Wishful Thinking (2 page)

“I don't know.” Kara continued to bite her bottom lip in concern. “I still don't like it.”

“Kara, relax. I mean, I'll be down there for two minutes tops. Seriously, what could possibly go wrong?”

T
EN MINUTES LATER SOPHIE HAD FINALLY CONVINCED her friend that there were no axe murderers waiting on the other side of the door, and she was able to head down to the basement (though only by sending Kara back upstairs to check on Ryan, just so she would stop calling Sophie back every two seconds just to make sure she was okay).

As she looked around, the first thing Sophie noticed was that, despite what the Declaration of Independence stated, all basements were most definitely not created equal.

The one in Sophie's own house was a dark, musty place that was filled with old toys, loads of her mom's weird pottery statues—which Kara insisted were works of art but Sophie privately thought were just crooked blobs of clay with body parts—not to mention lots of creepy spiders (despite being a very positive person who was at one with the Universe, she drew the line at spiders). Which was why she tended to avoid her own basement as much as possible, venturing down only when she wanted to look at her dad's boxes. Just to make sure they were okay for when he came home.

Whereas the room she was standing in was nothing like that. Instead, it was neat and clean, without a hint of mustiness or spiders.

Over in one corner was a large antique desk that looked even more expensive than the one Ryan had destroyed upstairs. The walls were covered in old paintings whose gilded frames suggested that they also cost loads of money, and for a moment Sophie thought it was a pity that Kara had refused to come down because she would've loved it.

Behind the desk was a floor-to-ceiling bookcase filled with leather-bound books, and dotted around the rest of the room were various display cabinets containing all sorts of old—what her mom liked to call—curios.

This was obviously where Mr. Rivers kept more of his stock from the antiques shop. Then she glanced around again and realized there was no sign of her jeans. For a moment she wondered if Ryan had been playing a trick on her just to get her into trouble, but before she could decide, she caught sight of another doorway.

She headed over and peered in, happy to see that it led into a small, orderly laundry room. Next to the white washing machine and dryer was the chute with a laundry basket sitting below it. Most importantly, her jeans were on the top of the basket.

Sophie immediately thanked the Universe for its help and then snatched the jeans and held them close as she breathed in the scent of denim. Thank goodness that order had been restored to the world.

She headed back to the main part of the basement and was just about to go upstairs to where Kara would no doubt be waiting, when she heard a noise coming from outside.

Because it was the basement, the only windows were set high up on the wall, but when the noise continued, Sophie felt duty bound to find out what it was. She pushed the black leather swivel chair that had been behind the desk over to the window and climbed up.

At first, as she peered out, she thought she was merely looking at Mr. Rivers's side garden, but then she realized that it actually flowed onto the side of the Taits' house.

Sophie widened her eyes. If she had known that there was no side fence between the two houses, she would've spent her entire day out there.

At that moment she heard the noise again and then saw an orange basketball bouncing up and down, before a pair of legs walked into view. She craned her neck upward so she could see the owner of the legs.

Oh, sweet happiness.

It was Jonathan Tait. Sophie pressed her nose up to the glass. Not that she was a pervert or anything, but until a person had seen Jonathan Tait without a shirt on, it was hard to explain just how compelled she was to look at him. And of course it had to be taken into account that Sophie hadn't seen much of her crush since he had left Miller Road Elementary the previous year to head to Robert Robertson Middle School. But now, not only would she get to see him every day starting tomorrow, she was obviously being given a chance to remind herself just how gorgeous he really was.

See, Sophie knew that her jeans would help her. Wasn't this proof of that? Even if it was in an unusual and slightly weird sort of way.

She grinned some more. Jonathan was just as golden and lovely as she remembered him. All tanned skin, blond hair, and chocolaty brown eyes. But of course the best thing about him was that he was just as lovely on the inside as he was on the outside. Okay, well sure, she hadn't had that many conversations with him—one to be precise. But the point was that it had been a quality one.

It was actually a few months after her dad had first left, simply leaving a note saying that there was something he had to do and that he would be back soon. Problem was that her grandmother, who was staying with them at the time (trying to convince Sophie's mom to stop crying and get out of her pajamas), kept saying that it was obvious her dad wasn't coming back, since no one just vanishes like that unless he really doesn't want to be found. She even used the police report to back up her story.

