Sealed with a Wish (2 page)

I stuck out my tongue and dabbed my face dry. “Haven’t I been through enough trauma today?”

“Maybe. It’s just so weird how he puked all over you like that. I mean, what are the chances?”

I shrugged. “Probably a bad breakfast burrito or something.”

...plus a magical punch in the stomach,
I thought.

CHAPTER TWO

Having magic powers sucks.

It sounds like a dumb thing to say, like someone complaining about being “too pretty” or something equally moronic, but being a genie just isn’t that great. For starters, I have to grant people’s wishes.

Well, I would if anyone ever got their hands on my ring, which is why I keep it on me all the time. Mom and Dad are convinced that my ring would be safer if we locked it up, but it’s not like I’m in the habit of letting random people reach inside my pocket. As genie-stuff goes, my ring is pretty low-key.

There are regular (as in, non-halfie) genies out there, and those poor jerks are stuck in lamps and rings and sometimes even rolled up in dusty old carpets. Most of the time, they get passed down like heirlooms, used to make rich, powerful families even more rich and powerful. Mom swears that’s how one of our presidents got elected.

Having a genie in the family sounds like a great idea, but the thing is, genies are usually pretty pissed off. I suppose a few thousand years in servitude will do that to you. If you’re not super careful about what you wish for and how you do it, you might just be cursed into a life of geniehood, which is exactly what happened to my paternal grandfather.

When his turn with the family genie finally arrived, he asked her for all the usual stuff--money, power, blah blah blah--but, for his last wish, he thought he would be really clever. He wished for unlimited wishes for the rest of his life.

Big mistake. Just like that, the clever genie had an out. She swapped places with him, turning my grandfather into a genie that was still human enough to make wishes, while she got to walk away, newly mortal and free. I’m guessing she made more than a few obscene gestures on her way out the door.

My grandfather gave the ring (and the three wishes that accompanied it) to his wife. She used her first two wishes on (big surprise) even more money and/or power, and then kept the last wish in reserve so that no one could enslave her husband. I guess it’s kind of romantic, except that she went half-crazy with anxiety at the thought of accidentally muttering, “I wish...”

One day, my now-pregnant grandmother said that she wished her baby would be “strong and fortunate.” It was just a slip of the tongue, the kind of thing all expectant moms say, but it was enough to pass on the curse to her unborn son.

Or so they thought. My bio-dad grew up thinking that his geniehood was because of an unfortunate wish by his mother (my grandmother). I’m guessing that’s why he was so surprised to find that his special condition had suddenly disappeared after that spring break fling with my mom.

Yeah, that’s right. I’m the product of a college hook-up. If someone asks how my parents met, I have to tell them to be more specific. Like, do they want to hear about how my mom got knocked up by some random Eurotrash guy who just happened to be a genie? Or do they want to know how Mom met my stepdad a few years later? (Though it’s weird to think of Dad like that. I mean, he’s been my father ever since I could remember, even if he’s not technically my “real” dad.)

Mom didn’t realize I was a genie until after I was born. By then, my bio-dad was long gone, but he was kind enough to give her a pretty ruby ring “to remember him by.” Yeah, right.

Since she technically had possession of the ring, her off-hand wish to get rid of her baby weight ended up coming true. For that, I like to think I’ll always be her favorite daughter, and not just because I’m an only child. Mom used her second wish to track down my bio-dad, who I’m told was partying hard in Ibiza. I’m not sure what Mom did to him--the most she’ll admit to is some vague stuff about “incriminating photos”--but he finally told her what was really going on.

Turns out that geniehood can be genetic, or at least it is when it comes to weird, rare cases like mine. I guess that means that, one day, I might marry Chace Crawford and pop out a little genie of my own. At the very least, this makes an excellent case for me to devote my life to raising orphaned ponies or something.

So, basically, I’m half-human, half-genie. I’ve got some powers, but my wishes never turn out the way I want them, like when I was nine and wished to go to Disney World. Oh, I got myself there--but without any parents or money or a place to stay. I rode some rides and hung out with Mickey for a while, but that’s all.

