The Eyes of Kid Midas (5 page)

"Follow me. It'll only take a second." Kevin led Josh off into the woods until the sounds from the campsite were far away, and he was sure no one could hear them.

"Okay," said Kevin. "Here's the proof: One, I told Bertram to jump in the lake, and he did."

"Big deal."

"Two, I told him to do it again, and he did it again!"

"Big deal."

"Three, the avalanche. I said there was an avalanche, and then,
pow,
there was one."

Josh leaned against a tree, and a look of worry began to creep onto his face. "What you're saying is looney-toons, you know that?"

Kevin took off the glasses and looked at them. Now they had faded to the rich purple of the western sky.

"They tingle, Josh."

"What?"

"The glasses. They tingle. First, when I told Bertram to jump, and then when I said, 'Avalanche.' They tingled . . . and it sort of felt .. . good."

Josh reached out his hand. "Let me see."

"No!" Kevin pushed Josh's hand away. Josh frowned but didn't reach for them again.

"What do you want me to do, then?" asked Josh.

Kevin's voice was a whisper. "Ask me to wish for something."

"You're nuts."

"Ask me."

"You're certifiable!"

"What are you afraid of?"

It was a good question, and rather than admit he was afraid, Josh gave Kevin a wish.

"An ice-cream cone," said Josh.

"What flavor?"

"Unmerciful Chocolate Destruction. A double scoop."

"Cake cone or sugar cone?"

"Just get it over with!"

Kevin planted his feet firmly on the ground andstuck out his hand, concentrating with the full force of his mind.

"Okay," said Kevin, "give me one double dip of Unmerciful Chocolate Destruction on a sugar cone to go!"

The glasses went dark, and at first Kevin could see nothing. Then a spot of light appeared before him, which exploded in waves of brilliant color. He could feel the warmth and tingle of the frames as they ever so slightly surged with energy, as if they were pulling it right out of Kevin's head.

"Kevin," said Josh, his voice trembling, "your eyes . . . I think they're glowing!"

In his mind, Kevin imagined the cone dripping with ice cream, and then, when the colors faded from before his eyes, he realized that the picture he had in his mind, had entered the real world.

Unmerciful Chocolate Destruction dripped down his fingers, cold and sticky.

Josh was the first to scream, and Kevin joined him. He dropped the cone and they both ran from it, screaming at the top of their lungs, until they got to a clearing far away from the horrific cone. There they stopped to catch their breath.

"This is weird, Kevin!"

"I know!"

"No, I mean this is
really
weird. Remember when Ralphy Sherman said his father was a werewolf, and then they found him one morning sleeping in a neighbor's doghouse? Well,
this
is weirder."

Kevin looked at his hand, which still had some melted chocolate ice cream on it. He licked it. It was unmercifully real.

"What are we gonna do?" asked Josh. "What are we gonna do?" And then something struck him. "Hey," asked Josh, "where's my ice-cream cone?"

With Hamburger Helpless on the menu, it quickly became obvious what they were going to do. If reality was flexible enough to allow an ice cream cone to be born out of thin air, then it was flexible enough for quite a variety of things.

Within ten minutes the little clearing was filled with food. Burgers from every imaginable fast- food chain lay all over the ground, one bite taken from each. The birds were feasting on french fries, and a bivouac of army ants was all but carrying away the discarded burgers.

And, of course, the feast was topped off by a whole gallon barrel of U.C.D. ice cream. They kept shoveling in the ice cream until it could no longer go down and just sort of squirted out of the sides of their mouths when they tried to swallow. Then they rested; two beached whales barely able to move.

The glasses, which had gotten a bit warm when Kevin wished up their gluttonous feast, had cooled off. Now, in the moonlit sky, their tint seemed tohave disappeared, leaving the lenses completely clear.

"This is just the beginning." Kevin took off his glasses and polished them against his shirt. "There's no limit to the things we can wish up!"

"Yeah," said Josh. "But what if it's not all free?"

"Like how?"

"What if the glasses are like some . . . I don't know . . . like some intergalactic charge card, or something? And what if someone comes to collect the bill?"

