by Amanda Ashby
“Of course he’s not going to try to beat any of us up,” Sophie assured him before catching his worried look. She let out a reluctant sigh. “Fine. If he even looks at you funny, then he will be totally toadified.”
“Toadified? Is that even a word?” Kara asked. But before Sophie could answer, Ben had closed the distance between them and suddenly he was standing there, once again staring directly at her.
“Hey, Campbell,” the seventh grader said. “I was hoping to catch you before first period.”
“You were?” Sophie blinked in surprise. Next to her Harvey and Kara looked equally confused. “Er, why?”
“To say thank you for letting me touch Eddie Henry’s guitar pick yesterday. You know I was hoping it would bring me good luck when I told my mom about flunking my test? Well, it totally did. I mean, she didn’t even yell or anything. And this is a woman who likes to yell.”
“Oh. Okay. Well, that’s good. I mean, no one likes to be yelled at,” she said in a polite voice, still not quite sure she followed what he was saying.
“I know, right.” Ben gave an eager nod of his head. “Anyway, the thing is that I’ve got to go see Principal Gerrard. She’s kind of annoyed at me for setting fire to my lab partner yesterday.”
“You set your lab partner on fire?” Kara suddenly squeaked, while next to her Harvey started to have a coughing fit and Sophie was pretty sure she heard him muttering the words turn the pyro into a toad under his breath.
“It was a total accident, and no skin was burned,” Ben assured her, not looking remotely remorseful. Then he shot her a pleading smile. “It’s just Principal Gerrard doesn’t seem to see it that way, so I was kind of hoping I could touch the guitar pick again.”
For a moment Sophie paused. It wasn’t that she particularly liked Ben Griggs—dating Melissa Tait and setting his lab partner on fire weren’t the kind of qualities she admired in a person. However, he was a friend of Jonathan Tait’s, and there was no way she wanted to offend him. She found herself nodding her head.
“Sure. I mean, yeah. I guess.” She reluctantly pulled out the necklace from under her shirt. The minute she did so, Ben reached out and touched it, a reverent look in his green eyes.
“Cool.” He finally released the guitar pick so that it fell back against Sophie’s neck, and then he grinned at her. “Anyway, I suppose I’d better go and try to sweet-talk Gerrard, but thanks for the luck.” Then without another word he loped off down the corridor, leaving Sophie and her friends to stare at one another.
Finally, Kara spoke. “Okay, so can I just say that sixth grade is weird? I mean, did you ever in a million years think that Ben Griggs would ever come up and want to talk to the likes of us? And is it just me, or did he seem to think that Eddie Henry’s guitar pick is magic or something.”
“I know, he did, didn’t he,” Sophie agreed. “Which is crazy. It’s just a guitar pick. How could it be magic?”
Harvey stared at them both for a moment before rolling his eyes. “Yeah, how dumb of a crazed pyromaniac to think that a guitar pick is magic. I mean, it’s not like it’s a sparkly apple-shaped ring or anything.”
“Hey, that’s different.” Sophie immediately touched her djinn ring. “For a start, it’s not like I think it brings me luck or anything. It is more just a channel for my djinn power. I mean, I don’t even need to wear it anymore for my magic to work.”
“But all the same, it might be worth asking Malik about the guitar pick,” Kara advised. “Just in case the pick somehow got some weird mojo and Sophie gets another case of RWD by wearing it.”
Sophie shuddered. When she had first started wearing her djinn ring, she had gone a bit overboard on the magic and had developed Random Wish Disorder. Technically, it was like chicken pox and not something she could get again, but it was probably best not to take any chances. “You’re right, I’ll ask him.”
“And speaking of Malik, where is he?” Harvey suddenly started to glance around as he quickly shoved his half-eaten packet of M&M’s back into his jacket pocket. “I hope he’s not doing the invisible thing again, because I hate when he does that. Especially when I have snack foods.”