The rest of the story involves Dad paying a ton of money for a last-minute plane ticket to Orlando, and then having to hunt for me in Disney World before some security guard assumed I had run away or something. So I’m pretty careful when I say the words, “I wish,” but sometimes I slip a little, like this morning.

After school, I changed out of my borrowed pants, determined to forget the sensation of Sean Fabry’s vomit all over my legs.

I dumped the Mom Jeans into my closet, planning to sneak them into the laundry tonight after manning Nat’s charity booth at the soccer game. Natalie had already caught a ride with our friend, Rajesh, so all I had to do was get changed and walk back to school. I knew it would have been faster to ride my bike (there were trails all over town because of some “green” initiative a couple of years ago), but the idea of being seen on a bicycle, looking like some random fifteen-year-old, made me cringe.

Not that I
wasn’t
fifteen-years-old or anything, but there was no reason for me to emphasize my lack of a driver’s license, was there? Something about my bike just felt so... junior high. Even if it would add another ten minutes to my trip, I’d rather hoof it back to school than pedal there on my ten-speed.

I dumped my shirt into the hamper and grabbed a fresh pair of jeans. I had only just pulled them on when Mom walked in.

I yelped and covered my bare chest with my arms. “Hey!”

“Oh, sorry.”

“I thought we agreed to start knocking around here.” With one arm, I fumbled for the scoop-neck shirt I had laid out on the bed.

“Sorry, honey. I was just going to ask if--”

“Yeah?” I pulled my shirt on and looked up at Mom, stiffening as I saw the expression on her face.

Her gaze turned sharp as she stepped into my bedroom. “Layla Yasmin Sadat-Grubman.”

Uh-oh. I flinched under the Power of the Full Name. To me, that was even more potent than,
‘I wish...’
Looking down at my jeans-covered legs, I almost expected some kind of lingering puke-residue.

“What on God’s green earth is your ring doing on your neck like that?” Mom said.

“Oh, right. My ring.” I shrugged. “So what?” Hidden under the dark material of my shirt, it just looked like a little bump on my chest.

“’So what?’” Mom repeated, her voice louder.

A second later, Dad appeared behind her, his eyelids clamped shut. “Everybody decent?”

“Yes!” Mom and I said together, our voices so tense that Dad jumped. When he saw Mom’s harried face, he sighed. There was only one thing that could upset my normally calm mother so quickly. “Layla,” he said, “how many times have we talked about this?”

“I was just--”

“You cannot afford to be careless with your ring,” Mom said. “What if someone got curious and asked to see it? What if they wanted to borrow it for a minute? Or what if they just grabbed it off your neck? They’d have it in their hands, Layla, and then--”

“I know what would happen then!” I burst out, unable to keep my voice from spiking up.

“If you know what’s going to happen, then why would you wear your ring around your neck like that?” said Mom.

I sighed. I had a perfectly good reason--just not one I wanted to share with my parents. Something told me that admitting the truth would only get me grounded.

“Honey, we know you like to have your ring close to you,” said Dad, “but you can’t wear it against your skin that way. It’s not safe.”

“Oh! Oh, yeah, right. My skin.” That made a lot more sense than mumbling some excuse about an art class gone wrong. I shook my head and added, “I was going to tie it into my pocket before I went to the game. I’m not that forgetful, you know.”

“Really?” Dad said. “You looked pretty surprised when we reminded you.”

“Oh my gawd. Why do you guys always have to treat my like an idiot? I know, okay?” Never mind that I kind of
had
forgotten about it. It’s not like I wouldn’t have remembered it eventually, and who says that someone would have noticed my ring, anyway?

Dad put his arm around Mom, who looked ready to explode--or to pull me out of school and make me study from home, which they had wanted to do for years.

Mom let out a heavy breath. “Just tie it into your pocket, Layla, all right?”

As I heard the fatigue in her voice, my stomach flip-flopped with guilt. “Fine,” I mumbled. “Whatever.”

