The Art of Wishing Page 4

  Oliver was watching me closely now. His fingers were pressed together so forcefully that the tips had gone white.

  “You don’t mean . . . do you mean me? This is magic I can use?”

  “Yes,” he said easily, but his eyes still searched mine for a reaction.

  I licked my lips. “Why me?”

  “Because you found my ring,” he replied patiently, like it was perfectly obvious.

  I frowned at him. “Well, sure. But I found it by accident.”

  “Most people do,” he said.

  “Oh.” I shifted in my seat, all too aware of the ring’s presence in the pocket of my jeans. I’d been wrong. Tom’s definitely wasn’t the appropriate place to talk about things like this. “So, what now? What do I do?”

  “Well,” he said, holding my gaze steadily with those intense green eyes, “you could give the ring back to me, and forget any of this ever happened. Or you could tell me what you want me to do for you.”

  I paused. He hadn’t offered me this choice back in the girls’ bathroom. What had changed between then and now? Why was this supposed magic suddenly at my disposal?

  “Okay,” I said, pressing my flimsy napkin between my hands. “Let’s say I kept the ring. Theoretically. And let’s say all this magic stuff is for real. Again, theoretically. What could you do? If I asked?”

  “Well, there are limits,” he said, almost apologetically. “Like, I can’t change the past, and I can’t see the future. But other than that, you can ask me for any three things you want. And if I have enough power for them, I’ll give them to you.”

  Something slid into place in my head. “Wait. Did you just say three things?”

  He nodded slowly, watching me begin to understand.

  “Are you . . . ?” But I couldn’t quite bring myself to say the word. It was too impossible—and I would feel too stupid if he told me I was wrong.

  “I’m a genie.” Oliver’s face shone with pride. “Which means I have the power to grant you three wishes. Now, where are my waffles?”

  As if on cue, our waiter returned with our food. Oliver used the side of his fork to cut his waffle, and I watched as he carefully assembled each forkful, making sure to have at least one taste of each topping on every bite. He set the cherry aside. I wondered if he was going to save it for last.

  So we were still going to eat a meal, like normal people. Okay, I could do that. But when I picked up my burger, I realized my hands were unsteady. So I went for the French fries instead, dipping them in ketchup, chewing them slowly, and watching Oliver the whole time.

  “Good fries?” asked Oliver, about halfway through his waffle. He was a hell of a fast eater.

  “Uh-huh,” I managed.

  “Can I steal one?”

  That was it. Claiming to have mystical, supernatural powers was one thing, but doing so while eating my food was quite another.

  “Okay, you said you’re a what?”

  “A genie,” he said, lowering his fork to his plate.

  “Right,” I murmured. “So, genies are real. You are a genie. I get three wishes. Okay. What else? Do you live in a bottle?”

  “No,” he said, sounding almost offended. “I live in an apartment.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  There was a pause.

  “Are you seriously telling me the truth about all this?” I asked.

  “I seriously am,” he replied. “I was also serious about stealing a fry.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, take the fries. Have as many as you want. But, I mean, you don’t look like a genie.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “You mean I’m not blue and I don’t sound like Robin Williams?”

  “That’s not what I meant,” I said.

  He grinned at me.

  “Okay, fine, that’s what I meant. But I mean, look at that movie. Aladdin rubs the lamp, right, and it’s all fireworks and explosions, and out pops this genie, and you look at him and you go, ‘Oh, hey, look, it’s a genie.’ But you? You look . . . normal.”

  “Except for when I disappear.”

  “Well, yeah, except for that. But how do I know—”

  “How do you know I’m not going to wait for you to make a wish, and then point and laugh and tell everyone at school that you fell for it?”

  I stared at him. Yes, it was exactly that. In fact, the thought was so true that it could have come out of my own mouth, if only I’d known how to phrase it accurately.

  “Try it,” he said, waggling his eyebrows conspiratorially. “Make a wish. I won’t tell anyone, I promise.”

  I suddenly felt very small. “What, you mean right now?”

