animals and plants. And rocks, the oldest of all nature.”

  “Right. Sure. So Shawn’s gonna mess up the world by growing the wrong grass? Get real!”

  Abruptly Kendall leaned forward. “You get real, Jared. Your ignorance is appalling—what are they teaching you in that school? Yes, the Other Side might ‘mess up the world’ by growing the wrong grass, if there’s profit in it. Money or power profit. Don’t you know that there’s money to be made from drought, from famine, from hurricanes, from killer bees, from mutated plants? There’s always money to be made in disasters. You cause them, then you charge heavily to clean them up, as just one example. You’re poised and ready with whatever is needed, because you know exactly when and where the disaster will occur. And no one ever suspects you caused it, because hurricanes and volcanoes and droughts and invasive plant species are all completely natural. Plus, no one in the developed countries, where money flows like green water, even believes in magic anyway. Now do you get it?”

  “No,” Jared shouted. “You telling me Shawn is rich from this magic? Man, he don’t even have a decent deck!”

  “No, because riches now would draw attention to the Other Side. And it takes a lot of international coordination to pull off a big profit from a major disaster. They’ve already managed a couple of small ones—did you read in the paper about that unexpected flood, along the Big Thompson River in Colorado? No, of course you didn’t, you don’t read the papers. But we think that flood was one of theirs. We’re still organizing, too. One day Shawn will be very rich, and very powerful, although most of the world will never know how he did it. The FBI will assume drugs and spend futile years trying to prove it.”

  “So now you can see the future, too!”

  “No, of course not, I just—”

  “You’re just full of crap! You’re crazy, man, you know that? The biggest loser ever, and this sucks!” Jared jerked at the locks on the kitchen door, yanked it open, and bolted outside.

  “Jared . . . wait . . . don’t—”

  He was already gone, skimming along the cold sidewalk in the dark. The man was more than crazy, he was totally gone. Psycho. Loony-bin. Jared was never going back there.

  Where else was he going to go?

  Jared shivered. Last evening’s rain had stopped, but it was really cold out. His hoodie wasn’t enough for this weather. He had to move faster, stay warm, get home.

  Home. The heatless apartment where Ma and her new boyfriend would be sleeping under all the blankets, including Jared’s, or—worse—up fighting, strung out on crystal. And getting home alone, this time of almost morning when only the gangbangers were out on the streets . . .

  He stopped under a streetlight. For o
ne terrible minute, he thought he might cry.

  Bag that. And bag all the psycho stuff Kendall had been telling him, too. The old man had been kind to him. So what if he was crazy? He wasn’t dangerous, and it wasn’t like Jared hadn’t dealt with worse. He could deal with anything he had to. And Kendall’s place was warm, and had food.

  Why had Shawn reacted so weird to Jared’s accident?

  He spun his board around and skated back to Kendall’s, thinking hard.

  The back door to Kendall’s house still stood wide open. In the kitchen, the chairs were knocked over, and Kendall’s coffee sloshed all over the floor. Blood smeared the table. Jared searched the whole house; Kendall was gone.

  He found a flashlight in a kitchen drawer and took it outside. Fresh tire marks slashed across a corner of the soggy lawn. They led down Carter Street—but where after that?

  He should call the cops.

  Oh, like cops would believe in the kidnapping. If an adult went missing, they wouldn’t even start looking for him for a couple of days. And they certainly wouldn’t believe Jared, who had a bunch of citations, unpaid, for illegal skating at the Civic Center and the library.

  It was only after he thought all this that Jared saw what it meant: that he believed Kendall had been kidnapped, and by the so-called “Other Side.” The second he realized this, he started shaking. Cold, he thought. It was just the cold. Just the cold.

  In the dark he skated to one end of the block, peered down it. Nothing. The other end of the block—also nothing.

  No one else had been as good to him as Kendall had. Nobody, not ever.

  There was no way to know which way the psychos had taken Kendall. No real way. Unless . . .

  Jared looked around with his flashlight. The house next door to Kendall had a flowerbed edged with stones. Feeling like the biggest lamebrain in the whole crappy world, Jared picked up three of the rocks and thought, Which way?

  Nothing happened, so he said it out loud: “Which way?” Nothing happened.

  He stepped away from his deck, with its metal trucks, and tried again. Nothing.

  His hoodie had a metal zipper, so, shivering, he took it off and laid it on top of the deck, twenty feet away. “Which way, you psycho stones?” Nothing.