“Whoa, whoa.” I held a defensive hand up. “Calm down, okay? I thought you said you’d give me time.”
A frown creased his forehead. “But you want—”
“I know what I want,” I interrupted, letting out an exasperated laugh. “And for the record, I still think it’s weird that you know it, too.” I paused. “You do know how weird it is, right?”
“It’s pretty weird,” he said seriously, though there was a hint of a smirk around his eyes.
I smiled. “As long as we’re on the same page. Anyway, yes, I do have a wish. Three, in fact,” I said, lowering my voice as some girl I didn’t know passed close enough to brush my shoulder. “And I want to run them by you first, so I don’t screw them up. But preferably somewhere not in the middle of school.”
“Hey McKenna, you coming?”
Naomi was already halfway down the hallway, and she looked impatient. She and I always walked to chemistry together after French, but I hadn’t thought to ask her to wait for me today. “Oh! Sure, right, um. Naomi, you know Oliver, right?”
“Sure,” she said briskly, walking back to us. “How’s the yearbook coming along? Got enough pictures yet?”
“Mm-hmm,” he said, shoving his hands into his pockets and letting his hair fall into his face. “But, you know. Always room for more. I mean, not in the yearbook. There’s only a four-page spread there. But for the slide show, and for me. I’m, um, kind of a perfectionist, I guess?”
I frowned as I watched him. Naomi nodded and asked him something else, and he mumbled his reply without quite looking her in the eye. Granted, a lot of guys had that reaction to Naomi, but this was different. It was like watching Superman turn into Clark Kent. What was his deal?
“So, call me after school?” said Oliver. “We can talk before tonight’s rehearsal.”
“Hmm?” I said, refocusing my thoughts as I sensed words directed at me. “Oh. Yeah, sounds good.”
“Cool,” he said. Shooting me a secretive grin from under his unruly bangs, he darted into the hallway traffic. As I watched him go, a stray thought meandered into my head. It went like this: Wow, his eyes are really pretty when he smiles.
“What was that?” said Naomi, her shrewd gaze locked on to Oliver’s retreating figure.
“What?” I said innocently, even though I already knew the answer.
“You and Parish, obviously,” she said, rolling her eyes at me. “I know flirting when I see it, McKenna. Never thought you’d go for a sophomore, but I’m not one to judge. Younger guys are so deliciously malleable.”
“It’s nothing like that,” I told her. “There’s no flirting. We’re just friends.” But for some reason, even though that was the truth, knowing Oliver’s secret made it feel like a lie.
“Too bad,” she said, and looked back down the hall, where Oliver had disappeared into the crowd. “I thought maybe you were finally moving past your mooning-over-Simon phase.”
I winced. “Am I that obvious about Simon?”
“Oh, sweetheart,” she said, slinging an arm around me and propelling me toward our next class. “Don’t make me answer that.”
Chapter FIVE
As soon as school was over, I called Oliver from the park. Bundled in my coat and gloves, I touched the ring and leaned against my car to wait for him. In about four seconds, he appeared a few feet away from me, wearing snow boots and a puffy jacket, just like mine—only mine was bright blue, like my car, and his was gray, like his hoodie.
For a moment I wondered if the hoodie had magically turned into a jacket. But that was just dumb.
“Want to walk for a bit?” he asked smoothly, without any of the awkwardness from earlier. But when he saw me staring at him, he grew shifty again. “What?”
“Nothing,” I said quickly. “Actually, that’s not true. It’s just . . . you’re different, somehow, depending on who’s around. You went all flaily and awkward around Naomi this afternoon, but now that it’s just me, you’re . . . and at the diner last night, you were all suave and debonair and ‘Look at me, I’m a genie and I’m so awesome,’ and . . .” I trailed off with a shrug. “You know what I mean.”
“Did you just call me debonair?” he said, blinking in astonishment.
“Never mind,” I said, feeling my cheeks go hot. “Yeah, let’s walk.”