  “Why not?” He popped a fry into his mouth. “I’m a genie, and you’re a person who wants a whole bunch of stuff. Let’s do this.”

  A trillion dollars. A mansion. A pony. What was I supposed to wish for, anyway? And how disappointed would I be if it didn’t work?

  “Ponies are hard to take care of,” said Oliver, taking a few more fries. “Really messy, too. You’d be surprised how many people don’t think of that.”

  “Wait, what?” I said, my heart suddenly racing as I sat up straight in my seat. “How did you . . . Do you read people’s minds, too?”

  “Not everyone’s,” he said, and a hint of pride flitted across his face again. “But yours, yes. When you picked up my ring, it opened a link between your mind and my magic. I can’t see all your thoughts, but I can see the ones about wanting. The ones that might turn into wishes. That way, when you make your wishes, I can see the shape of the desire behind them. None of that stuff about wording things exactly right so your genie doesn’t screw you over. You make a wish, I give you what you want. Easy as that.”

  Too easy, I thought, for the second time that night—but even as I thought it, I could feel curiosity stirring. There was something perversely fascinating about the idea of someone else being in my head. My ego stood at full attention, wondering what other thoughts Oliver could see.

  “I could tell you, if you want,” he said, which startled me. As cool as it might be to have him in my head, the one-sided conversation was definitely weird.

  “Why not?” I said, throwing my hands up. “Go ahead.”

  He leaned forward in his seat, folding his hands neatly and cocking his head just so. The entire pose looked staged, right down to the thoughtful expression on his face, like this was a show he’d performed a thousand times before.

  “Let’s see. Well, first off, you want this conversation to be happening somewhere classier than a diner.”

  Oliver was absolutely right, but before I could tell him so, he gave a casual wave of his hand—and suddenly we weren’t in the diner anymore. Where the tacky food cartoons had been, there were now panels of light wood, tastefully decorated with simple, bright paintings of flowers and trees. Soft light shone from candles in sconces, illuminating our food, which now rested on delicate china instead of cracked diner plates. Savory, mouthwatering smells emanated from the kitchen.

  I put my hand against the seat to steady myself, but pulled it away again when my fingertips touched velvet instead of vinyl.

  “What the,” I breathed, half enthralled and half terrified. “What did you do?”

  “I gave you what you wanted,” he said smoothly. “Well, one of the things you wanted. I can also see that you want me to be lying, so you can finish your dinner and go home with everything back to normal.”

  He paused to let me reply, but I didn’t. Nothing was going back to normal any time soon, whether I wanted it to or not.

  “Next,” he continued, “you want your family back to the way it was.”

  “Ha!” I said, pointing at him. “You’re a year too late for that one. My family’s already back to how it was.”

  He regarded me steadily for a moment, like he was trying to piece something together. After a moment he gave a huff of laughter and shook his head. “Oh, I see. My mistake. Well, you want Vicky’s part in the musical, but everyone knows that. You a
lso want everyone to think you’re perfectly fine with the part you got instead.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “I am perfectly fine with it.”

  “If you say so,” he said with a shrug. “You want to be closer to your mother than you are. You want to get accepted to a good college, so you can move away. You want to write your own music, so you aren’t stuck putting your own spin on songs that have been sung by hundreds of other people before you—”

  “Okay, okay, stop it,” I said, forcing a laugh. “I believe you, all right? But can we get back to the part where this is not Tom’s Diner? We were just in Tom’s, and now we are in a fancy café.”

  “Yes we are,” he agreed, smiling like it was the most natural thing in the world. “And I’m glad you believe me.”

  “I believe something, anyway,” I murmured, pushing myself to my feet. An elegant older woman was smoking a cigarette, Breakfast at Tiffany’s style, near the door, and I was struck with the sudden urge to go over there and become her best friend so we could sip coffee together and talk about our endless ennui. I wondered if the Eiffel Tower would be across the street, instead of the Exxon station.