Hence, a seven-year-old Sophie had been crying her eyes out behind the bike shed. Unfortunately, just as her eyes were at their reddest and her nose was at its snottiest, a gang of fourth graders made their way toward her, and even through her grief, she realized that if they caught her crying, they would probably make her life hell for all eternity.

However, before they could reach her, Jonathan Tait appeared like some sort of modern-day savior, and not only did he pause in front of her to see if she was okay, but he then winked (and she didn't care what Harvey said, it was most definitely a wink, not a facial tic) before he pointed across the practice field to where a fight was taking place. The gang of kids immediately forgot about Sophie and darted away.

That had been four years ago, and it had been love ever since.

Oh, though for the record, Sophie had never cried for her dad again because that very night she had suddenly remembered that her dad never lied to her. Not when she asked him about Santa Claus or even when she asked him if it had hurt when he kicked the wall by mistake when they were playing soccer, and so she didn't care what her grandmother or the police report tried to tell her. If his note said that he was coming back home, then that meant he was coming back home.

Of course, sometimes Sophie thought it would be nice to actually know when he was coming home, since four years was a long time. But the most important thing was after that day she had never lost faith again. Not in her dad and not in the awesomeness that was Jonathan Tait.

Jonathan did another lay-up and Sophie only just resisted the urge to shout and clap out loud (though she was so shouting and clapping on the inside). Instead, she just stood there, holding her jeans up to her mouth in awe as she took it all in.

However, her contented smile suddenly disappeared as she realized that not only was the ball bouncing toward her, but Jonathan had started to jog in the same direction. Sophie gulped. If he bent down and peered over, there was a strong possibility he would notice her looking at him.

As quickly as she could, she started to scramble off the chair. Unfortunately, the movement made the wheels at the bottom go slipping along the concrete floor, and before Sophie quite knew what was happening she found herself falling sideways into one of the antique wooden cabinets nearby.

She flinched as her shoulder slammed into it before she went flying off to one side, where she landed with a thump.
Ouch!
She was just about to get up and check if the cabinet was okay when she realized it was rocking dangerously back and forth.

Nooooooooooooo.
She put out her hands to try to stop it from falling over, but it was too late. She barely had a second to think about how it was like something out of one of Harvey's horror movies as the whole thing suddenly went tumbling onto the hard concrete floor (with emphasis on the hard). The contents crashed into a mosaic rainbow of tiny pieces.

Sophie's hand flew to her mouth, and she shut her eyes to will it not to have happened. Like seriously. Unfortunately, the Universe, who had obviously thought it had done quite enough favors for her recently, didn't seem to appreciate her predicament because when she opened her eyes again, she was still completely surrounded by shattered glass and broken curios.

No. No. No.

This was NOT good. Times ten.

And it wasn't like she hadn't been in bad situations before, because she had. For instance, there was the time she and Harvey had been goofing off in science and had accidentally knocked over a beaker of hydrochloric acid and it had eaten a hole into their teacher's briefcase. Or when she and Kara had tried to staple Mrs. Victor's skirt to the chair. But back then all she'd ended up with were a couple of detentions and a boring lecture from her mom. Who knew where this was going to end?

“Sophie, I know you told me to wait upstairs, but I just wanted to see what was taking you so. . . 
Holy freak show
.” Kara suddenly appeared in the doorway, a smudge of charcoal on her nose, her iPod earbuds dangling around her neck, and her jaw almost hitting the floor.

“I know,” Sophie groaned. “What a disaster. But the important thing is that we stay calm. I mean, yes, they're all ruined. Like really ruined, but that's not my fault. Well, okay, so perhaps it was my fault, but honestly, it was an accident. Oh, and maybe I could just blame Ryan, since it's not like he's exactly an angel of goodness.”

“Soph—” Kara started to say, her pale green eyes so wide that they would probably out-Bambi Bambi.

