The Magic Touch

by Jody Lynn Nye

  He wondered if the FGU could help him find money so he could transfer in his sophomore year. Maybe that benefit plan they talked about could stretch to give him a good start in life. They wanted to do good for kids, and he was pretty certain he hadn’t had his miracle yet. He would swear to work off the loan in granted wishes in Washington, D.C., if they gave him a referral to the local chapter.

  It would be terrible to leave Hakeem behind, but it looked as if Hakeem was already gone. Ray felt a deep, aching sense of loss. Could he use the magic to stop his friend craving drugs and pull him away from Zeon and the Jackals? But, no: Rose talked about impinging on free will by doing too much by magic. He didn’t want to interfere with Hakeem, take over any of his personal liberty. It was frustrating to have the ability to do something special without it applying to the people around him who needed extra. To make a wish that Hakeem stop taking drugs might result in him being arrested and put on a rehab program. In any case, he’d hate Raymond forever, exactly the opposite of what Ray wanted.

  The sound of soft breathing from the other bedrooms told him that Chanel and Bobby were safely asleep. That was good. He didn’t want to have to answer their questions about his evening out yet. He didn’t know what he’d tell them. Quietly, he crept into his room and eased the door almost shut. It creaked on its hinge, and Ray winced. A little sigh came from Chanel’s tiny room. Ray listened with his ear to the door, wondering if the sharp noise had woken her up. No. He heard the rustling as she turned over and settled down into deeper sleep. Whew!

  Raymond took the little wand out of his pocket and put it on his desk. He looked at it while he changed from his good clothes to the T-shirt and gym shorts he wore to sleep in. Such a funny, ordinary-looking thing, no more than a stick painted blue with a cookie-cutter star the size of a quarter on top, but just touching it gave him that fabulous feeling of goodness. He almost forgave the wand for looking like a thirty-nine-cent pencil. In a way he was sorry it would be almost a week before he’d be using it again. In the meantime, where would be a safe place to put it?

  Ray looked around his small room. There were few places that he considered safe for anything private. His little sister, Chanel, had a typical eleven-year-old’s views about property. If she thought he had something she needed, she rooted through his desk and dresser with a perfectly clear conscience. His parents seemed to think her taking his possessions and leaving his room a disaster was cute. He thought it was a menace. Who knew what kind of havoc she could wreak with a magic wand? His desk was unsafe, since it didn’t lock. Same for his dresser. If he put the wand under his pillow, it might roll out during the night or, unthinkably, get put into the wash when his mother stripped the beds. No, he decided the only good place to keep the wand was where he’d had it all evening. He put it back into the jacket pocket and zipped it closed. There, it was secure. The funny thing was he could still sort of feel the goodness even though he was no longer in physical contact.

  He slid into bed and folded his arms under his pillow, cradling his head and staring up at the ceiling. In his mind’s eye he kept seeing the faces of Rose and those children over and over again. So much had happened in one day. Ray felt absolutely exhausted. He closed his eyes only to have them pop open again with excitement. If only Zeon hadn’t been there when Hakeem dropped by. He would’ve had to swear Hakeem to secrecy, but it would have felt good to share his experience with his best friend. Or should he call Antoinette? No, she’d be in bed, too. He sat up, folded the pillow in half, turned over on his side, and tried again to settle down. In his mind he saw those pink-and-purple skates and heard Clarice’s wondering voice say, “Are they really for me?”

  There was a soft tap at the door. Ray sat up straight in bed.

  “Come in,” he called.

  “Hello, child,” his grandmother said, swinging the door open a few inches. “I could feel clear across the house that you wanted to tell someone something.”

  Ray replied with alacrity. “I sure do, Grandma.”

  O O O

  “Hey, I thought you said he was flush,” Zeon complained to Hakeem as they strolled away from the Crandall house. “He got nothing. Or he say he got nothing.”

  “If he says it he means it,” Hakeem said, crossly. “Don’t you call him a liar. He’s my brother, Zeon.”

