Sealed with a Wish

by Rose David

  SEALED WITH A WISH

  by Rose David

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  CHAPTER ONE

  This wasn’t going well, at least not for me.

  Up at the front of the class, Sean Fabry gave us a big, movie star smile as he told us not to support animal testing.

  Our teacher, Ms. Conlin, sat nearby, nodding in agreement. I wasn’t sure she would do the same when it was my turn to come up, which would be in about 3.4 minutes (according to the big timer on her desk).

  What had she been thinking? Pro-and-con persuasive oral pieces were no big deal, but giving the cute jock the pro-puppies-and-kitten stance while I got to defend animal testing? Did she want me to get hosed with red paint after school?

  “Listen, I’m not some fruity vegetarian who’s telling you guys you need to give up your cheeseburgers, you know? I like burgers as much as the next guy.” He paused, and I could almost see a cartoon gleam sparkling across his perfect teeth. “And hey, hot wings aren’t bad either, right?”

  Laughter rippled through the room. Not that I understood what was so funny about that. Since when were hot wings--?

  Oh, yuck. Was Sean actually talking about Hooters in his speech? For half a second, I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt, but then I flashed back to the time I had passed Sean’s locker on the way to English class, remembering with sickening clarity the Hooters calendar hanging inside the door.

  So he was obviously a fan of “family” restaurants that served their hot wings with a side order of cleavage. No big surprise there.

  I turned to Ms. Conlin, assuming she would tell Sean to stop being such a creep (but, you know, in a cleaned up, teacherly way) but either she didn’t get the reference or she just didn’t care, because all she did was nod again.

  Unbelievable. I didn’t know what was more offensive: the Hooters stuff, or the crack about “fruity” vegetarians. As someone who had once been a practicing vegan for almost twenty-four hours (an unfortunate lunchtime trip to McDonald’s had been my downfall), I resented that remark.

  Unfortunately, my righteous indignation couldn’t last more than a minute or two, because my turn at the head of the class was coming up. As Sean finished his speech, I felt my palms start to sweat.

  “Even if you’re not into saving the whales or whatever, we’ve still got to draw the line at certain kinds of stuff,” he said. “You guys know what I mean?”

  From the way that everyone was bobbing their heads, it was safe to say that most of the class did.

  Crap. Crap. Crap.

  Polite applause followed Sean to his seat in the front row, and Ms. Conlin turned to me. “Layla? Looks like it’s your turn.”

  “Yeah, okay.” I sighed at my note cards, wishing they could say something different, something better.

  Not that wishing for things ever helped me any.

  I dragged myself to the front of the room, then nodded at Ms. Conlin to start the timer. I cleared my throat. “Without animal research, medicine as we know it today wouldn’t exist. For example, there are some cancer treatments that we never would have found without testing them first on animals.” My eyes flicked around the room. Treating cancer was good, right?

  A few feet away, Sean’s expression was bland, but I had a good idea what he was thinking. ‘That weird sophomore girl wants us to kill puppies.’ Or something like that.

  “And,” I continued, “most antibiotics and vaccines had to be tested on animals before they could be used on humans. For example...” I bit my lip. Maybe it was the new boredom on everyone’s faces (like Sean Fabry had drained their attention spans dry) that made the rest of my speech fly right out of my ears.

  There I was, standing in front of my third-period Public Speaking class and telling them we should all want to vivisect lab rats, and I couldn’t remember my persuasive points.

  After a moment of silence, Ms. Conlin asked, “Layla? Are you all right?”

  “Yeah, I just need to check something.” I cursed under my breath as I flipped through my note cards.

  I wish... I wish...

  Without another thought, I muttered, “I wish I didn’t have to do this.”

  Uh-oh. I tensed for the inevitable something to happen, hoping it wouldn’t be too bad. The last time I accidentally wished out loud, the sprinklers went off in my French class and a bunch of kids had to buy new cell phones. I felt bad about it, but what was I supposed to say?

  Sorry, guys, but I totally wasn’t prepared for that pop quiz. I’m sort of half-genie and if I wish for something, it actually comes true, so now we’ve all got another day to study!

  Yeah, like anyone would have believed me. That would probably land me in the nearest psych ward. I could wish myself out, but then I’d just be an escaped mental patient.

  Like I needed to worry about that in the middle of the semester.

  So when I said the magic words in Public Speaking class, I knew something weird would happen. I held my breath, waiting.

  “Are you sure you’re all right, Layla?” said Ms. Conlin.

  I blinked. No collapsing ceilings or exploding lights. And (so far) the sprinklers hadn’t gone off. Weird. “Yeah, I’m fine, I was just, umm, looking at my notes.” I flipped to my final card and read aloud, “We owe a lot to animal testing. With humane standards and--”

  A sick sound cut through my words.

  We all turned as Sean Fabry uttered a long groan. He struggled up from his desk, one hand lingering over his stomach.

  “Sean,” said Ms. Conlin, “are you all right?”

  Sean nodded, mumbling something about the bathroom as he took a few shaky steps forward.

