I saw Lancaster in the hallway, dodging an army of furniture movers. “You’re crazy for selling this to me,” he said. “I mean, what are you still doing in this trash heap of an apartment building when you had this? I made one wish and we’re out of here.”
“You getting your old house back?”
“Heck no! I wished for a new house. A mansion. The biggest one in town.”
“What about the people who already live there?”
“Quit your worrying. I wished them a new house.”
“Yeah, but where’d that house come from?”
“I don’t know. Somewhere else.”
“Some other person will lose their house to fulfill your wish.”
“Big deal, then I’ll wish a new house for them, too. A better house.”
“Don’t you get it? That house will have to come from somewhere, too. Somewhere, at the end of the line, you’re messing up someone’s life.”
“Geez, Silver. You worry too much.” Lancaster nudged me in the chest. “That’s why you sold this to me. Because you’re a worrier. Hey, I was gonna tell you something you might like. Some good news for you.”
“Yeah?”
“I told my dad he should try to help you guys out—you know, financially. So he said he’d do a solid by you all.”
“And?”
“He’s gonna buy that car from your dad. The Corvette.”
My heart sank. “It’s not a Corvette. It’s a Ferrari. A 430.”
“Whatever. He’s gonna buy it for a hundred grand. Said it can probably be my car in a couple of years, when I turn sixteen. Maybe I’ll keep it. I don’t know. I might wish for something nicer.”
I felt my face growing hot. “There is nothing nicer.”
“Yeah. Well. It’s not like it’s new. If I’m gonna drive a car to school, I don’t want to drive a used one.”
The next day, I stood on the sidewalk, watching the Ferrari pull away on the back of a truck. Lancaster and his parents were gone. Mrs. Appleyard stood behind me, blowing smoke toward the back of my head. “They was fancy people. Fancied up the joint. Didn’t even want their damage deposit back. That’s real class.”
I couldn’t help thinking about what might have been. I could have made a couple of big wishes. My family could have been billionaires. I could have flown around in a private jet. Could have had a yacht, servants, a helicopter, horses for my sisters.
But every time I thought about what I might have wished for, I also thought about whom I might have hurt.
THIRTY SECONDS LATER, Mrs. Appleyard grabbed me by the arm and pulled me across the street toward Hank’s Bar.
“Come with me for a sec, Ten Cents. I’ve got a question for you.” She towed me inside and we sat down at her booth, right inside the door. She yelled at the bartender. “One of mine, Hanky. And a Coke for this fine young man!”
“He ain’t supposed to be in here!” Hank yelled back.
“He’s leaving in a sec. I promise.” Mrs. Appleyard lit a cigarette, even though there was a NO SMOKING sign right by our table. She took a big drag and blew smoke up toward the tar-stained ceiling.
“Them Brackleys,” she said. “It’s weird them moving away all sudden like that.”
“Weird how?”
“Well, I’ve been through the Brackley cycle three or four times already. Daddy Brackley hits it big on whatever he does with money—”
“Hedge funds is what Lancaster said.”
“Sure. Whatever. Anyway, Daddy hits it big and they move out. Daddy goes broke and they move back in. But this time is different because, well, for one, they never hit it this big before. And for two, this time it wasn’t Daddy.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Sure you do, because I know that Lancaster told you, same as he told me, a bunch of times. He said, ‘This time it was me. And this time, we’re gone for good. Or at least I am.’ So the question is, Ten Cents, the question is, what the hell is going on?”
I took a sip of my Coke and shrugged. Mrs. Appleyard sipped her red fizzy drink without taking her eyes off me. She smiled. “I know you’re part of it, because ever since you moved in, you’ve been sneaking around as if you’re hiding something. I know sneaking, Ten Cents. Mr. Appleyard, bless him, invented sneaking. I married sneaking, till death did us part. And your dad—your daddy—got his job back and got that fancy car and, well, this ain’t the kind of place where that stuff happens. People who live at the Bright House don’t inherit Ferraris.”
