Three Wishing Tales

by Ruth Chew

  “What?” Christopher asked.

  “Nothing really got bigger,” Meredith told him. “We got smaller.”

  Christopher didn’t have much time to think about this. “There’s the school!” he yelled.

  “Your class is already going in,” Meredith said.

  The silver coin flew down into the crowded schoolyard. It landed right beside Meredith’s class.

  The boys and girls looked like giants. Meredith looked up at the biggest shoe she had ever seen.

  Christopher grabbed his books and his lunch and jumped off the coin. At once he was as big as ever. He raced across the yard and followed his class into the school.

  Meredith stood up. As soon as she stepped off the coin she was back to her right size. She bent down to pick up the little silver coin. Then she got on line.

  Mrs. Fleming waved to her. “You’re just in time, Meredith. I was afraid you were going to be late.”

  Meredith’s class had to practice writing first thing in the morning. Then they took turns asking each other questions about yesterday’s social studies homework.

  At eleven o’clock Mrs. Fleming said, “It’s time for our math test, boys and girls. Petra, I want you to give out the papers.”

  Meredith placed the silver coin face-up on her desk.

  Petra walked up and down the aisles. She put a blank sheet of paper on each desk. When she came to Meredith’s desk, Petra took a good look at the coin. “There’s a picture of that man in one of my grandmother’s books,” she said.

  “What’s his name?” Meredith asked.

  “I think it’s Juan Pablo Something-or-other,” Petra told her. “But I’m not sure.”

  Mrs. Fleming rapped on her desk with a yardstick. “Petra! Stop talking and finish your job.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Fleming.” Petra gave Meredith a sheet of paper and went on to the next desk.

  Meredith looked at the coin. The face on it was frowning again. Meredith remembered that Mrs. Fleming had a desk drawer full of things people had brought to class. There were a lot of baseball cards, several pea shooters and water guns, and at least one set of jacks in the drawer. Mrs. Fleming kept it locked. She was going to give the things back on the last day of school. That was almost three months away.

  If Mrs. Fleming thought Meredith was playing with the coin she might lock it up in her drawer. Meredith picked it up and put it back into her pocket.

  “I’ll just have to remember what I learned from Juan Pablo when I was doing my homework last night,” she said to herself.

  During the test she found that fractions were easy now that she understood them. The test was like a game. Meredith had fun with it. She was one of the first people to finish. Mrs. Fleming asked her to collect the papers when the test was over.

  At twelve o’clock Meredith met Christopher in the big basement lunchroom of the school. They sat at one end of a long table.

  The lunchroom was noisy. The voices of the boys and girls seemed to echo off the metal ceiling. Meredith almost had to shout to make herself heard.

  “I found out his name,” she said.

  “Whose name?” Christopher asked.

  Meredith pulled the coin out of her pocket and put it on the table. She placed one finger under the chin of the man with the beard. “His.”

  Christopher unwrapped a sandwich and bit into it. “Peanut butter.”

  “No,” Meredith said, “Juan Pablo.” She took a bite of her sandwich. “This stuff sticks to the roof of my mouth. I wish we had some milk to go with it.”

  Meredith felt something move under her finger. It was the coin. “Juan Pablo’s getting bigger again.”

  Christopher stared at the coin. “We don’t need an umbrella in here.”

  The coin spread out in all directions like an egg dropped into a frying pan. When it was a little bigger than two fried eggs, the edge of the coin turned up to make a rim, and the coin stopped growing.

  “It’s a silver tray,” Meredith said.

  “And look what’s on it!” Christopher picked up a small container of milk and handed another to his sister.

  Meredith pointed to the tray. “He even remembered the straws! Thank you, Juan Pablo.”

  The peanut butter sandwiches tasted good with the milk. Meredith and Christopher each had a yellow apple and two chocolate cookies packed in their lunch bags. The milk lasted just until they had finished eating everything.

