Zacktastic

by Courtney Sheinmel

  But in New York City, the streets are really crowded. I thought that made it more dangerous. But now that I think about it, it’s a little bit safer, too. Even when you’re alone, you’re not really alone.

  I doubt there will be so many people on the streets in this city. And even if there are, no one can see me! What if I trip and fall in the middle of the crosswalk and a car comes speeding through and runs me over because I’m invisible to the driver?

  I’ve never before felt so completely all on my own. I gather up all the bravery I have and walk out the door. I head to Hollyhock Drive and down a block. Then I have to cross the first street. I look both ways about five times, because you can never be too careful, step off the curb, and—WHAM!

  It wasn’t a car, but I was sure hit by something, and now colors are swirling all around me, so fast, like someone put a rainbow in a blender. It feels like something is pulling me back and back and back.

  Could it be that I’m being pulled home?

  Suddenly there’s a loud SNAP!, like a giant rubber band was stretched and let go. The wind is rushing in my ears as I fly forward. I think I can make out something in the distance. The roof of a building. I’m headed straight toward it! And there’s no sign of slowing down.

  I don’t want to die I don’t want to die I don’t want to die.

  I can’t bear to look, so I squeeze my eyes shut tight. But then I open just one eye a crack, and the weirdest, coolest thing is happening—the roof of the building is opening up like a giant mouth. I sail right through and land on my feet with a thud.

  “Zack!” Quinn shouts.

  16

  THERE SHE GOES AGAIN

  “There she goes again.”

  It’s Ms. Lucas talking. She’s here in this large, square room. There are floor-to-ceiling bookshelves against every wall, except the back wall, which is all windows. A couple of oversized red leather chairs are set in front of a huge dark-brown wood desk. Ms. Lucas is in one of the chairs, and Mr. Hayden is in the other. Quinn is standing between them. And there’s another man, sitting behind the desk. He’s got a thick rug of hair on his head, and his face is as round as a bowling ball. The nameplate in front of him says: E. M. HEDDLE, HEAD OF SCHOOL.

  “There she goes what again, Helen?” Mr. Heddle asks.

  “Zack,” Ms. Lucas explains. For a split second, she turns her head in the direction Quinn is facing, but instead of looking at me, it’s like she’s looking through me. A chill shoots down my spine.

  Ms. Lucas faces Heddle again and goes on, “She keeps calling out to someone—”

  “My brother!” Quinn interrupts.

  “Who isn’t here,” Ms. Lucas finishes.

  “He’s here, I swear,” Quinn says.

  Ms. Lucas folds her arms across her chest. “I advise you to stop lying, miss.”

  “I’m not lying!” Quinn says. She drops her voice to a pleading tone. “I know you don’t believe me—I didn’t believe Zack, either. But I swear on my life that he’s in this room. I don’t know why we’re here, or how he made himself invisible. But it’s all true.”

  Ms. Lucas shakes her head, exasperated.

  The phone rings on Mr. Heddle’s desk, and he pushes a button to silence it. Then Mr. Hayden pipes up. “You know, Helen, I actually believe she’s telling the truth,” he says. “At least I believe that she thinks she is.”

  I recognize the look Mr. Hayden gives Quinn, because it’s a look that Quinn has given me about a billion times. A look that says: You are such a nut job.

  I always thought it would feel good to see Quinn get a taste of her own medicine. But it doesn’t. Not even a little bit.

  “I’m so tired,” my sister says quietly. “I just want to go home. I wish I could go home.”

  I wiggle my toes in Trey’s flip-flops. They feel like regular toes.

  “I’m sorry,” Mr. Heddle tells her. “But wishing isn’t going to make it so.”

  I may be a genie, but I’m afraid he’s right about that.

  “It’s my opinion that we should get this young girl some much-needed medical help,” Mr. Hayden goes on. “Should I call in Nurse Corridan? Or better yet, perhaps I should take her straight to the emergency room.”

  “An emergency room?” Quinn asks. “At a hospital?”

  “They could give you the help you need,” Mr. Hayden tells her.

  Quinn turns to me and shakes her head. Mr. Hayden probably thinks she’s talking to him, but she’s talking to me: “I won’t go to an emergency room,” she says.

