Out to Get You

by Josh Allen

  But the vines are shriveling, she thought. She was sure of it. They weren’t a deep greenish black anymore. They were a greenish brown. And they hardly glittered at all. When she checked the vine on her arm before going to bed, two of the leaves had even fallen off—one on her forearm and one by her wrist. If Ivy could just keep her arm dry for a few more days, she was sure the vines—all of them—would vanish.

  The next morning, Ivy locked the bathroom door. She grabbed a dry towel and wrapped it around her arm. Then she turned on the water.

  She didn’t even take off her clothes. The water ran while she sat against the wall, on the far side of the room.

  She let the water run for ten minutes, long enough for her mother to hear and the mirror to start fogging. Then, with her arm still in the towel and stretched out far behind her, she cranked the water off.

  Before leaving the bathroom, she put on extra deodorant. In her bedroom, she checked the vine on her journal. No more leaves had dropped, but its stalk was definitely thinning. Definitely.

  Ivy tucked her hair up into a purple baseball cap, and she managed to leave the house without coming face-to-face with her mother.

  * * *

  The vines proved harder to kill than Ivy had hoped. Five days later, they still had four leaves. On her arm, the leaves were in a clump halfway between her wrist and elbow. The stalk on her hand, though, was definitely brown.

  Ivy kept her hair tucked up in a bun now. It had become stringy and oily, and it stuck together in greasy clumps. And though she’d never had acne, families of zits had popped up on her face and neck.

  But she felt so close—so close to killing the vines and being free.

  Still, she knew her mother could ruin everything. All it would take was for her to get one close look at Ivy’s hair or to inhale one big whiff of Ivy’s moldering smell, and her mother would order her into a big tub of warm water and soap.

  So Ivy became “too busy” to spend much time at home. She told her mother she needed to attend study groups at the library. She needed to stay after school and complete extra credit. She needed to meet a tutor at the park. When she did have to be at home, Ivy wore long sleeves and hoodies that hid her face and hair, and she ate her meals quickly. If her mother tried to talk to her, she muttered about homework and darted off to her room, where she sat surrounded by the slowly withering vines.

  She just needed to hang on, she told herself. Just a little longer. She could handle the bits of grime around her toenails. She could deal with the black grit behind her ears. She could even accept that no amount of deodorant could cover her smell anymore—a smell that was something like a head of lettuce rotting away in an old locker room.

  Because when she thought of what might happen if she took a bath—how the vines would stretch across her whole body, wrapping around her ankles, tracing along the grooves in her ears—she refused to quit.

  Not now.

  * * *

  Over the next three days, only one more leaf dropped. But the vines on her arm and her journal and her books and her stuffed animals seemed to be getting thinner.

  She felt gritty all the time, and in class the kids who sat next to her scooted their desks as far from her as they could.

  One day at lunch, she sat in her usual place and waited for Madison and Carrie to join her. She chewed her sloppy joe. She looked around.

  Then she heard whispers.

  You can smell her from here! She’s like a garbage dump!

  You can actually see the grease in her hair!

  We should call her Poison Ivy!

  Halfway through her sloppy joe, she scanned the lunchroom and found Madison and Carrie. They were eating together and laughing at another table far away.

  It will be okay, she told herself. In a few more days, the vines would be dead. If she could just hang on, then soon—very soon—she could fix this. She would clean herself up and get back to a normal life.

  * * *

  Five days later, the vines still weren’t gone. She didn’t understand it. All the leaves had vanished, but the brown stalks remained.

  Her hands, she decided, were the dirtiest part of her. She’d spilled a glob of grape jelly on them the day before, and she’d tried wiping it off with a dry napkin, but it just smeared the jelly into her layer of existing grime. When she balled her fingers into a fist, they stuck together as she tried to open them.

  At dinner, her mother sniffed the air, peered at her eyes, and asked Ivy to peel back her hoodie.

  “I have a ton of homework,” Ivy said, standing up and pushing away her plate.

