I brushed my fingers against the metal. Tiny vibrations shuddered up my hand, as if the nearly invisible tattoo across my fingertips was shimmering in harmony with the lamp. Two more wishes, I thought. Two more chances to change my life in any way I wanted.
“Kira!” Maddy called. “Come on! Are you going to play Scrabble?”
My housemate’s voice jerked me back to the present. I wondered how long I’d been standing there, how long I’d been caressing the brass lamp, dreaming of the treasures Teel could give me. I blinked hard, as if I were waking up after a long, restless night. “Um, yeah,” I called back. “But just a sec. I want to show you something.”
I started to carry the lantern out the door, but it didn’t want to go.
Okay. I knew it was an inanimate object. I knew it didn’t really have wants, couldn’t possibly have desires. But it grew heavy as I carried it, suddenly so massive that my arm sagged, my muscles trembled.
I turned back to my desk, and everything was normal.
Scowling, I shifted my grip on the lamp. My fingers must have slipped on its graceful, swooping handle. It must have been weighted, originally for ease of pouring oil, I guessed. There. I had it firmly in hand this time. Two steps toward the door, though, my fingertips started buzzing, itching with a ferocity that was on the edge of stinging.
I wasn’t an idiot. The lamp obviously didn’t want to leave my room.
Shrugging, I set it on my desk. As I moved away, though, it fell over on its side, with a clunk that was mostly muffled by my backpack. I was getting exasperated now—I wasn’t a clumsy person by nature, and there was nothing I had done that should have made the lamp fall.
I righted it and turned to go, only to find that it had fallen again.
So. The lamp didn’t want to come with me, and it didn’t want to stay on my desk. At least it didn’t want to stay upright on my desk.
This was utterly bizarre. The lantern hadn’t had any problems in my father’s office; I hadn’t sensed it jumping around inside my backpack then. It hadn’t moved around while I was driving home; there had been no strange lamp behavior in the car. It hadn’t clunked against my spine through the canvas of my backpack as I walked the three blocks from my car.
And then the answer dawned on me. The lamp didn’t want to be seen by anyone other than me. It hadn’t rebelled at Dad’s, in the car, during my walk, because it had been hidden.
After everything else that had happened in the past two days, thinking of a brass tchotchke as a sentient object didn’t actually sound that strange. I took the lamp from my desk and opened my closet door. By now, I wasn’t surprised that it was happy with that choice; I could feel its satisfaction tingle through the tiny flames on my fingertips.
It was even happier when I shoved it into my hamper. It almost sang when I covered it with my coffee-stained sweatshirt from the day before.
I was still looking at my fingers when I went back into the living room. I forced my voice to be normal, nonchalant even, as I asked, “So what did you guys order?” Before they could answer, I said to Maddy, “Don’t even bother. I know you got the hot and sour soup. And Eight Treasures Chicken.”
Maddy stuck out her tongue. “Am I that predictable?”
I grinned. “If it makes you feel better, you can claim ‘reliable.’ ‘Dependable.’” The truth was that Maddy had chosen hot and sour soup and Eight Treasures Chicken every single time that we’d ordered Chinese in all the years I’d known her. If she had selected anything else, the world would have slipped off its axis. The moon would have crashed into the sea; the earth would have spun into the sun.
That, or I would have been so astonished that I couldn’t have eaten my own meal.
Jules looked up from her perch at the table in the corner of our living room. She had the Scrabble board set up, all of the tiles turned upside down in the top of the game’s box, ready to be selected and played. She flashed me her killer smile. All of us were Scrabble fiends, but Jules had a dictionary embedded in her brain.
I still didn’t understand why Julia Kathleen McElroy had given up on her stage career. She said it was because she was only ever cast as a romantic lead, and she knew that she couldn’t continue that once she lost her looks. That sounded so grounded, so centered, that I knew it had to be a lie. I think that she’d had a bad experience, losing out on one coveted role a few years back. When she succeeded at her next audition, for an industrial training film, she never looked back at the crueler, more objectifying life of live theater.
