My aunt nodded slowly, her eyes still glued to the cassette.
I almost jumped up with excitement. “So who is she? Who’s Gem? Do you know her?”
Aunt Glinda sighed. “Once upon a time, Gem was me.”
I could only stare at her for a second. “You?” I finally managed. “But … but, how?”
“It was a nickname I had back in middle school. Honestly, no one ever called me that besides my friend Deedee. Glinda was a sparkly good witch, right? Well, Deedee would always tease me about my name being glittery and sparkly, and somehow that turned into her calling me ‘Gem.’ ”
“So this tape was for you?”
“Yes, Deedee made it for me before she moved away. I was looking for it everywhere, but I couldn’t find it. I thought it was lost.” She looked at me. “This was at the Antique Barn?”
I nodded. “In a box with a bunch of other stuff, calendars and things.”
“Ah. I guess I should have gone through them more carefully before I dropped them off.”
My brain was spinning. It wasn’t possible, was it? “So does that mean … the wishing stones I found, were those yours too?”
“Wishing stones?” my aunt repeated. “What wishing stones?”
But they had to be hers, didn’t they? It was the only thing that made sense.
I ran over to my backpack and pulled them out of the inner pocket where I’d carefully hidden them away. When I brought them over to show my aunt, she blinked at them in surprise.
“Oh! These things!” She laughed. “I’d forgotten all about them!”
That couldn’t be right. If she’d made wishes on them, wouldn’t she remember?
“Where did they come from? Did you ever use them?” I asked.
“I must have gotten them when I was about your age. They came from a little gift shop in town, one that doesn’t even exist anymore. I don’t know what possessed me to waste my allowance on them. Anyway, I made a few wishes, but I don’t know that any of them came true.”
“Do you remember what you wished for?”
“Hmm.” She took the stones out of the pouch and looked at each one for a moment. Then she laughed softly. “The Health stone. Oh yes, I remember now. My pet hamster was sick. Captain Squeak, I told you about him the other day. I was scared he was going to die, so I used that stone to wish that he’d be healthy again.”
“Did it work?” I asked.
“I have no idea. A few days later, he ran away and I never saw him again.”
Okay. Well, that didn’t mean her wish hadn’t worked. For all we knew, that hamster was still running around, all these years later, healthy as could be. That had to be why Austin was acting so weird, right? Because my wish had gotten tangled up with my aunt’s, and the stone had started to make Austin act like a healthy hamster?
“What about the others?” I asked.
My aunt picked up the Success stone. “Oh, this one I used before the talent show,” she said. “I wanted to wow everyone with my singing.”
“So what happened?”
“Nothing. I got cold feet before the show and never tried singing in front of people again.”
“But why?” Her wish would have made her win for sure.
“Because I got scared that I’d mess up. There were too many things out of my control, you know?”
Of course, I did know. It was the exact reason I’d chickened out of auditioning for the dance club last year.
“Family,” my aunt said, looking at the stones again. “I don’t remember what I used that one for. Probably something silly like wishing my family were happy.” She glanced at me. “And we were happy, I suppose. Before your mom went away to college and both of our parents passed on, things were actually really nice.” She sighed. “But I guess life runs its course, whatever you wish for.”
It made sense that nothing too bizarre had happened with my Family wish, since my aunt and I had pretty much wished for the same thing.
“And the Friendship stone?” I asked.
“That one is easy. I used it to get Deedee Lewis to become my best friend.” Aunt Glinda laughed. “My ‘friend soul mate,’ in fact. But of course, that only worked for about a month. Then Deedee’s mom got a new job and they moved away over the summer. I never saw her again.”
“Friend soul mate,” I repeated in a whisper. It was exactly what Elijah had said the other day. That couldn’t be a coincidence.
Then it hit me. Elijah Lewis-Green. Was it possible that Deedee Lewis was Elijah’s Mama Dee?
No. It couldn’t be. Elijah had nothing to do with my wish. He was a nice guy who’d offered to help me out, that was all.
A guy who always happened to come along at the exact right time when I needed him? Who showed up at Aunt Glinda’s house with a picture for Austin when there was no way he could have known I was going to be there? Who had become the very friend I needed after everything fell apart with Cassa?
I closed my eyes, suddenly feeling dizzy.
“Lexi? Are you okay?” Aunt Glinda asked.
“Could you give me a ride to Elijah’s house? I really need to talk to him.”
When I got to Elijah’s, I tried knocking on the front door, but no one answered. After hesitating for a minute, I went around the side of the house and knocked on the shed door. I could hear faint music coming from inside.
I knocked again, louder this time, and the door swung open.
“Oh, hey!” Elijah said. His shirt was smeared with paint, and even his glasses had a dab of orange on them. He looked happy to see me. Too happy considering how mad he’d been the last time we talked. It had to be part of whatever the wish had done to him.
“Can I talk to you?” I asked.
“Sure! Come in.” He ushered me inside where a large canvas was splattered with all colors of the rainbow.
He looked at me expectantly, but I couldn’t make myself tell him about my suspicions. “I found Gemini,” I said instead. “Thanks for tracking her down, by the way.”
