Genie and the Sandman

by Julie Parker

  The sound of sweet silence soon passed over the house, and once I gained my feet, my fear of discovery was pushed aside…temporarily. Every step I took up to the kitchen squeaked. The door gave an ominous creak when I inched it open and slipped past. The kitchen floor was my enemy, as was the groaning hard wood I tiptoed across in the living room. At the top of the stairs I felt a little better when all remained silent, considering my loud ascent. Soon I was before Logan’s door. It was probably my imagination, but the door appeared larger and sturdier than the last time I was standing there. Should I knock, I wondered, or just barge in?

  Barging in seemed the most logical thing to do. Besides, I didn’t want to risk making any more noise. Gently I eased the door open, just enough to slip into the room. Then I closed it silently behind me. I switched on my flashlight and shone it in the direction of where I knew Logan’s bed to be. And there he was, all tucked in with his eyes closed, not a worry in the world. By the contented look on his face, I almost expected to see his thumb popped into his mouth and a teddy bear tucked under his arm.

  Was this the same guy who’d fought five men to get to me in a bear pit? The guy who’d been my rock, leading and caring for us while we fought and scrapped our way through medieval times? Where was my hero? My champion? Where was the gallant, dashing, strong young man who’d held me in his arms and kissed me so gloriously?

  The light shining in his face must have woken him, for he began to stir. “Payton?”

  I switched off my light when he rolled on his side to turn on his bedside lamp. My feet on his soft carpet hardly made a sound as I strolled over to stand near him. I tossed my flashlight on the bed and put my hands on my hips. “You were supposed to call me, remember? Or did you somehow forget we need to get the hell out of here?” I’d made up my mind; it was something I most definitely wanted to do now.

  He ran a hand over his face and wiggled up into a sitting position, throwing off the vestiges of sleep. When he saw how angry I was he at least had the decency to look guilty. “I’m sorry. But you gotta understand—”

  I held up a hand. “I know. It’s your mom. But the longer you drag this out, the greater the chances are things could go wrong.”

  He pushed back his blanket and swung his feet over the side of the bed. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, only pajama bottoms that had sailboats on them. Though the sight of his bare chest left me breathless for a moment, I couldn’t help but snicker when I saw them. He saw the direction of my gaze and shrugged his shoulders. “They’re all like this…not just boats, but other stupid stuff.”

  “Aww, and did your mommy read you a bedtime story before she put you to bed with a wittle kissie on your forehead?”

  “Knock it off.” He got up and stomped over to his dresser, pulled out a T-shirt, and tugged it on over his head.

  “Well, pardon me. I’m feeling a little out of sorts considering I just spent the day with a hung-over mother who can barely stand being in the same room as me.”

  “That bad, eh?”

  “Worse.” The tender gaze he gave me almost caused my knees to buckle, but then I remembered I had something to tell him. “Hey, I think I’ve figured this whole gift thing out.”

  “Gift thing?”

  “Yeah, you know, my healing ability.”

  His focus grew sharper. “You can still do it?”

  “No. I tried to heal my mother, but when I put my hands on her, nothing happened.”

  “That wasn’t a wound though…doesn’t really count.”

  I shrugged. “Whatever. I’ve been doing some thinking about the old well from the cave.”

  “You think it’s got something to do with the healing gift?” His look was doubtful.

  “I was able to concentrate on my past and I remembered a long time ago, when I was young, my parents took me on a picnic and there was a well; although, it wasn’t in a cave, but it did resemble the one we saw. Anyway, my mom made a wish that I would always remember—she meant the great day we’d had together—and I got some of the well water on my face just afterward.”

  “And in our world you had the incredible memory. That does make sense.”

  “I still do have that ability,” I reminded him.

  “But you don’t think you can still heal with your touch?”

  “No. Maybe I just take on the gift of my counterpart when I enter her dimension.”

  “And lose it when you leave,” he finished my sentence.