  But her mother said, “Stop, honey! The hoodie. Now.” And then she said, “I haven’t seen your face in weeks.”

  Slowly, Ivy lifted her hands and pushed back her hood. She kept her head down.

  Her mother gasped.

  “Ivy,” her mother said, standing up. “Oh, Ivy. What is this?”

  Ivy folded her arms and pressed her lips. How could she possibly explain?

  “Why are you doing this to yourself?” Her mother reached out and felt Ivy’s hair. “You’re covered in…grime,” she said. “You’re going to get sick.”

  Ivy shook her head.

  “You need a shower,” her mother said, her voice rising. “Right now. How long has it been?”

  Ivy shrugged.

  “You have to take care of yourself.”

  Ivy didn’t speak. She turned away and lifted her sleeve. The vine was still there on her arm. It was faint, barely a thin brown line, but she could see it trailing down her skin like a winding vein.

  She shook her head.

  “Honey, this isn’t a request!” her mother said.

  But without a word, Ivy walked to her room, closed her door, and locked it.

  A few minutes later, her mother knocked. “You’ll shower, young lady, and you’ll wash your hair, or you’ll be grounded for a month.”

  “A month?” Ivy said quietly, checking the vines around her. They were so thin. So brown. “I’ll take it.”

  * * *

  In school, hallway crowds parted around her. Kids who sat next to her plugged their noses. Girls left the bathroom quickly when she walked in.

  The creases in her knuckles became crusted with dirt. The grooves at the bases of her fingernails became caked with black gunk. The crannies inside her ears grew crusty and hard. The backs of her knees turned grubby. No one talked to her.

  She sat alone. She studied alone. She ate alone.

  She spent even less time at home. She sat in the library. She wandered around parks. She hid behind trees in her own backyard.

  Almost there, she told herself as she entered her room one night and had to squint to see the disappearing vines. Just a little more.

  * * *

  On Ivy’s twenty-third day without a shower, Mr. Jameson passed out a worksheet on adverbs. When he handed one to Ivy, he shook his head slightly as he looked down at her. Her hair, which had once been soft and wavy, was now thick and clumpy.

  Ivy reached for her worksheet, and her fingers left small grease smudges on the paper. At the top of her assignment, a line asked for her name. Ivy reached into her backpack for a pencil, and she pulled out, instead, the marker.

  Somehow, she’d managed to forget about it. She’d been so focused on the vines, so focused on killing them, that she hadn’t even touched it.

  But it had been there, this whole time, in her backpack.

  She set the marker on her desk and she pulled up her sleeve to check the vine for what must have been the thousandth time. Her skin was flaking. Dirt crusted her arm.

  Ivy leaned close and stared. She blinked.

  She couldn’t believe it.

  The vine was gone.

  Yes, the vine was gone. It was completely, wonderfully gone.

  She checked all her noteboo
ks and binders, pulling them out of her backpack one by one.

  There was nothing on them, not even faint lines.

  On her arm there was just skin—her greasy, dirt-stained skin.

  She closed her eyes and let out a heavy breath.

  It’s over, she thought. She fought back tears. She thought of her shower at home, how she couldn’t wait to turn the knobs and stand beneath the water and let it run off her in murky streams. She would stand there for hours. She would make up for the last twenty-three days. Even if the hot water ran out, she would shampoo her hair over and over. She would scrub her skin with a hard brush, and she would use up a complete bar of soap. No, two. And then she would use body wash—all she could find—and an anti-acne face scrub and globs and globs of conditioner. And when the last crusts of dirt had peeled off and floated down the drain, when she was finally clean, she would dress in newly washed clothes and hug her mother and say she was sorry—she was so, so sorry—and she’d let her mother hold her and breathe in her soapy, perfumey scent for hours.

  And then things could become normal again. Maybe the whispers that surrounded her would stop. And the jokes. And the nose-pluggings.

