Mr. Fahrenheit (2 page)

SIX YEARS LATER

Many years ago, the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, “Because it is there.” Well, space is there, and we're going to climb it.

—President John F. Kennedy (1962)

Magic reminds us that the universe is a huge, capital-M Mystery.

—from the documentary
Make Believe

B
enji opened the door and strode with the Bedford Falls High School football team into the locker room.

He put on his uniform piece by piece: the gloves he always wore on cold game nights, the shoes with special spikes. The cinder-block walls glowed white in the fluorescent lights as the room filled with the electric anticipation of pregame.

After the team dressed in their blue-and-gold uniforms, they gathered in a semicircle around Coach Nicewarner, who began to tattoo a dry-erase board with X's and O's. Coach looked a lot older than his fortyish years right now, which made sense given everyone's stratospheric expectations for the team this year: Led by the greatest athlete in the school's history, Bedford Falls was on their way to their first undefeated season in decades.

“Make no mistake, fellas,” Nicewarner shouted in a nasal, farm-boy accent, “we're going to have to fight tonight. Nobody rest for a single play. Not one single play!”

The team responded, “YES, SIR.”

“Don't you dare think of this game as a ‘warm-up' for next week. This is their field. You match 'em on it hit for hit, gut for
gut. You will not let them take down your team—or your town.”

“NO, SIR.”

“We will win or lose as a damn team. No single player can do it all, y'understand?” Coach said, though this wasn't entirely true.

“YES, SIR.”

Coach Nicewarner capped his dry-erase marker, tossed it to an assistant, and addressed the team, now in a much more sincere voice.

“It's a cold night out there, gentlemen, so you do what you always do: You give your hometown the sun. Show the other team what Magic football means. It means one good, unforgettable ass-bustin'! Okay, let us pray!” Coach looked Benji's way. “Captain, you want to lead us?”

The team's captain, the brilliant Bedford Falls quarterback—who was standing beside Benji—nodded and stepped forward. The team collectively took a knee and bowed their heads.

And as the Our Father filled the room, Benji finished buttoning his tuxedo, put on his top hat, and left.

This field house's hallway was decorated in the style of every field house hallway in the charted galaxies. Teams from years past stared down somberly from photos on the walls. Stenciled between them were words of generic manly wisdom (
You 4GET your PAIN, You REMEMBER your GLORY!
). Benji wove through the parents hovering outside the locker rooms, and he could hear the home team's own pregame pep talk, which was identical to Coach Nicewarner's in its God-praisin' and ass-bustin' themes. It was just a game night, that was all, and Benji had attended almost every game night for four years. They'd lost their novelty for him a long time ago.

But as he opened the door at the end of the hall and stepped
toward the familiarly chaotic night, his insides backflipped with nervous excitement. Time and experience might dampen most miracles, but the sight of genuine beauty was not among them.

She was standing at the end of the tunnel.

The concrete tunnel ran beneath the bleachers before shooting onto the field. Benji could feel the stomping game-night mania of countless fans inches above his head; on the field, the Bedford Falls band blistered the air with their brassy rendition of the school fight song, which would momentarily summon Benji into the lights.

But it was the sight of the familiar silhouette at the other end of the tunnel, and nothing else, that made his heart skip a beat.

“Hey!” he called.

Ellie Holmes turned. “Benji Lightman! When did you become so dapper? Does James Bond know you raided his wardrobe?”

Huh?
Benji thought, then remembered: The school had just bought him a new “Magic Mascot” tux. “Also, Batman's wardrobe,” he said. He pulled a string on his shoulder; a black cape unfurled all the way to his ankles.

“Holy fashion icon.” Ellie grinned.

By the time Benji reached her, she'd turned away, aiming the Media Department's expensive video camera toward the Bedford Falls fans in the bleachers across the field. She looked miserable, for some reason.

“What's up?” he asked.

“Nothing. Okay, well, not that it's a gigantic deal, Benji Lightman, but the apocalypse is upon us.” She thumbed the camera's Zoom button; the lens whirred as the Bedford Falls crowd grew larger on the LCD screen. “And lo, the skies were opened,” she said, speaking loudly as the band crescendoed, “and the seven plagues burst forth, and the first among those plagues was this:
a swarm of innumerable FIGs returning to torment us even though homecoming isn't until next week, damn you!”

