-4-

Lungs burning, dark spots dancing before his eyes, Alan nearly collapsed against the door of the Hoagie Hub as he finally reached it, after having run the whole way home from school as fast as his legs would carry him. His chest heaving, he yanked it open with all his might and stumbled inside. Ignoring the laughter and catcalls that erupted from the high schoolers who made up most of the lunch rush, as they caught sight of his hat, he cast his gaze around the busy restaurant until he spotted his mother taking a customer's order on the far side. And even though there was a long-standing rule about not bothering either of his parents while they were dealing with customers, Alan frantically elbowed his way through the crowd towards her.

"Mom!" he called, ducking under the hands of the teenagers at table nine, as they tried to pluck his hat off when he passed. "Mom, we need to call the police! Julia's been kidnapped!"

"Excuse me a moment, please," Mom said to the bewildered old couple she'd been talking to at table six, smiling tightly at them as she grabbed hold of the strap of Alan's backpack and tugged him towards her. "I just need to have a quick word with my son. Be right back."

Alan stumbled as she shoved him ahead of her, steering him through the crowd towards the swinging door that led into the Hub's empty kitchen.

"What do you think you're doing, blurting out nonsense like that in the middle of a rush, Alan?" she scolded him, after she'd pushed him through ahead of her. "Are you trying to start a panic? I swear, you nearly gave that poor old woman a heart attack!"

"But Mom, it's not nonsense! Julia has been kidnapped!" Alan protested. "She didn't meet me at the playground so I could walk her home, like she's supposed to! So I went to her class, and called into the girls' bathroom, and looked all over the school, and I couldn't find her anywhere! She's gone!"

"She's not gone, Alan," Mom sighed, even as she smiled at him fondly. "And she hasn't been kidnapped. Julia's been home for twenty minutes. She's in the streetcar, having milkshakes with one of her little friends from school."

Alan's mouth fell open, as he stared out the pass-through at the Hoagie Hub's trademark vintage streetcar, which made up part of the restaurant. Sure enough, he could just make out the top of his sister's head through one of the windows, her dark pigtails waving back and forth as she talked animatedly with somebody he couldn't see.

Julia had come home without him? But she never did that! They always waited for one another. And walked home together. And sat on the couch and eat PB&J's together as they watched TV together, veering from Dexter's Laboratory to TRL and back again as they fought over the remote, until it was time for him to go back to school. Neither of them ever brought home other friends. Heck, neither of them even had other friends...mainly because Julia didn't like other people, and other people didn't like Alan. And they'd been fine with that, because they'd always had each other. What did they need other people for?

So why in the world had she brought someone else home with her?

"What are you talking about?" he asked his mother, narrowing his eyes at her. "What friend?"

Mom shrugged as she tucked her order pad into her apron, and started to wash her hands over the sink. "Pretty little red-haired girl? I think Julia said her name was...Heidi, or something?"

"Heidi? But we don't have a Heidi in our—" He broke off mid-sentence as a sudden thought struck him. "Wait, you don't mean Hayley, do you? Hayley Finster?"

"Hayley, that's it," Mom nodded, wiping her hands off on a dishrag. She grimaced as she cast a glance around the kitchen. "Now where the hell does your father keep disappearing to? TERRY?"

"Julia's hanging out with Hayley Finster?" Alan exclaimed. "Agh, why? She's weird! She's always staring at me! And her mother dresses her funny!"

"That's not a very nice thing to say, mijo. Besides, people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones," Mom said, with a glance at Alan's hat. "TERRY, KNOCK IT OFF! I'M WAITING ON THREE ORDERS, HERE!"

As if on cue, the heavy metal door to the vegetable cooler swung open, and Dad poked his head out.

"Sorry, Heralda," he said. "I was just helping Kirby to put the finishing touches on the—oh, Alan! Good, you're home! Come on in here for a second, son. Your uncle and I want to show you something."

Alan frowned at him, then leaned to the side and tried to peer past him into the cooler. "Uncle Kirby's here? In our freezer? But I thought you said he was working out of the country..."

"Kirby? Working? Ha!" Mom scoffed. "Now there's a magic trick I'd like to see."

Alan's frown deepened as he looked from his dad to his mom, and back again. "So, what? You mean he doesn't work? But then how does he—?"

"It's kind of a long story, Alan, but it'll all make sense in a minute." Grinning, Dad stretched his arm out the door, and beckoned him into the freezer. "Now c'mon and check this out, already! It's so cool!"

"Oh, no you don't!" Mom growled, grabbing hold of Dad's hand, and physically yanking him out into the kitchen. "Table five has been waiting on their tuna melt for almost ten minutes, already! Out!"

"But honey!" Dad protested, reaching back for the cooler door as it slammed shut behind him. "I just wanted to show him the—"

"Your brother can show him. It's not like he has a job to get back to, or anything."

"But—!"

Mom cut him off with a glare that meant business as she stepped back out through the swinging door and hurried back towards the old couple whose order she'd been in the middle of taking when Alan had interrupted.