“Ack, you're right.” She dropped to the ground and frantically started to collect the tiny pieces as her face heated up in panic. “I can't just leave it all here because there's no way Ryan would take the blame for it. Oh, and what if Mr. Rivers freaks out at my mom? I mean, the whole reason she wanted me to babysit was to earn some brownie points, but this is the opposite of brownie points. It's a brownie-point disaster—”

“Sophie.” Kara tried again, but she hardly heard as a new idea formed. She regulated her breathing and felt a swoosh of hope go racing through her.

“I could always try and find some replacements before tomorrow. Perhaps my mom could help me? I might have to use up my I Will See Neanderthal Joe in Concert No Matter What Fund, but I think under the—”

“Sophie Campbell. Like, seriously, be quiet,” Kara finally cut her off by putting her hand over Sophie's mouth so she could finish the sentence. “I'm not talking about all this broken stuff. I'm talking about that guy over there.”

“Muh?” Sophie's reply was muffled as she stared blankly at her friend. “Mhat muy mover mwhere?” she continued before Kara guided her head around and nodded toward the corner of the room. Then she moved her hand from Sophie's mouth. Sophie let out a strangled gasp as she realized that there was indeed a guy over in the corner.

He appeared to be in his late twenties, with brown hair that fell across his dark eyes, and for some obscure reason he was wearing a pair of brightly colored harem pants and no shirt.
Harem pants? Really?

But the two things that really stood out about him were the fact that his skin was completely orange and the fact that, even though he was sitting cross-legged, he was hovering at least five feet off the ground.

E
R, SO, WOULD THIS BE THE RIGHT TIME TO SAY I told you so?” Kara asked in a low voice.

“What?” Sophie squeaked, quite unable to take her eyes off the sight in front of them. “When did you tell me that I'd break a cabinet full of antiques and that a floating guy the color of orange soda pop would suddenly turn up? Because I promise, I would've paid attention if you'd said something like that.”

“Fine, so I didn't go into details, but I did try and point out that this whole thing was a bad idea.”

“Yes, well, next time perhaps you could be a little bit more specific,” Sophie croaked as her heart pounded in her chest like the time she'd drunk three cans of Red Bull in a row.

“I'll try my best,” Kara agreed before nervously weaving her fingers together. “So what do we do?”

Run? Scream? Hide? All of the above?

However, before Sophie could even open her mouth to say any of her suggestions out loud, the flying guy suddenly unfolded his legs and floated back down to the ground, where he proceeded to study them with his dark eyes.

“So, which of you two do I have to thank for my release?” he asked as he did a couple of shoulder rolls and then cracked his knuckles.

“Y-your release?” Sophie blinked as she inched closer to Kara while secretly wishing that Harvey was with them, since in order to stop him from spending so much time watching horror movies, his mom had insisted he take up karate last year. Something that Sophie was dearly wishing she had done as well. “R-release from what?”

Oh, and for the record, if he said
mental hospital
, then there was going to be some serious fainting going on.

“From my binding, of course.” He used his orange foot to point distastefully to a sliver of red glass that Sophie realized had once been part of a bottle. “I've got no idea how you managed it, but whichever one of you did it, you have my eternal gratitude.”

Sophie turned to Kara for a moment and chewed her lip. “Is this making any sense to you? Because I'm lost.”

“I've been lost since I realized there was an orange man floating in the air,” Kara admitted.

“A man? I'm not a man. I'm a djinn,” he corrected with a frown as he started to study the large ring on one of his fingers.

“W-what?” Sophie widened her eyes. “No way. You cannot be serious.”

“What's a djinn?” Kara demanded as she turned to Sophie in confusion. “Do you know what he's talk about?”

“Well, yeah. A djinn is like a genie,” Sophie was momentarily distracted as she turned to explain it to Kara. “You know, like ‘Aladdin and the Magic Lamp' from
The Arabian Nights
. My dad used to read all the stories to me when I was a kid. B-but they're not real. They're just stories. I mean, who would live in a lamp?”

“Exactly.” The orange guy nodded in agreement. “For a start, most lamps are made of brass, which always causes me to break out in a rash. Besides, I find that if you're going to stay somewhere, you're better off at the Quality Inn. They have great showers, and I love the free soap and shampoo that you get. As for Aladdin, he wasn't a hero; he was a tyrant. An evil, scum-sucking
sahir
who just happened to have a good publicist.” Then he seemed to catch Sophie and Kara's baffled faces, and he let out a morose sigh. “But unfortunately, djinns aren't just a bedtime story. They're real.
I'm
real.”