Benji burst out laughing. FIG was code: “Forgot I Graduated,” a term applied to people who had technically completed high school but didn't quite seem
finished
with it. There were a ton of Bedford Falls–based FIGs, of course—depressing fixtures of the local high school party scene. Bedford Falls's FIG population always exploded during Homecoming Week, but it did seem like this year's migration had begun earlier than usual. Maybe this was partly because tonight's game had been delayed by a snowstorm and was taking place a day late, on a Saturday. But it was probably mostly because everyone wanted to get an extra look at the Magic quarterback.

Still staring at the camera, Ellie shook her head and sighed, a never-ending stream of her breath (which smelled like cinnamon) rising in front of her green eyes. If she was trying to look like the world's cutest dragon, well, she did. Benji made an effort to look away.

When she finished and glanced up, her forehead was creased a little in something approaching fear. “Promise me you'll never let me do that after I leave next year,” she said.

“Not for all the gold in Gotham.”

Ellie chuckled. “Wait, promise on camera. Pics or it didn't happen!”

“On my honor as a double-oh agent,” he said when she raised the camera to him, “I swear I won't let you do that after we leave next year.”

“Fabulous. Now say Something Profoundly Profound to your future self.”

“Ummm.”

“Slightly more profound, please.”

“Congrats on becoming the greatest magician since ever.”

“And in spite of all your successes, Mr. Lightman, have you ever forgotten where you came from?”

“Oh, yeah. I purposely forgot, like, pretty much immediately.”

Ellie laughed. “Good man. Oh! That reminds me: How's the application to the Magic Lantern coming?”

Benji's smile faltered, just a bit. Then the marching band blasted its final note, which was his cue.

“How do I look?” he asked.

Ellie gave him a once-over, then reached up and tilted his top hat a little to the left, her soft wrist touching his cheek for an infinitesimal moment. “Poifect,” she said, and Benji didn't know what Coach Nicewarner had been talking about: The night didn't feel cold at all.

The moment when he emerged onto the field was, as always, vaguely fantastic.

The field lights, which climbed high and silver on spindly poles, tossed a white illuminative bubble above the stadium. Under the dome of light, the chalked yardlines appeared ignited. The bleachers on both sides of the field were packed to capacity, eight thousand-ish people. As the final note of the fight song (“A Mighty Magic!”) hung on the air, a deep voice resounded over the speakers.

“Bedford Falls fans, please welcome yourrrrr Bedford Falls Magic mascot: Bennnnnjiii BUH-LAZES!”

Half the crowd roared as Benji wove between members of the marching band now standing at attention. He knew this was just an Indiana high school football game, and that people weren't applauding for him so much as for the idea of the football team, the only positive and
pure
thing to come from Bedford Falls in years. But wow, did he love performing.

He stopped in the perfect center of the field, facing his crowd
in the away bleachers. A microphone was clipped to his lapel. He cleared his throat, reached into his tuxedo pocket, and thumbed the mic on.

He said, “Who are we?”

His voice boomed from the arena speakers, amplified a thousand times (and always sounding slightly higher than he imagined it). The Bedford Falls crowd's roar, led by the cheerleaders, vocalized around one word:

“MAAAAGIC!”

Benji clapped his hands, which burst into instantaneous flame, courtesy of the pyrotechnic flash paper on the palms of his gloves. At the same moment, two cheerleaders fired T-shirt cannons: Cotton comets arced into the crowd, which said, “
Oooooo!
” (Their “
Oooo
” came in a more subdued volume than you'd probably expect from spontaneous combustion and free shirts, but they'd been seeing this trick all season.)

At the perfect instant, with smoke obscuring his hands, Benji twitched his wrist: A magic wand, loaded on a spring, ejected from his sleeve and flew into his hand.

“What do we do?” Benji asked. (Somewhere behind him, in the home crowd, a fan shouted, “SUCK!”)

The Bedford Falls side disagreed: “MAAAGIC!” Now a volley of blue and gold sparks jetted forth from the wand's tip. Benji whirled on his heels, aiming his spell in the direction of the home stands, grinning like a perfectly friendly wizard nemesis.