  I know why she won’t. An emergency room is where they brought Dad.

  “My car is just out back,” Mr. Hayden says. “Unless you think we should call an ambulance.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Mr. Heddle says.

  “Thank you,” Quinn says. There is relief in her voice, but it only lasts about two seconds. “But wait, do you mean calling an ambulance isn’t necessary, or going to the hospital at all?”

  “Helen, Colin,” Mr. Heddle says to the teachers. “You can go back to your classrooms now. I can take it from here.”

  Mr. Hayden and Ms. Lucas rise from their seats. Mr. Heddle waits until the door closes behind them, and then he holds a hand out. “I know you’re tired. You should take a seat.” Quinn eyes the oversized red chairs but doesn’t move toward them. “Go on,” Mr. Heddle tells her. “Make yourself at home.”

  My sister moves slowly to the chair on the left and sits down on the edge of it. I take the one on the right—like Quinn, I’m right at the edge. It’s hard to sit back and make yourself at home when you have no idea what will happen next or if you’ll ever make it back to your real home again.

  “Thanks,” Quinn says.

  “Can I get you anything?” Mr. Heddle goes on. “Water? A bag of chips?”

  “I’m okay,” Quinn tells him.

  “Oh, come on,” Mr. Heddle says. “You look like you could use a little pick-me-up. How about both?”

  “Okay,” Quinn says, nodding. “I actually am pretty hungry—and thirsty, too. I wanted to get something at Food Hall. But Zack . . .” Her voice trails off, knowing Mr. Heddle probably won’t believe what she says anyway. He opens a desk drawer and pulls out a bottle of spring water and a bag of barbecue chips—my favorite—and places them in front of Quinn. My stomach grumbles. “Gross, Zack,” Quinn whispers out the side of her mouth.

  “It’s been a while since I’ve eaten, too,” I remind her.

  “And whose fault is that?”

  “Go easy on your brother,” Mr. Heddle says. “It looks like he’s had a long day, too.”

  Looks like? He can see me?

  He’s staring at me—at me, not through me.

  “You can see Zack?” Quinn squeaks out.

  “I sure can,” he says.

  “How?” I ask.

  E. M. Heddle cracks a smile. He pulls another bag of chips out from a drawer and tosses them my way. Then he folds his hands together and leans forward over the desk. I hesitate opening the bag because, well, it just seems weird that he can see me. But I guess it’s even weirder that no one else can. “Sit back,” he says. “Relax. Eat.”

  I can’t think of anything else to do, so I rip open the bag and pop a chip into my mouth. “How can you see me and no one else can?”

  “Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Quinn tells me, as if that’s what I should be worried about right now. She turns to Mr. Heddle. “Please believe me when I say I have no idea what happened to that kid—to Trey. Zack keeps telling me he’s a genie and Trey wished to turn into me, or something like that.”

  “I do believe you,” Mr. Heddle says. “Do you believe him?”

  “I don’t know!” Quinn says. “I didn’t think so. But I don’t know what the real explanation could be. So many things are happening that I can’t explain. Like, those teachers didn’t believe me that Zack was invisible, and I knew he was right there.” She puts her bottle of water down, hard, and a bit sloshes out onto the desk. “Sor
ry,” she says.

  “That’s all right,” Mr. Heddle tells her.

  “It’s just hard to know what to believe,” Quinn says softly, shaking her head. “I wish someone would be straight with me about what I’m doing here.”

  “I wish—” I start.

  “Ah, ah, ah,” Mr. Heddle says, shaking a finger at me. “You don’t want to waste your wish—trust me.”

  Just like Uncle Max did, he licks a finger and holds it in the air. “Mr. Heddle?” Quinn asks.

  “I’m not who you think I am,” he says.

  “Who are you?” I ask.

  “The question isn’t who I am,” he says. “It’s who you are.”

  “Who I am?”

  “You’re a seventh-family genie,” he says.

  “How do you know that?” I ask.

  “Because I’m a genie, too,” he says.

  “That’s why you can see me!”

  “Indeed it is. Mortals can only hear, see, and feel what they expect. But we genies know to expect the unexpected, and we see everything.”