“No, definitely no invisible thing—well, not in front of you guys anyway,” Sophie assured him, since Malik could choose who could see and hear him and who couldn’t. “But obviously he will be invisible to everyone else. Anyway, he said he would meet me here. It turns out that despite worshipping the ground my mom walks on, he refused to get in the car with us this morning. Apparently, he had a nasty run-in with a woman camel-train driver about a zillion years ago. I guess I should summon him just in case he’s forgotten.”
Sophie clapped her hands three times, and Malik suddenly appeared next to them. Today he was wearing some tight black jeans, a pair of pointy boots, and a white T-shirt, which was remarkably like what Zac had worn on his second day of school in the movie 17 Again. Looks like he wasn’t going to take her advice and change into anyone else.
“Greetings to you all.” The djinn ghost did an elaborate bow and then shot them a dazzling smile. Harvey and Kara both blinked, but Malik didn’t seem to notice as he glanced around the crowded corridor with a curious expression on his face. “Ah, so this is the famous Robert Robertson Middle School? Nice.”
“Malik, you’ve been here loads of times,” Sophie reminded him as she pulled the guitar pick out from under her adorably cute navy blouse and held it up to him. “Anyway, I wanted to know if you think this is magic.”
“That thing?” Malik sniffed it for a moment before he pulled an offended face. “Of course it’s not magic. I mean, what self-respecting djinn would put his power into a junky old bit of plastic? Rule number one about being a djinn is that if you’re going to put your magic into anything, you should make it something expensive. Preferably with sparkles on it. Actually, you should write that down.”
“Junky?” Sophie slipped the guitar pick back under her shirt and looked at him with disgust. “This isn’t junky. I’ll have you know it belonged to the best bass player in the world. In fact, one just like it sold for over two hundred bucks on eBay. Not that I’d ever sell it, of course, but I’m just saying. It’s not junky.”
“Er, okay.” Malik blinked before turning around, obviously bored with the conversation. “So anyway, what’s up first? Should we do a group number? Or should I go straight to my solo? I’m thinking jazz hands.”
Harvey turned to Sophie. “Um, what’s he talking about?”
“High School Musical,” Sophie reluctantly explained.
“As in the singing and dancing movie?” Harvey wrinkled his nose in distaste since the only movies he liked to watch were of the horror variety. The creepier the better.
“It’s his new obsession,” Kara added. “I guess he thinks that’s what a regular school is like and that any second now we will just stop what we’re doing and spontaneously break into song.”
“Please, I’m not stupid,” Malik protested with disdain. “I mean, of course it isn’t HSM, as we call it in the biz. For a start, this is middle school, and obviously Middle School Musical just doesn’t have the same pizzazz. Plus, I’ve got to say that the people here aren’t nearly as good looking as Zac and Vanessa.”
“That’s because no one here is wearing makeup or spent three hours getting their hair done,” Sophie said before she caught sight of Melissa Tait, who was still glaring at Sophie like she was something the cat dragged in (backward through a swamp). Sophie quickly amended. “Okay, so nearly no one here does that.”
“Well, maybe they should consider it?” Malik pondered as he pulled out his camera phone and took a photograph of himself standing next to Sophie’s locker.
“What are you doing?” Sophie was immediately distracted.
“It’s for posterity,” Malik explained. “Of course, it sucks that I’m a ghost, and so you can’t actually see me in the shot, but it’s still a good idea, is it not?” As he spoke he took another photograph of himself, this time givin
g a very cheesy thumbs-up, making him look more like a tourist than a two-thousand-year-old ex-djinn.
“It is not,” Sophie asserted.
“Ha! You’re such a joker,” Malik said, undeterred as he studied the screen of the camera. Then he looked up and frowned. “And why do you keep looking over at the locker? If I didn’t know better I would say that you’re about to shape-shift into a giraffe the way your neck’s stretching.”
“I can shape-shift?” Sophie was immediately sidetracked. “I mean, I knew that you could, but I didn’t think it was something that I could do. Why didn’t you tell me? Perhaps I could do that for the Djinn Council instead of the transcendental conjuring? That might impress them even more.”