“Did it help? Was she Gem?”
“Um, no. It turns out my aunt was Gem.”
His eyelashes fluttered in surprise. “No way! Your aunt Glinda?”
“Yeah. She was the one who used to own the wishing stones.” I told him about her wishes, going through them one by one. He nodded, as if it all added up. Finally, I said, “And she used the Friendship one to get a girl named Deedee Lewis to become her best friend.”
Elijah took a step back. “Deedee Lewis? That’s my mom’s name. Or it was, before she got married and hyphenated it.”
“Did she live here when she was younger?”
“Yeah, but not for very long. When we moved to town when I was a kid, Mama Dee said she’d always wanted to come back.”
So it was true. To think, my aunt’s former best friend was living a block away and she had no idea. It sounded impossible, but considering how Aunt Glinda only went to work and came home and never talked to anyone, it actually wasn’t that far-fetched.
But if that part was true, then that meant the rest of it was true too. I took in a long, shaky breath and forced myself to say, “I think that’s why you showed up in my life when you did, because of that wish.”
Elijah pushed his glasses up his nose. “What are you talking about?”
“How did you know I was going to be at my aunt’s house that day when you came over to give me the Batman drawing for Austin?”
He thought for a second. “I don’t know. I guess I just figured it out.”
“But how? You barely knew me, and you didn’t know my aunt lived there. I didn’t even know I was going to be there until a few hours before.”
“I knew I had to bring you that drawing, that’s all. Honestly, I drew your brother without even realizing it. It wasn’t until I saw you that I knew it was for him.”
“Wait, so your mom didn’t tell you that Austin was in the hospital?”
Elijah shook his head. “Nah, she’s not supposed to talk about stuff li
ke that. I just knew somehow.”
“Because of the wishing stones,” I said. “They sent you there after I made that wish about Cassa and Marina. My aunt wished for your mom to be her best friend, and somehow that got all twisted up so that the wish sent you to me instead. That’s why you’ve been so nice to me. That’s why you didn’t care that I’m such a weirdo, because of the wish.”
“What are you saying? That we were never really friends?”
“Think about what happened last time we hung out. You got so mad that I wasn’t spending enough time with you, remember?”
“Well, yeah, because you were blowing me off.”
“No, I was busy. And you acted like we had to spend every second together!”
“Not every second. But if we are supposed to be best friends—” He stopped, and I could practically see the wheels turning in his head. “But we’re not best friends, are we?” he said slowly. “I mean, why would we be? We barely know each other.”
A wave of disappointment crashed through me. So it was true. Our friendship, or whatever it was, had all been fake from the start. Elijah was so confident and relaxed and fun. How could I have ever thought he’d actually want to hang out with me?
“I … I have to go,” I said.
“Wait,” Elijah said. “What about—”
But I was already running out the door.
When I got home, I tore around my room, trying to find something to organize, but every inch of it had already been life-hacked. There was nothing left to do. Finally, I plopped down at my computer and desperately searched for videos I hadn’t seen yet. Then I watched all of them, one after another after another. How to use Vaseline-soaked cotton balls to start a campfire. How to neatly slice a birthday cake with dental floss. How to soothe a cut using ChapStick. I couldn’t stop.
As I watched, my brain kept churning. Why did it bother me so much that Elijah might have been hanging out with me because my wish had made him? We’d only gotten to know each other over the past few days, so why was this such a big deal?
Then I realized, maybe that’s how Cassa had felt with Marina. Maybe that’s why she was so upset that their brand-new friendship had suddenly ended with no explanation.
I was so restless that it felt as though my insides might burst out of my body. Thankfully, I suddenly remembered something that hadn’t been organized yet. I jumped to my feet and ran to the kitchen for supplies. Then I grabbed Dad’s keys and hurried outside.
I opened Dad’s car and pulled out the junk that had been piling up for weeks—take-out containers and used napkins and crumpled receipts—and dumped them in a trash bag. Like I should have dumped the wishing stones the minute I found them. When the car was trash-free, I grabbed a little foam brush and started dusting all the air vents, trying to brush off thoughts of Cassa leaving for the summer. Then I put some baking soda in a sock and stuck it under Dad’s seat to suck up the odors, like I wished I could suck up the image of Austin burrowing into the backyard and hibernating all winter.
Finally, I hopped out of the car and started slathering toothpaste all over the car’s headlights. I scrubbed and scrubbed, trying to scour away the look on Elijah’s face when he said we weren’t really friends, but the headlights still didn’t look clean.
“Lexi,” I heard Dad call from the doorway. “What are you doing out here? It’s almost dark.”
I was too wrapped up in what I was doing to answer him. I was afraid what might happen if I stopped moving.
“Lex. Lex!” Dad said, coming over to me. “Lexi, stop. Please, put down the toothpaste!” He managed to wrench it out of my hand, and only then did I realize I’d somehow squirted out the entire tube. It was all over me and the car and the driveway.
“What on earth are you doing?” he asked.
But I still couldn’t answer him. Instead, I burst into tears.
Dad stood stunned for a second. Then he pulled me into a hug, holding me so tightly that it felt as though he were squeezing all the tears out. Until finally, there were none left.
