by Liz Kessler
“How can you smile at a time like this?” I gasped.
She continued to smile. “Daisy, I was one of the few who said you were ready,” she said. “Thank you for proving me right.”
“Right about what? What have I done?” I asked. I didn’t want to talk about me and what I could do! I wanted to talk about Philippa!
“You’ve passed your task, Daisy. Compassion. You’ve shown you can care. And I knew you could. I knew we were right to give you this task.”
I didn’t really understand what she was talking about — and to be honest, I wasn’t really interested. All I knew was that I desperately wanted her to tell me they would do what I was asking. I’d worry about the consequences another time.
“Yes, Daisy. We will help,” she added simply.
A moment later, something emerged from inside the rainbow. A new wish voucher! They’d agreed to my request! I could help Philippa!
“She can use it anytime. No need for shooting stars with this one. And Trisha’s wish will be canceled immediately.”
“Oh, thank you,” I cried. “Thank you!”
“Hurry up now, but remember your life cycle,” FGRainbow9254 whispered as she began to break up and fade. “You haven’t got long.”
“Thank you so much,” I said again. Then I used all the energy I could gather to get myself out of there and back to school.
Two more acts, and then it was my turn. By now, my legs should have been turning to jelly. My insides should have been turning to mush, my heart should have been racing like a train out of control. Instead, I felt calmer than I’d felt in weeks. There was no need to be nervous. The past was the past. I was different now.
The only thing that bothered me was the fact that I would never really know what people thought of my magic tricks. Because of my silly wish, everyone would probably spend the rest of the week telling me how fantastic I was — but it would only be because they’d been brainwashed into thinking that everything I did was amazing!
And the fact that my parents weren’t here. I ached from how much I wanted my old parents back.
Trisha was still around. I saw her in the wings on the other side of the auditorium, waving the wish voucher at me and smiling and looking pointedly at the clock. Let her. Let her do whatever she wanted. She wasn’t going to get to me.
“Philippa!”
I turned to see who was calling me.
Daisy! She burst through the back curtains just as the act before me went onstage. Danny Treldwin, second-grader, was doing a series of dances. I was next.
“Daisy!” I breathed. “You made it!”
She looked around to check that no one was watching us. “I got you this!” she said, panting and breathless. She held something out to me. Something that sparkled and shone and sent all the colors of the rainbow whispering around the hall. “It’s another wish,” she said, handing me the voucher.
“But how come? Where did you get it?” I asked, taking the wish voucher from her.
“I got them to give me another one. I pleaded with them.” She laughed. Her laugh turned quickly to a hacking cough, and she reached into her bag for some water.
“Daisy, are you OK?” She looked terrible. Her eyes were sunken dark holes in her face. Her hair was matted and so thin you could see her scalp.
“I’m fine,” she gasped. “Just use the wish. You can have the confidence now.”
“But the shooting star?”
“It doesn’t matter. You can use it anytime. It’s an Emergency Wish Voucher. Use it — it’s yours!”
I looked down at the voucher in my hand. I had another chance at my final wish. I could use it just as we’d said. As I stood in the dark hall, I could hear the music change for Danny’s final dance.
I stepped to the side, peering around the curtain at the audience. A few more minutes and it would be me on that stage, all those eyes on me.
My stomach turned over. I held the voucher out and was about to make my wish to banish away the fear.
“Well, well, well.”
Trisha.
“What do you want?” I asked coldly.
“I just wondered if you’d like to know what I’m going to wish for.”
As I looked at her face, contorted with meanness and spite, I felt something change inside me. The fear in my gut was replaced with anger. “I don’t care,” I said slowly. “I don’t care what you wish for. I don’t care what you do — in fact I don’t care about anything to do with you!”
Trisha stared at me, for once shocked and speechless. As we held each other’s eyes, I realized how true my words were, how she couldn’t harm me anymore.
“You see,” I went on, my voice calm and measured, “I don’t care about people who only get their kicks from making other people’s lives worse. I don’t care what you do with the wish because whatever it is, it won’t be real. I won’t let anything you do affect me. You’re welcome to the wish voucher.” I smiled at Trisha. “In fact, if you think that the wish can improve your life, then I feel sorry for you.” As I spoke, everything I’d ever felt toward her — the jealousy, the anger, the humiliation — everything she’d ever done to me turned into one thing. Pity.
Trisha didn’t say anything. She was still looking at me with a strange expression on her face. Disbelief, I think it was. That was probably the first time anyone had stood up to her like that. It was certainly the first time I’d stood up to her — and it felt good!
“Oh, and by the way, Trisha,” Daisy said, “your wish voucher has been canceled. You can’t use it anyway.”
“What?” Trisha reached into her pocket for her voucher — but when she pulled her hand out, it was full of what looked like shredded paper. It fell through her fingers, dissolving and floating away like a handful of ash. “What have you done with it?” she seethed.
Daisy shrugged. “I guess some things are more powerful than nastiness and spite,” she said.
Smiling broadly, I turned back to Daisy as Danny’s last song drew to a close. “Can I really use this now?”
She nodded.
“And I can wish for anything I want?”
