My friend knows an exec at Chanel; I can get you bags, clothes. You want drugs? Coke? Molly? Fentanyl? I’ll do anything. Anything you want, just name it.
But it wasn’t something I could explain in a few sentences. I couldn’t condense years’ worth of study into a few simple, digestible lines. A few incantations, a spell written on a scroll. Hand it out like, here, here’s the key to all your dreams.
That was too simple, it was something that could only happen in a story. The real reason Magic isn’t pervasive, isn’t widely practiced is because there isn’t a formula. It was years of study, years of clawing your eyes over text you could barely understand, of practicing combinations of words and sounds until your lips cracked, until your fingers scuffed and bled, and that was not something people wanted to hear. I couldn’t recite the steps to find your objects, to reach the level of understanding you needed to be able to access Magic. There was no easy way to make you understand that Magic was not there to be your equal or your subservient. It was there to be a part of you, and if you let it in, you had to be prepared to deal with it.
But people didn’t want to hear that. They wanted me to write it out on a sheet of paper, a step-by-step recipe to follow to make all their dreams come true. Words that they could repeat over and over again to make something happen. And I got tired of telling them no, that Magic wasn’t fantasy, that it was nothing like a fairy tale.
Luckily, there weren’t many of those people. Most were just members of a silent audience, people who quietly kept tabs on Max and me, watching to see what we did next.
The group dissipated as the boys zeroed in on a group of girls who walked into the room, and I faded into the background of the party. The taste of moonshine was less harsh on my tongue than it was before, and I wondered why I’d ever thought it tasted like gasoline to begin with. A guy walked upstairs to grab something from a bedroom, and my eyes followed him up.
That was at least one good reason to be a fly on the wall at these sorts of things. My feet carried me to the stairwell and the door to Basile’s office beside it, which had now been shut. I nursed my drink, looking at a picture on the wall. Next to the World of Warcraft and Call of Duty posters was a framed print of what looked to be an Ancient Greek philosopher, with a long beard and robe. He stood beside a stone table with a hexafoil carved into the front.
I tried the door handle, locked. Again, my eyes traveled up the stairs. Which bedroom was Grant’s?
Another old song played on the stereo, following a string of Third Eye Blind hits from the nineties, and though I was here with the brothers, I was thinking about someone else entirely. Stuck in a different time, a memory I couldn’t escape, lyrics pumping through the stereo making me remember things I would rather stay forgotten. Not because they were bad memories, but because they were just the opposite.
Bits and pieces of “How’s It Going to Be” drifted over to me, and I was hit with a wave of nostalgia so hard I could barely breathe. Max’s hands on my face, lips on my forehead, hot breath against my neck.
A scribbled lyric slipped into a book and left outside my door. He knew I’d liked them, had discovered it during one of those games you play when you’re first trying to get to know someone.
Favorite band? he’d texted one night.
Too easy. The Offspring. No, wait! Smashing Pumpkins. No!
Can’t decide?
Okay, okay. Third Eye Blind.
Final answer?
Final answer.
Ohhh, straight nineties girl, huh? What a millennial. I’m a Randy Houser fan myself.
Okay, somehow that doesn’t surprise me at all.
Not only had he remembered it, but he’d listened to the whole album, and for the next six months had slipped the lyrics into our conversations.
“You might call that … Losing a Whole Year,” he’d said, or “Gah. What a Semi-Charmed Life,” in typical Max fashion.
Now I made it up the stairs—my compliments to an extremely sturdy banister—and slipped into a room on my left. The room was empty of people, but full of stuff. I rummaged through notebooks lying on the desk in the corner, looking for any indication of its owner, but I was getting dizzy and lightheaded. My pleasant buzz had veered off into something a lot less pleasant. The alcohol had hit me faster than I expected. Definitely harder than any mixed drink I’d ever had.
I quickly sifted through a folder of history notes when something caught my eye below the nightstand.
A loose slip of paper sticking out of a composition book. I picked it up and smoothed it with both hands.
It must have been the alcohol hitting me because when I tried to focus on the words, I couldn’t make any sense of it, one side effect of my blood alcohol content veering off a steep cliff.
The note was only two lines long.
Cut not fire with a sword. When the wind blows, worship the noise.
Music reached me from the hallway and downstairs, and I spun to the door, not remembering if I’d shut it behind me. The room started to tilt a little on its axis, and I stuffed the note into my purse and stumbled to the door.
I’d made it back into the hallway when the ground did a swan dive and I fell flat on my face.
“Whoa,” someone said, a hand falling on my back. “Are you okay?”
