Page 4 of Witch You Would

I gathered my energy and intentions and pushed them into the shrimp, which I’d already infused with part of the spell. Magic

rippled down my arms, prickling my skin and warming my hands. I dropped the shrimp into the jar, flung my free hand into the

air, and yelled, “Presto!”

Everyone went quiet. The inky black water began to glow a pale blue, coalescing into a blob that drifted aimlessly. A tiny

jellyfish popped through the hole in the lid, rose a few feet higher, and hovered in place.

“Isn’t this little buddy adorable?” I asked. No one was impressed, of course, but that was the idea.

A few seconds later, my “little buddy” started growing. It went from the size of a marble to a lemon, then a mango, then a

basketball, and kept going.

“Uh-oh,” I said. “It’s not supposed to do that.”

The strands of its trailing tentacles dangled like shimmering fishing wire. From the center of its body hung arms like thick

ribbons with scalloped edges. It was pretty accurate to life, if I said so myself. When it got as big as a giant beach umbrella,

I stepped underneath the jellyfish and looked up. “I must have put in too much star anise.”

The crowd chuckled. Time for phase two.

“Thankfully it’s only a residual echo of the real thing, so it doesn’t sting!” I ran my hands along the tentacles, which shifted

like a beaded curtain, leaving glowing neon streaks on my skin.

And then they reached out and circled my wrists.

“Guess the echo remembers how to catch fish,” I joked as more tentacles wound their way around my legs and chest. I pretended

to struggle, shifting my expression from haha to yikes .

The central arms grabbed my shoulders and pulled the whole jellyfish body down, until I was wearing it like a hat. I yelped

as the jellyfish sucked my head into its mouth.

The audience cracked up. For extra comedic effect, I wiggled and made a few more muffled sounds that could have been bad words.

Once the laughs slowed down, I got one of my arms loose and tried to push the jellyfish off my head. It didn’t work, of course—it

wasn’t supposed to—but the laughing came back. The tentacles got me again, and after a brief but mighty battle, I freed myself.

My whole body glowed in neon blues and purples, coated in a sheen of spectral residue. My mustache in particular probably

looked ridiculous. I wiped the color off my glasses with my fingers and everyone lost it.

The jellyfish brightened, and I froze, hands and one leg up in a defensive pose. With a sound like a rushing wave, the creature

dissolved into a cloud of glitter that spiraled up into the night. The laughter changed to ooh s and aah s. For a moment, it was like the whole Milky Way spread across the sky instead of just a few random stars and planets, and

then it was gone.

I shouted, “Presto!” as everyone clapped. The show was over.

Sam and Ed stopped filming and I joined them for our post-spell routine.

Ed climbed back up the swing set to get the sport cam.

I picked up the lanterns, still covered in faintly glowing neon stripes.

Sam started playing back her video, and we all hunched over the tiny screen.

I was a little more stiff than usual, but it was good enough.

With this, we had a solid buffer to last through my Cast Judgment time.

Some people left; others went back to the playground or stood around soaking up the vibes. Some hovered like they wanted to

ask me questions but were too shy. I’d mingle in a minute, though I couldn’t stay long. I had to check in at the hotel where

I’d be staying during filming.

The replay finished. I said, “If Ed adds some silly sound effects and a few funny captions where my energy drops, I think

it’ll be okay.”

“Are you nervous about the show?” Ed asked, adding quietly, “I know spending so much time in character is a lot for you.”

It was, but this would be a good opportunity for Mage You Look . More exposure hopefully meant more subscribers and sponsors and ad revenue, which meant a bigger budget, which meant we

could raise rates for everyone who worked for us. Might sell extra merch, too, if we were lucky.

Grandpa Fred thought I could get my own cable show out of this, but honestly, I had the feeling the producers had signed me

up to be comic relief. I wasn’t one of their stars or some fancy CEO; I was the latest Jinxd account to go viral on the regular.

I was there to “capture the youth market,” to paraphrase my agent.

Most importantly to me, though, I was competing for my grandpa’s charity: Alan Kazam’s Schools Are Magic.

Funding for classes in anything beyond basic, boring rote-memorization casting kept getting cut from public elementary schools, along with art and music and anything else deemed insufficiently essential.

