Wishworks, Inc.

by Stephanie S. Tolan

  “As real as you are.”

  “How much does a wish cost?” Max asked. A real wish was valuable. It would probably be very, very expensive. He suspected he didn’t have enough money to buy one.

  “You always have what you need for a wish,” the man said, as if he had heard Max’s thought. “Check your pocket.”

  Max reached into his pocket and found, to his surprise, a twenty-dollar bill. That was more money than he had in his bank at home. He held it out.

  “Exactly the price,” the man said, and took it. He punched a key on the cash register and its drawer opened with a clang. He put the bill in and closed the drawer.

  Max grinned. Even for twenty dollars, the wish would be a bargain. He would get a real wish for an imaginary twenty.

  The man looked at Max, frowning so that his shaggy white eyebrows nearly met over his eyes. “This is the hard part. Think very carefully before you answer. Very carefully! What’s your wish?”

  Hard? Hard? It was the easiest thing in the world. Max didn’t have to think at all. More times than he could remember, he had wished for a dog of his own. It was what he wanted more than anything else in the whole world. Max thought about King, sitting outside the shop, waiting for him. “I wish for a real, live dog,” Max said.

  There was a deep, chiming sound and the shop seemed to go dark for a second.

  “Done!” said the old man.

  Max looked around. The shelves were empty. The man leaning against the counter was still the only living thing in the shop except Max. No dog had appeared the way King always did when Max imagined him. He looked at the old man. “Well?”

  The man smiled. “I meant your wish is done, of course, not the dog. The dog, being real, may take a little time.”

  “But it’s guaranteed?”

  The man nodded gravely. “Guaranteed!”

  4

  KING WAS SITTING PATIENTLY on the sidewalk when Max came out of the shop, the bell tinkling as the door closed. The dog stood up, waving his long plume of a tail. “Just you wait,” Max told him, patting his head. “Things are going to change. Guaranteed.”

  Maybe they had changed already, he thought. Instead of imagining himself walking King all the way back down the street toward home, Max just took a deep breath and opened his eyes.

  His room looked exactly the way it had before. Ali Baba was snoring softly. The boxes labeled MAX’S THINGS were still stacked on his shelves and against the wall. Max looked carefully around the room. There was no dog.

  Max sighed. “The dog, being real, may take a little time,” the old man had said. What did “a little time” mean? He got up from his bed and went out into the living room, where his mother was watching television.

  Mother checked her watch and frowned. “It’s late. I thought you’d gone to bed,” she said.

  “Not yet,” Max answered. There was no dog in the living room.

  How would the dog come? Max wondered. Maybe, he thought, a real dog had to come a regular, real way.

  “Mom,” he said, making his voice as sweet as he could manage, “do you think we could have a dog now that we’ve moved? In this neighborhood, it would be a good thing to have a watchdog, wouldn’t it? It could be dangerous here. There are lots and lots of people around us all the time. Lots and lots of strangers.”

  His mother sighed. “This is a very nice neighborhood. Very safe. Think of all those people as friends we haven’t met yet. Besides, you know perfectly well Ali Baba doesn’t like dogs.”

  “Well, what if the dog liked Ali Baba?” Max said. “And what if I mostly kept him in my room? And what if he was a big, beautiful dog that always did what he was told? I’d take care of him. I promise! I’d walk him and feed him and —”

  “No dog,” Mother said, shaking her head. “Not even a paragon of perfection.”

  Max didn’t need to know what paragon meant to understand that his mother wasn’t going to help the real dog come into his life. He sighed and went back to his room.

  How could his wish come true if his mother wouldn’t let it? Guaranteed, he reminded himself. The wish was guaranteed. Tonight, Mother was saying “No dog.” Tomorrow might be different. Maybe that’s why a real dog took time. There were real people involved. And real people, Max knew, could be difficult.

  Max put on his pajamas, turned off his light, and snuggled down into his bed with Ali Baba curled against his legs. He thought about what his life would be like with a real dog. The real dog would be just like King. The real dog could even be King. He thought about how it would be to put his arm around King’s big warm furry body and have him lick his nose.