  And maybe, in time, even Madison and Carrie would come back to her.

  She took one last look at the greenish-black marker that had started everything, and she bent and set it on the floor beneath her desk. She pushed it away with her foot. Then she reached back into her bag, fumbled for a pencil, and in the space on the adverb worksheet that called for her name, she wrote three clear, block letters.

  I-V-Y.

  So I’m walking home from school, strolling down the sidewalk along Magnolia Avenue, and I’m thinking about Caroline Spencer and her green eyes and the way she tucks her hair behind her ears when she makes comments in History class. Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about Caroline Spencer and her green eyes and the way she tucks her hair behind her ears when she makes comments in History class, and the truth is, I’m starting to get a little weirded out. I’m ready to get back to thinking about the Red Sox and the hot dogs at Fenway Park and the catcher’s mitt I got for my birthday.

  But I can’t.

  Because did I mention that Caroline Spencer has green eyes? Did you know that she tucks her hair behind her ears when she makes comments in History class?

  So yeah. I’m walking and kicking at sidewalk pebbles as I go, and I’m telling myself to think about baseball, baseball, baseball.

  But it’s no use.

  Because I’m also thinking about the last two words I said to Caroline Spencer—the last two idiotic words.

  Here’s what they were:

  Neat-o burrito.

  No kidding. I actually said those words to her. To Caroline Spencer.

  I don’t think I’ve ever said the words neat-o burrito to anybody in my entire life. But now they’re playing in my mind like they’re on a loop or something.

  Neat-o burrito. Neat-o burrito. Neat-o burrito.

  I’m such an idiot.

  Here’s what happened:

  When the last bell rang at school, I stood up and shouldered my backpack.

  And next to me, Caroline Spencer stood up, too.

  She tucked her hair, like she does, and I thought for the hundredth time how she walks home in the same direction I walk home—we live on the same street—and so I thought that maybe I’d ask her if she wanted to walk home together.

  “Hey, Caroline,” I said, and she turned. “Are you walking home now?”

  She didn’t answer right off. Or maybe she did, and it just felt like forever while I waited to hear what she’d say.

  After about two hours, she finally said, “I’d like to, but I can’t. It’s Tuesday.”

  I made a face to show I didn’t understand.

  “On Tuesdays, I stay after to help Miss Sutherland clean the erasers,” she said.

  I didn’t know what to say next, so we both just stood there for a second, looking at each other. My tongue seemed to swell, and I think I might have even started sweating a little. I swallowed hard, and then I said the words. The two idiotic words.

  “Neat-o burrito.”

  Of course Caroline kind of looked at me funny. I mean, why wouldn’t she? We both stood there for what felt like another hour, and then she said, “Bye, Matt,” sounding a little sad. She turned and walked to the front of the classroom, where she started gathering up the erasers.

  Neat-o burrito?

  Idiot.

  Now, kicking sidewalk pebbles on Magnolia Avenue, I realize what I should have said instead. When Caroline Spencer said she was going to stay after school and clean the erasers, I should have said this:

  Wow, you clean the erasers for Miss Sutherland? That’s cool. I’ll wait for you. That way you won’t have to walk home alone.

  I nod my head. Yep. That’s what I should have said. Idiot.

  I find another pebble and send it skittering down the sidewalk and into some bushes.

  Or, I realize, I should have said this:

  I’ll stay after and help you.

  Yeah. That’s what I should have said. It would have been perfect. I should have offered to help her. I should have been generous, thoughtful, chivalrous. Yes, that’s the word. That’s what I should have been.

  Chivalrous.

  But nope.

  “Neat-o burrito,” I mutter out loud. I shake my head a little. Where did those words even come from?

  I come upon a big pebble. It’s the size of a quarter, and I kick it as hard as I can.

  It bounces down the sidewalk and drops into the gutter. Then it plinks against something metal, something that makes a shiny thunk sound. I look, and a gold reflection in the gutter catches my eye. I walk over, and can you believe it? It’s a lamp, right there in the gutter.