  “Yeah, but he don’t act it.” Zeon rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. “He ought to be giving you what he’s got. We better score something quick. I’m starting to feel bad, you know?”

  Hakeem still felt the pleasant light-headedness of the drugs in his system, but Zeon was bigger, so probably his dose had worn off too soon. “We’ll find something,” he said, but he didn’t feel at all certain.

  “I know a man who could give us a score, just like that,” Zeon snapped his fingers, “but he want cash in hand. You sure you got no money?”

  “I’m sure, Zee,” Hakeem said, quickly, worrying whether Zeon would decide to disbelieve him. He’d seen the bigger youth casually beat the guts out of somebody he thought was lying to him. “I’ve got nothing but my bus pass.”

  The streetlamps burned too brightly in his eyes, and the air was hot and sticky. Hakeem felt all his senses were too intense. Four more brilliant white lights glared into his face, and he covered his eyes with his forearm. Out of the blazing whiteness, a man’s deep voice spoke.

  “Hey, kids, you need money?” The lights dimmed until Hakeem could tell they were only car headlamps. A silhouetted figure, its outline blurred, stepped up in front of them. “Do you two need some money?” The voice, when Hakeem heard it again, sounded melodious and educated, not quite a white voice, but something more exotic.

  Zeon, his eyes bleary, turned toward the man. “Who wants to know?” he asked belligerently.

  The figure paused significantly. “Somebody who could perhaps grant your wish. Somebody who could make sure you get what you need. Interested?”

  “Maybe,” Zeon said, weaving a little. “Yeah. Maybe.”

  “This way, then.” The man tilted his head toward a flashy car. Zeon followed, almost as if in a trance. The door nearest him swung open, and Zeon slid inside.

  “C’mon, Hakeem.”

  Hakeem held back for a moment, then the shadowed man moved a hand. The strong white light grew more intense, and suddenly, Hakeem felt … receptive to the stranger’s offer.

  With a final look of regret toward Raymond’s house, he trailed along behind Zeon.

  Chapter 8

  Rose looked up and down the street in front of the Assembly Hall, and checked her watch again. Seven o’clock, already, and beginning to get dark. Where was Raymond? She’d been so certain he had decided to join the Union. And after Eustatia Green had called her with such a glad report on the child’s first day, Rose was ecstatic, certain the two of them were right, that Ray was a willing and viable apprentice. Had he changed his mind in the past six days? Rose was disappointed. She drummed her fingers on the side of her purse and tried not to be impatient. If he came, he came. If he didn’t, well, maybe he forgot. No, Mrs. Green said he never shirked appointments, and he was usually on time. Maybe he got hit by a car. The way people drove around here. Poor child!

  “Hey, Rose,” Raymond’s voice said. Rose spun to greet him gladly, and felt her mouth drop open with surprise. “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  “Will you look at you?” Rose asked, before she could help herself. Ray looked down at himself and tilted his head up to meet her eyes with confusion. “What are you wearing?”

  Well, it wasn’t as if she couldn’t see for herself what he was wearing, but why? The big pants and the enormous maroon T-shirt hanging out over it made him look like a fat man who had gone on a sudden, catastrophic diet. The bronze brocade vest he had on over the shirt was greasy, and his tennis shoes were only laced to the second grommet. He could fall out of them any step. At least he had spared her the backward-facing baseball cap.

  “Something wrong with my clothes, grandma?” Ray
asked, defensively.

  “I should say so!” Rose said, thinking of things to say, then swallowing them. With the tact born of many years of dealing with children and grandchildren, she calmed down and began again. “I know the two of us come from very different generations, Raymond, and maybe I’m just not used to the fashions, but … but you were dressed so nicely the other night.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Ray said, rolling his eyes up. “Those were my Sunday clothes. I wear that stuff to church and days when my mom says to dress up. But since we’re going around the neighborhood, I thought it’d be okay if I went comfortable.” His brows lowered. “You want me to go home and change.” It wasn’t a question; it was a challenge.

