The Fascinators

by Andrew Eliopulos

  Hold up.

  In His Name?

  Did that mean . . .

  Amber started singing, and it wasn’t clear from the first few lines, but . . . yup, there it was.

  “ . . . always have a home in the heart of the Lord . . .”

  Amber’s band was a praise band.

  And that was fine. That was cool. That was one hundred percent whatever. James was right, Amber had the voice of an angel, and Carrie and Ellie were talented, too.

  So why did Sam suddenly feel so weird?

  Sam sat with the feeling as it squirmed its way through his brain; he wrestled and untangled it. When all the knots were gone and the buzzing slowed, he could see the source of the feeling clearly: Amber’s band was a praise band, and James hadn’t told him.

  James was swaying back and forth from one foot to the other, the closest he ever came to dancing, really, utterly unsurprised and even giving off the appearance of a person enjoying himself, in spite of everything. Yet the James Sam knew would not be enjoying himself in the presence of a praise band. The James Sam knew would be catching Sam’s eye right now and smirking to high heaven, two thirds of a morally superior trio in a sea of Friedman zealots and simpletons. Those were the exact words of the James Sam knew—“zealots and simpletons”—and they were not his words from that long ago, either. This new James wouldn’t even look Sam’s way. The swig of the flask was the only sign that this new James wasn’t perfectly happy, and Sam didn’t want to root for James to take another illegal sip from an illegal flask, but he couldn’t very well root for a James who left him alone out at sea, either.

  This new James had eyes only for Amber. This new James and Amber kept smiling at each other like they were the only two people downtown.

  Now Sam was swaying, too, only it wasn’t intentional. He felt dizzy, faint. Gone were the people of Friedman; everywhere he looked, there were only the faceless ones, and they were leaning into Sam, pressing against him, pressing into his lungs. He couldn’t breathe. He grabbed at his throat and stumbled, falling back against something solid. Not a faceless one but a very present stranger, a brick wall of a man, who didn’t so much catch Sam as he did forcefully push him back to standing.

  “Hey, whoa now, watch it,” the man said. Sam was mortified to realize that he’d bumped right into this guy’s beer, splashing him and his girlfriend, too.

  “I’m so sorry, I—I don’t know what happened,” Sam said.

  That didn’t stop the guy and his girlfriend from looking at Sam like he was a piece of gum they’d stepped in, but they didn’t escalate it any further. They slunk off, presumably to grab napkins or another beer, muttering curses the whole way.

  “You okay?” Delia said. She’d seen enough of what happened to come check on him. James and Denver must not have heard. Their attention was squarely on In His Name’s next song.

  “I think so,” Sam whispered. “Just lost my balance for a second.”

  Delia frowned, hesitating on the verge of pressing further, before deciding to let it go. With her voice lowered so that only Sam could hear her, she said, “So, did you know that Amber’s band was rah-rah for Jesus?”

  Sam literally cackled, the surprise and relief bubbling up in him, making room for his breathing to return to normal.

  That caught Denver and James’s attention (not to mention the harsh stares from a few adults nearby), and they both looked back to see what was so funny.

  Delia shrugged at them like she had no idea.

  On the whole, it all could have been much, much worse.

  They didn’t stick around Main Street long after Amber’s band finished their set. Everyone’s drunkenness was really showing now, and the lines for food were fifteen people deep. Sam, Denver, and Amber were parked in the same general direction, and as they all headed back to their cars, a plan started forming—a plan to head either to Steak ‘n Shake or Waffle House, with the majority of them wanting Waffle House because Waffle House was just better, but with James and Ellie both begging the others to do Steak ‘n Shake, because James hated Waffle House for some unfathomable reason and because Ellie had had it too many times this month and needed a change. Then it came out that Denver had never been to a Waffle House, even though there were plenty of Waffle Houses in Nashville—there were no acceptable excuses—and that pretty much decided things, even if James wasn’t happy about it.

