The Wish Stealers (4 page)

Griffin beamed. Even in this terrible weather, with her grandma not feeling well, she’d still taken the time to drive to school. She adored her grandma Penshine. Dropping off a special gift for her was just like something her grandmother would do. While Griffin’s mom used to write notes with a nontoxic black pen on a banana like
I’m bananas over you!
and stick it in her lunch bag, her grandma gave magical gifts like a hand-knit bag with lucky stones and a four leaf clover inside. (Charlemagne ate the clover by accident, but Grandma Penshine said not to worry, it just made Charlemagne a very lucky turtle.) Griffin opened the box. A tiny golden key lay inside with a note:
Good luck. From Mariah.

All the color drained from Griffin’s face.

Good luck or bad luck can flip on a dime … or a penny.

D
ashing back to first period English class, Griffin couldn’t stop sneezing. The smell of dying lilies barreled through the hall.
Mariah pretended to be my grandma!
The thought enraged her.
What is this key for?
She sneezed five more times.

Griffin clenched the key in her hand and darted into a bathroom. She stuffed her pocket with toilet paper for her runny nose. Finally she made it back to room 13. She quietly opened the door and scanned the sea of heads for Libby’s blond hair and striped sweater. But the seat next to Libby, the one she’d asked her to save, was taken. A beautiful girl with long brown hair as silky as mink, and with the high preppie
collar of her shirt turned up, sat there. Griffin walked to the one empty desk in the back corner of the classroom.

That smell. She couldn’t get that sickly sweet smell out of her nose. “Haaaaachuuuuuuu! Haaaachuuu! Haaa-chuuuuuuu!” Griffin sneezed uncontrollably.

“Ewww,” said a boy in front of her.

“Excuse me,” said Griffin.

“Gesundheit!” said the teacher.

Libby turned around and mouthed
I’m sorry
and tipped her head toward the girl who’d taken Griffin’s seat.

Rain hit the classroom windows, and the sky darkened.

“Whoa! Look at the sky!” a boy exclaimed.

“Creepy!” said a girl.

“‘By the clock ’tis day / And yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp,’” quoted Mrs. Gideon, the English teacher. She had short silver-gray hair and wore a long skirt and a necklace made from chunky, colorfully glazed pottery pieces. “What perfect weather to begin our study of Shakespeare’s condensed
Macbeth
!” Mrs. Gideon clapped her hands together. “Some people think this play is a bit advanced for sixth graders, but I say nonsense. It’s about desires, greedy rulers, and betrayal—themes found in most of your computer games.”

On the board Mrs. Gideon wrote,
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds
, and drew a witch’s hat next to the
sentence. “Everyone has three minutes to write down on a piece of paper what they think this quote means.”

Is this why the school smells so bad?
Griffin wondered.
Was it part of the lesson?
Griffin stared at her paper. Suddenly her hand felt possessed and she scrawled out a sentence.

“Okay, class. Time’s up! Pass up your papers so I can read some aloud,” said Mrs. Gideon. She flipped through some of the answers and stopped on one paper. “Who is David Hunt?” called the teacher.

David raised his hand.

“You wrote ‘This quote means weeds really stink, but beautiful flowers stink worse,’” read Mrs. Gideon. “Interesting.” She rustled through more papers. “Who is Griffin Penshine?”

Griffin raised her hand.

Mrs. Gideon smiled and read Griffin’s paper, “‘This quote is really about people. Some bad people are like weeds, ugly on the inside and outside. But what’s worse is to be a good person who turns bad, does cruel things, and rots on the inside.’”

“Very good. Very good, Griffin,” said Mrs. Gideon. “Maybe you’ll be my new English star this year.”

Griffin blushed. Libby turned around and smiled at her. The gorgeous girl next to Libby swiveled her head at Griffin. She narrowed her swampy green eyes. Griffin stared back. She
had never seen eyes like that, green cold slits like a reptile’s.

Just then the intercom blasted through the school. “Attention, students. This is your school principal, Dr. Yeldah. Please walk to the auditorium with your class for our welcome assembly.”

All the kids packed up their bags. Griffin slid the tiny gold key in a side pocket of her backpack.
What awful thing does it open?
she thought, shivering.

Libby ran up to her. “Griff, I’m sorry. I told that girl I was saving that seat for you, but she just ignored me and sat there with her two friends.”

“It’s okay, Libby. It’s not your fault. Maybe she got confused,” she said.

“Why did you get called downstairs?” asked Libby.

Anger surged through Griffin. She couldn’t believe Mariah had come to her new school!

“Griff?” said Libby.

“Uhh, my grandma”—Griffin gulped—“gave me a present.”