  “So you can help us!” I say. “We’re trying to get home—or at least get in touch with my uncle Max.”

  “You can help yourself,” he says.

  “How?”

  “We’ll get to that. We’ll get to everything, little sparkie.”

  “Sparkie?” I repeat.

  “That’s what new young genies, such as yourself, are called—your powers come out in fits and sparks. You haven’t figured out how to harness your power and use it at will.”

  “I’ll say,” I tell him. “Sometimes things happen because I want them to, and sometimes nothing happens at all. And I don’t know what I’m doing differently.”

  “That’s perfectly normal,” he tells me. “But give yourself some credit, too. After all, your sister is here because you successfully used your powers to grant a wish. That young man, Trey, wished to be someone else, did he not?”

  “He did,” I say.

  Mr. Heddle—or Mr. not Heddle—nods. “And that turned out to be Quinn.”

  “But . . . But . . .” Quinn sputters. “But when we tried to call my mom, she said I was there at home.”

  “That was a brilliant play on your brother’s part—he did a Rutherford split. Part of you is here, and part of you is there. Neither part realizes she is simply a piece of a whole.”

  He snaps his fingers, and a white shade falls down over the window on the far wall. The room is suddenly darker, and a movie begins to play with the shade as a screen.

  No, wait. It’s not a movie. It’s Quinn! Quinn and Madeline! They are sitting on the bed in Quinn’s room. Unlike the Quinn here at MA with me, the Quinn on the screen has both sides of her hair in braids. She and Madeline are bent over their toenails, painting them a rainbow of colors. I watch Mom enter the room and say something about putting towels down and not spilling polish on the comforter.

  “That’s me,” Quinn says. Her voice is barely a whisper.

  “That’s the other half of you,” Mr. Heddle says. He turns to me. “Well done, young man.”

  “Uh. Thanks,” I say.

  “But wait,” Quinn says. “Is it dangerous that I’ve been split in two?”

  Mr. Heddle shrugs. “Whole people are always stronger than the individual parts,” he says.

  “Zack, how could you do that to me?” I turn to her to apologize, but my sister is yawning. She leans back against the red leather chair. “It’s too much,” she says. “I think I need to close my eyes for a bit.”

  I feel a bit light-headed, too. Maybe I made a sparkie mistake and accidentally did a Rutherford split on myself. Because the room seems to be spinning.

  Oh, wait. The room is actually spinning! The walls are moving around us. I haven’t moved a muscle, and yet I feel myself rising up, up, up. I reach down to grab the chair beneath me, but it’s hard to get a good grip when things are going in circles. I manage to pull at the piping on the back of the chair with the tips of my fingers. But then I continue to rise and I can’t even do that anymore. Below me, my sleeping sister is getting farther and farther away.

  Mr. Heddle shoots up next to me. The fake Mr. Heddle. I’m still thinking of him as E. M. Heddle in my head because I don’t know his real name, whoever he is. Around us, the sky is dark except for the glow of stars like lights on a Christmas tree. I swing my legs around, trying to figure out if I can make myself move back down. Trey’s flip-flops fall off, one after the other, and I can hear them whistling to the ground.

  “Oh no!” I cry. “Watch out, Quinn!”

  But she’s too far away—and fast asleep—to hear me.

  “You sound concerned,” Mr. Heddle says.

  “Well, yeah, of course,” I say. “Do you know how many people are killed each year by things that fly out of windows, or off roofs of buildings? A shoe falling from this height—that’s gotta be deadly.”

  “I suppose it would be,” Mr. Heddle says calmly, evenly.

  “Plus, we’re just floating in space. I get maybe that’s a genie thing, but I still prefer solid ground.”

  “If that’s what you prefer,” Mr. Heddle says. And with a snap of his fingers, a floor materializes under my swinging feet.

  “Where are we now?” I say as my feet test the ground.

  Mr. Heddle keeps snapping. A chair knocks me gently from behind, and I fall into it. Beside me a floor lamp appears, and a little coffee table. “Put your feet up,” he says. “This is the thirteenth parallel, where we aim to make our guests comfortable so they’ll want to stay.”

  “And Quinn?”