"Yes, dear," Dad sighed heavily, even though she was out of earshot. Shoulders slumped as he crossed the kitchen to the sandwich-making station, he glanced at Alan and jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

"Why don't you go join your uncle in the cooler, Alan? I'll be along in a few minutes, once the lunch rush calms down."

"Uh...should I go upstairs and get a coat, or maybe some earmuffs, first? Because you know how I get an ear ache whenever I—"

"Alan...please just go in, OK?"

"OK, Dad," Alan said. Looking over his shoulder through the pass-through, towards the streetcar—just in time to see Julia's wide, brown eyes dart away from him, just above the bottom of the window—Alan stepped over towards the heavy metal door, grabbed onto the handle with both hands, yanked it open with all his might—

—and stepped through not into the freezer, but into an unfamiliar room he'd never set foot in before.

Alan gasped in surprise as he suddenly found himself in a scene straight out of the Dungeons and Gargoyles Game Master's Handbook: a cozy, brick-lined room filled to bursting with shelves upon shelves of musty, leather-bound books, bottles of all shapes and sizes filled with liquids in every color of the rainbow, and all manner of occult trinkets and knickknacks, from skulls and statues to candles and cauldrons. A large, oddly-shaped French door took up almost the entire wall on the opposite side of the room, each of its stained-glass panels frosted over and flashing brightly in multi-colored hues. And there, in the middle of it all, lying back on Dad's dusty old recliner from the basement and fanning himself with what looked like an over-sized, petrified bat wing, was Uncle Kirby.

"Oh, hey kiddo," Uncle Kirby wheezed, then lazily waved his arm around to encompass all the magical bric-a-brac surrounding them. "Welcome to your brand spankin' new Wizard's Grotto. Surprise!"

Lifting his other arm, which had been dangling out of sight over the arm of the recliner, Uncle Kirby waved a long, black and white wand at Alan. The tip of it glowed blue for a split second, and then Alan found himself blowing a noise-maker that had suddenly materialized in his mouth, as an explosion of confetti and streamers appeared out of thin air, and drifted down around him towards the floor.

"There," Uncle Kirby huffed, dropping his arm again and lolling his head to the side, as if the effort had winded him. "Excuse me if I don't get up, huh kid? I've spent all morning dragging all this stuff out of wizard storage, and I'm zonked. Nice hat, by the way. Man, does that hideous thing bring back memories..."

"Wizard storage?" Alan yanked the noise maker out of his mouth and stared around the room in wide-eyed wonderment. "Wait, you mean all this stuff is mine?"

"Well, yes and no. A lot of it's family heirlooms and crap, but seeing as how your Dad's not a wizard anymore, and I don't have much use for any of it myself—I've always preferred to travel light, y'see, in the unlikely event of a strategic withdrawal—yeah, I guess it's all yours for now, sure. At least until Julia and Sam get old enough for their powers to kick in, anyway."

Alan wrinkled his nose at this, the idea that it would eventually belong to Julia, too. On the one hand, he didn't want to have to wait until her powers came in to share it with her...but on the other hand, he knew that Julia didn't exactly have the firmest grasp on the whole concept of sharing to begin with.

"But where the heck are we, Uncle Kirby?" Alan asked, still turning slowly on his heels as he took in the size and scope of the place. "How is this room so big when the cooler was so small? And how are going to keep all the vegetables and stuff from spoiling now that it's gone?"

Uncle Kirby shook his head and chuckled lightly. "Kiddo, one of the first things you're gonna have to learn as a wizard is to stop thinking so literally. Just because we came through the freezer door doesn't mean that we're in the freezer."

"It...doesn't?" Alan frowned.

"Shit, no! The freezer's still there, sonny boy! I've just enchanted the doorway to act as a gateway to here, too!"

Alan stopped turning and blinked at him. "And 'here' is...?"

Uncle Kirby rolled his eyes. "Welcome to your brand spankin' new Wizard's Grotto," he repeated himself, slowly this time, as though explaining it to a particularly dull child. "Surprise."

He waved his wand, the tip flaring brightly one more time, and again Alan found himself blowing into a noisemaker as confetti and streamers burst around him.

"Pbbllfft!" Alan ripped the noisemaker out of his mouth, coughing and spitting out the confetti he'd accidentally inhaled through it. "Wizard's Grotto? What's a Wizard's Grotto?"

"Uh, a grotto for wizards?" Uncle Kirby said, as though this were the most obvious thing in the world. Then, off Alan's blank look, he added: "Look, it's like a hideout, kid. A secret place where you and your dad can do your wizard training, hidden away and safe from the rest of the world."

"Oh," Alan said, brow furrowing below his floppy hat as he processed this. "You mean like the Fortress of Solitude?"

Uncle Kirby shrugged. "I would have gone with the Batcave, myself, but sure. Whatever floats your boat."