  Then they got to Sam’s car.

  It wasn’t immediately apparent, because the car was parked at an angle, with cars right up next to it on either side. Everyone else was still milling about around the trunk, talking and laughing, when Sam got to the driver’s side door and noticed all the glass in his seat.

  “Shit!” he shouted. The talking and laughing immediately stopped.

  James and Delia ran to him without hesitating, and the three of them took in the sight of his smashed windshield together, while the others peered through and around the car to get a look.

  There were lots of gasps and curses. Sam paced back and forth on the sidewalk in front of his car.

  “Any of y’all know how to fix broken glass?” Ellie said.

  “I know a general repair spell,” James replied. “But maybe there’s something specific to glass we can find on the spell app?”

  “For a basic crack, sure,” Delia said. “But a break this big? In laminated glass? You’d probably have to pick up all the pieces out of the seat and then—”

  “Hello?” Sam said, a hair shy of hysterical. “Can we please not focus on how to theoretically fix broken glass for a moment and focus instead on the fact that someone violently smashed a giant hole in my windshield?”

  His mind flashed to the guy with the beer, but that didn’t make sense. That guy would have no idea which car was his.

  “Sam, do you think . . . I mean . . .” Denver trailed off, and when Sam looked his way, he saw that he, Amber, Carrie, and Ellie were all staring at the back of his car. Sam went around to join them, and . . . oh.

  Oh, right.

  The bumper sticker had been a gift from his parents—from the birthday when they’d given him the car. He hadn’t been sure whether he was getting a car that year or not, because his parents had always just made noises of consternation when he’d asked. So when they’d taken him to Mo’s Steakhouse and handed him a big wrapped box, the double fake out worked—he wasn’t expecting the Q-Atl rainbow pride bumper sticker under the hundred layers of tissue paper, let alone the Post-it that read, “For your (practically) new (okay, it’s used) car.”

  “Shit,” Sam said again, only this time it meant something different—a word of resignation, of sadness but not surprise. Most days, he completely forgot the bumper sticker was there—it was a background fixture in his life, just like the Q-Atl meetings he periodically attended—but every once in a while, he’d see a dirty look in his rearview mirror and wonder why he hadn’t taken up his parents on the offer they’d once made, in total seriousness: to move somewhere else. Find engineering and real estate jobs in Atlanta, or another state entirely. Put Sam in a school that actively supported its queer students instead of deigning to allow them. Maybe one that really valued his magicker talents, too. Sam’s grandparents were gone now; they didn’t need to stay for them.

  “You think this was a bias incident?” Delia said, still standing at the front of the car. “It’s possible that contributed, I guess, but I don’t think this was a spur-of-the-moment decision.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Come look.”

  Sam rejoined her and James at the front of the car. Delia was pointing to a brick Sam hadn’t noticed before, sitting in the passenger seat. There was a piece of paper folded and tied around it, and while Sam couldn’t say for sure without taking it off, from what he could see, he was willing to bet the lines on it would make the shape of a lightning-bolt V when he did.

  “How did those people know which car was mine?” Sam whispered urgently to James.

  James didn’t respon
d. He was staring at the brick, too, and his breathing had become deep and ragged; his hands were clenched into rocks.

  “James?”

  James brought his fists up to his chest, slowly, as if he were lifting heavy weights. He pushed his knuckles together, then slowly, laboriously, began to open his fingers, uniting his flat palms in a prayerful position. Sam was so entranced by James himself that he didn’t think to look for the effect of his spellwork, until the rattling of glass pieces, like rain on a porch roof, brought him quickly around.

  “James, don’t—” Sam started to say, but too late.

  The glass levitated, then hovered angrily in the empty space of the windshield, like a cloud of hornets. The glass looked like it desperately wanted to be whole again, but there was too much tension, the blunt energy too strong.

  Sam saw what was coming in the second before it happened. There was barely enough time to brace for impact, but still, reflexively, his arm shot out toward James.

