Wicked As You Wish

by Rin Chupeco

  “Course not. Her name is Joanne. Tita Chedeng is Mercedes, and Tita Teejay is Tiffany. You’ll get used to the nicknames. That’s a Filipino thing too.”

  Alex gave up and tried the crispy tissue instead. “It’s pretty good,” he admitted, chewing, and had another. “How long have you been living next door to the Katipuneros?”

  “Almost all my life.”

  “And you know about who they are?”

  Tala hesitated. “That they were a part of Avalon’s 65th regiment, yeah.” The notorious 65th regiment. Nicknamed the Underdogs for taking on missions with the lowest survival odds. Tala had grown up on their stories. Tita Baby, who’d once killed a jabberwocky; Tito Boy, who’d lost his hearing protecting refugees from the sirens haunting the Neverland Sea; General Luna (not the actual Filipino hero of history, but who wore the same kind of mustache), a serial cusser and hero of the Adarna Pass; Titas Chedeng and Teejay, who once fended off a dozen ogres for two hours until help arrived; and Lola Urduja, the strongest of them all. Half of the original members died in Wonderland helping survivors flee after the wilder magic was unleashed there. These were the toughest fighters Avalon had to offer, and there were no better protectors for Alex.

  Alex stared at his banana leaf plate. “Filipinos always had strong ties to Avalon,” he said. “There is—was—a huge Filipino population in the kingdom for as long as I could remember. I’m sorry we couldn’t save them. And now it looks like you all are going to sacrifice even more for my sake—hey!” Tala had picked up a piece of calamansi and squirted juice in his direction.

  “Mum used to tell me about this thing they have back in the Philippines called bayanihan,” she said matter-of-factly, ignoring Alex’s glare as he mopped up his lap. “People used to live in bamboo houses. When families needed to move, they enlisted the help of the whole community to move their homes to the new locations.”

  “You’re kidding me. How do you move a whole house?”

  “It was all about community spirit. People pitched in knowing that if the roles were reversed, the family they were helping would do the same thing for them. Like it or not, you’re one of us now. And we always look out for our own.”

  That made him smile. “Thanks.”

  “There we go!” Tita Baby proclaimed, adding a tray of freshly grilled tilapia to the table. “Now we can eat!”

  “Excellent,” Alex said, as the others took their places. “I’m starving. Where’s the silverware?”

  The Katipuneros traded glances with each other, looked over at the exiled prince of the kingdom of Avalon, and began to laugh.

  * * *

  “Am I the reason we’re stuck here?” Tala asked sometime later, once the leaves had been cleared, the leftover food carefully stored away in Tupperware containers, and the Katipuneros were treating a very amused Alex to numerous renditions of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” via the karaoke system they had plugged in.

  She had asked variations of this question over the years and had never received a straight answer from her parents. Was her ineptitude keeping them from leaving? The thought upset her, though not enough to stop herself from cutting a huge slice of flan.

  “Oh, anak,” her mother said. “It’s not that. There are far more factors involved than you think.”

  “I mean, surely this town can’t be the only place where magic doesn’t work? There must be better places out there. Places where…you know…”

  Places that weren’t stupid small towns that had stupid small-town kids and their stupid small-town parents, where the closest thing to variety was the tamale festival at nearby Somerton. Places where people didn’t think and act like Mark Jones or Mr. McLeroy. Places in America where she didn’t have to stand out, where her mother and her side of the family didn’t have to look so different. So yeah, maybe Invierno wasn’t conducive to magic and that was good for a girl and a mother who negated spells on a daily basis, but surely there were nicer towns out there with the same hiccup?

  Her parents looked at each other. Finally, her father reached out and gave her a quick hug. The mic had now been passed on to Alex, who was doing his best impression of Bruno Mars. The general was attempting to dance, to mixed reactions. “We stay because it’s right bastard hot out here,” her father finally replied, but that didn’t sound like much of a reason to Tala either.