Hamilton Park was popular for picnics in the summer and sledding in the winter, but right now it was empty, probably because of the unappetizing expanse of slush covering the ground. But it was nothing my Doc Martens and Oliver’s snow boots couldn’t handle.
“So,” said Oliver, after we’d taken a few minutes to let the wintry quiet sink in. “You have a plan for your wishes?”
“That I do,” I said, kicking at a little mound of snow. “I was thinking, if I have three wishes, at least one of them should be something for someone else, right?”
He looked at me curiously. “If you want.”
“I do want,” I said. “I mean, it seems to be the done thing. So, how about this: I keep one for myself, wish for world peace with the second—”
“Whoa, wait a second,” he said, holding up a finger. “You want me to give you world peace?”
“Um . . . yes?”
Closing his eyes, Oliver turned his face to the sky and let out a laugh. “If I had a dollar for every time I heard that one.”
“Really?” I said, suddenly feeling very wrong-footed.
He looked back at me again, eyes shining with mirth. “Really. Don’t get me wrong, I’d grant that wish in a heartbeat if I could. But I don’t have enough magic for that. Not nearly. Even if I lived to be a hundred thousand years old, I wouldn’t have enough.”
“Oh. I didn’t know. Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said, and started walking again. I followed. “What about the third?”
“Well,” I began hesitantly. I’d been so sure of this, ever since Naomi had given me the world peace idea in French class. But now that he’d shot it down, the whole plan felt unstable. Still, I went ahead and told him:
“I figured I’d use the third one to wish you free.”
When I’d planned this conversation with Oliver, I’d assumed he’d be happy about the idea. Maybe even elated. But as I watched, his face drained of color. “Don’t,” he said. “It doesn’t work like that. Just . . . please don’t.”
“What? Why?”
One of his hands drifted up toward his collarbone, and his face was pale and terrified. Haunted. I actually turned around to see if there was something scary behind me. There wasn’t.
“Oliver,” I said, alarmed. “What is it?”
Oliver didn’t answer. But then he winced, his whole body going tense. “If you wish me free,” he said shakily, “you’ll unbind me from my ring. It would kill me.”
“Kill you?” I whispered, struck dumb by the simple finality of his answer. “But . . .”
“But nothing,” he said evenly, relaxing again. “You didn’t know. Don’t worry about it.”
“Are you okay?” I asked warily.
He raised an eyebrow at me. “Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Whenever I ask you stuff, you go all . . .” I mimicked the motion as best I could, squinting and squinching my shoulders up. “You keep doing that.”
“Ah,” he said.
I waited for him to elaborate, but when he didn’t, I said, “What is it? Is something wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong. It’s just a matter of questions and answers.” I shook my head in confusion, and he went on. “When you ask me a question, I have to reply as honestly as I can. And as quickly. My magic usually gives me a second or two, depending, but not much longer.” He trailed off with a shrug.
I frowned. “Not much longer before what?”
“Before it starts to hurt,” he said shortly. “A lot. Come on, let’s keep walking. It sounds like there’s running water nearby.”
“There’s a stream over there,” I said quickly, pointing. “I’m sor
ry. I didn’t know it would kill you. I just assumed—”
He reached over to nudge my arm, smiling again. “Hey. I’m serious, Margo. Don’t worry about it. So . . . stream?”
Right. He was trying to change the subject, which was downright generous of him, considering. “Stream,” I said, walking toward the far side of the field. “I used to wade there in the summer, but I got so many cuts on my feet, my mom stopped letting me go in. But I did anyway, whenever she wasn’t around.”
The little stream was swollen with melted snow, which filled the quiet air with a gentle rushing sound. I sat on one of the wooden benches a few feet away from the water. The seat of my jeans felt damp almost right away, but I didn’t care. Oliver sat gingerly beside me, and we watched the water swirling around the rocks in the streambed.
“So, aside from the obvious, what did Vicky wish for?” I said—and then realized I’d asked yet another question. “Crap, I’m sorry. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”
Oliver blinked owlishly at me, and for a moment I couldn’t read his expression. “No, it’s fine,” he said finally. “It’s not like . . . I didn’t mean you should stop asking me things. Where’d that one come from?”
