by Mike Ford
FOR JEANNIE
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Sneak Peek
Copyright
“Did you find something?” Max asked his mother for the fifth time in as many minutes.
For the fifth time she answered, “Not yet, sweetie.”
They had been inside the Gingerbread House for what felt like hours. Max’s mother was looking for a gift for his aunt Maxine’s birthday. They were having a party for her at their house that night, and they’d already been to the grocery store for food, the florist for flowers, the party store for balloons, and the bakery for a cake. The present was the last thing on the list.
“How about this?” Max asked, picking something at random from a shelf and holding it up.
His mother looked at it. “I don’t think Aunt Maxine would like a ceramic clown.”
Max groaned and put the clown back.
“Why don’t you go look around?” his mother suggested. “I won’t be much longer.”
“There’s nothing interesting to look at,” Max complained, indicating the shelves filled with candles, teacups, and bubble bath. Nothing a ten-year-old boy would want.
“Why don’t you go to that new store that opened next door, then?” his mother said. “There might be something fun there. I’ll be done here in a few minutes and will come meet you, okay?”
“Okay,” Max said unenthusiastically. It will probably be more boring old-lady stuff, he thought as he walked out of the Gingerbread House.
He peered into the window of the shop next door. The name was painted in red-and-black letters across the glass: FRIGHTVILLE. Looks like a lot of old junk, Max thought as he pushed the door open and went inside.
He was wrong. Frightville wasn’t filled with junk. Max stood just inside the doorway, marveling at a room overflowing with stuff that most definitely wasn’t for old ladies. At least not old ladies like his aunt Maxine.
“You look like a young man who enjoys interesting things,” said a voice.
Behind the counter of the shop, a man was standing and regarding Max with an appraising air. Tall and thin, he was wearing a black suit that looked like it was probably a hundred years old. The man himself also looked like he might be a hundred years old, with pale skin and silver hair.
“This is a lot better than teacups,” Max remarked.
“Oh, I have some extremely fascinating teacups,” the man said, coming out from behind the counter. “They tell your fortune. But I have a feeling you’re looking for something really special.”
Max grinned. “What have you got?” he asked.
The man waved his hands around. “See for yourself,” he said. “Adventure waits around every corner.” He paused, raising one eyebrow. “For those who aren’t afraid to look for it,” he concluded.
Max wandered around the store—checking out everything. The man was right—there were teacups. But there were so many other things. There was a doll that was sewn out of scraps of different-patterned fabrics, a jar filled with antique keys that looked like they might unlock treasure chests, and lots of boxes with peculiar symbols on their sides that made Max wonder what might be inside them. But then he saw something really weird. Tucked into the dusty corner of a cupboard was a set of teeth. Max tapped his fingernail against them. He’d thought they might be wood or plastic, but they actually felt like real teeth. Or maybe they were ivory or bone. Whatever they were made of, they were old and stained, and there was a small metal key sticking out of one side. Max picked the teeth up and discovered that there was a paper tag tied to the key. Written on the tag was a short poem:
The Wish Eater
Make a wish and write it down
Place it in the Eater’s mouth
Go away, come back and check
If it’s gone, the answer’s YES
Max turned the key that was attached to the teeth. The mouth swung open and a red wooden tongue emerged. He peered inside. How could a toy eat a piece of paper? It was a silly idea. But the Wish Eater was really cool. He’d never seen anything like it.
“Did you find something?”
Max turned and saw his mother. He held up the Wish Eater. “This,” he said.
His mother made a face. “It’s kind of ugly,” she said. “But you’ve been really patient, so if you want it, it can be your reward for helping me run all these errands.”
The two of them went to the counter, where Max set the Wish Eater down.
“An excellent choice,” the man said as he wrapped the Wish Eater in tissue paper and placed it inside a bag. He handed the bag to Max. “May all your wishes come true.”
When Max and his mother got back to the house, the place was in an uproar. Max’s older twin sisters, Elfie and Elsie, had just gotten home from softball practice and had made a mess of the kitchen, fixing themselves peanut butter and marshmallow sandwiches. His next-youngest brother, eight-year-old Charlie, had decided to paint a portrait of Aunt Maxine for her birthday and had gotten as much paint on the living room carpet as he had on the painting. And Max’s youngest brother, Arthur, only three years old, was running through the house with no clothes on, laughing and banging on a pot with a wooden spoon.
“Sam!” Max’s mother shouted up the stairs.
Max’s father poked his head around the corner. “I’m on a call,” he said, holding up his phone.
“You were supposed to be watching Arthur.”
“I told Charlie to do it,” Max’s father said. “It’s only five minutes. What can happen in five minutes?”
He disappeared back into his office while Max’s mother groaned. “A lot,” she said. “Okay. Max, you take Arthur upstairs and get him dressed. I have a million things to do for the party.”
“But I was going to—”
“Max, please,” his mother said. “Just do it.”
Max groaned. “I hate being the middle child,” he said as he grabbed Arthur, who giggled and banged loudly on the pot.