  3

  In Which Alex’s Teacher’s Breakdown Is Viewed Millions of Times on Social Media

  Three important things happened the autumn Tala turned seventeen, nearly a year later: Arizona officially signed the Emerald Act into law, legalizing commercial use of category two magic for the first time, the thirty-third state to do so; her history teacher went viral on social media in the worst possible way; and Ryker Cadfael asked her to the upcoming bonfire celebrations.

  Obviously the last one was the most consequential because Ryker Cadfael was so far out of Tala’s orbit that his planet had yet to be discovered within her system. He still was. She’d remained oblivious to any form of interest from his direction until Alex had insisted that the boy liked her. She didn’t believe him, even when Ryker started hanging out with Alex whenever she was around. Even when he started walking her to class on occasion. Even when he started flirting. Or maybe he was just teasing her? How did one know the difference? Alex was the only person she could ask, except Alex was also the last person she wanted to ask.

  Cool. Super cool. She had an algebra test next period, and overthinking this was not the distraction she needed.

  “But it’s the distraction you deserve.”

  “Shut up, Alex.”

  Alex rolled his eyes and reached out to swipe at Tala’s lunch—lumpiang shanghai, chicken adobo, eggplant torta, and rice—with a fork, snagging one of the spring rolls before she could protest. Despite his newcomer status, he was on the varsity baseball team and was therefore several rungs higher up the social ladder than Tala, enough that hanging out with her barely affected his popularity cred. “It’s not like you haven’t been flirting back. I didn’t even know you were capable of giggling.”

  “Shut up.”

  “You’ve both been making goo-goo eyes at each other for like a month now. What’s the holdup?”

  “Because it’s Ryker Cadfael.”

  “The one and only.”

  “The basketball player.”

  “The school’s star basketball player. Keep up, Tally.”

  “The one with the nice abs.”

  “I have nice abs,” Alex protested, looking hurt.

  “Yeah, but they’re not connected to Ryker Cadfael. Stop stealing my food. Didn’t Lola make your lunch today too?”

  “Yeah, but I’m a growing boy and need more food than you. Besides, I see you brought your mom’s famous adobo, and I know she’d want me to have some.” He took a piece of chicken, ignoring her glare. “Why are you acting like having a crush is the worst thing in the world?”

  “It’s not a crush,” Tala lied. “I can admire people from afar without any expectations.”

  “You’re in denial. You do like him.”

  Of course she did. Blind people could hear how gorgeous he was. Ryker was even more of a newcomer than Alex; he’d only moved here a few months earlier. His father was apparently some hotshot real estate developer, and there had been talks to purchase several tracts of land in the area for some important urban projects. Why they chose Invierno of all places remained a mystery, but it brought Ryker to town, so the rest seemed unimportant in comparison.

  Alex stole another piece of eggplant. “Did you know how many questions he pestered me with at the start before I told him to quit bugging me and just talk to you?”

  Tala’s face flamed. “Since when are you even friends with him, anyway?”

  “I have English and history with him.”

  “Maybe he’s interested in you?” Tala kept her voice low.
Alex had made it quite clear early on that he had no desire to come out in a place where the majority of the population still thought dinosaurs were a cosmic practical joke.

  He snorted, but his voice was equally as quiet. “He’s as straight as a metal ruler. Besides, he’s not my type. I prefer green-eyed guys with messy curly hair and British accents.”

  “That was strangely specific.”

  It was his turn to blush. “Shut up.”

  “You’re making fun of me,” Tala repeated, but with none of the conviction. They rarely talked about their respective secrets nowadays, an unspoken agreement they’d made and reinforced, but Alex was also the closest thing she had to a best friend, and it wasn’t like him to pull something out of nowhere.

  “Is it so ridiculous to think that a cute guy might be interested in you?”

  “Yeah, Alex, they’ve been breaking down my door these last few years.”

