Want to learn how to cast a circle? asked Pan.
It was Max’s turn to speak but he had no idea what a circle was or if he wanted to cast one. It was quiet in his room. Max heard the foundation settle and the walls creak as they breathed out.
Say something, said Pan. His hands hung at the end of his pin-thin wrists. They fell stunningly by his side. You look nervous as a cat in a room of rocking chairs. You scared?
Max felt like he was on a date, but he knew he wasn’t. Maybe it was that he wished he was on a date. But he didn’t know what a date even was or how to do that here or anywhere.
Pan unzipped the jacket he’d been wearing over his Carhartt’s. Beneath his overalls was just skin, no undershirt at all. Pan wore a Band-Aid over each nipple.
No, said Max.
Mascara clumped in the corner of Pan’s eyes, and Max fought the urge to reach out and clean him.
Course you aren’t, said Pan. Now sit down and be still.
What is circle? Is that like a prayer? Like rat magic?
What did you say? said Pan. Did you say rat magic?
No, said Max. Fear replaced his curiosity.
Pan smacked his thigh.
You almost sound like someone who’s been here a minute. Have they started on you yet? Are you saved yet?
Saved? Asked Max. What does it mean, saved?
He thought of the Judge falling from a cliff and not dying. Was that saved?
Okay, said Pan. So not yet. That’s good. Now just sit down. Why be saved when you can just be safe?
He made Max cross his legs on the floor and focus on his breath as it traveled in and out of his lungs. Pan ordered Max to concentrate on the feeling of air entering the chest, expanding, and scraping through his throat and nose on its exit. Max opened one eye long enough to watch Pan point to the four corners of Max’s room and recite a mantra at each cardinal direction. He pointed up and down and then Pan flicked his own chest.
Circle is opened, said Pan.
Pan spoke nonsense words, a guttural sound, a spew. Max became light-headed but maybe it was because he held his breath for a long time. They sat for what seemed like ages in complete silence. Max became bored. He wondered if he could fall asleep sitting up. He wondered if Pan had any real power or if this is what he meant when he’d said he was a witch. He peeked again at Pan and his eyes were wide open.
This is the question-and-answer part of our séance, said Pan. Time to go deep into the tangles of our minds. Ready?
We go into the tangles, said Max.
What do you really want from life? Pan asked.
I don’t know, said Max. His throat tightened. I have not so much thought about it.
That’s okay, said Pan. That’s normal. It’s the answer I expected. No one really considers what they want from life. Unless you’re brainwashed. Then you think you know. But you don’t know. We all just walk around like robots doing what we think we’re supposed to do and then we die, said Pan. It can make one very depressed.
Max thought he understood what Pan meant.
Max said, I think what I want is the exact same thing as what everyone is wanting.
Pan scrunched his forehead.
No, you don’t, he said. I know you don’t. I can already tell. So, don’t say that and start lying like a liar.
Sorry, said Max. What is it you can tell?
I said you’re not like the others. I can see that plain as the day is long.
Pan wrapped his jacket around his skinny shoulders like a lady tightening her shawl in the cold.
Max tingled from all the attention. What could Pan see?
What kind of witch are you? asked Max.
Have you ever seen the television show Psychic South?
Max hadn’t. Pan explained how during the show the producers made psychics compete by taking them to places where horrible things had happened: churches, steel mills, piers on the edge of an ocean. Then the psychics had to reconstruct the event that happened in detail—the rapes, the murders, the burnings alive. Whoever recounted the event the closest to the truth won.
I saw a woman tell of a stabbing like it happened right before her, like she was there. She’s that in touch with the spiritual realm, said Pan.
Pan was training that same power by going to crime scenes in Alabama and standing in the energy and concentrating on his visions. He was learning how to detect trauma in the molecules of the air.
I went out to a gas station last week where a group of men murdered a woman they knew, he said. I stood near the dumpsters and felt my whole body beginning to bruise. My legs left the ground and I started to drift up to the power lines like something was going to tie me to them. But when I opened my eyes, I was alone. No one was with me except for the wind and the rats and the trash.
You are being serious? Max said, unsure if Pan was telling the truth.
I was inhabiting the past moment. I was reaching back toward the killing and for a moment I was close. I had visions. But I never got there completely. I hit a spiritual wall.
Is this what witch is? asked Max. Is psychic and witch the same thing?
Basically, yeah, said Pan. Basically.
Pan riffled through his purse and handed Max a pair of scissors to hang at the entrance of his door. The scissors had red plastic handles.
For protection, said Pan.
Protection from what? Max asked.
Pan ignored the question and said, If you decide what you really want from life, there are visualization techniques you can practice to manifest your destiny into reality.
Pan said, You can learn to make a force field. To be a magnet.
And Max walked right up to Pan when he said it, so how could he not believe him?
That night, Max thought about the odd Pan and his odd words. Toodalooooo was how he’d said goodbye. He’d kissed his cheek like he was French. Strange. Max stretched out in bed and felt the humidity raise acne on his neck. He jerked the sheet off his stomach and considered the question What did he want? Had he ever thought about it? Max had forgotten to ask Pan what he wanted. He wished he could travel back in time and ask him. He would stare right into his odd face and say What do you want anyway for this life? It seemed like Pan had thought about it, like he would have an answer. It would be different if Pan had wings, if he had fangs, if his nails were pointed, if his tail were wide, but he was only a boy.
DURING CLASS, PAN WROTE SOMETHING in his notebook just for Max to see. He scribbled: Ignoramuses don’t even believe in the big bang theory or the evolutions. They think God put dinosaur bones in the earth’s crust to trick us. How about the earth is 5000 years old? So much for science. Bet it’s not like that where you come from. Is it?
Max didn’t know what to say.
Pan swallowed a laugh. He wanted Max to step inside the joke with him. The joke was that an ignoramus was teaching them, and that science was real. Max picked up the pencil after Pan put it down. The utensil was warm from his touch. Max wrote: Wow. Would make my mom freak. She loves science.
Freak, a saying Max had recently picked up. Along with flip your shit and go mad.
Pan wrote: Tell me about Germany.
Max wrote: Very different in Germany. Also not so different.
Then the bell rang, and time was up.
At lunch, Max ate with the football team. They placed chips that smelled of vinegar inside their ham sandwiches and smashed the white bread, so he could hear the sound of something break against a layer of mayonnaise. The fruit punch they drank turned the tops of their tongues neon. Max watched their tongues go flat in their mouths as they haw-haw-hawed about how they shoved a melted chocolate bar in a boy’s boxers during gym so that it looked like he had shit himself. The boy had to go home for a new change of clothes. He had been chosen as the target because years ago he had farted during history class and when he stood up shit had slid down his leg. The boys would never forget.