He hurled the wand to the turf. It detonated between his feet, raising a great column of smoke. A few people in the home stands booed, but a couple of little kids, who hadn't yet learned to hate on command, shouted in delight.

Benji raised his hands with a flourish; playing cards, propelled by springs, flew from both sleeves like doves. He grabbed a card from each deck, displaying them to the audience: One
card read
8
, the other
0
. His team's undefeated record.

Benji reeled back like Bedford Falls's famed quarterback, preparing to slam both explosive cards to the ground. He shouted his final line: “Let's make it
nine
and—”

A squeal of feedback screeched over the speaker system. Benji flinched, thrown off his rhythm.

There was a kind of rumbling sound, like someone was wrestling over the microphone in the press box. Then, a voice: “Lightman puts flash paper on his gloves to make the fire. You can get it on Amazon for three bucks a sheet.”

The voice wasn't the announcer's. It sounded like a teenage guy.

“The wand's a Sparkler Stick. Twelve bucks,” the guy said, starting to laugh. “Bedford Falls, you suck, you bunch of rednecks! Have fun tonight, 'cause Newporte's gonna kick alllll your asses next week! Benji Lightman, you suck, Bedford Falls you suck, NEWPORTE HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL FOREVER!”

The Bedford Falls crowd booed. Some in the home crowd started laughing. A grown man's voice, off mic, said, “Kid, you get the heck away from that!”

After what sounded like a scuffle for control of the mic, the younger voice spouted one final sentence.

“Hey, Lightman, don't set yourself on fire again.”

Benji's cheeks flared. In his mind, he pictured an old red door.

He cut the thought off, shouting, “Let's make it nine and zero!”

He hurled the cards to the earth: two bangs of light and smoke, this time in the school colors of blue and gold. The marching band blared to life and the Bedford Falls Magic football team erupted out of the stadium tunnel, a rushing stream of shoulder pads and shining helmets, splitting around Benji
like they were a river and he a stone.

He was almost back to the tunnel when a Bedford Falls player grabbed his bicep. The player's fingertips bore white rings of athletic tape, the better to grip the ball on cold nights.

“Wrong way, sexy,” he said. The voice echoed through the stadium; Benji realized his lapel mic was still broadcasting and switched it off.

“Whatever you're thinking of doing,” Benji told him, “let's do the other thing.” But he was already resigned to the fact that protesting was useless, because he recognized the expression on the player's face: laser-guided rage. It was the same focused fury, familiar from four years of football game nights, that had made this quarterback the most singular and legendary athlete in the history of Bedford Falls High School.

Quarterback Christopher Robin “CR” Noland said, “Nobody puts my Banjo in a corner.”

The marching band departed the field in formation. The teams were stationed on the sidelines; the only people on the field now were each team's offensive captain and the referee waiting on the fifty-yard line. CR was Bedford Falls's captain. A lean mountain who towered over Benji by six inches, CR had hit puberty early and hard: Shortly after moving to town during the vanishing summer before sixth grade, he'd sprouted like a kid christened by comic-book radiation.

Nearing the (bewildered) referee, CR stuck two fingers through his helmet's face mask and whistled in the direction of the Bedford Falls sidelines. “Zeeko, this is a party of three!” he called.

Zeeko—the team's trainer and one of the few African Americans on the sidelines—looked uncertainly at Coach Nicewarner, who, after a moment's indecision, motioned for him to join CR.
“Jesus, help us,” Zeeko muttered as he caught up with Benji and CR, his eyes enormous behind his thick glasses. But there was a laugh in his voice.

As they reached the fifty-yard line, the other team's captain glared at CR. “Son,” the ref said to CR, confused, “this is a captains-only, no-mascots type deal.”

“Hell, sir, you think I don't know that?” CR said earnestly. “These good-looking studs
are
captains.”

“Love of God, son, they don't even have uniforms,” said the ref. As if Benji's tuxedo wasn't enough, Zeeko was wearing the plaid hoodie and boxy Kmart jeans that had earned him his (affectionate) nickname, “Dad Clothes.”

CR grinned, this huge smile that was absurd on his face, but it was precisely that goofiness that made it the sort of smile you just had to believe.
C'mon, now, would I lie?
“They're injured,” he said. “Special teams.”