Any Which Wall (5 page)

There was a deep moment of silence. A breezeless, birdless, wondrous moment of nothing.

And then …

Nothing happened.

Nobody turned into a pirate. Nobody saw a pirate carousing off in the distance. There wasn’t even a salty breath of sea spray wafting around them or the faint odor of rum casks and unwashed sailors lingering in the air. Nothing!

Henry’s face fell.

Susan said, “Okay. You made your wish. It’s my turn.” She held out her hand again for the key.

But Henry looked so disappointed that she withdrew her upturned palm. “Sorry,” she said. “Maybe we just need to wait a minute so that the magic has a chance to warm up.”

Henry kicked at the dirt. “Or maybe it was just a one-time thing, a fluke, and we wasted it on root beer floats. Man!”

“You really think so?” asked Susan.

Henry sulked and nodded.

“I suppose it’s
possible
that it was a one-time thing,” Roy offered. “Who really knows? But before we get too frustrated, let’s try to figure it out. Isolate our variables.”

“What’s that mean?” asked Emma. “It sounds ouchy.”

“It’s not a bad thing, Em. It just means we should figure out precisely what we’re doing, like in a science experiment. See, it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. There might just be tricks to the magic. The way we turn the key, for instance. Maybe you don’t have to turn the key every time you make a wish. Maybe it’s more like a light switch and it stays the way you leave it, either on or off.”

“Huh?” Now Emma was
really
confused.

Roy explained. “See, yesterday, we turned the key, and the magic happened, so we assumed that we activated the wall by turning the key. If that were the case, it would make sense that we’d need to activate it every time we wanted to use it, whenever we wanted a wish. But if it
isn’t
like that, if it’s like an on-and-off switch, or a lock …”

“That’s
just
what it is!” shouted Henry, looking up. “A lock! The whole wall is kind of like a giant lock, right?”

Roy looked excited. “Sure! In which case, when we turned it yesterday, we
unlocked
it, but when we turned it today, we
locked
it again!”

“Oh!” said Emma, beginning to understand. “We left it unlocked overnight?”

“Exactly!” said Roy. “So now we just need to turn it again.”

Susan beamed at her brother. “You know, as little brothers go, you’re pretty smart!”

Hopeful again, Henry nodded, then crouched back down to the keyhole and turned the key. This time, he spoke respectfully, even carefully. He didn’t sound like himself at all when he said, “Please, wall, we’d very much like to wish for a pirate adventure, if that’s okay with you.”

And this time …

Nothing happened
again
!

“I guess I was wrong,” Roy apologized sheepishly. “Try turning it back the other way?”

“ARRGHHH!” Henry yelled, sounding even more like a pirate, but now by accident.

Susan began to say, “Maybe we just need to wait for—” But before she could finish her sentence, Henry kicked the wall.

“Don’t kick it!” Emma got upset. “Poor wall. You’ll make him angry.”

Henry kicked it again. “I don’t CARE! Darn wall—”

“Maybe,” Susan said, “maybe there’s another variable? Like, maybe the problem isn’t the wall but the wish. Maybe the wall just doesn’t like pirates, and you should try wishing for something else.”

Henry thought about this and nodded. “Yeah. Yeah,
okay, that’s possible. I’ll try.” He took a deep breath. Then, touching the wall lightly with the fingers of one hand, Henry said, “I wish I could fly.” After that, he stepped away from the wall and flapped his arms. He flapped them tentatively at first, and then harder, but other than fanning Emma’s face a bit, nothing seemed to be any different.

“Maybe you need a running start?” suggested Susan.

Henry tried that too, hurtling forward and launching himself very briefly over the tips of the young cornstalks, but then his sneakers hit the ground again, hard.

Susan and Roy couldn’t help looking disappointed. Emma, who had been holding her breath, let it out in a gust.

“Aw, man,” Henry said in a thoroughly frustrated tone. “It just isn’t working.”

