Magic Dad's Cookie Bites

1 gloomy kiddo

While he waits for Kieran to get home from school, Eric puts the final touches on his latest stage routine. 

"For my next trick," he says, "I will push this hat into a rabbit." He pauses, grins, gives his imaginary audience a wink and ironic half-bow. 

A car drives by outside, and Eric glances at the clock on the microwave: 4:15. Strange that Kieran isn't back yet. 

He runs one hand through his hair, pulling out the 6-foot streamer of brightly-coloured flags he lost last month and piling it on the counter nearby with a few deft flicks of his wrist.

He's forever misplacing things like that. 

Always getting commitments mixed up, too—forgetting Kieran's gym club meets, showing up an hour late for his own shows. He stares at the streamer, frowning, until the door bangs shut and distracts him from his self-pity.

"Hey, Dad," Kieran mutters as they shuffle into the house. They drop their bag on the table without commenting on Eric's top hat and tail-coat, without so much as a good-natured dig at how embarrassing he is.

"Welcome back, kiddo," Eric says. "Want me to make your rain cloud disappear?" He waggles his eyebrows, adds an ostentatious flourish of his wand, but Kieran just pulls one of the bar stools by the kitchen counter out and slides onto it with a sigh way too heavy for a kid who's only twelve.

That's when Eric remembers: the bake-off's tonight.

4 sticks butter

It'd be easy enough to magic up a batch of something, but Coach Darbin was very clear after last year that bake-off treats needed to be prepared the old-fashioned way—they still hadn't gotten all the icing off the gym ceiling, last Eric heard. Store-bought goods aren't allowed either.

Eric rummages in the fridge, discovering a more pressing problem.

"Hey, do we have any butter?"

Kieran doesn't answer. 

Eric ducks out of the fridge and looks over to where they're sitting, shoulders slumped, picking at one of their fingernails. "Kiddo?"

"Huh?" Kieran glances up, blinks, gives their head a little shake, then goes back to their fingers. "Butter? I dunno. Wasn't it your turn to make the shopping list this week?"

Eric sticks his head back into the fridge, so they can't see him wince—poor kid has enough going on already. "Yeah. Guess it was. Sorry."  He grabs a tub of margarine instead, opens it. Breadcrumbs all over it, but...  

"Guess this'll have to do," he mutters, and cranks his smile all the way up before he turns around. "Presto chango!" He waves one hand over the container, hamming it up. "Instant butter. Now, you ready to bake the best darn cookies the gym club's ever seen?"

Kieran just gives another one of those sighs.

2 eggs

The eggs, at least, are where they should be. 

Eric picks them out and tosses them up into the air, catching each with his other hand and keeping it going, until the four little orbs form a perfect arc overhead. His egg trick is always a crowd-pleaser. "Whatcha think, Kiddo?"

Kieran smiles, but it's dispirited, not playful.

"You coming down with something?" Eric asks as he catches the eggs one after the other and cracks them into the mixing bowl, making sure the doves that flutter out cooing don't get feathers or worse in the batter. 

Nah," Kieran mumbles. This time they don't even sigh.

Eric's so distracted that he doesn't notice he's put in twice as many eggs as the recipe calls for. "Well," he says. "Let me know if I can help." 

1 ½ cups sugar, 1 ½ cups brown sugar

"Help me with the sugar?" 

Kieran gets the bags out of the cupboard and drops them on the counter with a thud, then goes back to their stool. They don't pour the sugar into bowls or offer to help stir. 

Eric measures out the cupsful and pours them into the eggy mixture, remembering as he stirs how much Kieran loved the bake-off last year. How they'd stolen little bites of chocolate chips when they thought he wasn't looking, sneaked pinches of brown sugar out of the bowl.

As Eric adds one too many cups of brown sugar, he wonders why they aren't as into it now. Is it an age thing? 

If only being a dad was like baking. At least baking comes with a recipe.

1 tsp salt, 2 tsp baking soda, 2 pinches family history

"This recipe's pretty old, you know," Eric says as he starts the dry ingredients in a separate bowl. "Your great-grandad came up with it. Won a prize with it at some kind of fair back in Scotland, if I remember right."

Kieran snorts and rolls their eyes. "That'd make it like 100 years old, dad. I don't think they baked chocolate chip cookies back then."

Eric doesn't mind—at least they're engaged, now. Talking to him. "Sure they did," he says, then pauses. "Or, wait... maybe I'm getting the stories mixed up. Maybe the magic comes from your great-great's grandad. Might be the cookies were your mother's grandfather's, instead."