“Students, stay in your group, line up on the far left of the auditorium, and file into the first three rows of seats,” said Mrs. Gideon.

Libby and Griffin scanned the auditorium for some of
their friends from their old school and looked at all the new kids from different schools. Already they’d heard whispers about the cutest boy in sixth grade, Garrett Forester, whom they spotted on the opposite side of the auditorium.

While Griffin and Libby stood waiting to enter the row of seats, the girl who’d stolen Griffin’s seat talked with her two friends. On her left stood a tall girl with long flat-ironed blond hair. She wore a necklace with the name Sasha sparkling in silver letters. On her right a girl with shoulder-length brown hair wore a pink headband with the name Martha embroidered on it in green. She wore a beige plaid designer skirt. Martha was saying, “Samantha, I just know you’re going to win the Fresh Face! Prettiest New Face Contest. The whole school has already seen you model on your dad’s infomercials. Everybody knows he’s the best dermatologist with the
best
skin products in Kansas.”

Samantha smiled, glad that Martha was talking so loudly. She turned around and looked Griffin and Libby up and down. “What school are you guys from?” she demanded.

“We went to Dadesville Elementary,” said Libby.

“We went to Westminster
Private
School,” said Samantha. Sasha and Martha did not move or smile.

“Isn’t that the school with its own planetarium? My mom said the planetarium is really cool,” said Griffin.

“It’s totally lame. I hate planetariums,” said Samantha. “Wait, is your mom the town astronomer, Dr. Penshine, the one who always wears those stupid T-shirts?”

Red flames shot up Griffin’s face. Lilies. That horrible smell of putrefied lilies crept up her nostrils. She sneezed five times.

“Disgusting!” snarled Samantha. “Use a Kleenex! You almost ruined my cashmere sweater!”

Griffin reached into her pocket for a tissue and blew her nose loudly. “I
love
my mom’s T-shirts,” said Griffin. She did not notice that a long piece of toilet paper fell out of her pocket and onto the auditorium floor.

“Samantha Sloane,” called the gym teacher. “Please go sit up on the stage. The principal chose your name out of a hat to welcome your class.”

Samantha flipped her hair and walked away.

“I’ve seen her on her dad’s infomercials. She’s rich, beautiful, and mean—like a queen lizard,” said Libby.

Somehow the image of a lizard queen walking around school cracked Griffin and Libby up, and they couldn’t stop laughing.

Students finally settled into their seats. The principal walked onstage. “Welcome, students. Before I speak, I’d like to call up the three class representatives I randomly picked
this morning to read our state motto in unison, ‘To the Stars Through Difficulty!
Ad Astra Per Aspera
,’ and tell me how he or she thinks this motto applies to our exciting school year!”

Samantha and the seventh- and eighth-grade representatives moved toward the microphone. Suddenly a group of boys roared with laughter. Griffin and Libby stared. The boys pointed at Samantha as she pranced in front of the whole school. A long piece of toilet paper was stuck to the heel of her designer shoe.

Samantha looked down, ripped the toilet paper off her shoe, and glared across the auditorium at Griffin.

What a strange illusion it is
to suppose that beauty is goodness.

—Tolstoy

G
riffin’s foot tapped under her desk in third period math class. A queasy feeling sloshed around inside her. Maybe she was just nervous; after all, it was the first day of school. But the stench of rotting lilies still coated the school from floor to ceiling, and she had already made an enemy.

“It reeks in this school!” kids cried in the hallways. Griffin spied a group of janitors searching for the source of the odor. “It’s the oddest thing,” she overheard one of them say. “We don’t have a clue where this smell is coming from. We scoured the place from top to bottom only two days ago.”

She thought back to her last seven wishes. Two had evaporated in the last 24 hours.

X
I wish the dentist will not have to pull my two back molars for braces.

X
I wish my new school smells like warm chocolate chip cookies.

She told herself she was being silly. It was all just coincidence. Wasn’t it?

“Fifteen more minutes on these last math problems,” said her teacher, Mrs. Sato. “Concentrate! I’m assessing your math skills from this quiz.”

Was Griffin going crazy, imagining things? A tightness wrapped itself around her throat. She remembered her two most important wishes:
I wish for a baby sister. I wish for Grandma Penshine to get well soon.

Chills, like sharpened fingernails, crept up her back. In case there was even the tiniest bit of bad luck stuck with Mariah’s wishes, and these weren’t coincidences, Griffin had to get rid of them.

“Griffin?” called Mrs. Sato.

“Yes?” she said.

“Are you okay?” the teacher asked, bending over her desk. “You’ve been very distracted ever since class began.”