“Anything.” The song ended. Glimpsing around the curtain, I saw Danny take a bow as the audience burst into applause.
This was it. My one chance to wish for all the confidence I’d never had, my chance to undo the humiliation from all those years ago, my chance to seal the popularity I’d begun to have.
I looked again at Trisha’s stunned face, and I knew exactly what to wish for.
The clapping was starting to die down.
“Hurry,” Daisy said.
“OK.” I took a deep breath. “Here goes. I wish . . .” I glanced at Daisy. She nodded for me to continue.
“I wish,” I started again. I glanced at Trisha, who was watching to see what I was going to say. The clapping had finished. Mr. Holmes was onstage introducing me. I had a minute. I knew exactly what I wanted.
I spoke loud and clear. “I wish that I could undo my previous wishes.” Just the chance to be myself again. I wanted it more than anything.
Daisy gawped at me. Trisha’s mouth was so wide open that I could see her tonsils.
“I don’t want to be the most popular girl in the school,” I went on. “I just want to be me. I want people to either like me or not, but for it to be because of me, because of who I am. And I want my parents back. My crazy, nutty, embarrassing, wonderful, amazing parents.”
I glanced again at Daisy. She was smiling now. Even Trisha’s face had changed. I saw something new in her eyes. What was it — respect? I couldn’t tell. I didn’t care. What mattered most was how I felt about myself.
“You’re sure?” Daisy asked.
Before I had a chance to reply, Mr. Holmes came offstage. “You’re on,” he said with a wink. I picked up the box beside me with all the objects I needed for my magic show and headed for the stage.
I paused in the wings to look back at Daisy. Holding out the voucher in my palm, I said, �
��I’m sure. That’s my wish. Undo it all!”
With that, the voucher flew from my hand. Floating above my head, it burst into a flame of color, filling the air with swirling, whirling rainbows. Among the colors, I walked onto the stage and took a bow.
The audience looked back at me from the darkness, hundreds of pairs of shocked eyes. They must have thought the colors were my first trick! As I scanned the rows of faces, I could already tell that no one was looking at me with the expression they’d had for the last few days — that I was the most fantastic person they’d ever met, without having any reason to feel that way. It was all up to me to make them feel that way. If I did, great! But if I didn’t, well, that was fine, too.
I was about to start my first trick when there was a disturbance at the back of the hall. People were turning in their seats to see what was happening as the doors opened and a man and a woman burst through, apologizing as they searched the rows of seats for somewhere to sit down.
Mom and Dad!
Dad’s hair bounced uncontrollably as they shuffled along a row of seats. Mom was wearing her torn old MEAT IS MURDER T-shirt. For a moment, the pair of them attracted more attention than me, and they weren’t even performing! In the old days, I would have died right then and there, on the stage in front of the whole school. I’d have wondered how on earth they could embarrass me like that; I’d have wanted to run away and never show my face in public again.
Instead, I had never felt happier to see anyone in my whole life.
“Sorry we’re late,” Dad mouthed at me. And then they settled into their seats and the auditorium gradually fell into an expectant hush.
“Before I start my show, I’ll need a couple of volunteers,” I began. I looked down at Mom and Dad. “Maybe you could help me.”
As my parents joined me onstage, I couldn’t suppress a smile. They smiled back. I wanted to throw my arms around them — but that could wait. There was magic to be done.
“For my first trick, I am going to show you how to make your parents’ money disappear before their eyes.”
A ripple of laughter spread through the audience. I turned to Dad. “Sir, do you have a five-dollar bill on you?”
Dad handed me a five. With a flourish, I took it from him and began my first trick.
I’d done it. I’d finished my magic show. The audience had been on their feet cheering and clapping and whistling for the last five minutes and weren’t showing any signs of stopping yet. I couldn’t stop smiling.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the star of tonight’s talent show and winner of a vacation for herself and her family, Miss Philippa Fisher!” Mr. Holmes raised my hand in the air as the audience erupted again.
Surely he was joking. I turned to look at him, and he handed me the envelope with the prize vacation voucher in it. I’d won the talent show! I’d really won it. Me, Philippa Fisher!
The hall was filled with smiling faces — all looking at me! And it wasn’t because they’d been fooled into believing I was popular. It was all totally, one-hundred percent, wonderfully, fantastically real! Everyone thought I was great — because of what I’d done. Because of my talent. Because of me.
I had to find Daisy.
As soon as the clapping died down, I ran backstage. All the other acts were there, standing around chatting together. “Philippa, you were awesome!” said a girl who’d done a mime routine. Her friends nodded their agreement.
I looked into their faces. All I could see in them was genuine approval of me and my act, not some blind hero-worship because of a wish. “Thanks,” I said gratefully. “You have no idea what that means to me.” They really didn’t.
I looked around. “Have you seen Daisy?”
“Sorry.” They shook their heads.
I ran all around the hall. “Daisy!” I called, opening doors and calling out to her everywhere. Nothing. Where was she?
As I made my way back to the main hall, I noticed a side door that was hardly ever used. It was open. Out in the yard, I saw her by a bench.
“Daisy!” I called.