  But it’s not the kind of lamp you’d have in your house. It’s the kind of lamp you’d rub to make a genie come whooshing out. It’s scratched and copper colored, and it’s about the size of a football.

  “Cool,” I say to no one—certainly not to Caroline Spencer, who I guess is still out pounding erasers and won’t be coming this way for at least ten more minutes.

  Baseball, I tell myself. Think about baseball.

  Then I pick up the lamp.

  I grab it by the little handle thing. It’s warm, and there’s a long snake carved around the base. I start rubbing it with one hand ’cause that’s what you do with a lamp like this, right? I mean, who wouldn’t? Of course I know nothing’s going to happen. This lamp is just junk someone dumped in the gutter. But no one’s around, and it’s pretty tempting, so I mutter to myself as I rub the lamp—for fun.

  “Oh, great genie of the lamp,” I say. “I call you forth.”

  Then—get this—the lamp starts smoking. Seriously. It looks like it’s gushing steam, like a teapot with a narrow spout puffing away. I startle and drop the lamp, and it clatters back to the gutter.

  Then—Hiss! Boom! Poof!—there’s a genie floating in the air. Just like that. An actual genie. He’s got a purple head-wrap and a matching little vest and a goatee.

  “Who summons me from my slumber?” he says. His voice is deep, and it echoes down Magnolia Avenue. There are a few kids walking on the next block, but they don’t turn my way, so I figure they must not be able to see or hear the genie. I guess only I can do that.

  Crazy, right?

  My mouth drops and I make what my mom calls my “no-way face.” But I blink hard, and sure enough, this is all real. There’s a genuine genie right there, hovering just over a fire hydrant on Magnolia Avenue.

  The genie glares at me. His bottom half funnels down into the lamp, and I can’t tell whether he has legs or not.

  I snap out of my little trance, and I realize the genie asked me a question, so I say, “Oh, I guess I, um, summoned you.”

 
; He looks at me from bottom to top, peering from my shoes to my knees to my chest and finally to my eyes. He licks his lips.

  “I’m Matt,” I say. I raise one hand and give a little wave. Right after, I wish I hadn’t.

  The genie sort of drifts around, like a balloon on a string.

  “One wish,” he says, and then his eyes begin to narrow.

  He holds up one finger. All his fingers, even his thumbs, have rings on them. “I will grant you one wish. No more. Then I will return to my slumber.”

  I thought I got three wishes, not one. Isn’t that always the deal? But I’m too amazed to say anything, so I shake myself and try to stick with what’s happening.

  “Speak your deepest desire.” The genie opens his arms. “Speak it, Matt, and I will make your dreams come true.”

  Your deepest desire. Your dreams come true. The words echo around in my head and I think about—surprise, surprise—Caroline Spencer.

  But then I slap myself on the inside.

  See, I might be an idiot, but I’m no dummy.

  I’ve read the books. I’ve seen the movies. I know how this works.

  Wishes never go the way you plan them. Never. Here’s what I mean:

  Suppose I ask this genie for a bajillion dollars. What’ll probably happen is this. I’ll make my wish and hold out my hands ready for money to plop down from the sky. But then, as I’m standing there, looking up, some guy with a clipboard and an official-sounding name—a name like Montgomery Macalister—will stroll up and tell me my parents were just killed in a tragic car accident. He’ll tell me my parents owned a huge life insurance policy, and now I’m rich.

  Presto! My wish has been granted! And I’ll spend the rest of my life orphaned and lonely.

  Or say I wish to become the world’s best baseball player.

  Just like that I’ll be smashing home runs on final pitches, and everyone will be begging for my autograph. I’ll have my own personal assistant and agent and publicist, and then one day I’ll wake up in some fancy bed and realize that I’m a complete fraud. I’ll know, deep down, that every other baseball player on earth earned their success through practice and hard work. But not me. I wished my way into it.