do you believe in magic?

By Lynn

    There wasn’t much that Tally hated more than children; they couldn’t sit still, they didn’t know how to shut up. Everything about children was despicable.
     Why Tally was a magician for children’s birthday parties, not many people knew.
     “Hide in plain sight,” their mentor had told them. “No one will guess that a stage magician is an actual magician.

    Why couldn’t they just work at Subway? No one would guess that just some random employee at the local Subway was a magician, either.
    No, Tally was forced to become some petty stage magician for kids who couldn’t even watch long enough to appreciate the colliding rings or pulling an animal from a hat (stuffed, as Tally refused to use live animals in the act).
    Tally sighed as they watched the last few children leave. The recreation building was completely empty apart from the mess left behind from Tally’s show. They pulled their magician’s hat from their head, letting their bottle-blue hair fall in front of their eyes. After their exhausting shows, they still had to clean up the stage.
      Tally’s mentor had hammered into their head never to use magic outside the house. “No one must know of our magic,” she would always say. “The world isn’t ready to know yet. Not until everyone can react without leading to violence.”
       But no one was around, right? No one would know if Tally were to use actual magic to clean up, just this once.
     Taking one last quick look around to ensure that everyone had left, Tally pulled open their suit jacket before pulling out a wand. Exactly as they had been trained, they took in a breath and waved the wand around themself. A flash of light appeared from the wand.
      Tally blinked, the world around them blurring as their movements began to quicken.
   Speeding around the stage, they picked up all fifty-two cards scattered across the left side of the stage, the notebook Tally had thrown aside during the show after changing the image, and the array of props that they had actually bothered to place back upon the table. Every prop made its way back into the seemingly endless dufflebag hidden at the back of the stage. 
      Only twenty seconds had passed before they returned to the end of the stage to reverse the spell, except for how they couldn’t quite stop themselves quick enough at the speed they were moving, leading them to fall off the edge of the stage.
    The stage wasn’t too high off the ground, but their landing still knocked the wind out of them. Tally paused, then laughed at themself, trying once more to cast the spell to return them to their normal speed before standing up.
       In the back of their mind, Tally knew their mentor would somehow become aware of the magic use. How, Tally never knew, but somehow their mentor always found out. 
      Now, Tally was in the moment, thinking of their fairly successful use of magic as they went up to the stage one last time to grab their belongings.
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