The last time I was in a place with cushioned pews was the chapel for Dad’s funeral. My breath quickens once again. The boom-booming of my heart is back to full force.
There’s a staccato pop! pop!—one pop on one side of my head, another on the other side. Oh, my ears are back. I hadn’t realized they’d still been itty-bitty.
The first thing I hear is a scream: “OWWWWWWW! GET OFFA ME, YOU DIRTBALLS!” Quickly, I duck back down to the ground, out of sight.
“Ooh, he’s a slippery little sucker,” a different voice says, presumably a dirtball. “Come back here, ya twerp!”
“Help me!”
Could this “twerp” be my genie assignment?
“Shut up!” shouts the dirtball.
“Yeah, twerp, you’re the one who got us into this mess,” yet another voice says. I’m betting it’s dirtball number two.
Wait, who am I supposed to help? The twerp or the dirtballs?
I slide on my stomach, commando-style, in between the pews to the back of the chapel, where the voices are coming from.
Along the way I pass an overturned backpack and a trail of items strewn across the floor. Items that must’ve once been inside it: a broken pencil, a pen without the cap, notebooks flipped open and pages scrunched up, a couple of books, plus an iPod, an iPad, and an iPhone. Holy smokes, that’s a lot of electronics for one backpack. I don’t have any of those things.
I see a hand reach out toward a blue binder.
“Oh, Trey-ey,” one of the dirtballs calls, turning a one-syllable name into two. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”
“There he is!”
“Aha! Where do you think you’re going, twerp?”
That’s when I see him—Trey, aka the twerp. He’s a skinny red-haired kid with glasses that are lying crooked across the bridge of his nose. One of the lenses is smashed up. Two larger boys pounce on top of him. By process of elimination, they must be the dirtballs. One has shaggy blond hair and freckles, and the other has a brown buzz cut. All three boys are wearing khaki pants and white button-down shirts, with MA stitched into their front pockets.
MA? Like for Massachusetts? But I live in Pennsylvania. I know from the map in Mrs. Hould’s classroom that they’re separated by at least a few states. It would take hours in the car to get there. Genie travel sure is quick.
“OWWWWWWW!” comes another scream. The shaggy blond kid has a tuft of red hair in his fist, and he’s yanking hard. “Hey, you!” Trey calls. He’s looking right at me. “Do something!”
Do something? What could I possibly do? Take on Shaggy and Buzz Cut? I may be a genie, but I don’t know how to use my powers yet, and these guys are two of the worst Reggs I’ve ever seen. Plus, they’re big—WAY bigger than I am.
“Who are you talking to?” Buzz asks.
“That kid over there,” Trey says. “He’s been watching you the whole time. You better let me go, or you guys are gonna get in so much trouble! Even more trouble than before!”
Buzz steps off Trey and looks in my direction. I barely have time to duck back behind the pews. “I don’t see anyone,” he reports.
“That’s because the twerp is a lying liar,” Shaggy says. “There’s no one in here.”
He tugs harder on Trey’s hair. “OWWWW!” Trey cries. “You’re hurting me!”
“Now, the question remains,” Buzz says. “What should we do with this sniveling little twerp?”
“Let me go, let me go, let me GOOOOOO! Please, if you do it now, I won’t tell anyone about this.”
“You bet you won’t,” Shaggy says. “Or we’ll make life even worse for you.”
“We could shut him inside a locker,” Buzz suggests.
“Nah, that’s so overdone,” Shaggy replies. “Besides, once class is over, everyone’d come into the hall and hear him shouting to get out. How about if we stick him in the utility closet?”
“We don’t have the keys to unlock it,” Buzz says.
“Good point,” Shaggy says.
Trey’s pleas have lowered to a whimper: “Please, please, please.”
“I’ve got it,” Buzz Cut says with a snap. “We’ll take him to the garbage dump. It has his name on it, after all.”
“Jake, you’re a frigging genius,” Shaggy tells him.
There’s a flurry of action as the Reggs climb off Trey. Shaggy starts to pick him up. Something rolls across the floor. It’s a bottle. A green one. Scratched up just like mine.
“That’s my bottle.”