  But before I could figure out how to move my feet, our waiter appeared beside me. Except he was definitely not the same waiter as before. Standing as straight as a soldier, he wore an expensive-looking vest over a crisp button-down shirt, and regarded me with the benevolent patience of someone who knew exactly how to get a good tip.

  “May I interest either of you in a glass of wine?” he asked.

  “Wine?” I said. I’d had wine with my mom a couple of times, and I didn’t like it much. But the cozy, elegant atmosphere of this place somehow made the idea of wine very appealing. “Wine . . . yeah . . . I mean no! No wine. Thanks, but we’re fine.”

  The waiter nodded, and I watched him move toward the woman with the cigarette. He said something to her, and she laughed: the tinkling laugh of a black-and-white movie star.

  “Go ahead,” came Oliver’s voice, cutting into my thoughts. “Pick any three things you want, and wish for them.”

  Finally I forced myself to look back at him. He was lounging in his seat like he owned the place—like a salesman trying to impress a customer. Except there was a nervous edge to his posture, and a sharpness in his eyes, that gave me pause. There was way more happening here than just a sales pitch from him and a yes-or-no answer from me.

  I narrowed my eyes a little. “What’s in it for you?”

  “What?” he said, clearly taken aback.

  “If I make three wishes, what’s in it for you?” Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out the ring. I put it on the table in front of me, and it glinted in the candlelight. “Before, you wanted me to give this back. You weren’t even going to tell me about the wishes, and now you’re all, ‘Make wishes and solve all your problems, and by the way, let’s go to a fancy café!’ Why? What do you get out of it?”

  “A job well done,” he said.

  I laughed. “Please. I want a real answer, Oliver. I’m serious. Why did you do all this? Why do you want me to make three wishes?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Real answer, huh?” he said. I nodded, and he shifted anxiously. “All right, then. I like your wishes, Margo. The ones I can see in your head. I want you to make three wishes because after I leave this place, I won’t be able to grant wishes again for a very long time. Maybe forever. And if that’s the case, then, well, I want the last wishes I grant to be good ones.”

  Now it was my turn to be startled. “Good ones? Wait. Why do you need to leave? Didn’t you just transfer to Jackson High a couple months ago?”

  “I did. And I need to leave because there’s someone looking for me, and I . . .” He paused for a breath, then said carefully, “I’d rather he didn’t find me.”

  “Who is it?”

  Oliver shifted in his seat. “He was my master once. And a friend, at least for a while. I granted two wishes for him, but he returned my ring without making a third. He said it wasn’t time yet.”

  I peered at him. “But it’s time now?”

  “Yes.”

  “And I’m guessing his third wish won’t be of the happy, sparkly, cupcakes-for-everyone variety.”

  “You could say that.”

  “So why wait?” I asked, exasperated at how little sense he was making. “Why are you sitting here with me, instead of hiding?”

  “For the reason I told you,” he said with a soft smile. “Well, that and the logistical stuff.”

  “Logistical stuff?”

  “Sure. The moment you picked up my ring, it bound me to you. So until you make three wishes or give the ring back to me, my magic and I are yours to command. I can’t leave until then. Like I said: logistics.”

  His tone was light, but that serious edge still lingered around his eyes. He was here because he was trapped here, that was what he was saying. Suddenly, the candlelight and fancy décor were terribly distracting.

  “Take me back,” I said immediately. “The diner. I want the diner again. Take me back, okay?”

  Alarmed, Oliver waved his hand again. The French café thing vanished, and I was surrounded once again by vinyl seats, cartoon food, and useless jukeboxes. I made myself breathe. Oliver watched me uneasily.

  “Are you serious about wanting to grant wishes for me?” I asked. “Instead of, you know, running away?”

  He nodded, relaxing again. “I was. Still am. I mean, the sooner the better, obviously, but . . . yes.”

  “How soon?”

  He lifted his wrist, like he was checking an invisible watch. “Five minutes ago?” he said, with a little laugh that I didn’t quite believe.