  They put the empty milk containers and the straws back on the little tray. A second later they were gone. The silver coin was once again lying on the table.

  Meredith picked it up and put it into her pocket.

  Today was Friday. The afternoon seemed to go on and on.

  At last it was three o’clock. Meredith met Christopher at the gate of the schoolyard. They started to walk along Albemarle Road.

  “I’m tired,” Christopher said. “Why don’t we fly home?”

  Meredith took the coin out of her pocket. She placed it on the sidewalk. “We have to be standing on it.”

  Christopher looked at the man on the coin. “What did you say his name was?”

  “Juan Pablo,” Meredith told him.

  “It seems pretty awful to step on his face now that we know who he is,” Christopher said.

  Meredith remembered what her mother said when she had to do something that would bother somebody. “I beg your pardon, Juan Pablo,” she said and stepped on the coin. She could only get one foot on it, so she put the other foot on top.

  She expected to shrink small enough to sit on the coin, but nothing happened. “Please, Juan Pablo, fly us home the way you flew us to school.”

  Still the coin stayed just as it was on the sidewalk.

  “Maybe something happened to the magic,” Christopher said. “Or maybe he doesn’t like being stepped on and has given up flying. See if he’ll do something else.”

  Meredith hopped off the coin and stooped to pick it up. “Is there some other kind of magic you’d like to do, Juan Pablo?” she asked.

  The coin just lay in her hand. The face on it looked straight at her, but there was nothing about it that was special. For a moment Meredith wondered if she’d dreamed all the magic.

  “If we hadn’t fooled around we’d be home by now.” Meredith dropped the coin into her pocket. “Last one home is a rotten egg!” She started to run. Chris chased after her.

  Meredith reached the house first. She went up the steps two at a time and rang the doorbell. Christopher came charging up the front stoop right behind her.

  Mrs. Dalby opened the door. “I’ve never known you two to get home from school so fast. What is it, more magic?”

  Meredith liked to do her homework on Friday. That way she didn’t have to think about it for the rest of the weekend.

  After supper she sat down at her desk. She took the silver coin out of her pocket and placed it where she could see the face on it. “Maybe you’ll help me with my homework, Juan Pablo, even if you’re tired of magic.” Meredith opened her science book.

  Christopher burst into her room. “How about lending me Juan Pablo? I decided to do my homework now.”

  “I wanted him to help me,” Meredith said. “Why don’t you wait till Sunday night to do yours, the way you usually do?”

  “Please, Meredith,” Christopher said.

  Meredith looked hard at the face on the coin. “Oh, all right.”

  Her brother picked up the coin and went out of the room. Meredith closed the door and started to read her science book. She kept remembering the look on Juan Pablo’s face. Somehow it made her think she ought to lend Christopher the coin.

  She read a chapter on electricity and all the things it could do. It was quite a lot like magic, Meredith thought. When she closed the book she found that she remembered everything she’d read. She had to make up questions on what was in the chapter. Meredith told herself the answers as she wrote down each question.

  Her math had never seemed so easy. The chapter in the social stu
dies book came alive like a television program in her mind.

  Meredith saved the homework she liked best for last. That was reading.

  She finished her library book. Then she remembered that she had to do a book report on it. Meredith hated book reports. They almost ruined the fun of reading the books.

  She took a fresh sheet of lined paper and started. “The main character is a girl who goes to live with her grandfather,” she wrote. Meredith saw Juan Pablo’s face in her mind. He was smiling. She smiled too and went on writing.

  Her homework was finished before it was time for bed. Meredith put away her books and went to see if the magic coin was helping her brother.

  Christopher’s room was at the back of the house. Meredith went down the narrow hall. The door was open, so she walked in. Christopher was talking, but Meredith didn’t see anybody with him.

  “Why don’t you just tell me the answers?” he said.

  Now Meredith saw that Christopher was holding the coin in his hand and arguing with it.