AKSAM provided a free magic curriculum, appropriate to the grade level and with all necessary reagents included.

And it was fun! I’d done some school visits as Leandro Presto, and guiding crowds of adorable, excited kids through the lessons was incredibly fulfilling.

More than these videos, if I was being honest with myself. Especially if we cut the explanations. Not that I’d tell Sam and

Ed that.

Fundraising was tough in the best of times, especially when so many people were broke. AKSAM donations had dropped, and the

charity was on the edge of shutting down if they couldn’t get a cash infusion, fast. If I won Cast Judgment , the check for $100,000 would keep the lights on for a while longer and pay for a hell of a lot of magic classes. Even if

I lost, they’d get $10,000, which would be a huge help.

I’d do my best, but I was up against industry pros way further along in their successful careers. It wouldn’t surprise me

if I lost in the first round and spent the rest of the shoot reading in my hotel room since we couldn’t leave early because

of our NDAs. But I was damned well going to try, for the kids and my grandpa.

Sam finished packing her cameras while Ed checked his phone. Frogtail walked back over to her friend in the crowd just as

Sam nudged me to start mingling.

“How did you like the spell?” I asked them.

“It was awesome!” Orange Polo replied.

“Yeah, doing a spell like this at night was really nice,” the guy across from her said.

“You could do it at the beach next time,” someone added.

“Nah, the parking sucks,” someone else said.

“What about you?” Sam asked, pointing at Frogtail, who was even cuter up close.

Before she could answer, one of the teenagers jumped in. “She wouldn’t shut up about how he was doing it wrong,” he said.

Oh. Ouch.

Frogtail looked down at her sneakers. “It was cool. Just, you know, the star anise.”

“Too much,” I agreed.

“Way too much. Half a seed would have been enough. Though if you had used more shrimp, you would have a bunch of small jellies

instead of one big one?”

“Right, the size would be proportional to the ratio of the catalyst to the reactant.”

Her eyes widened like I’d surprised her. Oops. Leandro Presto shouldn’t be rattling off variations on the theory of compositional

conformity. Grandpa Fred’s rule number two: stay in character.

I gave her my best himbo grin. “That’s what I read on the internet, anyway.”

Her eye roll said she bought it.

“My friend’s a spell tech,” Orange Polo explained. “She helps people with magic stuff. You know, proofs their recipes, tells

them if their ingredients will interact. Keeps them from making mistakes.”

That explained the urge to correct me.

“If you ever need help with one of your spells, you should email her. Or call her.”

Was she trying to wingman? Grandpa Fred’s rule number five: hands off the fans. That rule was especially sacred since the

Stalker Incident.

“It’s okay,” Frogtail said. “You don’t need some rando telling you what to do.” After a breath, she added, “You really should be more careful with your magic, though. What if those tentacles had gotten wrapped around your neck and choked you? Or the jellyfish suffocated you like a plastic bag?”

Neither of those things was physically possible with this spell, but she couldn’t know that. What would Leandro say? “They

didn’t, so it’s all good.”

“It’s not all good—you got lucky. One day someone’s gonna get hurt.”

“I always tell people not to try the spells at home.”

Frogtail frowned. “That won’t stop them. You need to be responsible with the content you put out there.”

That’s why I explained everything so carefully. In the videos no one watched, that Sam and Ed wanted to get rid of. “Don’t

worry. If anyone gets hurt, it’ll be me, and that video will go super viral.”

“Is getting likes seriously all you care about?”

“Nooo.” I paused for effect. “Likes and subscribes.”

Everyone laughed, and I hoped that would be the end of it. Instead, it got worse as other people started dunking on her.

“Can you make a spell to give yourself a sense of humor?”

“Or maybe one to take the stick out of your ass.”

“Hey, whoa,” I said. “Be nice.”

Even if they heard me, they kept going, and Frogtail stood there and took it with this flat look on her face, like she’d heard

worse. I had to stop it, but I couldn’t figure out how Leandro would do it.

Suddenly I was a kid again, before the divorce, listening to my parents fight, past the point where I could defuse it with

a joke. The shouting, the name-calling, the cold sarcasm... I wanted to hide in my room until it was over. My mouth refused

to work, like all my words got stuck in my throat and wouldn’t come out.