I shrugged. “All my wish ideas sucked, and I don’t have a backup plan yet. I need inspiration.”
Oliver gave me a sidelong look. “Well, she used her first wish on her dad. He was injured in a car accident last year, and his physical therapy wasn’t going well. So she helped it along with a wish.”
“Seriously?” I said, amazed. I hadn’t known about Vicky’s father, but the idea of a miraculous recovery was pretty awesome.
“Seriously.”
“And then she wished for the lead in the play,” I said flatly, looking at the ground.
“Actually, no, she didn’t,” he said. I looked up, confused. “Her second wish was for more people to like her. And believe me, that was a logistical nightmare to grant. See, she didn’t want everyone to like her. She said that would be too weird. Just more people than before. I actually saw her thinking seventy percent when she made that wish. So at first, I thought about taking seventy percent of the world’s population at random, and tweaking them just the tiniest bit, so they’d be inclined to like Vicky if they ever met her. But that’s huge magic. Way beyond my power.
“So I changed Vicky instead. Not her personality, because that’s not what she wanted, but the reaction she inspires in people. I changed her so that seven out of every ten people she meets has a positive reaction to her. Wish number two? Granted.” And with that, he leaned back on his hands, looking prouder than a cat.
“That’s like magical math,” I mused. “I didn’t know it took that much work. Pretty damn cool. Although it would’ve been cooler if I were in that lucky seventy percent. Or if Miss Delisio weren’t.”
His grin faded, and I immediately felt bad for saying anything.
“Yeah, I know,” he said. “You wanted that part. Everyone thought you would get it, too, including Vicky. I’m really, really sorry. I didn’t realize it would work out that way.”
I’m really, really sorry. Something about the cadence of that phrase brought a memory to mind. Oliver, on the day the cast list went up, looking at me with pity, saying how sorry he was. Me, wondering what the hell he was apologizing for.
Who are you?
Nobody.
He hadn’t been anyone important to me, nor did he have any intention of ever being so, but he’d still wanted to apologize for what he’d done. Even if he hadn’t meant to do it. There was something incongruously kind about that.
Oliver got up, looking away from me and stretching his arms over his head. It was a casual gesture, but the timing of it made me wonder what he’d seen in my mind just now.
“What about her third wish?” I asked quickly.
“She didn’t use it. That’s why I thought you were her, when you called me yesterday.” He shot me a dark look. “She’d promised to use her third wish within a week, and instead of following through, she just abandoned me. Left my ring in the bathroom, of all places, without even telling me first.”
“Why?” I asked, alarmed at his tone.
“I don’t know!” he said, his hands curling into fists as he began to pace in front of the bench. “I tried asking her in school today, but she wouldn’t answer. She just kept avoiding me.” He stopped abruptly, turning a hard expression on me. “You have to understand, Margo, I’m good at what I do. I’m very, very good at it. But she . . .”
“She wasn’t happy with her second wish,” I supplied, remembering the band room fight.
“She’s miserable,” he said bluntly. “And of course she blames me for it. But she’s the one who didn’t set boundaries, so all I had to work with was the wording of her wish, and the images in her head of people smiling and being friendly and including her in things. And unless she learns how to deal with the effect she has on people, or uses her third wish to undo it, she’s going to keep being miserable for the rest of her life.” Then he sighed, letting his features soften again as he shook his head. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t complain about her to you.”
“Why the hell not?” I said automatically. He looked sharply at me, his expression unreadable—and before I knew it, we were both laughing.
The tension broken, he extended a hand to help me up. I took it and stood, wriggling uncomfortably in my wet jeans. Maybe sitting down hadn’t been the best idea.
“You know,” he said softly, his eyes slightly downcast, “if anyone new had to find my ring, I’m glad it was you.”
I felt myself blush.
“Uh-oh,” said Oliver.