Uh-oh. Did I say that out loud? Luckily, my voice came out as barely a whisper. But Trey meets my eye again. Shoot, he heard me.
“No way,” he says, loud enough for Shaggy and Buzz to hear, too. “You’re my genie?!”
“Ha!” Shaggy spits out. “Did you just say genie?”
“Your daddy get one of those for you, too, twerp?” Buzz asks, barely suppressing his laughter.
“He did,” Trey says, “and I wish—”
My toe starts itching again. That must mean Trey is the genie assignment. At least, I think that’s what it means. I hope that’s what it means. I’d much rather grant the wishes of a twerp than of a couple of Reggs.
Shaggy claps his hand over Trey’s mouth. “That’s enough out of you. . . . Oh, man! Did you just lick me? Gross!” He drops his hand and wipes it on his khaki pants.
“I—” Trey starts again.
But Buzz Cut has retrieved a pair of gym socks from the mess on the floor, and he stuffs them into Trey’s mouth. “I’ll check if the coast is clear.” He peeks out the door at the back of the chapel. A second later: “We’re good to go.”
Shaggy’s got Trey hoisted up, arms pinned back so he can’t get the socks out of his mouth. He pushes the door open with his shoulder and heads out. I think Buzz will follow them, but instead he doubles back, toward me.
Oh no oh no oh no. He did see me, and now I’m done for.
But he just kicks at something, and the bottle sails out the door after Shaggy and Trey. Buzz follows. Then SLAM! goes the giant chapel door behind them.
7
IN PURSUIT
Once they’re gone I take a second to recap what has happened so far today: I turned ten, had a party, was told I was a genie, rode a dinosaur, shrunk down and got sucked inside a bottle, popped out of another bottle and turned big again, and managed to stay out of the Reggs’ line of sight.
Except they’ve taken my bottle with them. My bottle on the other side, that is. Uncle Max had told me quite clearly to keep it close. Having it end up in the wrong hands would be bad. Very bad indeed. Something tells me that Buzz’s hands aren’t the right ones. Besides that, that bottle is my ticket home, and right now home is the only place I want to be.
I scramble to my feet and move to the door, a bit unevenly with one shoe on and one shoe off. The door creaks on its hinges as I open it just a crack. There they are, at the end of a long hallway. Buzz is kicking the bottle like it’s a soccer ball. “Hey, did you hear something?” Shaggy asks, and I duck back inside the chapel, quick as a wink.
Oh, man. Another close call. I need some oil or something to un-creak the hinges before I open the door again. But where would you get oil in a chapel?
Drip. Drip.
Something drips from the edge of the door onto my bare foot. I bend down and swipe at it with my fingers. Greasy and slick like snot. Ew.
Hold up. That’s oil.
I made oil! I just thought of it, and now it’s there! Holy smokes!
So the trick is, I think of things and they appear. That’s not hard at all. I’ve got this genie thing covered, no problem.
I need that bottle back in my hands, I think.
And . . . nothing.
Shoot. What am I doing wrong? I think it again, harder: I need that bottle back in my hands. I add the word wish to my thoughts: I wish I had that bottle back in my hands. But still nothing.
Okay, now I’m just wasting time. There is the oiled door, at least, so I open it again. Cre
ak-free this time. Unfortunately, Trey and the dirtballs aren’t in the hall anymore. Here’s what is in the hall: endless lockers, and signs up above them that say things like “Millings Academy Lacrosse: UNDEFEATED!” and “Millings Academy Yearbook Staff Meeting THIS Monday!”
Millings Academy! As in MA!
Academy is another word for school, which accounts for the backpacks, the lockers, and all of them dressed the same. They have school uniforms. That’s got to be it—and it makes a lot more sense than all three of them wearing Massachusetts shirts. I mean, I think Pennsylvania is a good place to live, but I don’t have a special PA shirt.
But what kind of school would have its very own chapel? And more important, why would anyone be here on a Saturday?
Am I at a college? Nah, those kids are too young for college. Unless they’re geniuses or something—that’s geniuses, not genies. Though judging by the three I saw so far, that doesn’t seem very likely.
Whatever they are, as long as they have my bottle, I have to find them.