Finally someone asked, “Why do you hate fun?” and I could almost see the top of her head blow up like in a cartoon.

“I don’t hate fun!” Frogtail clenched her hands into fists. “I just don’t make an ass of myself on Jinxd. Some of us don’t need to be told how cool we are all the time. Some of us fix spell problems instead of causing them. Some of us care more about helping people than being famous.”

She didn’t really know me, only Leandro Presto, but still. Every word hit like a punch.

“Hey,” Sam said. “Cool your tits.”

This was my fault. I should have known my fans—which Frogtail clearly wasn’t—would want to defend me, and I shouldn’t have

let them take it so far. Why did I always lose the power of speech when stuff like this happened?

I mean, I knew why, but you would think all the therapy would help me deal better.

“S-sorry,” Frogtail stuttered, her face red. “That was super shitty of me. Sorry. I’m so sorry.” She practically ran away,

toward the parking lot.

I started to follow her. I didn’t know how, but I wanted to fix this. A car beeped, and Frogtail slid into the front passenger

seat and slouched too low for me to see her.

I stopped at the edge of the sidewalk. Epic fail.

Orange Polo joined me, looking worried. “She isn’t usually like this.”

“It’s my fault. I let it get out of hand.”

“She had a super-bad day at work. I keep telling her to quit, but where’s she gonna go? SpellMart?” Orange Polo shrugged.

“That’s why I was kinda pushing her on you. Sorry.”

“It’s okay. She seems really smart.”

“She is. Super smart. And she works so hard. I just wish someone could appreciate it.”

“I’m sure someone will,” I said, but it sounded weaksauce even to me.

Orange Polo jingled her car keys. “I should go. She has to be up early, and I already kidnapped her so I wouldn’t have to

come here alone.” She walked backward away from me. “It really was a great spell! Better than the one from Dolphin Mall. And

you’re even cuter in person.” She grinned, then turned around and gave her hips a little extra shake.

Sam stepped up next to me. “Nice. Too bad about rule five. Hey, did I tell you the new bad pickup line I heard yesterday?

‘You dropped something... my jaw.’”

“Not now, Samantha,” I muttered.

“Oh snap, full-named.” Her eyes got big. “You’re really upset. What’s up?”

“I wish I’d handled that better.”

“Haters gonna hate. Don’t stress about it.”

More quietly, Ed said, “Leandro isn’t you. He’s just a character.”

A character people didn’t take seriously, which was the whole point. But it stung to have it rubbed in my face. As if it didn’t

take a lot of skill and hard work to be a clown.

I’d tried the usual path for someone with my degree, and it had gotten me nowhere. My parents still asked how my job hunt

was going every time we talked. Had I applied to that listing they saw on NetWorkedIn at the University of Never Gonna Hire

Me? What about that research position that required me to have started publishing papers when I was in diapers? Explaining

that the economy didn’t work how it had when they were my age was a waste of time. I was lucky to be an adjunct at a community

college. Recording dozens of crappy video auditions was how I’d ended up creating Leandro Presto in the first place.

Orange Polo’s headlights came on and the car backed out. I got a glimpse of Frogtail looking out the window, then they were gone.

“We’d better get home,” Ed said, adjusting the shoulder strap of his bag. “You have a long day tomorrow.”

A long couple of weeks, even. Tonight I’d be at a hotel in Edgewater, and tomorrow I’d be on a soundstage in Wynwood. I would

meet the hosts and judges of Cast Judgment , I’d meet my fellow “Spellebrities”—ugh, what a ridiculous name—and I’d be assigned my casting partner. Hopefully they wouldn’t

be too disappointed to be stuck with a Jinxd joker.

My PhD had to count for something, though, right? Not that I could tell them I had one. People saw what they expected to see,

and Leandro Presto was just a curly mustache, safety glasses, and tacky shirts. But even a fake guy had to do real work. My

friends were counting on me to network, but more importantly, my grandpa’s charity needed money.

Every kid deserved a little magic in their lives.

So did the grown-ups, no matter what Frogtail might think. I summoned up a smile and turned back toward the fans who hadn’t

left yet. “Anyone have questions before I head out? Or want a selfie?”