“No. That's not possible.” Sophie shook her head, but before she could say anything else, the guy let out another weary sigh and snapped his very orange fingers. The next thing she knew he was no longer orange but a rather Violet Beauregarde shade of blue. He snapped again, and this time his brown hair became a fiery color of red. Snap. He was covered in spots.
Snap.
He suddenly disappeared altogether, and in his place was a large bird with a golden plumage and disturbingly familiar dark eyes. One final snap and Orange Soda Pop Guy was standing in front of them still looking glum.

Say what?

Sophie turned to her friend and tried to speak, but somehow words failed her. Kara seemed to be having an equally hard time figuring out what she should say and they ended up just staring helplessly at each other.

“It's all right.” The djinn didn't seem remotely fazed by their reaction. “I'm sort of used to it by now. Humans aren't exactly the most trusting of species, which is why I first developed that little demonstration. I like to call it Introduction to Djinns 101, but if you're still having problems with it, I could always turn into a dinosaur.”

Sophie quickly shook her head and let out a sigh of relief as he lowered his snapping hand, since she was pretty sure her brain couldn't cope with any more weirdness right now. Instead, she needed to figure this thing out. And more importantly, make everything go back to normal.

“S-so what are you doing here?” Kara finally asked as Sophie closed her eyes and tried to remember what she knew about djinns.
There was the story of Solomon, who had a famous ring that he used to control loads of djinns.
Unfortunately, the only ring Sophie had on was a plastic flower ring with lip gloss inside it, and she didn't think it could control anything.

“No idea.” The djinn shrugged. “All I know is that I was bound to a very ugly glass bottle for the last two hundred years (give or take, since time tends to move a bit differently when you're in a bottle). Problem is, as is often the case, a djinn gets bound to something and once its current owner dies, the thing gets passed along or misplaced, and suddenly you're in hell-bound limbo for eternity. Which, let me tell you, can really screw up your plans for the week.”

“Do you mean that Mr. Rivers didn't even know you were there?” Kara asked as she knitted her eyebrows together to consider the notion.
Oh, and then there was the fisherman who tricked the djinn into climbing back into a bottle.
But Sophie quickly dismissed it when she realized that the bottle this djinn had been in was now broken into a zillion pieces.

“I doubt it.” The djinn sighed again. “And if you hadn't come along, goodness knows how much longer it might have taken for me to get released.”

“You could've been in there forever? That's terrible.” Kara, who didn't even like hearing stories of sick kittens, was now staring at him with her pale green eyes filled with compassion.

“Literally. Or worse,” the djinn hinted in an ominous voice, but Sophie hardly heard as she suddenly remembered one of her dad's favorite stories. She couldn't remember the name of it, but she could almost hear his voice reciting it in her mind.

Once upon a time, there was a handsome djinn who did a foolish thing and ended up trapped in a bottle. He was in there for a long time, which meant he could do a lot of thinking, and he decided that if he ever got out, he would stop being so foolish. Finally, a human girl came along and opened up the bottle.

The djinn thought she was the most beautiful girl in the world and, completely forgetting his decision not to be foolish anymore, instantly fell in love with her. It was a very bad idea because djinns and humans aren't meant to be together. Then, because she had saved him, the foolish djinn offered her three wishes—

Of course! Sophie felt a rush of excitement go racing through her as she suddenly remembered that the essence of every djinn story was that the person who releases the djinn is granted three wishes. Well, in the case of her dad's story, it was slightly different.
But the human girl, not realizing that the handsome boy was actually a djinn (or that it wasn't wise to fall in love with him) had only one wish. She wished that he would stay with her. And because he loved her and wanted to grant her that one wish, he did.
Which, if you asked Sophie, only proved that each was as foolish as the other.

Not that it really mattered. The important thing was that she wouldn't waste her wishes. Sophie Charlotte-Marie Campbell. Genie releaser. It certainly had a nice ring to it, and she clapped her hands together in excitement, which in turn caused Kara and Orange Soda Pop Guy to look at her.