“The reason I didn’t tell you about it is because you’ve only got a very small brain and I didn’t want it to get overloaded,” Malik told her in a kindly voice. “Besides, I thought it would be better to master your borrowed powers first before concentrating on your internal ones.”
“Borrowed powers? Internal powers? What are you talking about?”
“See, small brain,” he said before sighing. “Fine. I’m talking about the fundamental elements of djinn magic. Borrowed powers are all the magic that comes through your djinn ring, and they’re taken from everything around you—like the air, the trees, Harvey’s M&M’s. You use your borrowed powers for all the wishes that you do and for your transcendental conjurations.
“However, your internal powers are what are already inside you. For someone like Kara, it’s nada, but for you, it’s very strong. Probably because your father was Tariq the Awesome. Anyway, it’s your internal power that allows you to do transfigurations. Now stop changing the subject and tell me why you keep looking at that locker. There isn’t a purple ifrit in it, is there? Because if so, then you can tell him from me that I don’t have the money. Furthermore, the Geneva Convention clearly states that when a djinn is under the influence of date juice and—”
“Malik there’s no ifrit in there; it’s just Jonathan Tait’s locker,” Kara interrupted in a gentle voice. “I think Sophie was hoping that she would see him before first period.”
“No ifrit? Oh, boy. You gave me quite a scare there.” Malik started to fan his face, but before he could say anything else the bell rang. Sophie and her friends wove their way through the throng of students toward their homeroom.
She was just biting back her disappointment at not seeing Jonathan when he suddenly bounded up next to her, an apologetic look on his face. Today he was dressed in an apple green Adidas hoodie and baggy jeans, his damp golden hair casually pushed back off his tanned forehead. Be still her beating heart.
“You’re here.” She grinned. “I wasn’t sure if you were at school.”
“I was trying to get in some last-minute basketball practice before Thursday’s game,” he explained as he shoved his hands into his back pockets. “But I didn’t want you to think I was avoiding you. I mean, hanging out at our lockers has kind of become our thing.”
Sophie grinned some more. First they’d had “a moment,” and now they had “a thing”? Could this day get any more awesome?
“So how did it go? Are you all ready?” she forced herself to ask so that she didn’t look like a complete idiot.
“It went okay; it’s the first game of the season, and it’s my first game as captain, so I’m pretty nervous,” he admitted before he suddenly took a deep breath and shot her a nervous glance. “I was hoping you might come along for good luck.”
“Really? I would love to,” Sophie instantly agreed before quickly adding, “Not that you need luck, of course, since you’re an awesome basketball player.”
“Thanks.” A relieved smile tugged at his lips. “Especially since I know basketball isn’t really your thing.”
“Of course it is. I’m all about the basketball.” She gave an enthusiastic nod before catching his surprised look. She let out a rueful sigh. “Well, okay, so perhaps playing it isn’t really my thing, but I’ve got no problems watching it. Especially when you play. Oh, but I better not sit anywhere near your sister. I’m pretty sure she hates me. She gave me the look of death before.”
“Of course she doesn’t hate you,” Jonathan assured her. “She just has problems flexing her facial muscles. Don’t take it personally.”
“Really? Because she looked pretty angry to me. Do you think it’s still the jeans thing? I’ve seriously said sorry like a zillion times about that.”
“Which is probably a zillion more than you needed to. Look, don’t worry about Melissa. That’s just the way she is, and until my parents will authorize the frontal lobotomy that I requested for her, we’ve just got to put up with it the best we can. Anyway, before I go, did you like the playlist I made you?”
“Totally.” Sophie nodded as she felt another goofy smile coming up to her lips. At the concert, Jonathan had given her a CD full of his favorite songs, and she had been listening to them on her iPod ever since.
“Cool.” He grinned back at her before letting out a reluctant sigh. “Well, I suppose I’d better go before I’m late, but I’ll catch you later.”
Sophie continued to smile as she watched him jog back up the empty corridor. Then she turned and walked into her homeroom. Malik was standing in front of Harvey and Kara and appeared to be demonstrating some hip-hop moves, but she hardly noticed as she started to hum one of the songs from Jonathan’s playlist. First she’d had the good news about going to see the Djinn Council and finding out more about her dad’s disappearance, and now she had Jonathan asking her to watch him play basketball. It was everything that a positive thinker like herself could ask for.