  Then Max had a terrible thought. What if, in spite of the guarantee, Mom could stop the wish from coming true? What if the guarantee only meant that if his wish didn’t come true, he could get his money back? He didn’t want that imaginary twenty-dollar bill. He wanted his dog!

  He needed to go back to Wishworks, Inc. He needed to ask the old man some more questions. Max took a long, deep breath and imagined himself on the sidewalk outside the shop. It looked exactly the way it had looked before. In the window were the candies and kaleidoscopes, the books and toy trains and rockets and stuffed animals. And there was the sign leaning against the castle. WISHES GUARANTEED.

  Inside, he could see the old man in his red-and-white checked apron, still leaning against the counter.

  Max reached out to push open the door. But as he did, the door changed shape. It grew very, very tall. It turned to brick. There were lots and lots of windows. It had become the back wall of an apartment building. Then, before he even had a chance to wonder what had happened, the apartment building became a tree, its leaves just beginning to open.

  Max had fallen asleep.

  5

  WHEN MAX WOKE UP THE NEXT morning, Ali Baba was still there and the dog still wasn’t. He had to get up and get dressed for school. There was no time now to go back to Wishworks, Inc., no time to ask the old man about the guarantee. Maybe on the school bus.

  At the breakfast table, he considered mentioning a big, beautiful, perfectly behaved dog again. But he didn’t have the nerve. He didn’t want to hear “no dog” even one more time. The more often his mother said it, the less likely she was to change her mind.

  On the bus, Max tried to go to Wishworks, Inc. But Polly was sitting next to him, chattering on and on about her new friends. “Do you think Mom would let them come over after school sometime?” she asked. “Do you think Mrs. Chang would give them cookies?” She poked him. “I said, do you think Mom would …”

  Max gave up.

  At school Max scanned the school yard, looking for Nick and his henchmen before he would let Polly get off the bus. Maybe a first-grade bully wouldn’t go after a girl, but he wasn’t sure about Nick Berger. After a moment, he saw them standing around a very little boy up against the fence.

  “Go find your friends,” Max told Polly, but she was already waving at a cluster of first-grade girls. Max imagined King at his side as he walked close to a group of fifth graders, keeping them between him and Nick Berger. Between the shoulders of the older kids, Max saw the little boy hand Nick something. It looked like a package of chocolate cupcakes.

  When the fifth graders met up with their friends, Max slipped around them and hurried up the steps to wait right by the door so that he would be the first one in when it opened. He got to his classroom before Nick and his henchmen, put away his things, and hurried to his desk, King beside him. “Down, King,” he whispered under the noise of the other kids coming in. King lay down by his feet, his ears up, his eyes alert for danger. When Nick came in, shoving a couple of other kids out of his way, there was a smear of chocolate on his mouth.

  During language arts, Nick went to sharpen his pencil at the back of the room and pulled Max’s hair as he passed by. King could do nothing to stop him. Max imagined the pencil sharpener gobbling up Nick’s pencil, then sucking in Nick’s fingers and sharpening them too.

  On the way ou
tside to recess, Rocco came up behind Max and bumped him so hard he crashed into a wiry boy named Jerome. “Watch yourself, Rocco!” Jerome called after him. “Those guys are trolls,” he said to Max. “Don’t let them bother you.”

  Max nodded. Trolls — that’s just what they were.

  When the other boys started a game of dodgeball, Max didn’t join in. But Nick threw a ball at him anyway, and hit him in the back of the head. Max imagined King biting the ball so that it went all flat and nobody could play with it again. But he also went and stood with his back to the one tree that grew up through the pavement on the playground. The truth was, having an imaginary dog for protection didn’t make him feel that safe.

  Max kept one eye on what Nick was doing and one eye on the sidewalk outside the school’s fence. It had been a lot more than a little time since he’d made his wish. Maybe the real dog would come walking down the sidewalk and into the playground. But no dog came.