  “What’s the matter, Chris? Didn’t you get any help from Juan Pablo?” she asked.

  Christopher looked up. “Oh, sure,” he said, “I got all my work done. But this character makes me look in the book for what I have to know. I think he should just give it to me straight. It would save a lot of time.”

  Meredith laughed. “Give me the coin,” she said, “and come on downstairs. It’s time for that program about deep-sea divers looking for the wrecks of old treasure ships.”

  Meredith woke up early on Saturday. She was out of bed and dressed before her mother came to call her. When she came downstairs Christopher was already eating breakfast.

  “One of the kids at school told me he found a cave in the park,” Christopher said.

  Meredith looked out of the window at the blue sky. “I wonder if there are any baby ducks on the lake.” She sat down at the kitchen table and filled a bowl with shredded wheat.

  Mrs. Dalby poured milk into the bowl. “Why don’t you two go to the park today? The magnolias must be in bloom.”

  After breakfast Meredith ran up to her room. She tucked the silver coin into the pocket of her jeans. It might come in handy in the park, she thought. She put on a light jacket and went to find Christopher.

  He was in his room, going through the drawers of his desk. “Here it is!” He held up a little fishing drop-line. “Dad says he read in the paper that the lake has been freshly stocked with fish.”

  “Get your jacket on,” Meredith said, “and let’s go.”

  Christopher’s jacket was hanging on the back of a chair. He picked it up and put it on as he ran downstairs.

  Prospect Park was five blocks away. Meredith and Christopher walked down Ocean Parkway and went into the park by the corner gate.

  There were big sticky buds on the horse chestnut trees and little green spikes poking out of the ground. The children crossed the road that wound through the park. No cars were allowed there on weekends. The road was full of people riding bicycles, pushing baby carriages, rollerskating, and jogging.

  Four teenagers on horseback were coming down the bridle path. Meredith and Christopher waited until they had galloped past. Then they walked across to the grassy slope above the lake.

  Meredith ran down to the stone wall that bordered the water. She saw two brown ducks and one with a beautiful green head swimming on the lake. But there weren’t any ducklings.

  Meredith started walking along the wall. Christopher followed her. They passed a man who was fishing. Only children were allowed to fish in the park, but older people often did.

  Around a bend of the lake they came to a place where there was a tangle of water lily plants in the water. There were no flowers there yet, but Christopher remembered that he had once seen a fish swimming among the floating stems. He put his hand into his pocket to take out the drop-line.

  “Hey, kid, let’s see what you’ve got in your pocket.” Two big boys stepped out of the woods near the lake. One of them yanked at Christopher’s hand.

  Christopher pulled out the drop-line.

  The boy looked at it. “I don’t need that piece of junk. What else have you got in your pockets, kid?”

  Christopher felt in his pockets. He took out a battered piece of red crayon and a green plastic pencil sharpener.

  The other boy looked at Meredith. “Maybe the girl has something.”

  Meredith could have run away, but she didn’t want to leave Christopher. She put her hand in her pocket. There was just one thing in there—the magic coin. She held it out.

  The boy grabbed it. “What do you know? Here’s a quarter!”

  The first boy came over to take a look. “Stupid! That’s no quarter.” He snatched the coin and dropped it into the murky water of the lake.

  The two big boys ran back into the woods.

  As soon as the two big boys had gone, Meredith kneeled down on the stone wall at the edge of the lake. She looked into the water. Something round and shiny caught her eye.

  Meredith slipped out of her jacket and laid it on the wall. She took off her shoes and socks and rolled up her jeans. Then she stepped into the lake. The water was much deeper than she had thought it was. It came almost up to her waist. “Ouch!”

  “What’s the matter?” Christopher asked.

  “There’s all sorts of stuff on the bottom of the lake,” Meredith told him. “I stubbed my toe.”

  “You should have kept your shoes on,” Christopher said.

  Meredith leaned over and felt around in the slime near her feet. She fished up a little metal circle. “What’s this?”