She could hardly stand up. “I just needed some air,” she said, her voice rasping and hoarse. Leaning on the bench for support, she smiled weakly at me. “You did it.”
“We did it,” I corrected her. “I’d never have managed it without you.”
Daisy smiled feebly. “You did it, Philippa. You stood up to Trisha; you did the show. You won everyone over. You. Remember that.”
“OK.” I nodded. “I will.”
“Good.” Daisy tried to smile again, but even that looked like too much effort. Her face was gray, her eyes tiny black dots.
“Daisy,” I said, my voice cracking almost as much as hers. “What’s happening to you?”
“I’ve got to leave now,” she said. She had her MagiCell in her hand. “I’ve only got a couple of minutes left.”
A couple of minutes? She was really leaving me now? But she couldn’t! “Don’t go!” I urged. “Can’t you ask for longer?”
She shook her head. “The life cycle’s nearly finished.”
“But I want to thank you.”
Daisy weakly raised a hand. “Hey, I thought we’d established that you’re the one who achieved this. You don’t need to thank me. I messed it all up. It was you who did it.”
I shook my head. “Not for the wishes,” I said.
“What, then?”
I paused as I felt my cheeks heat up. “For being my best friend,” I said.
It was only then that I realized it was true. I mean, Charlotte would always be my best friend — but things had changed. It would never be exactly as it had been — and neither would I! And anyway, who said you could only have one best friend?
Daisy’s smile was so wide, it even managed to brighten her face up for just a second.
“Thank you,” she said.
“What for?”
“For teaching me what it’s like to be a real friend.”
“Hey, it was easy,” I said with a laugh. We both knew it had been anything but easy!
“I’ll never forget you,” I said, reaching out to give her a hug. Her frail body sagged against me for a couple of seconds.
“I have to go now,” she said, pulling away. Then she pressed a few buttons on her MagiCell. “Remember: you did it on your own,” she said. “You can do anything!”
And then a sudden mist swept toward us. It picked up leaves and dust along the ground, whipping across my eyes and blinding me for a moment as it swirled across the playground.
When it had passed, Daisy was gone.
I sat on the bench, looking at the playground — emptier and darker than ever before.
“Hey, there you are!” Mom and Dad rounded the corner. Dad bounded over to me and threw his jacket over the arm of the bench as he lifted me off the ground in the biggest hug ever. I’d missed those hugs so much!
Mom was behind him. “We’re so proud of you!” She beamed, kissing my cheeks. “Hey, you’re crying,” she said. “What’s up?”
“Oh, it’s nothing,” I said. “Just happy that you made it.”
“Of course we made it! We wouldn’t have missed it for the world!” Dad said. Digging Mom in the ribs to tickle her, he added, “It was your mother’s fault. She had to drive to some girl’s house to deliver a fairy costume from the shop.”
Mom laughed. “It was so sweet,” she said. “This little girl was absolutely convinced she would meet a real, live fairy as long as she wore the costume. So cute, believing in fairies. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if they really existed?”
“Yeah,” I said, looking up at the mist still swirling in a spiral toward the clouds as Mom and Dad each wrapped an arm around me. “It would be.”
“Come on, then, let’s go home,” Dad said, grabbing his jacket. Then he stopped and bent down again. “Hey, look at this.” He picked something up from the bench. Turning back to us, he said, “How did that get here? These don’t grow on the playground.”
Dad held out
his hand and I peered into his palm.
A daisy.
“It’s beautiful,” Mom said. “I’ve never seen one so perfect. Look at those petals, so shiny. And look at its yellow face. It almost looks as though it’s smiling.”
“It is,” I said, smiling back at it. I could have sworn it shone even brighter then.
“Here.” Dad handed it to me. “You have it. As a reminder of a wonderful evening.”
I took the daisy from him, placing it carefully in my pocket and knowing it was a reminder of so much more than that.
Then Mom and Dad each threw an arm around me again and we ambled out of the playground together, all talking nonstop about the magic tricks I’d done, about the ones they liked best, the ones I’d yet to learn, the new ones I’d learned from The Magician’s Handbook that had fooled even Dad. Others were coming out of the auditorium, crossing the playground. And I was walking across it, arm in arm with my parents!
“Hey, I’m doing a party this Saturday,” Dad said. “Want to help me out?”
I paused for a moment. Could I? After all these years? Had I really managed to put it all behind me? Then I remembered what Daisy said as she’d left. You can do anything.
She was right; I’d proved it tonight. It didn’t matter what anyone else thought. From now on, I was going to be me. I didn’t need false parents, I didn’t need false friends, and I didn’t need to run away from anything or anyone. I could do anything.
I turned to Dad, linking my arm more closely in his. “Of course,” I said with a smile. “I’d love to.”
The fairy stood in front of FGCloud3679 and FGRainbow9254.
“You did a good job,” the white light of the cloud said to her. “You made your client happy — and you passed your extra task. You have developed a level of compassion that enables you to move on to higher levels now.”
“Thank you,” the fairy replied with a smile. “But I did get to work with the best person in the world!”
The cloud smiled back, bunching up and bouncing into a new shape. “I believe she may feel the same way about you, too, Daisy.”