Jules still looked the part of the girl who got the guy. Her shoulder-length black hair was thick and straight, possessing a magical texture that let it take a curl and hold it, no matter how hard rain or snow fell outside. Her eyes were so green that she was regularly asked if she was wearing contact lenses, which might have annoyed her if her natural vision had not been twenty-ten. Her skin was tawny, and her cheeks were permanently flushed; she looked like she had just come from a tennis game on a sun-drenched court in the Riviera.
If her looks weren’t enough cause for hating her, her love life just might be. Jules had been dating the same guy since high school. She and Justin had been Homecoming Queen and King; they had been voted Most Likely to Marry. The only reason they hadn’t tied the knot yet was that Justin was playing the law firm game, cruising through the ranks at a firm even larger than my father’s. Justin promised Jules that they would get married the year he made partner, when he would be able to spend enough time with her, all the time in the world.
Me? I would have taken the perfect guy, whether he had to work late or not. But what could I say? The delay worked for Jules and Justin. And Maddy and I had never needed to look for a new roommate.
“What did you order, Jules?”
She smiled. “Corn and asparagus soup,” she said. “And Ants Climbing Trees.”
“What’s that?” We’d been ordering from Hunan Delight for years, but Jules still managed to find exotic dishes that I’d never noticed on the menu before.
“Spicy pork over cellophane noodles,” she said, as if ants and trees were as common as peanut butter and grape jelly on Wonder bread. “Want to try some, when it gets here?”
“No thanks,” I said, a little too quickly.
It wasn’t the fact that it was spicy—I liked my food hot. It wasn’t the pork; I was an avowed fan of The Other White Meat. It wasn’t even the cellophane noodles; in the past year, I had developed a love for all carbohydrates, without discriminating against any grains of origin.
I just didn’t like to share my food.
I’m not sure where the aversion came from. Some kids throw fits if one type of food touches another on their plate. Other kids hate to eat green vegetables. Still others refuse to consider trying anything other than chicken fingers or mac and cheese, preferably the neon-orange kind purchased in a bright blue box.
Not me. I was a good eater, even before my TEWSBU-inspired binges took control of my life.
I just didn’t like to share, didn’t like people digging around on my plate with chopsticks or forks, snagging the perfect bite that I’d saved for last. Of course, I knew that I was acting like a baby. I knew that the vast majority of mature adults enjoyed tasting one another’s food. I knew that Chinese food, especially, gave people a chance to try new flavors, to experience with textures.
So, I felt a little guilty. And that guilt kept me from trying other people’s dishes, even when they freely offered their own food.
Jules laughed. She found my aversion to sharing hysterical. She wasn’t above testing me when we went out, asking me for a French fry, or begging for a forkful of salad. I had learned to look her in the eye and call her bluff, volunteering to place an order for a whole new plate of whatever I was enjoying.
What could I say? I was a freak.
As if to confirm my self-diagnosis, the buzzer rang, indicating that the delivery guy was at the front door downstairs. Jules said, “I’ll get it.” She brandished her wallet. “And
that will close out last week’s Scrabble debt in full.” We played for a dollar a point, and Jules had hit a really bad stretch, getting stuck with a U-less Q in three consecutive games.
Maddy and I made noises of agreement as Jules scurried downstairs. I heard the Swensons open their door, and I winced. The delivery guy had obviously rung their doorbell before—or after—he’d rung ours. The financial transaction at the front door was muffled, but I heard Jules say, “Sorry, Mrs. Swenson. Would you like some dumplings?” There was a mumbled reply, and then Jules said, “No, I don’t think any of us has ever gotten indigestion from eating this late. I’m sorry they got the bell wrong. Again.”
She sprinted up the stairs and closed our apartment door, leaning against it in pantomime of being chased by wolves.
“Brave, brave woman,” Maddy said sardonically.
“What were you going to do if she took you up on the dumplings?” I asked.
“Act astonished that Hunan Delight forgot them,” Jules replied, shrugging as she carried her bounty to the kitchen counter. She made short work of parceling out the bright red containers, and we were soon crowded around the Scrabble board, slurping soup before we got to our main dishes.
