Wishes and Wellingtons

by Julie Berry

  As I say, it’s always a treat to see Polly, and Aunt Vera, a cheerful, clever woman who will talk about anything to anybody, is one of my favorite relatives, but, after they left, I resolved to try to write to Father a bit more often. He was busy most of the time, and fussy over money the rest of the time, but at least he wasn’t silly, with a head full of nonsense, like certain of my sisters. I’ll make no comment about my mother.

  My mind wandered in Miss Guntherson’s French class as I thought and thought about the final wish and how to spend it. I needed a wish with effects that would last for the rest of my life, since this was the finale.

  Why did it have to be the finale? How could I have used my first two wishes so foolishly? I racked my brain to remember all that Mermeros had said about the thieves. The ones who tried to pass the djinni around, and instead went mad and killed each other. Well, no wonder; they were criminals, after all. I wouldn’t trust Tom with Mermeros for one second. Could I trust Alice? Lend her the djinni and ask her to give one of her wishes to me? She had everything money could buy, so she wouldn’t mind. Would she? Surely we wouldn’t murder each other. What rubbish.

  But as I thought on that plan, something turned sour inside my stomach. Yes, I trusted her to hold on to it for me, but if I were to give Alice the djinni outright, and she became its master, anything could happen. I’d no longer be in control. She might lose it, or get some silly, “noble” idea and drop it in the Thames to save me from making any more wishes.

  Or what if she changed? What if power went straight to her head, and she forgot all about her promise to me? She might decide not to share a wish. She might not give me the djinni back. She might hog all the wishes for herself. She might get drunk on power, and then she wouldn’t be shy Alice anymore, the Alice who enjoys the company of someone like me, and—

  I caught myself. Alice? Was I really suspecting things of Alice?

  My face felt hot, and my hands, sweaty. I wanted to race back to the room to check to make sure the sardine tin was where it ought to be.

  I was being silly. Surely I was.

  But no, I wouldn’t give Mermeros away to gain more wishes. Not if it might cost me the only one I had left. My only option was to spend it well.

  I thought about travel, and about my cricket league. I still wanted them desperately. They both cost money.

  In fact, independence cost money, plain and simple. If a girl or woman was to live life on her own terms, she needed money of her own to do it with. If she needed her father or her husband to give her the money, then she was only as free as he allowed her to be. The money came with strings attached. Expectations that must be met.

  And how could a girl earn money of her own? I was certain I had no eccentric uncles out there anywhere ready to die and leave me a fortune. It was so unfair, all rich uncles belonging to some other niece but me.

  I could work for money, of course, once I was grown. But my family would look down on that. So be it; I could shrug off their disapproval. But most of the jobs available to women, and I knew there weren’t many, paid very little. If I were chained to a desk or a sewing machine, figuratively speaking, or a chalkboard like Miss Guntherson, here, I couldn’t very well visit the Pyramids.

  Some people’s lot in life was to be born into fortune, like Theresa Treazleton. Other people, like me, were born into enough for everyday, but not enough to be truly free. I looked out the window at Mission Industrial School and Home for Working Boys. Some people, I reflected, were born into nothing at all.

  I should, no doubt, be more grateful. But I wanted so much more out of life. And I’d been handed a miracle, if not a rich uncle: a wish-granting djinni with one wish left for me. Why not wish myself into vast riches and be free from others’ rules and wishes for me forever?

  I couldn’t see a flaw in this plan. But I bided my time. Two impulsive wishes hadn’t exactly gone as hoped.

  One puzzling thing kept on happening. Whenever I passed by Theresa Treazleton, in the dining room, in a classroom aisle, or in a corridor, she bumped into me, hard. The first time, I thought it was an accident. The second time, I thought she was clumsy. The third time, I thought she was just mean.

  I guess I’m a slow learner. By the fourth time, I’d figured it out. She was trying to find out if I had the sardine can in my pocket.