  “So, you’re coming with me to Sydney’s bonfire party this weekend?”

  “Absolutely not.” There were two kinds of bonfire parties at Elsmore High: the regular desert bonfire party everyone went to once the championship games ended, and the bonfire party exclusive to cheerleaders, jocks, and a select few of their friends. For the last three years they’d celebrated it at Sydney Doering’s house, which was the biggest one in town.

  “I know Ryker’s gonna ask you. And I’m inviting you, so that’s like, two invitations total. You know how many people would kill for just one? And it’s my birthday the day after, so consider accepting as your gift to me. Come on, everyone says the bonfire’s the best party of the year.”

  “Is this another one of your attempts to hide from Lynn Hughes?” The girl was a year younger than Tala, and obviously smitten with Alex, much to his dismay.

  Alex reddened. “She’s a nice girl, nicer than her brother, anyway, but obviously you know why I’m not asking her out.”

  “You know Sydney Doering and Chris Hughes just broke up. That means Hughes won’t be coming to her party, which means Lynn won’t be there either. Is that why you’re choosing Doering’s thing over the desert this year? Did Hughes give you some sort of ultimatum about his sister?”

  Alex shrugged, but that didn’t fool Tala. “Maybe I just want to try something different this time. I heard the Buendia Bruja might even show up. She predicted the Tigers winning, and she’s never wrong.”

  Tala rolled her eyes. “Yeah, you’re totally going to the bonfire just to have your fortune told by the only seeress of the Royal States’ southwestern realm. It’s not often you turn down the chance to quietly ogle half-naked guys around a fire. And I’m not going to Doering’s party. You know I’ll wind up murdering everyone there, right? I’m pretty sure half of them still think I’m Mexican.”

  Alex frowned. “I won’t force you to go. But I wasn’t lying when I said Cadfael’s gonna ask.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “It’s just that crowds are the last thing I want to deal with, especially their kind of crowd. And anyway, if a boy wanted to ask me out, the least he could do is ask me himself instead of funneling the request through friends.”

  “That’s good to know.”

  The voice came directly behind her, and Tala’s stomach promptly dropped out of her body, along with her confidence. She turned away from the grinning Alex to stare up into Ryker Cadfael’s amused blue eyes. “Uh, um, uh,” she stammered.

  “Am I interrupting something?”

  “Of course not,” Alex said cheerfully, gathering up his things. “I gotta work on a paper before my next class. I’ll see you at the library later, Tally.”

  Coward, Tala wanted to scream after his retreating form, don’t leave me here with him, you traitor, but she couldn’t because Ryker Cadfael was standing Right There looking at her, and she had to concentrate on not making a fool of herself and holding it together lest she somehow disrupt the current space-time continuum by accidentally imploding.

  Oh God, Tala, why are you like this? She was usually so sarcastic, had good enough self-esteem for her age group, wasn’t really one to care about what other people thought about her…

  “Uh,” she said again.

  “Did Smith tell you about the bonfire party?”

  “Uh…yes?” She knew instinctively that the answer wasn’t no, but was just as uncertain if there could be another response other than an affirmative.

  “That mean you’re going?”

  No was now her immediate reflex, but she was also worried this might be misconstrued as turning him down, so she frantically tried to come up with an answer that was a mollifying mix of I’m not comfortable going because most of your friends are trash fires with the much more demure I’m not very good at mingling with people.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry. Did my friends do something?”

  Crap. Had she said the first one out loud? “I’m not very good at mingling with people, is what I wanted to say.”

  Ryker nodded understandingly. “I know they’re not always the best crowd to hang with, and a lot of them can be pretty obnoxious. We don’t need to go.”

  Tala nodded eagerly, thankful for the reprieve, until the pronoun he’d used started bouncing around her head. “We?”

  “I wouldn’t mind going to the desert bonfire this year. There’s a crowd there too, but at least it’s not going to be closed off like at Sydney’s.” He hesitated. “Would you prefer going there with me instead?”

