Fair Coin (12 page)

“You want me to use it? Now?”

“Make a wish,” she said.

Ephraim licked his lips. “Like I said, I don't know how it works, not completely. I don't want to use it again until I know it's not going to cause any more harm. And now you're talking about other universes and everything, and it sounds even more dangerous than I thought.”

“Wait. Any
more
harm? What harm has it done so far?” Jena asked.

“It gives me what I wish for, but sometimes…sometimes bad things happen, too. Things I didn't intend. Things you can't predict.”

“Which is why you were looking through all those books on fairy tales. Bad things like what?”

Like your father having a heart attack.

Ephraim swallowed and kept his mouth shut. He wasn't ready to tell her everything.

“Maybe we should leave this for now,” he said. It all suddenly seemed less important. Jena was talking to him. Her father was okay. He was getting things back on track without the coin.

The only problem was Nathan. He wasn't the friend Ephraim remembered, and he didn't know if they could be now. They hardly had anything in common anymore; Nathan was a popular football jock, and he was dating Shelley Morales. He didn't have room for Ephraim in his new life. He didn't need Ephraim the way he always had before.

“No way,” Jena said. “If you stop now then I'll have to assume you're lying about the coin.”

“I wouldn't lie to you.” Ephraim picked up the coin. “All right. But you have to hold my hand when I make the wish.”

Jena blinked. “Is this some attempt to put a move on me?”

“We have to be touching or you won't remember the way things were before the wish. It worked that way with Nathan.”

“Nat Mackenzie?”

He nodded.

“What does Shelley's boyfriend have to do with this?” she asked.

“Before all this…we were best friends. He was different then. I told him about the coin, we shared a few wishes. But so far the coin only works for me, and I forgot to grab his hand the last time we used it, so he doesn't remember it or our friendship now,” Ephraim said.

“Who else did you tell about the coin?” Jena asked.

“No one,” he said. “Nathan was the only one. I swear.”

“Not even Mary?”

“Why would I tell her?” Ephraim said.

Jena smiled. “Forget it.”

Jena held out her hand, and Ephraim gripped it lightly, worried she would notice how sweaty his palm was. Her skin was cold. She stared at their clasped hands for a moment and then met his eyes.

“You were dating my best friend,” she said.

“That was a…side effect of a wish I made for Nathan.” He swallowed. “I've only ever wanted to go out with you, Jena.” There, he'd said it.

She pursed her lips but squeezed his hand.

“So what should we wish for?” she asked.

“Something small. Something harmless, but noticeable. That should minimize the possibility of things going wrong, or changing too much. I hope.” Ephraim eyed the take-out containers on the coffee table. “I have an idea,” he said.

He balanced the coin on his thumb, ready to flip it. “I wish we'd ordered Chinese instead of Mexican.” He raised his eyebrows, and Jena nodded. He flipped and caught it a moment later.

Heads.

He felt his stomach flop as though it had just been turned inside out, and the room shimmered. He realized he and Jena were now sitting on opposite ends of the couch, no longer holding hands. After a moment of obvious disorientation, Jena clapped a hand over her mouth and ran for the kitchen.

Jena came back a few minutes later wiping at her mouth with a damp paper towel. Her face was pale.

“Um. I should have warned you about that,” Ephraim said.

“You knew that would happen?”

“It only happens the first time. What's wrong now?” She was ignoring him, looking at the coffee table.

Ephraim suddenly noticed the little white cardboard containers. Jena tucked her hair behind her. “Chinese food,” she said.

The aluminum containers of Mexican food were gone, replaced by tins of egg foo young, cartons of white rice, dishes with chicken in brown sauce. Jena's plate was empty, but food still sat untouched on Ephraim's plate, the sauce gelled on top.

“There's no way you could have switched all that while I was in the kitchen, is there?”

“Not without magic.” He grinned.

“Okay, hold on. When you came over I asked if you wanted Mexican or Chinese. And you said Mexican. That's how I remember it.” She furrowed her brow the way she did during exams, when she was concentrating really hard on a question.

“And I just changed that with my wish.” Ephraim said.