It only got worse from there. At dinner, Charlie was telling a story and knocked his glass of milk over, right into Max’s lap. Aunt Maxine pinched his cheeks twice. And after they cut the cake, Max left his piece on the table for a second while he went to get a fork, but Aunt Maxine’s dog jumped up and ate it, so he got none.
Later, in his room, with Charlie snoring in the other bed, Max finally took the Wish Eater out of its bag. He held it in his hands. “I really wish I was an only child,” he said aloud.
He thought about it. Was that really his wish? Even if it was, how could it possibly come true?
“It’s all just for fun anyway,” he told himself as he scrounged in his bedside table drawer for a scrap of paper and a pencil. Then he wrote his wish down, folded the paper up, and stuck it inside the Wish Eater’s mouth. He placed the teeth on his bedside table and turned out the light.
When he woke up, the first thing he noticed was how quiet it was. Normally on Saturday mornings the house was filled with the sounds of his brothers and sisters. But there was nothing. He looked over at Charlie’s bed. It was empty. Not only that, but it looked as if it had never been slept in.
Then he noticed the Wish Eater. He’d forgotten about it during the night. Now he opened its mouth and peered inside. His wish was gone. He poked around with his finger, thinking it must have fallen inside somehow, but there was no hole at the back of the mouth. It had simply vanished. Or been eaten. But that was impossible.
He got o
ut of bed and went downstairs, fully expecting to find Charlie watching cartoons and the twins eating their third or fourth bowls of Krinkle-Os and arguing about whether to go skateboarding or swimming. Instead, he found only his mother and father in the kitchen. His mother was sitting at the table, drinking a cup of coffee and looking at the paper. His father was making pancakes.
“Hi, champ,” his father said. “You ready for some breakfast?”
“Since when do you cook?” Max asked.
His father laughed. “Every Saturday,” he said. “You know that. You want chocolate chips in yours?”
“Okay,” Max said, still unsure what was happening. He sat down across from his mother. “Where is everybody?”
“Everybody who?” his mother asked.
“The others,” said Max. “Charlie. Arthur. Elfie and Elsie.”
“Who are they, honey?” said his mother. “New neighbors? I don’t think you’ve mentioned them before.”
Max stared at her. Was she kidding? Had Charlie found the note he’d left inside the Wish Eater and they’d decided to play a joke on him?
His father brought over a plate of pancakes and set it down in front of Max. “Here you go, sport.”
“Thanks,” Max mumbled. He picked up a fork and cut off a piece of pancake. He put it in his mouth and chewed. “These are great,” he said.
“You sound surprised,” his father said, laughing. “You always like my pancakes. They’re the best in the whole county.”
Max’s mother looked at him. “Are you feeling okay?” she asked.
Max nodded. He didn’t mention that his father had never once made pancakes before.
“So, who were you talking about earlier?” his mother said. “All those people you wanted to know about? Elfie and Elsie? Those are funny names.”
Max hesitated. He didn’t know what was going on. If they weren’t playing a joke on him, was he dreaming? Or had the Wish Eater really granted his wish and he was now an only child? That was ridiculous, of course. But if it had granted the wish, where were his brothers and sisters now? If his family was teasing him, he decided, he could play that game too.
“Nobody,” he told his mother. “I was just joking around.”
“What do you say we go see the new Mutant Marauders movie this afternoon,” his father said. “Does that sound like fun?”
“Just us?” said Max. “Nobody else?”
“You can invite a friend if you want to,” his father said. “Otherwise, yeah, just us.”
Charlie had been begging their father to take them to the Mutant Marauders movie all week. There was no way he would let them go without him. Something was definitely up.
“Great,” Max said. “If you’re sure there’s nobody else who should come with us.”
His father laughed. “Well, your mother can come if she wants to.”
“Mutant Marauders?” Max’s mother said. “I think I’ll let you boys see that one on your own.”
“Looks like it’s just the two of us,” said Max’s father.
Max finished his pancakes, and went to get ready for the movie. He walked through the house, looking for any signs of his brothers and sisters. There were none. No toys. No clothes. Even the photos hanging on the wall showed only Max and his parents.
It was as if Elsie, Elfie, Charlie, and Arthur had never existed.
On the drive to the movie theater, Max tried to trick his dad into admitting that the whole family was playing an elaborate joke on him.
“Don’t Elsie and Elfie have a game this afternoon?” he mentioned as they drove past the softball field.
“Elsie and Elfie?” his father said, laughing. “My great-great-grandmother and her sister? I don’t think they’re in any shape to be playing softball. You know, since they’re dead and all.”
Max pretended to laugh too, as if he’d been making a joke. It was true that his sisters were named after his dad’s relatives, but it was a little weird how he could so easily pretend that his own daughters didn’t even exist. Part of Max was impressed by how committed he was to the joke, but another part started to feel uneasy about the whole thing.
He forgot about it during the movie, which was as awesome as he’d hoped it would be. But on the way out of the theater, he said, “We’ll have to come again with Charlie. He’ll love it,” and his father replied, “The kid you mentioned this morning? Sure. I’ll talk to his parents and make sure it’s okay with them, though.” Then Max felt the knot of worry in his stomach again.