  That’s when Sean Fabry puked on me.

  It happened so fast that it didn’t even occur to me to step out of the way until after I had warm goo running down my legs.

  After Sean finished hurling out his breakfast, he fell down on one knee. Ms. Conlin rushed to his side and made soothing noises, as if he was the one covered with someone else’s upchuck.

  I sighed. As usual, I had gotten my wish.

  #

  I left little footprints down the hall, squeaking as I headed to the main office. The alternative was to take my shoes off and carry them, but I figured that might make holding my nose a little more difficult.

  Mrs. Bradshaw, the school secretary, smelled me before she saw me. When she looked up and found me wandering in, she held up one manicured hand and said, “Don’t you dare come any closer.”

  I wasn’t too offended. She was seven months pregnant and who knew what could set her stomach off? I only wanted to be puked on once today, so I took a step back, just in case.

  Mrs. Bradshaw shut her eyes tight and slid a scented candle to her side before crying, “Natalie, we need some pants out here, please.”

  “What size?” came Nat’s voice from another room.

  “It’s me,” I said, which was all the info she needed.

  We had been best friends since we were five-years-old, so Natalie knew pretty much everyth
ing about me--aside from the genie thing, which my parents had made me promise never to tell. Mom and Dad would have grounded me for life if anyone found out, even my best friend.

  A minute later, Natalie rushed out of the storage closet with a big smile on her face, bearing a pair of acid-washed jeans. “Layla! I’m so glad you’re here.”

  Mrs. Bradshaw took a deep sniff from her candle. “That makes one of us.”

  I squinted into Natalie’s effervescent face, which didn’t show even a hint of being grossed out by the chunky stuff dripping off me. I couldn’t say the same for our pregnant school secretary, so I backed out into the hallway and said, “Come on, Nat. Help me change.”

  Mrs. Bradshaw was so eager to see me go that she didn’t stop Natalie from coming along.

  As we headed to the bathroom, Nat bounced alongside me, still smiling. “I’ve got the best news. Like, the best best news.”

  Puke-covered or not, I grinned back. There was only one thing that Nat could be so excited about. “Oh my God, you got in! I knew you would.”

  She went to hug me, but thought better of it. Instead, Nat squeezed my shoulder. “I know we were going to wait until lunch and open the letter together, but it was just sitting there in my backpack like a load of bricks. I couldn’t stop myself.”

  “Dude, who cares? The point is you got in. That’s awesome.”

  Nat gave a long, dreamy sigh, her thoughts probably swimming with visions of dorm life in downtown Chicago and days spent with her guitar and a notebook.

  Nat and I had both applied to the Summer Arts Institute--Nat for music composition, me for photography. She could have gotten in for music performance, but that would have meant playing in front of an audience, which she still hadn’t plucked up the courage to do after years of writing songs.

  I hadn’t heard anything yet about my application, which didn’t suck as much as it should have. While a part of me hated all the suspense, another part didn’t mind a little nail-biting if it meant putting off another scenario: rejection.

  And even if my pictures did impress the admissions committee, it wasn’t like I was even sure my parents would let me go, because of my “special condition” (which was just Mom and Dad’s nice way of saying that they didn’t trust me to be alone in a strange city).

  “You’ll probably hear back from them soon,” Nat said as we stepped into the bathroom. “They said the photography program has a lot more competition.”

  “No kidding.” I ducked into a stall and smirked. It seemed like every girl with a digital camera and a willingness to take pictures of her feet thought she was a photographer.

  I thought about the slim camera in my backpack and the shots littering its memory card. Some of those pictures were bound to be worthwhile--I had moved on from feet-photos a couple of months ago.

  Nat rummaged through a cabinet under some sinks. A second later, she slid a trash bag and some baby wipes underneath my stall door. Then she grabbed my dirty sneakers and placed them under a running tap in the sink. “So, what happened to you, anyway?” she asked.

  “Sean Fabry spilled his breakfast all over me,” I said, “about three hours after he ate it.”

  “Gross. Did he look sick?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.” I took my ring out of my pocket. It was tied to a little ribbon that my mother had sewn in. The big ruby in the center glinted under the fluorescent lights, even more hyper-red after I had made a wish. I laid the stone against my lips, feeling its warmth. It was too bad I couldn’t wear the ring on my finger, but it was way too big.

  I pulled on the borrowed pants (which were about as flattering as high-waisted Mom Jeans could be) and put my ring in the pocket. I almost stepped outside, but then I stopped myself. Without the little ribbon to tie it to, my ring could fall out. The idea of it rolling into a drainpipe or something made me shudder. Never mind someone finding it later and getting three wishes out of the deal.

  I unlatched my necklace and slipped my ring through the chain. The stone felt heavy as it hung against my chest, but at least my shirt covered everything.

  “Those pants fit, right?” asked Nat.

  “Umm, yeah.” I must have looked like an old Tom Petty groupie, but I wasn’t exactly known for my fashion sense, anyway.

  “So, what was Sean’s speech like?” said Nat.