I shrugged again. “I should probably go. Hank said I’m not supposed to be in here.”
Mrs. Appleyard squashed out her cigarette, right on the tabletop. Her side of the table was covered in black scars—burn marks from cigarettes. She said, “Mr. Appleyard, if he was here, he wouldn’t let you leave until you confessed everything. He wasn’t nice like me. Lord, I loved that man. Had discipline. Did you know that Bright House was our fourth apartment building?”
“You own other ones?”
“Not own. Owned. They’re gone now. Each one burnt down. Weirdest string of coincidences, Ten Cents. Like they was on a schedule—every eight years.”
I gulped. “When was the last one?”
“The last fire? Let me see…seven years and…and boy, time really sneaks up on you, don’t it? But as I was saying, Mr. Appleyard could keep to a schedule.”
“Why would he burn down his own apartment buildings?”
“Ten Cents, why would you say such a thing? To accuse my dear, late husband of such dreadful destruction. The man was a genius when it came to insurance policies, I’ll grant you, but to accuse him of burning buildings? It won’t stand. I won’t let it.” She pulled out another cigarette and tapped it on the table. “Mr. Appleyard died four years ago. Sad he didn’t get to see this one through, too. Now me, I don’t care as much about insurance and such things. Sure, I could use the money. But it’s the memory of the man that motivates me. The memory of Mr. Appleyard. ‘The schedule is everything,’ he used to say. And if the schedule was everything for him, then it is for me, too.” She lit the cigarette and puffed on it until the end was glowing hot. “ ’Course, I’m also a lot more considerate than he was. Softer, you might say. More motherly.” She blew smoke right into my face. “So tell Mother what’s going on.”
“I—I don’t know what you mean.”
She grabbed my hands and squeezed them until it hurt. “You’ve got a secret and I want to know it. If you don’t tell me, I’ll—I’ll kick your family out.”
I think she saw my face brighten with hope as I said a quick prayer that she would make good on her threat.
Instead she squeezed tighter. “Let’s try this again, Ten Cents. If you don’t tell me—and I mean soon—then I’ll move it up.”
“Move what up?”
“The schedule. Keep your old secret if you want. But if you don’t tell me, I’ll move up the schedule.”
“You’re threatening me,” I said. “I think that’s against the law.”
“I ain’t threatening you, Ten Cents. I’m giving you options.”
A scream from our apartment building interrupted our conversation. It was Mom. I jerked my hands free from Mrs. Appleyard and sprinted across the street. I heard Mrs. Appleyard following me, but didn’t look back. I flew up the stairs to our door. In the middle of our living room, Mom and the rest of my family were standing around a steaming, bubbling hot tub.
* * *
—
“But where did it come from?” asked Mom. “Hot tubs do not just appear in apartments on their own.”
“It’s so awesome,” said Georgina.
“Soooo awesome,” echoed Meg. They ran to their room, probably to change into their swimsuits.
“I don’t know any more about it than you do,” said Dad. He dipped a finger into the water. “It’s warm. Feels nice.”
“I
don’t care how it feels, Johann, we are not keeping a hot tub in our living room. A hot tub! In our living room!”
“I’m gonna get my suit,” I said.
“You’re what?” said Mom.
“I’m gonna get my suit. Then I’m gonna climb in for a soak. Because you and Dad are gonna get rid of this. Just like you did with the Ferrari. If there’s something cool in our lives, you guys always get rid of it.”
“Gabe—”
“So before that happens, I’m gonna at least try it out.”
I marched into my bedroom. I had to dig through my drawers for a while to find my suit. I hadn’t gone swimming since before we moved. I put my suit on and walked back into the living room.
They were all in it—Meg, Georgina, Dad, and even Mom. She’d apparently gotten over her anger enough to try it out.
“Come on in, Gabe,” Georgina said, blowing bubbles.
I climbed in with them.
“No splashing,” said Meg.
“Yeah,” said Georgina. “Mom doesn’t want to get the floor wet.”
“I don’t suppose this means we’re keeping it,” I said.
