His father’s voice continued to drone, murmuring sounds like musical notes. Henry’s vision became fuzzy around the edges, while the wand remained in perfect focus. From the blurred edges, his father’s hand emerged, slowly reaching toward the wand.

Henry frowned. Something was not right.

The musical vibration of his father’s voice changed to a lower, ominous pitch.

This time his Spidey-Sense did tingle. Contamination!

Something in his subconscious mind reacted, and a feeling like pins and needles raced down his arm and into the wand. A single spark jumped from its tip, and Henry was suddenly aware of his surroundings again. In one fluid motion he whipped the wand out of his father’s reach and stared at him in surprise.

For a brief instant, Henry caught a glimpse of a swirling cloud—a miniature galaxy of spinning stars and vapor—that had replaced the whites of his father’s eyes.

A gasp, or possibly a hiss, escaped his father’s lips, and he rose quickly from the bed. Three long strides and he was at the window, his outline framed in moonlight.

Henry was frightened. But the fear was laced with curiosity.

“What was that?” he asked his father. “Was that … magic?”

From the day he’d been given the guidebook, Henry had dreamed of making a wand that would give him exceptional power. Things like transforming Billy Bodanski into a toad for bullying him on the school bus. Like turning Mary Cooper’s tongue into a frying pan when she stuck it out at him for getting a higher score in math. Like changing toilet paper into enough money to buy his mother a new car, or at least a better one. And if there was still enough magic left, he’d poof a few dozen comic books for himself.

But things like that didn’t happen for people like Henry. They happened in movies.

Theatrical special effects. Computer wizardry.

Yet maybe not.

Henry’s father stared at him from across the room, holding his glasses in his hand. His eyes were soft and caring—and normal. Henry could easily have imagined the whole thing. If there was one thing he had an abundance of, it was imagination.

He looked down at his wand again.

“Henry.” His father nudged him with an elbow.

Henry shifted his eyes from the wand to his father, who was sitting beside him on the bed. How had he gotten there from across the room so quickly?

And as he gazed into the swirling mass of stars that had reemerged within his father’s eyes, an answer formed within Henry’s eleven-year-old mind.

It never happened …

Musical intonations of his father’s voice played softly in Henry’s ear.

It never happened …

His father was smiling and nodding his head as if to confirm Henry’s thought.

It never happened …

The music stopped.

Henry blinked as if he had just awoken from a midday nap.