  I bit my lip, more torn than I could say. Make three wishes now, when my brain was full to bursting and I could barely think, or lose my chance to make wishes at all.

  “Vicky had your ring before me, didn’t she,” I said. It wasn’t a question, but he nodded anyway. “So why not just let her wishes be the last ones you grant?”

  “Why not indeed,” he said, an edge of bitterness in his tone. “Well, she made a wish that . . . let’s just say she wasn’t happy with the result. But instead of letting me fix it, she abandoned my ring. That’s when you found it,” he added hopefully.

  So she’d made crappy wishes, and he wanted me to do better. No pressure at all. I shook my head. “Listen, Oliver, thanks for all this—the mind-reading, the teleporting-me-to-a-café thing, the wishes—but I can’t do it. Not this fast. If you want me to keep the ring and make wishes, then I will, but I have to make a plan first.”

  “A plan?” he said, raising his eyebrows.

  “Yes,” I said firmly. “I can’t just pull wishes out of thin air, you know? I need time to think about them.”

  “How much time?”

  “I don’t know! Just . . . time. A day or two, maybe.” I paused, taking in his troubled expression. “And you obviously don’t have a day or two. Look, you said you can leave if I give the ring back to you. So here’s me, giving it back.”

  I pushed the ring a few inches toward him. He looked at it with suspicion, but didn’t move to take it back.

  “Go ahead,” I said. “It’s your choice.”

  He was silent for a moment as he studied me with a gaze so keen that I found myself fighting the urge to sink down in my seat. “A day or two won’t kill me,” he mused thoughtfully. Then he smiled—a small, hopeful smile that spread slowly until it reached his eyes and made them shine.

  “I think you should keep it.”

  Chapter FOUR

  “If you had three wishes,” I asked Naomi, after we’d finished our in-class assignments in French the next day, “what would you wish for?”

  “Random,” she said, resting her chin in her palm. “Probably the usual stuff. Winning the lottery, finding true love, world peace. What about you?”

  “I don’t really know,” I replied, which wasn’t exactly the truth. I had some ideas, most vague, one very specific. But world peace—I had
n’t even thought of that. Should I wish for world peace? That’s what any decent person would do, right?

  “Then why’d you ask?”

  Because if I’m going to be the sort of person who believes in magic, I want to do it right. But obviously I didn’t say that. What I did say was, “Just curious. I watched Aladdin last night.”

  That part was true. I’d dug out my DVD last night after dinner, which had thrilled Mom. She and Dad had raised me on a steady diet of all the Disney classics, and she was quick to turn my hour and a half of genie research into a full-blown popcorn-fueled family night, just like when I was a kid. Not that any of the research paid off, of course. Aside from a few interesting wish ideas—I mean, who wouldn’t want their own pet monkey?—all I’d ended up with was a weird dream about Oliver Parish piling baklava on top of me, then vanishing in a puff of blue smoke.

  She grinned. “Aw, I love that movie. Hey, remember my Princess Jasmine costume? Second grade, right? I won the costume contest that year.”

  The memory of Naomi in a blue tiara and poofy pants made me laugh. Which, of course, brought Mlle Bernstein slinking suspiciously over to our desks. She gave extra credit assignments to Naomi and me, mostly to keep us quiet until everyone else finished. That was fine by me. I was counting down the minutes until the bell rang and I could find Oliver in the hallway, and the extra work kept me from watching the clock.

  World peace. Huh.

  When French finally ended, I darted into the hallway—and there was Oliver, waiting for me just outside the door, wearing a backpack and the same gray hoodie.

  “Hey!” I said, a little bit taken aback. “I was just about to come find you.”

  “I know,” he replied. My confusion must have shown on my face, because he grinned down at me. “You want to make a wish.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “You can read my mind from three classrooms away?”

  He laughed. “Hey, don’t look at me like that, okay? I wasn’t eavesdropping or anything. I just sort of . . . overheard you. So what’ll it be? I have a few minutes before Brit Lit if you want to wish right now.”