Since I was a kid, I believed that once my mastery of card tricks and disappearing rabbits kicked in, I would spur a tantalizing blossom of local aspiring magicians. They’d come, pinching their beards, not asking questions, whispering every fourth word beneath their breath. Enough time would pass until I’d be supported enough by this motley following to further my magician studies, ultimately departing for the dusty neon stage of Vegas. This was, before Claire Beaumont, the gist of my prospective future.

Claire Beaumont stood five foot something with such a didactic tongue I regularly found myself silenced by her mere acknowledgment. Despite all the cues that would indicate an uptight and affable uprising, she occasionally chortled and wheezed at my otherwise pedestrian jokes. We met in the library, she playing hunter upon I, whom was blatantly unaware of her ulterior motives between shelves. Prey-grabbing my wrist, whisking me away to a secluded corner, she spoke to me with a single strand of brunette hair over her eyelashes as the significance of this first encounter escaped me.

The planets suddenly aligned; she came to me casually, nonchalant, with the mood of comfortable preparation, and smacked me with a blunt inquiry for my immediate consideration. The ramifications of this scenario was the embodiment of childhood dreaminess – an invitation to form an after-school magician’s society. Nothing professional or specifically aspiring, but a non sequitur opportunity for one to discover perhaps an unmet desire for the company of other magically inclined peers. Despite my initial confusion, this idea, although seemingly abrupt, piqued an interest that could only be satiated by the sub-usual.

Soon we were making regular breaks from our studies to investigate the rulebook methodologies of vanishing coins and mysterious levitation. Only then I realized my skills weren’t as poised as Claire’s previously unknown magician talents, inhibiting my early ambitions to stage fame with simple ball-and-cup strategies. However, in these sessions I caught a brief glimpse of Claire Beaumont’s spectacular ease, her lax demeanor towards apprehensively complex techniques, making my amateur antics seem flimsy and pointless. Yet, she encouraged my efforts with vibrant words, with the same expectant enthusiasm of some newly discovered curiosity. She had no time for reluctant beginners – there was simply no place for them in such sporadic life.

Mastery eventually came and crept into my hands like a nighttime visitor, enacting a sort of separate magic itself as my technique and focus incrementally improved. A kind of fantastical whimsy possessed the regular noon idleness of after-school as our dealings for the Magician’s Society’s started taking shape. Only days after our club's formal debut the biology class designated for our use rustled with suburban magic, welcoming an unknown and unorthodox proponent of all things predisposed to calamity.

Claire’s fastidious commandeering immediately captured the minds of the society's new membership. The novelty of her ability soon vanished just as it had unraveled, the admiration of our new members now transformed into a jagged cut of beginner determinism. By demand, we increased our involvement in cultivating the strategies of disappearing cards and coins. Yet, despite our unified efforts at improvement, we barely touched the fringes of the blazing trail Claire Beaumont left behind. From the time of the society’s birth to the ending of the school year, Claire Beaumont remained an impervious idol and beloved portrait of magician-aspiration. Yet despite her glory, I felt the trickling flames of not jealousy, but an unnamed consuming desire to become Claire Beaumont’s single most confiding friend.

My fears of being shadowed by Claire’s immaculate glow were steadily dismantled as the final weeks of the Magician’s Society neared. Its final contribution would be composed of an articulated effort by all members, orchestrated and designed to offer the public the club’s undisputed finest. What befell was an aura of accomplishment – a beaming plan to formally showcase Claire Beaumont’s true prowess at the annual spring talent show.

Feeling the humidity outside push behind my ears, I stood in the already familiar waving crowd of awe made victim to the nighttime show stage. The star that was Claire Beaumont blazed beyond comprehension, welcoming the crowd, removing her magician’s equipment piece by piece with unmet casualness. Her performance was hardly the actual impression of magic; instead the audience was subdued into an understanding trust of her illusions, the stage lights fixated on Claire and Claire alone. Here was the show’s pinnacle – where the helios of illusion met with the encapturing awe of skill. I held my breath, the pit of my chest searing with a vicious desire to lift off and – not join – but gaze from above and witness the Cygnus I know charmed Claire Beaumont. After the performance the curtains fell silently, like elongated crimson phosphine sweeping away the remains of her spectacular, leaving only an auburn-crowned nebula in her place. Whatever lasted was tinged with the reverberating magnetism of moments ago. Claire walked away with a capable ambiance, her magician glamor still raw and radiating to pierce the skin of those who dared approach her. Her gestures and words were now irreversibly electric, forever sophisticated in the untouchable white hot purity of feat.

*

The second year, I turned from the Magician’s Society, and switched my membership towards the Earth Science club with some sort of fundamental trust in their pragmatism to cure my own anxiety. It was a sudden shock, realizing that behind the club’s door, were the mystic fingertips of Claire Beaumont. For a moment, I thought that my inferiority may be forgotten with the silhouette of the Magician's Society now faded behind me. However, as I approached Claire, her grin resembled that of a Cheshire as she came towards me with the same lopping enthusiasm of last spring. Once again, I immediately realized she would drag me in, like the inevitable pull of a black hole, into another of her starry-eyed endeavors.