“You’re on thin ice, kid,” Dad said. “You’re lucky you’re still going to that soccer game tonight.”

“I can’t just ditch Natalie and Raj,” I protested, but stopped when Dad’s expression turned steely again.

“Thin ice,” he repeated.

I sighed again. “Well, I’m going to be late. I’m meeting them at the game and we still have to set up.”

My parents left, shutting the door with a soft click. We’re not a door-slamming kind of family, which was why fighting with Mom and Dad always left me feeling tired, instead of mad. I sat on my bed, not getting up until long after the sounds of my parents’ footsteps had faded away.

#

By the time I got to the soccer game, Natalie and Rajesh had already set up our charity booth for the Heifer Project. A few dozen cow-shaped sugar cookies were arranged on the table, marching in straight lines like sprinkle-covered soldiers.

I carried a plastic bag filled with my share of cookies, baked and decorated last night.

As I set it down, Rajesh wondered, “Are those supposed to be squid or something? I--Oof!” He rubbed his side, where Natalie had elbowed him.

I shrugged. “Something went wrong with the dough. Or the oven. Or something.”

Rajesh took one of my malformed creations, giving it an experimental sniff. He and Natalie exchanged looks of concern.

“We’ve got so many cookies already,” Nat said, her voice as chipper as ever. “Maybe we can use these as back-up.”

“Yeah. For when we sell out,” said Raj.

I glanced at the spectators who had started to pour into the soccer stadium, none of which seemed all that interested in our decorated cookies. “That’s cool,” I said, sitting down.

I should probably have been embarrassed, but I was still too upset with my parents to think about much else. It seemed like every little mistake I made around Mom and Dad was magnified to epic proportions. Sure, I understood that losing my ring could mean a lot of things: being exposed and enslaved, forced to grant any wish that came my way, even if it hurt people. Really, I couldn’t blame them for freaking out, but I was too stubborn to let myself sympathize for long.

Caught between the two tugging emotions, I watched without interest as we sold a cookie or two before the game started. After that, our trickle of customers dried up completely.

With the sounds of cheering soccer fans blaring behind me, I grabbed a cookie for myself and nibbled thoughtfully on a rainbow-sprinkled cow’s head.

One corner of Raj’s mouth curled up. “You know, every time you steal a charity cookie, a little kid stops believing in magic.”

Nat chuckled, and normally, I would have done the same. But today, Raj’s joke seemed kind of unfair, like I couldn’t even do something as normal as eat my feelings without getting flack for it.

I stood. “I’m going to get a hot dog or something. I’ll be back.” Not waiting for a response, I slipped off to the concessions stand around the corner.

With the game on, I didn’t think anybody else would be there, but I found myself standing fourth in line. The girl up front was Diana Bukowski, who must have accidentally wandered away from her crowd of spray-tanned wannabes. That was strange; didn’t popular girls always run in packs? I wondered what her bleached-out cronies were doing without her.

Probably plotting a coup,
I thought. Diana was kind of their Alpha Blonde (probably by virtue of her
naturally
golden hair) but I assumed there was plenty of competition to be Carter High’s Next Top Hottie.

Diana ordered a Diet Coke (of course) and returned to the stands. Even as she mingled through the crowd, she never quite blended in. Diana was too tall and too pretty for that. Meanwhile, I could disappear so well that, sometimes, it felt like
that
was my magic power, instead of the whole genie thing. I felt a little flutter of envy--or maybe that was just my stomach growling.

The two girls in front of me giggled loudly, craning their necks to watch Diana. “Such a skank,” said the one in the miniskirt, loudly enough that Diana had to have heard.

I rolled my eyes. As the story went, Diana Bukowski had cheated on Sean Fabry, a fellow junior, at some lame party last month when she’d had a tongue-fest with a college guy. Most people seemed happy to call Diana a skank and call it a day, but I had a feeling there was more to the story than that.

Not that I would ever really know, since I hadn’t been invited to that party. Like the rest of the lowly underclassmen, Nat, Rajesh, and I had only heard about the incident after the fact.