  “How about a compromise?” Rose asked quickly, not willing to alienate him. “Let me explain why it’s important in your position as a fairy godfather to look, well, professional, and you’ll make the decision for yourself, all right?” He made no reply but a surly nod, so Rose pressed on. “All right. You’re trying to engender respect and confidence in children. You’re supposed to set an example. You can’t do it if they can’t distinguish you from the kids they see every day on the street.”

  “Isn’t the fact I’m walking in through walls good for anything?” Ray asked, with raised eyebrows. “I’d believe in a man who came in through my wall.”

  “But sometimes we do use the door,” Rose persevered. “And sometimes we’re already in the room when a client enters. How will they know you’re the one they can trust?”

  “Even perverts can wear nice clothes,” Ray retorted, but Rose thought she was breaking through to his natural good humor.

  “Yes, because they’re trying to gain the trust of someone who doesn’t know them,” Rose said reasonably. “It’s the right behavior for the wrong reason. You need to do the right thing for the right reason.”

  “Aw … well, what about some special mark I could wear instead? You all need to lighten up. Everybody in that room the other night was dressed so drab.” Ray considered for a moment. “Except maybe the Blue Fairy.”

  “The Blue Fairy?” Rose asked, amused.

  Ray pulled an embarrassed face. “Uh, the chairwoman. Uh, what’s her right name?”

  “Alexandra Sennett.”

  “Yeah. Sorry. Well, I don’t want to look like an office dweeb,” Raymond said stubbornly. “I’m me, so I want to look like me.”

  “Raymond, you will never look like anybody but you,” Rose said patiently, “but you know, you would have to dress up to go to work, to show that you have some appreciation of the importance of what you’re doing, so why not treat this like a job?”

  “Because I’m not being paid for this, which I would if it were a job,” Ray said sullenly, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his capacious trousers.

  “You do get paid, sort of,” Rose said tentatively. “It’s not money, but it’s worth something.”

  “More intangibles? Like those good memories?” Ray asked, recalling their first conversation. He turned away from her into the shadow under the Assembly Hall marquee so she couldn’t see his face, but she could guess his thoughts. There were a few special memories he was cherishing in that head of his, still too private to share.

  “Very much like that,” Rose said, with a smile. She grabbed his arm and pulled him out onto the sidewalk and started walking north, toward a minor need string she had sensed. They could talk while they walked. In the meantime, there were children waiting for help. “For one thing, you get to live happily ever after.” In answer to a derisive snort from Raymond, she added, “Don’t knock it. Listen,” she said, stopping to face him. “There’s something else. You do get another kind of reward for fairy-godparenting. We call them brownie points. You get them when you grant wishes, a point per child you’ve helped, plus fractions for other things, obedience, willingness, good judgment, good deeds.” Rose tried to describe the effect with her hands, and threw them away from her impatiently. “Anyway, it adds up.”

  Raymond looked interested at last. “So I have some brownie points right now?”

  “At least one,” Rose assured him. If appealing to civic responsibility and self-respect didn’t work, always go for the self-interest, she thought. “You did grant Matthew’s wish. You did a fine job, too.”

  “Yeah?” Raymond asked, thinking hard. “So what do I have in brownie points?”

  Rose shrugged eloquently. “I don’t know. Not too many. You’re the only one who’ll know that for sure. You can figure it out by concentrating on the place where you’ll keep them, a kind of mental bank account. They accumulate slowly. Don’t try to build the Sistine Chapel in one day, Raymond.”

  “Concentrate?” Ray asked suspiciously. “They’re not real?”

  “Oh, they’re real,” Rose said. “As real as anything we did for those children the other day. Brownie points are magic. It’s part of the process of fairy-godparenting. Magic has a certain rebound, like karma. Good people who do good things get good magic in return. You can use a brownie point any way you want. Of course, good people tend to use them in good ways. Which gets you fractional interest in brownie points on top of your original balance, just like that credit card, what’s it called?” Rose waved her hands, trying to think of the name. She could see the logo in her mind’s eye, but her mind’s eye wasn’t wearing its glasses. She squinted.