“So now it's like we had ordered Chinese in the first place. But what I just threw up in the kitchen was definitely Mexican food.” She put her hand over her stomach. Ephraim made a face. “So why didn't it change the contents of my stomach too?”

“Because you were included in my wish.” It seemed that Jena believed in the coin now.

“Because I was an observer…” Jena muttered. She collapsed onto the couch and toed the Chinese food plate away from her with a grimace.

“It's just Chinese food,” he said. He picked up his own plate and poked at the thick gel with the end of a chopstick. “It's not radioactive or anything.”

“How do you know? Do you have a Geiger counter?” She shook her head. “I just don't have much of an appetite anymore.”

Jena picked up her laptop and started typing. Then she shrieked and closed the lid.

“What the hell, Ephraim?” she said.

“Huh?”

She showed the laptop to him, close to tears. “My MacBook. My beautiful MacBook. What have you done?”

The laptop was still silver, but it was clearly a PC.

“Oh no,” Ephraim said.

“If this is a joke, it isn't funny, Ephraim. Give me my Mac, and I won't kill you.”

He swallowed. “I didn't do that. It was the coin.” He shrugged. “Random stuff like that happens whenever I use it.”

“Well, wish it back then.”

“It's not that easy. The next wish could make things worse.”

“I don't know what could be worse than this,” she muttered. She took a breath and opened the lid again, poking around sullenly at the mousepad. “All my files seem to be here, at least. Probably some nasty viruses too.” She glared at him. “All right, we'll fix this later.”

She started typing, more slowly and with an occasional curse. “We should go over this. Scientifically. It would be better if we had some actual equipment, access to the labs at school.”

“You really want to test it with a Geiger counter?” He hoped the coin wasn't radioactive; he'd been carrying it around in his pocket every day.

“Well, we could at least weigh it, compare it to a regular quarter. But let's start with what we do know about it,” she said.

“One: it's probably not from our world, because of the Puerto Rico thing and the different bust of Washington.”

“Not to mention the magic thing,” Jena said dryly.

“Right. Two: you have to flip the coin to make a wish,” Ephraim said.

“Actually, stop right there. That's interesting. What's the purpose of the coin flipping? Some magical ritual?”

Jena picked up a Pepsi—had it been Coke before?—and sipped. She frowned and examined the can distrustfully.

“It starts getting hot as soon as I make a wish, and it cools after I flip it,” Ephraim said.

“So it's like making the wish activates the coin, or charges it. And flipping it completes the process,” Jena said.

“That makes it sound like it's mechanical.”

Jena shrugged. “I'm just trying to be logical. Does it matter if it's heads or tails?” she asked.

“I've been wondering about that. I've tried to remember each of my wishes, and I think when it's heads I get what I asked for, more or less. When I get tails it still grants the wish, but something bad happens along with it.”

“Like a Monkey's Paw,” Jena said.

“Yeah. That's what I thought.” He'd found the story in library research. In it, a magical monkey's paw twisted every wish its owner made so horribly that the owner regretted ever making it. “But I guess it seems more like a mixed bag after each wish, regardless of how the coin comes up. I can't account for every change it's made, just the ones I've noticed.”

“Was that last coin toss tails?” she asked.

“Heads,” he said. “I prefer PCs.”

She grimaced. “No one's perfect. So the outcome of each wish is essentially random. Tricky.”

“That's what really has me worried.”

“In stories, magical items often aren't the blessing they seem. People usually get in trouble when they start to abuse them, or think they can outsmart the magic somehow. Of course, until today, I didn't think magic existed.”

“You read all those fantasy books, but you didn't actually believe in magic?” Ephraim asked.

“I read to escape the real world. I never thought magic could be real, no matter how much I wanted some in my own life.”

She typed some more; Ephraim enjoyed watching her. It was comfortable being with her like this. It was what he'd always wanted, right from the beginning. Maybe the coin was still granting that early wish of his.

Jena shot him a glance over the top of her screen. “If I hadn't been holding your hand when you made that last wish, would I have realized that we'd had Mexican before, or would I have just thought we'd gotten Chinese?”