  “Exactly.”

  He came over and sat back down on the edge of his bed. “So what about here? Can you do anything here?”

  “I got my mom to try and remember if there’d been a well in her past that she and I had visited. She finally admitted there was.”

  “And….”

  “And she said something about wishing. Wishes I made would come true…at least, in the beginning they did.”

  “Really? That’s amazing. But what about now? Can you make it work now?”

  “I dunno. Before I left I wished for our family to be happy again. I was hoping I just had to put my heart into it.”

  “Could be.”

  “So look, I left my pack down in the tunnel against the barn door. I want to leave as soon as you’re ready.”

  “How did you get in here anyway?”

  “I broke into the station house and took the tunnel. Had to pick a couple of locks,” I boasted.

  He grinned at me. “Payton, would you be really pissed if I asked you to wait just a couple more days?”

  “What?” I exploded. Logan shushed me and I struggled to keep my voice down. “Do you realize the amount of effort it took for me to get to you?” He tried to reach out and touch me, but I backed away. “I can’t believe you. We don’t belong here. I want to go home.”

  “It feels so much like home though. Come on, please. You need to understand…when I get home I have to go back to having no mom, but here….”

  “It’s not real, Logan. This isn’t our world, and she isn’t your mother.”

  “Don’t you think I know that?” He got to his feet and stomped over to the window, putting his back to me. I knew he was mad, but so was I.

  “How do you think I feel seeing my mother as a drunk?”

  “At least you have a mother.”

  “Yes, I do. She’s at home right now waiting for me to return. So is my dad, and your dad. Probably worried sick about you, too.”

  He turned around and fastened those precious pleading eyes upon me. “Just a few more days.”

  “No. I left the cottage and I’m not going back. There’s nowhere for me to stay.” When he opened his mouth to argue further I held up my hand. “I’m not hiding out in the tunnel while you play mother may I with that tyrant.”

  “She’s not.”

  “Not to you maybe, but to me she’s a real b—.”

  “Don’t you say it,” he cut me off.

  “I will say it. And that’s not all. I’ll make a wish to see us out of here. I’ll do it right now. I wish Logan would come to his senses and leave with me.”

  He glared at me. “Yeah, well, I’ll make a wish too. I wish you’d go away and leave me alone for a couple of days.”

  Then it happened.

  My hands suddenly moved up and clapped together before my face. I said, “I wish I’d go away and leave Logan alone for a couple of days.” Then my head gave a nod.

  I’d had no choice in the matter. The words and actions seemed not of my own doing, but of a stronger force entirely.

  The next thing I knew, I was gone. Gone from Logan’s sight and from his room. It felt like I was flying, through time and space. Seconds later, I landed softly with an “oof.” After the shock wore off and I pushed my hair from my face, I noticed I was sitting on my bed at the cottage. It occurred to me in that moment, it hadn’t been my wish that had triggered these actions. It had been Logan’s.

  I had gone away just as he had wished.

  Chapter Five

  The phone began ringin
g about five minutes later. I ran to answer it, thinking this was probably the one and only time I was fortunate my mom was passed out. It was Logan, of course. His voice was frantic and I was glad.

  “Payton? Thank God. I didn’t know what to think. I ran around the house searching for you, and when I couldn’t find you….”

  “Wow, such concern coming from a guy who just wished me away.”

  “Cut the sarcasm, okay? I didn’t know it would work.”

  “Yeah,” I sighed. “Didn’t quite work out the way I’d hoped it would either.”

  “I know you’re mad, but try looking at the bright side. You can wish us home; or, I mean, I can wish us home, and you can make it happen.”

  He was right. All he had to do, it seemed, was wish and it would be so. This mollified me somewhat. Logan took my silence as encouragement.

  “And now, since there’s really no hurry—‘cause you can send us back to the exact day and time we left—we don’t need to leave right away.”