  When the bell rang to signal that recess was over, Max breathed a sigh of relief. Math was after recess. Max didn’t have to pay attention to Mr. Malone talking about borrowing and carrying. He had had borrowing and carrying in his old school. Math was the perfect time to go back to Wishworks, Inc., and get his questions answered.

  But when he got back to class, there was a policeman in the room with Mr. Malone. As soon as the kids came through the door, they all got very quiet. Everybody hurried to put their jackets away and sit in their seats. Max wondered if someone had called the police on Nick and his henchmen. As mean as they were, he didn’t think they’d broken any actual laws.

  “Class,” Mr. Malone said when they were all in their places, “this is Officer Fisher, Jerome’s father. He is our parent of the month and he’s come to tell us all about his job.”

  For the next half hour, Max couldn’t help paying attention. Everything Officer Fisher said was interesting. He told them he’d wanted to be a policeman since he was even younger than they were. He explained the training he had had to go through. One of the boys asked if he drove a police car. “I walk a beat,” he said. “I like to stay close to what’s going on in the neighborhood. I like to know the people I watch out for. I like to know who belongs there and who doesn’t.”

  He told stories of the things that had happened while he was walking his beat. He had foiled a robbery at a jewelry store and arrested the robbers. He had found a lost toddler who had wandered away from his mother in a store. And when he saw bad guys hanging out where they didn’t have any business, he moved them along.

  Officer Fisher took his nightstick out of his belt and gave it to Mr. Malone to pass around the class. When Nick got it, he pretended he was going to hit Caitlin, the girl who sat next to him. Mr. Malone took it away from him and gave it to Caitlin instead. When the nightstick finally got around to Max in the back of the room, he was surprised at how heavy it was. He could knock out a goblin or even a giant with a nightstick like this. He thought he would take one with him during Adventure Time that night, just in case. Officer Fisher showed them his gun too, but he didn’t let them touch that.

  When Officer Fisher finished answering all their questions, he told them they should consider joining the force when they grew up. Mr. Malone thanked him for coming and the class applauded. As he was about to leave, Officer Fisher looked at Caitlin, then at Nick Berger, then back to Caitlin. “If you became a police officer,” he said to her, “you could protect people from anyone who thinks it’s okay to hurt other people.”

  Max wondered if Jerome had told his father about Nick and his henchmen. The other kids laughed. Nick’s ears got very red.

  Jerome Fisher was just about the luckiest boy in the world, Max thought. His father was a real person who had real adventures and did noble deeds every single day. No wonder Jerome could yell at Rocco. And no wonder, even though Jerome wasn’t any bigger than Max was, he could say not to let Nick and his henchmen bother him. A real policeman father was much better protection than an imaginary dog.

  When Mr. Malone announced after lunch that it was time to catch up on the math they’d missed in the morning, everyone groaned except Max. Finally he would be able to go to Wishworks, Inc., and find out what was going on with his wish. He set his book up on his desk to provide some cover and closed his eyes. Immediately he was back on the sidewalk outside the shop. As he opened the door, the bell tinkled and the old man behind the counter looked up. He smiled when he saw it was Max. Max didn’t smile back.

  “You said a real dog would take a little time. How long?” he asked.

  “As long as necessary,” the old man said.

  “Do you mean I might not get my dog till I’m all grown up?”

  The old man’s smile faded. “Do you think that will be just a little time?”

  Max shook his head. “That will be a long time.”

  The smile came back. “Well, then! There’s your answer.”

  “Is the guarantee only a money-back guarantee?”

  The old man laughed and shook his head. “What good would it do you to have imaginary money instead of a real dog? No, no. Our guarantee is just what it says. A wish you buy from Wishworks, Inc., is guaranteed to come true.”

  Now Max smiled. All he needed to do was wait a little longer, he thought.

  “Max!” Mr. Malone’s sharp voice brought Max back to the classroom. “I asked if you can take eight from six!”

  Max looked at the problem Mr. Malone was pointing to on the whiteboard at the front of the room. There was a thirty-six with an eight below it and a line underneath. Thirty-six minus eight. Easy. “You can take eight from six,” Max said, “if you borrow from the tens column.”

  Mr. Malone, looking surprised, nodded. “Can you come up here and show us?”

