If magic is real, you should absolutely use it

The Shield of Mylitta spell only takes a simple chant, so you cast it right away. Not having to worry about condoms with Tracey will be great.

Ensuring a long, healthy life with the Blessing of Aegle looks like a no-brainer, too. You want to cast it on yourself and Tracey.

You also look over the Blessings of Aphrodite and Adonis. Tracey doesn’t need any improvement as far as you’re concerned, but why not give yourself a boost? People might not question why a beautiful girl like her is dating you if you were better looking and more masculine.

The rituals for the blessings require the same herbs. You’re pretty sure your mom has them. You head down to the kitchen. When you’re confident Abbie isn’t coming out of her room, you go through your mom’s spice rack, grab the little plastic jars of herbs that you need for the spells, and jam them into your pockets. You take an apple from the fridge, and head back to your room.

As you walk past Abbie’s bedroom, she opens the door. “Hold on a sec, Beanpole, I need to talk to you. Are you sure you’re not getting pranked or set up for something?” she asks. “It’s almost the end of your senior year, and some kids think they can get away with crap when they’re this close to graduation. This could be some mean-girl dare where they pretend to like unpopular guys.”

You almost **** on the bite of the apple that you were munching, cough, then answer her. “I’m pretty sure Tracey really likes me, Abs,” you reassure her. You can’t tell her why you’re so sure, though. “Besides, from what I’ve seen, she doesn’t hang around with a clique of mean girls or anything. Isn’t that stuff mostly just in dumb teen movies, anyway?”

“It can be more real than you’d think,” Abbie smirked. “High school girls are under a lot of pressure to fit in, and will do some stupid, destructive things if they think it’s what the group wants. You never talk to any girls, so you wouldn’t know what they are up to. How are you so sure she really likes you?”

“Do you really think she’d, you know, go as far as we did if it was just for a prank?” you ask.

Abbie frowned as she considered that. “No. But I still think it happened too fast to be believed. Just be careful. OK, Stretch? I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

“I will. Be careful, that is. Not get hurt,” you clarify. “I know you’re looking out for me, but it’s a little insulting that you find it so hard to believe a girl could just like me, you know?” You smirk at her.

“Sorry. I know you’re a good guy, and if you had a little more meat on your bones, you might even be almost decent-looking,” she teases you. “But it’s hard to understand how any girl found that out, since up until yesterday you’ve always turned red and choked on your tongue anytime you had to talk to one.”

You shrug in answer. “Looks like at least one girl figured it out. Maybe you still see me as just your dorky little brother, and Tracey can see me as more than that.” You grin at her, then step into your room and close the door behind you.

After waiting a few minutes to be sure that Abbie isn’t going to follow you into your room, you open the website again. You follow the instructions for the Blessing of Aegle, spreading the herbs on your desk and drawing the symbols on the screen in them with your finger. You chant the words of the spell quietly, so Abbie won’t overhear you. You repeat the spell naming Tracey.

When you’re done with that, you go through similar steps to cast the Blessing of Adonis on yourself. The spell says to envision the looks you want. Abbie is always calling you beanpole and telling you girls aren’t into scrawny guys, so as you chant the words, you imagine your skinny frame replaced with a strong athletic build, a broad chest, defined pecs, six-pack abs, and muscular arms and legs. You imagine your still somewhat boyish face becoming more ruggedly handsome and square-jawed, with piercing blue eyes, and your shaggy mop of untamable black hair becoming lustrous and wavy. Once the spell takes effect, no one will question why Tracey would want to be with you.

A glance at the clock on your computer screen reminds you that your mother will be home soon, so you head back to the kitchen to put the herbs away. Not long after you get them back into the spice rack, you hear your mother’s car pulling into the driveway.

As you and Abbie help your mom make dinner, Abbie mentions that you’ve got a girlfriend now and had her over for a study date today. Mom smiles wide. “That’s such great news, honey. I’d love to meet her sometime soon.” She sounds very happy, if a little surprised. You suspect she was worried about you ever getting a girlfriend due to how shy you’ve always been. The rest of the evening passes uneventfully.

When you wake up the next morning aching and hungry, you head down to the kitchen and gulp down two containers of yogurt, a pair of Pop-Tarts, and a banana just to stop your stomach’s rumbling. You go back to your room and open the magic website again. You have an idea that the dream-walking spell you saw might help deal with Tracey’s ex, Leah. Maybe you could change Leah’s dreams to make Tracey seem less attractive to her or just help her get over things somehow. You’re not sure it will work, but you want to know what you need to perform the spell so you can at least try.

When you look for the dream spell in the list of spells, you notice a new link at the bottom of the page. It reads: “Greater awareness and understanding.” You click on it, and it takes you to a new page that opens with “You have successfully cast three different spells. This indicates that you have sufficient ability and interest to master more complex magic.”

You think it’s weird that somehow the website, or someone updating it, knows that you cast three spells. Apparently, magic can do a lot more than the spells the website has shown you so far. The page has more spells on it and something about magic that uses sexual rituals. You don’t have time to read them all now. You need to shower and get ready for school, and you want another breakfast before you catch the bus.

You go back to the Journey of Morpheus spell, and see that you need something that the subject has held. You think you can probably get something that has been in Leah’s hands at school today, but you’re going to have to be careful.

After you shower, you look in the bathroom mirror and see a heavier shadow of a beard that you’re used to. You hadn’t planned on shaving. Usually, you can get away without shaving for a few days before the stubble becomes noticeable. You think your jawline might look just a little better defined, and there’s something different about your eyes, too. They had always been a hard-to-define blue-greenish gray. Now, they are more obviously blue, and they are set deeper, giving a new intensity to your gaze. You smile at the change. The Adonis spell is starting to work.

You start to feel like it will be a good day today. You get dressed, eat another breakfast, then catch the bus to school. During the ride, you text Tracey and tell her to meet you by your locker before first period.