“We can’t,” said Mom. “I’m sure if Mrs. Appleyard found out, it would be against the rules. And all the steam. It would cause mildew. I’ve seen what happens when people have hot tubs indoors. Not pretty.”
“Besides,” said Dad, “all this water is really, really heavy. I’m sure our floor isn’t designed to hold this much weight. This thing is probably filled with five hundred gallons. At eight pounds a gallon, that’s—whoa. That’s four thousand pounds. That’s a lot of pounds.”
“Okay, okay. I get it. But can we at least keep it for a little while?”
Mom and Dad looked at each other. Mom sighed and nodded. Dad said, “One week. And then we need to figure out how to get it out of here. How do you think it got in?”
We sat theorizing in the warm, bubbly water. The girls thought maybe we’d won a contest. Dad thought someone might have delivered it by mistake. Mom guessed that Shoreby left it to us in another section of his will. I said maybe the hot-tub fairy paid us a visit.
I suppose I could have told them the truth—that I’d wished for it. I probably should have. But the bottle was out of my life and I didn’t want to speak about it again. So I listened to them talk, then dunked my head under the warm water.
When I came above the surface, Dad shushed everyone. “Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“A squeak.”
We all listened, but all I could hear was the bubbling of the water.
“Must be nothing,” said Dad, but then we all heard it—the squeak of groaning wood, like the sound an old nail makes when you pull it from a board.
“I heard it that time,” said Mom. “What is it?”
We heard another squeak—much longer and louder this time. It was coming from right beneath us.
“It’s not good,” said Dad. “Four thousand pounds. Not good.”
The squeak grew into a shriek, then turned into the sound of ripping and breaking. The heavy hot tub crashed through our floor, with us in it.
We all screamed. We landed with a boom in the middle of Mrs. Appleyard’s apartment. The hot tub broke in two. Dad and I fell backwards out of one half of it. Mom and the girls fell out of the other half. The water burst out onto the floor of Mrs. Appleyard’s apartment.
The bathroom door opened. Mrs. Appleyard stepped out, an unlit cigarette hanging from her lips. She stared at us as if we were aliens who’d just crashed a spaceship into her building. She looked down at the floor, where her bare feet were standing in four inches of water. She looked up at the ceiling, at the huge hole that gaped into our apartment. She looked at Dad.
“You are definitely not getting your damage deposit back.”
IT TOOK WEEKS TO SORT THE WHOLE MESS OUT. Mrs. Appleyard wanted to know why we had a hot tub in our apartment. Of course she didn’t believe Dad when he said it just appeared there, full of hot water. She told him he was going to have to pay for the damages.
“Isn’t the building insured? said Dad.
“ ’Course it’s insured,” said Mrs. Appleyard, “but insurance doesn’t cover gross negligence, and bringing a hot tub into a second-story apartment is very negligent and very gross. So I’m not giving you options. You gotta pay cash money. Besides, I like to save my insurance claims for big things.”
“How is this not a big thing?” said Dad.
“Big-big things,” said Mrs. Appleyard. “Building-size things.”
It cost about half the money Dad had gotten from selling the Ferrari to repair all the damage. Dad said he could have done it himself for a fourth of that. Every time he saw Mrs. Appleyard, he said, he came away feeling that she’d cheated him out of a few more thousand in repairs.
Finally, the floor got fixed. Mrs. Appleyard ended up with all new furniture and all new carpets in her apartment. We had the same crappy rug we’d had before. And we still had that same old hole in our ceiling.
A week after the last repairman left, Joanna and I were sitting on our couch. There was a knock on the door. I opened it to Doctor Mandrake.
“Good morning, Madam. Good morning, young Sea Goat. Or is it afternoon?”
“It’s two o’clock.”
“And what a lovely time of day that is.” Mandrake stretched his arms above his head and yawned. “For the last few weeks, I have had the most delicious sleep, night after night. I feel like a king. Or a czar. Peter the Great. Dear England’s own Alfred the Great. One of the greats, to be sure.”