There are double doors at the end of the hall, so I run toward them, faster than I’ve ever run in my life. I’m a bit lopsided, with one shoe off and one shoe still on, but there’s no time to worry about that. I push open the double doors. Outside is all bright colors. The sun is shining high in a clear blue sky. There’s a field of grass so green, it looks like it was colored in that way. On the left, it’s bordered by tennis courts. On the right, there are three HUGE houses made of red brick. Each house has a different sign out front: “Daly Hall,” “McGuire Hall,” “Food Hall.”
Food Hall? Like a cafeteria? We have one of those at our school. It doesn’t look a thing like this one, though. Ours is in the basement of a plain redbrick building. And we don’t have tennis courts across the way, either.
Hey, I bet this is one of those fancy boarding schools, like where Quinn’s friend Bella goes!
Shaggy, Buzz, and Trey are nowhere in sight. Where could they be? Where would I be if I didn’t want to be caught dragging a kid to a dump? I scan the area again. There are woods beyond the tennis courts—I’d go there.
When I squint my eyes, there’s a strange click, click, click behind my eyeballs. Suddenly I can see farther and more clearly than I’ve ever seen before. Like, I can see the blades of grass on the ground, and even the bark on the line of palm trees. I’ve never seen palm trees in person before. And if that weren’t cool enough, I spot a grasshopper, resting on one single blade of grass, flicking an antenna in front of its eye.
Holy smokes, this is cool.
Focus, Zack. FOCUS. Find those kids.
Okay, I see the three of them. They are walking into the woods. Trey is still over Shaggy’s shoulder. And Buzz has the bottle. He’s tossing it high up into the air and catching it, tossing it up again, higher. Oh, he misses this time. It lands at the roots of a palm tree. I decide to wait until they’ve walked a bit farther. Then I’ll run out and grab it. But before I can put the plan into action, Buzz swipes it from the ground and tosses it up again.
I sprint toward the woods, running as fast as Superman. Whoosh, I’m like the wind.
“What was that?” Buzz asks.
I’ve passed them by a few dozen yards at least, without even trying. Now I hide behind a tree, watching Buzz and Shaggy look around to make sure they’re not being followed. They don’t see me, and so they keep going. I creep back toward them, concentrating on moving slowly this time and staying a safe distance behind them from now on. When Shaggy stops to readjust Trey’s weight on his shoulder, I duck behind a big rock. When Buzz drops the bottle—again—and turns to pick it up, I crouch by a bush.
The woods open up to an expanse of dirt and faded grass in patches. In the distance, there’s a sign: “Future Home of the Twendel Athletic Center,” and one of those construction site drawings showing you how beautiful and elaborate the finished product will be. I dart out and hide behind a cement mixer.
They stop at a Dumpster at the end of a gravel road. “Nice athletic center, twerp,” Shaggy says sarcastically. “I’m sure you’ll use it a lot, since you’re such a jock and all.”
Buzz puts down the bottle. Together, he and Shaggy hoist Trey into the Dumpster. “Ow!” he cries. At least he’s finally been able to take the socks out of his mouth.
Shaggy bends to grab a handful of gravel and tosses it up, too. I watch the little rocks move through the air—the sunshine is pinging off them and they float in the air for a few seconds. It looks like a sparkly little galaxy, hovering right there above the Dumpster. Am I the one holding them there? With just the power of my stare?
“What the—” Buzz says, watching as the rocks are seemingly unaffected by gravity.
“Boys!” an unmistakably adult voice calls.
I blink in surprise, and the gravel drops into the Dumpster. There are clink, clink, clink sounds as each piece hits something unseen on the other side. But there’s not another word from Trey. Not even a sigh or a grunt.
A man rushes forward. “What are you doing down here?” he asks Shaggy and Buzz accusingly. “You have class right now!”
“We had to come down here to, ah, to throw some stuff away for Mr. Heddle,” Buzz says quickly.
“Mr. Heddle, huh?” the man says. “The head of school sent both of you?”
“Sure did. It was especially heavy, so he needed us both.” Shaggy flexes a muscle for effect. A big muscle, I might add.