“I’m not blushing,” I shot back, just a fraction of a second before realizing that he hadn’t said anything about blushing. In fact, he wasn’t even looking at me. Standing and turning around, he shaded his eyes with his hands and scanned the park. It was just as deserted as before.
“What-oh?” I asked, hoping he hadn’t noticed my previous comment. Or that he’d be gentlemanly enough to ignore it.
“That felt like . . .” Trailing off with a sharp shake of his head, he took a couple of steps toward the middle of the field. I hung back, watching as he peered around the empty field. Splaying his fingers, he began to move his hands through the air, carefully, like someone feeling his way through a room in the dark. Or like a mime. Only less stupid-looking.
I watched him, fascinated, wondering what he was feeling for. I slipped my gloves off and pushed at the air, hoping I might be able to feel it, too. But all I felt was the cold, nipping at my fingertips.
Apparently I wasn’t the only one. When Oliver turned back to me, he looked bewildered, and more than a little relieved. “I guess I imagined it.”
“Imagined what?” I asked.
“A call. You know how you can call me with my ring? It felt like . . .” He crooked one of his fingers, and mimed using it to hook me through the chest and pull. “God, I’m getting paranoid.”
“You mean a call for another genie?” I frowned. “I never even asked. There are other genies, aren’t there?”
His face darkened, just for a moment. “Yes. And yes. But let’s talk about that first wish of yours! The selfish one. What’ll it be?”
“Ah, right,” I said, thrown by the sudden change of topic, even if my wish was why we were here in the first place. I twisted my hands together, feeling very uncertain. It was one thing to think about what I wanted, what the result of the wish would be, what it would feel like once I had it—but it was another thing to say it out loud. I wondered if it would sound stupid. But I went ahead and said it: “I want to write music. Good music.”
Oliver nodded thoughtfully. “I had a feeling you’d go for that one.” He gave me a conspiratorial smile. “And don’t worry, it doesn’t sound stupid.”
I waved away his comment with one hand, like that had never even been a concern. “So what now? Is there a ceremony or something?”
He pursed his
lips, looking very serious. “Well, there’s a special hat you have to wear, made of ferns and cat food cans and glitter. And then—” He stopped abruptly, wincing, and looked accusingly at the sky. “For heaven’s sake, I was kidding. No, there’s no ceremony.”
“Good thing, too,” I said quickly, before the light mood could disappear again. “The cat food cans are no problem, but I was wondering where we’d get ferns in March.”
Oliver paused, narrowing his eyes like he was plotting something. “Wait here,” he said, and vanished. A handful of seconds passed. A handful more. Then, right before I could start to worry, Oliver was there again, a couple of feet in front of me. In one hand, he clutched the thin stem of a many-fronded plant.
“Is that . . . ?”
He nodded, holding it out so I could take it. “There’s a great little greenhouse, just south of San Diego. Not very busy at this time of day.”
I blinked at him. “And you went there? In like fifteen seconds?”
“Yeah,” he said, with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Just a little trick I can do.”
I shook my head mutely, turning the fern over in my hand. It was a perfectly ordinary fern, but . . .
“Just a little trick, huh?” I said faintly.
“Yup.” He raised a sly eyebrow at me. “What, was that too debonair for you?”
With a laugh, I reached up and placed the fern on my head. “No such thing as too debonair. So, my good man, where do we begin?”
Oliver grinned in approval. “You need my ring, dear lady.” I dutifully pulled it out of my pocket and presented it to him. “Now, it’ll work as long as you’re holding the ring, like you do when you call me—but it’ll be more powerful if there’s contact between us. If I’m touching you, I’ll be able to dig deeper into your intentions when you make the wish, so I can make it as close as possible to what you really want. Can I . . . ?”
He tentatively reached his hands out, the question reflected on his face. I blinked in surprise. We both went to a school where everyone hugged and backslapped and high-fived each other without a second thought, and here he was, actually asking permission to touch me. Oddly charmed, I nodded and held my hand out to him.
The Art of Wishing Page 5