Knowing how to build tension in a dramatic scene, I waited until they had both selected their seven tiles, hiding them on their trays. Jules flipped over a W. Maddy flipped over an N. I flipped over an E. I got to go first. I pretended to study my tray as I fished out a piece of tofu from my hot and sour soup. I touched one tile, then another, and then I put my spoon back in my bowl. “So,” I said, drawing out the word. “I got a bit of good news yesterday.”
“Your father’s dropping our rent by a hundred dollars,” Maddy said, taking a moment to crumble more fried noodles into her soup. Jules followed suit. I glanced down at my black sweatshirt, momentarily regretting my double order of noodles as I recited my ten thousandth resolution to return to my prewedding-abandonment weight.
What the hell. I was celebrating. If I was going to eat crispy sesame chicken—fried chicken in a sweet, hot sauce—a few extra noodles in my soup couldn’t hurt. I added a thorough handful, taking time to break them into pieces as I enjoyed the anticipation growing on my housemates’ faces.
“Um, not exactly.” I refused to let my LSAT obligation get in the way of my good news. There’d be plenty of time for my housemates to tease me about my study books for the exam, the endless logic questions that I’d leave strewn about the apartment.
“You found the crown jewels from Camelot!” Jules offered.
“No.” I frowned. I’d forgotten they were missing. Oh well, that garage sale bonanza was going to be up to Anna to continue. The Fox Hill fundraiser already seemed very far away. Fearing the next crazy guess my housemates might lob my way, I took pity on their curious faces. “You, dear friends, are looking at the Landmark Stage’s latest stage manager.”
“What?” Jules said, her perfect brow creasing into a frown as she parsed my words, comparing them with her encyclopedic knowledge of local theater productions.
“Really!” Maddy said at the same time. “For what? One of their summer shows?”
“Nope.” I shook my head. “Romeo and Juliet.”
Jules said, “That’s impossible! That’s opening in three months! They must have set the stage manager ages ago.”
My conscience prickled just a little at her words, and I resisted the urge to stare at my fingertips, at their ghostly film of a flame tattoo. Maria’s mother was going to be fine, Bill had said. I didn’t need to worry.
Instead, I raised my chin and announced, “I got the call from Bill Pomeroy yesterday, just as I finished tagging the costumes. His stage manager had some family emergency.” I looked down at my lap, feigning modesty. “I was the first person he called. We had our first rehearsal today.”
My housemates cooed with a gratifying level of support. Maddy said, “Wait a second. That’s the show with Drew Myers, right?”
I surprised myself by blushing as I thought of our leading man’s, er, leading lady’s square jaw. “That’s the one,” I said.
“That’ll fill a few seats in the house.”
I shrugged and tried to sound as if I hadn’t noticed how gorgeous Drew was. “The whole cast is good.”
Maddy waggled her eyebrows. “I’m not talking about acting ability. He played Happy in that Death of a Salesman I worked on last year. And just about every woman in the audience had a smile on her face every time he walked onstage.”
We all laughed. It felt good to share the joke with my housemates. We all knew the Twin Cities theater scene. We all knew just how important this Landmark job could be. I let their kind words break over me, thinking how long it had been since I’d had great news to share.
That could have been because I’d been sacrificing my career for TEWSBU’s, when he and I were still together. It could have been because I’d turned down three great stage management prospects in the year that we were engaged, jobs that would have meant traveling out of town, away from my so-called sweetheart. It could have been because I’d let myself loll in the Fox Hill hammock for too long, lulled into complacency by a steady paycheck, even if that paycheck was lean, and I was bored to tears with second-class renditions of musicals designed to do nothing more than please the masses.
But all of that was behind me now. All of that was history. And I hadn’t even told my housemates the most amazing thing. I glanced at my fingertips again. The flames were too faint to make out in the living room’s shadows. They were never going to believe me when I told them about Teel.