"Great-Grandad's from Hoboken, Dad. And he can't even boil water without burning it."

"Uh. Right." Eric clears his throat and goes back into the cupboard for the flour. "The point is, this recipe's a tradition. Dads've made it for our kids since..."

"Since fifty to two hundred years ago?" Kieran says, sounding torn between laughter and sarcasm.

"Exactly! So it's going to kick the pants off everyone else's bake-off entry, and make you the star of the gym club."

Kieran slumps. "Sure," they say. 

Ah, Eric thinks. So it's gym club that's the problem. He's tempted to push, to ask for more, but buries the impulse in the baking soda. Kieran will open up in their own time, and when they do, he'll be there.

Flour (2, er, 8 cups)

"So, um," Kieran says, while Eric's carefully pouring the flour into the dry ingredients bowl. "Dad?"

"Yeah, kiddo?"

"I'm thinking about quitting gym club."

Eric's so surprised he drops the flour bag into the bowl. "What? Why? You've loved gym ever since you were..." he pauses, tries to think.  "Ever since," he finishes, tamely.

"Yeah," Kieran says, "It's just..."  

They sigh. Again.

Eric scoops out some excess flour and tosses it into the trash, folds in the egg-and-butter mix and adds some chocolate chips, then kneads the dough until it feels as right as it's going to get--too lumpy, too dry, but isn't that always the way of it? 

Besides, he has more important things to worry about than these cookies. He splits the batter into what might charitably be called balls on the baking sheet, slides the sheet into the oven, and takes a seat next to Kieran. 

1 heart-to-heart

"Okay, Kiddo," Eric says. "What's going on?"

Kieran looks up, and at first Eric thinks they're just going to deny there's anything wrong. To clam up, like Eric always used to as a kid. But then their eyes water, and Eric freezes. He's never been good with tears, never ever. It's something he's worked hard on since Kieran was born. But... 

He swallows, mouth suddenly dry, and manages a come-here gesture.

Kieran collapses into his shoulder with a sob, their shoulders shaking. Eric lets them cry it out, patting them awkwardly. It's been a long time since he was this close to them physically. They've never liked touching much, to the point where he's surprised they want to now. 

"So..." he prompts.

Kieran sniffles. "It's Cassie," they mumble. "She says...  she says boys can't do gym club."

"But you're not a boy." Eric absentmindedly pulls a red silk tissue from behind their ear and hands it to them.

"I know," Kieran mumbles. They blow their nose. "I told her. But she said if I'm not a girl, I must be."

Eric grimaces, makes a note to talk to Coach Darbin about it. "Well, that's a rude thing to say. Besides, I have it on good authority that anyone can do gym club, so long as they participate in the bake-off."

He's trying to think up a spell that would teach the bullies of the world more empathy when he notices Kieran looking at him, eyes wide, horror replacing the sadness they'd worn since they walked in the door.

"What?" Eric asks. "What did I say?"

Then he smells it too. Something burning, acrid and bitter.

"The cookies!" they both shout out at the same time, and Eric knocks his stool over trying to get to the oven in time.

It's useless, of course. Black smoke pours out of the oven door when Eric opens it: the cookies are beyond saving.

1 last magic trick

"Isn't it against the rules to use store-bought cookies?" Kieran asks. Eric steals a glance at their face, relaxes when he sees the glimmer of excitement beneath the worried exterior. 

"Oh, yeah," he says. "Super against the rules."

Kieran giggles nervously, pushes some of the crumbs around the countertop. 

"But," Eric adds.  "But! These cookies are different."

Kieran picks up one of the emptied-out packages, turns it over in their hands. "I dunno," they say. "Looks like normal old chocolate chip cookies to me."

"A-ha!" Eric says, waggling his eyebrows. He chops the first dozen into bite-sized pieces.

"Oh," Kieran says, the excitement winning out. "I get it! It's not cheating because we're going to..." They pause, crinkle their eyebrows.  "Going to what, exactly?"

"We're going to magic them into the best damn cookie bites the world has ever seen," Eric says. He tosses the bits into a bowl, adds sugar, cocoa powder, a little bit of egg and butter. "Hand me my wand."

Kieran picks up the wand with a full-on grin, and Eric knows it doesn't matter anymore how the cookie bites turn out. Because that smile is the best magic trick in the world, every single time he sees it.