  My suspicion was confirmed when I came upstairs to my dormitory room and rounded the stairwell just in time to see her tiptoe out of my room, close the door softly behind her, and furtively look both ways. My heart nearly stopped. When she saw me, her face hardened.

  “Looking for something, Theresa?”

  “I don’t know what you’ve done with it,” she hissed, “but we’ll find it. This is war.”

  I laughed in relief. She hadn’t found it, then. My reaction only angered her more. But I ought to give some thought to better hiding places.

  “You think it’s funny,” she said, “punching my face and chopping my hair, but you’ll pay. We will get that djinni. Just see if we don’t. A nasty girl like you doesn’t deserve it.”

  She turned and stormed off to her own room.

  “You think you’re entitled to everything,” I called after her. “You think darling Theresa Treazleton deserves everything her heart desires.”

  “I should say she deserves it more than a reprobate like you,” said Miss Salamanca, popping up in the corridor just then, like a mole from its hole.

  Tommy climbed our drainpipe late one night for a friendly chat. Alice still looked a bit queasy at the prospect of letting a boy into our room, but at least she didn’t scream. Bit by bit, I’d win her over to my life of crime.

  Tommy showed us a little leather thong he’d made to loop around Morris’s leg.

  “With this,” he explained, “I can take Morris for an outing one of these days. In the park, maybe.”

  “They let you go free during the daytime?” asked Alice. “We don’t get to.”

  “Not really,” Tom said. “But things will be more relaxed over the holidays. The masters will stay up late celebrating, and mornings won’t have classes. A good time to come and go.”

  That got me thinking about what Tom’s Christmas season might look like. “What happens at Christmas at your school, Tom?”

  His face stiffened. “Nothing much. Some visitors. From churches and such.” He fingered the leather strap. When he looked up and saw us still watching him, he shrugged. “It’s fine, you know? We’re not expecting presents.” He spoke the last word like it was an object of scorn. I knew better. To misquote Shakespeare—and see, Miss Stratford? I did pay attention—the orphan doth protest too much, methinks. He’d have to be in his coffin not to want presents.

  “I’ll write to you over the holidays, Tom,” I told him. Least I could do. Maybe even send him some shortbread.

  “Don’t,” he said, without looking up. “The masters would be suspicious. None of us gets mail. I’d never see the letter. They’d open it, and I’d get… Well, just don’t.”

  He’d get in trouble for having a friend who’s a girl.

  “So, are we going on another adventure, or what?” asked Tom.

  Alice, whose nausea had finally seemed to pass, now looked greener than ever.

  “Not tonight,” I told him. “I’ve got to think hard about how to use my last wish.”

  Tom’s eyes gleamed. He still thought after I got my last wish, he’d be next.

  “Say, Alice,” he said, “what will you wish for when it’s your turn?”

  Alice blinked. “When it’s my turn?”

  Tom looked surprised. “Hasn’t Maeve told you?” he said. “We’ll all take a turn being its master.”

  I smelled danger. Alice gave me a very curious look. But, old sport that she is, she went along with it. As I say, she was learning every day the arts of subterfuge.

  “My wish is probably
impossible,” she said. “I would wish to leave this school and go home to my grandparents—”

  “Entirely possible,” I said.

  “That would just be the first wish,” Alice said. “And for my second, I would wish for a pure high C that wouldn’t ever crack.”

  “A high what?” Tom looked baffled.

  “Music rubbish,” I explained, having at least the benefit of Miss Salisbury contributing to my education. “She wants a voice that would shatter glass.”

  “I do not!”

  “Go on,” I said. “Both of those wishes seem doable.”

  Alice sighed. “It’s the third one that probably isn’t.” A sad look came over her face. “I would wish that I could always live with my grandparents, and nothing would change.”

  Tommy and I looked at each other. We were both confused.

  “You mean, you wouldn’t grow up?” I asked.

  “Oh, I’d grow up,” she said quickly, “but they wouldn’t grow any older.”

  High C or no, her voice cracked at that.