  Max went to the front of the room, stepping carefully over the foot Nick shot out to trip him. He took the marker Mr. Malone held out. He crossed out the three in thirty-six and wrote a two above it. “When you borrow from the tens column, the three becomes a two and the six becomes sixteen,” Max said and wrote a one squeezed in beside the six. “Sixteen minus eight is eight.” He wrote an eight under the line. “There’s nothing to subtract from the two, so you just bring it down.” He wrote a two beside the eight and handed the marker back to Mr. Malone. “The answer is twenty-eight.”

  “Very good, Max!” Mr. Malone said.

  Max started back to his seat. “I apologize,” Mr. Malone said. “I thought you were daydreaming again.”

  Max ducked the rubber band Luis shot at him and shook his head. Whatever Wishworks, Inc., was, he felt sure it wasn’t a daydream.

  6

  MAX OPENED HIS EYES. HE WAS in bed with Ali Baba on his legs. A tiny sliver of gray light was visible along the edge of his window shade. Was that the doorbell he had heard? Who could be ringing their doorbell so early? It wasn’t even time to get up and get ready for school.

  He heard his mother hurrying down the hall and unlocking the front door. Then he heard voices. He moved Ali Baba and got up. He went out to the living room in his pajamas. Ali Baba followed him.

  Beyond his mother he could see a baseball cap with long gray hair sticking out. It was Mrs. Kavitsky, the woman who lived upstairs, whose front door was right next to theirs and shared the same stoop. She and his mother were both talking at once. “We can’t,” his mother was saying. “We have a cat — an old cat —”

  “I was out doing my morning run, and this poor thing came tearing across 17th Street. She was nearly hit by a car. You can tell nobody has been taking care of her. Who knows how long she’s been on her own.”

  Max saw now what they were talking about. It was shivering in Mrs. Kavitsky’s arms. It was a dirty yellow color and only a little bigger than a loaf of bread. Odd tufts of hair sprouted around its ears. Its legs were short and skinny. They clawed at Mrs. Kavitsky’s sweatshirt.

  There was no doubt about it. The thing was a dog. A real, live dog. Max caught sight of the creature’s rear end. Instead of a lovely plume,
there was a long, thin, almost naked tail that reminded him of a rat.

  No, no, no! This wasn’t anything at all like King. There was some mistake. This was most certainly not the dog he had wished for.

  Mrs. Kavitsky, holding the quivering rat-tailed dog, stepped inside. His mother was still shaking her head. “We can’t. We just can’t,” she said.

  Max breathed a sigh of relief. Of course she wouldn’t take it. He was pretty sure if his mother could just see King, just meet him once, Max could persuade her to let him keep him. But nobody could want this horrible little rat-tailed dog.

  Mrs. Kavitsky’s eyes filled with tears. “I guess I’ll have to take her to the pound, then. I was going to keep her myself, but when I took her upstairs, my Schatzi went after her and chased her three times around the apartment. Females often don’t get along, you know. Schatzi scared her half to death. Just look how the poor little thing is shaking.”

  “You’re going to take her to the pound?” Mother said in a very small voice.

  Mrs. Kavitsky nodded, tears beginning to trickle down her pink cheeks. “Let’s face it, this dog is no beauty. She isn’t likely to get adopted. You know what will happen to her at the pound.”

  Mother looked hard at the shivering dog in Mrs. Kavitsky’s arms. Mother’s forehead was all wrinkled, and Max thought she looked as if she might be about to cry too.

  Just then, Polly came down the hall from her room in her pink-and-white polka-dot nightgown. “Why is everybody up so early?”

  Before anyone could answer, she saw the dog in Mrs. Kavitsky’s arms. “Oooooh,” she squealed, “what a cute little doggie!”

  Polly must be blind, Max thought.

  “Can we keep him?” Polly asked.

  No! Max thought.

  “Her,” Mrs. Kavitsky said. “It’s a sweet little girl dog.”

  “Awwww! Can we keep her? Can we? Can we?” Polly said, and started tugging at their mother’s robe.