And everyone had to admit that it really
didn’t
seem to be working. None of them wanted to admit defeat, but they all (with the possible exception of Emma) felt a little silly standing for so long with their hands on the wall, which they’d been doing since before the first pirate wish. One by one, they sat down a few feet away, beside their scattered bikes. First Susan, then Roy, and finally Emma.

All except Henry. Henry just stared at the wall, his
teeth clenched, his hands balled into fists. He refused to be beaten, though the wall was proving a worthy adversary. He bellowed again and kicked the wall even harder. He mumbled some words he wasn’t supposed to say (words
you
certainly aren’t supposed to say) under his breath, kicked the wall a third time, mumbled another something, and turned beet red.

Nobody was paying much attention to Henry by this point. Instead, they busied themselves with munching their emergency granola bars. Roy, who had cleverly rubber-banded a water bottle to his bike’s frame, took a swig and passed the bottle. Who needs
supplies for an adventure that isn’t going to happen?

But it’s too bad they were distracted, because the next second, as Henry kicked the wall a fourth time and said, “Aw, this is a waste of time. I wish I was at the CineSix instead—”

He disappeared!

The others didn’t. Sprawled in the scrabbly grass with their bikes, they were completely unprepared for Henry’s instantaneous departure. Emma saw him blink away out of the corner of her eye and shrieked. Susan’s jaw dropped, and a big mouthful of water spilled out onto her shorts. Roy threw down a handful of trail mix, jumped up, and ran to the wall, but not quickly enough.

Susan and Emma scrambled after him, and because they were all scared to have lost Henry, they quickly touched the wall and shouted at the same time, as if they had rehearsed for this moment, “The CineSix!”

Suddenly they were at the movies! Surrounding them was the scent of stale popcorn and the soft darkness of a completely empty theater.

Thank goodness the magic was feeling kind and blinked them to the same spot it had blinked Henry to. It didn’t have to do this, since the Quiet Falls CineSix offers (as you might imagine) six fabulous screens, and the magic could just as easily have dropped Susan, Roy,
and Emma in a different room. If it were feeling truly ornery, the wall could have chosen to send them to a different CineSix altogether, a movie theater in Baltimore or Boise. But the magic was generous and blinked them gently into the same theater as Henry. They found themselves facing the back of the room, with their hands against a carpeted wall. They turned around to face the screen, and found Henry a few feet away, looking grumpy. Even in the dark, they could see his crossed arms and cranky expression.

“This doesn’t count as my wish,” he said in a surly tone. “I never would have wasted a wish on the movies. Plus, if I
were
going to wish for a movie, it wouldn’t be
this
one. Ugh. Look!” He uncrossed his arms and pointed.

On the huge screen, a woman and a man were kissing loudly in the woods. The woman was wearing scant rags and the man looked terribly pained. He clutched one of his legs in such a way that suggested the leg was broken, but he kept on kissing the woman through his utmost agony and her lustrous hair, which kept getting in both their eyes. Near the couple was a crashed airplane.

The four kids stared. Henry wore a look of true revulsion and Roy one of disinterest. Susan couldn’t help blushing. Only Emma was curious.

“Why are they kissing when he’s hurt?” she asked. She looked to Susan for an answer. “Why doesn’t she go get help? Why doesn’t he lie down and get some rest?”

“Who cares!” said Henry, louder than he meant to. “Why is this even
playing
? Shouldn’t this place be all locked up? The matinee shouldn’t start for hours yet.”

“Maybe,” whispered Susan cautiously, “there’s someone here, watching it. Someone who works here.” She glanced around, but there didn’t seem to be anyone else in the theater.

“Let’s go,” said Henry.

They all made for the brightly glowing exit sign beneath the screen, and nobody spoke, but when Susan’s hand pushed open the door, a terrible alarm sounded, and they all ran as fast as they could. They bolted onto the sidewalk and ran straight for a row of hedges beside the building, where they huddled, hiding until it became clear nobody was coming.

“Not exactly tight security, huh?” asked Henry, standing up and looking around.