“You wouldn't have remembered things were ever any different,” he said.

Jena's nails clicked against the keys for a moment.

“Ephraim.” Jena looked at him somberly.

“Jena?”

“You said that dating Mary was just a ‘side effect’ of Nat's wish. What did you mean? What did he wish for?”

“Nathan
wanted me to wish that he and Shelley were dating. Somehow that made Mary like me. I didn't want that or anything, it just happened.”

“When did you make that wish?”

Ephraim thought back. “Four days ago.”

“But you two have been dating for the last month. You've gone out three times already.”

“I don't remember going out with her before the other night, aside from the birthday dinner with her, Shelley, and Nathan.”

Jena drummed her fingernails against the laptop case. “You said it yourself. You remember things differently because you made the wish.”

“But why would it change things that far back?” he asked.

Jena shook her head. “Four days ago…that's when you kissed Mary, isn't it?”

Ephraim's palms began to sweat. He'd known girls talked to each other about stuff like that, but he was still shocked that Jena knew about the kiss. “I was confused. One minute I was by myself, the next I was out on a date with her. She kissed me, if you want to get technical.”

“You kissed her back.”

“No, I—”

“Ephraim. Did you ever use the coin on me?”

“What?”

“Have you made any wishes that affected me directly?” Jena asked.

He sighed.

“That sounds like a yes,” she said.

“I was going to tell you.”

She closed her eyes. “Tell me now.”

“It was just an accident. I wasn't used to the coin yet, didn't even think it worked really, and I sort of wished…that you liked me.”

“I don't remember ever not liking you.” She opened her eyes. “Damn.”

She slid the laptop onto the couch and pulled her legs in so she was sitting Indian style with her hands on her knees. “What else? You said that was ‘the first time.’”

Here it was. He had to tell her. “I was just trying to help,” Ephraim said. “But the coin is so unpredictable. That's why I stopped using it, to figure out how to get control over it.”

“What did you wish for?” Her voice was flat.

“You don't remember it, but you and your family were going to go to L.A.”

“Oh. That's why you thought I was moving. My father was being considered for a promotion, but he didn't get it.” She narrowed her eyes. “Was that your doing?”

“He got the job before. I didn't want you to leave, because it seemed like we were finally getting to know each other.” He paused, but he didn't remind her that was only because of his previous wish. “So I wished that you didn't have to go. The coin landed on tails. And…your father had a heart attack.”

Jena didn't say anything.

“As soon as I realized what had happened, I used the coin to make him better,” Ephraim said. “I tried, honestly. But every time I use it, I don't know what else is going to change. It just gets harder to fix. That was going to be my last wish.”

She wouldn't look him in the eyes. “I thought you were a good person. I liked you, Ephraim.”

“After that last wish, I was afraid you hated me.”

“I was jealous, Ephraim. I've always liked you too, but Mary got you first. So I stepped out of the way.” She sighed. “It's stupid, I know. I hated the way it made me feel when I saw the two of you together. I thought I should be happier for both my friends.”

“Then why did you act like you hated me?”

“I was angry with myself for never telling you how I felt. But I guess I took it out on you, because I didn't want to lose my best friend, too.” She sighed. “It was easier to be around you if I pretended that I didn't like you. The thing is, right now I'm not sure if I'm pretending anymore.” She spoke quietly.

“Jena, it turned out all right though. Your father's fine.
We're
fine. Aren't we?”

“Don't make any more wishes about me, even if you think you're helping me. I mean it. I know I can't enforce it, I guess I probably wouldn't even realize if you change things around so that I love you or we're dating or whatever. But if there's a tiny sense of decency in you, you won't do it.”

“I wouldn't do that! Of course I wouldn't.”

She slammed her laptop shut and ran her fingers over the black Tandy logo, where the Mac apple had been.

“In fact, don't make any more wishes, period. It's obvious you don't know what you're doing. You can't control what the coin changes.” She lowered her head, her bangs falling over her eyes. “I think you should go now. We're done here,” she said.

He stood up and waited for a moment, hoping she would say something else. Hoping she'd ask him to stay.