“Maybe we should head to Twendel One,” the man says, his voice full of fake niceness. “I’m sure Mr. Heddle will welcome you to his office, so he can personally thank you both.”
“I don’t think that’s necessary, Mr. Gaspin,” Buzz says. “It was really no problem.”
“No problem at all,” Shaggy adds.
“Let’s go, boys,” Mr. Gaspin barks.
I step one foot out from behind my hiding spot so that I can tell this guy—Mr. Gaspin—that they threw Trey into the Dumpster.
But then I step back. On second thought, if I tell him, will I get in trouble, too? Of course I didn’t throw anyone into a Dumpster. But what if Mr. Gaspin gets mad at me for trespassing? It’s not my fault that I’m here. But if I explain myself—you see, I’m a genie and I came here through a bottle that’s a portal—it’s not like he’ll believe me, or even understand what I’m saying. What if he carts me away and I don’t get the chance to grab the bottle? I will have screwed up this genie thing before I even get started, and there’d be no chance of getting home.
I don’t know what to do, and before I even have time to make the decision, it’s too late. They’re gone.
8
RESCUE #1
Mr. Gaspin and the Reggs have been gone for at least five minutes and there hasn’t been a peep from inside the Dumpster. I can’t even hear Trey breathing. Either he’s holding his breath or . . .
Or he’s dead. A handful of gravel shouldn’t do that much damage. But I guess if even a tiny piece hit you in the exact right spot on your temple, you’d be a goner.
Or maybe Trey isn’t dead. Maybe he’s just unconscious and it’s up to me to resuscitate him. I know how to do it because I looked it up on YouTube: I’ll have to put my mouth on his mouth—kind of gross, but hey, I’m saving a life. Then I’ll pump my hands up and down on his chest and count as I go.
Climbing into the Dumpster isn’t the easiest thing in the world, especially with just one sneaker. But my feet find the grooves on the side. I swing one leg over, then the other.
Oooph. I land on a pile of junk and Trey.
“OWWWWWW!” he says.
“You’re alive!”
“Of course I’m alive,” he says, pushing me off. Now there’s something digging into my side. “But thanks to you I have a few more bruises.”
I twist around to get comfortable—or as comfortable as one can get on a pile of metal and wooden construction scraps. “Sorry,” I say.
“I thought genies were supposed to fix problems, not cause them. You sure don’t ac
t like a genie.” He adjusts the broken glasses on his face. Aside from the smashed right lens, the left side of the frame is sticking up at a funny angle. “And you sure don’t look like one, either.”
I look down at myself—besides the missing shoe, my jeans are torn at the left knee, and there’s dirt on my hands and elbows. Probably on my face, too. I push my hair out of my face. “My mom says I look better when you can see my eyes,” I say.
“Your mom? Genies have moms?”
“Oh yeah,” I say. “Genies have whole families—moms, sisters, and . . .” My voice trails off.
“It doesn’t matter,” Trey says. “All that matters is you’re a genie and I have some wishes to make, and I don’t want to waste any more time, now that it finally worked.”
“What finally worked?”
“Rubbing the bottle,” he says. He has a look on his face like, Duh, genie! “All this time, I thought it had to be a fake. Just a dumb souvenir my dad brought back from his business trip to Bolivia. Or actually that his assistant brought back. My dad is too busy to waste any time shopping for me.”
“So you rubbed it today?” I ask. “In the chapel?”
“I rubbed it a thousand times before today and nothing happened,” he tells me. “I only had it with me today because I was going to throw it away. Then those kids showed up. And finally you popped out. Not that you were much help.”
“Yeah, those guys,” I say. “They seemed pretty mad at you. You must’ve—”
But Trey cuts me off. “Never mind them. I have wishes to make!” My toe tingles with the mention of that word—wishes. “The genies in the movies always grant wishes. I get wishes too, right?”
“Uh-huh,” I say. I reach down and scratch my toe. It’s pretty dirty from walking all the way from the chapel to the construction site. You can’t even see my birthmark anymore. I scrap off some dust and mud with my fingernails. Then I pick the dirt out from under my nails and flick it away.
Trey scoots back, even though I wasn’t flicking the dirt anywhere near him—honest. “The genies in the movies are not at all this gross,” he says.
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