I swallowed when she greeted me and heard a clock somewhere instinctively tick. She took my hand, steady, interlocking her fingers into mine as if to prevent them from escape. Here was a perfect parallel of our first encounter, Claire Beaumont ready to entrust me once more with her greatest of plans of yet. Her hands were remarkably warm, palms surprising untouched by the calluses of meticulous practice, and were enchanted by an instantly recognizable articulated grace. I felt my fear of inadequacy melt, chilling the nerves of my skin and diluting the shaking embers in my chest. I looked up wordlessly, hoping to confirm this unprecedented apparition for pretense – only to find Claire Beaumont's crescent smile still beaming at me.

*

The disbanding of the Magician’s Society wasn’t utterly holistic. A straggling measure of members and dedicated amateurs propelled our collective of card tricks forward during our decisively temporary disappearance. As unfortunate as it was to leave, I felt a sort of compelling dissociation, as if by standing with the society’s former immediate idol justified an admittedly cowardly vanishing act. Hand in hand though, these discomforts withered in a wave of sincere disregard, as if by acknowledging this affliction, Claire thought she could show me this distress was altogether unnecessary. Was I so willing to accept her own judgment for mine? Only a year since our meeting I was already awash with a marrow stiffening phobia of ripping open the bond I felt we accomplished. It was only rejection I feared, one step away from striking the effable emotional chords of Claire Beaumont that nevertheless kept me at fringe.

*

Wispy plants shuddered from the bottom of the Beaumont family pond, allowing themselves to become folded to the water’s will without argument. Claire happily escorted me to other nearby premises – specifically a bridge that crossed one end of the garden to another, where we stopped to peer over the gaping mouths of the fish below.

“To be honest,” Claire started, “I don’t find them all that impressive.”

The gurgling of the water stuttered.

“No,” I said after a thought, “You’re right. They’re nothing special.”

For a moment it seemed as if she hesitated, to hold her words and exchange them for something better suited, but simply lingered beside me with the fish.

“I think they’re happy to see you, actually,” she gestured over the bridge, “they’re never like this when it’s just me.”

I tried to picture that, and then quietly nodded.

Another bout of awkward silence. She eventually added, “They actually don’t do much of anything at all. I hardly come out here too, to be honest. I thought – it’d be interesting to visit, anyways.”

My hands were meanwhile wrapped around the red arches of the bridge. I felt an invisible force slither around my neck, patiently constricting me as I tried to find a proper reply. What could bring me closer to someone like Claire? Could I even comprehend it?

She then stifled an abrupt enough laugh that welcomed the sudden ambiance that followed. Claire Beaumont stood there next to me with an impervious glow, leaving the clouds to idly lick the water’s surface below and the buzz of the surrounding nature to ferment. This was patient weather, locked in an eternal state of energy, thrashing beneath the earth as the skies dragged on while waiting for someone to finally strike its seismic heart. Claire’s skirt kissed her knees as she removed herself from the bridge to bid the mumbling fish adieu, deserting me to follow in her trail as the garden tentatively began to recuperate.

*

The week afterwards, Claire Beaumont invited me to the local planetarium. I began to become accustomed to the afternoon routine of the Earth Science club until she finally whisked me away for another inquiring evening. Inside the dome, over restless voices and crinkling of plastics, I found myself encapsulated by her undisturbed poise. Above, the dome soared from one end to another, an immeasurable distance away from where we sat. I gazed at it with indifference, feeling my seat insistently graze between my shoulders as I let myself go limp. Hardly did I ever question the interests of Claire Beaumont – her stellar livelihood always buckling me before I could refute; however I remained idly engaged with face of the dome, waiting for perhaps some magnificent clarifying light to crash down on me.

Without warning, the entire building imploded with a dizzying life, radiating from the ceiling towards the pit of faces surrounding us. I picked up my elbow to shield my eyes; however, as soon as I saw Claire’s aplomb I reluctantly lowered it. Something wholly natural possessed her, a mask too sincere to confine – an absolute unchasten look of wonder. I closed my mouth and settled my hands away from Claire’s and gazed up. One speck of brilliance on top of another, shining as it to bridge across and close up the space between. For a second I let this vision carry me, as if by simply witnessing it I could transcend upwards to embrace its perfection.

Meanwhile, Claire Beaumont leapt from constellation to constellation, making sharp angular incisions into the air as one astral body after another glide pass us. Altair, Deneb, Vega. Her palm cusped the glazing fissure, faded the seashell pink of galaxies, cradling and allowing their signal light to trickle through. A certain comfort came from the closeness of spatial bodies, ancients walking the infinite, all trapped within the binds of raw brilliance. Claire shifted, leaning her head my way as she spread open her hands, uncurling her fingers like a bat awaking at dusk to let the illuminations flow down her wrists and take flight.

Any second I prepared for the planetarium to unhinge, lion’s maw, for Cygnus to brush my shoulder, for the Summer Triangle to suddenly shatter and disperse, for the crystalline tail of the Milky Way to split open and reveal the hidden road to Claire Beaumont’s heart. Yet I waited, stuck behind her invisible glass, keeping track of the star’s movements, and aligning them in my mind just right if only for the slightest chance of reaching across. For the rest of the night I followed her boundless voice, from star to star, mapping Lyra and Aquila for safekeeping in the shrine of my memory, so that maybe one day, I could approach Claire Beaumont’s glow with mine.