  Oh, here we go again. This was all about his precious mommy. If she was so wonderful, then why did she bail on her family when Logan was just five? It seemed to me he should be a lot more unforgiving than he was.

  “Come on, Logan. I want to go home, we’ve waited long enough.”

  “Just a couple more days. Besides, since it’s what I wished for, you probably won’t be able to get near me till then anyway.”

  “I can try,” I snarled.

  “You can only grant my wish if we’re together. That’s how it works when you’re a genie, or something.”

  A genie? Well, I guess it did make sense since I made other people’s wishes come true. Now that I thought about it, perhaps those earlier wishes Mom had told me about were in fact her wishes, not mine. She only thought they were mine because I’d repeated them and then made them happen, same as what had taken place with Logan. Maybe there was a chance I could get Mom to wish for happiness. Since it seemed I had a couple of days to kill, it was worth a try.

  “All right. But I want you to contact me soon, no longer then a couple of days. Or else I’m gonna come looking for you, and you don’t want me looking for you!” I wasn’t about to let him off easy.

  “Thank you. I’ll make it quick, I only need to discover what went wrong. There has to be a reason why she stayed with us in this world, but not in ours.”

  Whatever he discovered here wasn’t going to make much of a difference in our world. That much I was pretty sure of. There was no need to wound him any deeper with my thoughts on the matter, so I remained silent.

  “See you in a day or two,” he said, and hung up the phone.

  The hour was late, and since I wasn’t going home for a couple of days, I let fatigue overtake me. I retired to my room and crawled into bed. Part of me wanted to pull out my laptop and write some notes about what was happening. Perhaps even leave a message for my counterpart about what I’d discovered. But if she’d lived with this gift for most of her life, she probably already knew what she was capable of. Why she hadn’t fixed her life somehow, someway, I had no idea. She obviously wasn’t happy, considering she’d run away…yet again, according to Logan’s mother. Or maybe she didn’t know. The idea gnawed at me, so I crawled out of bed and grabbed the laptop, fighting yawns while I waited for it to warm up.

  As you may already know, you have the ability to make wishes come true. I wrote. But, what you may not know is that you can only grant other people’s wishes. Not your own. Sorry if you already know this, but I just had to tell you in case you didn’t. I signed it, The Other Payton. And added, By the way, your world and mine are very similar, except we only have one moon where I come from. I could have written more, but old Logan’s warning about the dangers of revealing too much sounded in my ears.

  It felt a little strange writing this note to myself. In a way, I also derived some comfort in the fact I wasn’t the only one traveling through time, space, dimensions, whatever. It made me feel I wasn’t alone. There was Logan, of course, which helped immensely. His counterparts would be traveling around with the counterpart Paytons, which gave me even more comfort. I wondered if all the other Paytons had crushes on their Logans. I also wondered if their Logans frustrated the heck out of them the way mine did.

  I turned off the laptop and crawled back into bed to ponder things for a while. It wasn’t like I’d have to hurry to get up in the morning. Mom probably wouldn’t be up till late again, and I doubted she’d notice if I slept in or not.

  Before I knew it morning arrived, and though I laid around in bed I couldn’t fall back to sleep. After a quick breakfast, I decided to hike into town. I suppose I could have stayed at the lake and chummed around with some of my counterpart friends, if they were around, but I wanted to see if I could get to Logan. He’d been pretty sure I couldn’t. Perhaps if I tried really hard, I could. We could get out of here today. Slim chance, I know, but I still wanted to try it.

  Not much later I was settling into the tall grass out back of Logan’s house, spying again. The distance was safe, it seemed, being far enough away from him to not get catapulted back to the cottage. I wasn’t brave enough yet to risk going up to his door. If I did get flung, I didn’t want any witnesses. Logan would need to come outside before I attempted to approach him.

  About an hour later I received my reward. Logan came out the back door, and I could have sworn his eyes went directly to where I was sitting. I was about to get up, except I was only able to unfold my cramped legs and make it up to my knees before I spotted someone coming down the driveway.