  “Don’t you worry about Quinn,” he says. “Let’s talk about your heart’s desires. You wanted a dog, right? A dog just for you and no one else? Do you still want one?”

  “Sure, I guess. But now doesn’t seem the time . . .”

  “Nonsense! I won’t even make you wish for it. This one will be a freebie.”

  I spot something in the distance. At first it’s just a dot, like the sparkle of a star. But it’s moving closer and closer, running toward me, seemingly through the air. Before I can blink, the world’s cutest golden Labrador puppy has jumped up next to me. It settles its head in my lap. Could this really be happening? I lower a hand to the dog’s back. It certainly feels like a real dog.

  “Check out the tag,” Mr. Heddle says.

  I feel around the dog’s neck for the collar and look at the name tag: I BELONG TO ZACK COOLEY, it reads.

  “You should name it. A dog needs a name. Speaking of which, I haven’t properly introduced myself, have I?”

  “No,” I say. My voice is barely a whisper.

  “I am Linx. I am the head of the thirteenth family.”

  17

  HISTORY LESSON

  “Linx,” I repeat.

  Before my eyes, the man who was E. M. Heddle starts to transform. He grows taller and broader. Thick hairs sprout from the top of his head and flow back in waves like water. The whites of his eyes go whiter, so white they practically glow. And his pupils turn red—which is incidentally the same color that his skin has become.

  I pull the puppy closer, onto my lap, and bury my face in its silky tan fur.

  “Don’t be scared,” Linx tells me. His voice has changed, too. It sounds as deep as the ocean. “I’m not going to hurt you. You believe me, right?”

  I look up. There in front of me, Linx looks more like a monster than a man. But I find myself nodding anyway, almost involuntarily, like I’m in a trance.

  “That’s good,” he says. He stretches his arms out, as wide as a pterodactyl’s wingspan. “Whoa, it feels good to be out of Heddle’s body. It was getting a little cramped in there. Those of us in the thirteenth have always been a bit bigger than average.”

  Understatement of the year. Next to Linx, the guy cleaning up the chapel was practically the size of a toddler. “Did you say the thirteenth family?” I ask.

  “Indeed,” Linx says. “But I bet your uncle Max told you there were
twelve genie families.”

  “You know Uncle Max?”

  “Max and I go way back,” Linx says. “Way back to the womb. So I know he has a tendency to lie when he needs to. Tell me this, Zack, has Max ever lied to you before?”

  “No,” I say. But as soon as the word is out of my mouth, I remember—he lied about how we were related, and he lied about being a genie, and he lied about my being one, too.

  “Ah, Zack. Really?”

  “Uncle Max loves us a lot. After my dad died, he . . .” I let my voice trail off. “Anyway, like I was saying before, my sister and I just want to go home.”

  “Here, Zack, catch.” Linx throws me a doggie treat. The puppy laps it from my palm, licking each of my fingers like they’re lollipops. It’s hard to tell just what is real. But this dog certainly feels real. “You still haven’t named him. It’s not right for a dog to go nameless.”

  I shake my head. “I can’t think of any.”

  “Titan? Flash? Goliath? Hercules?” Linx suggests, and I shrug. “Well, you think on it. In the meantime, I have a story to tell you. Years ago, years and years ago—before you were even a figment of your parents’ imaginations, before your parents were figments of your grandparents’ imaginations, and centuries before that—the thirteenth genie family was the most powerful genie family in all the world, and I was the most powerful genie.”

  Linx pauses for a moment and smiles, like he’s remembering fondly.

  “Mortals would find my bottle and rub it,” he goes on. “But as you know, merely rubbing a genie bottle is not enough to summon a genie.”

  “I didn’t know that,” I tell him.

  “Mmm, it seems that uncle of yours is a little behind in your education. Allow me to enlighten you—as a rule, only a man in distress can get a genie to emerge.”

  “Trey isn’t a man,” I say. “He is a boy—a kid, like me.”

  “My dear Zack,” Linx says. “Trey was most certainly not ‘like you.’ But I see your point—a man, or a woman, or a child must be in distress, and rub the bottle at that very moment. And when that happens, the magic kicks in.”