“Fight!” I hear from somewhere above us.
I grab Warren by the collar, give him a hard slap to the jaw, not enough to hurt, just enough to shock him. “You’re a pathetic fighter,” I say, as I grip him tighter.
“And you’re just pathetic,” he spits. He thrashes his hand, nails bared toward me, and manages to cut my lip. As he tries to roll over, I send my shoulder into his stomach before two pairs of hands rip us apart. It’s only when I’m pulled to my feet that I realize the music has been cut, the sorcerers have stopped their tricks, and Warren and I are now the main performance.
“What the hell, Warren?” this Napoleon of a frat boy says, barreling in between us.
Warren freezes. “Sam, I—”
“Who is this guy?” Sam interrupts, nodding toward me.
“An old friend.”
“Doesn’t look like a friend to me.” Sam studies me with wide eyes. “You even go here, chump?”
“No, I’m a trainee,” I say slowly, “with the Prohibition Unit.”
Sam pops a sharp, cutting laugh over the crowd’s silence. “So you’re fighting with a pig, Warren, at a criminal magic party?”
“I’m not a pig,” I interject.
“Shut up,” Warren and this Sam chap say in unison.
Sam turns his wrath back to Warren, stares him down. “It was stupid, bringing him here. And we take smart fellas at Sigma Phi—”
“No, no, he’s cool,” Warren interrupts with a stammer. “I mean, he’s a total prick, but he won’t rat on us—he can’t, he’s as crooked as his old man—”
At the mention of my father, my fist takes on a mind of its own, flies out from my side before I can stop it, sucker punches Warren right in the jaw.
Warren stops, sucks in his breath, in shock or pain I’m not sure. He looks at me silently, as he holds his face.
“Get these losers out of here,” Sam barks at the two varsity-letter types that pulled us apart earlier. Each of them grabs one of my arms, as another frat boy comes to the rescue and restrains Warren.
Sam glares at Warren. “Don’t come back here.”
The frat boys take us up the back stairs, into a dark kitchen, through the side door and the force field, and into the alley behind 35th Street. And then they leave Warren and me with each other.
“I can’t believe it.” Warren gives a weird, almost girlish laugh as he rubs his jaw. “You just managed to ruin everything.”
The high from Lana and the adrenaline from the fight are both waning, and a dull, familiar self-loathing starts taking over. “It’s all right,” I say softly. “Sam must have paid an arm and a leg for those sorcerers. My bet is he was already shined. He won’t remember tomorrow. You’ll get in.”
Warren just stares at me like I’m insane. “Don’t ever talk to me again, you understand?”
He turns on his heel, starts fumbling with his pack of cigarettes as he walks into the alley.
“Come on, Warren, that was as much your fault as it was mine.”
He doesn’t answer, and my heart starts pounding.
“Warren.”
Nothing but smoke funneling over his head as he turns onto O Street. “WARREN!”
Christ, he’s really serious.
“Warren, come on!”
And then the pounding gives way to a strange, searing ache in my chest. It vaguely feels like a part of me’s melting.
I stand there for a long while, alone. I smoke one cigarette, then another, study the force field of the house in front of me, the dark exterior, the magic blanket of quiet draped over the raging Sigma Phi house within. I picture all those pretty dames and lucky chaps. Dolls with nothing to worry about but the shade of their lipstick. Boys with fathers who can buy them into fraternities. Boys like Warren.
Once upon a time, boys like me.
I take a long drag, focusing on that force field. And then I turn inward, wait for that huge, all-encompassing feeling of power to start coursing through my veins, fuel me with lightning. And when I feel ready, full, I flick my cigarette stub toward the force field and exhale with a whisper: “Poof.”
The facade in front of the Sigma Phi house shatters, crumbles into dust in a flash of a moment, spirals away like it’s being carried by a magic wind, and now I’m staring at the real house. Light shines from every window. The quiet back alley of Georgetown is shocked awake with the wailing jazz that thunders from within Sigma Phi. No longer cloaked in magic, it’s bright as a beacon, a siren. The house practically thumps against the crisp September night.
I watch neighbors’ lights go on around me, witness a woman in her nightgown thrust open her door to assess the commotion from across the street. Dogs bark and more lights blink on as I walk away, smiling, down the alley toward O Street.
And for just a second, the world feels a little fairer. Despite the fat lip that Warren just gave me, I even manage a whistle around the corner.
THE ROAD TO POSSIBILITY
JOAN