"They don't work like that," said Kevin.

"How do you know?"

"Because I do! When you wear the glasses, you just know things about them."

"Like what?"

Kevin cradled the glasses in his hands, running his fingers tenderly across the black-and-gold rim.

"Like they were meant to be used," he said. "Like they're supposed to make everything a whole lot better. That they're more valuable than anything in the world."

Josh reached out and gently took the glasses from Kevin, staring at them as if he held the world's most precious diamond in his hands. He seemed almost afraid to be touching them.

"Would I feel all that if I wore them?" asked Josh.

"Probably," said Kevin, grabbing the glasses back and slipping them on. "But you don't need towear them, as long as you've got me. I'll give you whatever you want."

Josh seemed relieved, as if he really didn't want to test them himself, anyway.

Kevin burped, then giggled as a thought occurred to him. "I guess I'm the master of the universe."

"Ah, put a leash on it!" said Josh.

"No way." Kevin's imagination had been strapped to a post long enough. He stood up, hungry for something more than fast food, and climbed on a high boulder, reaching a hand up to the heavens.

Josh laughed. "Whatcha gonna do? Part the Red Sea?"

"Something like that."

Josh stopped laughing and watched as Kevin stared through his glasses at the infinite depths of the star-filled sky.

"Clouds," he whispered to the night. The frame of the glasses began to get warm, the lenses went dark and then silver. Directly above them, a gray spot appeared, like a hole in the sky, and clouds began to unfold, growing high above their heads— dense gray clouds, but the glasses reflected them in rich, swirling hues.

"Pretty intense," said Josh. "Now stop it."

The clouds spread out and blackened. Now the entire mountain was covered by gray clouds, turning black. A billow shrouded the moon, and the forest became as dark as moonshadow. Kevin Held both hands up to the sky. "Wind!" he said. And the mountain breathed, sending a wind that rasped across the treetops, then swooped down, picking up leaves and pine needles, dragging them away.

Josh labored against his full stomach to stand up. "Are you deaf? I said that's enough!"

"Faster!" Kevin said. The wind began to groan and the trees bend to its voice.

Back at the campsite, everyone must have been watching the dark threat of the sky. Kevin could imagine tents blowing away with the wind,
his
wind.

"You see?" said Kevin. "All I have to do is say it, and it happens! Even if I just whisper it!" Far above, the clouds began to flash and rumble.

"Kevin, you're scaring me!" yelled Josh. "Stop it!"

"I'm not finished!" It was Christmas rolled up with the Fourth of July. The clouds began to swirl and change, their electricity moaning to be released.

Now the smile was gone from Kevin's face, and although the glasses had gone as dark as dark could be, Kevin could see through them with an impossible clarity. He could see all the clouds, inside and out, swirling with color. The eyeglass frame was heating up around his ears and across his eyebrows. It glowed a dull red. "Now the fireworks!" He threw up his hands like the very small conductor of a very large orchestra.

"Lightning," he said.

"Kevin, no!"

Lightning exploded all around them.

Again Kevin threw up his hands and pulled down the lightning, much more violently than before. Now it was time for the grand finale. He pointed his finger at a tree directly in front of him. "There!" he said, and as he did, a fat, sizzling bolt shot down from the sky, hit the tree dead center, and split it in two with a deafening roar.

The colors swirling before his eyes settled down as the glasses awaited their next command—but Kevin had had enough for now. He let the colors fade and the glasses wash clear once more. He took off the glasses and admired his masterpiece raging in the clouds all around them. "So, how did you like that?" Kevin asked. He turned to see Josh crumpled in a ball, shaking, with his hands over his head as if it were the end of the world.

"Make it go away!" he wailed as the storm continued to build.
"Please
make it stop."

"Ah, don't be so gutless." Kevin pushed the glasses farther up on his nose and reached up his hands. "No more lightning," he said.

A moment later, lightning struck again.

"I said make it stop!" yelled Josh.

"I'm trying!" Kevin threw up his hands and called out in his most powerful voice, "No more storm!"

But neither the glasses nor the sky seemed to listen. The wind blew, the lightning crashed, and the clouds kept bubbling slowly outward.