  With me, he said.

  Supernovas gave birth to new worlds hammered out of ice, only to succumb trillions of years later into balls of fiery gas; kingdoms rose and crumbled away; the melody to “Your Song” from the ancient Elton John vinyl her father loved to play spun through her head. And then she remembered she was supposed to answer.

  “I’d like that a lot,” she squeaked out. Dammit.

  “The game ends at seven thirty, so would eight be good? Okay if I have your number so I can call you once I get there? You’re going to watch the game, right?”

  She just nodded, having exhausted human speech, and let him put his own contact details into her phone.

  “Done.” Ryker leaned closer, and for a short, delirious second Tala thought he might actually kiss her. Here, in a roomful of witnesses. But all he did was place her phone very gently back into her hands. “It’s a date.”

  * * *

  “You coward,” Tala snarled much later, after classes had ended. She’d finally located Alex in the library, and now that she’d regained command of words, she was primed to do some deserved, possibly misplaced yelling. She was giddy at the turn of events, of course, but she was also painfully aware of how flustered and embarrassed she must have sounded. Tala had very little reason or opportunity to engage with uncomfortable things like crushes, and recalling her behavior only made her cringe.

  Alex was settled in one of the quietest corners of the library. He was staring at his laptop and didn’t seem to realize she was there until she poked him, hard.

  “You shouldn’t have left me alone with him,” Tala groaned. “What were you thinking? I was at least expecting some kind of wingman support.”

  Alex was quiet.

  “I should have wished him luck for the game. Why didn’t I wish him luck? I just stood there like a moron. He must have thought I was a…”

  She stopped. Alex was looking up at her, but it didn’t look like he was focusing on her face, or on anything at all. “Hey. Are you okay?”

  He looked back at his computer. “I think you better watch this,” he said. “You’re gonna find out about it soon enough, anyway. Everyone’s talking about it.”

  Someone had uploaded a video on social media titled She Has a Point, and Tala started when she saw it was Miss Hutchins, one of Elsmore High’s teachers. The camera shifted slightly, briefly panning over the rest of the students in the class, and Tala saw Alex sitting in one of
the chairs, looking stupefied. Then the lens swung back to Miss Hutchins’s strained face.

  “…supposed to tell you lies.” Whoever had taken the video had started filming midway through the teacher’s speech, but it was clear she was just getting started. “It’s always been lies. That’s how it starts, by changing the truth into the lie that suits them best, and they always start with schools.

  “They’ve already softened your textbooks’ stances on slavery, on the massacres of Native Americans. They’ll argue that it was for the greater good. They’ll tell you why California is an illegal kingdom and unpatriotic for refusing to assimilate with the rest of the Royal States. They won’t tell you that their anger is because the Native Americans there control the only major glyph mine in the country that they’ve never been able to get at.

  “And today I am supposed to instruct you, as the newly revised curriculum states, of: Magic over the centuries, from the Greek advancements that helped shape magical philosophies, to the American breakthroughs of the last few decades, down to the latest strides in spelltech and its many advantages.”

  She paused. For probably the first time in her life, everyone in class was paying attention to her.

  “Most of you have heard about the Wonderland Wars. They will show you this as a prime example of how magic was misused by all sides involved, resulting in the destruction of both the winter kingdom of Beira and of Avalon itself. They will tell you that new laws have been put into place in the aftermath to ensure they cannot be abused again.”

  Miss Hutchins sneered. The usually quiet, polite, almost meek Miss Hutchins actually sneered. “But these new laws will allow them everything but accountability. Oh, there were plenty of terrible people from both nations, they’ll say. They’ll tell you that King Ivan of Avalon had no business dragging other countries into his personal vendetta against the Snow Queen of Beira, that he was just as greedy. And what was the cost? The loss of magic, the fallout plunging many countries into an economic recession, including the one America has just barely struggled its way out of.”