  “How do I get them?” Ray asked, having patiently waited out the stream of consciousness narration. “Does somebody count up my visits and give them to me?”

  “No. You just get them. They’re available to you right away, like … like an electronic transfer,” Rose said, finally finding a simile she liked. “Ah. This computer age, it’s like ma—”

  “Can you use brownies to hit the lottery?” Ray interrupted, spreading out his hands to collect his imaginary winnings. “Whoa! A million dollars! I would love to take my folks to Europe and Africa, maybe on one of those big cruise ships to the Caribbean. Yeah! What I could do with a million bucks.” He stretched out his arms and grinned up at the streetlamps.

  “That wouldn’t be ethical,” Rose said firmly, rapping him on the wrist with her wand. He clutched his hand, and gave her a hurt look. “That defrauds someone else out of real money. If you entered a contest and used magic to sway the judge, wouldn’t that be as bad as somebody who bribed him? Worse, because he wouldn’t know you did it, or how.”

  Ray seemed to wilt, disappointed. “There are a lot of rules in this game,” he said, shaking his head.

  “There certainly are,” Rose said, but more gently. He was so young, he didn’t understand it in his head yet, but she could see that he did in his heart. “And for good reasons. Power corrupts, you know. It does. The rules protect you. They protect your soul.”

  Ray kicked a fragment of concrete into the gutter. “If you can’t win money or influence people, what can you do with brownie points?” he asked.

  “I use them mostly for my grandchildren,” Rose said, happy to move onto one of her favorite topics. “Last Chanukah I found one of those TV dolls, whatever they’re called, when everybody else had absolutely stripped the toy store. I found a red one in a corner that somebody had returned, and the box was only a little torn on one edge. I don’t know if I really needed to use a whole point for that, but my little Sharon, you should have seen her face light up!” She sketched a sunrise with her hands, and Ray grinned, diverted in spite of himself.

  “So you use them like little wishes,” Ray said, mining the small kernel of meaning out of her speech.

  “Exactly,” Rose replied, relieved that he seemed to understand at last. It would be nice to do something for Ray. He had worked so hard the other day, without knowing any of these things. A little reward was in order.

  “Here, hold out your hand.” She thought hard. It felt like there were about eight and a half brownie points left hanging around her. Mentally, she captured one like a firefly in a glass jar, and let it blink at her while she thought about something nice for Raymo
nd. What was it kids always had hanging out of their ears these days? CDs? She was pretty sure he didn’t have one. All right, then, she thought, directing the brownie point. To the best of your ability, give him a personal device that plays CDs with perfect fidelity so only he can hear them. She cupped her free hand, put it over his, and tapped both of them with the wand. She took her hand away. “Voilà!”

  Ray looked down at the silver object on his palm. It had a round base about four inches across and a tapering spindle in the center, and weighed about the same as a pocket calculator. “What is it? It looks like a giant thumbtack.”

  “It’s a personal CD player,” Rose said, a little uncertainly. “For you.” True, it didn’t look like the ones in the magazine ads. But the magic never lied to her. It would do what she had wished it to do.

  “Thanks,” Ray said, just as uncertainly. He turned it over a few times. Rose shook her head impatiently and closed her eyes again. The request had actually used up two brownie points, but she felt the value of the demonstration was worth it. She captured a few of the fractional, minor sparks dancing around in her “bank account,” and wished for a disk from home to test the device.

  She opened her hand and directed a red-pink flash into her palm. A flat square lay there.

  “Tony Bennett?” Ray said incredulously, picking up the box. “Cool. Thank you. You’re not as antiquated as I thought.”

  Rose smiled. “I listen to the radio,” she said. As she watched, Ray flipped open the Tony Bennett CD and popped the glistening ring onto the spindle. A second later, he flattened his hand over one ear, then the other. He turned a wondering stare on Rose.

  “That’s incredible!” he said, holding up the thumbtack CD player for closer scrutiny. “I’m hearing music. Nothing’s moving, but I can hear the music absolutely perfectly. It doesn’t even have moving parts! How’s it work?”