  The windshield exploded.

  Everyone screamed.

  The screaming lasted just long enough to carry them into the moment when they all realized they were fine. That the windshield had shattered into the car instead of outward. They all took inventory of one another. Even one stray piece of glass, flung at that speed, could have done serious damage. But no, they were alive. They were scared but unharmed.

  “I’ll fix this, Sam,” James said, his voice like shrapnel. “All of it. I’ll show those assholes they can’t mess with me and my friends like this.”

  Sam was too stunned to form a reply. James was talking like some kind of vigilante, like a person used to revenge. And who knew? Maybe he was. Tonight, Sam was coming up against the hard truth that there was still a lot he didn’t know about James, which was a problem, not least because so much of Sam’s own identity had been built on a foundation that had James in it.

  “What in the world just happened?” Carrie called from the other side of the car.

  “Boy genius over here tried a general repair spell without a calm mind,” Delia replied. “The associations were all wrong.”

  “I think I need to call my parents,” Sam said. “I don’t think I can drive this car right now.”

  “I can drive you,” Denver said.

  “No, no,” Sam said. “I mean, thank you, that’s very kind, but no. I need to stay with my car. Make sure no one hotwires it away and sells the parts for a fortune.”

  “Well,” Denver persisted, “do you want us to wait with you until your parents get here?”

  Sam didn’t answer that one right away. The real answer was yes, of course, there was no way he could handle being alone right now. But the other real answer was that he could see the residual fear and sadness in all their faces, the weight of a fun night disappeared, the reminder that the place where they lived could be hostile sometimes, and Sam didn’t feel like sitting with that sadness. Better to be alone than to be the lightning rod for their disappointment.

  “Don’t worry about me,” he said. “Y’all go have fun. Friday night and all that.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Delia said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  James shuffled his feet. He looked physically pained.

  “James, it’s okay. You can go,” Sam said.

  “It’s just—I’m worried if I’m gone too long, my dad will catch on and notice I’m not there. And if my dad realizes I snuck out, he will actually murder me. Or worse, he’ll lash out at Benji in my absence.”

  “You snuck out?” Amber said. She sounded equal parts horrified and flattered, and James shrugged bashfully.

  “I get it,” Sam said. “Seriously. You should go.”

  “All right,” James replied, although he really did look guilty about it. “Amber, do you think you could give me a ride?”

  Sam couldn’t decide, as he watched them walk to Amber’s car, whether he’d feel better or worse if they ended up going to Waffle House after all.

  He was still working on swallowing that bitter pill when he realized that Denver wasn’t leaving with the rest of them. He was taking a few tentative steps Sam’s way, like Sam was a frightened cat who might swipe at any sudden moves.

  “Can I please wait, too?” he said. “My mom’s working tonight, and . . . at the risk of sounding creepy, I’m not sure I can just . . . go home . . . without making sure you’re okay.”

  Sam started to say that he was okay already, or that at least he had Delia here to look out for him. But Delia was very suddenly very interested in something on her phone, unavailable to confirm or deny Denver’s redundancy.

  “Plus,” Denver said, “I’m still jittery myself. From the, you know, near-death experience with the glass.”

  “You can stay. I mean—thank you. I’m sorry tonight didn’t turn out how you were expecting it to.”

  “I try not to have too many expectations. Just, in general.”

  “Okay, well, then I’m not sorry tonight turned out how you were not expecting it to.”

  Denver grinned.

  It wasn’t fair how cute his smile was. It was a cheap magic trick, mixing up Sam’s brain and making it think all kinds of things he wasn’t sure he was ready to think. Make comparisons he wasn’t ready to make.

  “You should probably call your parents now,” Denver said.

  “Right,” Sam said. “I was getting to that.”