  “Beautiful. Perfect. Sickeningly adorable?”

  “Layla.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Fine. I honestly wasn’t paying attention. Everybody else seemed to like it.”

  Outside, Nat sighed in that slow, swimmy way that I knew so well.

  I held back a groan. Natalie had been in love with Sean Fabry since that time they had kissed during spin-the-bottle at summer camp. I had always thought it was kind of pervy of Sean (who was already in junior high and almost fourteen years old at the time) to canoodle with a twelve-year-old, recent sixth-grade-grad like Natalie, but hey, whatever.

  Over the years, I’ve sat through the story so many times, it’s almost like I was there myself, except I wasn’t ever allowed to scarf s’mores and guzzle bug juice at camp, given my little personal problem. Once, I had tried wishing to be there, but I just ended up zapping myself into a lake. My parents had to drive three hours to pick me up, and I spent the rest of the summer under house arrest. Maybe things worked better for regular genies, but for halfies like me, wishes tended to backfire.

  “At least we know Sean eats breakfast every morning,” I said. “That’s an important quality to look for in a husband, right?”

  As I emerged from the stall, Nat got me in the face with a handful of water. She laughed as I shivered. Natalie is really small and delicate-looking, but when she does her villain laugh, she looks like some evil Disney fairy. It’s probably because her hair is this crazy bright red shade, dyed over her normally blonde hair.

  After I had a second to recover from the freezing cold, I had to laugh even if I was still shaking like an excited chihuahua. “T-truce?”

  She handed me a few paper towels. “Truce, but admit it: you deserved that.”

  I stuck out my tongue and dabbed my face dry. “Haven’t I been through enough trauma today?”

  “Maybe. It’s just so weird how he puked all over you like that. I mean, what are the chances?”

  I shrugged. “Probably a bad breakfast burrito or something.”

  ...plus a magical punch in the stomach, I thought.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Having magic powers sucks.

  It sounds like a dumb thing to say, like someone complaining about being “too pretty” or something equally moronic, but being a genie just isn’t that great. For starters, I have to grant people’s wishes.

  Well, I would if anyone ever got their hands on my ring, which is why I keep it on me all the time. Mom and Dad are convinced that my ring would be safer if we locked it up, but it’s not like I’m in the habit of letting random people reach inside my pocket. As genie-stuff goes, my ring is pretty low-key.

  There are regular (as in, non-halfie) genies out there, and those poor jerks are stuck in lamps and rings and sometimes even rolled up in dusty old carpets. Most of the time, they get passed down like heirlooms, used to make rich, powerful families even more rich and powerful. Mom swears that’s how one of our presidents got elected.

  Having a genie in the family sounds like a great idea, but the thing is, genies are usually pretty pissed off. I suppose a few thousand years in servitude will do that to you. If you’re not super careful about what you wish for and how you do it, you might just be cursed into a life of geniehood, which is exactly what happened to my paternal grandfather.

  When his turn with the family genie finally arrived, he asked her for all the usual stuff--money, power, blah blah blah--but, for his last wish, he thought he would be really clever. He wished for unlimited wishes for the rest of his life.

  Big mistake. Just like that, the clever genie had an out. She swapped places with him, turning my grandfather into a genie that was
still human enough to make wishes, while she got to walk away, newly mortal and free. I’m guessing she made more than a few obscene gestures on her way out the door.

  My grandfather gave the ring (and the three wishes that accompanied it) to his wife. She used her first two wishes on (big surprise) even more money and/or power, and then kept the last wish in reserve so that no one could enslave her husband. I guess it’s kind of romantic, except that she went half-crazy with anxiety at the thought of accidentally muttering, “I wish...”

  One day, my now-pregnant grandmother said that she wished her baby would be “strong and fortunate.” It was just a slip of the tongue, the kind of thing all expectant moms say, but it was enough to pass on the curse to her unborn son.

  Or so they thought. My bio-dad grew up thinking that his geniehood was because of an unfortunate wish by his mother (my grandmother). I’m guessing that’s why he was so surprised to find that his special condition had suddenly disappeared after that spring break fling with my mom.

  Yeah, that’s right. I’m the product of a college hook-up. If someone asks how my parents met, I have to tell them to be more specific. Like, do they want to hear about how my mom got knocked up by some random Eurotrash guy who just happened to be a genie? Or do they want to know how Mom met my stepdad a few years later? (Though it’s weird to think of Dad like that. I mean, he’s been my father ever since I could remember, even if he’s not technically my “real” dad.)

  Mom didn’t realize I was a genie until after I was born. By then, my bio-dad was long gone, but he was kind enough to give her a pretty ruby ring “to remember him by.” Yeah, right.

  Since she technically had possession of the ring, her off-hand wish to get rid of her baby weight ended up coming true. For that, I like to think I’ll always be her favorite daughter, and not just because I’m an only child. Mom used her second wish to track down my bio-dad, who I’m told was partying hard in Ibiza. I’m not sure what Mom did to him--the most she’ll admit to is some vague stuff about “incriminating photos”--but he finally told her what was really going on.