5
OKAY, SO I KNOW I SAID THAT MALIK COULD COME to art class with me, but I swear that’s an experience that I never want to repeat again,” Kara announced as she collapsed at the cafeteria table next to Harvey, who was cramming food into his mouth and trying to read a textbook at the same time. Sophie, who had been discreetly listening to the playlist that Jonathan had made for her, pulled out her earbud and looked up.
“What happened? Was he terrible?” she cautiously asked as she nibbled on a chip. Not that she held out much hope for Malik’s behavior since he had spent most of the morning being anything but okay. Then Sophie glanced around the table. “And more importantly, where is he now?”
“Just look for the orange ghost who’s stealing Jell-O,” Kara said as she pulled out the large sketch pad that never left her side and buried her head behind it. Sophie peered toward the long line at the food counter, where a very orange Malik was hovering over someone’s lunch tray.
“You painted him?” Harvey finally looked up from the pasta he had been shoveling into his mouth.
“I didn’t want to,” Kara wailed from somewhere behind her sketch pad. “But he wore me down. He’s like Chinese water torture. Drip, drip, drip. It was either paint him orange or have my cubist sketch look like something Jackson Pollock’s cat would do. Besides, he promised me that once the paint hit him, it would be invisible to anyone who couldn’t already see him.” Kara cautiously peered over the sketch pad at Sophie. “Are you mad?”
“Of course not.” Sophie shook her head and pulled the sketch pad down so she could clearly see her friend. “You don’t have to tell me how annoying he is. Why do you think I conjure him up so many Cheetos? It’s so I can keep him quiet. Besides, I appreciate your taking him. After the way he behaved in Spanish, I’m surprised that Señor Rena didn’t give me a detention.”
For a moment they were all quiet, as if individually remembering how Malik had started making Sophie’s entire pencil case float in the air like it was possessed. He had even made sound effects, which, judging by the looks people had given them, could be clearly heard by everyone. The annoying thing was that when Sophie had asked him to put off potential house buyers by pretending her house was haunted, Malik had acted like he didn’t have a clue as to what she was talking about.
Finally, Kara spoke. “So how long do
you think he’ll need to stay at school with us? Because we haven’t even lasted half a day yet, and I’m already exhausted. I don’t dare take him back to the art room again since he seemed to think that Colin the winged monkey was some kind of evil demon, and he kept throwing things at it. Now I’m going to have to redo one of the wings because Malik broke it.”
“Oh, Kara,” Sophie groaned. “I’m so sorry about Colin’s wing. I had really hoped Malik would behave himself. But until I get my new appointment with the Djinn Council, I need him to keep training me. We just need to stay positive and think happy thoughts. Pretend that he’s like a puppy.”
“Puppies? Ewh, why are you talking about those hideous creatures?” Malik suddenly appeared next to them, his painted orange face smeared with red Jell-O, making him look like pumpkin roadkill. “By the way, have you tried this stuff? It’s like pond scum but with sugar.” As he spoke he lifted his black leather jacket from where it was draped over his arm to reveal a plate that was stacked with yet more fluorescent Jell-O, all violently wobbling, as if it knew what was coming next.
Why did Sophie get the feeling he hadn’t paid for it either? But before she could say anything, Ben Griggs walked up to the table and gave her two thumbs up before pointing to the guitar pick around her neck. Sophie could only assume that he meant he had managed to convince Principal Gerrard not to give him a detention. She gave him a halfhearted wave in return and tried to ignore the triple strength, venomous glare that Melissa was throwing down from just behind him.
“Whoa, what was that about?” Kara blinked as the two seventh graders walked over to one of the popular tables. “Did you see the way she was looking at you?”
“I know, it was pretty magnificent.” Malik whistled in appreciation. “That girl has serious spunk. I’m thinking that she could definitely play Sharpay in High School Musical. I bet she wouldn’t even need to rehearse.”