“You’re okay,” Dad said into my hair. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
“You don’t know that,” I said, pulling away. “How can you know that?”
“Because it has to be,” he said, and he sounded so sure. “I know things have been rough lately, but they’ll get better. I promise you, they will.”
On Saturday morning, I asked Dad to bring me over to Aunt Glinda’s house so that I could help her clean out her attic. The previous day had gone by in a fog, and I was hoping that decluttering something would help pull me out of it.
“Wow, you and your aunt have been spending a lot of time together lately,” Dad said. “That’s great. I know she loves the company.”
I nodded but didn’t say anything. Because the truth was, I could use the company too. Unlike with Elijah, at least I knew that my aunt wasn’t only spending time with me because some wishing stone told her to.
“How are you feeling?” Dad asked, giving me a long look. “You were in pretty rough shape the other night. Any better now?”
“Yeah, I guess. Sorry again about your car.”
He laughed. “Are you kidding? It hasn’t been this clean in years. And now it has minty-fresh breath.”
I couldn’t help letting out a soft laugh. Of course my dad would take my total meltdown and make a joke out of it.
When I got to Aunt Glinda’s, she was sitting at her kitchen window again, staring out at the yard, looking ready to cry. For once, my first instinct wasn’t to run.
“Are you okay?” I asked, going over to her.
“Oh, yes, fine,” she said. I recognized that “fine.” It was the one I chanted to everyone, including myself, when everything felt wrong.
“No, really,” I said.
She smiled. “I guess thinking about Deedee Lewis the other day brought up all sorts of things. I was always a bit of a loner, you know? Never had a lot of friends. After Deedee moved away, I kind of drifted along by myself. I’m not sure I ever stopped drifting.”
“What if I told you that I know where Deedee is?” Maybe I couldn’t fix things with Elijah, but at least I could set one thing right.
My aunt wiped her eyes. “What?”
“She lives in your neighborhood! You know Elijah who came over a few days ago? He’s her son.”
“That’s … wow, really?”
“So you’re not alone. I mean, you have us, you have your family. But if you wanted to, you could have your best friend back too.”
I expected her to jump to her feet and dart out the door. But she kept looking at me. “Oh, I don’t even know what I’d say to her. I mean, it’s been ages. Besides, she probably has her own life and—”
“Those sound like excuses,” I said. “I thought you were done making excuses.”
It was clear she wasn’t convinced. “I’ll think about it,” she said. Then her face lit up. “Oh, I need to tell you about the stone!”
“What stone?”
“The one I lost,” she said. “I completely forgot about it until last night. I was thinking how strange it was that there were only four stones. I mean, what kind of ‘magic kit’ has four of something? Then I remembered that there used to be five of them.”
My mouth fell open. “But what happened to the fifth one?”
“I lost it before I could make a wish on it, probably in the attic. That was my bedroom when I was your age.” She shrugged. “Good thing we’re cleaning up there today. We might find it.”
I could barely breathe. An unused wishing stone. One that wouldn’t backfire. One that might actually make everything all right again. Finally, my luck was changing.
We spent all afternoon in the attic. I could tell where my aunt had had her bedroom back when she lived up here. One corner was covered in band posters from the ’90s, and there was a huge mirror on the wall with old bumper stickers around the edges. I couldn’t imagine sleeping up here, crammed in like Austin in his little hamster n
est, but I could tell by the way my aunt glanced around at the posters that she had fond memories of being up here. And if this had been where she’d lived, then the stone had to be here somewhere.
With Aunt Glinda’s help, I moved furniture, opened endless boxes, and scanned every inch of the space. My mouth was full of dust and I had cobwebs in my hair, but there was still no fifth stone. Not on any of the bookshelves or in any of the boxes or under any of the bedframes. If it was here, it had to be in some nook or cranny where I’d probably never find it. Thanks a lot, universe.
When I finally admitted defeat, Aunt Glinda said, “For all I know, my old hamster ate the stone before he ran away. Maybe it’s not even in the house anymore.”
That thought was more depressing than I could handle. “I should go get cleaned up. Dad will be here soon.”
“Thank you so much for helping me clear out the attic, Lexi,” Aunt Glinda said as we made our way back down the narrow stairs. “It looks great in there now!”
That was one good thing that had come out of my frantic search. I’d helped Aunt Glinda get rid of a lot of junk along the way, a lot more quickly than I normally would have. I hadn’t had time for any life hacks or organizing tricks, so I’d simply gotten rid of the clutter and tried to put things into neat piles. It actually felt okay to leave it that way, even though it wasn’t my usual brand of organized.
“No problem,” I said.
“Maybe you could help me tackle Grandma Jean’s room sometime.” Aunt Glinda laughed, but it was a strained laugh, as if she were fighting back tears again. “To be honest, I haven’t even gone in there since she passed.”
She looked so sad that I found myself saying, “I’d love to help.”
“What about Monday after school?” she asked.
Monday was the second round of dance auditions, but there was no way I was going to that. I might as well come help my aunt instead. “Sure, I’ll be here,” I said.
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