"But Bruce Wayne's parents were already dead by the time he started training to be the Batman, Uncle Kirby," Alan said, matter-of-factly, crossing his arms over his chest. "I mean, Clark Kent's were too, sure, but Jor-El's consciousness or whatever was in the crystals that built the fortress for him, and they taught him how to use his powers to become Superman..."

"Consciousness, sure, I'll take your word for it," Uncle Kirby said, sounding bored as he patted the air between then with both hands. Then, bending his arm and looking at the back of his left wrist, he gasped and bounded up out of the chair. "Oh, look at that! I'm late for my two o'clock!"

"You're not wearing a watch, Uncle Kirby," Alan pointed out. "And it's not even one yet..."

"Yeah, well...wizards can time travel, and...and tell future time from the, uh...angle of the...shadows that the sun casts on—look, just trust me when I say I gotta go, huh?" Raising his wand in the air, he began to twirl it in a tight circle, then hesitated and looked down at Alan. "Hey, you're gonna be OK if I leave you in here alone, right kiddo?"

"Sure," Alan nodded, then grunted in frustration and pushed the hat out of his eyes when the top of it flopped down in front of him. "But can you do something about this stupid hat, first? Like, make it invisible or turn it into something cool, maybe?"

"Sorry, buddy, no can do," Uncle Kirby shook his head. "The hat's enchanted to absorb magic. That's kind of the point of it. You'll only have to wear it for a couple days, though, just until you get the hang of your powers. So hang in there, kiddo. This too shall pass."

"Easy for you to say," Alan muttered under his breath. "You're not in third grade."

"Look, promise me you won't touch anything until your dad comes back, all right?" Uncle Kirby said, oblivious. "Some of this stuff can be pretty volatile if you don't know what you're doing, and I'd hate to get blamed if—I mean, I'd hate it if anything happened to you."

"I promise," Alan said, holding up his right hand in a three-fingered salute. "Scout's honor."

"Atta boy," Uncle Kirby grinned at him, as he raised his wand again. "Welcome to the family business, kiddo. You've got an exciting future ahead of you."

"Thanks, Uncle Kirby," Alan said, more by rote than out of any genuine gratitude. He'd been raised to be polite, after all.

"Anytime, little buddy. Say goodbye to your mom and dad for me. Adios, muchacho!"

The tip of Uncle Kirby's wand glowed brightly again—yellow-orange, this time. And then suddenly, with a flick of his wrist, he was gone, disappearing in a bright flash of light, with only the barest puff of smoke left behind. Alan stared at it until it faded away, then heaved a weary little sigh and climbed into his dad's old recliner. It was getting late, he knew. It was very nearly time for him to be heading back to school, and he hadn't even had his lunch, yet...but he'd just seen his uncle willfully evaporate himself for the first time. He needed a minute or two, here.

Reaching up, he felt for the velvet edge of the hat pressing against his forehead, hesitated for a moment, then shrugged slightly and tugged it off into his lap. He worried his bottom lip between his teeth and glanced uncertainly towards the ceiling, until it became apparent that the world wasn't about to end. Exhaling in relief, he ran his fingers back through his hair and began scrubbing at his scalp in about a half-dozen places at once. Not only was the hat sinfully ugly, but incessantly itchy as well.

Glancing around at all the mysterious books and trinkets that surrounded him as he scratched, Alan knew he should be overcome with wonder and curiosity. Jumping up and hurrying around excitedly to painstakingly examine each and every piece. (Just looking, of course, with his hands tucked firmly behind his back, because Uncle Kirby had told him not to touch anything, and Alan was nothing if not a good boy.) And, normally, he would have been. But as he sat there, in the huge, overstuffed recliner, with only his stupid hat for company, Alan was surprised to discover that he wasn't really in the mood. This should be the greatest day of his life—better, even, than when he'd seen the first movie trailer for Episode I—and all Alan wanted to do was curl into a ball and hide here for the rest of the afternoon. Sure, he was special now, just like he'd always wanted to be...but he'd never felt so alone.

Fortress of Solitude, indeed.

"I wish Julia was here," he murmured to himself, bringing his feet up into the chair, and hugging his knees to his chest.

And then, suddenly, Julia was there, appearing before him with a bright flash of light.

"...think Lance is way cuter than Justin, but Justin is a much more better danc—woah!" Julia gasped and stumbled backwards a step as she took in the sudden change in her surroundings. Her brown eyes darted rapidly around the room, wide with fear and confusion, until they finally landed on Alan, who had stood up on the recliner and was staring back, his shocked expression mirroring her own. "Alan? What the hell—?"

"UHHH, I WISH JULIA WASN'T HERE AFTER ALL!" Alan shouted, wrenching his eyes shut and clenching every single muscle in his little body as he willed it to happen. "I WISH SHE'D GO BACK TO SITTING WITH HAYLEY FINSTER IN THE HOAGIE HUB!"

"Alan, wait! Where the hell are w—?"

Alan opened his eyes, to see a small puff of smoke drifting in the air right where his little had been standing just a second ago. Had he done it? Had he managed to send her back? Or had he just...made her vanish?

Had...had he just accidentally vaporized his baby sister?