Next day at school, Fred and Nita try to retrieve Nita's pen from her bullies. They summon a sentient white hole from space, who they call 'Fred'. A terrible cosmic force (later named as the Lone Power) tries to consume them. They create a new spell, which presents a vision of a frightening alternative Manhattan: polluted, lightless, and frightening. While practicing a spell to retrieve the pen, she meets another Wizard Christopher 'Kit' Rodriguez, also a new wizard, also making a spell for fearlessness.

The next morning she looks at her manual and sees her name in its list of Wizards. Before she goes to sleep, she takes the Wizard's Oath. On the way home, the bullies corner her, beat her up, and take a space pen given to her by her uncle. Nita, taking refuge in the library from bullies, checks out a book found in the children's section with the provocative title So You Want To Be a Wizard.

(The Young Wizards series consistently capitalizes the word Wizard.) She discovers a new hidden magical world. She discovers that she can do actual magic and meets Kit Rodriguez, another young Wizard. Nita Callahan, a thirteen-year-old girl living in New York City, discovers a book entitled So You Want to Be a Wizard. In 2012 a revised 'New Millennium Edition' was released as an eBook. It was written in 1982 and published the next year. So You Want to Be a Wizard by Diane Duane is the first book in her long-running Young Wizards series of novels which currently consists of eleven books by Diane Duane. 1983 (first printing by Delacorte Press, reprinted 1996 by Harcourt)

Diane duane so you want to be a wizard