“You're clapping because he might've been stuck in that bottle forever?” Kara scolded. “Sophie, I'm ashamed of you.”

“What? No, sorry, it wasn't that. It's just, I finally remembered something. I mean, he's a genie—”

“Djinn,” the orange guy corrected. “You don't call me a genie, and I won't call you a
Homo sapiens
.”

“Okay, sorry,” Sophie apologized before turning to Kara. “But here's the thing. He's a djinn, and I'm the one who released him. Don't you see what that means?”

“That you're a very nice person?” Kara guessed, but Sophie impatiently shook her straight blonde hair, which felt like it had somehow gone into a static halo around her head.

“No, silly. It means I get the three wishes.” Sophie grinned from ear to ear as she started to tick off her fingers. “Okay, so for number one, it will have to be to get this place cleaned up. I mean, it's a bit of a waste of a wish, but I can't let my mom get in trouble. For my second wish, it will be for three tickets to see Neanderthal Joe in concert—complete with backstage passes. And for my third wish. Hmmmm. . . ”

She paused for a minute and considered. Obviously, world peace was tempting, but down at the mall there was also a very cute pair of shoes, which were way out of her pocket-money league. Would that make her a bad person?

Before she could decide Kara coughed and shot her a pointed glare.

“Okay, fine.” She let out a reluctant sigh as she forced herself to lose the mental picture of how adorable those shoes would look with her new jeans. “I suppose you should get one of the wishes, even if you didn't think it was a good idea for me to come in here—but I guess I can't hold that against you.” Too much.

“Actually, it's not about the wishes. It's about him. He seems to be shaking his head.”

Huh? Sophie spun around and to where Orange Soda Pop Guy was in fact doing a lot of head shaking. And no smiling either.

“Why are you doing that?” she demanded. “Are you saying that I didn't free you from your prison in the bottle?”

“You most definitely did,” he assured her. “But that doesn't mean I have to grant you three wishes.”

“What? But you said before that you were eternally grateful to me,” Sophie reminded him as she once again looked around at all the shattered glass and her excitement started to be replaced by mounting panic.

“And I am,” the djinn assured her. “But eternal gratitude and being bound to you for three wishes are two entirely different things. Besides, unless you're an evil scum-sucking
sahir
in disguise and have done a binding spell on me—which, by the way is a rhetorical question, because if you had, then I would be screaming in agony right about now and you would have a very distasteful gloating look on your face—then I'm not obliged to do anything for you.”

What?

Well, that couldn't be good news.

Especially since it meant Sophie was right back at the beginning. She was still in a bucketful of trouble and now she had an unobliging djinn to deal with as well. As a person who believed in the power of positive thinking, this was really starting to test her faith. She licked her lips and took a deep breath.

“Okay, so how about just one wish?” she wheedled as she tried to hide her desperation. “You see, while the whole bottle-breaking thing ended up okay for you, the truth is that this isn't my house, and if Mr. Rivers sees this mess, my mom and I will both be in more trouble than you can ever imagine.”

“Oh, you'd be surprised at how well I can imagine trouble,” the djinn retorted in a dry voice. “And still I can't help you.”

“But you have to,” Sophie insisted as she decided there was no point in pretending that she wasn't desperate when she absolutely was. “Look, the thing is that my mom's a potter, but on account of losing her mojo after my dad left, she had to go out and get a regular job to help look after my sister and me. Just until my dad comes back home. Problem is that she really sucks at working for other people, and if she loses this job, then who knows how long it will take her to find another one. Which means her boss can't find out that I trashed his basement—by complete accident, I might add. So please, I'll do anything you ask as long as you snap your fingers and make this whole mess go away.”

“Anything?” He raised an eyebrow, and Sophie felt a glimmer of hope go racing through her.

“Absolutely.” She nodded. “Just name it. Would you like me to explain what's happened in the last two hundred years? Because I don't mean to boast, but I really rock at history. Or perhaps help you buy some more up-to-date clothing—with particular reference to some trousers that aren't bright purple? Or I could even—”

“Wear this ring?” The djinn cut her off as he held out his orange fingers to draw her attention to the hideously ugly large garnet ring that was mounted on some sort of black filigree setting.