  Christopher looked at it. “That’s the pop-top from a beer can.”

  Meredith was soaking wet. The water was much colder than the air. “The coin must be right here. I saw just where that nasty kid dropped it.”

  Her teeth were chattering, but Meredith went on looking for the silver coin. She started pulling things out of the lake. She found three more pop-tops, a plastic bag with half a rotten orange in it, a green woolen mitten, and a Coca-Cola bottle. Her feet were getting colder and colder.

  Meredith was about to give up looking when she felt something hard under her left foot. She reached down and dug it out of the mud. “Look!”

  “It’s Juan Pablo! Now you’d better get out of that water.” Christopher held out his hand. Meredith grabbed hold of it.

  Christopher pulled as hard as he could. The wall was slippery. His feet skidded out from under him.

  Splash! Christopher fell into the lake beside Meredith.

  They tried to climb onto the stone wall. It was covered with soft green scum, and they couldn’t get a grip on it.

  Meredith held onto the silver coin. “My feet are freezing.”

  “It feels like winter.” Christopher looked across the lake. “But I know it’s spring. Those people over there are rowing a boat. And the park doesn’t rent boats in the winter.”

  “I wish we were in a boat,” Meredith said. “Then maybe my feet wouldn’t be so cold.”

  She felt the coin move in her hand. “Chris,” Meredith whispered, “Juan Pablo’s up to his tricks again!”

  Christopher blinked. He saw that Meredith was still holding onto the edge of what must be the coin. But it had spread itself down and under and around them.

  Meredith and Christopher were in a little silver rowboat.

  They sat down on the seat. Christopher pointed to the floor. “That Juan Pablo thinks of everything!”

  Meredith saw two silver oars lying side by side in the bottom of the boat.

  The silver boat was close to the stone wall at the edge of the lake. Meredith took her jacket and shoes and socks off the wall. She put them on. “Now I feel better.”

  “But I don’t,” Christopher said. “My shoes and jacket are just as wet as everything else I’m wearing.”

  “In the television program we saw last night the divers looking for treasure were wet all over,” Meredith said. “They didn’t seem t
o mind.”

  “Don’t be funny, Meredith. You know that was a warm sea,” Christopher said. “I wish we were back in the days of treasure ships.”

  The boat began to swing around. Meredith picked up an oar and tried to steer it. But the little silver boat acted as if it were caught in a whirlpool. Meredith was afraid the oar would be yanked out of her hands. Christopher grabbed hold of it and helped her pull it back into the boat.

  Now the boat started spinning like a top. It went so fast that the trees on the lakeshore blended with the sky into a greeny-blue blur.

  Meredith and Christopher got down in the bottom of the boat. They held onto each other to keep from being pitched out into the water. The boat turned faster and faster.

  Meredith felt dizzy. She closed her eyes. The boat went on turning, but after a while it began to go slower. The air was getting warmer.

  Meredith opened her eyes. The silver boat had stopped spinning. It rocked gently on a blue sea. Across the water Meredith could see tall cliffs rising.

  “We’re not in the park.” Christopher climbed back onto the seat of the boat. “I wonder where we are.”

  Meredith slipped out of her jacket and sat down beside him. “It’s so hot our clothes ought to dry in no time.”

  Christopher took off his jacket too. “Let’s row over to the shore.”

  Meredith helped him fit an oar into the oarlock. Then he gave her a hand with the other oar. They began to row toward the cliffs.

  Meredith leaned over the side of the boat and looked down into the clear water. “It’s not very deep. I can see the bottom.”

  Christopher stopped rowing and stared into the water. “That looks like a zebra fish. I saw one like it in the Coney Island aquarium.”

  “Those rocks look mighty sharp. Maybe they’re made of coral. Columbus wrecked one of his ships on a coral reef. We don’t want to put a hole in our boat.” Meredith steered carefully between the rocks.