He wanted to tell his dad to stop, that it wasn’t funny anymore. But he didn’t want to look like he couldn’t take a joke. He decided to wait and see what happened when they got home. Maybe while they were gone, his mother and siblings had put things back to normal. He bet that when he and his father walked in, everyone would be standing there with big grins on their faces, and the pictures of the whole family would be back where they belonged. Then he would laugh too, and they would all have spaghetti for dinner together like they always did on Saturday nights. He wouldn’t even mind if Arthur wanted to bang on a pot with a wooden spoon.
But when they got home and opened the door, the house was still quiet. The photos on the walls still showed only Max and his parents. There was no one watching TV, or making a mess in the kitchen, or listening to music that Max didn’t like. Instead, there was just his mother, sitting on the couch reading a magazine.
“How was the movie?” she asked.
“Great,” Max said. He sniffed the air, expecting to smell the scent of simmering sauce.
“Are you getting a cold?” his mother asked.
Max shook his head. “I was just wondering what’s for dinner,” he said. “It’s spaghetti night.”
“Spaghetti?” his mother said. “I guess that would be different. But I thought we’d order sushi, like usual.”
“Sushi?” said Max.
“You don’t call it Sushi Saturday for nothing,” his father said, looking at him with a puzzled expression. “Are you sure you’re not coming down with something?”
“Sushi’s fine,” Max muttered as he walked to the stairs.
Up in his room, Max stared at the Wish Eater. It wasn’t magic. It was just a toy. And yet, he was suddenly afraid of it.
He went to the dresser that he shared with Charlie. He pulled open the drawer that held their T-shirts, his on the left side and Charlie’s on the right. But now the drawer was filled with only his shirts. Charlie’s were gone.
He tugged open the other drawers. It was the same in each one. Max’s clothes were folded neatly inside, but where Charlie’s clothes should have been were just more in Max’s size. Next, Max looked at the shelf that held their collections of books and toys. All of Max’s favorites were there. But the things Charlie loved—the Danger Squad comics, the Bear Baxter adventure novels, the Action Guy figure—they were nowhere to be seen.
“Great job, guys!” Max called out, surprising himself. “But I know you’re up here.”
Nobody answered him. He got down and looked under Charlie’s bed, hoping to see his brother hiding there, his hand over his mouth to cover the sound of his giggling. But there was nothing. Max went and yanked open the closet door, ready to act like he knew all along that they were playing a joke on him when Charlie popped out to yell “Gotcha!”
But the closet was empty too. And only Max’s clothes were hanging up inside.
Max ran into the hall, opening the nearest door. Behind it he should have found Elfie and Elsie’s room. Instead, there was what looked like a home office. No posters on the walls. No clothes and sporting equipment all over the floor. No twins yelling at him to get out.
“This isn’t funny anymore,” Max said as he checked Arthur’s room and found a generic-looking guest room instead of his baby brother’s nursery. He shut the door and ran down the stairs. His parents, still in the living room, looked at him, startled.
“What’s with all the yelling?” his father asked.
“You can s
top pretending,” Max said. “I’m sorry I wrote the wish about wanting to be an only child. I was just angry.”
His parents looked at each other. For a moment, Max felt his hopes rise. Any second now they would turn to him and tell him that everything was okay, that they had only been trying to teach him a lesson about appreciating his family. And he had learned his lesson. He did appreciate them. Now he needed them to tell him the game was over.
But when they looked back at him, their expressions were ones of worry. “I really think you might be coming down with a fever,” his mother said, standing up and walking over to him. She placed her hand on his forehead.
Max swatted it away. “I don’t have a fever!” he said. “Now stop pretending! Go back to being like you were before.”
“Before?” his father said. “Before what?”
“Before I—” Max started. Then he stopped. Before I made my wish, he thought to himself. And that gave him an idea. “Nothing,” he said. “I guess I don’t feel so great. I’m going to go lie down.”
He went back to his room. Going to his desk, he took out a pen and paper and wrote out a new wish: I WISH I HAD NEVER BOUGHT THE WISH EATER. He folded the paper up, then picked up the Wish Eater. Turning the key to open its mouth, he placed the paper on the wooden tongue and closed the mouth again. Then he set the Wish Eater on his bedside table.
It was too early to go to bed, so he tried to distract himself by reading comic books. But every minute or two he found himself glancing over at the Wish Eater, as if maybe he could catch it in the act of chewing up his wish and swallowing it. Every time, though, it was just sitting there, unmoving.
It’s not alive, he reminded himself. It’s just a piece of wood.
Except that wasn’t true. If the Wish Eater was just a piece of wood or whatever, his wish would have never come true. But it had. Which meant that the Wish Eater really was magic. And that made Max very nervous.
A little while later, his mother brought him some dinner. Fortunately, it was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and not sushi. Max ate it, staring at the Wish Eater the whole time, imagining the sandwich was his wish. He hoped the Wish Eater would eat too and that in the morning its mouth would be empty.