  Chapter 7

  THE DRIVE FROM FRIEDMAN TO ATLANTA WASN’T TOO bad on a sunny day—about two hours of mostly interstate, a stretch that was rarely crowded until you passed 285 and got into the city. But today was not a sunny day—it was raining cataclysmically—and it was only because, after another night of visceral waking nightmares, Sam’s exhaustion came across equally cataclysmically in all-caps texts that he was able to convince Delia to make the drive.

  “I still don’t understand why James couldn’t join us,” she said, hunched over the steering wheel and peering into the rain. Their vision was limited to the red hint of taillights on the cars in front of them and, otherwise, gray—lots and lots of gray. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to help. But this is mostly his problem. And if I can find time to go to Atlanta between work and practice, I’m pretty sure he can, too.”

  “You didn’t see his dad last night,” Sam said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if James is still grounded come November. Like, I wouldn’t be surprised if his dad tries to make him miss convention entirely.”

  “So he can sneak into the inner sanctum of a group of dark magickers, and he can sneak out to see Amber’s band of Jesus freaks, but ask him to drive two hours in the rain and then it’s ‘Mustn’t break Daddy’s rules’?”

  “Why does James suddenly have an English accent?”

  “I don’t know. Because I’m annoyed. I hate the rain.”

  “But I love you.”

  “You better. Honestly, I’m surprised your parents let you leave the house today. I would’ve thought they wouldn’t let little Sam out of their sight based on how traumatized they seemed.”

  “With my mom, you just have to couch whatever you want to do in terms of how it will be better for your mental and emotional well-being. I said if I didn’t leave, I would end up sitting in the house all day, picturing the broken windshield and getting sadder and sadder. I said spending time with you would really help me move on.”

  “And she couldn’t see through that, with her powers?”

  “See through what? None of it was a lie. That’s the other trick with my mom.”

  “You’re ridiculous.”

  They drove in amiable, focused silence for a few minutes, with Delia keeping her attention on the road and Sam digging around online to try to pull up more information about where they were going. James had called it “a store for magic stuff”—apparently it was some place Amber had mentioned on their drive home last night, when James hinted vaguely that he was stuck trying to find something with magic. How or why Amber knew about it was anyone’s guess, and it was a sign of
their collective desperation to make the visions stop that they were willing to undertake such an arduous drive based solely on her recommendation and a Google maps listing: “Findias: Retailer / Occult / Books & Crafts.” Sam couldn’t even find an official website or any customer reviews.

  More or less out of nowhere, Delia said, “So, Denver.”

  “Is the capital city of Colorado? Yes, correct,” Sam said.

  “Is a boy who is awfully cute and awfully smitten with you, for whatever reason.”

  “What? No way. He’s just nice.”

  “Please. That boy started flirting with you before he said hello. Of course, given your total lack of experience being flirted with, I can forgive you for not recognizing it when it smacks you in the face.”

  “People have flirted with me! I’ve been flirted with!”

  “Online doesn’t count.”

  “Okay, well, that seems harsh and arbitrary. Still. I think you’re forgetting Eliot.”

  “Eliot from Q-Atl? Eliot whose mom sat with your mom two tables away while you talked about who had the higher-level character in Goblins & Gateways?”

  “That counts as flirting!”

  Delia sighed.

  “Anyway, I’ve been flirted around. I know what flirting looks like.”

  “Agreed, which is why you know full well that Denver has been flirting with, around, next to, and beside you. The question is, why are you so determined right now to pretend he isn’t? Are you not into him?”

  “‘Into him.’ What is this, ‘into him’?”

  Delia let out an exasperated sound. Which, okay, Sam was being a little difficult.

  “I don’t know if I’m into him, okay?” he said. “He’s sweet. It’s complicated.”

  “Complicated? You mean because you’re in love with James?”

  Damn. Delia was not messing around today. But Sam didn’t deny it, either.

  “Sorry,” she said. “You don’t exactly hide it. I know it can’t be easy.”

  “I really am fine and happy just being friends with him, you know. It’s not like I’m only friends with him because I want it to be something more.”