  “Oh, Logan,” a sweet, melodic, familiar voice rang out.

  It was counterpart Callie!

  What was she doing at Logan’s? I looked around for Dan or Jake, wondering if they might have come too. Alas no, all I saw was Callie. I could just make out the expression on Logan’s face. He appeared confused, as well as at a loss at how to greet her…I guess because she wasn’t our Callie. As she got closer to him, and then even closer, the look on his face changed to one of surprise, then shock when she threw herself into his arms and kissed him on the mouth.

  I got to my feet.

  They noticed me about the time I reached halfway across the yard. Logan saw me first as he was attempting to untangle himself from the octopus Callie had become. He’d push her off and she’d jump right back on again. Talk about desperate.

  I’d gotten about twenty feet away from them when I began to feel funny. When I stopped and looked down at my hands, I noticed they were beginning to fade. This was a terrible time to discover Logan had been right. If I got any closer I’d disappear, and probably find myself back at my cottage.

  My mouth still worked though.

  “Logan. What are you doing?” I snapped, glaring at him and at that hussy. That was my guy she was throwing herself at.

  “It’s not me. It’s her.”

  “Her? Is that what you call me now? Me…your girlfriend?” Callie spat. “I’ve only been away for a couple of days. Have you forgotten me already?”

  “Girlfriend?” Logan and I both said at the same time.

  Callie turned her snarky gaze on me. If she was wondering why I kept my distance, she didn’t ask. “Why are you so shocked, Payton? It was you who made it happen.”

  Her voice was triumphant, except when she turned her sights back to Logan she seemed confused over his denial of her. “Is it wearing off?” she asked me. “Does that happen? I mean, I didn’t think it would wear off.”

  If she’d wished for Logan and her to be a couple, I suppose he would be unable to resist her, even if he wanted to. This might perhaps be the reason why Logan and Payton had run off into the tunnels. Payton had probably made Callie’s wish come true, and Logan had been stuck with the consequences. So they had left, no doubt, to save Logan. It was plain to see the wish didn’t affect my Logan. Callie just couldn’t understand why.

  This was my chance to do some good. If I could get Callie to undo her wish, the Logan and Payton from this w
orld would be free to return…if they could find their way back.

  “It does wear off. At least for Logan it does,” I warned her. “He no longer loves you, but you will love him forever, unless you release yourself.” I hoped it worked.

  Callie eyed me suspiciously. “Maybe you just want him for yourself. Maybe I’ll just ask for Logan to fall in love with me forever.”

  “I suppose you could. But crushes don’t usually last a lifetime, and when you tire of him, he’ll still be following you around.”

  She now eyed Logan critically, probably wondering if she wanted to risk being saddled to him forever.

  “If he can’t finish school or get a job because all he thinks about is loving you, then you have only yourself to blame.”

  She could probably wish for him to fall out of love with her if she got bored with him; if she could find me to make it happen, that is. Although I was hoping she wouldn’t think of that.

  Letting loose a giant sigh, Callie uttered the words, “All right. I wish Logan and I were no longer in love. Happy now?”

  My hands came up and clapped before my face, and I repeated Callie’s words and gave a little nod of my head. “It’s done,” I told her.

  Callie looked at Logan loathingly. “What did I ever see in you?” After snapping a hard look at me, she turned on her heel and marched away without another word. Logan stood by like a dolt the whole time this was going on, following our conversation like it was a ping-pong match.

  “I guess I’ll go too, seeing as how I can’t get any closer to you. Unless you’re ready to change your mind and wish us home now?” I asked hopefully.

  “Not yet. I still haven’t figured out what I need to know.”

  My sigh matched Callie’s. “It’s your day to break hearts, isn’t it?” I turned and strode off across the back lawn, hoping it wouldn’t be too much longer before Logan decided to wish us home.