"What's wrong?"

"I don't know! I don't know, it's not working anymore!" Small drops of rain began to fall on them, and then the clouds ruptured like a water balloon, letting loose a downpour the likes of which the mountain had never seen.

"Let's get out of here!" Josh yelled over the roar of thunder. They ran from the clearing just a moment before it was blasted by lightning.

The camping trip was ruined. When the lightning started, everyone raced for the vans. Kevin and Josh were the last to arrive. For a half hour, everyone huddled in the vans, filled with a weird sort of excitement, as they wondered whether or not they were all going to die in a flash flood. The kids who had done the rain dance earlier that day proudly claimed responsibility.

After an hour, it became clear that waiting out the storm was more dangerous than driving through it, and so the teachers ventured out to collect what was left of the tents. The rain was still coming down in sheets when the vans crawled out of the campsite.

Kevin leaned his head against the cold window and wiped the fog off the glass. As they put more distance between them and the Divine Watch, the thunder began to chase the lightning, falling farther and farther behind with each flash. Kevin had to smile. To think that this was all his doing!

"There's nothing funny about it," said Josh. And that's all he had to say. On Josh's video game, fighter jets bombed Godzilla. By his score, Kevin could tell Josh really wasn't concentrating.

Only fifteen minutes after the bus had left the Divine Watch, they finally passed out of the storm, and the normal, comfortable chaos filled the van. Kevin was not a part of it. He felt far away. As numb as the chilling rain. As smooth as the surface of his glasses.

"I know why I couldn't stop the storm," Kevin told Josh, when they were well away from the Divine Watch.

"Why?"

"I don't think the glasses can reverse what I've asked them to do; they can't
uncreate
anything they've created."

"So is it going to rain there forever?"

Kevin shrugged. "I guess."

"You guess?" said Josh. "You turn a mountain into a rain forest, and all you can say is 'I guess' ?"

Kevin didn't know what else to say to Josh, so instead he pushed the glasses up snugly on his face and reached out his hand. "Hey, Josh?"

Josh turned to Kevin, and Kevin touched the piece of gauze on Josh's cheek that covered the cut he got when they fell from the mountain.

"Heal," whispered Kevin. He imagined the cut on Josh's face gone and then slowly peeled off the bandage. There was no sign Josh had ever been cut at all.

"See, Josh? The glasses can do good things, too. It just depends on how you want to use them." Josh still didn't say anything. "So, are we still friends?" asked Kevin.

Josh looked at Kevin and thought for a moment. He reached out, took the glasses off Kevin's face, and put them in Kevin's jacket pocket, zipping the pocket completely closed.

"Of course we're still friends," he said.

Kevin felt the glasses bulging in his jacket, and for a moment he wanted to feel their weight on the bridge of his nose again—but his head was beginning to ache just a bit, and he figured they should stay in his pocket for a while.

Behind them the storm faded on the horizon until it was out of sight and out of mind. Two girls in the front were glancing at Kevin and laughing about the way his face had gotten sunburned everywhere except around his eyes—but it was all right. It didn't matter what anyone said or did to him now. Because now, Kevin was finally in control.

CHAPTER 6

Better Homes and Headaches

It was the usual Monday morning madhouse.

Downstairs the TV blared, and the dog was barking nonstop. In the master bedroom, the electric razor buzzed as Patrick Midas, Kevin's father, made his magical transition from stubble-bearded bum into clean-shaven businessman. In the hall bathroom, Teri Midas, Kevin's fourteen-year-old sister, blasted a radio while blasting her wet head with hot air. And, as if all this noise wasn
't
enough, Monday was trash day.

Kevin cringed in bed as a metal garbage can rang out like a broken bell. No doubt trash collectors' pay was based on how much noise they could make.

"Avalanches!" said Donna Midas, Kevin's mom. "Avalanches and rainstorms!" She violently shook a thermometer and crammed it into Kevin's mouth. "Avalanches, rainstorms, and camping trips! You're going to kill me one of these days, Kevin, you know that?"

Kevin knew he didn't have a fever, but he did have a splitting headache and no intention of going to school today.