“Well, have you seen the kids who work here?” said Roy. “They all look half-asleep most of the time. We could probably watch the whole movie and nobody would even notice.” But nobody thought that sounded like much fun.

Once they felt safe in the open, the kids prepared to head back to the field, until it dawned on them that they did not have their bikes. “I guess they weren’t touching the wall this time,” said Roy, smacking himself in the head and remembering the clatter the bikes had made falling to the ground.

Henry groaned at the thought of walking all the way back to the wall. “It’ll take us forever to get there, an hour at least,” he said, sitting down on the curb, exhausted by the very thought.

“Yeah,” said Susan, “it will, but maybe while we walk, we can figure out what we’re doing wrong. I mean, why won’t the wall work when we
mean
for it to? Is it a trick? Is
that
the secret of the wall? That it only does accidental magic?”

Roy answered her. “How could the wall possibly know whether we’ve planned a wish or not?”

“Magic knows stuff,” said Emma, sounding very certain. “It just does.”

“I think the magic is being mean!” said Henry, standing back up. “I bet it could let us do whatever we want, only it doesn’t want to. It’s messing with us.”

“No.” Roy thought for a minute. “I really don’t think that’s it. I still think there are rules, and we’re wishing wrong.”

“What do you mean?” asked Susan. “You mean like the wish has to be a good deed or something? Boy Scout magic?” She pointed to Roy’s tan uniform.

“No,” he said, “because root beer floats aren’t exactly what you’d call good deeds.” He adjusted his bandanna and added, “And for your information, I’m
not
a Boy Scout. I’m an explorer.”

“Let’s think,” said Susan. “What’ve we wished for so far?”

“An adventure with pirates,” said Henry, “and the ability to fly. But we haven’t gotten either of those wishes. The magic’s only happened twice, and both times that it’s worked, we were wishing for something dumb.”

“Not dumb,” said Susan. “Just regular. Root beer floats. Movies.”

Everyone thought about this for a minute.

“Huh,” said Roy, “I wonder if that’s it. I wonder if it’s only normal stuff the wall can give us. Maybe, instead of wishing for a big thing like flying, we should be wishing for something smaller. Something—”

“Boring?” suggested Henry, making a sour face. “How about soup? You want to wish for some soup? Or maybe we should wish for a newspaper, or a chance to clean out the basement.”

But Emma, who had been listening quietly, shook her head and said, “But we
didn’t
wish for root beer floats. We didn’t wish for movies either.”

“What’s that, Em?” asked Susan.

“We didn’t,” said Emma. “We didn’t wish for ice cream or movies. We wished to be at the CineSix and at Annabelle’s Diner.”

“We did?” Roy scratched his ear and tried to remember.

“Emma’s right,” said Susan. “We all were
thinking
about root beer floats, but that wasn’t what I said. What I
said
was that I wanted to
be at Annabelle’s
.”

“That’s true,” said Roy. “And today, we wished to be at the CineSix. Both times that the magic worked, someone was wishing to be in a different
place
.”

“A different
place
,” echoed Emma.

“That makes sense!” Susan burst out. “Tons of sense. It’s a
wall
, after all. And a wall is a
place
. Maybe it’s like that book Emma just read,
Magic by the Lake
. Remember that? How they have to wish watery wishes because the magic is watery magic. Since this is a wall, maybe we have to wish wall-ish wishes.”

Roy nodded. “Right … okay … then maybe the wall isn’t a magic talisman, exactly. Maybe it doesn’t grant wishes, so much as it can become a different wall.”

Emma was struggling to understand. “So, we have to turn on the wall, and then when it’s
on
, it can change into other walls—any other wall we want—and it can take us with it?”

“I think so,” said Roy excitedly.

“If I’d gotten to wish to be in a castle today, instead of Henry wishing for pirates, it would have worked?” asked Emma.

“Maybe,” said Roy. “Maybe so.”

They all thought about this, and it did seem to make sense, so they were all feeling hopeful again when they stopped by Roy and Susan’s house to get a quick lunch before the long walk back to the wall.