  “You’re afraid of them dying,” I said softly.

  “Haven’t you got parents?” asked Tom.

  She smiled sadly. “No,” she said. “I’m an orphan, too. But I have the most wonderful grandparents. I miss them so much, being here. And when I think about getting older, I…”

  “You’ll have everything, Alice,” I said. “Homes and carriages and money and all that anybody could want.”

  She looked at me as though I was daft. “And nobody to share it with?”

  Oh.

  “You’ll have friends,” I said. “I’ll be there.”

  “Me too,” Tommy said stoutly, then looked at the floor. “If that’s all right.”

  “Of course, that would be all right,” Alice said, and I could’ve hugged her on the spot. “But you see how it is with Theresa Treazleton, and girls like her. The people that chase after rich friends are usually not the nicest people to have around.”

  “I didn’t know you were rich,” Tommy said. “You don’t, er, act the part.”

  “That’s because she’s our Alice,” I said. I turned to my roommate. “You’re afraid you’ll have no one to trust,” I told her. This was all a revelation to me. I had no idea. I’d never considered it. “Well, don’t worry, Alice. I’ll be there with my cricket bat, and I’ll give those phony types a good crack in the shins.”

  Alice grinned.

  Footsteps sounded outside the hall. We froze, and Alice blew out her candle. Finally, when it seemed safe, Tommy crept out the window and slid down the pole.

  “Maeve,” Alice whispered, when he was gone, “why did Tommy think I’d get a turn with the djinni?”

  I gulped.

  “Does he think he’ll get the djinni when you’re done with it?”

  I squirmed between the sheets. “I believe he does.”

  “You believe he does,” she echoed. “And will he?”

  Egads. She was as persistent as a detective in a story. “It doesn’t work that way.”

  “But you haven’t made that clear,” she said. “You’re letting him think he’s next.”

  “So he doesn’t rob me,” I protested.

  “But, Maeve,” Alice said. “Tommy thinks you’re his friend. Aren’t you?”

  I said nothing.

  “You wouldn’t lie to your friends, would you, Maeve?”

  She stabbed my heart. No, my conscience. “I’ve never told you anything untrue, Alice.” Just the kind of slippery, slimy thing Mermeros would say.

  “That’s not the same thing,” she said, and eventually, went to sleep.

  Chapter 19

  Days passed, one after another, and Alice’s disappointment in me was never mentioned again. We didn’t see Tommy, so I put my guilty conscience out of my mind. I thought constantly about Wish Number Three, but I couldn’t satisfy myself as to the exact, ideal words.

  Mr. Treazleton’s words and Theresa’s treachery, likewise, faded from my thoughts, though I shouldn’t have let them fade. My mind was soon occupied with plans for the Christmas holidays. Needlework class had shifted from embroidery to knitting, and we were all busy making mufflers and mittens for the poor boys at Mission Industrial School and Home for Working Boys. It made me laugh to think of Tommy as a “poor boy,” though, of course, I supposed he probably hadn’t a shilling to his name. My muffler was the worst of any girl’s at Miss Salamanca’s school, and, as for mittens, Miss Bickle, the needlework instructor, gave up on me altogether. Alice knitted mine for me.

  Her sunburn had faded to a golden glow by the time the hallowed tradition of the muffler-mitten hand-off rolled around. The weather lost its golden glow and settled into a chilly winter. Just right for Advent, holly berries, candles in frosty windows, and the coming of Christmas.

  On the day of the charitable home’s Christmas treat, we were given an early tea, then sent to our rooms to dress in our matching plaid uniform capes and bonnets. Apparently, we would be seen at our most adorable that way, not that I gave a fig about that. I had an idea, one planted in my mind by Mr. Treazleton himself. I wanted to talk to Alice about it.

  “Would you help me get the sardine can down from the shelf?” I asked her as soon as we were both in our room.

  “Hush!” She gestured toward the door, where girls’ footsteps tramped past our room in the corridor.