“Okay.”
Mandrake leaned in close to me and whispered. “It’s gone, isn’t it?”
“Isn’t what?”
“The bottle. It’s out of the building.” He held up his hand. “Don’t bother answering. I can tell.”
I nodded. “Been gone for a couple of weeks.”
“I knew it! I knew it! That’s why I’m sleeping again. Not long after those atrocious Brackleys moved out, I nodded off on my chaise lounge. Luckily, I was already in my pajamas.”
“Aren’t you always in your pajamas?” asked Joanna.
Mandrake ignored her. “And then I slept! I’ve been sleeping twelve hours a day since then and feel as rested as Rip Van Winkle. I knew the wretched thing was gone.”
Joanna said, “If you were so sure about it, why did you have to come and ask?”
“You are a skeptical one, aren’t you, young lady? Well, on a day like today, even your skepticism does not bother me. Sea Goat, I would like to thank you for expunging that object from the premises. Come up to my chambers and I will give you a reading, free of charge. And perhaps a cup of Earl Grey, also free of charge.”
“Can Joanna come, too?”
Mandrake frowned. “Can you keep her quiet?”
Joanna rolled her eyes. “Fine. But I’ll be keeping myself quiet.”
“Should we come with you now?”
“Now? No no no. In the dark of night you will come. There are no stars in the daytime.”
“They’re still there,” said Joanna. “You just can’t see them.”
“And if one cannot see them, how, pray tell, can one read them?”
We agreed to come that night, at ten o’clock.
I met Joanna outside her door at 9:59. Her mouth was set in a straight line.
“You look pretty excited for this,” I joked.
“This is my excited look.”
We walked upstairs in silence and knocked on Mandrake’s door. “Entrez, mes amis,” he said from inside.
We walked in. The room reminded me of Mandrake: It was dimly lit, everything was old, and it looked as if it had been richly decorated once, long ago. Antique maps of stars hung from the walls in rickety gold frames. A faded print of a queen surrounded by corgis sat on the mantel. Incense smoke filled the air. The only li
ght came from the blinking red lights of the smoke detectors on every wall, and from about a dozen candles. On closer inspection, I realized the candles were small electric lights that flickered to look like candlelight.
“Further in, further in,” came Mandrake’s voice from some unseen spot. “Close the door. Shut the rest of the world outside. Step into starlight.” Mandrake strode forward out of the shadows, clad in a purple silk robe. He waved his hands toward the ceiling. It was covered in constellations of glowing stars—tiny spots of greenish light in the dark room.
“Are those glow-in-the-dark stickers?” said Joanna.
“Hush!” said Mandrake. “Gaze upon the Milky Way. Upon the shimmering torso of Andromeda. Upon the pinching claws of Cancer—”
“The claws of what?” interrupted Joanna.
“The crab. Not the disease. Gaze upon the glorious wings of Pegasus. Orion’s belt is shining. The Big Dipper is upside down over us. It’s pouring out its light.”
“I had those same stickers on my ceiling when I was little,” whispered Joanna.
“You promised to keep quiet,” I said.
“I’m trying.”
“These stars are merely an echo of the real stars,” said Doctor Mandrake. “Come with me, young Sea Goat. Come with me up. And come with me out.” He took me by the hand and led me back through what I guessed must be his living room. Joanna followed behind. We came to a door. Mandrake flung it open, revealing a shadowy stairway.
“Behold,” said Mandrake. “The stairway to the heavens.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Watch your head, the ceiling is kind of low in here.” We followed Mandrake up the narrow stairs until we stepped through a hatch, onto the roof of the Bright House. Four rusty beach loungers were spread out in the darkness.
“We have been blessed with a clear night. Witness the stars in all their glory.”
“This is actually pretty cool,” said Joanna. “I didn’t know you could come up here.”
“Thank you, my dear. It’s nice to know at least one thing meets with your approval. Sea Goat, lie back on this lounge and look toward the heavens.”
The Bottle Imp of Bright House Page 10