“There’s something else, too,” I said, immediately silencing Maddy’s and Jules’s chattering congratulations. “I didn’t totally get the job on my own,” I said. “I had help.”
“Help?” Maddy asked, spooning up the last of her soup.
I nodded. “I was cleaning up the Kismet costumes, and I found a brass lantern. It must have been part of the set decoration. I started to polish it, when all of a sudden—”
I couldn’t speak.
Just like that, I couldn’t form words. I moved my mouth, but nothing came out; I was as silent as if someone had punched the mute button on my personal remote control device.
I coughed, and that sound was audible. I took a sip of water and started again. “I started to polish it,” I got out without any trouble, but when I tried to say, “and a genie came out,” I was knocked utterly silent again.
“Are you okay?” Maddy asked, putting down her own spoon. “Are you choking?”
I shook my head. “I’m fine,” I said, my voice totally, completely normal.
My housemates stared at me as if I were nuts. Which, all of a sudden, I was beginning to think I might be. I took my last mouthful of soup, swallowed it. There was nothing wrong with my throat. Nothing wrong with me at all. I gritted my teeth, suddenly more determined than ever to complete my story. “I was tagging the last of the Kismet costumes, when I knocked a brass lantern onto the floor. When I picked it up, it was filthy.”
There. That had been easy. I gripped my spoon and clenched my jaw. I took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, and then measured out each word, concentrating on the sounds like a student learning a new language. “I…polished…it…and…then…a—”
Crash.
Without warning, my hand swept across the Scrabble board. I tried to stop my fingers, tried to interrupt the sweeping motion, but it felt like my grip no longer belonged to me. I had no control. I knocked over the game board and all of our tile holders, sending little wooden letters flying across the room. As if for good measure, I turned over Jules’s soup bowl, sending her half-finished corn and asparagus flying across the table, toward my unsuspecting chest.
“Kira!” Jules exclaimed.
Maddy sprang into action, whipping her napkin off her lap and trying to mop up the disaster. Fortunately, Jules’s soup was no longer steaming hot. My tough-as-armor sweatshirt blocked most of it from my skin.
“I am so sorry!
” I said. “I—” How could I explain what had happened? I didn’t even have any idea what had happened.
“That’s okay,” Jules said wryly. “I’d had enough, anyway.”
Maddy’s napkin was quickly soaked, though, and mine had been sacrificed to the initial deluge that seeped down to my lap. I shrugged in disgust and said, “I’ll be back in a sec.”
I pushed away from the table as Maddy and Jules started collecting the Scrabble tiles. They made concerned noises, but I assured them that I’d just had a really strange cramp in my hand. I saw them exchange a look, but they let me go.
I closed my bedroom door behind me and peeled off my sweatshirt. Something had happened there. Something strange. A distinct power had taken over my hands, a definite force that had emanated from the tattooed flames on my fingertips.
I opened my closet door and reached toward the hangers where another half-dozen sweatshirts waited. Before I could seize clean clothes, though, the world around me disappeared.
Yes, I know how bizarre that sounds. Believe me, it was more bizarre when it happened to me. One moment, I was peering into my closet, shaking my head at the strangeness that had overtaken my life. The next, I was standing nowhere, surrounded by nothing, peering at nobody.
Automatically, my arms folded across my chest, as if I could shield my less-than-stunning décolletage from the complete absence of anything familiar around me. I looked around frantically, wondering if I’d accepted Teel’s magical presence too easily. Maybe my first instinct had been correct. Maybe I truly was going nuts.
I glanced down at my feet—they were firmly anchored on top of an invisible surface. I tried shuffling my toes to the side. I kept my balance, which implied that the absent floor extended beneath me in an even plane, but I still couldn’t feel anything of substance. Cautiously, I crouched down, trailing my fingers beside my sock-clad toes.
Nothing.
The space around me wasn’t warm, wasn’t cold. It wasn’t hard, wasn’t soft. It wasn’t dark, wasn’t light. It was like a memory of something from before I’d ever lived, like my personal recollection of what my life had been like a year before I was born.
Act One, Wish One Page 7