  “It’s just sardines,” I teased her. “My favorite teatime snack on toast.” I dropped my voice to a whisper. “I think I have an idea for my final wish. Want to hear it?”

  Alice opened the closet, removed the shelf, and pulled the sardine can out from its hiding place, then reached for her winter things. “Go on, then.”

  I took the can and spun it slowly between my thumb and finger. Not fast enough to bother Mermeros, I figured. But if it made him a little bit queasy, I wouldn’t mind.

  How best to explain what I had in mind? I’d thought about it a thousand ways. But it all boiled down to one necessary thing, and it made for the simplest explanation.

  “I’ll wish for a fortune,” I told Alice. “Bags and bags of money. More than I could ever need. Then I can use it to do whatever I might wish for in the future—travel, buy a home, start a cricket league for girls. What do you think?”

  Alice frowned. “Money?”

  She looked at me as though I had mustard smeared all over my frock. I didn’t like it.

  “Why, what’s wrong with money?” I demanded.

  She settled her bonnet over her golden curls. “It’s just so… I don’t know. Anybody can wish for money. Most people do. It seems like some of the meanest people do nothing but wish for money.”

  “It’s not the money I want,” I explained. “It’s what the money will buy. I’m not greedy.”

  Mermeros’s warning from the cellar flashed before me, but I pushed it aside. I wasn’t greedy. I wasn’t like those others he was talking about. Besides, who knew if he was even telling the truth about people’s lives being ruined, and all that rubbish? The full truth, I mean, without slippery exaggeration. The big windbag was probably just trying to scare me, just as Mr. Treazleton had tried to do.

  Alice never liked to make anyone unhappy. I knew these questions were making her uncomfortable. “Maeve, you’re not like other people. The wish to visit Persia… That was you all over. It was a ‘Maeve’ wish to make. Dangerous, and daring, and full of mystery.” She smiled. “Even turning Theresa and Honoria’s braids green. That was classic Maeve. Attack first and think later.”

  I laughed. It had been a waste of a wish, but worth it, too.

  “I only have one wish left, Alice,” I told her. “I squandered the others. Money’s the best way to make all the other wishes I’ve been dreaming of come true.”

  Alice shook her head. “Don’t turn into a…a banker now, Maeve. Don’t
be a miser or a moneybags. Be you. Do something exciting. Something spectacular.”

  I couldn’t stop what came out of me next. Or, perhaps I could, but I didn’t want to. “That’s easily said when you’re Alice Bromley, sole granddaughter of the Grosvenor Square Bromleys,” I said. It was rotten of me. I wasn’t sorry. “You can have anything you want, anytime you want it. If you wanted a cricket league, you could form one tomorrow.”

  Alice looked stung. Immediately I was sorry. Alice could have anything she wanted, but she didn’t. Some girls took every occasion to flaunt their dresses and travels and bijoux. Not Alice. You’d never know she came from wealth.

  I reached for Alice’s hand. “That was beastly of me,” I said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.”

  Alice tried to smile, but her face was sad. “I know you didn’t.”

  Trust Alice Bromley to be so good a soul that her wealth made her feel badly about it.

  She met my gaze fixedly. “I’m beginning to think,” she said, “that the things we want most in life shouldn’t come as granted wishes. If we don’t work for them, what do they even mean? Do they even matter?”

  I was beginning to see the truth. Quiet Alice Bromley could see right through me. It was a good thing she was my friend. Even if she made me squirm.

  “Miss Merritt! Miss Bromley!” bellowed Miss Guntherson’s very un-French voice from downstairs. “Everyone else is ready for their errand of mercy but you!”

  I quickly hid the sardine can under my pillow, then scurried into my winter things and followed Alice down the stairs at a trot. This third wish needed more thinking. Alice was right about wishing for money.

  Was Mermeros right, too?

  Chapter 20

  We assembled in the paved courtyard where we had greeted our families on visiting day. We would assemble there again the next morning when they came to bring us home for the holidays. I couldn’t wait.