Free Off to Be the Wizard by Scott Meyer

the door firmly behind him.
    Margarita and Walter looked at each other, confused. They heard sirens, which were getting louder. Walter slowly started walking toward Martin’s room.
    “Son,” he said, loud enough to be heard through the door. “Are you in some kind of trouble?”
    He was almost to the door when it burst open. Martin ran out of the door and back to the kitchen. For some reason he was wearing that stupid robe from his Halloween costume when he was in high school.
    Martin ran to the drawer next to the kitchen sink.
    “Martin, what’s going on?” Margarita asked.
    Martin held up a package of cling film. “Do you have any heavy duty? This stuff’s too flimsy.”
    “In the cupboard under the sink. Why are you wearing your Snape costume?” Margarita had to yell, the sirens were very loud now, as if the police cars had parked on the front lawn, which they had.
    Martin muttered, “It’s Malfoy. You always get that wrong,” as he threw open the cupboard, grabbed two boxes of heavy duty cling film, and silently thanked his parents for shopping at a discount warehouse. He then went back to his old room. He shouted, “Thanks, Mom!” and closed his bedroom door just as he heard someone pounding on his parents’ front door.
    Back in the storeroom of The Rotted Stump, Martin caught his breath. He felt a fresh pang of guilt over the stress he was causing his parents. He knew that to them it had been less than a minute since he burst in their front door, but to him it felt like his parents’ home had been under siege by federal agents for several hours. There was nothing he could do about that now, though. He had problems of his own.
    Working by the dim light of his phone’s screen, Martin opened the two boxes of heavy duty cling film. He set the rolls aside while he methodically tore and folded the cardboard boxes so they could be hidden in his pockets. He doubted they’d be of use, and he didn’t think the people of this time would know what to make of them, but it felt foolish to leave any evidence lying around.
    Martin stood up and spread his arms. He was wearing his light jacket under his robe, and when he raised his arms the robe billowed outward from his sides exactly as he’d hoped. He picked up one of the rolls of cling film and pulled about a yard of the film off of the roll. He did not tear the exposed film off. Instead, he scrunched it into a sort of loose rope and fed it through the arm of his robe. He put the roll of film in the left exterior pocket of his jacket where it would be hidden beneath his robe. He held up his left hand. He could see an inch of the cling film extending out of the cuff. With his other hand he tugged it, and with some effort the film fed smoothly off of the roll and out his sleeve. He fed the excess back into his sleeve. Martin giggled fiendishly as he put the second roll in his right jacket pocket and fed the film through his right sleeve.
    Pete, Gert and Philip heard a knock on the storeroom door. Pete released the catch and swung the door open. Martin Banks didn’t say a word. He acted like he didn’t notice they were there. He walked back to the front of the inn’s main room and held his arms aloft, with the backs of his hands facing the assembled audience. All conversation stopped.
    “I, Martin the Magnificent, the most powerful wizard in the … place, have been challenged to prove my prowess by producing more of the cloth you can see through. Before I continue, I ask the one called Phillip, can you produce the see-through cloth?”
    Phillip stood smiling at the side of the room, next to Gert and Pete. “No, Martin, I admit I cannot. I look forward to watching you do so, that I might learn something of your methods. The day we stop learning is the day we stop living.”
    Yeah, you’re about to learn, you fraud , Martin thought.
    “SO BE IT!” Martin bellowed. “I will need two volunteers!”
    The audience shrank away from him and tried to avoid eye